Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
Poetic genre which flourished in late E.-Syr. hymnography. In earlier
periods, the term ʿonithā (pl. ʿonyāthā) indicates the antiphonal response to psalms or the
refrain of a madrāšā (see Poetry), ranging
from one line to a full verse. The late ʿonyāthā are
liturgical hymns characterized by a tripartite structure: prologues and
epilogues contain lines of various length, whereas the main text is
structured in verses of a fixed number of isosyllabic lines. Generally a
verse consists of four rhymed seven-syllable lines. Verses and/or lines are
often connected by alphabetic acrostics or other stylistic artifices.
Being used during the daily service or celebration of the Eucharist, ʿonyāthā deal with various subjects: penitence,
feasts of the liturgical year, praise of saints and martyrs, commemoration
or prayer occasioned by dramatic events (war, famine, pestilence).
ʿonyāthā of historical-celebrative content were
composed by
had
its natural continuation in the Sureth genre of the