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.