REVIEWS

Philip M. Forness, Preaching in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: University Press, 2018). Pp. xvi + 322; $100.

KRISTIAN S. HEAL, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY This important book is about a simple question: why does Jacob of Serugh pair suffering and miracles when talking about Christ in his memre? This question naturally demands a close reading of Jacob’s homilies (chapters 4–6), together with a detailed examination of his letters (chapter 3), an exploration of Jacob’s relationship to contemporaneous Syriac and Greek sources, and ultimately the project of tracing this pairing of suffering and miracles back to key Chalcedonian documents (chapter 2). Preaching Christology tells this story with great skill and erudition. Since its publication, reviews of this book have appeared in several journals, and I refer the reader to those for chapter-by-chapter summaries and for engagement with Forness’s work on Jacob’s Christology.1 In this review I focus on the book’s two important methodological and theoretical claims. The underlying message of Preaching Christology is that Jacob of Serugh’s language reflects a deep and thoughtful engage- ment not only with his literary culture, but also with his contemporary theological and political world. But how does Forness derive this from Jacob’s verse homilies? One way that Forness allays his readers’ concerns about connecting Jacob’s poetic pairing of the suffering and miracles of Christ with con- temporary theological thought is by allowing us to observe this connection in the safer genre of epistolography: “[Jacob’s] let-

1 Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2019.08.21 (Jaclyn Maxwell); Reviews in Religion and Theology 26 (2019), 625–628 (Jacob Lollar); Journal of Early Christian Studies 28 (2020), 149–151 (Volker Menze); and Scrinium 16 (2020) (Dmitry Bumazhnov). 417 418 Reviews ters justify the connections [we draw] between Jacob’s homilies and the specific debate over the Henotikon in the second and third decades of the sixth century” (p. 90; cf. 133). Not only do we expect careful forensic argumentation in this genre, but let- ters can be more readily historicized (pp. 115–125). They often have a known addressed audience, and a more readily discov- erable cultural setting (pp. 104–115). They can often be dated (pp. 110, 125). Syriac homilies resist the historian’s need for certainty. As Forness’s far-reaching comparative first chapter is forced to conclude, when we work with Syriac homilies we are almost always unmoored from a specific time, place, and context, which means that a different set of tools are needed to tease out their significance. These are the tools of the literary critic, the philologist, and the intellectual historian. When these tools are deployed together the Syriac sermon begins to yield some of its latent potential. Thus, Preaching Christology is offering an important response to one of the great problems in the study of Syriac late antiq- uity, namely the seeming inscrutability of a large portion of extant sources. How are scholars of late antiquity to utilize the hundreds of Syriac verse homilies written between the fourth and sixth centuries? They are a tantalizing source for social, exegetical, theological, and political historians. Yet, those who have tried to harness them have almost always been rebuffed, primarily by an inability to gain purchase on the historical con- text of a given homily. This is why one of the most exciting contributions of Preaching Christology is that it offers historians “a new method- ology for linking homilies to historical investigations” (p. 3), or, as Forness says later, it provides historians with “a model to integrate late antique homilies into historical narratives of late antiquity” (p. 18). This methodology of “tracing key slo- gans, such as the pairing of miracles and suffering, to debates occurring among contemporaneous authors suggests how homilies might be tied to historical situations” (p. 21). This methodology underpins the subtle and careful philological detective work that clearly demonstrates how the deliberate Reviews 419 language found in Jacob’s homilies overlaps with his surviving epistolary corpus—I say surviving because Forness convinc- ingly suggests that the surviving letter corpus was preserved precisely because of its Christological content (p. 90). Using this methodology, Forness capably contextualizes Jacob within his late antique milieu, and his sermons within a larger world of homiletic discourse. The far-reaching significance of Forness’s work is not merely methodological, however, but also psychological. After reading his book, the concerns of historians about Syriac hom- ilies are allayed. Their fears are calmed, and they feel able for the first time to approach this corpus as a potential historical source with confidence. This confidence in the richness, com- plexity, and scrutability of the early Syriac literary tradition is what distinguishes the work of scholars such as Robert Murray, Sebastian Brock, Susan Harvey, Manolis Papoutsakis and now, Philip Forness. But historians who hope to undertake a similar project may tumble at the first hurdle unless they are prepared to do the kind of careful and thorough work that underlies the studies produced by these scholars. Forness not only provides a new methodological model for historicizing the Syriac sermon, but also offers “a new theoret- ical understanding of the audience of sermons” (p. 3). At the heart of this understanding is the idea of two audiences, essen- tially listeners and readers, or, in the work of Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford that Forness cites at this point, the “audience addressed” and the “audience invoked” (pp. 29–30). Here Forness reframes our notion of audience. But what work does this reframing do? There is certainly value in recognizing that a homily is produced within a particular discursive context (30); and understanding the process that stands behind the record- ing, redaction, collection, and circulation of Jacob’s homilies (pp. 41–53) convinces us, among other things, that the largest audience of Jacob’s homilies, demographically, geographically, and temporally, are the later readers of his works in manuscript form. However, with regard to the audience Jacob actually preached to, “The available evidence suggests that he had 420 Reviews diverse audiences, preached throughout a broad geographical area over a long career, and delivered homilies in a variety of liturgical settings” (p. 40). So, has Forness advanced our knowledge beyond the claim that Jacob preached lots of hom- ilies to lots of different people, in lots of different places and settings? To frame the question in this way is, I suspect, to miss the point, since one argument of Preaching Christology is precisely that Jacob preached lots of homilies to lots of different people, in lots of different places and settings, and therefore he had an almost viral effect on his ecclesiastical community in terms of the spread of miaphysite Christology and other knowledge. As Forness puts it, “The principal argument of this monograph is that preaching served as a means of communicating Christo- logical concepts to broad audiences in late antiquity” (p. 3). Again, in the first chapter he notes that, “The most significant claim of this monograph for the study of Christianity in late antiquity is that homilies spread knowledge of the Christologi- cal controversies to wide audiences” (p. 27). This claim must be qualified of course. Thus, even as Forness says that Jacob’s “homilies served as a means of spreading knowledge of Christology to both clergy and laity,” in the next paragraph he has to qualify this claim by acknowledging that “few homilies in Jacob of Serugh’s corpus engage overtly with the Christo- logical debates that characterize theological discourse in his day” (p. 9). In fact, with Jacob, we are working with a corpus of homilies that do not focus on Christological debates but do “contain specific criticism of Chalcedonian Christology” (p. 9). This makes the project more interesting. Forness’s extensive reading of Jacob’s corpus enables him to make a claim about Jacob’s project that is not obvious to the casual reader: homi- lies are doing important cultural and intellectual work. Among other things, they are tying both the simple believer and the studious reader into the larger contemporary Christological conversations. Homilies were thus the primary way that people knew about Christology in late antiquity (p. 223). The implications of this observation lead Forness to hope that Reviews 421

“Homilies may yet transform our understanding of the range of society that participated in theological debates” (p. 228). The great strength of Forness’s book is that it reveals a Jacob who is culturally relevant and intellectually engaged, a product of “vibrant intellectual currents” (p. 6), and at the cen- ter of the big issues of his day. He is a thinker whose ideas can be taken seriously. He is also a thinker with enormous cultural influence. A thinker who participated “in a discussion of the miracles and suffering of Christ that spanned the Roman Empire—and beyond to Armenia and the Arabian Peninsula—and across no less than five languages” (88). Preach- ing Christology is a rich, erudite, clearly written, generously documented, wide-ranging, and significant contribution to the study of Jacob of Serugh. It is also an essential work for anyone wishing to explore the large, diverse, and promising corpus of Syriac sermons from late antiquity. M. Perkams and A. M. Schilling, eds., Griechische Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei den Ostsyrern: Zum Gedenken an Mār Addai Scher (1867–1915) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020). Pp. ix + 214; €79.95.

YURY ARZHANOV, AUSTRIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES This volume, edited by M. Perkams and A. M. Schilling, goes back to a colloquium held at the University of Jena (Germany) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the tragic death of Mar Addai Scher, who fell victim to the Armenian and Assyr- ian genocide in 1915. The book principally consists of the papers presented at the colloquium and is supplemented by three other essays. The volume aims to present an up-to-date overview of research on the reception of Greek philosophy in the East Syriac (hereafter: ES) schools in the late antique and early medieval periods. This goal is met, even though the word Wissenschaft in the title of the book is misleading since the vol- ume contains no contribution to the history of natural sciences in the ES schools, a desideratum which Perkams notes in his introduction. However, the German word Wissenschaft can refer not only to science but also to knowledge or learning in general, and it is probably this meaning that justifies its place in the title, for in his introduction Perkams speaks of “christ- liche Wissenstradition.” Various contributions focus on one of two areas which traditionally have constituted main points of scholarly interest: forms of education in the ES schools (primarily the famous ) and the reception of Greek philosophy (with special focus on Aristotelian logic). The book gives attention also to the figure and legacy of Addai Scher, the Chaldean bishop of Siirt. In the introduction, Perkams outlines several characteris- tics of the ES tradition of philosophy, upon which he further elaborates in his article “Ostsyrische Philosophie: Die Rezep- tion und Ausarbeitung griechischen Denkens in der Schule von Nisibis bis Barḥaḏbšabbā.” Thus, Perkams approaches ES philosophy primarily in terms of the reception of the Greek

422 Reviews 423 literary heritage and in the context of education; this consti- tutes also the approach taken by most other contributors. M. Heimgartner, in his article on the knowledge of Greek philosophy by the ES catholicos Timothy I, states that in the time of Timothy I the term “Greek philosophy” was con- stituted from two elements: Aristotle’s logic and patristic literature. Heimgartner stresses that cultural and political factors stimulated Timothy’s interest in Aristotelian works: the language of logic was applicable both to polemics against other Christian groups and to dialogue with the Muslim elite. N. Kavvadas’ essay elaborates on the latter aspect, i.e., the Sitz im Leben of Aristotelian logic in the ES schools, and pre- sents a number of notable cases of what the author calls “Jargon der Logik.” In the examples given, Kavvadas discovers similar patterns in the use of Greek logical terminology, which turns out to be an instrument of power (“Sprache der Macht”). This pattern most likely goes back to the philosophical and rhetorical training of the Christian elite. This training included Aristotelian logic for polemical purposes and aimed at provid- ing students with a powerful instrument for confronting both Christian and non-Christian opponents. Such an approach towards Greek philosophy brings the ES educated elite close to their WS counterpart. This observation is supported by several essays that present a number of case studies, the results of which generally point in the same direc- tion, namely, to the idea of an interdependence of ES and WS traditions. J. O. Schmitt revisits the question of Barhebraeus’ use of ES sources and concludes that the WS maphrian was generally “open-minded towards the .” A. M. Schilling offers a detailed analysis of the so-called “Koran-Florilegium,” preserved by the twelfth-century WS author Dionysius bar Ṣalībī, which turns out to be dependent upon an eighth-century work of the ES catholicos Timothy. M. Perkams demonstrates that the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, written in the early seventh century by Barḥadbšabbā, to a large extent depends upon the Commentary on the Categories Addressed to Theodore, composed in the early sixth century by 424 Reviews

Sergius of Rēšʿaynā. E. Fiori’s evaluation of the references to Dionysius the Areopagite by ES authors shows that their knowledge of the Corpus Dionysiacum was second-hand and de- rived most likely from monastic florilegia. Fiori’s article points at the need for a more detailed analysis of the forms of trans- mission of Greek philosophical works, not only in ES but also in WS sources. All contributions mentioned thus far present the ES philo- sophical tradition not as an isolated phenomenon, but as part of a broader process of a Syriac reception of the Greek philo- sophical heritage. This process was to a large extent shaped by new forms of Christian education at both the ES and WS schools. Two articles published in the volume deal specifically with the ES educational system. A. Becker sums up the main points of his monograph, which appeared in 2006. Thus, speaking about the ES schools, he stresses their relation to the Babylonian rabbinic educational system and highlights their general rejection of classical rhetorical education in favor of monastic ascetic practice. Additionally, Becker describes in his essay the role Addai Scher played in the modern “recovery of East Syrian scholastic culture.” Both Scher’s catalogues of Syriac manuscripts preserved in the monastic libraries, and his editions of historical sources, such as the works of Barḥadbšabbā and Theodore Bar Kōnī, greatly contributed to our knowledge of the intellectual life of the Church of the East. At the same time, Becker asks how the educational background of Scher himself might have shaped his understanding of the history of the Church, and thus also our understanding of it. U. Possekel’s article on the School of Nisibis re-examines the extant sources on this most famous ES educational establish- ment. Based mainly on the Statutes, the article outlines the school’s history, structure, and educational profile, and points out the school’s legal and financial autonomy, and even a certain autonomy from the local bishop. The author draws par- allels between the mechanisms of succession of leadership in Nisibis and the non-Christian Greek philosophical schools of Reviews 425

Athens and Alexandria, thus stressing the similarity between ES and Greek late antique school systems. The volume contains an extensive bibliography, divided into sources and scholarly literature, which covers works refer- enced in all the contributions. A short but informative general index helps navigating the volume. Both the bibliography and the index furnish English titles and keywords alongside the German ones, thus enlarging the possible audience of the pub- lication. Overall, the book is a useful collection of studies which, taken together, give a systematic and up-to-date picture of the history of reception of Greek philosophy in the Church of the East and of its school system in the late antique and early medieval periods.

C. Noce, M. Pampaloni, and C. Tavolieri, eds., Le vie del sapere in ambito siro-mesopotamico dal III al IX secolo: atti del convegno inter- nazionale tenuto a Roma nei giorni 12–13 maggio 2011, OCA 293 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2013). Pp. 373; €38.

EMANUEL FIANO, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY This volume collects papers originally presented at an interna- tional congress held in Rome in 2011, on the topic of “paths of knowledge” in the Syro-Mesopotamian world between the third and ninth centuries. The eighteen contributions are pre- ceded by a Preface and by an Introduction which helpfully groups them thematically (p. 12; though with the mistaken mention of an author not present in the book and the omission of another one who is). In this brief review I will limit myself to a minimal summary of all the essays. Paolo Bettiolo’s “Le scuole nella Chiesa siro-orientale: status quaestionis e prospettive della ricerca” (pp. 17–46) focuses on the East Syrian scholastic model (late fifth to eighth centu- ries). The author sets up a typology of exegetical-theological schools, examines the link connecting them to Christian elites and to East Syriac monastic learning, and highlights the role of in their training. In “Storia di Roma – storia di Antiochia: la storiografia romana tardoantica riflette una prospettiva antiochena?” (pp. 47–58), Susanna Elm dis- cusses the Antiochene setting of the writings of the fourth- century historians Eutropius and Festus in relation to their treatment of Rome’s expansionism toward Persia at the time of Julian and Jovian. Elm suggests that those authors’ cautious attitude toward the Roman campaign may reflect an Antio- chene perspective on the events. Elisabetta Abate, in her “Le catene della tradizione nella Mišnah” (pp. 59–73), compares four passages of this Jewish compilation that articulate the “chain of transmission” of religious knowledge, adding an excursus about the institutional structure of the rabbinic movement. Aryeh Kofsky, in “Theology and Hermeneutics among , Greek Christianity and Contemporaneous 426 Reviews 427

Judaism (4th–5th Centuries): Paradigms of Interaction” (pp. 75– 90), surveys the Christological views of Aphrahat and Ephrem. Kofsky interrogates “the influence of early Syriac Christianity on Greek Syrian Christianity and, further, on the school of Antioch” (p. 84), paying particular attention to those two authors’ “low anthropology and Christology” (p. 87). René Roux’s “Sapere teologico e sapere profano all’inizio del VI secolo: l’esperienza di Severo di Antiochia a Beirut” (pp. 91– 103) describes Severus’s sojourn in Beirut (from 487 to 492) and his early contacts with Christian theology, dwelling espe- cially on the influence of his study of Roman law upon his theological method. In “Libanius’ Pro Templis and the Art of Seeing Syria through Rhetoric” (pp. 105–114), Edward Watts offers a reading of Libanius’s proposals for ending religious violence in Oration 30 that emphasizes the limited sway the rhetorician held in Antioch at that time. Gerrit Jan Reinink, in “The School of Seleucia and the Heritage of Nisibis, the ‘Mother of Sciences’ ” (pp. 115–131), argues that it was the arrival of Mar Aba at Seleucia and the appointment of Ishai— both were students of Abraham of Bet Rabban, a teacher at the School of Nisibis—that propelled academic activities in the Sasanian capital. “Poesia e conoscenza nei madrāšē di Efrem: fra Nisibi e din- torni” (pp. 133–148), by Emidio Vergani, explores among other things the metaphors used by Ephrem to refer to knowledge, as well as the limitations the Syriac theologian placed upon knowledge as a tool in the path toward salvation. In “Provvidenza, libertà e legame anima-corpo nella lettera 2 di Timoteo I a Rabban Bokhtīšōʿ, archiatra di Hārūn al-Rašīd” (pp. 149–175), Vittorio Berti investigates the contribution of theology and philosophy to medical science through a letter by Timothy I, patriarch of the Church of the East. Sabino Chialà, in “Lettura e cultura negli ambienti monastici siro-orientali” (pp. 177–190), shows, based on both hagiographical and canonical evidence, that while reading was generally held in high esteem in the East Syriac monastic milieus, a contrary ten- dency may be noticed in the sixth-century spiritual reform of 428 Reviews

Abraham of Kashkar and in his followers. Chialà also analyzes the course of studies completed by Rabban Bar ʿEdta at the Great Monastery of Mount Izla, as presented in his Vita. Marco Demichelis, in “Baṣra, Cradle of Islamic Culture: An Analysis of the Urban Area that Was the Early Home of Islamic Studies” (pp. 191–220), details the political and cultural factors that led this city to become an even greater center of Islamic intellectual production than the capital Damascus. In “Biblical Predictions of the Prophet Muḥammad among the Zaydīs of Yemen (6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries)” (pp. 221–240), Sabine Schmidtke calls attention to the links be- tween different Yemenite Zaydi theologians’ treatments of biblical prophecies about the advent of the Prophet. Her treat- ment, which starts with the twelfth-century scholar Ḥusām al- Dīn al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Raṣṣāṣ, integrates untranslated passages of the authors’ treatises. David Thomas, in “Explana- tions of Christian Doctrines in the World of Early Islam” (pp. 241–252), provides an overview of Christian-Muslim theolog- ical dialogue in the early centuries of Islam. The author emphasizes the lack of mutual understanding between the two communities and shows how attempts at dialogue rapidly devolved into the exchange of formalized arguments, without any true engagement. Carmela Baffioni’s “Il ‘computo delle proposizioni’ nel MS Esad Effendi 3638 e la tradizione siro- araba” (pp. 253–278) examines an anonymous text, titled On the Composition of the Premises and appended to the epistle about Aristotle’s On Interpretation (Letter 12) composed by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā (Brethren of Purity). Baffioni provides a translation of the Composition (pp. 257–278) and explores various links to the Syriac and Arabic philosophical traditions. In “The Crossing Paths of Greek and Persian Knowledge in the 9th-Century Arabic ‘Book of Degrees’” (pp. 279–303), Alexandre M. Roberts provides an introduction to, and summary of, an un- published treatise of genethlialogical astrology (i.e., astrology related to the fate of a newborn). Roberts indicates that the work presents itself as an heir to ancient Greek wisdom while being terminologically indebted to Sasanian culture (a culture Reviews 429 that, he argues, played an important role in the eighth- through tenth-century Greek-to-Arabic translation movement). With her “Teaching the Hearts: Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiya’s Role in the Spiritual Formation of the Intellectual Élite in Al-Baṣra, II Century of the Hegira” (pp. 305–319), Shirine Dakouri offers a portrait of a prominent eighth-century Sufi mystic, pondering the religious significance of her womanhood and the role of the “female element” (p. 305) in Sufism. The last two contributions, by editors Carla Noce and Claudia Tavolieri, are both devoted to the role of music in the third- through fifth-century education of women in Roman Syria. The two essays, which were conceived jointly, carry identical titles but different subtitles. Noce’s “Una vita tra silenzio e canto: alcune considerazioni sul ruolo svolto dalla musica nella formazione religiosa delle donne cristiane in ambito siro-occi- dentale” (pp. 321–349) discusses the dialectic between women’s silence and pious singing found in ancient Christian sources (rooted in biblical and Graeco-Roman traditions). Noce also re-reads the dossier of Paul of Samosata, identifying Antioch as a place where tensions between ecclesiastical fac- tions revolved also around the use of liturgy and the role played in it by women. Claudia Tavolieri, in “Una vita tra silenzio e canto: l’importanza dell’educazione musicale delle donne in alcuni esempi tratti dalla letteratura siriaca” (pp. 351–373), tackles the interplay of music and female education by sam- pling Syriac works such as Ephrem’s madrashe, the Acts of Thomas, and the Vita of Abraham of Qidun, additionally establishing connections with Christianity’s Old Testament background. In spite of occasional editorial oddities (some contributions contain a bibliography while others do not, and one lone contribution is followed by an abstract) and of some heterogeneity in the authors’ styles of presentation and aca- demic modes, the collection holds together quite nicely. As a whole, the volume is successful in directing the reader’s atten- tion to the forms, institutions, and avenues for the trans- mission of knowledge within and across the diverse religious and linguistic cultures of the Syro-Mesopotamian region. Emma Loosley Lemming and John Tchalenko, Notes on the Sanctuary of St. Symeon Stylites at Qalʿat Simʿān (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Pp. x + 132; $179.00.

P. CORBY FINNEY, PRINCETON, NJ This splendid volume consists of three sections. First, a bio- graphical overview (pp. 1-27) documenting the extraordinary life and brilliant work of Georges Tchalenko (1905-1987) writ- ten by Georges’ son John. Second, a short essay (pp. 28-32) on the historiography of Qalʿat Simʿān written by Emma Loosely. And third, Georges’ Notes (written in French) on the sanctuary of Qalʿat Simʿān with photographs and plans. Loosley and John Tchalenko have translated Notes into English and have included selected restoration and reconstruction drawings and photographs housed in the Beirut archive of Georges Tchalenko. The biographical section reveals first a man who was a gifted student. In 1928 he earned a degree as a certified engi- neer at the University of Braunschweig. His German mentors praised his work. His sense of architectural design reflects the Bauhaus tradition during its initial decades – a connection that would be interesting to pursue. Georges Tchalenko also pos- sessed considerable organizational talents. His political allegiance was liberal and anti-fascist. He was a Slavophile and at the end of the Second World War sought Russian citizenship which was twice denied. In 1933 Georges Tchalenko travelled to Palestine, and that pre-war date marks the beginning of his archaeological magnum opus. In 1935 he married Gerda Man- gold, a union that was marked by long bouts of separation. Georges Tchalenko comes across as a person of pessimistic, self-critical temperament, dissatisfied especially with his ex- tended state of penury, with the quality of his own work, with his lonely life, with his want of a passport, with his longing for repatriation with his Motherland (he was born in St. Peters- burg), and with lack of scholarly recognition. In fact, it is clear from the biographical section that his closest friend, Henri

430 Book Reviews 431

Seyrig, Director of the French Services des Antiquités, held Georges Tchalenko in the highest regard. Loosley introduces the beginning of part 2 with a short – and in my view, disappointing – discussion of Qalʿat Simʿān as a sacred place. The historiography of sacred place begins not in the 1990s as she suggests but instead in a late 19th or early 20th-century context (cf. P. C. Finney, “TOPOS HIEROS und christlicher Sakralbau in vorkonstantinischer Überlieferung” Boreas 7 [1984], 193-225). Loosley expresses the view that it was not the personhood of Symeon Stylites that formed the basis of Qalʿat Simʿān as a holy place, and this is incorrect. After Symeon’s death the only material evidence of his person that survived at Qalʿat Simʿān was the column which became the symbolic center of the cult devoted to the veneration of the saint. But the column was a holy place because a holy man had resided on it. The second part of Loosley’s discussion is biographical, focused on Georges Tchalenko’s struggle to bring his work to a successful conclusion. He worked with a typewriter and hand-written corrections. Georges Tchalenko wrote under difficult circumstances, including exile, war, conflict with his rivals at the Institut français du Proche-Orient, and technological limitations. He was still at work on Qalʿat Simʿān and the Syrian bêma churches into his early 80s. The third part of this remarkable volume gives Georges Tchalenko’s useful historiography of the excavation and resto- ration of the Qalʿat Simʿān sanctuary. The martyrion, the monastery, the funerary chapel, the baptistery, the guest houses (cf. Rabun M. Taylor, “Xenodocheion,” The Eerdmans Encyclo- pedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology [Grand Rapids, 2017], s.v.) are at issue here. Georges Tchalenko gives a chronology of the sanctuary which extends over the 5th to 19th centuries. He traces the history of the sanctuary before and after its restoration. Throughout this discussion Georges Tchalenko’s photographs and plans accompany the text. The work of res- toration is the most impressive part of this discussion. Part 3 432 Reviews is an informative and important addition to the architectural history of early Christian Syria.