Description

Forty-three Syriac and Garshuni manuscripts owned by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage are here catalogued and described in great detail. The manuscripts cover major literary genres known to Syriac literature, each of which is discussed in a lengthy introduction with an up-to-date bibliography. To illustrate the contents and styles of the manuscripts, short texts extracted from most of them are given in Syriac and Garshuni with translations in English. Some manuscripts are liturgical and were once the property of Melkite, Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, and Assyrian churches. Other manuscripts are spiritual and theological compendiums, biblical lectionaries and psalms, Melkite pastoral letters dealing with Roman Catholic devotional practices, charms and popular medicine, and sogyata and durikyata poems. A unique manuscript consists of a Kurdish (Kurmanji) grammar in Syriac authored by a 19th century Chaldean monk living in the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd in northern Iraq. The codices are dated between the 16th and the 19th centuries, though there is one dated to the 14th century, and they were produced in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and central and eastern Anatolia.

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