Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies (Volume 7): 2004 [2011] 9781463214135

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Hugoye 7:1
In Memoriam
Papers
Mar Raphael Bidawid (1922-2003)
Ben Segal (1912-2003)
Michel Van Esbroeck (1934-2003)
Generous Devotion
The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration, “On Wars”
Mallpânâ dilan Suryâyâ
Ephrem in the Works of Philoxenus of Mabbog
Recent Books on Syriac Topics
Book Reviews
Conference Reports
Hugoye 7:2
Papers
Priests, Laity and the Sacrament of the Eucharist in Sixth Century Syria
The Pearl of Virginity
The Credentials of Mar Julius Alvares
Book Reviews
Conference Reports

Citation preview

HUGOYE JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES A Publication of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute

Volume 7 2004 [2010]

HUGOYE JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES A Publication of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute GENERAL EDITOR George Anton Kiraz, Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute / Gorgias Press EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Sebastian P. Brock, University of Oxford Sidney Griffith, The Catholic University of America Amir Harrak, University of Toronto Susan Harvey, Brown University Mor Gregorios Y. Ibrahim, Mardin-Edessa Publishing House Andreas Juckel, University of Münster Hubert Kaufhold, Oriens Christianus Kathleen McVey, Princeton Theological Seminary Wido T Van Peursen, The Peshitta Institute of Leiden University Lucas Van Rompay, Duke University ONLINE EDITION EDITOR Thomas Joseph, Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Kristian Heal, Brigham Young University PRINTED EDITION EDITOR Katie Stott, Gorgias Press

HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES (ISSN 1937-318X) Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is a publication of BETH MARDUTHO: THE SYRIAC INSTITUTE. Copyright © 2009 by GORGIAS PRESS and BETH MARDUTHO: THE SYRIAC INSTITUTE. The Syriac word hugoye, plural of hugoyo, derives from the root hg‚ ‘to think, meditate, study’; hence, hugoyo ‘study, meditation’. Recently, hugoye became to be used for ‘academic studies’; hence, hugoye suryoye ‘Syriac Studies’. SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscription requests should be addressed to Gorgias Press, 180 Centennial Ave., Suite A, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA. Subscriptions may be made online at http://www.gorgiaspress.com. Back issues are available. NOTE FOR CONTRIBUTORS Submission guidelines and instructions are found on the Hugoye web site at http://www.bethmardutho.org. NOTE TO PUBLISHERS Copies for review should be sent directly to the Book Review Editor at the following address: Mr. Kristian S. Heal, Hugoye Book Review Editor, Brigham Young University, Stadium East House - METI, Provo, UT 84604. ADVERTISEMENTS Rates: $250 full page; includes a listing in all e-mail announcements for one year. To place ads, write to the subscription address above.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

TABLE OF CONTENTS HUGOYE 7:1 In Memoriam .............................................................................................3 Papers Mar Raphael Bidawid (1922-2003) 3 George A. Kiraz................................................................................3 Ben Segal (1912-2003) 4 Geoffrey Khan..................................................................................4 Michel Van Esbroeck (1934-2003) 7 Lucas Van Rompay ..........................................................................7 Generous Devotion 11 Heleen (H.L.) Murre-van den Berg .............................................11 The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration, “On Wars” 55 Craig E. Morrison...........................................................................55 Mallpânâ dilan Suryâyâ .............................................................................83 Ephrem in the Works of Philoxenus of Mabbog 83 Lucas Van Rompay ........................................................................83 Recent Books on Syriac Topics 107 Sebastian P. Brock........................................................................107 Book Reviews.........................................................................................111 Conference Reports ..............................................................................117

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HUGOYE 7:2 Papers Priests, Laity and the Sacrament of the Eucharist in Sixth Century Syria 129 Volker Menze................................................................................129 The Pearl of Virginity 147 Robert A. Kitchen ........................................................................147 The Credentials of Mar Julius Alvares 157 George A. Kiraz............................................................................157 Book Reviews.........................................................................................169 Conference Reports ..............................................................................195

Volume 7 2004 [2010]

Number 1

HUGOYE JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES A Publication of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute

IN MEMORIAM

MAR RAPHAEL BIDAWID (1922-2003) GEORGE A. KIRAZ BETH MARDUTHO: THE SYRIAC INSTITUTE [1]

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On the morning of July 7, 2003, Mar Raphael Bidawid, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church passed away in Beirut, Lebanon. The 81-year old Patriarch had been suffering for a few months from an acute health problem. The news of his death was first announced to the Syriac studies community two days later during the opening session of the North American Syriac Symposium in Princeton, NJ. The gathered scholars recalled Mar Raphael’s various scholarly contributions. Raphael Yousif Warda was born on April 17, 1922 in Mosul, Iraq. His parents enrolled him at the very young age of 11 in the Chaldean seminary. Shortly thereafter, in 1936, he was sent to Rome where he studied for 10 years. He was ordained a priest in 1944 and received his doctorate in 1946. The following year Fr. Raphael went back to Iraq where he served as a priest in the Chaldean Church. In 1957, he was consecrated bishop for the Amadia district, and in 1966 he was transferred to Beirut, Lebanon. On May 21, 1989, Mar Raphael succeeded Mar Paulos Chekho II to the Patriarchate of the Chaldean Church, and received the Pallium from Pope John Paul II on November 9 of the same year. Mar Raphael was instrumental in the ecumenical movement, especially with relations with the Assyrian Church of the East. During his Patriarchate, he established Babylon College which became an instrumental educational institution for the Chaldean Church. Mar Raphael has been succeeded by Mar Emmanuel Delly at a Synod of the Chaldean bishops in the Vatican on December 2-3, 2003.

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BEN SEGAL (1912-2003) GEOFFREY KHAN CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY [1] [2]

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Judah Benzion ‘Ben’ Segal, scholar of Semitic languages, born June 21 1912; died October 23 2003.1 Judah “Ben” Segal, who has died aged 91, was a leading scholar in the field of Aramaic and Hebrew studies. He was professor of Semitic languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), in the University of London, from 1961 until his retirement in 1979. Among much else, he was largely responsible for a degree course that allowed students to study all the major languages of the Semitic family, including Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian and Ethiopic. This course, which sadly no longer exists, was unique in a British university at the time, and provided an excellent training for those who wished to undertake a research degree in Semitic philology. It ensured that students gained a thorough knowledge of the languages and were able to read the most challenging texts, rather than simply learning “about” the languages. Segal’s own research was wide ranging. Several of his publications concerned the Christian Aramaic dialect known as Syriac, and the culture and literature of eastern Christianity. His first book, The Diacritical Point and the Accents in Syriac (1953), a study of the vowels of Syriac, is greatly admired by Semitic philologists and often regarded as one of his best works. In 1970, he published Edessa: The Blessed City, an erudite but very accessible historical study of the city of Edessa, modern Urfa in southern Turkey, where the Syriac language had its origins. He also made major contributions in the field of Hebrew and Jewish history; his book The Hebrew Passover from the Earliest Times to AD 70 (1963) quickly became a standard work. In retirement, Segal continued his scholarly research with considerable energy. In 1981, he was awarded a Leverhulme emeritus fellowship, which allowed him to conduct research in 1

2003).

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In Memoriam

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India on the Jews of Cochin, resulting in the publication, in 1993, of his definitive work on the subject, A History of the Jews of Cochin. He also continued to make important contributions to Aramaic studies through his publication of Aramaic texts from North Saqqara, with some Fragments in Phoenician (1983) and his Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum (2000, in collaboration with Erica Hunter). Born in Newcastle, Segal was educated at Magdalen College school, Oxford, and graduated with a first-class tripos degree in Oriental languages from Cambridge University in 1935. He returned to Oxford to study for a research degree, and was awarded a DPhil there in 1939. His outstanding ability won him a series of prizes and scholarships. Most of his later academic colleagues and students were not aware that he had distinguished himself in action during the second world war, to the extent that, in 1942, he had been awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Earlier that year, he was sent more than 100 miles behind German lines in north Africa to report on the movements of Rommel’s forces, and give advance warnings of planned attacks. He spent several weeks in secret hideouts with local Arabs, whose language he could speak. His regular reports helped save many allied lives. Narrowly avoiding capture on several occasions, he led an operation that resulted in the capture of the Libyan town of Derna, which proved to be crucial for the advance of Montgomery’s 8th Army. After the war, Segal pursued an academic career, as had his father, the distinguished Hebrew scholar M.H. Segal. In 1946, he joined SOAS, where he spent his entire career, as a lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic, was promoted to reader in 1955, and took a chair in Semitic languages in 1961. In 1968, he was elected to a fellowship of the British Academy. It was my privilege to be his student at SOAS in the late 1970s, and I was, at first, overawed at being taught by a scholar of such eminence and erudition. Segal’s quiet, gentle approach, however, soon made me feel completely at ease. In those days, more importance was attached to passing on scholarship to a younger generation than to maximising the number of students in the class. Indeed, I was often the only student on the courses that he taught.

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His public-spiritedness was demonstrated on numerous occasions, especially when, at the age of 70, he agreed to become director of the progressive London Jewish seminary, Leo Baeck College, and worked resolutely to save it from imminent closure. His wife Leah, whom he married in 1946, survives him, as do their two daughters.

MICHEL VAN ESBROECK (1934-2003) LUCAS VAN ROMPAY DUKE UNIVERSITY [1]

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Professor Michel van Esbroeck died in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, on Friday morning, November 21, 2003, suddenly and prematurely.1 He just had come back from a trip to Rome, driving through the night, as was his wont. The news of his death reached his American colleagues and friends as they gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. It was received with disbelief and shock. Michel van Esbroeck was a truly remarkable scholar in the field of Eastern Christian studies. While the main focus of his work was on Georgian and Armenian Christian literature, his interest and competence covered other fields as well, and he had a number of fine publications in the field of Syriac. Michel was born on June 17, 1934 in Malines (Mechelen), a Belgian town well known to Syriac scholars for the publication of Ephrem’s works by Thomas J. Lamy (Malines, 1882-1902). Michel often jokingly described himself as “flamand francophone” (“French speaking Flemish”), thus indicating the inadequacies of our linguistic and cultural categorizations. He himself was in fact a man of culture without borders, who did not fit into ready-made categories and who mastered an extraordinary number of languages, both ancient and modern. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1953 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1970. Since 1962 he was associated with the Museum Bollandianum, the Brussels headquarters of the Bollandists, a group of Jesuit Fathers engaged in the scholarly study of Christian hagiography. In the early sixties he studied Armenian and Georgian with Gérard Garitte at the Catholic University of Louvain and spent some time at the Université St.-Joseph in Beirut, where he 1 I would like to thank Lucie van Esbroeck, Françoise Petit, Stephen J. Shoemaker, Peter Cowe, Basil Lourié, and Joel Marcus for providing me with information.

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studied Arabic and Syriac. Meanwhile he also worked on his Coptic and Ethiopic; for the latter language he was in regular contact with Victor Arras, the renowned editor of the Ethiopic texts on the Virgin Mary’s death and the only authority on Ethiopic then living in Belgium. For his doctorate Michel embarked, under the supervision of professor Garitte, on a study of the earliest Georgian homily collections. He obtained the degree of Doctor in Oriental History and Philology at the University of Louvain in 1975. His dissertation was published as Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens. Étude descriptive et historique (Publications de l’Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 10; Louvain-la-Neuve, 1975). In the following years, Michel made several trips to the Soviet Union, where he was able to study Eastern Christian manuscripts in Moscow, St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Yerevan, and Tbilisi. To these trips Syriac scholars owe, among other things, Michel’s detailed description of the famous Syriac manuscript Leningrad (N.S.) no. 4, published in Mélanges Antoine Guillaumont (1988). In the early eighties, Michel taught Classical Armenian and Georgian at the Pontificio Istituto di Studi Orientali in Rome and, for one year (1985), at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In 1987, he accepted the chair of “Philologie des Christlichen Orients” at the University of Munich. As the successor of Julius Assfalg, he was responsible for research and teaching in six languages: Armenian, Georgian, Syriac, (Christian) Arabic, Coptic, and Ethiopic (Ge’ez). After his retirement, in 1999, Michel continued to travel, to lecture, and to attend conferences, where his scholarly interventions, his engaging conversations, and his piano improvisations always were very much appreciated. He traveled to Armenia, the Middle East, and India. He lectured at the University of California, Los Angeles, made an extensive trip to China, and kept up his contacts in Rome, where he planned to move after his temporary stay in Louvain-la-Neuve. His friends and colleagues in Paris were looking forward to a prestigious lecture which he was invited to deliver at the Collège de France on January 14, 2004. A Festschrift celebrating his seventieth birthday was in preparation (this will now be turned into a memorial volume and is due to appear in St. Petersburg, as the first volume of Scrinium. Revue de patrologie, hagiographie critique et histoire ecclésiastique, to be edited by A. Mouraviev and B. Lourié). No one was considering the possibility that Michel would be slowing down, least of all Michel himself!

In Memoriam [7]

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Michel did major text editions and translations in Greek and Georgian: two Greek homilies attributed in the manuscripts to either Basil of Caesarea or Gregory of Nyssa (in collaboration with Alexis Smets, Sources chrétiennes 160, 1970); a Georgian treatise attributed to an otherwise unknown author Barsabas of Jerusalem (Patrologia Orientalis 41, 1982); the Georgian version of Epiphanius of Cyprus’ “On weights and measures” (CSCO 460461 / Iber. 19-20, 1984); and a Georgian Life of the Virgin Mary, attributed to Maximus Confessor (CSCO 478-479 / Iber. 21-22, 1986). A great number of shorter texts, in various languages, were edited, translated, and studied by him in articles which appeared in scholarly journals and collective volumes. His doctoral dissertation (Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, 1975) consists of a detailed description and analysis of six early Georgian homily collections. The Georgian materials are compared to homily collections in other languages of the Christian East. The Syriac collections, which had just begun to be studied in a systematic way by Joseph-Marie Sauget, assume an important place in this comparison. The similarities between the various traditions as well as the specific content of the Georgian tradition thus clearly emerge. Among the Georgian homilies that have no parallel in any of the other traditions are nine homilies attributed to Melitius, bishop of Antioch between 360 and 381, of whose works only very little is preserved in Greek. Michel strongly argued in favor of the authenticity of these nine homilies. On three occasions Melitius quotes Ephrem and refers to passages which can be identified in the Syriac Hymns on the Nativity and in the Commentary on the Diatessaron. If the homilies are authentic, these references are among the very earliest external attestations concerning Ephrem’s works, made by an author who must have had direct or indirect access to the Syriac Ephrem. The exploration of the Georgian homily collections provided Michel with many topics which he elaborated in ensuing publications. Of particular importance are his studies of the traditions surrounding Mary’s death (her “Falling Asleep,” Dormition, Transitus, or Assumption). Fifteen of his articles on this theme were reprinted under the title Aux origines de la Dormition de la Vierge. Études historiques sur les traditions orientales (Collected Studies Series, Aldershot: Variorum, 1995). Georgian, Armenian, Coptic, and Arabic traditions are discussed here and a more general

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essay on “Les signes des temps dans la littérature syriaque” is included as well. Syriac topics also are dealt with in a number of other studies, e.g., the Syriac Cross-finding legends, the Syriac version of the Agathangelos story, Syriac legends concerning the apostles (Philip and Andrew, in particular), and the Syriac transmission of Gregory of Nyssa’s panegyric on Gregory Thaumaturgus. Michel’s analyses of texts and of their complicated transmission often are very specialized and technical; they always attest to his intimate familiarity with the historical, cultural, theological, and liturgical aspects of the Christian East, in its various interrelated traditions. Michel was known to colleagues and students as an extremely erudite and imaginative scholar, always willing to share his knowledge and enthusiasm with others, unswerving in his commitment to his work, and at times uncompromising. May this restless seeker and traveler have found his lmênâ d-shaynâ, his Harbour of Peace! A bibliography of books and articles, prepared by Michel himself, contains seven books and 222 articles or chapters in books or collective volumes.

Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, Vol. 7, 11-54 © 2007 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute and Gorgias Press

GENEROUS DEVOTION WOMEN IN THE CHURCH OF THE EAST BETWEEN 1550 AND 1850 HELEEN (H.L.) MURRE-VAN DEN BERG UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN

ABSTRACT In the centuries following the Ottoman conquest of northern Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, the Church of the East showed a remarkable vitality, which was expressed among other things in a considerable manuscript production and the restoration of churches and monasteries. This article intends to highlight the contribution of women to this revival. It is based mainly on a study of manuscript colophons and a few inscriptions, which testify to the large number of women who were involved in financing the production of manuscripts and to their reasons for doing so. A closer reading of the colophons also reveals details about the social position of these women, the role of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, as well as about their position within the church—varying from incidental references to daughters of the convenant, deaconnesses and nuns, to highly-esteemed mothers and well-doers in the Christian community. Finally, the article asks for a closer reading of the colophons in order to enlarge our knowledge of the Church of the East in this period of history.

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In the early summer of 1707, the priest Yosep, son of the priest Giwargis, son of the priest Israel Alqoshaya from the Shikwana 11

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family, one of the famous scribes’ families of Alqosh of the period, in his hometown finished writing a ʞaksĆ d-kĆhnē, a priests’ office book which included the regular Sunday eucharistic liturgies, a few special liturgies and a number of ʚuttĆmē by various authors. In his colophon he notes: “This book of the ʞaksĆ d-kĆhnē was written thanks to the money and labor of Belgan, a believing woman from Alqoshta, and she bestowed it upon the holy church of Mar Yoʘannan in the blessed village of Dawedaya, in the region of ʙapna (Amadiah region). From now on, everyone is required to read from it.”1 Belgan from Alqoshta (a little village in the mountains of Berwari, about 65 miles north of Alqosh in what is now southeastern Turkey) is not the only woman of the Church of the East who makes her appearance in the Syriac manuscript colophons of the Ottoman period. In David Wilmshurst’s list of colophons and inscriptions, more than eighty women are mentioned in sixty-six entries made between 1500 and 1830.2 On the total number of colophons and inscriptions of this period, numbering about 1350, this already constitutes a significant group of about six percent, but when compared with the number of colophons that mention commissioners and sponsors (the roles in which women occur most frequently), the percentage goes up to about eighteen percent.3 Although most of the colophons are See appendix, no. 30. The appendix contains a list of women’s names taken from the primarily Syriac colophons in MSS. written by Church of the East copyists between 1500 and 1830. The list is gleaned from David Wilmshurst’s list of colophons of Syriac manuscripts, in The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, CSCO vol. 582, Subsidia 104 (Louvain: Peeters, 2000). When the catalogues were available to me and provided extra information on the women and the MSS., such information has been added. Note that Wilmshurst did not include the Arabic MSS. produced by Church of the East writers in this period. Note also that my timeframe is considerably shorter than that of Wilmshurst, who covers the period from 1318 to 1913. I have limited myself to the ‘Ottoman period,’ but with the exclusion of most of the nineteenth century, because of the largely different circumstances (considerable western influence) and abundance of sources from about 1830 onwards. 3 My numbers are based on the colophon descriptions in Wilmshurst, The Ecclesiastical Organisation. Although he seems to have taken into account all manuscripts that are described in the catalogues, the often 1 2

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edited only partially, the information available in the catalogues already provides us with a wealth of information on the women of the Church of the East in this period. It is this information that is used for the present contribution.4 The period of about 1500 to 1830 is the period in which the Church of the East, after a century of almost complete silence following Timur Leng’s raids in the late fourteenth century, slowly recovered from the destruction and ravages wrought by the plague. The great majority of the East-Syriac manuscripts that have survived to our day date from this period, in which apparently a great effort was made to restore the classical heritage. Especially between 1670 and 1760 the large village of Alqosh was the center of an enormous manuscript production. Its scribes provided new manuscripts for village churches and monasteries in northern Mesopotamia and northwestern Iran that in this period were also often restored. Three famous families dominated life in this village: the Shikwana and Naʛro families, to which most of the scribes belonged, and the Abuna family, from which metropolitans and patriarchs were selected.5 The patriarchs had their official see in the famous monastery of Rabban Hormizd, not far from Alqosh, and so added to the importance of the region. The importance of the Alqosh region (including the monastery of Rabban Hormizd and the village of Telkepe) is also reflected in the colophons of the manuscripts in my list: thirty-five of the fifty-eight manuscripts were produced here. Smaller centers of manuscript production were found in villages and monasteries in the west (Amida, Gazarta), in the Hakkari mountains (Gissa) and western Iran (Darband, Tergawar). In addition to the copying of older texts, this period also saw a limited production of new texts, both in Classical

rather concise way in which the MS. colophons are edited suggests that a study of the MSS. itself would yield additional information. 4 To my knowledge, women in the colophons in similar manuscript traditions have not been studied in extenso, cf., e.g., the absence of any particular reference to women in the study by Sanjian K. Avedis: Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301-1480. A Source for Middle Eastern History, Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 2 (Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 9-14. 5 Wilmshurst, The Ecclesiastical Organisation, 244, 249, 251.

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Syriac and in Modern Aramaic, the spoken language of the majroity of the members of the Church of the East.6 Politically, the region became more and more part of the Ottoman Empire, although it took until the middle of the nineteenth century before the Ottomans were able to exercise any kind of effective control over the Hakkari Mountains with its independent Kurdish and Assyrian tribes. Roman Catholicism also made its influence felt in the region. In 1552, Yuʘannan Sulaqa established official links with the papacy and in doing so created the uniate counter-patriarchate in 1553. Although his successors severed links with the papacy towards the end of the sixteenth century and continued as the Church of the East patriarchate of Qodshanis, both this line (whose patriarchs took the formal name Shimcun) and the line of Rabban Hormizd (whose patriarchs took the formal name Eliya) had occasional contacts with Roman Catholic missionaries. In 1681, a new Catholic patriarchate (whose holders took the name of Yosep) was created in Amida (DiyarbakÖr), under the influence of Capuchin missionaries. In 1830, this patriarchate merged with the by then Catholic patriarchate of Alqosh.7 Despite occasional setbacks caused by wars (between Turkey and Persia as well as between local rulers), outbreaks of the plague and looting by local robbers or rival tribes, the considerable manuscript production and the restoration of churches testify to the vitality of the Church of the East in the Ottoman period. However, so far hardly any attention has been paid to the role of women in this ‘awakening.’ This study focuses on the question to what extent and in what way women participated in it. The following themes will be discussed: the position of these women See H.L. Murre-van den Berg, “A Syrian Awakening. Alqosh and Urmia as Centres of Neo-Syriac Writing,” in Symposium Syriacum VII, Uppsala University, Department of Asian and African Languages, 11-14 August 1996, OCP 256, ed. R. Lavenant, S.J. (Rome: 1998), 499-515, and Alessandro Mengozzi, Israel of Alqosh and Joseph of Telkepe. A Story in a Truthful Language, Religious Poems in Vernacular Syriac (North Iraq, 17th century), 2 vols. CSCO 589, 590, Scryptores Syri 230, 231 (Louvain: Peeters 2002). 7 See H.L. Murre-van den Berg, “The Patriarchs of the Church of the East from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries” Hugoye, Journal of Syriac Studies 2:2 (1999). 6

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within their families [6-8]; the geographical origin of the women and the manuscripts [9-10]; their names [11], money and status [1213]; and the reasons for commissioning, sponsoring8 and donating9 [14-16]. I will end with a few concluding remarks [17-18]. There can be little doubt that the women in the colophons are first and foremost identified by their family relationships. The most common way to introduce a woman is to add her father’s name to her own: Kanzadeh, daughter of the deacon Sulaiman (c. 1660, no. 14), Gozal, daughter of the smith ʗanna of Mosul (1707, no. 31), Shmuni, daughter of the priest ʗoshaba (1722, no. 37), and many more. In the one case of a female scribe, an extended genealogy is given, extending to five generations: Teresa, daughter of the priest Khadjodor, son of the deacon ȨAbdelkarim, son of the priest Bakos, son of the priest Khadjo, son of the priest Bet SabrishoȨ of ȨAyn Tannur (1767, no. 53). This usage is exactly parallel to that regarding the men in the colophons: a brief genealogy (usually only the father) in the case of donors, sponsors and commissioners, long genealogies in case of scribes. In one case, a woman is identified by giving the name of her mother only: Naze, daughter of Shmuni (1766, no. 52), whereas one woman is identified first by her mother, than by her husband: Maryam, daughter of Elisabeth and wife of Maroge, of Nisibis (1586, no. 7).10 In addition, in quite a few cases a mother and daughter sponsored or commissioned together, for instance Shona, daughter of OshaȨna and her mother Nasrat (1706, no. 29), ʗatun and her mother Sette, daughter of the priest Eliya of Telkepe (1710, no. 32), as well as ȨAzize and her 8 The difference between commissioning (yʜep), and sponsoring (‘giving money’ – cf. no. 38) is unclear. In many cases only commissioning is mentioned and we are left to assume that commissioning in those cases included providing the money. In other cases commissioners and sponsors are mentioned separately, which might suggest a different role for each. 9 I use the term donor/donating in the case of already existing MSS. or other valuables, such as land and/or houses. 10 In at least two cases I have not been able to ascertain whether the name of the parent refers to a man or a woman: Maryam, daughter of Mima of Erbil (1559, no. 4), and Seltana, daughter of Belgana of Bet Megali (ca. 1593, no. 8). There is also one instance of a male scribe who gives only the name of his mother (the deacon Giwargis, son of the believing woman Gozal, 1704, no. 27).

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mother Baghdad, together with their father and husband Isaac, son of Giwargis (1705, no. 28). In this list, the second most important way of identifying a woman is by giving her husband’s name. However, of only twentyone of the eighty-four women in the list a husband is mentioned, often in addition to the father, e.g. in the case of a manuscript donated by a couple such as Auraham, son of Mako, and his wife Shmuni, daughter of the priest Quriaqos (1682, no. 19), or by two couples together: “the money was given by the believers ʗanne, Kammo, and their righteous wives Sara and Maryam” (1723, no. 38). An eighteenth-century inscription in the church of Mar Quriaqos in Salmas simply says: “This church was renovated by the wife of Amr, may the Lord give her rest” (18th c., no. 36). In addition to these twenty-one cases where a woman’s husband is explicitly mentioned, in eleven instances marriage can be inferred from the mentioning of a dowry, (grand)sons or daughters. The two instances of dowry (mĆhrĆ) probably both date to the early eighteenth century. In the first case the manuscript itself constitutes the dowry, taken for the daughter of the priest ȨAbdishoȨ son of Zangish (no. 23), in the second, the manuscript contains a note of a dowry taken by the priest ʗanna for his daughter (no. 24). Both women remain anonymous.11 A total of thirty-two married women among the more than eighty women in the list is a strikingly low number, which requires an exploration of the possible reasons. The most obvious one, although explaining only a minority of the cases, is that women remained unmarried for religious reasons. In five instances, there is little doubt: women are referred to as a nun (rĆhiba, Maryam, daughter of priest Hormizd of 1542, no. 2, and ʗatun in Mar Yoʘannan Naʘlaya, 1629, no. 12), as a daughter of the covenant (ba(r)t qyĆmĆ, Seltana, daughter of Belgana, c. 1600, no. 8), as a deaconess of the monastery of Mar Augin (mshammshĆnĩtĆ, Maryam, 1739, no. 45) and as a distinguished virgin (btultĆ zhitĆ, Shmuni, daughter of Marqos, 1824, no. 64).12 In a number of other cases Curiously enough, the copyist of the second MS. seems to be the same ȨAbdishoȨ of Zangish who accepted a MS. as his daughter’s dowry. In both cases, the names of three or four witnesses (all men, different in each case) are added. 12 The presence of these different types of religious women raises some issues that cannot be adequately treated in this article. One is the 11

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one may perhaps assume that the women were not married yet, as in the case of the first colophon in our list, in a manuscript copied by a priest Aprem son of the priest YaȨqub for “his own and learned daughters Tamar and Shmuni” (1521, no. 1), or our female copyist, the girl Teresa, daughter of the priest Khadjador, who was fifteen years old when she wrote her manuscript in 1767 (no. 53).13 In this respect, one also wonders to what extent the custom described by Surma d’Bait Mar ShimȨun (a member of the patriarchal family of Qodshanis) in the early twentieth century might explain the fact that for some women no husband is mentioned. She notes: “Often girls and youths live as virgins in their parents’ house. They are called Rabbanyati [the usual title for nuns, MvdB] although they have not received the blessing of the Bishop, so they are not officially recognized.”14 With perhaps a number of widows among them, it seems not unreasonable to assume that a significant part of the remaining fifty-two women were not married. In addition, there is the distinct possibility that even if a woman was married, it was not always necessary to mention that fact in the colophon, especially if the husband had not been personally involved in the commissioning or sponsoring. Whatever the reasons for the low number of husbands in the colophons, it seems to me that at the very least this indicates that husbands in the majority of cases were not the defining factor in apparent survival of the earlier offices of both ‘deaconess’ and ‘daughter of the covenant,’ although we learn next to nothing about the content of these offices (on these in the early days, see S. Harvey Ashbrook, “Women’s Service in Ancient Syriac Christianity,” in Kanon XVI. Yearbook of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches: Mother, Nun, Deaconess, Images of Women according to Eastern Canon Law (Egling: Edition Roman Kovar, 2000, p. 226-241). The other interesting issue is the possibility that the nun Shmuni was involved in the early stages of the Chaldean monastic movement, initiated in 1808 by Gabriel Danbo in Alqosh; cf. S. Bello, La congregation de S. Hormisdas et l’église chaldéenne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, OCA 122 (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1939), although Bello does not mention female involvement. 13 Although I do not have direct evidence for the age at which girls generally were married, somewhere between twelve and sixteen seems likely. 14 Surma d’Bait Mar Shimun, Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of Mar Shimun, Vehicle editions, ca. 1920, p. 32.

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deciding whether women could or would donate valuables or commission and sponsor the writing of a manuscript. It is worthwhile to take a closer look at the place names mentioned in these colophons. The dominance of Alqosh as a center of manuscript production has been mentioned above, but for a study of the involvement of the women, the location of the monasteries and churches benefiting from their generosity seems to be more important. Surprisingly enough, it is usually only the church and its location, rather than the hometown or village of the commissioner or sponsor, that is mentioned in the colophon. It seems to me that the reader of the colophon is meant to understand that the commissioner or sponsor lived in the vicinity of that particular church. One of the few colophons to mention the woman’s home village, is the one naming Belgan from the village of Alqoshta (no. 30), who bestowed a manuscript to a church in Dawedaya, a village about fifteen miles south. When we look up the churches and monasteries that profited from the generosity of the women of the Church of the East on a map, we find that most of these are situated in a rather circumscribed area: a small band stretching northwards from Mosul, via Telkepe, Alqosh, and Dohuk towards Dawedaya, and a little eastwards from there, towards Aqra, via Tella, Artun, Geppa and Barzane.15 Regions that benefited to a lesser extent were the monasteries around Mardin, Nisibis, Seert and Gazarta in the west. The Hakkari mountains and the Persian territories of the country of the Church of the East are represented only by the inscriptions of Salmas,16 and by the reference to the place of origin of a few women.17 Although a comparison with the larger collection of colophons will perhaps refine this picture somewhat, these data suggest that in the southern and western regions the Christians were wealthier and church life was more active. It was not only churches and monasteries close to home that benefited: the Church-of-the-East community in Jerusalem and particularly the monastery of Mart Maryam also shared in the relative prosperity, For detailed maps, see Wilmshurst, The Ecclesiastical Organisation. This is probably due to the fact that inscriptions from other regions have not been edited, whereas the Salmas inscriptions were edited by Rubens Duval. 17 Sanam of Daralik in Sulduz (1770, no. 54) and Banusheh from Gulpashan in Baranduz (1813, no. 62). 15 16

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which confirms the importance of this city in the spiritual life of the time.18 Of the seventy-five woman’s names in the colophons, only about twenty-six can be considered traditional Syriac names. Most of these are biblical and one is Greek. These twenty-six women, however, share among them only nine different names, of which the most popular are Shmuni and Maryam (eight times each), and Helen (five times).19 All other names will probably be identified as Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and perhaps a few as more recent Aramaic/Syriac names, but much further research is required here. Note also here the interesting case of two women named after illustrious cities: Baghdad (1705, no. 28) and Stambul (1773, no. 55), a custom that may be observed also among presentday Christians from the region who name their daughters, e.g., after the city of Edessa.20 The most interesting aspect of these colophons is the fact that they show that at least some women of this period had the independent use of money or other possessions. Twenty-three women in this list are mentioned as the single donor or commissioner of a manuscript, whereas seven more are listed as having donated other valuables such as land or buildings. Some examples of individual commissioning are Belgan from Alqoshta, mentioned above (no. 30), Putta, daughter of chief ȨAtallah of ʗarab Olma (ca. 1550, no. 3), Shmuni, daughter of NaȨazar (1701, no. 25) and Alpo (1808, no. 58). Thirty-one women donated land or commissioned manuscripts together with others: their husbands, mothers, other women or other men. The deacon Bako and his wife Rihana commissioned a gazza together (1686, no. 20), while the two couples ʗanne and Sara and Kammo and Maryam (1723, See no. 6 (pre-1581), no. 8 (ca. 1593) and no. 33 (1710). Syriac/traditional names: Tamar, Shmuni (8x), Maryam (8x), Helen (5x), Qudsiya Hormez, Meskinta, Marta, Sara, and Elisabeth. I wonder whether Elfiya (3x) and Nasimo (