An Episode in the Story of emon of Qartmin

(Syriac and Arabic)

Adam McCollum
Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
Saint Johns University
amccollum@csbsju.edu
e purpose of this document is to make easily accessible a freshly transcribed
hagiographic episode in Syriac and Arabic. It is hoped that it will be of use to
readers of Syriac and/or Arabic at various levels; students, scholars, autodidacts,
etc., will not nd it devoid of interest. e accessible publication of texts, that is,
the presentation of manuscript data with ease of access, is one thing that keeps
literary, cultural, and linguistic studies vibrant, and it is with this in mind that
these few pages are made available.

e Syriac version
is episode in the Syriac story is available, among others, in three manuscripts
belonging to the Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin:
, pp. -
, pp. - (end of this episode missing due to a missing folio)
, pp. -
e rst two manuscripts are of approximately the same age, perhaps of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, while the third is from the twentieth century. e

Comments and corrections may be sent to

Some parts of the Syriac version are
the email address above.
available in English at http://www.soc-wus.
org/ourchurch/St.Shemoun.htm.

later manuscript is quite distinct from the other two in its readings, yet it is certain that the scribe knew of the readings of those older manuscripts because in
certain places where his text diers from that of the other two there are evident
erasures, the erased text being precisely that of the older manuscripts. No.
is thus not an independent witness from the perspective of the earlier text, but
rather bears the hallmarks of conscious alteration (for the purpose of Syriac style
more in vogue at that later period?). For readers who may be interested in the
variety of Syriac forms of expression, not to mention as an example of the textual liveliness of hagiography, I include those readings. I use the asterisk ( )to
mark the beginning of a longer series of words that is dealt with in the notes.
e indication of any punctuation, inconsistently used in the manuscripts and, in
comparison with a knowledge of Syriac syntax and an aentive reading faculty,
unhelpful, has been eschewed, but the story has been broken into paragraphs.
e story of emon of Qartmin, together with those of his predecessor Samuel
and his successor Gabriel, was published in a hard-to-nd edition almost three
decades by Andrew Palmer. e main manuscript for that edition, at least for
the story of emon, is BL Add. , perhaps of the thirteenth century, but he
also used another copy in the Syriac Orthodox Church in Istanbul. e text of
Palmers edition is strikingly dierent from and longer than the text according to
the Mardin witnesses mentioned above. It is beyond the scope of this lile presentation to oer a comparison between these text-types or even to consider the
possible relationships between the manuscripts, but such investigative work will
naturally be required for any deeper treatment of this saints story specically or
of those of the other two Qartmin saints more broadly.

(Glane, ). e
part of the story given below is on pages -
of Palmers edition.

Wright, Catalogue, vol. , -.

+
.

Om. .

...

Om. .
Om. .

; see also below.

Om.
.
.

.Om. -

.Add. -

: ...

...
. :

: ...
.

.
.

.
.

.

.

Om. .

Om. .

Not fem. in .

... :

(this noun is of

masculine gender, but the pronominal sux

of the previous word in clearly has the

;the
diacritical point marking it as feminine.) wording is above was rst wrien then erased.

omits the verb

and has only

...
:

(sine puncto!) .

...

:

.
.

Wrien, then erased in .

Om. .
+ .

...
om. .
.

... om. .

e laf is missing in .
Om. .

+ .
+
.

.
Erased in with
of it.

Om. .

Om.

Om. .

+ .

Om. .

for - .

.
Om. .

+
.
.

om.

...:

- .

om.

+
.

+ - .

Om. .

marg.

+
.

Om. .

wrien on top

e Arabic version
Below is presented a brief part of the Story of emon of Qarmin from the Garn
manuscript Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin (CFMM) , p. , l. -p. , l..
In the interest of broadest readability, and merely that, I have transliterated the
Syriac script into Arabic script. Producing editions in Arabic script from Garn
manuscripts is not always as straightforward as one might wish. ere are editorial questions, of course, even when going from Arabic manuscripts to the printed
or digital representation of those manuscripts: more so in the case of Garn. Put
briey and incompletely, Garn manuscripts vary in their use and quantity of
diacritical marks (for k versus , etc.), some include the hamza, some do not, and
so on. e present manuscript generally includes dierentiating diacritical marks,
except in the case of d versus . e adda is oen marked, and there are a few
vowels, but no hamza. While it may be tempting to introduce corrections to the
text according to the rules of classical Arabic grammar, and while such corrected
solecisms might prove to be instructive examples when reading with students, I
have le the text to stand as-is with respect to the rasm, but I have frequently
added both adda and hamza, along with vowels in a few places; in particularly
conspicuous spots I have also indicated the rasm as in the manuscript, or as nearly
as possible using Arabic leers. As in the Syriac presentation above, there is no
punctuation here, but the story is divided into paragraphs (corresponding with
those of the Syriac text above). is nished product, of course, should be taken

.
.

e writing is slightly obscured in the body

and the word is rewrien more clearly at the
.
boom of the page. has

...

;the two
transposed in .

+
.

Om. .
.

phrases

are

merely to be a reading-text (according to my interpretation) for scholars, students, and other readers and not as indicating anything about how these lines
!would have been read aloud at the time they were copied
e beginning of the story is missing in the Arabic manuscript, but most of
this particular episode remains: all that is missing (known from the Syriac original) is that a girl tried to get an unnamed monk to have sex with her and he
tricked her into leaving the room by asking her to go fetch a Gospel book for
him.

Note that the expected accusative ending

) is absent.

< A colloquial word:

at is,
.

. at is,

. at is,

Not energy as in the more usual meaning,

but window (cf. Freytag vol. , p. .

at is,
.
at is,
. e form in the manuscript
is probably an extrapolation from the sg. pass.
form: uy(a) > uy.

e use of the singular

for
(and
other forms) is known from other so-called
Middle Arabic texts; see, for example G. Khan
in S. Weninger, ed., e Semitic Languages: An
International Handbook (), and .

at is,
.

at is,
.

Something like
missing here.
Taking the consonants at face value, the
supplied vowels indicate the intended word (cf.
Freytag, vol. , p. , for the form), but these
consonants might more loosely also reect the
commoner fem. form
(cf. the note on the
spelling
) above and
below.

e word is spelled here like Syriac, unlike

the other occurrences in this text.

at is,
.

Last updated: September , Typeset in XELATEX

e meaning of this sentence is unclear to

Again, the expected accusative forms are
me: what is
?
missing.

at is,
; cf. the rst note above.