Syriac literature

Syriac literature is literature written in the Syriac language, an eastern Aramaic language. The majority of classical Syriac literature is of a Christian religious nature. However, the corpus witnesses a wide range of literary forms, and much of its literature is quite different from European Christian literature.

The earliest Syriac inscription comes from Edessa, and is dated to AD 6. There are, all told about eighty inscriptions from the region of Osrhoene dating from the first three centuries AD. All of these early inscriptions are non-Christian or pre-Christian. From the third century, Syriac was adopted by much of the church in upper Mesopotamia.

The earliest Christian literature was biblical translation, the Peshitta and the Diatessaron. The fourth century is considered to be the golden age of Syriac literature. The two giants of this period are Aphrahat, writing homilies for the church in Persia, and Ephrem the Syrian, writing hymns, poetry and prose for the church just within the Roman Empire. The next two centuries, which are in many ways a continuation of the golden age, sees important Syriac poets and theologians: Jacob of Serugh, Narsai, Philoxenus of Mabbog, Babai the Great, Isaac of Nineveh and Jacob of Edessa.

The advent and spread of Islam throughout the Middle East generally proved to be good for Syriac culture. The process of hellenization of Syriac, which was prominent in the sixth and seventh centuries, slowed and ceased. Syriac entered a silver age from around the ninth century. The works of this period were more encyclopaedic and scholastic, and include the biblical commentators Ishodad of Merv and Dionysius bar Salibi. Crowning the silver age of Syriac literature is the thirteenth-century polymath Bar-Hebraeus.

The conversion of the Mongols to Islam began a period of retreat and hardship for Syriac culture. However, there has been a continuous stream of Syriac literature from the fourteenth century through to the present day. This has included the flourishing of literature from the various colloquial Neo-Aramaic languages spoken by Christians. This "Neo-Syriac" literature bears a dual tradition: it continues the traditions of the Syriac literature of the past, and it incorporates a converging stream of the less homogeneous spoken language. The first such flourishing of Neo-Syriac was the seventeenth century literature of the School of Alqosh, in northern Iraq. This literature led to the establishment of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic as a written literary language. In the nineteenth century, printing presses were established in Urmia, in northern Iran. This led to the establishment of the 'General Urmian' dialect of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic as the standard in much Neo-Syriac literature. The comparative ease of modern publishing methods has encouraged other colloquial Neo-Aramaic languages, like Turoyo and Senaya, to begin to produce literature. Composition in the classical Syriac language still continues, especially among members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, where students in the church's monasteries are taught living, spoken Syriac, or "unicode|Kṯoḇonoyo".

References

* W. Wright: "A Short History of Syriac Literature", 1894, 1974 (reprint)

External links

* [http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/index.html HUGOYE: JOURNAL OF SYRIAC STUDIES]
* [http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/oriental/syriac.htm Syriac Literature]
* [http://www.bethmardutho.org/ Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Computing Institute]
*CathEncy|wstitle=Syriac Language and Literature