Eliya I of Ṭirhan
author: Herman G. B. Teule
source date: 2011
edition published: 2016-09-22-16:00
availability: Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

Eliya I of Ṭirhan

https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Eliya-I-of-Tirhan http://syriaca.org/bibl/197 188 http://syriaca.org/person/468 [person] [Bp. of Ṭirhan, cath. , author of an important work on Syriac grammar.]

(d. 1049) [Ch. of E.]

Bp. of Ṭirhan; cath. , author. After having been bp. of Tirhan, Eliya was consecrated cath. in 1028. Prior to becoming bp. he wrote his influential Syriac grammar, aimed at students accustomed to the system of grammars of Arabic. He also may be the author of three treatises on accents and diacritics. As cath. he ordered the introduction of some new liturgical practices, such as the Service of the Genuflection (Syām burkā) on Pentecost. He most likely is responsible for the final redaction of the great E.-Syr. Synodicon, and he issued several canons in the field of hereditary law, possibly written in Arabic and translated into Syriac. Ṣalībā b. Yuḥannā, the compiler of the theological encyclopedia Asfār al-asrār, attributes to him a theological handbook in Arabic (Kitāb uṣūl al-dīn), which, however, on the basis of internal criticism, must be the work of a later author.

Primary Sources

F. Baethgen, Ṭurrāṣ mamllā suryāyā, oder, syrische Grammatik des Mar Elias von Tirhan (1880). (Syr. with GT)
A. Merx, Historia artis grammaticae apud Syros (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 9.2; 1889), 137–57 and 194–200. (Treatises on accents; Syr.)

Secondary Sources

J. B. Segal, The diacritical points and the accents in Syriac (1953), 32 and 144–5.
W. Selb, Orientalisches Kirchenrecht, vol. I (1981), 175–76.
R. G. Rilova, Grammatika sirijskogo yazika Ili Tirchanskogo (Palestinskij Sbornik 14[77]; 1965).

Herman G. B. Teule