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The Mathematical Sciences in Syriac:

From Sergius of Resh-Aina and Severus
Sebokht to Barhebraeus and Patriarch
Nimatallah
Hidemi Takahashi
a

The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Available online: 11 Nov 2011

To cite this article: Hidemi Takahashi (2011): The Mathematical Sciences in Syriac: From Sergius of
Resh-Aina and Severus Sebokht to Barhebraeus and Patriarch Nimatallah, Annals of Science, 68:4,
477-491
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A NNAL S O F S CI EN C E ,
Vol. 68, No. 4, October 2011, 477
491

The Mathematical Sciences in Syriac: From Sergius of Resh-Aina and

Severus Sebokht to Barhebraeus and Patriarch Nimatallah
H IDEMI TAKAHASHI
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Email: takahashi@ask.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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Summary
Syriac translations and Syriac scholars played an important role in the
transmission of the sciences, including the mathematical sciences, from the Greek
to the Arabic world. Relatively little, unfortunately, remains of the translations
and original mathematical works of earlier Syriac scholars, but some materials
have survived, and further glimpses of what once existed may be gained from
works of later authors. The paper will provide an overview of the earlier materials
that have survived or are known to have existed. This will be followed by an
account of some of the later materials, which will include an example illustrating
how further earlier materials can be recovered from the writings of later authors,
and a mention, by way of an epilogue, of an instance where a Syriac scholar was
involved in a major historical and scientific event in the West, namely the reform
of the calendar by Gregory XIII.

Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Survey of extant and lost materials . . . . . .
Later authors and recovery of lost materials
Epilogue: a letter of Patriarch Nimatallah .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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477
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1. Introduction
While there have been varying assessments of the significance of their contribution
to the development of the Arabic sciences,1 it is beyond dispute that the Syriac

1
Among recent scholars looking mainly at the philosophical materials, Gutas, for example, gives the
Syriacs a minimal role as initiators and promoters of the translation movement under the Abbasids, while
acknowledging their role in providing the technical skills necessary for it (Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought,
Arabic Culture (London, 1998), 20
22; cf. id., Origins in Baghdad, in Cambridge History of Medieval
Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010), 11
25), whereas Watt, as a Syriacist, would give the Syriacs a more active
role in initiating and determining the course of that translation movement (John Watt, Syriac Translators
and Greek Philosophy in Early Abbasid Iraq, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, 4 (2004),
15
26; id., The Strategy of the Baghdad Philosophers: the Aristotelian Tradition as a Common Motif in
Christian and Islamic Thought, in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East
since the Rise of Islam, edited by J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg and T. M. van Lint (Louvain,
2005), 151
65). Saliba, as a science historian, takes a somewhat different approach and sees in the
competition among the bureaucrats, many of them Syriacs, the initial driving force behind the development
of the Arabic sciences (George Saliba, Revisiting the Syriac Role in the Transmission of Greek Sciences
into Arabic, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies, 4 (2004), 27
31; cf. id., Islamic Science and
the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 58
64).

Annals of Science ISSN 0003-3790 print/ISSN 1464-505X online # 2011 Taylor & Francis
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478

H. Takahashi

language and the groups of people accustomed to using Syriac as their literary
medium had a role to play in the transmission of the sciences from the Greek to the
Arabic-speaking world, so that the elucidation of the exact manner in which that
transmission took place requires a careful examination of the Syriac material. Aside
from their role as intermediaries, the sciences in Syriac are also of interest in
themselves as a body of knowledge in the hands of a group of people, who (if we
discount the petty kingdom of Osrhoene in the nascent stage of Syriac) never had a
state of their own, but were in close contact with the sciences in the hands of their
rulers, the Greeks (or Greek speakers) and the Persians in the earlier stages, and the
Arabs (or Arabic speakers) in the later stages of their history. Both the statements just
made apply also to the Syriac materials dealing with the mathematical sciences*by
which is meant here the disciplines that later came to be known as the
quadrivium*even though the available evidence indicates that the corpus of
mathematical literature in that language was never very extensive and was smaller in
comparison with the bodies of literature in other fields of the sciences such as those
of philosophy and medicine.
We are, unfortunately, rather ill-informed about the Syriac contribution to the
secular sciences in general, and in particular about their contribution to the
mathematical sciences, and that is largely due to two reasons. The first is the loss
of much of the scientific materials that once existed in Syriac. While the survival
of any body of literature is conditioned by historical circumstances, with the
Syriacs, the circumstances have been particularly unfavourable for the preservation
of their secular literature, since the fact that they never had states of their own
with their courts and bureaucrats means that for much of their history the
preservation of their literature depended almost exclusively on their ecclesiastical
institutions; this has been compounded by a factor that has adversely affected the
preservation of Syriac literature in general, namely that the Syriacs have for nearly
a millennium now been dwindling and often persecuted minorities in most of the
areas in which they lived and live. The second reason is the relative lack of
research on the scientific materials that have survived. The emphasis in Syriac
scholarship has, with good reason, always been on the ecclesiastical literature.
Although a significant number of important mathematical texts were edited and
translated in the latter half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth
century by such scholars as Franc ois Nau, this has for some decades been a
neglected field of study, so that some important documents still await publication,
while the documents that have been published still await deeper analysis of their
contents, as well as of their relationships to the germane materials in such
languages as Greek and Arabic.
Time, in other words, is still far from ripe for writing a history of the
mathematical sciences in Syriac. What will be attempted below under these
circumstances is no more than to provide a brief and somewhat superficial survey
of the earlier (pre-1000 A.D.) materials that have survived or are known to have
existed. This will be followed by some words on the materials from the second
millennium, including comments on how further earlier materials could be
recovered from the later materials, and the mention of a Syriac document from
a more recent period that is connected with an event of some worldwide
significance.

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Mathematical sciences in Syriac

479

2. Survey of extant and lost materials

The earliest known Syriac works and translations of a serious scientific nature
date from the sixth century, and it was largely from their contemporaries in
Alexandria that the Syriac scholars of the period received their texts and
inspirations.2 The most important scholar known by name from this period is
the West Syrian3 archiater Sergius of Re sh-Aina (d. 536), who is reported to have
received his education in Alexandria and to have translated over thirty works of
Galen into Syriac.4 While he is better known and appreciated for his works on
medicine and Aristotelian logic, as well as his translations of the De mundo and
the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus, we have surviving under his name in the seventhcentury manuscript that contains many of his works (British Library, Add. 14,658,
fol. 141r
149v) a treatise on how one finds out the effect of the moon according
to the opinion of the astronomers, evidently intended as explanatory material for
Galens On Critical Days.5 This treatise is followed in the same manuscript (fol.
149v) by an anonymous piece on the movement of the sun, which has been
identified as an excerpt from the Elementa apotelesmatica (Eisagogika) of Paul of
Alexandria.6 Further materials probably by Sergius and touching on astronomy
are reportedly found in a work that was previously identified as a Syriac version
of Galens commentary on Book VI of Hippocrates Epidemics, but now appears
to be a free translation by Sergius of the commentary on Epidemics VI by Gesius
(5th c.).7
A more important figure for the mathematical sciences in Syriac is Severus
Sebokht (d. 666/7), who studied and taught at the West Syrian Monastery of

2
On this point, which has, of course, long been known but has been brought more clearly into light by
tudes
recent studies, see, for example, Henri Hugonnard-Roche, La logique dAristote du grec au syriaque. E
sur la transmission des textes de lOrganon et leur interpretation philosophique (Paris, 2004), 10; id., Textes
philosophiques et scientifiques, in Nos sources: arts et litteratures syriaques (Sources syriaques 1) (Ante lias, 2005), 405
33 (here 405
13).
3
The term West Syrian is used here to refer to the group that has traditionally been called Jacobite;
the term East Syrian will be used below for the group traditionally referred to as Nestorian.
4
On Sergius and his works, see S. P. Brock, Sergius of Reshaina, in The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of Syriac Heritage [  GEDSH], edited by S. P. Brock, A. M. Butts, G. A. Kiraz and L. Van
Rompay (Piscataway, forthcoming), with the literature cited there; especially Hugonnard-Roche, La logique dAristote (note 2) 123
42,  id., Notes sur Sergius de Resaina , traducteur du grec en syriaque et
commentateur dAristote, in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, edited by G. Endress and R. Kruk (Leiden, 1997), 121
43, which includes a list of Sergius works.
5
bersetzungen von Schriften
Published in Eduard Sachau, Inedita syriaca. Eine Sammlung syrischer U
griechischer Profanliteratur (Vienna, 1870), 101
24; cf. Hugonnard-Roche, La logique dAristote (note 2),
126
27; id., Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 413.
6
Sachau, Inedita syriaca (note 5), 125
26. For the identification as a translation of Paul of Alexandria,
see George Saliba, Paulus Alexandrinus in Syriac and Arabic, Byzantion, 65 (1995), 440
54; cf. id.,
Islamic Science (note 1), 8.
7
Grigory Kessel, personal communication, Oct. 2010
Feb. 2011; also G. Kessel, The Syriac Epidemics
(MS Damascus Syr. Orth. Patr. 12/25) and its Relation to the Commentary of Galen, paper presented at
the conference Epidemics in Context: Hippocrates, Galen and Hunayn between East and West, The
Warburg Institute, 12
13 November, 2010. On the earlier, evidently false, identification of the work in the
bersicht u ber die syrische U
berlieferung der
manuscript, see Rainer Degen, Galen im Syrischen: eine U
Werke Galens, in Galen: Problems and Prospect, edited by V. Nutton (London, 1981), 131
66 (here 151).
For one further piece of evidence for Sergius interest in the mathematical sciences, see E. Fiori, Le pitome
syriaque du Traite sur les causes du tout dAlexandre dAphrodise attribue a` Serge de Resayna , Le
Museon, 123 (2010), 127
58 (here 145, paragraph VI); cf. Daniel King, Alexander of Aphrodisias On the
Principles of the Universe in a Syriac Adaptation, Le Museon, 123 (2010), 159
91 (here 166, with note 30).

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480

H. Takahashi

Qenneshre, an important centre of Greek learning among the Syriacs in this period.8
Besides works relating to Aristotelian logic, he has left us some important works on
astronomy, which are preserved in their most complete form in Ms. Paris,
Bibliothe`que nationale, syr. 346 (dated 1309).9 These include a treatises on the
astrolabe based on a lost treatise of Theon of Alexandria (fol. 36v
51v),10 a treatise
on the cause of the eclipse of the luminaries (fol. 51v
59v),11 and a treatise on
the constellations, in which we find ample evidence of Severus familiarity with
Greek astronomy (78r
141v),12 together with a series of some ten letters on matters
relating to astronomy, chronology and the calendar. One of these letters addressed to
Basil, a West Syrian priest (periodeutes) living among Greeks in Cyprus, has been
widely cited as the first known reference outside of India to the Indian numerals.13
That letter is also remarkable for the expression it gives to the reaction of Severus, a
scholar well-versed in the Greek sciences, to what he perceived as the chauvinism of
the Greeks in scientific matters.14 The letter has a long heading (most probably added
by a later copyist, but reflecting reasonably accurately the content of the letter): On

8
On Severus, see G. J. Reinink, Severos Sebokht, in GEDSH (note 4), with the literature cited there; on
his astronomical works in particular, Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden, 1967

2010), VI.111
12 (also V.211
13); Henri Hugonnard-Roche, La scienza siriaca. IV. Matematica e astronomia, in Storia della scienza, IV. Medioevo Rinascimento, ed. S. Petruccioli (Rome, 2001), 36
41, 69
70
(here 36
38); id., Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 414
18; John M. McMahon, Severus
Sebokht, in The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, edited by T. Hockey, V. Trimble, T. R.
Williams, K. Bracher, R. A. Jarrell, J. D. Marche, F. J. Ragep, J. Palmeri and M. Bolt (New York, 2007),
1044
45; for all of Severus astronomical works mentioned here, as well as the two astronomical letters of
George of the Arabs, we await the new edition and study being undertaken by Edgar Reich (see further
note 17 below).
9
For a detailed description of the manuscript, which in its first part contains a Syriac translation of
Ptolemys Tetrabiblos (cf. below), see Franc ois Nau, La cosmographie au VIIe sie`cle chez les Syriens,
Revue de lOrient chre tien, 15 [ 2e se r. 5] (1919), 225
54. Some of the same material is also found in Mss.
British Library, Add. 14,538 (ca. 10th c.) and Berlin, Petermann 26 (1556 A.D.).
10
Published on the basis of the Berlin manuscript by Franc ois Nau, Le traite sur lastrolabe plan de
Se ve`re Sabokt, Journal asiatique, 9e se r. 13 (1899), 56
101, 238
303; English translation in Robert
Theodore Gunther, The Astrolabes of the World (Oxford, 1932), vol. 1, 82
102 (translation made not from
Naus French as stated by McMahon (note 8), but from the Syriac by Mrs. Margoliouth [  Jessie Payne
Smith]; see ibid., preface, vii).
11
The attribution of this piece to Severus requires further study, since, although it is attributed at its end
to Severus, a marginal note ascribes the second chapter (on the lunar eclipse) to George of the Arabs.
12
Translated by Franc ois Nau, Le traite sur les constellations e crit, en 661, par Se ve`re Se bokt e ve que
de Qennesrin, Revue de lOrient chre tien, 27 [3e se r. 7] (1929/30), 327
420, 28 [3e se r. 8] (1931/32), 85
100;
excerpts (parts of chapters XVII and XVIII) edited from the London manuscript (Add. 14,538) in Sachau,
Inedita syriaca (note 5), 127
34.
13
The letter was for long known to the academic world only through the excerpts quoted by Franc ois
Nau (Notes dastronomie syrienne, Journal asiatique, 10e se r. 16 [1910], 219
27 [here 225
27]; La cosmographie (note 9), 248
52; Le traite sur les constellations (note 12), 332
33); for the text of the whole
letter with a German translation, see now Edgar Reich, Ein Brief des Severus Se bo kt, in Sic itur ad astra.
Arabisten Paul KuStudien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften. Festschrift fu
r den
nitzsch zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by M. Folkerts and R. Lorch (Wiesbaden, 2000), 478
89; cf. a partial
English translation in Takahashi, Between Greek and Arabic: The Sciences in Syriac from Severus Sebokht to Barhebraeus, in Transmission of Sciences: Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Latin, edited by Haruo
Kobayashi and Mizue Kato (Tokyo, 2010), 16
39 (here 21
23).
14
Cf. Sebastian Brock, From Antagonism to Assimilation: Syriac Attitude to Greek Learning, in East
of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period, edited by N. G. Garsoan, T. F. Mathews and
R. W. Thomson (Washington, 1982), 17
34 (here 23
4); Hugonnard-Roche, Textes philosophiques et
scientifiques (note 2), 414
15. It is rather ironic, and indicative, at the same time, of the supranational
nature of Syriac, that this Syriac nationalist bears a distinctively Persian (se -boxt, saved by three, i.e. by
the Trinity, cf. Philippe Gignoux, Noms propres sassanides en moyen-perse e pigraphique [Vienna, 1986],
157), as well as an originally Latin, name.

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Mathematical sciences in Syriac

481

the precedence15 of the knowledge of the Syriacs in the teaching of astronomy, and
the fact that the knowledge of the things that are [i.e. philosophy]16 is common
property, namely of the Greeks and non-Greeks (barbara ye ), provided they are
diligent; and some questions, or problems, concerning some matters out of those [that
are covered] in this science [sc. of astronomy]. In the letter, Severus strongly
criticizes the attitude of the Greeks who regarded the sciences as their prerogative,
mentioning, among other things, the dependence of Ptolemy on the Babylonians
(whom Severus goes on to identify with the Syriacs) and the story, recounted in
Platos Timaeus (21B), of the Egyptian priest telling Solon that the Greeks were but
children.
The same Paris manuscript, syr. 346, also contains, on fol. 145r
161r, the two
astronomical letters of George of the Arabs (d. 724), a student of Severus, addressed
to John of Litharb and dated 714 and 716 A.D., which were edited by Ryssel from
another, earlier manuscript (British Library Add. 12,154, 8th/9th c.).17
Among the works from the following period known to us only by name is a Book
of the Stars by the East Syrian Catholicos Timothy I (727/8
823, catholicos
780
823), who is otherwise known, among other things, to have translated a part of
Aristotles Topica from Syriac into Arabic at the command of the Abbasid caliph
al-Mahdi (775
85).18 We have, for the moment, no way of knowing whether this
Book of the Stars, which is mentioned in the catalogue of books by Abdisho
bar Brikha (d. 1318),19 was a book on astronomy (so Ruska, Duval, Berti), on
astrology (so Baumstark), or against astrology, as suggested as a possibility by
Hugonnard-Roche.20
Among the Syriac mathematical works from the ninth century that are similarly
lost, but about which we have somewhat more knowledge, are those of the Harra nian

scholar Tha bit ibn Qurra (826
901), the only major non-Christian author who is
known to have composed works in Syriac. While Tha bit wrote most of his works in
15

qadmu t Reich (a form unknown to lexica); qaddmut Nau, Notes dastronomie syrienne (note 13),

248.
16

The phrase, which is taken from one of the definitions of philosophy in the text of the letter (knowledge of those things that are in so far as they are, data d-halen d-tayhon b-hay d-tayhon, Reich (note
13), 481, l. 3), derives, of course, from Aristotles definition of metaphysics as knowledge of being qua being
(Metaphysics, G1, 1003a 21).
17
Viktor Ryssel, Die astronomischen Briefe Georgs des Araberbischofs, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie
und verwandte Gebiete, 8 (1893), 1
55; German translation in id., Georgs des Araberbischofs Gedichte und
Briefe (Leipzig, 1891), 112
29; cf. Sezgin (note 8), VI.112
14; Saliba, Paulus Alexandrinus (note 6), 444

47; Hugonnard-Roche, La scienza siriaca (note 8), 38. More generally on George and his letters, see Jack
Tannous, Between Christology and Kalam? The Life and Letters of George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes, in
Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone. Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, edited by G. A. Kiraz (Piscataway,
2008), 671
716; and a new edition and translation of the letters being prepared by Tannous (Piscataway:
Gorgias Press, forthcoming).
18
Sebastian P. Brock, Two Letters of the Patriarch Timothy from the Late Eighth Century on Translations from Greek, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 9 (1999), 233
46 (here 236, 240
41). As a recent study
on Timothy and his scholarly activities, see Vittorio Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I (823), patriarca
cristiano di Baghdad: Ricerche sull epistolario e sulle fonte contigue (Paris, 2009).
19
Joseph Simonius Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome, 1719
28), vol. III/1,
162.
20
See Julius Ruska, Studien zu Severus bar S akku s Buch der Dialoge, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie und
verwandte Gebiete, 12 (1897), 8
41, 145
61 (here 9); Rubens Duval, La litterature syriaque, 3rd ed. (Paris,
1907), 278; Berti, Vita e studi di Timoteo I (note 18), 279
80; Anton Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen
Literatur mit Ausschlu der christlich-palastinensischen Texte (Bonn, 1922), 217, n. 9, cf. ibid., 363, s.v.
Astrologische Texte; Hugonnard-Roche, Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 423: . . . et il
e crivit a` propos dastronomie (peut-e tre contre lastrologie).

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482

H. Takahashi

Arabic, we learn from the epitome of Tarkh al-hukama , the Arabic biographical
of the thirteenth-century West
work by Qift (ca. 1172
1248), and the Chronicon

Syrian scholar Barhebraeus that he also composed some works in Syriac, which
presumably was his native tongue.21 Barhebraeus gives us a list of 16 books
composed by Tha bit in Syriac.22 While the majority of these books, to judge from
their titles, dealt with various aspects of Sa bian religious practices, the list also
the mathematical sciences, namely a
includes three that had evidently to do with
book on music, and a book on the fact that two straight lines meet each other when
they are made to go out at less than two right angles, and another book on the same
subject. The two geometrical works mentioned here may be identified as the Syriac
counterparts of the two surviving Arabic works on the same subject.23
Tha bit was one of those scholars who worked in ninth-century Baghdad to
translate Greek philosophical and scientific works into Arabic. Almost all of these
translators were Christians,24 and, at least in the earlier stages of the translation
movement, would have been more at ease reading and writing in Syriac than in
Arabic. We know that in making the Arabic translations they often made use of
earlier Syriac translations where such translations were available, and, where they
were not, often translated the Greek works first into Syriac and then into Arabic. In
some rare cases, translations were also made from Arabic into Syriac.25 Thanks to a
letter on the subject by Hunain ibn Isha q (808
73),26 we are very well informed about

what medical works of Galen

were once available in Syriac. We are less fortunate with
works in other fields, and often only know about the existence of Syriac versions from
sporadic references in later works, whereby the references are usually of such a nature
that it is difficult to determine whether the Syriac versions date from the pre-Abbasid
period or were made during the Abbasid translation movement.
The one work on arithmetic that is known to have been translated into Syriac is
Nicomachus of Gerasas Arithme tike eisago ge. The direct testimony for the existence
of this Syriac version is found in a somewhat unexpected place, since it is from the
prologue to the Hebrew version of the work by Qalonymos ben Qalonymos that we
21

See Ibn al-Qifts Tarh al-hukama , edited by Julius Lippert (Leipzig, 1903), 112.11
12: He [Tha bit]

wrote this book in Syriac, since

he was more proficient in it . . . A disciple . . . translated it into Arabic, and
Tha bit corrected the Arabic.
22
Gregorii Barhebri Chronicon syriacum, edited by Paul Bedjan (Paris, 1890), 168
69; cf. Ibn al-Qifts
Tarh al-hukama (note 21), 120.14
21; Takahashi, Tha bit ibn Qurra, in GEDSH (note 4).
23
See A. I. Sabra, Tha bit ibn Qurra on Euclids Parallels Postulate, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 31 (1968), 12
32; and Roshdi Rashed and Christian Houzel, Tha bit ibn Qurra et la
the orie des paralle`les, in Tha bit ibn Qurra: Science and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Baghdad, edited by
Roshdi Rashed (Berlin, 2009), 27
73.
24
According to a count made by Ge rard Troupeau, Le ro le des syriaques dans la transmission et
lexploitation du patrimoine philosophique et scientifique grec, Arabica, 38 (1991), 1
10 (here 4), among
the total of 61 translators named in the bibliographical works of Ibn al-Nadm and Ibn Ab Usaibia, there
and one
are 48 Syriacs (38 East Syrian, 9 West Syrian and 1 Maronite), eleven Melkites, one Sa bian

Persian.
25
See Gotthelf Bergstra sser, Hunain ibn Isha q u ber die syrischen und arabischen Galen-U bersetzungen

(Leipzig, 1925), Arabic text 24.4, 24.24, 49.13
14,

translation 19
20, 40; cf. Herman Teule, The Transmission of Islamic Culture to the World of Syriac Christianity: Barhebraeus Translation of Avicennas
Kita b al-isha ra t wa l-tanbha t. First Soundings, in Redefining Christian Identity. Cultural Interaction in the
Middle East since the Rise of Islam, edited by J. J. van Ginkel, H. L. Murre-van den Berg and T. M. van
Lint (Louvain, 2005), 167
84 (here 168).
26
bersetzungen (note
Gotthelf Bergstra sser, Hunain ibn Isha q u ber die syrischen und arabischen Galen-U
Isha qs Galen-Bibliographie (Leipzig, 1932). A new edition and
zu Hunain ibn
25); and id., Neue Materialien
translation of the letter are being prepared by John Lamoreaux, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq on His Galen Translations (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, forthcoming).

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Mathematical sciences in Syriac

483

learn that the Arabic version made by Habb ibn Bahrz for Ta hir ibn al-Husain (d.

822) and revised by Kind was based on a Syriac version.27 A more indirect witness for
the Syriac version is to be found in the section on arithmetic in the Book of Dialogues
of the thirteenth-century Syriac author Jacob bar Shakko, which is based largely on
Arabic sources, but also on Nicomachus, and where the use of Greek loanwords
unknown to Arabic suggests a knowledge of the Syriac version of the work.28
The only piece of translation to survive in the field of geometry is a fragment of
Euclids Elements,29 about which scholars have not been able to decide whether it is
an early Syriac version made directly from Greek or a late one made from Arabic.30
We also know otherwise of the existence once in Syriac of whole or part of the De
sphaera et cylindro31 and a Book on Triangles (Kita b Arshmds f al-muthallatha t)32
by Archimedes, as well as the Sphaerica, perhaps along with some other works, of
Menelaus.33
Among the works of Ptolemy, the Syriac translation of the Almagest
(Mathe matike syntaxis) is attested in the twelfth century,34 while his Geography
(Geo graphike hyphe ge sis), too, is said to have been available in Syriac.35 The
contents of the latter also found their way into Syriac through an epitome known

27
See Gad Freudenthal and Tony Le vy, De Ge rase a` Bagdad: Ibn Bahrz, Al-Kind, et leur recension
arabe de lIntroduction arithme tique de Nicomaque, dapre`s la version he braque de Qalonymos ben Qalonymos dArles, in De Ze non dEle e a` Poincare. Recueil de tudes en hommage a` Roshdi Rashed, edited by
R. Morelon and A. Hasnawi (Louvain, 2004), 479
544; cf. Moritz Steinschneider, Die arabischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Griechischen. Zweiter Abschnitt: Mathematik, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenla ndischen Gesellschaft, 50 (1896), 161
219, 337
417 (here 352); Sezgin (note 8), V.164
65; HugonnardRoche, La scienza siriaca (note 8), 39; id., Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 422. On Ibn
Bahrz (Abdsho bar Bahrz), East Syrian bishop, it is worth noting in this context, of Harra n before
4), with the
becoming metropolitan of Mosul, see B. Roggema, Abdisho bar Bahrz, in GEDSH (note
literature cited there.
28
See Julius Ruska, Das Quadrivium aus Severus bar S akku s Buch der Dialoge (Leipzig, 1896).
29
Published by Giuseppe Furlani, Bruchstu cke einer syrischen Paraphrase der Elemente des Eukleides, Zeitschrift fu
r Semitistik, 3 (1924), 27
52, 212
35.
30
See Sezgin (note 8), V.88
90; Hugonnard-Roche, La scienza siriaca (note 8), 40; id., Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 422; Saliba, Revisiting the Syriac Role (note 1), 29 (who may be a
little too hasty in deciding in favour of Barhebraeus authorship); Takahashi, Barhebraeus: a Bio-Bibliography (Piscataway, 2005), 85.
31
A note about the omission of difficult passages in the Syriac version is quoted in Ms. Istanbul, Fatih
3414 (dated 1277/8); see Sezgin (note 8), V.129.
32
The relevant passage in Qifts Tarkh al-hukama (note 21, 195.18
19) is not altogether transparent,
Sina n ibn Tha bit ibn Qurra to a partial translation from
but seems to say that corrections were made by
Syriac into Arabic by Yu suf al-Qass; cf. Steinschneider (note 27), 175; Heinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker
und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke (Leipzig, 1900), 52, 224; Sezgin (note 8), V.135; HugonnardRoche, La scienza siriaca (note 8), 39, and id., Textes philosophiques et scientifiques (note 2), 422
(identifying the work, without explanation, as De mensura circuli).
33
Ibn al-Qifts Tarh al-hukama (note 21), 321.16
17; cf. Steinschneider (note 27), 196; Sezgin (note 8),

V.159.
34
ber einige Spuren der syrischen Almagestu bersetzungen, in Prismata.
See Paul Kunitzsch, U
Naturwissenschaftliche Studien. Festschrift fu
r Willy Hartner, edited by Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer
(Wiesbaden, 1977), 203
10; cf. id., Der Almagest. Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolema us in
berlieferung (Wiesbaden, 1974), 7
9; see also George Saliba, The Role of the
arabisch-lateinischer U
Almagest Commentaries in Medieval Arabic Astronomy: A Preliminary Survey of Tu ss Redaction of
10), reporting a
Ptolemys Almagest, Archives internationales dhistoire des sciences, 37 (1987), 3
20 (here
quotation said to be from a Syriac version in a marginal note to Nasr al-Dn al-Tu ss redaction of the

Almagest (Tahrr al-Majist).

35
of al-Nad
m: a Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, translated by Bayard Dodge
The Fihrist
(New York, 1970), 640; Ibn al-Qifts Tarh al-hukama (note 21), 98.15; cf. Ernst Honigmann, Die sieben

Klimata und die Poloiw opishmoi. Eine untersuchung

zur Geschichte der Geographie und Astrologie im
Altertum und Mittelalter (Heidelberg, 1929), 116, who thinks the reference may be to the Skariphos.

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as the Sketch (Skariphos) of the Habitable World appended to the Syriac version of
Zacharias Rhetors Ecclesiastical History (XII.7),36 and through Jacob of Edessas
(d. 708) Hexaemeron,37 as well as through Arabic works on the subject in later
times, as is the case with Barhebraeus.38 Although astrology falls outside the scope
of the present paper, mention should be made, while talking of Ptolemys works,
also of the still unedited Syriac version of the astrological Tetrabiblos, which is
preserved at the beginning of the manuscript Paris, syr. 346 (fol. 1
36v), the
manuscript mentioned above in connection with Severus Sebokht; the beginning of
that text is unfortunately missing, and the text as we have it begins in the tenth
chapter of Book II.39

3. Later authors and recovery of lost materials

With the progress of the sciences in Arabic, we begin to see, towards the end of
the first millennium, instances where the earlier flow is reversed and Arabic sources
are used in Syriac scientific works, and this tendency becomes much more marked in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period often referred to as that of the Syriac
Renaissance. The situation is well summarised in a passage of Barhebraeus
Chronicon which has often been quoted in this context.
There arose among them [sc. the Arabs/Muslims, Tayya ye ] philosophers,

mathematicians and physicians who surpassed the ancients

in the subtlety of
their intellect. Placing (their buildings) not on another foundation but on Greek
basements, they perfected the buildings of the sciences, which were great on
account of their lucid language and their most studious investigations, so that

36

This was studied by J. P. N. Land, Aardrijkskundige fragmenten uit de syrische literatuur der zesde en
zevende eeuw, Verslagen en Mededeelingen der k. Akad. van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, 3. reeks, 3
(1887), 164
93; cf. Sezgin (note 8), V.213; Witold Witakowski, Geographical Knowledge of the Syrians,
in The Professorship in Semitic Languages at Uppsala University 400 Years: Jubilee Volume from a Symposium Held at the University Hall, 21
23 September 2005 (Studia semitica Upsaliensia 24), edited by Bo
Isaksson, Mats Eskhult and Gail Ramsay (Uppsala, 2007), 219
46 (here 233); Mark Dickens, Turka ye :
Turkic Peoples in Syriac Literature Prior to the Selju ks (Diss. University of Cambridge, 2008), 21; and
now also the annotated English translation in Geoffrey Greatrex, Robert R. Phenix and Cornelia Horn,
The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: Church and War in Late Antiquity (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2011, which I have not yet seen).
37
See Maria Gabriela Schmidt, Die Nebenu berlieferung des 6. Buchs der Geographie des Ptolemaios.
Griechische, lateinische, armenische und arabische Texte (Wiesbaden, 1999), 57
66; cf. Dickens (note 36),
75
81; and for a study more generally of the scientific materials in the Hexaemeron, Javier Teixidor, La
scienza siriaca. VI. Le scienze naturali secondo lHexaemeron, in Storia della scienza, IV (note 8), 56
66,
70
71. Jacobs account was then used by later Syriac authors, such as Moses bar Kepha (833
903) and
Jacob bar Shakko; see Honigmann (note 35), 111; cf. Takahashi, Observations on Bar Ebroyos Marine
Geography, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies (http://syrcom.cua.edu/hugoye), 6/1 (2003); Witakowski
(note 36), 229
30.
38
On the sources used by Barhebraeus in his accounts of geography, see Takahashi, Observations
(note 37).
39
See Nau, La cosmographie (note 9), 228
29; cf. William H. P. Hatch, An Album of Dated Syriac
Manuscripts (Boston, 1946), 191 and Plate CXL (for a page out of the text); Sezgin (note 8), VII.42; Saliba,
Islamic Science (note 1), 12. On a quotation from the Pseudo-Ptolemaic Liber fructus (Centiloquium) found
in Barhebraeus Candelabrum of the Sanctuary (a passage quoted, in turn, as an excerpt from the
Candelabrum in Paris, syr. 346), see Franc ois Nau, Un fragment syriaque de louvrage astrologique de
Claude Ptole me e intitule le Livre du Fruit, Revue de lOrient chre tien, 28 [3e se r. 8] (1931/32), 197
202; cf.
id., La cosmographie (note 9), 246; Jan Bakos, Le Cande labre des sanctuaries de Gre goire Aboulfaradj dit
Barhebraeus (suite) (Paris, 1933), 374.

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we, from whom they received knowledge through the translators*who were all
Syriacs*are now forced to ask them for it.40
In this passage, while acknowledging the remarkable scientific achievements of the
Arabs, the author gives expression also to the sense of pride he felt in being a
member of the group that once provided the teachers of these Arabs. It was no
doubt such a sense of pride and attachment to their tradition that often led the
later Syriac authors to continue composing scientific works in Syriac and, even
when they were relying mainly on Arabic sources, to make use also of earlier Syriac
materials in them where such materials were still available. One result of the
adoption of such a manner of working by these later authors is that it is sometimes
possible for us to recover passages of works otherwise lost in Syriac through a
careful analysis of their works.
One author whose works lend themselves to such treatment is the West Syrian
monk and bishop Severus Jacob bar Shakko (d. 1241),41 whose name has already
been mentioned in connection with the Syriac version of Nicomachus of Gerasa. Bar
Shakko is known to have studied under the East Syrian John bar Zo b, as well as
under the Muslim scholar Kama l al-Dn Mu sa ibn Yu nus (d. 1242), the teacher of
Nasr al-Dn al-Tu s (1201
74), and worked in the monastery of Mar Mattai near

Mosul.
The section of his Book of Dialogues on the four mathematical sciences,
which was edited by Ruska,42 appears to be based mainly on the Arabic encyclopedic
work, the Mafa th al-ulu m, of Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwa rizm, but, as was

noted by Ruska, it also contains materials evidently derived from earlier Syriac
versions of Greek works, and these parts may be expected to repay closer
investigation.43
Another author from the thirteenth century who composed works dealing with
the mathematical sciences is Gregory Abu al-Faraj Bar Ebra ya (Bar Ebroyo,
Barhebraeus, 1225/6
86), whose name too has already been mentioned on several
occasions.44 The learned prelate was born in Melitene (Malatya) in what is now
Turkey and made his early studies in Antioch and Tripoli, but normally resided
further east in Mosul and the nearby Monastery of Mar Mattai after his election to
the office of the maphrian of the East, the second highest office in the Syrian
Orthodox Church, in 1264. He visited Baghdad twice during his tenure of that office,
and also made at least four lengthy visits to Mara gha. He is likely to have met Nasr

40
Gregorii Barhebri Chronicon syriacum (note 22), 98.13
18; cf. Takahashi, Between Greek and
Arabic (note 13), 28.
41
On Bar Shakko in general, see Herman Teule, Jacob bar S akko, the Book of Treasures and the Syrian
Renaissance, in Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, edited by J. P. Monferrer-Sala
(Piscataway, 2007), 143
54, with the literature cited there; also Mixail Tolstoluenko, Kniga sokrovisc
urnal xristianskoj
Iakova bar S akko: bogoslovskaja kompiljacija epoxi sirijskogo renessansa, Simvol: Z
kultury osnovannyj Slavjanskoj bibliotekoj v Pariz e, 55 (2009), 357
74; id., Iakov bar S akko o boz estvennom promysle, Simvol, 58 (2010), 156
75.
42
Ruska, Das Quadrivium (note 28).
43
For an investigation of the sources used in the mineralogical and meteorological section of the Book
of Dialogues, which include the Syriac version of the De mundo and the Syriac Book of Treasures by Job of
Edessa (d. ca. 835?) alongside more recent Arabic works, see Takahashi, Fakhr al-Dn al-Ra z, Qazwn
and Bar Shakko , The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Ecumenical Studies, 19 (2006), 365
79.
44
On Barhebtraeus works on the exact sciences, see Takahashi, Barhebraeus (note 30), 82
85, 384
87;
id., Barhebraeus, Gregory Abu al-Faraj, in The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, edited by T.
Hockey, V. Trimble, T. R. Williams, K. Bracher, R. A. Jarrell, J. D. Marche, F. J. Ragep, J. Palmeri and M.
Bolt (New York, 2007), 94
95.

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486

H. Takahashi

al-Dn al-Tu s in that latter city, and he was certainly in contact with some of the
had gathered around Tus and the observatory founded by him there.45
scholars who

The influence of Tu s on Barhebraeus

is found, besides in the astronomical work
mentioned below, in the section on practical philosophy in his major philosophical
work, the Cream of Wisdom, which is based on Tu ss Persian work on the subject
(Akhla q-i na sir).46 A further piece of evidence for Tuss influence on Barhebraeus is
texts revised by Tus (Istanbul

found in a manuscript
of a collection of mathematical

manuscript
sku dar], Selim Ag a Ku tu phanesi, Selim Ag a 743). On folio 183 of that
[U
is a Syriac note which tells us that the manuscript belonged to Gregory, the lowly
maphrian and is dated 1592 A.Gr. (1280/1 A.D.).47
Barhebraeus tells us himself that he commented on Euclid and on the Almagest
during his visits to Mara gha,48 but it is likely that what is meant by commentary
here is oral commentary rather than the composition of written works.49 The list of
his works, which was probably compiled by his brother soon after his death, tells us
that he wrote a now lost book of astronomical tables (zj) for beginners. That
Barhebraeus had the intention of writing a work covering the four mathematical
sciences is indicated in a passage of his Cream of Wisdom, which was completed only
months before the authors death and which, although modelled as a whole on Ibn
Sna s Kita b al-shifa , does not, unlike the Shifa , have a section on the mathematical
sciences; there, near the beginning of the section on the metaphysics, after an
enumeration of the subject matter of the four mathematical sciences, we find
Barhebraeus telling us that he will deal with these four sciences in another treatise
(prgmtypragmateia).50
one work of Barhebraeus on the mathematical sciences that we do have today
The
is a handbook of astronomy entitled the Ascent of the Mind.51 This work as a whole is
modelled on the astronomical handbooks of Tu s. The correspondence of the four
large divisions of the work to those in Tu ss Tadhkira f ilm al-haia was already
noted by Nau,52 and Barhebraeus follows, for example, the values given there for the
45
We are told, for example, that Barhebraeus Arabic work on history, Mukhtasar tarkh al-duwal, was

composed at the request of the Muslim scholars in Mara gha (Gregorii Barhebraei Chronicon
ecclesiasticum,
edited by Joannes Baptista Abbeloos and Thomas Josephus Lamy, 2 parts [Louvain, 1872
77], II.469). We
are also told by Ha jj Khalfa (d. 1657) that Muhyi al-Dn al-Maghrib, one of Tu ss collaborators,
behest (Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopaedicum
of the Almagest at Barhebraeus
composed an epitome
a Mustafa ben Abdallah Katib Jelebi dicto nomine Haji Khalfa celebrato compositum, edited by Gustavus
Flu gel, 7 vols. [Leipzig, 1835
58], V.387, 389).
46
See Mauro Zonta, Fonti greche e orientali dell Economica di Bar-Hebraeus nell opera La crema della
scienza (Annali dell Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Supplemento, 70), (Naples, 1992); Peter
N. Joosse, A Syriac Encyclopedia of Aristotelian Philosophy. Barhebraeus (13th c.), Butyrum sapientiae,
Books of Ethics, Economy and Politics (Leiden, 2004).
47
niversitesi Dil ve TarihSee Aydn Sayl, Khwa ja Nasr-i Tu s wa rasadkha na-i Mara gha, Ankara U
(here 11
12, and plate opposite p. 16); cf. id., The Observatory
1
12
Cog rafiya Faku ltesi Dergisi, 14 (1956),
in Islam and its Place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara, 1988), 219
22; Takahashi,
Barhebraeus (note 30), 82, 127
28.
48
Chronicon ecclesiasticum (note 45), II.443.1
2, 19
20.
49
Both meanings are possible with the Syriac verb used (shra ), which, with its basic meaning of to
loosen, corresponds in many of its senses to Arabic halla.
50

Cream of Wisdom, Book of First Philosophy, 1.1.1;

Ms. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana,
or. 83, fol. 130v, right column, l. 11
12. Cf. the passage at the end of the Book of Theology quoted at
Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology in Syriac: Barhebraeus, Butyrum sapientiae, Books of Mineralogy and
Meteorology (Leiden, 2004), 586.
51
Edited and translated by Franc ois Nau, Le livre de lascension de lesprit sur la forme du ciel et de la
terre. Cours dastronomie re dige en 1279 par Gre goire Aboulfarag, dit Bar-Hebraeus, 2 parts (Paris, 1899).
52
Nau, Le livre de lascension (note 51), seconde partie, vii.

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Mathematical sciences in Syriac

487

first time by Tu s for his latitudes of the seven climes.53 It has been noted, however,

that the Ascent differs from the Tadhkira in making no mention of the so-called Tu s

couple, which is a central feature of the Tadhkira, and that it more closely resembles
another, less popular, work of Tu s, the Zubdat al-idra k f haiat al-afla k, in the

arrangements of its chapters.54 The reason for Barhebreus choice of this work as the
model may lie partly in its closer adherence to the Ptolemaic system, since such a
tendency to prefer the arrangements found in the older Greek models is also
observed elsewhere in his works, as, for example, in the arrangement of the books
within the Cream of Wisdom.55 This tendency of Barhebraeus to resort to older
sources and models when they were still available and retained their validity in his
eyes, together with the need he must have had to search for Syriac technical terms,
also means that we may expect to find in the Ascent, mixed together with the
materials taken from Tu s and other recent Arabic works, materials gleaned from

earlier Syriac works, including, in particular, those of Severus Sebokht, who is

actually mentioned by name at one point in the work.56
Evidence for Barhebraeus acquaintance with earlier Syriac works on the
mathematical sciences is also found in scattered places in his other works. One
such place where we find words quoted from an earlier translation of a Greek
astronomical work is in his Cream of Wisdom.
Barhebraeus, Cream of Wisdom, Books of Minerals, 4.1.2:
Stars, too, have a large influence on the transformation of elements into one
another in accordance with those coordinates which change with their movements,
especially those fixed stars, which, according to the opinion of the ancient
astrologers [pwtlysmtyqw apotelesmatikoi], move eight degrees to the north in
forty
years and [then] also to the south in the same number of
six hundred and
years*[i.e.] one degree in eighty years*as Theon of Alexandria stated in his
Canon as the method [pwdws ephodos] for this computation, based on the
beginning of the years of the reign of Augustus. In the same way, the apogees
and perigees change their positions [epochs] and they become major causes of
increase of water in one region and its decrease in another. In this way, in the
middle of the sea dry land is formed. For divine wisdom has thus deemed it just
that there be natural place for animals that breathe.57
The parts of the passage above in italics are taken from the following passage of Ibn
Sna s Kita b al-shifa , the work which, as has been mentioned, is the principal source
of the Cream of Wisdom.

53
See Takahashi, The Greco-Syriac and Arabic Sources of Barhebraeus Mineralogy and Meteorology
in Candelabrum sanctuarii, Base II, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 56 (2004), 191
209 (here 202

203); id., Between Greek and Arabic (note 13), 27
28.
54
Taro Mimura, personal communication, Aug.
Dec. 2010, to whom I also owe the following observation about the Ptolemaic character of the Ascent of the Mind.
55
See Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 11
14.
56
Nau, Le livre de lascension (note 51), text 106
107, translation 91. On the evidence for the use of
Severus Treatise on the Constellations in another work of Barhebraeus (Book of Rays), see Takahashi,
Bemerkungen zum Buch der Blitze (Ktobo d-zalge) des Barhebraeus, in Die Suryoye und ihre Umwelt. 4.
deutsches Syrologen-Symposium in Trier 2004, edited by M. Tamcke and A. Heinz (Mu nster, 2005), 407
22
(here 417
18); id., Between Greek and Arabic (note 13), 26.
57
Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 110.

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In particular, the stars undoubtedly have an influence in bringing about this

transformation according to their coordinates which change in accordance with
their movements, especially the fixed stars which move sometimes to the south
and sometimes to the north, and the apogees and perigees, which vary in their
positions. For it appears that these are the major causes in the production of
water in one region*or its conveyance towards it*and the annihilation of
water in another*or its conveyance away from it. . . . This being so, there
inevitably arise dry land and sea; and in this there is divine wisdom, had it not
been for which there would have been no natural place for terrestrial animals
that live by breathing.58
Into this framework, Barhebraeus has inserted phrases taken from the following
passage of Theon of Alexandrias Small Commentary on the Handy Tables
mentioning the theory of the trepidation of the fixed stars, whereby he rather
surprisingly makes the mistake of making trepidation take place in the north-south
direction instead in the east-west direction along the ecliptic. (The words and phrases
taken over by Barhebraeus in the passage above are indicated in the translation below
in italics).
According

to

certain

opinions,
the
ancient
astrologers
claim that the solstitial points move 8
degrees in the direct sense from a certain initial moment on, then turn
back again by the same amount; but this is not so in Ptolemys opinion
because without the additional term based on such calculation the said
computations, made with his tables, agree with the instrumental data.
Nor do we recommend such a correction; nevertheless we shall explain
the procedure of the calculation they (devised) concerning this
. They assume that 128
years before the beginning of the reign of Augustus the greatest shift occurred
in the direct sense of these 8 degrees, and also the beginning of the return
motion; they then add to it the 313 years from the beginning of the reign of
Augustus to the beginning of Diocletian and to it the additional years since
Diocletian; and they take the position corresponding to 1/80 of the total, such
that their motion amounts to one degree in 80 years, and they subtract from the
8 degrees the degrees which result from this division. They add the remainder as
the shift of the solstices to the result obtained by the said computations of the
positions of the sun and the moon and the five planets.59
Although the contents of this passage of Theon were known also to Arabic
astronomers, the presence in the passage of Barhebraeus above of the transliterated
Greek terms and some further details that are not found in Arabic sources tells us
that the passage must have been available to Barhebraeus in Syriac.60
58
Ibn Sna , Al-Shifa . La Physique V
Les Me taux et Me te orologie, edited by Abd el-Halm Montasir,

Sad Zayed and Abdalla h Isma l (Cairo, 1964), 24.8
25.1, 25.9
10.

59
Le Petit commentaire de The on dAlexandrie aux Tables faciles de Ptole me e, edited by Anne Tihon
(Vatican City, 1978), 236.4
237.2; translation here based on Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient
Mathematical Astronomy (Berlin, 1975), 632.
60
The same passage of Theon was also used by Barhebraeus in his Chronicon (edition by Bedjan, note
22, 54.7
26) and Ascent of the Mind (edition by Nau, note 51, 103.22
104.5). For further details, see
Takahashi, Aristotelian Meteorology (note 50), 324
329.

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489

4. Epilogue: a letter of Patriarch Nimatallah

No Syriac works dealing with the mathematical sciences as such are known to us
from the period subsequent to that of Barhebraeus. That the tradition of this kind of
learning in Syriac did not die out completely, that there were people who continued to
read such works in Syriac, and that this had an at least indirect influence on an event
of some significance in world history, we learn from a letter that has been preserved
among the miscellaneous items appended at the end of two manuscripts, as it
happens, of a work of Barhebraeus. The two manuscripts now in Berlin and at Yale
University are manuscripts of Barhebraeus theological work called the Candelabrum
of the Sanctuary.61 Among the additions at the end of the manuscripts is a piece
entitled On the investigation of the chrono n kano n or the 532-year cycle (taqlab).
The piece begins with a description of how the excellent men of these latter times in
this realm who were summoned from many different and opulent nations, I mean the
Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Germans, the Hungarians, the
Poles (leha ye ),62 the Venetians and others for long deliberated on the problems
surrounding the date of Easter, but were unable to solve them. The piece ends by
telling us that the author was able to solve the problem set before him by the pope
and other dignitaries with the solution he reached on 27th July, 1579. The author is
unnamed in the manuscripts and was left unidentified by the cataloguer of the Berlin
manuscript, but this must be a letter addressed to his former faithful in the Middle
East by the learned Syrian Orthodox patriarch Ignatius Nimatallah I (patriarch
1557
76), who after his abdication in 1576 went into exile in Italy, and on account of
his wide knowledge of the Oriental sciences was co-opted on to the commission for
the calendar reform created by Gregory XIII.63 The impression given by Nimatallah
in his letter that he single-handedly solved the problem is, of course, exaggerated, but
this was a letter that he wrote to his own people back home, and it may also be
remembered that a study by Ziggelaar has shown that the patriarchs criticism of the
original proposal of the commission was reflected to an extent in the final version of
the reform.64
What is of note from the point of view of the continuity of Syriac scholarship is
that the one authority that Nimatallah cites in his discussion in the letter of how the
61
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung, Sachau 81, and Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Syriac 7. See, respectively, Eduard Sachau,
Verzeichnis der syrischen Handschriften der Ko niglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin, 1899), 620
24; and
Takahashi, Also via Istanbul to Yale: Mss. Yale Syriac 7
12, in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and
Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, edited by D. Reisman and F. Opwis (Leiden, forthcoming); cf.
id., Excerpts from the Chronicle of Patriarch Michael I in Mss. Berlin Sachau 81 and Yale Syriac 7, in The
Edessa-Aleppo Syriac Codex of the Chronicle of Michael the Great (Texts and Translations of the Chronicle
of Michael the Great 1), edited by Gregorios Yuhanna Ibrahim (Piscataway, 2010), xxxiii-xxxvii. Digital
images of the Yale manuscript are accessible online on the website of the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/). A further copy of the letter was once
in the possession of the Syrian Orthodox patriarch Ignatius Ephrem I Barsaum (patriarch 1933
57), and

may still be in the manuscript collection of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate

(see Ignatius Aphram I
Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls, translated by Matti Moosa, 2nd edition [Piscataway, 2003], 513, n. 4).
62
This word is unknown to Syriac dictionaries, but is no doubt derived from (Ottoman) Turkish leh
Pole.
63
On Patriarch Nimatallahs activities in Italy, see Giorgio Levi della Vida, Documenti intorno alle
relazioni delle chiese orientali con la S. Sede durante il pontificato di Gregorio XIII (Vatican City, 1948); and
for the role he played in the calendar reform, August Ziggelaar, The Papal Bull of 1582 Promulgating a
Reform of the Calendar, in Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, edited by G. V. Coyne, M. A. Hoskin and
O. Pedersen (Vatican City, 1983), 201
39.
64
Ziggelaar (note 63), 218, 220
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H. Takahashi

date of Easter should be determined, besides the Council of Nicaea and Eusebius of
Caesarea, is the book of the one resting among the just, the pillar of our whole
confession, Gregory, which is called the Ascent of the Mind, in which at the end of
the fifth section of chapter five he decrees and lays down as a rule that our Pascha
must be near the full moon [pnshlynwsGreek pansele nos], or the opposition [here in
Arabic: istiqba l] which occurs between the sun and the moon, in the sign of Aries or
Libra, [up to] twenty-seven days after it.65 Barhebraeus is, in fact, also reportedly
found named as an ecclesiastical authority by Nimatallah, alongside earlier
Christian authorities such as the Didascalia, Gregory of Nyssa and Eusebius, in
his comments on the original proposal for the calendar reform, the Compendium
novae rationis restituendi Kalendarium of 1577, which are preserved in its original
Garshuni (i.e. Arabic in Syriac script) version in a manuscript in Florence (Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana, or. 301/1 [olim 64]) and in Latin translation by Leonard Abel
in the Vatican Secret Archives (fondo Bolognetti 315, 2r
58r).66 These citations are
of interest in that they indicate, in the first place, that the patriarch must have had
and taken with him to Italy a copy of Barhebraeus astronomical work, and that he
expected his correspondent back home too to be familiar with it. They are indicative,
furthermore, of the self-identification on the part of the learned patriarch as an heir
to the tradition of scholarship represented by Barhebraeus, and of the pride and
interest taken in that millennium-old tradition by this leader of what had by then
become a politically insignificant and materially, if not spiritually, impoverished
minority community.
5. Conclusion
As was stated at the beginning, what has been attempted on the preceding pages is
no more than to provide a superficial survey of what we know about the
mathematical and related literature in Syriac. The loss of a large part of the relevant
material means that we shall never be able to have a complete picture of that
literature, especially of the literature from the first millennium, when the Syriacs
played a crucial role in the transmission of scientific knowledge from the Greek to the
Arabic world, but we do have a sufficient amount of material to give us important
clues as to the way in which that transmission took place. The works of Severus
Sebokht are of particular importance in this respect, and an investigation of the
terminology used there, for example, may be expected to provide us with useful
insights into how a body of scientific knowledge that largely took shape in an IndoEuropean tongue came to take root and to develop in a Semitic idiom. The works of
later Syriac authors such as Barhebraeus, on the other hand, are of interest to us both
as an aid for the recovery of lost earlier materials and as a product of an age where
the Syriac and Arabic scientific traditions had become intertwined and the former
was now being nourished by the latter.
Another point of interest that emerges from the survey above is the sense of pride
taken by the Syriac authors in the scientific achievements of their people, which was
65
For the original text of the passage referred to, see Nau, Le livre de lascension (note 51), text 193,
translation 171. The explanation or the opposition which occurs between the sun and the moon, and the
phrase twenty-seven days after it are additions by Nimatallah.
66
Carl Ehrig-Eggert, personal communication, Aug. 2009, based on his paper Le patriarche Ignatius
Nimatallah et sa contribution a` la re forme du calendrier (1579
1580), presented at the VIIIe Congre`s
de tudes arabes chre tiennes (Granada, 26
27 September, 2008); cf. Ziggelaar (note 63), 162
63.

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given expression in different ways under different circumstances by such men as

Severus Sebokht, Barhebraeus and Patriarch Nimatallah. For the Syriacs as a people
who for the most part of their history have been under the political domination of
others, the advantage they had over their rulers in terms of scientific knowledge was
of importance as a psychological aid to them in upholding their identity, as well as for
practical reasons, as was the case under the Abbasids when Syriac scholars could earn
their living by selling their knowledge to the Arabs. Such sociological considerations
as this give an additional dimension of interest to the study of the scientific literature
in Syriac and the circumstances surrounding them, and for that reason, too, as well as
for others mentioned earlier, it is hoped that scholars of the history science will be
enticed to take a greater interest in this somewhat neglected field of study.