Gorgias Handbooks

Thirty short reading selections from the Book of Entertaining Stories of Gregory Bar ʿEbrāyā, with an analysis of the grammar and vocabulary of the texts.

The dot is used for everything in Syriac from tense to gender, number, and pronunciation, and unsurprisingly represents one of the biggest obstacles to learning the language. In this Arabic-language edition of his book, Dr. Kiraz peels back the evolution of the dot layer by layer to explain each of its uses in detail and to show how it adopted the wide range of uses it has today.

An Arabic translation of George Anton Kiraz's 'The Syriac Orthodox in North America (1895–1995)' – a short history of the Syriac Orthodox community in North America between 1895, the year of the First Sayfo that triggered the first wave of immigration to North America, and 1995, marking the passing away of Metropolitan Mor Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the first and only Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States and Canada.

The most significant and by far largest collections of Zaydi manuscripts are housed by the many public and private libraries of Yemen, an endangered cultural heritage tradition, currently at risk due to the conflict and warfare in Yemen. The contributions brought together in this volume address a wide spectrum of aspects concerning Yemeni manuscript cultures, with some focusing on their history and present state within Yemen and others discussing the collections of manuscripts of Yemeni provenance in Europe and elsewhere.

A sourcebook of major Arabic Christian theologians and texts from the 9th-11th centuries. Christian authors who spoke and wrote Arabic had no choice but to engage with Islam and the complex realities of life—initially as a majority, later as a minority—under Muslim rule. They had to express their theology in new ways, polemicize against the claims of a new religion, as well as defend their doctrines against Islam’s challenges.

A Spanish translation of George Kiraz's popular New Syriac Primer. This fruitful integration of scholarly introduction and practical application provides a primer that is more than a simple grammar or syntactic introduction to the language. Written in a style designed for beginners, Kiraz avoids technical language and strives for a reader-friendly inductive approach.

This is not a conventional history book. It is rather a study of the sociology of historical writing about a period that, although quite distant in time (330 B.C. to A.D. 670), still influences political discourse about the Arab world, and especially the relationship between the West and the Middle East. This book focuses on the riddle of the disappearance of the Arabs from history before Islam, their sudden appearance behind the banners of the Prophet, and the powerful and traumatic effect this emergence into world history has had on the relationship between the Arabs and the West.

The Church venerates among its saints several Early Christian women whose teaching and wisdom contribute to the depth of our theological heritage. Their inspired voices can be heard at work witnessing: in the New Testament, in the early centuries of the Church Fathers and throughout the Byzantine era. Readers will find this volume bringing female leaders from the Early Church to life from the traditional ancient sources and sharing their experience of the presence of God. Their remembered advice to followers still illuminates issues of faith and justice which bind us together as Christians today.

This book deals with various linguistic elements of Gǝʿǝz (Classical Ethiopic). More than two hundred and thirty-four linguistic elements are discussed, categorized into seven lexical categories: Adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, relative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, interjections, and particles. Dealing with their etymologies, meanings and grammatical functions is the particular focus of the work. To make the study clearer and easier to understand, appropriate examples and relevant textual sources are given for each theory or analysis.

A translation of Beatrix Potter's Tale of Peter Rabbit in Koine Greek, using only vocabulary found in the Greek New Testament and Septuagint (including the Apocrypha), and illustrated with Potter's original drawings.

This is a basic introduction to the various Syriac translations of the Bible and the ways in which they were used in the Syriac tradition. After an initial discussion of the general problems of biblical translation, the different surviving Syriac translations are outlined, as well as biblical manuscripts, lectionaires, printed editions, and translations. A reception history of the Syriac Bible covers the ways in which it has been interpreted, the commentary tradition, its use in preaching, in liturgy, and in spirituality. An appendix offers some comparative samples (in translation) to illustrate some of the differences between the different Syriac translations.

The British Library possesses one of the most important collections of Syriac manuscripts in the world, with large numbers dating back to the second half of the first millennium CE. The publication of important Syriac texts from these manuscripts has been going on for some 180 years and still continues. The aim of the present volume is to provide a guide to these scattered publications: following the sequence of the shelf-marks (call numbers), for each manuscript indication is given of what texts have been published from it. For convenience, a concordance between Wright’s Catalogue numbers and shelf-marks is provided, along with a list of palimpsests and of joins with manuscripts in other libraries, in particular with those still in the Library of Dayr al-Surian in Egypt, the monastery which was the source of over 500 manuscripts and fragments purchased by the British Museum in the mid nineteenth century.

The Gorgias Illustrated Learner's Syriac English, English-Syriac Dictionary is both a convenient academic resource and a door into the world of Modern Literary Syriac. With 13,000 entries drawn from the major existing works, alongside dozens of explanatory boxes on biblical, historical, theological, liturgical, cultural, as well as grammatical topics, and over 80 colored illustrations, it is a practical tool for those that wish to access all but the most specialized Classical Syriac texts.

This volume deals with One Thousand and One Nights in yet another and novel way as it brings old and new together by exploring parallels and possible origins of its tales, as well as the wealth of modern and contemporary material that it has originated and continues to inspire. The papers included in this volume address the theory and practice of the adaptation and appropriation of One Thousand and One Nights into any type of literary text and media, while approaching a definition of our contemporary knowledge and understanding of the Nights. Through this, it will be possible to underline the dynamic nature and autonomous life that the tale collection acquired and how it originated works like Jorge Luis Borges’s essays, Naguib Mahfouz’s works, Miguel Gomes’s trilogy, a Turkish soap opera that became popular around the world and made it to Netflix, or Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s well-known symphonic suite.

Based on Sabar's 2002 Jewish Neo-Aramaic dictionary, this dictionary serves a functional purpose for readers and scholars who would like to know the Neo-Aramaic vocabulary. It does not include grammatical or semantic details but does include the origin of the words, be it native Old Aramaic, and, in the case of loanwords, the original lending language, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, etc.

As part of the Gorgias Handbook Series, this book provides a political and military history of the Sasanian Empire in Late Antiquity (220s to 651 CE). The book takes the form of a narrative, which situates Sasanian Iran as a continental power between Rome and the world of the steppe nomad.

This handbook explores beliefs of ancient Jews and Christians surrounding death and the afterlife through the lens of texts ranging from the Old Testament and New Testament, to Second Temple period and rabbinic literature, to early Christian writings. Figueras further brings together eschatological texts from Iran, Egypt, Greece, and Rome as comparanda, and provides context and bibliography to guide readers in their study of ancient Jewish and Christian views of death and the afterlife.

A grammar of Classical Syriac. An introductory course of eight lessons presents the Syriac phonology and script, followed by the basic course of 40 lessons. The book is designed to cover one academic year.

A short history of the Syriac Orthodox community in North America between 1895, the year of the First Sayfo that triggered the first wave of immigration to North America, and 1995, marking the passing away of Metropolitan Mor Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the first and only Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States and Canada.

The history of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study dates back to 1935, and it is the one area of scholarship that has been continuously represented at the Institute ever since. The volume opens with a historical sketch of the study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute. The second part of the volume consists of essays and short studies by IAS scholars, past and present, covering fields such as the ancient Near East and early Islamic history, the Bible and the Qurʾān, Islamic intellectual history within and beyond denominational history, Arabic and other Semitic languages and literatures, Islamic religious and legal practices, law and society, the Islamic West, the Ottoman world, Iranian studies, the modern Middle East, and Islam in the West.

An English translation of Arman Akopian's comprehensive Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies, from the earliest appearances of Arameans in the historical record, through to the modern day.

This Introduction aims to provide basic guidance to important areas of Syriac studies. The relevance of Syriac studies to a variety of other fields is explored. A brief orientation to the history of Syriac literature is offered, and Syriac is set within the context of the other Aramaic dialects. A thorough discussion on important tools (Instrumenta Studiorum) is presented; topics include grammars, dictionaries, the Bible in Syriac, histories of Syriac literature, bibliographical aids and relevant series, periodicals, and encyclopedias. This Introduction should prove useful both for the student beginning Syriac studies and for scholars working in adjacent fields.

The Pocket Dictionary is both a convenient academic resource and a door into the world of Modern Literary Syriac. With 13,000 entries drawn from the major existing works, it is a practical tool for all but the most specialized Classical Syriac texts.

A short guide for studying, editing and translating medieval texts in manuscript form, outlining the technical steps for preparing a medieval manuscript for print: evaluating and describing the manuscript itself (transmission, provenance, and physical description), textual criticism (reconstruction, emendation, authenticity, dating, and authorship), and steps to preparing an edition or translation.

This is the first-ever study of Judeo-Urdu, that is, the Hindi/Urdu language written in Hebrew script. It provides background and an introduction to the Judeo-Urdu corpus, presents nearly two hundred entries from one text — a Hebrew-Judeo-Urdu glossary — and analyzes the orthography, phonology, and morphology of Judeo-Urdu. Comparison is made to standard Hindi and Urdu, from which Judeo-Urdu diverges in many interesting ways.