Introduction

INTRODUCTION PRELIMINARY REMARKS The Jacobite maphrian Gregory II Abuʾlfaraj bar Ahron (1226–86), better known as Bar Hebraeus, was one of the most interesting and prolific authors writing in Syriac in the second half of the 13th century. He was a polymath, and his many and varied interests included the study of history. His Chronicle (maktbanuth zabne), an important historical work written in Syriac, is organised into two parts, a secular history (the Syriac Chronicle or Chronicon Syriacum) and an ecclesiastical history (the Ecclesiastical Chronicle or Chronicon Ecclesiasticum), both of which take their narrative up to the closing decades of the 13th century. The two parts of the Chronicle are an important source for the history of the Middle East up to the period of the Crusades, and the Ecclesiastical Chronicle is of particular interest for its portrayal of the life of the indigenous Christian communities of the region under Muslim rule. Bar Hebraeus was writing during the Muslim revanche which followed the Mongol defeat at ʿAin Jalut in 1260, on the cusp of the catastrophic decline in the fortunes of Christianity in the Middle East in the 14th century. Bar Hebraeus and his Nestorian counterpart ʿAbdishoʿ bar Brikha of Nisibis were the last great representatives of a Syriac literary tradition that spanned a millennium, and it is not without reason that William Wright ended his influential study of Syriac literature with these two men. Although Syriac literature continued to be cultivated, albeit on a reduced scale, during the 14th and subsequent centuries, its glory had departed. The aim of this book is to make the contents of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Bar Hebraeus accessible to a wide circle of readers. The Ecclesiastical Chronicle has been translated into Arabic, and became widely available to European and American scholars in the Latin translation made by Abbeloos and Lamy between 1872 and 1877. Although its value as a historical source was almost immediately recognised by Western historians, only scattered sections have been translated into English. This may not have mattered too much half a century ago, when nearly all scholars read Latin fluently, but Classics is no longer taught in most European and American schools, and fewer and fewer scholars are comfortable reading Latin. As interest in the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Christianity and Islam continues to grow, so does the need for an English translation of the whole of this key text. I hope to meet this need in this book. I have based my translation on the Syriac text of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle published by Abbeloos and Lamy. This text, with its accompanying Latin translation, has been the standard text for nearly a century and a half. Several Syriac vii viii BAR HEBRAEUS, ECCLESIASTICAL CHRONICLE manuscripts of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle exist, and I understand that a critical edition of the text is being planned. Such an edition, especially if it is accompanied by an analysis of the sources used by Bar Hebraeus and his indebtedness to them, and by a detailed commentary which sets his narrative in its proper historical context, will be welcomed gratefully by all scholars in the field. All the same, any corrections necessary to the established text are unlikely to undermine the integrity of the present translation to a significant degree. A collation of the different manuscript readings may well produce hundreds of slight variations from the classic text of Abbeloos and Lamy, particularly as far as the spelling of proper names is concerned, but few if any of these variations will affect the meaning of the text. Given the uncertainty of funding for such projects, it may well be several years before a critical edition becomes available. I have therefore decided to publish my translation now, rather than waiting for its appearance. If necessary, the translation can easily be corrected and reissued at a later date. The two Eastern Churches which are the subject of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle have for most of their history been known as the Jacobite and Nestorian Churches. Some modern scholars are uncomfortable with these names, arguing that they carry the stigma of heresy. The Jacobite Church was named after its energetic 6th-century spokesman Yaʿqob Baradaeus (†578), associated by his enemies with the monophysite heresy, while the Nestorian Church was named after the patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople (428–31), condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 for the dyophysite heresy that bears his name. Partly as a result of such concerns, the Jacobite Church is now more often known as the Syrian Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox or West Syriac Church, while the Nestorian Church is known as the Church of the East or East Syriac Church. Such concerns are understandable, as recent scholarly research indicates that the views of both Churches were caricatured by their opponents, and that they both held orthodox christological positions.1 All the same, it should also be recognised that for most of their history the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East themselves accepted the labels ‘Jacobite’ and ‘Nestorian’. These labels are used by Bar Hebraeus throughout his ecclesiastical history. The term ‘Jacobite’ occurs 30 times in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle, while the word ‘Nestorian’ or its derivative ‘Nestorianism’ occurs 90 times. On occasion these labels are used disparagingly, but in the vast majority of cases they serve merely as convenient descriptive terms. I have followed the pragmatic approach of Bar Hebraeus throughout this book, mainly for convenience but partly also in service to historical truth. Dropping the names ‘Jacobite’ and ‘Nestorian’ in favour of their preferred modern equivalents risks taking sensitivity too far, by reading back into previous centuries attitudes which did not then exist. For most of its history the Nestorian Church championed the memory of the martyred Nestorius, unjustly (in its eyes) victimised by the 1 Brock, ‘The “Nestorian Church”: A Lamentable Misnomer’, BJRL, 78, 3 (1996), 23– 35. INTRODUCTION ix Greeks. Similarly, the Jacobite Church venerated the memory of the patriarch Dioscorus I of Alexandria (444–51), the controversial successor of Cyril of Alexandria (412–44). Pretending that they did not results in a sanitised, and therefore false, reading of history. THE CAREER OF BAR HEBRAEUS Bar Hebraeus was born near Melitene (modern Malatya in Turkey) in 1226, and died at Maragha in Persia in 1286. According to the inscription on his tomb in the Jacobite monastery of Mar Mattai near Mosul, his baptismal name was Yohannan, and he was also named Abuʾlfaraj. His father was a physician of Melitene named Ahron. Ahron is the Syriac form of the Jewish name Aaron, and until recently it was widely assumed that Ahron was a Jew, that Bar Hebraeus was a convert to Christianity, and that his Syriac nickname Bar ʿEbraya meant ‘son of the Hebrew’.2 It now seems far more likely that Bar Hebraeus and his father were both Christians from birth. The nickname Bar ʿEbraya is now thought to refer to the Christian village of ʿEbra in the district of Gubos near Melitene, probably where Bar Hebraeus was born, and means ‘son of the man from ʿEbra’.3 ʿEbra, a qastra or fortified village, is mentioned twice in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle, and also features in other Syriac sources. Gregory II Abuʾlfaraj bar Ahron has for several centuries been known to Western scholars by the name Bar Hebraeus, the latinised form of the name Bar ʿEbraya. This name has been hallowed by long usage. Most readers in the English- speaking world who have made the acquaintance of Bar Hebraeus will have first done so in the pages of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or Runciman’s History of the Crusades; and so long as these classic histories continue to be read both for pleasure and instruction, this name will survive. In recent years some writers, particularly members of the Syriac-speaking Churches, have preferred to use the form Bar ʿEbroyo, from the West Syrian pronunciation of Bar ʿEbraya. It is possible that the form Bar ʿEbroyo will eventually supplant Bar Hebraeus, at least in academic circles, but that time has not come yet; and as most readers of an English translation of the Ecclesiastical Chronicle will be more familiar with the traditional form, I have thought it better to retain it. While still a young man, Bar Hebraeus studied medicine and other branches of knowledge at Antioch and Tripoli, and a thirst for knowledge remained with him until his death. In 1246 he was consecrated bishop of his native district of Gubos by the Jacobite patriarch Ignatius III David (1222–52), taking the name Gregory, and in the following year was transferred to the nearby diocese of Laqabin.4 During the power struggle that followed the death of Ignatius III David, he supported the 2 Duval, La littérature syriaque, 409; Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature, 265–66. 3 Fathi-Chelhod, ‘L’origine de nom Bar ‘Ebroyo: une vieille histoire d’homonyms’, Hugoye, 4, 1 (2001), 7–43. 4 Bar Hebraeus, Ecclesiastical Chronicle, i. 669 and 685. x BAR HEBRAEUS, ECCLESIASTICAL CHRONICLE patriarch Dionysius ‘Angur (1252–61) against his rival Yohannan XII bar Maʿdani (1252–63), and was transferred by Dionysius in 1253 to the important diocese of Aleppo.5 He was shortly afterwards deposed by Ignatius IV Saliba (1253–58), the ‘maphrian’ or head of the Eastern branch of the Jacobite Church. Ignatius IV Saliba sided with the patriarch Yohannan bar Maʿdani, and took refuge with Dionysius in the monastery of Mar Barsawma near Melitene; but in 1258 Dionysius gained the upper hand, and Bar Hebraeus was restored to his diocese.6 In 1260, when Aleppo fell to the Mongols, he interceded with the Mongol commander for the lives of the city’s Christians.

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