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'I the Weak Scribe' Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 58(1-2), 9-26. doi: 10.2143/JECS.58.1.2017734 © 2006 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. ‘I THE WEAK SCRIBE’ SCRIBES IN THE CHURCH OF THE EAST IN THE OTTOMAN PERIOD HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG* Raban Yonan lived in a little chamber off the patriarchal church of Mar Shalita, and was one of the few monks remaining. A little man, with griz- zled hair, surmounted by a high conical hat and black turban, he had a sin- gularly pleasant smile and beautiful expression, which commanded love and reverence from all who saw him. He spent most of his time copying the ser- vice books and the other old works of his nation; indeed, he lived among books, and was quite the most learned man the Syrians had. […] [The boys] are much fonder of sitting in their class-rooms […] and writ- ing out in a “beautiful pen” a copy of the Catechism, or a history, or a shamashutha, which is the deacon’s part in the Liturgy. Writing is really with them a fine art; it takes a long time, but is often a beautiful sight when finished. […] The boys sit on the floor with one knee up, against which they lean their paper. They do not want tables or chairs. They look upon their productions, when done, with justifiable pride.1 INTRODUCTION When the two Anglican priests Arthur Maclean and William Browne described the life of the Assyrians of the Church of the East as they had come to know it during five years of mission work, the literary arts received due * H. Murre – van den Berg is Associate Professor of the History of World Christianity at the Faculty of Theology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the history of West- ern missions in the Middle East and the modern history of the Syriac churches, especially of the Assyrian Church of the East. 1 Arthur John Maclean and William Henry Browne, The Catholicos of the East and his Peo- ple; Being the Impressions of Five Years’ Work in the “Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mis- sion” [etc.] (London: SPCK, 1892), pp. 19 and 171-172. J.F. Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church of England. A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission (Oxford, 1992), p. 108, contains a picture of Rabban Yonan that corresponds beautifully to the description by Maclean and Browne. 10 HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG attention. Two images stand out, that of the old monk Rabban Yonan among his books, and the young schoolboys trying their pens on the shamashutha. Not only do these descriptions indicate the variety of persons included in the art of writing, i.e., the long experienced scholarly monk and the proud young schoolboys, they also attest to the vitality of the art of writing, fifty years after printing presses had been introduced. In this contribution I intend to take a closer look at the scribes of the Church of the East in the Ottoman period. In the last decade the study of the more recent history of the Assyrian Church of the East, also known as the “Nestorian” Church, has received a number of new incentives, mainly based on the study of the colophons of a large number of East-Syriac man- uscripts that date from this period. David Wilmshurst’s study on the Eccle- siastial Organisation of the Church of the East is the most important of these.2 Wilmshurst, building upon earlier work of Jean-Marie Fiey and Joseph-Marie Sauget,3 carefully identified numerous scribes and scribal families, especially those that were active in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. On scribes and manuscript writing in the Syriac tradition in general (including the Syr- ian-Orthodox tradition), the very informative overview article ‘The Art of the Scribe’, needs to be mentioned here.4 However, the picture of the scribes of the Church of the East is far from complete. We know hardly anything about their numbers, their training, standards of genre and language, their role in the religious life of the community, their income, and their family life. The answers to some of these questions require more extensive research, and for others reliable answers will perhaps never be found. The aim of the present article is to contribute to our knowledge of the scribes, focusing on two aspects: the groups to which the scribes belonged and the religious world-view 2 The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East: 1318-1913, CSCO, 583, Sub- sidia, 104 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000). 3 J-.M. Fiey, Mossoul chrétienne. Essai sur l'histoire, l’archéologie et l’état actuel des monument chrétiens de la ville de Mossoul and Assyrie chrétienne. Contribution à l'étude de l'histoire et de la géographie ecclésistiques et monastiques du nord de l'Iraq, Recherches publiées sous la direction de l’Institut de lettres Orientales de Beyrouth, 12, 22, 23, 42 (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique Beirouth, 1959, 1965-1986); J.-M. Sauget, Un gazza chaldéen disparu et retrouvé: le MS. Borgia syriaque 60, Studi e Testi, 326 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1987). 4 ‘The Art of the Scribe’, Ch. 7, in The Hidden Pearl: The Heirs of the Ancient Aramaic Heritage, II, eds. Sebastian P. Brock and David G.K. Taylor (Rome: Trans World Film Italia, 2001), pp. 43-262. I THE WEAK SCRIBE 11 their colophons represent. As an introduction, a short overview is given of the literary revival that took place between 1500 and 1900 within the Church of the East. The main source for this contribution are the colophons of the East Syr- iac manuscripts. The vast majority of these manuscripts (almost 2500, pre- served in a large number of academic and ecclesiastic libraries in East and West) have been described in varying detail in the library catalogues. The data that form the basis of this article have been culled from these catalogues,5 but the large number of colophons has so far not permitted a detailed reading of all of them, let alone an urgently needed study of all the original manuscripts and colophons. Most of the examples come from a limited number of colophons, the majority of these edited by William Wright (Cambridge) and Eduard Sachau (Berlin).6 THE LITERARY REVIVAL The reign of the Ottoman sultans, which began when Selim I (1512-1520) annexed northern Mesopotamia to the Ottoman Empire in the early six- teenth century, enabled the Church of the East to continue the modest cul- tural revival that had started under the reign of Yackub Bek of the Aq Qoyunlu towards the end of the fifteenth century.7 Despite the fact that the church was now much reduced compared to its earlier glory days (such as the time of patriarch Timothy the Great (8th-9th c.) or the metropolitan and illustri- ous author cAbdishoc bar Brikha of Nisibis (13th-14th), when the Church of the East had dioceses all over Central Asia, northern China and India; only the latter survived into modern times), there can be little doubt that the remaining community was greatly committed to the maintenance and strengthening of the East Syriac religious and cultural tradition. A great num- ber of manuscripts were produced, and churches and monasteries were restored as much as possible. Especially the late seventeenth and early eigh- 5 This research is based on a personal database of MS colophons and on the list of colophons in Wilmshurst, The Ecclesiastical Organisation, pp. 382-732. 6 W. Wright, A Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts preserved the Library of the University of Cambridge, 2 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1901); E. Sachau, Verzeichniss der Syrischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 2 vols., Die Handschriften-Verzeich- nisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 23 (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1899). Their edi- tions of the Syriac texts of the colophons have relatively few abridgments. 12 HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG teenth centuries appear to have been a particularly productive period, not only for the composition of new literature, which led Anton Baumstark to speak of the ‘School of Alqosh’, but also and perhaps more because of the large amount of copying that took place in what is now northern Iraq.8 The Ottoman period was also the time of growing contacts with Western churches, first mainly with Roman Catholics, later also with various Protes- tant denominations: Presbyterian, Lutheran and Anglican. In 1553, contacts with the Roman Catholic Church led to the establishment of the Uniate Chaldean Church, whose first patriarch was Yohannan Sulaqa. This union barely survived into the early sixteenth century, but a second attempt, result- ing in the installation of patriarch Yosep I in Diyarbakir in 1681, proved more successful. This union laid the basis for the present Chaldean patriar- chate, especially after its merger with the patriarchal line of Alqosh in the early nineteenth century.9 Catholic missions in the nineteenth century, both in Mosul in northern Mesopotamia and in northwestern Iran (Urmia and Khos- rowa), were instrumental in the further spread and consolidation of the Chaldean Church. Initially, the Protestant missions of the nineteenth century were not intent on establishing separate churches, but rather aimed at reform- ing the Church of the East from within. Over time, however, fundamental differences in religious outlook between the American Protestants and the Church of the East led to the establishment of a separate Protestant church. The influence of these Presbyterian missionaries, however, extended much fur- ther than these small Protestant communities, and the missionaries became 7 J.-M. Fiey, ‘Une page oubliée de l’histoire des Eglises Syriaques à la fin du XVe – début du XVIe siècle’, Le Muséon, 107 (1994), pp.
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