The Syriac World

Daniel King

Dec 2018 · Routledge

About this ebook

This volume surveys the 'Syriac world', the culture that grew up among the Syriac-speaking communities from the second century CE and which continues to exist and flourish today, both in its original homeland of Syria and Mesopotamia, and in the worldwide diaspora of Syriac-speaking communities. The five sections examine the religion; the material, visual, and literary cultures; the history and social structures of this diverse community; and Syriac interactions with their neighbours ancient and modern. There are also detailed appendices detailing the patriarchs of the different Syriac denominations, and another appendix listing useful online resources for students.

The Syriac World

offers the first complete survey of Syriac culture and fills a significant gap in modern scholarship. This volume will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Syriac and Middle Eastern culture from antiquity to the modern era.

Chapter 26 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

About the author

Daniel King (Research Fellow, Cardiff University, UK) is a scholar of Syriac who specialises in the history of Syriac philosophy and its contribution to the progress of knowledge. His research is principally concerned with examining how the Syriac tradition adopted and adapted to its own environment the heritage of Greek Christian thought and ideas, and how it was able to translate large numbers of Greek texts into a new and distinctive idiom. He has a special interest in all aspects of the history of translation and currently works in East Africa advising and consulting on the translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages of the region.