Late Antique Historiography

Maronite chronicle

Title(s):
  • Maronite chronicle
  • Chronicon Maroniticum
Author:
Period covered:
At least 340 B.C.-663
Language:
Syriac
State of Preservation:
Partial
Genre:
  • Chronicle (chronica)
Remarks:
The first folio of the manuscript London, British Library, Additional 17216 is currently a fly leave in the Saint-Petersburg codex (National Library of Russia, Syriac 1) containing the Syriac translation of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical history. The rest of the manuscript is badly damaged as well: the beginning and the end of the text are missing, and there are many gaps in between, for instance the whole period 361-658. The preserved portion starts with Alexander the Great's death and ends with the year 663. The account of a dispute between Maronite and Jacobite bishops, arbitrated by the Caliph Muawiyah and won by the Maronites (reported under the year of the Greeks 970), led Chabot (1904: 35) to gather that the author of the chronicle was a Maronite himself and to label the text as Chronicon Maroniticum. Lammens (1899) identified the author of this text with the Qays al-Maruni whose lost work is praised by the Muslim scholar al-Mas'udi, Breydy (1990) instead with Theophilus of Edessa. Both hypotheses are deemed unlikely by Hoyland (1997: 136-137). Brock (1984: 18-19) and Palmer (1993: 29) argued for an early date of composition, close to the last narrated events, but according to Hoyland (1997: 139) it is equally possible that the original chronological scope of the text was broader than what now remains, and that the author drew on earlier local records.
Edition - Translation:
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Users:
Sources:
Bibliography:
  • M. Breydy (1990) 'Das Chronikon des Maroniten Theophilus ibn Tuma'. Journal of Oriental and African Studies 2: 34-43.
  • S. Brock (1984) 'Syriac sources for the seventh-century history'. In: Syriac perspectives on Late Antiquity, ed. S.P. Brock (Collected Studies Series, 199). London: VII = Brock, S.P. (1976) 'Syriac sources for the seventh-century history'. Byzantine and modern Greek studies 2: 17-36.
  • M. Debié (2015) L'écriture de l'histoire en syriaque: Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellénisme et Islam (Late antique history and religion, 12). Leuven - Paris - Bristol: 546-548.
  • R. Hoyland (1997) Seeing Islam as others saw it: A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam (Studies in Late Antiquity and early Islam, 13). Princeton: 135-139.
  • H. Lammens (1899) 'Qays al-Mārūnī aw aqdam ta'rīkh li-l-kitbat al-Mawārina'. Al-Machriq 2: 265-268.
  • A. Palmer (1993) The seventh century in the West-Syrian chronicles, including two seventh-century Syriac apocalyptic texts (Translated texts for historians, 15). Liverpool: 29-35.