Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
The region known in Syriac as Beth Qaṭraye includes not only the peninsula of
Qaṭar, but also its hinterland Yamāma, and the entire coast of northeast
Arabia as far as the peninsula of Musandam, in present-day Oman, along with
the islands. Christianity must have reached Beth Qaṭraye no later than the
4th cent. Eliya,
Most of the information on Beth Qaṭraye pertains to the early Islamic period.
Among the correspondence of Cath.
In the 6th and 7th cent., Christian Beth Qaṭraye produced a number of
important Syriac authors. Most
While Christians in Beth Qaṭraye used Syriac as their literary and liturgical
language, Persian and Arabic must have existed in the region as well. This
linguistic complexity is reflected in a few dozen glosses, explicitly
identified as being in the ‘language of Beth Qaṭraye’ (in some cases the
adverb qaṭrāʾit is used) and preserved in later
works, esp. in biblical commentaries and in the Lexicon of
Christians from Beth Qaṭraye also served as translators. The Persian translator for the (undoubtedly Arabic speaking) Laḥmid king al-Nuʿmān III (579–601) is said to have been a Christian from Beth Qaṭraye. A monk from Beth Qaṭraye is credited with the translation from Persian into Syriac of the Law Book of Shemʿon of Rev Ardashir.