THE CHRONICLE OF JACOB OF

Witold Witakowski*

Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) was the most outstanding Syriac intellectual of the early Muslim era, and, it seems, one of the most important scholars of the Christian-Aramean tradition. A universal mind, to be placed beside only a few, such as Barhebraeus who lived 500 years later, he is known for exceptionally broad learning, for his knowledge of Greek and—according to some modern scholars at least—even He- brew,1 as well as for a prolific literary or rather scholarly production, covering such disciplines as grammar, theology (including Bible trans- lation, biblical exegesis, canon law, and liturgy), philosophy, astronomy, geography, zoology, botanics, and anatomy—the last five subsumed in his Hexaemeron.2 On top of all this he also made his name known in the field of studies in and reflection on history. As far as the latter is concerned one should mention his Letter on the Divine Economy, which provides a sketch of sacred history, valuable for the study of the Syriac Christian view of history.3 Yet in this area Jacob is mostly known for his Chronicle.

* Abbreviations used in this article: EbSh (= Elias bar Shenaya) – E.W. Brooks, Eliae metropolitae Nisibeni Opus chronologicum 1 (CSCO 62*–63*, Syr. 21–23; Paris 1910); J.-B. Chabot, Eliae metropolitae Nisibeni Opus chronologicum 2 (CSCO 62**–63**, Syr. 22–24; Paris 1909–1910); JacEd (= Jacob of Edessa) – E.W. Brooks, ‘Chronicon Iacobi Edesseni’, in E.W. Brooks et al., Chronica minora 3 (CSCO 5–6, Syr. 5–6; Paris 1905–1907), ed. 261–330, trans. 197–258; corrigenda in ed. 305–306. ME (= Michael the Elder (QS), also known as ) – J.-B. Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, patriarche jacobite d’Antioche (1166–1199) (Paris 1899–1924), quoted by volume number, pages, columns: a – central, b – innermost, c – outermost, and lines. 1 Thus, among many others, I. Ortiz de Urbina, Patrologia syriaca (2nd ed.; Rome 1965), 177; but see now A. Salvesen, ‘Did Jacob of Edessa Know Hebrew?’, in A. Rapoport-Albert and G. Greenberg (eds.), Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts: Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman (JSOT.S 333; London 2001), 457–467. 2 Text: J.-B. Chabot, Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron seu in opus creationis libri septem (CSCO 92, Syr. 44; Paris 1928); Latin translation: A. Vaschalde, Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron seu in opus creationis libri septem (CSCO 97, Syr. 48; Leuven 1932). 3 Letter 49 in Dr Jan van Ginkel’s classification (see his article ‘Greetings to a Virtuous Man: The Correspondence of Jacob of Edessa’ in this volume, esp. p. 81). 26 WITOLD WITAKOWSKI

1. Manuscript Basis, Editions, Translations, and Studies

Jacob’s Chronicle became known to the scholarly world through W. Wright’s catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library, in which he provided a short description of the manuscript of Jacob’s Chronicle and published the text of the introduction.4 The first general description of the Chronicle known to me was provided by C. Kayser in 1886,5 i.e. before the whole text was published. In 1899 E.W. Brooks published the Syriac text of the chronological tables, together with an English translation,6 to which S. Fraenkel and the editor himself soon added some corrections.7 Later the whole text (1905) was published again by Brooks with a Latin translation (1907) in one of the first volumes of the CSCO.8 So far, however, no special study has been de- voted to the work, although in general accounts of (like those by W. Wright,9 R. Duval,10 A. Baumstark,11 J.-B. Chabot,12 I. Ortiz de Urbina13) and especially in those of Syriac historiography (by S.P. Brock,14 D.S. Wallace-Hadrill,15 W. Witakowski,16 L.I. Conrad17

4 W. Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838 3 (London 1872), 1062–1064. 5 C. Kayser, Die Canones Jacob’s von Edessa (Leipzig 1886), 72–73. 6 E.W. Brooks, ‘The Chronological Canon of James of Edessa’, ZDMG 53 (1899), 261–327. 7 S. Fraenkel, ‘Zur Chronik des Jacob von Edessa (ZDMG. 53, 261 ff.)’, ZDMG 53 (1899), 534–537; E.W. Brooks, ‘Errata in “The Chronological Canon of James of Edessa” (ZDMG. 53, pp. 261 ff.)’, ZDMG 53 (1899), 550; idem, ‘The Chronological Canon of James of Edessa (ZDMG. 53, 261 ff.)’, ZDMG 54 (1900), 100–102. 8 Here referred to as JacEd, see the first footnote above. 9 W. Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature (Amsterdam 1966; repr. of London 1894), 147–149. 10 R. Duval, La litt´erature syriaque (3rd ed.; Anciennes litt´eratures chr´etiennes 2; Paris 1907), 190. 11 A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich- pal¨astinensischen Texte (Bonn 1922), 254. 12 J.-B. Chabot, Litt´erature syriaque (Paris 1934), 85. 13 Ortiz de Urbina, Patrologia, 208–209. 14 S.P. Brock, ‘Syriac Sources for Seventh-Century History’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 2 (1976), 19 (reprinted in his Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity (London 1984), Ch. VII); idem, ‘Syriac Historical Writing: A Survey of the Main Sources’, Journal of the Iraqi Academy, Syriac Corporation 5 (1979–1980), 8 (reprinted in his Studies in (Aldershot 1992), Ch. I); idem, ‘Syriac Culture in the Seventh Century’, Aram 1 (1989), 269–270. 15 D.S. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East (Cambridge 1982), 55. 16 W. Witakowski, The Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mah. r¯e: A Study in the History of Historiography (Studia semitica upsaliensia 9; Uppsala 1987), 80.