Christian Voices in Arabic: A Manuscript Heritage
Krisztina Szilagyi
Dear friends and colleagues,
About six weeks ago, I launched an online programme dedicated to reading Christian Arabic manuscripts for students and academics. Since then, I have shared eighteen excerpts from a wide range of manuscripts, each accompanied by a transcription, translation and explanatory notes. Here are some of my personal favourites from the series:
1. A Syrian Orthodox Scribe on Cyprus (posts 12a and 12b, 17a and 17b)
Yūsuf b. Sabāṭ, the scribe in question, claims that the Torah was revealed to Moses in Syriac and the seventy sheikhs translated it into Hebrew. He refers to this original Syriac version of the Torah as the Targum.
2. Islamic versus Christian Purification (posts 5a and 5b)
Attributed to a monk named Ibrāhīm b. ʿAmr, this short text argues that Christians are no less pure than Muslims despite not practicing ritual ablutions.
3. The Youngest Copyist in History? (posts 4a and 4b)
This colophon comes from a horologion copied by a twelve-year-old boy, ʿAbd al-Masīḥ b. Ḥannā. His handwriting is remarkably clear—better than that of many experienced scribes. Throughout the manuscript, numerous pages are adorned with beautifully executed decorative borders.
You can find them all here: https://drkrisztina.substack.com/
These posts are a useful resource for anyone interested in Christian Arabic literature, manuscript studies and book history—as well as for those looking to sharpen their Arabic. If your Arabic is at an intermediate level or beyond, reading these manuscripts will not be an exercise in frustration and it becomes more rewarding with every text you tackle. After sharing a manuscript excerpt, I give readers a few days to try their hand at it before posting the full transcription and translation.
Free subscribers are very welcome!
Best wishes,
Krisztina Szilágyi