Posted by David Michelson on Tuesday, October 4, 2016 in Publications.

Syriaca.org is pleased to announce the release of a new online publication:

A Guide to Syriac Authors

Photo Credit: “The Evangelists, St. Luke and St. John,” CFMM 37, f. 6r, Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin MS 37 (13th c.). Image provided by Syriac Orthodox Diocese of Mardin and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minn. under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Editors:
David A. Michelson, Vanderbilt University
Nathan P. Gibson, Vanderbilt University

A Guide to Syriac Authors is a scholarly manual with entries on nearly 1,000 authors who wrote in Syriac or otherwise had an influence on Syriac literature. A dialect of Aramaic, Syriac flourished as a lingua franca of the Middle East in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Today more than 20,000 manuscripts preserve texts in Syriac pertaining to theology, philosophy, commerce, science, and medicine. As a digital reference work, A Guide to Syriac Authors employs linked data technology to meet the needs of manuscript cataloguers and historical researchers interested in Syriac authors. Relationships between authors and texts, places, or other persons are documented through links to related information in The Syriac Gazetteer and The New Handbook of Syriac Literature.

A Guide to Syriac Authors is freely available online as the second volume of The Syriac Biographical Dictionary. Readers can browse entries online, download the entire publication in TEI XML, create permanent links to other digital publications, and offer editorial revisions at http://syriaca.org/authors

“This is the first Who’s Who in Syriac Studies, a pioneering tool in a whole range of ancient and modern languages providing information about the individuals through time who created and were part of Syriac culture and still keep it alive today.”
—Muriel Debié, Directeur d’études (Sciences Religieuses), École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris

An informational flyer about this publication may be downloaded here: Guide to Syriac Authors Flyer 2016