Search Tips
For best results, users are recommended to use the advanced search functions.
Search results can also be improved by the use of the the following Boolean search characters:
Wildcard Characters:
Given the prevalence of variant spellings in names, using Wildcard Characters may help.
"?" can be inserted as a variant for any single character.
Thus a search for:
returns results which contain either "Gewargis" or "Giwargis".
Similarly a search for:
returns results which contain either "Mar" or "Mor".
"*" can be inserted as a variant for multiple characters or a truncated word.
Thus a search for:
returns results for "Dayr" and "Dayro" and more.
Similarly a search for
returns results for "ʿAbdishoʿ" and "ʿAbda" and more.
Note: Because the sources we quote use a variety of transliteration formats, Syriaca.org ignores diacritics and punctuation in searching; for example, use of "ʿ" is not required to find results with this diacritical mark.
Fuzzy Search Character
Appending the character "~" after a word returns results for words that are close but not exact matches.
Thus a search for
returns results which contain "Aba" but also "Abi", "Saba", "Aha", and other words that are "fuzzy" matches for "Aba".
Exact Phrase Searches
To find an exact phrase, it should be enclosed in double quotes.
Thus
returns only one result with that exact phrase, while several results are found for the words "ʿAbdishoʿ" and "I".
Proximity Characters
To find two or more words which occur within a specified range of each other, one can append the character "~"
followed by a number to an "Exact Phrase" search. This allows one to search for two or more words that occur within a
specified distance of each other as defined by number of words.
Thus
finds three results in which the words "Jacob" and "Bishop" occur within two words of each other: "Jacob ,
bishop of Nisibin", "Jacob, bishop of Phesilta", and "Jacob , bishop of ‛Ānah" while a
simple search for "Jacob Bishop" returns many more results.
