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SOAA 00250 |
Mōr Mikha'il Rabo (Michael the Great) stresses that the territorial boundary of Syria was geographically situated to the west of the Euphrates river and that the name Syrians was employed within a metaphorical sense to those “who speak our language, the Ōrōmōyē (lit. Arameans), of which the Syrians are only one part.” In the heading of Appendix II, Mōr Mikha'il states "Aramean people, that is, sons of Aram, who are called Syrians, that is people from Syria (i.e. west of the Euphrates)." [2] The celebrated author and Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church (ca. 1166-1199) goes on to distinguish that the Ōthurōyē (lit. Assyrians) who were also known as Syrians lived “east of the Euphrates, that is from the banks of the Euphrates all the way to Persia” (see SOAA 00250). [3] These Assyrians, as Mōr Mikha'il explains were those from Aššur who founded the city of Nineveh. [4] For Mōr Mikha'il, both the Arameans and Assyrians were Syrians, that is speakers of Syriac. The former (Arameans), nonetheless, were the real Syrians whereas the latter (Assyrians) were Syrians in a metaphorical sense.
With respect to the historic origin and usage of the name Syrian, just like Yaqūb d-Urhōy (Jacob of Edessa) and Mōr Dīonysīus— Mōr Mikha'il stresses that it was the Greeks of antiquity who designated the Arameans and Assyrians by that name. Furthermore, Mōr Mikha'il evidentially demonstrates that the Arameans formed, as he says, “only one part” of the Syrians. These statements suggest that the exonym Syrian held linguistic implications and was employed by a multi-ethnic population who were not all necessarily ethnic Arameans. This can be attested due to the obvious existence of various Syriac-speaking ethnic groups (i.e. Greek Orthodox Christians) who also linguistically designated themselves as Syrians.
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BnF 4956, Fol. 10v |
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Herodoti, Halicarn Assei Historiarum Lib. IX Editio Secunda (Excudebat Henricus Stephanus, 1592), 463. |
[1] The Chronicle by Mōr Dīonysīus Tēlmāharōyō (Dionysius of Tēl-Mahrē) is lost. See Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Anonymi Auctoris chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens 1 (CSCO, 81, 109, Syr. 36, 56; Paris, 1916, Leuven, 1937), ed. pp. 112-114; trans. pp.88-90; Chabot, Chronique, ed. Vol. 4, pp. 522-524, trans. Vol. 3, pp. 76-78, where similar excerpts of this passage of his work are extant. Bas ter Haar Romeny, Religious Origins of Nations? The Christian Communities of the Middle East (Boston: BRILL, 2010), 121.
[2] Ibid. 119.
[3] J.-B. Chabot, Chronique de Michael Le Syrien Patriarchae Jacobite D'Antioche (1166-1199) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899).
[4] Jean-Baptiste Chabot, De Michel Le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite D'Antioche (1166-1199) Ed. 3 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1905), 443.
[5] George Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus (London: John Murray, 1862), 51.
[6] Gabriel Herman et al., Greeks between East and West: essays in Greek literature and history in memory of David Asheri (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2007), 192.
[7] I.G. Kidd, Posidonius: Volume III, The Translation of the Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972-1999), 356.
[8] John Selby Watson, Justin, Cornelius Nepos and Eutropius: Literally Translated, with Notes and a General Index (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), 5.
[9] see. Nathanael J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).