Yoḥannan of Mosul (d. 1270?) [Ch. of E.]
Monk of the Monastery of Mar Michael ‘Companion of the Angels’, Mosul, Yoḥannan was the author of a long poem of moral exhortation entitled Ktābā d-šappirut dubbāre, transmitted in a number of both E.- and W.-Syr. mss.; three of the memre are based closely on Wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible (those on Qohelet and Bar Sira are ed., with GT, by Deppe and by Strothmann). The work was published in Rome in 1868 by Eliya Yoḥannan Millos, Chald. metropolitan of ʿAqra, together with various other texts, under the title Directorium Spirituale; on the title page Millos gives the date of its composition as 1245 (though on what authority is not clear; on p. 113 there is a note to say that the memrā on the Mysteries was written in AH 622 = AD 1225).
Sources
- Abūna, Adab, 441–3.
- Baumstark, Literatur , 307.
- Baumstark, ‘Zu Joḥannan von Mossul, Joḥannan bar Penkaje und Michaʾel Badoqa’, OC 10 (1912), 137–40.
- K. Deppe, Kohelet in der syrischen Dichtung. Drei Gedichte über das Kohelet-Buch von Afrem, Jacob von Sarug und Johannes von Mosul (GOFS 6; 1975).
- W. Strothmann, Johannes von Mossul. Bar Sira (GOFS 19; 1979).