Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
Five maps are provided here to serve as an initial aid in locating some of the main centers, cities, towns, and monasteries in the lands of Syriac Christianity in the Middle East, both in the historical and in the contemporary periods. These maps should not be seen as an attempt to fully document the historical geography of Syriac Christianity. As a matter of fact, the geography of Syriac Christianity is a much underdeveloped field, and the creation of a set of historical maps remains an urgent desideratum.
All five maps were specifically designed and drawn by the Ancient World Mapping
Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, based on the data
provided by the GEDSH editors. For all of the maps the terrain depiction was
calculated from Environmental Systems Research Institute. SRTM Shaded Relief, on
ESRI Data & Maps 2006 [DVD-ROM]. Redlands, CA. While Maps I and II have a
primarily historical approach, Maps III to V were created from a contemporary
perspective, reflecting the sites of Syriac Christianity in the present-day
Middle East. As a rule we have followed the terminology most current among
Syriac Christians, without attempting to match the
While preparing the maps, we have relied on a great number of existing maps as well as on other relevant publications. The main sources are listed below and users of GEDSH are encouraged to turn to them as a first step in their more advanced study of any aspect of the historical geography of Syriac Christianity.
The following lists provide overviews of the church leaders in the different
Syriac traditions of the Middle East. They are not based on a fresh reading of
the primary sources, but have been compiled from existing lists in secondary
sources. The discrepancies that frequently exist in the primary sources, in
particular with regard to the exact commencement or conclusion of a patriarch’s
tenure, have led to different interpretations in the secondary sources. No
attempt has been made here to reconcile the conflicting data. Alternative years
have occasionally been added in parentheses or, when the divergences were small,
the abbreviation ‘ca.’ (
Within some traditions (esp. the Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church) the patriarchal lineage is commonly traced back to the apostolic age. This practice, however, has not been followed here. Not only is the information for the early period very scanty, but also our focus has been on the time when a clearly distinct Syriac Christian hierarchy existed, even if — as in the case of the Syriac Orthodox — this hierarchy merely continued an earlier, reputedly ‘orthodox’, tradition.
The numbering (with Roman numbers) of patriarchs having a common name is largely a modern scholarly practice. In several cases discrepancies among the various existing lists will be found or names unaccompanied by Roman numbers are found more frequently than those with numbers. When they occur, alternative numberings have often been added in parentheses.
Names in bold are used for patriarchs/catholicoi to whom a full entry is dedicated. Three dots ( … ) are used either for a vacancy or for uncertainty in the chronology. Square brackets ([ … ]) are occasionally used for counter-patriarchs.
I. The Church of the East and its Uniate continuations
The present list starts with the patriarchate of Severus of Antioch
(512–538). Earlier incumbents of the see of Antioch are known through the
historical writings of the Imperial Church. While the Syriac Orthodox
patriarchs obviously continued this earlier line of patriarchs, it is only
with Severus that a distinct Syriac Orthodox hierarchy emerged.
Continuing the Chalcedonian tradition of the Patriarchate of Antioch, it is only with Yuḥanon Maron that a specific Maronite hierarchy emerged. While the Christological controversies formed the background against which, in the early Islamic period, a separate Maronite Church was created, the Maronites remained closer to the Syriac Christian tradition of the Patriarchate of Antioch, in contrast to the Melkites who, even though in the earlier period they represented this same tradition, in the following centuries increasingly moved into the orbit of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity. It should be noted that prior to the Crusader period only very few names are known.
The present index includes references to manuscript collections as well as to
individual manuscripts. Manuscripts are listed according to the place in which
they are, or were, preserved. For most biblical manuscripts the sigla assigned
by the Leiden Peshitta Institute (OT mss.) or the Münster Institut für
Neutestamentliche Textforschung (NT mss.) have been added in parentheses. For a
general overview of the major collections of Syriac manuscripts and for the
whereabouts of collections and manuscripts, see J. F.
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General: Figure 44
General: Manuscripts
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Gannat Bussāme