The chronography of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, the son of Aaron, the Hebrew physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus : being the first part of his political history of the world / translated from the Syriac by Ernest A. Wallis Budge.

  • Bar Hebraeus, 1226-1286.
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The chronography of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, the son of Aaron, the Hebrew physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus : being the first part of his political history of the world / translated from the Syriac by Ernest A. Wallis Budge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    • • • Bedjan and published at Paris in 1890 (see p. xxxvii). The text there is printed in Nestorian Syrian characters, and the vocalization is Nestorian. The edition was probably intended for the use of Nestorian pupils and students, for Bedjan added notes in which he warns his readers against ac¬ cepting everything which he finds in the book, and exhorts him to remember that Bar Hebraeus was a Jacobite, who only regarded history from the point of view of the monophysite. What Bar Hebraeus himself would think or say if he could see his text in its Nestorian dress offers us an interesting field for speculation. But Bedjan’s edition provided a good text, and the Syriac scholars, who were not keen theologians, were thankful to have it. It is to be regretted that, according to the report of continental booksellers, this edition is ‘epuise’ and that copies of it are ‘tres rare’. This being so, students who have wanted to read the Chronography in Syriac could only do so in some library which possessed a manuscript copy of it. Whilst writing the translation of the Chronography the thought came to me repeatedly that the time had come when it was necessary to have a new edition of the Syriac text. There is no manuscript containing it in the British Museum, and it was obvious that the best source on which to draw for it was one of the two great manuscripts of the works of Bar Hebraeus preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, viz. Hunt No. 1 and Hunt No. 52, which are described at length by Payne Smith, Catalogus, col. 368 f. and col. 548 f. Hunt No. 1 (see Plate II) is a huge paper manuscript, a large folio from which the priests read from the lectern to their congregations in church; it measures 22 inches in length and 15 inches in breadth. Each page contains four columns of text, and Part I, i.e. the Chronography, fills 219 pages. The writing is large and handsome, and the letters are beautifully formed; many scribes were employed in copying the work, but all were experts, and they all seem to have been better scribes than Syriac scholars. Hunt No. 52 (see Plate III) is a paper manuscript which may or may not have been used as a service book in church; it measures 12 inches in length and 8^ inches in breadth, and contains Part I, i.e. the Chronography, only. Each of its 402 pages is filled with two columns of fine bold writing, and it was written by more than one scribe. A part of Hunt No. 1 was written by one Joseph, a monk in the year of the Greeks 1809 = A.D. 1498, but Hunt No. 52 is much older, and was probably written in the fourteenth century, perhaps not very long after the death of Bar Hebraeus in 1286. Among the readers of the latter was one who understood what he was reading, for he has added notes in many places. I decided to reproduce the text of one of these manuscripts in a form which would make it convenient for use by students and to make it the second volume of this work. To reproduce the text by type would be a very expensive undertaking, for the cost of setting Oriental books in type is now prohibitive in England; and as the mistakes of the editor and the