293 NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA in a 19Th CENTURY SYRIAC

NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 293

NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA IN A 19th CENTURY SYRIAC ANNALISTIC SOURCE

Introduction1

A collection of Syriac and Garshuni manuscripts, owned by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage and currently housed at the Cen- tre of Iraqi Manuscripts in Baghdad, includes two loose leaves bearing the number 1702. The two leaves are inserted in codex No. 18078, a Kurdish Grammar in Syriac, though no literary connection exists between the two sources. The leaves, mere paper, measure 17.5 x 12 cm each. The content of the leaves consists of short annalistic notes of historical interest written in classical Syriac using vocalized East Syriac script. In some notes the year is identified, and in this case both the Seleucid and Gregorian calendars are used, in addition to two other chronological systems. The purpose of this source is not clear, but it may have been produced as “aide-mémoire,” helping the reader or the writer remember events of personal significance. Nonetheless, the interest of the Annalistic Source goes much beyond its role as an aid to memory. The source mentions events dealing with upper Mesopotamia under Ottoman rule, and some of them may not be found in other literary sources.

The Cataloguing of the Annalistic Source

At the top of its verso, the first leaf of the Annalistic Source bears the words “N° 170”, written with a professional hand. Despite the fact that the two leaves are now inserted in the Kurdish Grammar bearing the 1 I would like to thank Dr. Mu’ayyad Sa¨id al-Damerji, former Director General, the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, and Mr. Usama al-Naqashbandi, Director of the Centre of Iraqi Manuscripts, for allowing me to work on the Syriac and Garshuni Manuscripts housed at that institution in the summer of 1999 and for their permission to publish this document. My thanks are also due to Zaynab Ramadhan Nur, Head of Cura- tors at the said Centre, Dr. Nawala al-Mutwalli, Head of the Department of Cuneiform Studies, the Iraq Museum, and Dr. Donny George Yukhanna, then Head of External Rela- tions, the Iraqi Museum, for facilitating my work on the Syriac manuscripts. My work was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2 See my Catalogue of Syriac and Garshuni Manuscripts of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage (forthcoming).

Le Muséon 119 (3-4), 293-305. doi: 10.2143/MUS.119.3.2017950 - Tous droits réservés © Le Muséon, 2006. 294 A. HARRAK number 18078, the Annalistic Source must once have been catalogued. In 1902 the famous scholar Bishop Addai Scher catalogued the manuscripts of the monastery of Our Lady of the Seeds, most of which came originally from the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, including the Kurdish Grammar in question. His catalogue ends with number 1533, and thus he may not have been the cataloguer who numbered the Annalistic Source. In the late 1930s, the Dominican Father Jacques Vosté catalogued the manuscripts once again, but did not refer to the Annalistic Source when he catalogued the Kurdish Grammar4. Item number 170 in Vosté’s Catalogue is a manuscript containing the letters of the Catholicos Timothy I, copied in the monastery of Our Lady of the Seeds in 18945 and now the property of the Chaldean Monastic Order6. Even the late Iraqi scholar Gorgis ‘Awwad who wrote about the manuscript collection of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd7 failed to mention the Annalistic Source, and thus the number given to this document re- mains enigmatic. The Centre of Iraqi Manuscripts did not seem to notice this document when it acquired the Kurdish Grammar in the 1980’s8 and it is hoped that it will not be lost because it is not catalogued among its many other manuscripts.

Author, date and place of writing

The author of our annalistic source is not named. That he was a monk in the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd on the mountain of Alqosh is beyond doubt since the source mentions “our monastery of Rabban Hormizd” (line 49). For two reasons, one may venture to add that the author was AblaÌÌad son of ¨Awdisho son of Khoshaba of Alqosh, a priest, monk, and author in the monastery. First, the leaves are inserted

3 A. SCHER, Notice sur les manuscrits syriaques conservés dans la bibliothèque du couvent des Chaldéens de Notre-Dame-des-Semences, in Journal Asiatique, Juillet-Août 1906, p. 153 (= SCHER, Notice). 4 J. VOSTÉ, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque Syro-Chaldéenne du couvent de N.-D. des Semences, Paris, 1929, p. 35 (= VOSTÉ, Catalogue). 5 VOSTÉ, Catalogue, p. 66-67. 6 BU™RUS ÎADDAD – JAK ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at al-surianiyya wal-ärabiyya fi khizanat al-ruhbaniyya al-kaldaniyya, I. Al-Makh†u†at al-surianiyya [The Syriac and Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the Chaldean Monastic Order, I. Syriac Manuscripts], Baghdad, 1988, p. 230-231 (= ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at). 7 GORGIS ÄWWAD, Ancient Monument in Iraq: The Monastery of Rabban Hormizd, Mosul, 1934, p. 50-58 (in Arabic). 8 USAMA AL -NAQASHBANDI – JAMIL RUFAÎL, Makh†u†at Araden [The Manuscript of Araden], in Bayn al-Nahrain [Mesopotamia] 13 (1976), p. 79-71; F.A. PENNACCHIETTI, Un manoscritto curdo in karsuni da Aradin (Iraq), in Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli, 36 [N.S. XXVI] (1976), p. 548-552. NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 295 in the Kurdish Grammar referred to above, which he himself composed in classical Syriac and Kurdish Garshuni. He could have placed the leaves inside his codex for convenience, and if this were the case one would wonder why both Scher and Vosté failed to mention them. Sec- ond, the annalistic source ends with the year 1879 whereas the Kurdish Grammar was completed in 1888; there was less than a decade between the two sources9. The place of writing must have been the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, though the Kurdish Grammar was completed in Araden, near Ïmadiyya.

Edition and translation

An edition and translation of the Annalistic Source will be given below. Since most of the events mentioned in it are well known, there is no reason to analyse them at length. Thus, we will limit ourselves to a com- parison of the historical data with comparable information gathered from other Syriac sources.

[F1v] 5 10 10 11

9 Notice also the historical note written by Fr AblaÌÌad on the properties of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd in 1881; VOSTÉ, Catalogue, p. 80 no 2 = ÎADDAD – ISÌAQ, Al- Makh†u†at, p. 102 no 2. 10 Erroneous (for in line 8) is here crossed off. 11 The year is corrected from what looks like that the author crossed off (see the comments below). 296 A. HARRAK

15 [F1r] 20 12 25 ” 30 13 [F2v] ” 35 14 40

12 The beth of is darkened and replaced by a clearly written one placed above it. 13 Erroneous (for in line 32) is here rightly crossed off by the author. 14 The phrase is wrongly changed from the correct original since the subject is “camps” (feminine plural) NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 297

45 [F2r] 50 55 60 15

1 [F1v] Through God, we are also writing the yearly computation of world eras. The year when the waters of the Tigris froze: 2072 of the Greeks [AD 1760/1]. 5 The year of Tahmasp: 2056 of the Greeks [AD 1744/5]. The year of the Great Pestilence: 2089 of the Greeks [AD 1777/8]. The year of the Small Pestilence: 2111 of the Greeks [AD 1799/1800]. The year pestilence attacked the region of Mosul: 10 2139 of the Greeks [AD 1827/8]. The year another pestilence took place; 94 people died in one day: 213916 of the Greeks [AD 1827/8].

15 Unnecessary final digit is here rightly deleted. 16 The date is corrected from Seleucid 2049 (A.D. 1738/9); see the comments below. 298 A. HARRAK

The year Sayyid Îasan Rashwan came to Tal-Kepa [Tel-Kef]: 2147 of the Greeks [AD 1835/6]. 15 The year Mira Kora came to besiege Ïmadiyya for seven years. He planted [F1r] a vineyard from which he ate, and then waged a battle against the city and conquered it: 2145 of the Greeks [AD 1833/4]. 20 The year Mira Kora came to Äqra and waged a battle against Salman Agha: 2144 of the Greeks [AD 1832/3]. The year Rasul-Beg17 ruled over Ïmadiyya –– this Rasul-Beg was the brother 25 of Mira Kora: 2146 of the Greeks [AD 1834/5]. The year Rashid-Pasha came, seized Mira Kora and drove him away to Byzantium. This Rashid-Pasha was amazing in terms of his army, for four 30 camps he had18: The first camp was made of white19 chariots and cavalry; [F2v] the second was made of black chariots and cavalry; the third was made of red 35 chariots and cavalry; the fourth was made of pale chariots and cavalry. It is also said that there were two others yellow and blue: 2147 of the Greeks [AD 1835/6]. The year came Inje-Bayraqdar, that is 40 Muhammad Pasha, to Ïmadiyya and conquered it, and GMLM∑ built a military barrack in Da’udiyya of ∑apna: 2152 of the Greeks [AD 1840/1]. The year Badr-Khan Beg came to ™iyare, pillaged it and devastated it with the sword: 2154 of the Greeks [AD 1842/3]. 45 The year Mira Kora came to strike Alqosh and Khatre [Î†ara] with the sword: 1832 of our Lord. The year Ismaïl Pasha came [F2r] to our monastery of Rabban Hormizd, pillaged

17 The homonym is corrected from some other misspelled form. 18 The word camp is here abbreviated. 19 The author misspelled the word “cavalry” here, but realizing that it was out of con- text, he crossed it off. NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 299

50 everything that it owned and destroyed it: 1842 of our Lord. The year called nahati, for there was no vegetation: 1847 of our Lord. The year in which Abu-Zaw¨a was in Alqosh; 55 its people fled to the mountains and the plains, seeking refuge in the Upper and the Lower Monasteries: 1866 of our Lord. The year there was famine in the region as a whole, more severe than any other famine 60 that occurred in the past, in such a way one wazna-weight of wheat went up for twenty qarna-measure and that of barley up to fifteen qarna-measure: 187920 of our Lord.

Comments

Some of the events recorded in the Annalistic Source are well-known and some others are only found in this document. Rather than studying these events in detail, a task that falls beyond the aim of this paper, we will concentrate on parallel information found in Syriac manuscripts. We will consult catalogues of several collections found in Iraq that have recently been published there; their colophons will prove to be useful in trying to understand the literary nature of our Annalistic Source. Lines 1-4: The freezing of the Tigris as a consequence of severe weather is well known in the long history of the region and is well documented in Syriac and Arabic chronicles. In Syriac, a commentary on the Old Testament by Cyril of Alexandria copied in Seleucid 2067 (A.D. 1756) includes a note listing all kinds of calamities to the north of Meso- potamia. Among these is a freezing of the Tigris that occurred five years earlier than the one in our Annalistic Source; it was so severe that “people were able to walk on it as if it were dry land”21. Line 5: The siege of Mosul by Nadir Shah Tahmasp, Shah of Iran (1736–1747) and of the Afshar tribe, is well documented in Syriac and Garshuni sources22. All these sources come from eye-witnesses, though

20 The year is corrected from an unacceptable figure with its last digit. 21 B. DANIAL, Makh†u†at kanisat Mar Gorgis fi Bar†elli [The Manuscripts of the Church of St George in Bar†elli], in Faharis al-makh†u†at al-suryaniyyah fi al-Ïraq, Baghdad, 1981, p. 138. 22 A comprehensive study of this event can be found in Dr. SAYYAR AL-JAMIL, The Siege of Mosul by Nadir Shah 1743, Mosul, 1990 (in Arabic). 300 A. HARRAK some are more detailed than others. A brief note in Garshuni dated to the Seleucid year 2056 (AD 1744, the time of the invasion) was inserted in a Lexicon of Bar Bahlul copied in AD 1717 and now housed at the Chaldean Monastery23. It states as follows: “The sale of this book took place in the year 2056, in which time Tahmasp Qizilbashi24 marched with a great army to capture the town of Mosul, pillaging the villages around it. The villagers dispersed and those who entered Mosul were delivered from the evil of the oppressive Tahmasp. As for the inhabit- ants of Mosul, through divine providence, the intercession of the Virgin, the prayers of the holy ones and the endeavour of the honourable Hussein Pasha, governor of Mosul, they inflicted upon him (=Tahmasp) a heavy and indescribable defeat. They massacred thousands upon thousands among his army, causing him to flee in defeat to the bottom of hell.” Lines 9-10: In the same year, the pestilence attacked Ïmadiyya according to commemorative notes left in two manuscripts now housed at the Chaldean Monastery25. In our annalistic source, Mosul may have wrongly replaced Ïmadiyya, since Mosul is also mentioned in connection with another rather severe pestilence that took place in 1738 (see the following paragraph). One might also add that a note in another Syriac manuscript states that in the same year (AD 1827/8) Yunis Agha ex- pelled the monks of Rabban Hormizd26. Lines 11-12: This entry is a repeat of the above. Most probably the author meant the year 2049 of the Greeks (AD 1738/9) before he crossed the year off, replacing it with the same year mentioned just two lines earlier. Seleucid 2049 witnessed a particularly severe pestilence in Mosul commemorated in a colophon of a Syriac manuscript now housed at the Chaldean Monastery; some forty thousand people succumbed to the pestilence27. The pestilence reached Ïmadiyya according to another commemorative note and as far as Amida (Diyar-Bakr) according to yet another note. Here four members of the family of the Deacon Mikhail succumbed to the disease28. Lines 13-14: A note in a Syriac manuscript repeats the same information about Tel-Kef and adds that Sayyid Îasan killed Yezidi people who

23 VOSTÉ, Catalogue, No. 287= ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 877. 24 From Turkish Qizilbash, lit. “read-head,” an appellation given to various tribes, including the Afshar, that supported the Safavid cause. The final –i in the quoted text is the Arabic nisbah. 25 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, Nos. 507 and 812. 26 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 221. 27 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 507, 10. 28 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, Nos. 507 and 746 subsequently. NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 301 had come to him in the same village. The manuscript was copied in 1853 probably at Tel-Usqof, a village between Tel-Kef and Alqosh29. Lines 15-19: Mira Kora was the Kurdish chief of Rawanduz. His real name was Muhammad Pasha but he was nicknamed Mira Kora (“The blind prince”) by Syriac authors to create a popular doubling. The chronicler of the Chaldean monastic order, Fr. Elisha, wrote in a colophon the following30: “The prince of Rawanduz [Mira Kora] came to the regions of Mosul and ¨Imadiyya on March 9 of the year 1832 of Christ, killed all the men of Î†ara31, took captive its women, and pillaged all the property that it owned. He went back to the village of Alqosh on March 15, killed 172 [local men], not counting women, children and foreigners, and pillaged it. Then his brother32 came to Alqosh once again and brought out all that was hidden, not leaving anything that was disclosed or exposed. [His army] took away the clothes of all the men who escaped the massacre, leaving them naked the way their moth- ers gave them birth, and so did they do to women. Moreover, they sub- jected them to severe torture and immoral acts.” As Vosté mentioned, the reformer of the Chaldean monastic order, Abbot Gabriel Danbo, was killed during this incursion33. The claim that Mira Kora planted a vineyard from which he ate could be a literary motif, connotating a time long enough to have allowed the planting of a vineyard. The same motif was used one thousand years earlier by the chronicler of Zuqnin (AD 775), when he talked about the siege of Constantinople by Maslama34. Mira Kora did not need suste- nance from the vineyard, having under his control a sizable region in the north of Mesopotamia. Nor did Maslama need a vineyard since the length of his siege of Constantinople was not three years as claimed by the Syriac chronicler but one year as is reasonably claimed by Arab sources35. Lines 26-38: Rashid Pasha was a former Ottoman Sultan and, by the date of the annalistic source, Ottoman minister and general. He went into this expedition in support of Bayraqdar (Pasha of Mosul; see the following entry), aiming at subduing the Kurds and other minorities in the north of Mesopotamia. He crushed Rawanduz, the domain of Mira Kora,

29 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 812. 30 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 525. VOSTÉ, Catalogue, p. 70 note 1. 31 Yezidi village near the Gomal and to the north-east of Alqosh. 32 He is identified by the present annalistic source as Rasul Beg. 33 VOSTÉ, Catalogue, p. 70 note 1. 34 A. HARRAK, The Chronicle of Zuqnin Parts III and IV A.D. 488-775, Toronto, 1999, p. 151. 35 Ibid., p. 151 note 3. 302 A. HARRAK whom he sent to Istanbul (called Byzantium in the Annalistic Source) where he was eventually executed. The death of Mira Kora put a final end to the principality of Suran in 1836. A Syriac manuscript in the diocese of Äqra contains notes of historical interest, one of which deals with the same event. It adds that Mira Kora had incarcerated Yusif Audo, the local bishop (and future patriarch Yusif VI Audo), in Ïmadiyya in 1835, but that he was freed one year later (1836). His free- dom was one consequence of the removal of Mira Kora from power36. The content of lines 26-38 is also echoed in a colophon of a Syriac manuscript housed at the Chaldean Monastery37. The description of the army in the Annalistic Source may be a literary motif based on Revela- tion 6:1-8. Otherwise, the army of Rashid Pasha was made of twelve regular units. Lines 39-42: Inje-Bayraqdar was the Ottoman Pasha of Mosul from 1833 to 1843. He conducted fierce military expeditions against Ismaïl Pasha of Ïmadiyya. GMLM∑ is puzzling. Could it be a homonym, Jamal-?, the bearer of which built a military barrack in Da’udiyya on the road from Dehok to Ïmadiyya? Or is it a corruption of (Äbd-al)-∑amad Beg, a Kurdish leader in Barwar? Lines 43-44: Badr-Khan was the Kurdish chief of Bohtan, land to the north-east of ™ur-Äbdin, in the Seert region. He conducted military expeditions against ™iari and Îakkari to subdue the Assyrian tribes38. Lines 45-47: The attack on Alqosh is mentioned in a note placed in the afore-mentioned manuscript of Äqra. The note adds that 172 local men were killed, not to mention the foreigners, women and children who also died on 15 March 183339. A Syriac manuscript housed at the Chaldean Monastery in Baghdad repeats the wording of our annalistic source40. Lines 48-51: Ismaïl Pasha, a Kurdish chief, pillaged “Alqosh and the Monastery in the 1st of April 1842” according to a note left in a manuscript from Äqra41. Another note was left in a New Testament that once

36 See Y. ÎABBI, Makh†u†at abrashiyyat Äqrah [The Manuscripts of the Diocese of Äqra], in Faharis al-Makh†u†at al-suryaniyyah fi al-Ïraq, Baghdad, 1981, p. 30 (= ÎABBI, Äqrah). 37 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 812. 38 G.P. BADGER, The Nestorians and their Rituals, London, 1852, vol. 1, p. 265ff. 39 J. VOSTÉ, Catalogue des manuscrits syro-chaldéens conservés dans la bibliothèque épiscopale de Äqra (Iraq), in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 5 (1939), Codex XXII = ÎABBI, Äqrah, No. 30. On the monastery of Rabban Hormizd as a scribal centre see now D. WILMSHURST, The Ecclesiastical Organization of the Church of the East 1318-1913 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 582, Sub. 104), Leuven, 2000, p. 259- 270. 40 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 812. 41 ÎABBI, Äqrah, No. 30. NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 303 belonged to the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd, stating that its leaves were torn apart by the soldiers of Ismaïl “when he pillaged the Monas- tery in the month of April of the year 1841.” The manuscript is now the property of the Chaldean monastery in Baghdad42. Lines 52-53: The year name is in Kurdish: wU t “scarcity, want, dearth,” the second part of a bound phrasewU t ôU “Year of scarcity”. What follows in Syriac is not a translation of the Kurdish year name but an explanation that the want was of grain. Lines 58-63: The famine commemorated in the annalistic source was worsened by the devaluation of the Ottoman currency. The majidi went down from its original value of 20 qirsh to 7 qirsh, and the pashlak val- ued at 5 qirsh went down to 2 qirsh, a fact that made Mosul feel the pressure of want43.

Conclusion

Though not all colophons dated to the 18th and 19th centuries are consulted, those consulted suggest that at least part of the information found in our Annalistic Source must have been drawn from colophons. The monks of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd copied a great number of manuscripts throughout the centuries and owned a very important collection of manuscripts44. Colophons recording historical events related to northern Mesopotamia abound, and hence they were accessible to the author of the Annalistic Source. He must have drawn from them information about early events that occurred long before his time and which may have been beyond the limits of his own memory. For the later events, he must have relied on his memory to record them, a practice also known among Syriac chroniclers45. Though the Annalistic Source which has been the focus of this article offers merely summary historical information, it is valuable. The 18th and 19th centuries in northern Mesopotamia are not well docu-

42 ÎADDAD – ISÎAQ, Al-Makh†u†at, No. 29. 43 SAYYAR K. ÄLI AL-JAMIL, Al-MawÒil min nihayat al-Ìukm al-Jalili ila al-îdara al- mubasira [Mosul from the End of the Jalili Rule to the Direct Administration], in Mawsuät al-MawÒil al-Îa∂ariyya [Cultural Encyclopaedia of Mosul], vol. IV, Mosul, 1992, p. 98. 44 The collection was later moved to the monastery of Our Lady of Seeds below the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, and then to the Chaldean Monastic Order; see SCHER, Notice, p. 480. VOSTÉ, Catalogue, 5. 45 Authors of universal chronicles compiled sources when they discussed early periods and added to them history of their own periods which they usually authored; see W. WI- TAKOWSKI, The Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-MaÌre: A Study in the His- tory of Historiography, Uppsala, 1987, p. 124-135. 304 A. HARRAK mented as far as regional and local history is concerned. Most of the rel- evant information comes from diplomatic and missionary sources and from accounts of travellers. Though these sources are important, they pertain mainly to major political events, and rarely to the life of small communities. Our Annalistic Source is local, and though brief, it mentions events witnessed by the author and sometimes not mentioned else- where; the attack against Alqosh by Abu Zawä in 1866 is a case in point. It is interesting to note that the Syriac source under study contin- ues until the middle of the 19th century an ancient annalistic practice, the backbone of chronography. The continuation of using Year Names (ex. “the year of Tahmasp”) is quite remarkable though not surpris- ing. Year names have been used since Sumerian times, and are at- tested in Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and here in Syriac and even in Kurdish. As in ancient sources, there are two types of Year Names, one consisting of a simple genitival phrase (ex. “the year of Tahmasp”), and another consisting of a sentence made of the word “year” + a relative clause (ex. “the year there was famine”). Ob- viously, these year names are not used to fix chronology since the Seleucid and Gregorian dating systems are used instead. Such names were popular dating formulae used until recently by an older generation in the Middle East, though this practice is doomed to disappear in cur- rent usage. The fact that the Annalistic Source was written by a monk of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd is also suggestive. In the long history of Syriac literature, this monastery was the last centre of literary activity and creativity. Not only did the monastery copy hundreds of manuscripts now housed in international libraries, it also produced original works such as the afore-mentioned Kurdish Grammar, now a jewel in the Cen- tre of Manuscripts in Baghdad46. The energetic monks of Rabban Hormizd never lost an opportunity to record historical events, whether on scratch papers (our Annalistic Source), or in manuscripts in colophons, or simply on the stone of their own cells. One yearly event in our annalistic source (ll. 48-51) was commemorated on the marble lintel of a room there as late as 1931: “In the year 1842, Ismaïl Pasha of Ïmadiyya, incarcerated the monks in

46 Already in 1902, the highly critical Addai Scher wrote concerning the grammar: “Cet ouvrage est très bien fait”; SCHER, Notice, p. 72 NORTHERN MESOPOTAMIA 305 this cell, tortured them, and sacked the monastery — we expanded it in the year 1931.”

Department of Near Amir HARRAK and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto 4 Bancroft Avenue Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1C1 [email protected]

Abstract — Among the Syriac and Garshuni manuscripts owned by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage there are two loose leaves containing short annalistic notes in Syriac. These cover one century of historical events in upper Mesopotamia between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 19th centuries. Some events are well known from Syriac and other sources, but some others, being local, are known only from the present source. The mention of “our monastery of Rabban Hormizd” suggests that the author of the anonymous notes was a monk in this monastery. He may have been the Priest AblaÌÌad ¨Awdisho Khoshaba of Alqosh, since the two loose leaves are inserted in the Kurdish Grammar in Syriac that he himself authored. The present article includes the edition and translation of the annalistic notes followed by a commentary on literary and historical aspects of the text.