An Album of Dated Syriac Manuscripts

Hatch's Album remains the main reference for dated Syriac manuscripts and the standard in the field. The book contains over 250 illustrations from manuscripts, each with a description. Hatch gives a general introduction to Syriac manuscripts and writing. This edition contains a new informative introduction by Lucas Van Rompay.

The Album conveniently brings together two hundred facsimiles, each representing a page of a dated Syriac manuscript. High quality black-and-white pictures are accompanied with full descriptions, providing technical data (dimensions, layout, ink, rulings, etc.) as well as observations on the content of the manuscript and references to editions and existing scholarly literature. The introduction (p. 1 to 47) summarizes the mid-twentieth-century knowledge of Syriac manuscripts, including such topics as writing materials, pens, ink, mode of writing, columns, ruling, colophon, dating, miniatures, quires, styles of writing, the forms of the letters, points and additional signs, punctuation, Gershuni, and the periodization of the history of Syriac handwriting. Much of this is still currently valid and nowhere else can a more comprehensive and competent survey be found.

“The selection of two hundred manuscripts is made among the Syriac manuscripts from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries. The term “Syriac” is taken in its broad sense, including the following categories: Estrangela, Serta, “Nestorian” (i.e., East-Syriac), Melkite, and Palestinian manuscripts. For the period prior to the end of the tenth century, the writer intended to incorporate samples of all dated Syriac codices known to him (more than one hundred in number). For the period between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries choices had to be made and only a limited number of codices were included.”

–From the Introduction, by Lucas Van Rompay