The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles makes accessible to a wide public sources vital for the reconstruction of events in the first Islamic century, covering the period which ends with the unsuccessful Arab siege of Constantinople, an event which both modern historians and Syriac chronographers see as making a decisive caesura in history. The general introduction enables a newcomer to the field to establish his bearings before tackling the texts.
Andrew Palmer came down from Oxford in 1977 with a Double First in Classical Greats. He spent 1977-8 in Tur Abdin and Munich, preparing himself to write a thesis in the history of Syriac monasticism. With a D. Phil. from Oxford (1983), he went on to write Monk and mason on the Tigris Frontier: The early history of Tur Abdin (Cambridge 1990). Since then he has published more than a hundred articles on the history of Mesopotamia and on Syriac literature. In 2009, for example, in L' historiographie syriaque, ed. M. Debie [acute accent on the last {e}], appeared his 'Les chroniques breves [grave accent on the first {e}] syriaques', which expands on what he (and Robert Hoyland) wrote on the Syriac minor chronicles in The seventh century in the West-Syrian chronicles (1993). Recently he has specialized in editing and translating Syriac texts, including The Life of Barsawmo the Northerner and Bishop Israel's chronicle of the Ottoman Genocide. From January 2016 he will be employed at the Research Centre for Aramean Studies, University of Constance, to edit, translate and elucidate the Universal Chronicle by Gregorius Barhebraeus (died 1286).
Title: The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles (Translated Texts for Historians)
Author:
ISBN: 9780853232384
Binding:
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Publication Date: 1993-03-01
Number of Pages: 352
Weight: 0.5898 kg