Search Results for “Syriac language”

• SYRIAC LANGUAGE

  Multiple Authors

  the slightly archaizing Eastern Aramaic dialect of the city of Edessa that is the most important Aramaic dialect used by Christians. Syriac served as an important contributor to the mainstream of medieval Islamic and Western European civilization.

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• SYRIAC LANGUAGE iii. Syriac Translators as the Medium for Transmission of Greek Ideas to Sasanian Iran

  Philippe Gignoux

   The high point in the history of translation from Greek to Syriac came in the seventh century, during which translations in all domains were revised. 

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• SYRIAC LANGUAGE i. IRANIAN LOANWORDS IN SYRIAC

  Claudia A. Ciancaglini

  Many of the authors of Syriac literature were Persians who wrote in Syriac, either because they were Christian converts, or because they wrote about subjects that had a literary tradition in Syriac, such as medicine. 

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• SYRIAC LANGUAGE ii. SYRIAC WRITINGS ON PRE-ISLAMIC IRAN

  Phillipe Gignoux

  Among numerous chronicles in Syriac using the same information, we must distinguish between the sources that derive from the western Syrians or Jacobites, and those which originate with the eastern Syrians or Nestorians.

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• AŠŌQAR

  EIr

  in Syriac sources the name of a deity.

• BĀBAY OF NISIBIS

  N. Sims-Williams

  Christian Syriac writer who flourished about the beginning of the seventh century CE; a homily of his is attested in Sogdian.

• APOSTOLIC CANONS

  N. Sims-Williams

  fragmentary Christian Sogdian text.

• AFRAHĀṬ

  J. P. Asmussen

  name attested in Syriac (ʾfrhṭ) of a number of Iranian Christian churchmen.

• EUSTATHIUS, ACTS of

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  Christian martyrological text, of which versions survive in many languages, including Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Armenian.

• CYRIACUS AND JULITTA, ACTS OF

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  Chris­tian martyrological text.

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• BAR HEBRAEUS

  Cross-Reference

  (b. Malaṭīa, 1225; d. Marāḡa, 1286), Syriac historian and polymath. See EBN AL-ʿEBRĪ, ABU’L-FARAJ.

• DEYLAM, JOHN OF

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  or Yoḥannān Daylomāyā (d. 738), Eastern Syrian saint and founder of monasteries in Fārs.

• DIATESSERON

  Cross-reference

  Persian translation of the four Gospels, based on a Syriac original. See BIBLE vii. Persian Translations.

• APOPHTHEGMATA PATRUM

  N. Sims-Williams

  (Maxims of the fathers), Graeco-Latin name customarily used to refer to a species of Christian literature consisting of sayings and edifying anecdotes of the monks and solitary ascetics who inhabited the deserts of Egypt during the early centuries of the Christian era.

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• ABU’L-FARAJ ʿEBRĪ

  Cross-Reference

  (b. Malaṭīa, 1225; d. Marāḡa, 1286), Syriac historian and polymath, also known as Bar Hebraeus. See EBN AL-ʿEBRĪ, ABU’L-FARAJ.

• ELĪJĀ BAR ŠĪNĀJĀ

  Wolfgang Felix

  (975-1049) prominent Nestorian polyhistor. 975-1049). His work is an important source for Sasanian history. In 1002 he was made bishop of Bēṯ Nuhādrē in Adiabene, and in 1008 metropolitan of Nisibis (Naṣībīn). He wrote in Syriac and Arabic on theological issues.

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• BIBLE v. Sogdian Translations

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  The following manuscripts containing biblical texts in Sogdian have been made known. None of them survives in anything like complete form, and some are mere fragments.

• ĀDURFRĀZGIRD

  C. J. Brunner

  a brother of the Sasanian king Šāpūr II (309-79 CE) who is mentioned in the Syriac Acts of the Persian Martyrs.

• CHRONICLE OF EDESSA

  Sebastian P. Brock

  a short local history of Edessa (modern Urfa), written in Syriac by an anonymous author and covering chiefly the period from 201-540 C.E. Events such as incursions by the Huns (403-04, 531) and relations be­tween the Byzantine and Sasanian empires are noted briefly.

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• EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  (346-399 C.E.), prolific author of Christian literature in Greek. After passing the first part of his career as a preacher in Constantinople, Evagrius took up abode in the Egyptian desert and became one of the most renowned of its many ascetics.

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• ORAHAM, ALEXANDER JOSEPH

  Eden Naby

  (1898-1953), physician and lexicographer, born in the village of Armudāḡāj of the Urmia District, Azerbaijan. He emigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. He is known for the widely used Assyrian-English Oraham’s Dictionary.

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• BĒṮ LAPAṬ

  Michael Morony

  the Syriac name for Vēh Antiōk Šāpūr (Gondēšāpūr), founded in ca. 260 by Šāpūr I in Ḵūzestān with the Roman captives from Valerian’s army.

• DADISOʿ QATRAYA

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  (late 7th century), Nestorian author of ascetic literature in Syriac. Pre­sumably a native of Qaṭar, as his surname suggests, he lived for a time at the monastery of Rabban Šābūr, near Šostar  in Ḵūzestān. His writings included commentaries on the Paradise of the Fathers and on the 26 “discourses” of Abbā Isaiah; fragments of the latter are found in Sogdian translation.

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• BULAYÏQ

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  town in eastern Turkestan, modern Chinese Sinkiang, situated about ten km north of Turfan. At the nearby ruin of Shüī-pang, a library of fragmentary Christian manuscripts (thought to be of the 9th-10 cents.) was discovered in 1905, and the site is judged to be that of a Nestorian monastery.

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• ASTABED

  M. L. Chaumont

  The word astabid occurs in two Syriac texts as the title of a high-ranking Iranian officer and is applied to three different individuals.

• ACTS OF ĀDUR-HORMIZD AND OF ANĀHĪD

  J. P. Asmussen

  Syriac martyrological texts.  Their events are set in the year 446 A.D., during the reign of Yazdegerd II; and they were apparently recorded not long afterward. They offer more detailed data on Zoroastrianism and Zurvanism, even though in a somewhat corrupted form, than is commonly found in the records of the Christian martyrs of the Sasanian empire. 

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• BŌRĀN

  Marie Louise Chaumont

  (Pers. Pōrān, Pūrān), Sasanian queen ca. 630-31, daughter of Ḵosrow II (r. 590, 591-628). There are extant coins of Bōrān dated from the first, second, and third years of her reign.

• ĀẔARĪ language

  cross-reference

  the ancient language of Azerbaijan. See AZERBAIJAN vii.

• AFRAHĀṬ, YAʿQŪB

  J. P. Asmussen

  Persian bishop of the mid-4th century CE, author in Syriac.

• BIBLE iv. Middle Persian Translations

  Shaul Shaked

  The only extant Middle Persian Bible version is represented by fragments of a translation of the Psalms. The Christians of Iran were dependent largely on the Syriac versions of the Bible, but the activity of creating new versions in the current vernacular must have been part of the missionary effort.

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• LORI LANGUAGE

  Multiple Authors

  the language of one of Iran’s major ethnic groups, spoken by five million people over the length of the Zagros range. This entry consist of two parts i. Lori dialects  ii. Sociolinguistic status of Lori

• ARABIC LANGUAGE

  Multiple Authors

  The profound influence of Arabic in Iran can be traced to its social, religious, and political significance in the wake of the Muslim conquest, when it became the language of the dominant class, the language of religion and government administration, and by extension, the language of science, literature, and Koranic studies.

• KANJAKI

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  language mentioned in the 11th-century Turkish lexicon of Maḥmud al-Kāšḡari as being spoken in the villages near Kāšḡar.

• ABBĀ ISAIAH

  N. Sims-Williams

  (i.e., “Father” Isaiah), late 4th century A.D., author of Christian ascetical texts; from these it appears that he was a hermit who lived in the desert of Scete in Egypt, of whom several anecdotes are told in the Apophthegmata patrum.

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• SOGDIAN LANGUAGE

  Multiple Authors

  one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages once spoken in Sogdiana.

• ISAAC

  Sebastian Brock

  bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Catholicos of the Church of the East (399-410). At the importnt church synod held, with permission of the Sasanian king, not long before his death, he worked with Marutha, bishop of Maipharqat, to obtain the approval of the creed of the Council of Nicaea (325) on the part of  the Church of the East.

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• PASHTO LANGUAGE

  Cross-Reference

  See AFGHANISTAN vi. PAŠTO.

• BARUCH

  Sh. Shaked

  scribe and disciple of the prophet Jeremiah, at the time of the first Jewish exile to Babylonia (586 B.C.).  Baruch was identified with Zoroaster by some Syriac authors, followed by some Arab historians.

• GUIDI’S CHRONICLE

  Sebastian P. Brock

  an anonymous, 7th-century chronicle of Nestorian Christians, known also as “the Khuzistan Chronicle,” written in Syriac and covering the period from the reign of the Sasanian Hormizd/Hormoz IV (579-89) to the middle of the 7th century and the time of the early Arab conquests.

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• CHRISTIANITY iv. Christian Literature in Middle Iranian Languages

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  In Persia itself Syriac eventually regained its status as the sole literary and liturgical language of the church, with the result that none of this Christian Persian literature survived, apart from a few texts preserved in Syriac translation, such as two legal works by the metropolitans Išoʿbōḵt and Simon.

• BAR KŌNAY, THEODORE

  J. P. Asmussen

  8th-9th-century Nestorian teacher and writer from Kaškar in Mesopotamia. His The Book of Scholiais notable for its sections on Zarathustra and Mani.

• ASSYRIANS IN IRAN ii. Literature of the Assyrians in Iran

  R. Macuch

  Although there were four missionary printing-houses in Urmia before the end of World War I, the Iranian Assyrian writers and poets were producing much more than they were able to publish. Many of their literary products remained in manuscript or were published only posthumously.

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• PAHLAVI PSALTER

  Philippe Gignoux

  name given to a fragment, consisting of twelve pages written on both sides, of a Middle Persian translation of the Syriac Psalter. It was discovered, with a mass of other documents, at Bulayiq, near Turfan, in eastern Turkistan (present-day Xinjiang, China) by one of the four German expeditions to Central Asia.

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• ABARQOBĀḎ

  C. E. Bosworth

  Ancient town of lower Iraq between Baṣra and Vāseṭ, to the east of the Tigris, in the region adjacent to Ahvāz, known in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times as Mēšūn (Mid. Pers. form) or Maysān/Mayšān (Syriac and Arabic forms).

• NEO-ARAMAIC LANGUAGE

  Cross-Reference

  See  ARAMAIC, IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (10). Aramaic ,  ASSYRIANS IN IRAN.

• ĒWĒNBED

  Philippe Gignoux

  lit. "master of manners"; Pahlavi title attested from the 3rd century C.E.

• ADDĀ

  W. Sundermann

  one of the earliest disciples of Mani.

• ČAḠATĀY

  Cross-Reference

  See CHAGHATAY LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE and CHAGHATAYID DYNASTY.

• BĒṮ GARMĒ

  Michael Morony

  a region and province in northeastern Iraq named after a people, possibly a Persian tribe.

• EUGENIUS

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  or MĀRAWGEN; legendary Christian saint traditionally credited with the introduction of Egyptian monasticism into Mesopotamia and Persia.

• GUIDI, IGNAZIO

  Erich Kettenhofen

  Guidi’s most valuable discovery,  the Syriac chronicle of an anonymous Nestorian Christian, contains otherwise non-attested details of late Sasanian history. Guidi recognized the significance of the synodal records of the Nestorian church for reconstructing the administration of the empire. 

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• KASHMIR

  Multiple Authors

  This entry is divided into five articles: i. Introduction. ii. Persian language in Kashmir. iii. Persian language in the state administration. iv. Persian elements in Kashmiri. v. Persian influence on Kashmiri art.

• KOROSH

  Multiple Authors

  the name of a tribe scattered across southwestern Iran, whose language is closely related to southern varieties of Balochi.

• ABRAHAM OF KAŠKAR

  Florence Jullien

  Christian monk of the 6th century CE, regarded as father of the monks in the Orient.

• BARŠABBĀ

  N. Sims-Williams

  legendary bishop of Marv and founder of the Christian church in eastern Iran. The only completely preserved versions of the legend are found in Arabic sources.

• EBN AL-ʿEBRĪ, ABU’L-FARAJ

  Herman G. B. Teule

  (1225-1286), Syriac historian and polymath. Most of his works were in Syriac, but he also wrote in Arabic. In his Syriac Chronicle,  much attention is given to the vicissitudes of the Jacobite and East Syrian, or Nestorian, churches in the “Persian territories.” 

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• MICHAEL THE SYRIAN

  Florence Jullien

  Jacobite patriarch of Antioch (1166-99), who wrote a universal chronicle (from the Creation until 1195) in Syriac. It includes much information concerning the history of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran—for instance, persecutions under the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II and the 6th-century wars between the Romans and the Persians.

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• CHRONICLE OF ARBELA

  Peter Kawerau

  a Syriac church history of Adiabene, written in the 6th century by Mĕšīḥā-Zĕḵā. A remarkable account from the Parthian period is that of the Feast of the Magi in the month of Iyyār. Equally noteworthy is the account of the fall of the Arsacids and the beginning of the reign of the Sasanians in 224.

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• ČAK

  Willem Floor

  legal document, testament, money draft, check.

• BROCKELMANN, CARL

  Rudolph Sellheim

  German orientalist (1868-1956). During a long and serene life as a scholar Brock­elmann produced a wealth of fundamental publications. His monumental output represents the unity of Oriental studies in his time.

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• DIEU, LOUIS (LUDOVICUS) DE

  J.T.P. de Bruijn

  (b. Vlissingen, Flushing, April 7, 1590; d. Leiden, Dec. 23, 1642), Dutch orientalist.

• QALA d-ŠRARA

  Eden Naby

  (The voice of truth), a monthly publication of the mainly French Catholic Lazarist Mission in Urmia which ran from 1897 to 1915. It was the second periodical to appear in Urmia wholly published in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, after Zahrire d-bahra (1849-1918). 

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• FĀRESĪYĀT

  Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī

  a literary term used in Arabic literature to refer to poems in Arabic which contain some Persian words or even phrases in their original form, the most notable example being the Fāresīyāt of Abū Nowās.

• Qašqā’i

  music sample

• EBN ḴAMMĀR, ABU’L-ḴAYR ḤASAN

  W. Montgomery Watt

  b. Savār (or Sovār), b. Bābā b. Bahrām (or Behnām) Ḵᵛārazmī, philosopher.

• BASILIUS OF CAESAREA

  J. P. Asmussen

  or Basilius the Great (ca. A.D. 330-79), bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia from 370, after Eusebius, who wrote regarding the Magi.

• Ilāri

  music sample

• KOJUR

  Multiple Authors

  historical district in the central Alborz, northwestern Māzandarān.  i. Historical geography.  ii. Language and culture.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN vi. ARMENIAN NAMES OF IRANIAN ORIGIN

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Linguistic research has documented that the majority of Iranian lexical and other borrowings in Armenian originated in the Parthian language.

• EPHESUS, SEVEN SLEEPERS OF

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  Christian legend attested by texts in many languages.

• MANDAEANS v. MANDAIC LANGUAGE

  Christa Müller-Kessler

  Mandaic is the term for the Aramaic dialect of the last remaining non-Christian Gnostics from Late Antiquity, the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Ḵuzestān). It belongs to the Southeastern Aramaic dialect group with Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic and Koiné Babylonian Aramaic.

• ĀFURIŠN

  W. Sundermann

  “blessing, praise,” a technical, literary term for a category of Manichean hymns. 

• BASSĀM-E KORD

  Z. Safa

  the Kharijite (fl. mid-9th century), one of the first poets in the New Persian language, active at the court of the Saffarids.

• EBN NOṢRAT, AMIR BAHĀʾ-AL- DĪN BARANDAQ ḴOJANDĪ

  Ḏabīḥ-Allāh Ṣafā

  (b. 1356; d. ca. 1433), Timurid poet.

• PUNJABI

  Christopher Shackle

  Indo-Aryan language of the Punjab with about 26 million speakers in India and more than 60 million in Pakistan.

• BANDAR

  W. Eilers

  “harbor, seaport; commercial town.” The concept of bandar probably continues an old Oriental tradition. Its double meaning of “harbor” on a river or a sea and “town, center of commerce and communications” (also in the inland) agrees well with that of Akkadian kārum.

• BIBLE vii. Persian Translations of the Bible

  Kenneth J. Thomas and Fereydun Vahman

  The Pentateuch, the books of the prophets, and the writings (Heb. ketūbīm), including the Psalms, from the Hebrew scriptures, collectively known as the Old Testament, and the Gospels and other writings in Greek, collectively known as the New Testament, have all been translated into Persian.

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• ĀFRĪD

  J. P. Asmussen

  5th-century Christian bishop of Sagastān.

• HAFTĀNBŌXT

  Mansour Shaki

  traditional reading of the name of a legendary warlord in southern Persia, mentioned in the Kār-nāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān (The exploits of Ardašīr son of Pābag).

• EBN BOḴTĪŠŪʿ

  Lutz Richter-Bernburg

  prominent family of physicians of Gondēšāpūr at court during the early ʿAbbasid period.

• BĀBAY THE GREAT

  A. Vööbus

  (d. 628), abbot and prominent leader in the Nestorian church in Iran under Ḵosrow II.

• GATHAS

  Multiple Authors

  or GĀΘĀS; the core of the great Mazdayasnian liturgy, the Yasna, consisting of five gāθās, or modes of song (gā) that comprise seventeen songs composed in Old Avestan language, and arranged according to their five different syllabic meters.

• DASĀTĪR

  Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabaʾī

  the most important tract of the Āḏar Kayvānī sect, almost certainly the work of its founder, Āḏar Kayvān.

• ARBĀYISTĀN

  G. Widengren

  name of a Mesopotamian province in the Sasanian empire.

• HORMOZD V

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  Sasanian great king (r. 630-32 CE) in the turbulent years following the murder of Ḵosrow II Parvēz (628).

• MĀLIK, DĀWĪD GĪWARGĪS

  David G. Malick

  (1861-1931), Assyrian poet and historian, born in the village of Sipūrḡān in the Urmia plain; served as secretary of the Patriarchal Church Committee.

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• CALLISTHENES

  Marie Louise Chaumont

  the name of a 4th-century BCE Greek historian of the period of Alexander the Great. On Aristotle’s recom­mendation Alexander engaged Callisthenes to write the history of his planned expedition against Persia. The existing History of Alexander is now commonly referred to as “Pseudo Callisthenes” or the Alexander Romance.

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• BĒṮ ĀRAMAYĒ

  Michael Morony

  lit. “land of the Arameans,” the region and Sasanian province of Āsōristān in Iraq between the Jabal Ḥamrīn and Maysān.

• ANGALYŪN

  J. P. Asmussen

  Persian rendering of the title of the Gospel of Mani.

• HÜBSCHMANN, (JOHANN) HEINRICH

  Erich Kettenhofen and Rüdiger Schmitt

  Hübschmann felt himself to be an orientalist. Originally an Iranian scholar, through his fundamental studies he became also the founder of modern Armenian linguistics; for it was he who created a solid basis for future historical-comparative research in this field.

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• ĀDUR-BŌZĒD

  A. Tafażżolī

  a Sasanian mobad of mobads (mowbedān mowbed) or high priest.

• HYMN OF THE PEARL

  J. R. Russell

  or Hymn of the Soul, a Syriac poem, of which an early Greek translation also exists, composed probably in the third century CE in the region of Edessa.

• BOḴTĪŠŪʿ

  Lutz Richter-Bernburg

  the name of the eponymous ancestor of a Syro-Persian Nestorian family of physicians from Gondēšāpūr, Ḵūzestān, 8th-11th centuries, and of several of its members.

• AḴAWAYNĪ BOḴĀRĪ

  H. H. Biesterfeldt

  4th/10th century physician who worked in Bukhara.

• ʿISĀ B. ṢAHĀRBOḴT

  L. Richter-Bernburg

  medical author of the third/ninth century, from Gondēšāpur. descendant of an apparently Nestorian Christian Syro-Persian family.

• ĀSŌRISTĀN

  G. Widengren

  name of the Sasanian province of Babylonia.

• FARHANG-E TĀRĪḴĪ-E ZABĀN-E FĀRSĪ

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  a comprehensive historical dictionary of the Persian language, of which only one volume has been published so far.

• CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS

  Multiple Authors

  This series of articles deals with Chinese-Iranian relations spanning from Pre-Islamic times to the Constitutional Revolution in Iran.

• ḤABIB AL-ESLĀM

  Nasser-al-Din Parvin

  Persian-language weekly newspaper published in Kabul, 1929 replacing Amān-e afḡān at the time of Bačča-ye Saqqā.

• ALCHASAI

  J. P. Asmussen

  a sectarian in the early Christian Church, 1st-2nd centuries CE, in the time of Trajan.