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This article identifies the place and institutional context of production of Vatican Syriac Manuscript 160, ff. 1-79. It argues that the priest Simeon of Marimîn and the archdeacon Cyrus oversaw the production of the Vatican manuscript's version of the Syriac Life of Symeon the Stylite as well as the construction of a hostel (pandocheion) in Telneshe in the 470s. The two expenditures were part of a broader project of promoting pilgrimage to Symeon's cult site. Since this manuscript contains either the autograph or an extraordinarily early version of the Syriac Life of Symeon, locating the manuscript's place and institutional context of production clarifies the rhetorical project of this manuscript's version of the Syriac Life of Symeon. In addition, the Vatican manuscript represents our fifth earliest dated Syriac manuscript. A sound assessment of the manuscript's place of production contributes to our understanding of fifth-century Syriac paleography, orthography, and manuscript production. Finally, this article provides an early case in which the composition of a saint's life is clearly connected with the economic organization that characterizes a saint's cult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the circle of translators who produced scientific, fictional and historical literature of the Enlightenment, which they translated from Greek and other languages into Arabic language. The translators led by the Greek Orthodox priest ‘Īsā Petro were supported by the Fakhr family and Syrian Christian merchants in the Egyptian port of Damietta between 1808 and 1818. The translations covered various learning such as history, travel and natural science.

This article focuses on changes in religious practices and the rise of radical religious groups among Christian Kerala immigrants to Kuwait after the First Gulf War in 1990–1. The impact of religious revivalism shows how religion has become a site for various identity-based community-centred networks among South Asian immigrants to Gulf countries. The article analyses the ways in which the church is increasingly active among Syrian Christian immigrants of Kerala in post-liberation Kuwait. Such religious groups are transnational in nature, actively linked to both home and destination countries, and the world beyond. The article focuses specifically on the growing affinity of Syrian Christian immigrants towards Pentecostalism. At the macro level, this article also investigates the interconnection between the geopolitical dynamics in the Gulf and the expansion of what appears to be ‘religious space’ in Kuwait. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For Christians of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the First Crusade and subsequent settlements brought confusion to the political and theological order of the world. Previously, the world existed as a stable balance between two divinely established forces: the divinely established empire of the Romans (the Byzantines), and the empire of the Muslims, equally established by divine providence, but intended to serve as the hammer with which God punished errant Christians. Western Christians (Franks) were peripheral to this world; at the time of the First Crusade, the Franks were commonly perceived as Byzantine mercenaries. After the Franks conquered Jerusalem, the city central to providential history, Armenians and Jacobites began to ask: who were the true Romans? The term in both Armenian and Syriac texts began to be applied to the Franks instead of the Byzantines, particularly in apocalyptic and providential schemes of history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From the sixteenth century onwards, the Syriac Jacobites living in the Ottoman empire were confronted by the propaganda of Catholic missionaries. As a result of this propaganda, a Syriac Catholic patriarchate was established in the late eighteenth century, and the Syriac community was divided into two. A merciless conflict ensued between Orthodox Syriacs, aligned with the main Church, and the Catholic Syriacs. While this conflict occurred in all places where Syriacs lived, it was most intense in the city of Mardin, the location of the patriarchal centre of Syriac Jacobites. The Jacobites struggled to prevent both the Catholicization of their community, and also the Catholic takeover of their churches, monasteries and cemeteries. At various times and for various reasons, the Ottoman empire and certain European states felt the need to intervene in this conflict. Continuing almost uninterrupted throughout the nineteenth century, this conflict adversely affected the Syriacs, and also precipitated their modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an exploration of intergenerational history and biography. The author utilizes ethnographic research among immigrant Turkish Syriac Christians residing in Vienna, Austria. Two historical experiences of crisis are highlighted, including the 1915-1916 Christian massacres in eastern Anatolia and the population dispersal to Western Europe after 1960. The author argues that the impact of cultural history on individual lives is mediated through social processes.

Information is provided on the "International Conference: The Syriac Writers of Qatar in the Seventh Century" held by the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Qatar University in the Persian Gulf region from February 26-27, 2014. Topics, including archaeology of Qatar (or Beth Qatraye in the Syriac language), biblical interpretation and Ethiopian Christian monasticism, are discussed.

Information is provided on the Fifth Dorushe Graduate Student Conference on Syriac Studies organized by Dorushe Graduate Student Association at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina from March 28-29, 2014. Topics, including the history of Syriac Christian communities, Syriac language translations, Christian identity in 4th century Persia and Christian hagiographical literature, are discussed.

The article looks at the history of Christian in Syria. Topics discussed include Prebaptismal anointing and its implications, early Syrian baptismal practice, and introduction of anointing of the whole body that led to the loss of its original impact. It also discusses reinterpretation of baptismal practice as a cathartic and apotropaic ritual along the Greek-speaking coastline of the Mediterranean.

During the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, representatives of the Chaldean community visited Rome seeking contact with the mother church. Abdisho IV of Gazarta, newly elected Patriarch of Mosul, made the journey in 1562. According to Pietro Strozzi, De dogmatibus chaldaeorum ( Roma: Zanetti, 1617), Abdisho's portrait was included in Giuseppe Porta's depiction of the Peace of Venice in 1177 in the Sala Regia of the Vatican Palace, circa 1565. The inclusion of Abdisho's anachronistic portrait in Porta's fresco can be linked to plenitudo potestatis, that is, submission to the authority of the pope. Abdisho's journey to Rome coincided with the Council of Trent, the intensified study of oriental languages, and advances in print technology. This case study reveals the global reach of papal Rome but it also shows how eastern Christians in the grip of religious and political crises engaged in dialogue with Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is provided on the workshop titled "An Intergenerational Approach to the Study of Genocide" sponsored by the EU (European Union) Grundtvig Lifelong Learning Programme and organized by the Inanna Foundation held in Rijssen, Netherlands from June 10-16, 2011. The workshop's focus on the impact of the Seyfo, or the Assyrian genocide during the World War I period conducted by the Ottoman Turks in Turkey, on Syriac Christian communities is discussed.

This article deals with Syriac manuscripts copied or preserved in India. It shows how they are a good mirror of the history of Syriac Churches and communities in Kerala: manuscripts copied prior to the arrival of the Portuguese may not have been very numerous and seem to have been mainly intended for liturgical use. From the 16 century onwards, several script traditions developed which are linked with different communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to pursue briefly the growing knowledge of Syriac and Syriac speaking Christians during the second half of the Sixteenth Century and also in that context to give a sketch of the Oriental types used in Rome in the later part of that century, the production of which was stimulated by increased contact with the Eastern churches. To do this it will be necessary to examine both the nature and extent of Roman contacts with Syriac speaking churches and the specifically Roman impulses which led to an interest in Syriac. It is, moreover, in this period that the approach to Syriac studies that characterised the work of the great seventeenth-century scholars and those who have subsequently followed them was essentially established. In addition this article seeks to draw a clear contrast with Syriac and Oriental studies in Rome during the first half of the Sixteenth Century and to show that the world-view of the later Syriac scholars there (who were increasingly native Syriac speakers) bore little or no relationship to the world of kabbalistic fantasy. A fantasy that had characterised the earlier Catholic scholars who, away from Rome, produced the first editions of the Syriac New Testaments and who also had achieved the typographic splendours of their bibles well before Rome's own golden age of Oriental typography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin of the Maronite community of Cyprus has long been a matter of debate amongst scholars, from Jerome Dandini in the sixteenth century to the present day. In this paper, I will raise four key questions concerning the traditional picture of Cypriot Maronite history. Firstly, did the Maronite community arrive on Cyprus to escape religious persecution in their homeland? Secondly, can we clearly identify the four waves of migration that the traditional history assumes and links with episodes of persecution of Maronites in their homeland? Thirdly, was the Maronite community in Cyprus purely agricultural or was it also involved in trade. Finally, the population of Maronites in Cyprus is supposed to have fallen dramatically between the twelfth century and the present day: this paper will ask how we can explain this and whether or not it was the result of mass conversion. The paper concludes that there is little evidence for four waves of migration to Cyprus following religious persecution and that economic migration is a more likely explanation for the movement of population. Maronites in Lebanon were heavily involved in the silk trade and with Maronite communities present in the cities of Cyprus as well as rural villages, so there is no reason to exclude the possibility of a merchant community. Evidence for population decline is less certain than previously supposed and mass conversion is not required to explain it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among those who opposed the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the West Syrian (or Syriac Orthodox) Christians were probably least likely to form a national or ethnic community. Yet a group emerged with its own distinctive literature and art, its own network, and historical consciousness. In an intricate process of adoption and rejection, the West Syrians selected elements from the cultures to which they were heirs, and from those with which they came into contact, thus defining a position of their own. In order to study this phenomenon, scholars from various disciplines, and affiliated to two different faculties, were brought together in a programme financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO. This essay introduces their research project and methodology, and presents their results and conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the concept of Syriac Orthodox identity in the chronicle by Michael the Great as it is expressed in terms for the self-designation (like mhaymnē, Suryōyē) and in the structure of the narrative. The heritage of the ancient Near East, based on the ethnical and historical conception of the Arameans (including the Chaldeans and the Ōturōyē as well as the Ōrōmōyē) since the times of the ancient empires was a very important element of the identity. Just as important to him was the historical legitimacy of the Orthodox Church as a group excluding other Aramaic-speaking Christians. This conception of identity was complex, dialectic, and multi-layered, comprising ethnic, historic, cultural, and religious elements. Not unlike modern people, he and the members of the Syriac Orthodox communities participated in different and overlapping cultures and identities throughout the Syriac Orthodox world. The Syriac Orthodox identity had been under polemical attack for a long time, against which both historical and theological answers were formulated over the centuries. At the same time, Michael can be a witness only for a certain group and a certain region. He speaks mainly for the Syriac-speaking regions of the Syriac Orthodox world and the clergy. Neither the Syriac Orthodox identity of Arabic speaking Syriac Orthodox Christians, for example in Takrit, nor the identities of laymen are of his concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of periodicals on the Ottoman "Süryâní," or the members of the Syriac Orthodox Church in the early 20th century and provides a bibliography for "Süryâní" periodicals. An overview of the social conditions of the Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Syriac Christians within Ottoman Empire during the early 20th century is provided. The social aspects regarding the use of the Ottoman Turkish language in publications are discussed. An overview of Syriac journalism is also provided.

Syriac scribes and readers often changed the texts that they were reading. In some cases, these modifications were motivated by the political and religious challenges brought about by the Islamic Conquests and subsequent Muslim rule. Such emendations provide important, material witnesses for how Syriac Christians reacted to the rise of Islam. They also challenge modern scholars to reevaluate the ways we read manuscripts and how we understand Syriac manuscript culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]