Babai of Nisibis (6th/7th cent.) [Ch. of E.]
Monastic author. According to the Khuzistan Chronicle there was rivalry between him and Babai the Great, as a result of which he was known as ‘Babai the Small’. His authorship of a monastic ‘Letter to Cyriacus’, transmitted in W.-Syr. mss. and attributed to ‘Babai whom the wicked Barṣawma slew’ (i.e., the Cath. Babowai, 457–84), is confirmed by a quotation, attributed to him, in Dadishoʿ ’s ‘Commentary on Abba Isaiah’ (13:18). He was also author of some memre, one being ‘On the final evil hour’ (of which a fragment in Sogdian translation also survives), and at least one Tešboḥtā (which is also found in the Maronite Weekday Office).
Sources
- S. P. Brock, Malponuto d-abohoto suryoye d-ʿal ṣluto (Glane/Losser, 1988), 93–114. (Syr. of Letter to Cyriacus)
- S. P. Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer, 136–65. (ET of Letter to Cyriacus)
- S. P. Brock, ‘Some early witnesses of the East Syriac liturgical tradition’, JAAS 18 (2004), 9–45, esp. 38–9.
- A. J. Maclean, East Syrian Daily Offices (1894), 157–8. (ET of Tešboḥtā)
- N. Sims-Williams, The Christian Sogdian manuscript C2 (Berliner Turfantexte XII; 1985), 87–100.