The Life of Rabban Hormizd

The monastery of Rabban Hormizd located in modern-day Iraq is an important site first for the Assyrian Church of the East and now for the Catholic Chaldean Church. The monastery is named after its founder, Rabban Hormizd, who was a seventh century monk from Persia. There are two accounts of the life of Rabban Hormizd, one prose and the other poetic. In the present work, E. A. Wallis Budge presents the Syriac text of the latter of these two works: a metrical work that recounts the life of Rabban Hormizd and details the origins of the monastery. The work is also an acrostic poem with twenty two sections corresponding to the letters of the Syriac alphabet. However, this is not a traditional acrostic: in this work, each line ends, rather than begins, with the same letter. This style frequently results in interesting orthographic variations, but it is also evidence of a vast knowledge of the Syriac language and remarkable creativity in the application of that knowledge. The text is accompanied by a brief introduction and a critical apparatus that notes many glosses included in the manuscript.