ARAM, 18-19 (2006-2007) 189-201. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.18.0.

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S. BROCK 189

EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM

IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

Dr. SEBASTIAN BROCK

(University of Oxford)

Although today the Church of the East has no church or monastery in Jeru-
salem, it is known that this was not always the case. East Syriac manuscripts,
and other documents, indicate that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
there existed a church ‘of the Nestorians’ dedicated to St Mary, situated to the
north of the Holy Sepulchre.1 Some time subsequent to 1733 (or possibly,
1825: see below) the East Syriac presence in the city came to an end, and the
majority of the church’s collection of manuscripts passed into the hands of the
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, where they are to be found today. It is in fact
these manuscripts, and other Syriac manuscripts written for, or otherwise men-
tioning, the church in Jerusalem, that constitute some of main evidence con-
cerning the East Syriac presence there.2
In the following contribution I collect together some of the main evidence to
be gleaned from East Syriac manuscripts; no doubt there is other scattered
material of this nature that I have missed, but it is to be hoped that at least a
basis upon which to build has been provided.

(1) MANUSCRIPTS ONCE BELONGING TO ST MARY’S CHURCH

Probably all but one3 of the fifty Syriac manuscripts in the Library of the
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem once belonged to the church of St
1 According to K.W. Clark, Checklist of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Arme-

nian Patriarchates in Jerusalem microfilmed for the Library of Congress, 1949-50 (Washington,
1953), p. viii, it now serves as the library for the Patriarchate’s manuscript collections.
2
 O. Meinardus, ‘The Nestorians in Egypt’, Oriens Christianus 51 (1967), pp. 112-29, in-
cludes a “Note on the Nestorians in Jerusalem”; the section on Jerusalem in D. Wilmshurst, The
Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913 (CSCO Subs. 104; 2000),
pp. 67-72 (which takes into account most of the manuscripts mentioned below) and 348-60. Be-
sides the manuscripts, some important evidence can be found in S. Giamil, Genuinae Relationes
inter Sedem Apostolicam et Assyriorum Orientalium seu Chaldaeorum Ecclesiam (Rome, 1902).
E. Tisserant’s article ‘Nestorienne, (Eglise)’ in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique 11
(1930), cols.228-32, provides a helpful overview; also valuable are G. Beltrami, La chiesa
caldea nel secolo dell’Unione (Orientalia Christiana 29; 1933),, R. Sbardella, L’Unione della
chiesa caldea nell’opera del P. Tomaso Obicini da Novara (Studia Orientalia Christiana, Collec-
tanea 5; Cairo, 1960), and A. Lampart, Ein Märtyrer der Union mit Rom, Joseph I (Einsiedeln,
1966), pp. 41-83.
3
 No. 28, a Melkite Octoechos; Koikylides [see note 5], who gives more information for this
manuscript than Chabot does, says that there is a note at the end stating that this belonged to St
Saba.

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 190 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

Mary. In date these range from the 10th to the early 18th century, though the
vast majority belong to the 16th and 17th century; many are dated. A summary
hand list was provided by J-B. Chabot in 1894,4 and a Greek version of this,
by K.M. Koikylides, was published in 1898.5 These manuscripts are cited be-
low as ‘Patr. Syr.’, and all my information about them is taken from Chabot’s
hand list (that of Koikylides is virtually identical). A second source of infor-
mation is provided by a list of manuscripts in the church’s library made by a
visiting priest from Tell Keph who came to Jerusalem in 1717/8 and stayed for
four years. When Chabot made his catalogue the list itself was missing in the
relevant manuscript, Patr.Syr. 5, but some thirty years later Rücker6 was fortu-
nately able to locate it. The list is introduced as follows:
I, the priest Kanun from Tell Keph,7 came to Jerusalem in the year 2029
[Seleucid era, AD 1717/8) at the bidding of our holy father Mar Eliya Catholicos
Patriarch of the East – may his prayers be a wall for us! I resided four years in
Jerusalem and I served at the tomb of our Lord and at the holy shrine of Mart
Mariam, which is the church of us Nestorians. I made qurbane in it every day,
and I took care of the prayers and hussaye for the dead, and I looked after its
books: I collected these together and put them in our church, and these are their
names…

The priest Kanun then lists 44 titles, indicating how many copies of each ti-
tle there were. In his article Rücker was able to identify a considerable number
of these with manuscripts today in the collection of the Greek Patriarchate,
while some further ones were to be located in other libraries, three in the Vati-
can Library8 and one in an American private collection.9
Two further manuscripts in the list can be identified with a high degree of
probability, both now in the collection of the Syrian Orthodox monastery of St
Mark. No. 181 in the Catalogue by Dolabany10 contains discourses by Isaac of

4
 ‘Notice sur les manuscrits syriaques conservés dans la Bibliothèque du Patriarcat grec
orthodoxe de Jérusalem’, Journal asiatique IX.3 (1894), pp. 92-134. There is a more recent
Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the Library of the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem, by
D.A. Johnson (Cascade Christian College, 1987), but this is very disappointing (and was appar-
ently made without knowledge of Chabot’s work).
5
 K.M. Koikylides, Katalogos synoptikos ton en te bibliotheke tou hierou koinou tou p.
Taphou apokeimenon syriakon cheirographon (Berlin, 1898).
6
 A. Rücker, ‘Ein alter Handschriftenkatalog des ehemaligen nestorianischen Klosters in Jeru-
salem’, Oriens Christianus III.6 (1931), 90-96.
7 The main East Syriac village in the plain of Mosul: see Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organi-

sation, pp. 223-32, and J.-M. Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne, II (Beirut, 1965), pp. 201-4, 355-76.
8 Vatican Syr. 90 and 151; Borg. Syr. 169 (an illustrated Gospel lectionary, discussed by

J. Leroy. Les manuscrits syriaques à peintures (Paris, 1964), I, pp. 404-8). The Jerusalem prov-
enance of these had already been noted by Giamil, Genuinae Relationes, p. 519.
9
 This was described by I.H. Hall, ‘On a Nestorian liturgical manuscript from the last
Nestorian Church and convent in Jerusalem’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 13
(1889), pp. cclxxxvi-ccxc.
10
 Mar Filoksinos Yohanna Dolabany (ed. Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim), Catalogue of
Syriac Manuscripts in St. Mark’s Monastery (Dairo dMor Marqos) (Damascus, 1994), pp. 380-1.

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 S. BROCK 191

Nineveh, dated 1560/1; a later note reads ‘Pray for ‘Abdisho‘ of Atel, bearer
of oppression, who came to Jerusalem in 1955 of the Greeks [ = AD 1643/4]11
and again in 1962 [= AD 1650/1]. As will emerge below, ‘Abdisho‘ was
bishop of Atel, who also commissioned manuscripts for the church in Jerusa-
lem. All this makes it very likely that this manuscript is the one described in
the list as ‘The holy book of Mar Isaac on beneficial discourse’, which Rücker
(p.93) described as ‘nicht mehr vorhanden’.
Bishop ‘Abdisho’ also receives mention in St Mark’s, no. 200,12 a manu-
script containing selections from Palladius, and written ‘in the monastery of us
Nestorians, under the protection of Mart Mariam’. The scribe, the solitary
Hormizd son of Haggai, from the village of Tell SBYN in the region of
Gwergal, states that in the year he copied the manuscript there were two bish-
ops ‘in our monastery: Mar ‘Abdisho‘ from the town Atel, and Mar
Athanasius from the region of Urmi, from the village Gogtapa’. No date sur-
vives, but the mention of the presence of bishop ‘Abdisho‘ indicates that it
must have been either 1643/4 or 1650/1. Once again, the manuscript can be
identified with one of those in the priest Kanun’s list which Rücker (p.94)was
unable to identify, namely the ‘Book of solitaries’.

(2) MANUSCRIPTS GIVEN TO THE CHURCH IN JERUSALEM

It is likely that most of the church’s collection of manuscripts will have

originated as gifts from pilgrims. In at least three cases, this is recorded in the
manuscript:
Patr. Syr. 11: ‘Abdisho‘, Paradise of Eden, dated 1474. This was given by a
certain David and his wife Hanem at an unspecified date.
Patr. Syr. 15: Psalter, copied in 1593 in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd.
The manuscript was bought from the copyist by a monk from Amid and then
sold to the Bath Qyama (i.e. priest’s wife) Seltana13 in a village of Beth Zabdai
(i.e. region of Cizre), who gave it to ‘the monastery of the Nestorians in Jeru-
salem’.
Patr. Syr. 41: Funeral services, 18th century. This was given by a certain
Aaron, brother of the priest Samuel, of Atel.
11 Further mention of this date is to be found in an East Syriac manuscript in St Mark’s Mon-
astery, no. 159, includes some stanzas by him ‘which he composed in Jerusalem in the year 1955
of the Greeks’ (Dolabany, Catalogue, p.342). An earlier note, dated AG 1877 (= AD 1565/6 ) is
in the hand of the (Chaldean) Catholicos, ‘Abdisho‘ (Shem‘un VIII Sulaqa’s successor); immedi-
ately before this note he had copied a madrasha by Israel of Alqosh, the first known person to
write poetry in Modern Syriac (though this poem is evidently in Classical Syriac); see Dolabany,
Catalogue, p. 343.
12 Dolabany, Catalogue, p. 406.
13
 No. 8 in H. Murre-van den Berg, ‘Generous devotion: women in the Church of the East
between 1550 and 1850’, Hugoye 7:1 (2004). [http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye]

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 192 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

(3) MANUSCRIPTS SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN FOR THE CHURCH IN

JERUSALEM

A certain number of manuscripts were copied specifically for the church of

St Mary in Jerusalem. In some cases these were commissioned by a bishop
(see under 1576, 1660), and in two cases by the Catholicos himself (Elia [XI],
see under 1709, 1710). In chronological order these are:
1576 (Borg. Syr. 169), Gospel Lectionary (illustrated); copied by a well-
known scribe of Gazarta (modern Cizre), ‘A†aya, son of the priest and Jerusa-
lem pilgrim, Faraj.14 Commissioned by Metropolitan Eliya of Amid (Diyar-
bekir)15 ‘for the church of the Nestorians [sic] in Jerusalem, situated near the
church of the Franks, north of the tomb of Christ’.16
1579 (Diyarbekir, Scher no, 74), ‘Abdisho‘, Paradise; copied by Eliya,
metropolitan of Amid, himself.
1605 (Patr. Syr. 32), Taksa d-Qelyatha; copied (probably in Gazarta) by
Joseph for his uncle ‘Abda, who sent it to Jerusalem in 1613/4.17
1612 (Patr. Syr. 17), Hagiography (Garshuni); copied by Isaac son of Ga-
briel from Supurgan in the Urmi region, but now living in Amid, and given by
him to ‘the church of the Nestorians in Jerusalem’. A later note mentions the
visit of the priest ‘Abdisho‘ of Atel to Jerusalem in 1613/4 (Chabot) or 1640/1
(Koikylides);18 this will be the future bishop (see under 1660).
1640 (Patr. Syr. 23), ‘Onyatha;19 copied in the monastery of Mar IoÌannan
brother of Mar AÌa.20 The manuscript was written by the priest AbdalaÌad for
the church in Jerusalem.

14
 He was the copyist of a large number of surviving manuscripts, ranging in date from 1536-
94 (these can be located in the list of dated East Syriac manuscripts in Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical
Organisation, pp. 400-23). For his father’s title, maqdshaya, ‘Jerusalem pilgrim’, see H. Kauf-
hold, ‘Der Ehrentitel “Jerusalempilger”’ Oriens Christianus 75 (1991), pp. 44-61.
15 He was one of the bishops consecrated by Sulaqa. On him, see R. Macuch, Geschichte der

spät- und der neusyrischen Literatur (Berlin, 1976), pp. 30-40; Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Or-
ganisation, pp.55-6,.
16
 The text and a Latin translation of the colophon is given by Giamil, Genuinae Relationes,
pp. 519-24.
17 The date given by Chabot and Koikylides is (AG) ‘1925 (1611)’. If ‘1925’ for the

Greek era is correct, this is puzzling in view of a note in Patr. Syr.3 (see the discussion below,
(7)).
18
 Chabot gives 1925/1614, whereas Koikylides has 1952/1641; without having seen the
manuscript, I am inclined to think that Koikylides worked from a copy of Chabot’s catalogue
where a transposition of two numbers had been corrected. If, however, Chabot’s figure is correct,
this too has a bearing on the matter discussed in (7) below.
19 The contents are described in detail by A. Rücker, ‘Über einige nestorianische Lieder-

handschriften, vornehmlich der griech. Patriarchatsbibliothek in Jerusalem’, Oriens Christianus

17 (1920), pp. 112-4. According to Rücker (p. 112, note 1) the date given by Chabot (‘1610’) is
wrong, and it should be 1640.
20
 For this monastery, see Fiey, Nisibe, pp. 197-9.

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 S. BROCK 193

1660 (Patr. Syr. 19), Liturgical; the manuscript was commission by

‘Abdisho‘, bishop of Atel,21 ‘at the request of our brethren in Jerusalem’. An-
other note mentions that he made three visits to Jerusalem (these will have
been in 1614, 1644 and 1651).
1662 (Patr. Syr. 2), ‘Onyatha;22 copied in the monastery of Rabban
Hormizd, near Alqosh, for the church in Jerusalem.
1679 (Patr. Syr. 1), Gospel Lectionary; copied by a well-known scribe,
Giwargis son of Israel,23 in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, for the church
in Jerusalem.
1709 (Patr. Syr. 14), Funeral services; copied by Joseph, son of Giwargis
son of Israel, and commissioned for the church in Jerusalem by Catholicos
Eliya.
1710 (Private collection, USA),24 Anaphoras; copied in Alqosh by Giwar-
gis, son of Israel, and commission by Catholicos Eliya for ‘the church of Mart
Mariam in our monastery in the holy city of Jerusalem’.

(4) MANUSCRIPTS WRITTEN IN JERUSALEM25

Three have already been mentioned in passing: Vatican Syr. 90, Prayers by
Eliya III (Abu Halim), completed in the Church of the Resurrection on Thurs-
day 28th September, 1570; Vatican Syr. 151, Timothy II, On the Mysteries,
completed on Wednesday 2nd June 1613 ‘in the blessed and holy city Jerusa-
lem’, by the ‘stranger’ (i.e. monk) Joseph, for the priest John; and St Mark’s
Monastery, no.200, written in St Mary’s in either 1644 or 1651. Another
manuscript in which the scribe (Eliya, from Amid) states that he was writing in
the Church of the Resurrection (rather than St Mary’s) was Seert (Scher, ms
62), completed on Saturday 12th August 1570.26 The same also applies to Bor-
gia Syr. 17, copied by an Archdeacon IsÌaq in 1630/1; besides containing a
hymn by Elijah of Nisibis, the manuscript rather surprisingly also includes a
Discourse by Pythagoras.

21
 Here, as elsewhere (especially for this period), the information from colophons supple-
ments the entry in J.-M. Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus novus. Répertoire des diocèses
syriaques orientaux et occidentaux (Beirut, 1993), as H. Kaufhold notes in his review in Oriens
Christianus 79 (1995), pp.247-63.
22
 The contents are listed by Rücker, ‘Über einige nestor. Liederhandschriften’, pp. 108-12.
23 Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, pp.243-45 (‘He was easily the most prolific

scribe of his day, and copied at least forty-eight manuscripts in a long career between June 1676
and September 1727’).
24 Described by Hall, ‘On a Nestorian liturgical manuscript’.
25
 The Letter of the Synod of 1552 to Rome was also written from Jerusalem: Giamil,
Genuinae Relationes, p. 13.
26
 This may well be the same Eliya who states that he began Vatican Syr. 84 (a Kashkul) in
Jerusalem on Sunday 18th June 1570, but only completed it in Amid on Monday 21 July 1572.

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 194 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

(5) REFERENCES TO PILGRIMAGES27

Specific references in colophons to pilgrimages are occasionally to be

found:
1573 (S.Fogg, Manuscripts of the Christian East (London, 1996), no. 36,
p. 57, with illustration), fragment with colophon. Although the main colophon
was written by ‘A†aya, son of ‘Abdo, son of Yonan, from Gozarta,28 there is an
added note by another, better known, ‘A†aya, the son of Faraj (already encoun-
tered, above); this reads: ‘This too do I inform the skilled readers who come
to Jerusalem: in the year 1884 of the blessed Greeks the feast of the Resurrec-
tion fell on 22nd Adar [March – the earliest possible date]. In this year there
came to Jerusalem (the following people): Mar Sabrisho‘, bishop of Hesna d-
Kepha;29 there also came the feeble priest ‘Ataya, son of the priest Faraj the
maqdshaya, who is from the town of Gazarta; and with him came certain oth-
ers, namely the deacon ‘Isa son of Isaac the Visitor, the deacon Thoma son of
the faithful NaÒr, and ‘AbdlaÌad son of Tomana, with his son the deacon
Hendi; and Rabban La‘zar from Beth Shabur, Jam‘a and Gabro from the re-
gion of Gazarta, and IsÌaq from AwÒar,30 and deacon Ishaq from Se‘ert, and
the faithful Shem‘on from the town of Mosul. Everyone who comes here to
Jerusalem should remember the people mentioned above in front of the tomb
of our Lord – along with the above-mentioned feeble ‘A†aya, the scribe of this
note. There also came with us the priest Yeshu‘ son of the priest Salman, a
Jacobite, from Gazarta'.
1582 (Patr. Syr. 3), Hudra copied in Amid in 1560; a note states that ‘I
‘Enanisho‘,31 metropolitan of Mardin, in AG 1893 (AD 1582) celebrated the
feast of the Resurrection on 15th Nisan (April) in Jerusalem’ when he came
with: the priest Thomas, son of the priest ‘Abdisho; Shem‘on of Mosul; Jacob
from Shosh; Misrael, IsÌaq and Abraham from ‘Ain Tannur.
27 In general, see J.-M. Fiey, ‘Le pèlerinage des Nestoriens et Jacobites à Jérusalem’, Cahiers

de Civilisation Médiévale 12 (1969), pp.113-26; Kaufhold, ‘Der Ehrentitel’. For other Oriental
communities at approximately the same period, see H. Kaufhold, ‘Zur Bedeutung Jerusalems für
die Syrisch-Orthodoxe Kirche’, in L’Idea di Gerusalemme nella Spiritualità Cristiana del
Medioevo (Città del Vaticano, 2003), pp.132-65; K. Hintlian, ‘Travellers and pilgrimages in the
Holy Land: the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the 17th and 18th century’, in A. O’Ma-
hony, G. Gunner and K. Hintlian (eds), The Christian Heritage in the Holy Land (London, 1995),
pp. 149-59; R.R. Ervine, Changes in Armenian pilgrim attitudes between 1600 and 1857’, in
M. Stone, R.R. Ervine (eds), The Armenians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land (Leuven, 2002),
pp. 81-96; A. O’Mahony, ‘Pilgrims, politics and Holy Places: the Ethiopian community in Jeru-
salem until ca.1650, in L.I. Levine (ed.), Jerusalem, its sanctity and centrality to Judaism, Chris-
tianity and Islam (New York, 1999), pp. 467-81.
28 For this scribe, see Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p. 91 with note 273.
29
 Chabot gives his name as ‘Enanisho‘, but from other sources it would seem that his name
was actually Înanisho‘; in 1574 he was the owner of Mardin (Scher) 19; cp Fiey, Nisibe,
métropole syriaque orientale (CSCO Subs. 54; 1977), p. 243.
30
 For this village (near Cizre), see Fiey, Nisibe, p. 172.
31
 For him, Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p. 73.

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 S. BROCK 195

1614 (Patr. Syr. 17): see above, under 1612 in (3), for a note recording the
visit of the priest‘Abdisho‘ of Atel in either this year, or 1641 (see note 17).
1644 or 1651 (Jerusalem, St. Mark’s, no.200), Selections from Palladius;
written in Jerusalem. For the two possible dates, see above, p. 191; the scribe
notes ‘in the year that I wrote out this book there were two bishops in the mon-
astery of us Nestorians, one being Mar ‘Abdisho from the town of Atel, the
other Mar Athanasius from the region of Urmi, from the village of Gogtapa’.
For a reference to three visits by ‘Abdisho‘, see above, under 1560 (a manu-
script which was commissioned by him for Jerusalem).
1647 (Patr. Syr. 39), Offices for Nativity and Epiphany, copied in 1547. A
later note, of 1647, records that the priest Yar, son of Daniel, son of YoÌan-
nan, son of Abraham, together with some other companions visited Jerusalem,
and gave his services free in the rebinding of some manuscripts, including this
one (for this activity of pilgrims, see below).
1655 (Jerusalem, St Mark’s, no. 159), Questions and Answers on Baptism,
etc., copied in the Monastery of St Jacob the Recluse, in 1566. A subsequent
note records ‘In the year 1966 of the Greeks [= AD 1654/5] there came to Je-
rusalem someone named Hormizd,32 and with him, the priest ™alya from the
village Îakmiya, in the region of Gazarta; with them was a deacon from the
region of Thoma, the deacon and Jerusalem pilgrim ‘Abdeh d-Marya. One of
them [i.e. ™alya] returned to his region, while Hormez [sic] and his deacon re-
mained in order to serve our Lord and his Mother, until they had received two
‘lights’.33 Brothers, out of Jesus’ love pray for this priest Hormez, that perhaps
the Lord may have compassion on him’.
1669 (Patr. Syr. 2), ‘Onyatha, copied in 1662. A subsequent note records the
visit of the priest Bakos, son of IsÌaq, of Bagouz, along with the deacon Isho‘,
son of Ibrahim, and an Indian servant named ‘Anayeh.
Date uncertain: (Patr. Syr. 9), New Testament of 1260/1. Later notes give
the names of pilgrims who used the book.
1825 (St Mark’s, ms 159). A later note (Dolabany, Catalogue, p.341) reads
‘Pray in the love of Christ for the feeble sinner Khodada, who came from the
region of Van to Jerusalem in the year 2136 of the Greeks [= AD 1824/5]’.
Was this East Syriac manuscript already in St Mark’s Monastery (Syrian
Orthodox) at this date, or could this be the latest terminus post quem for the
disappearance of the East Syriac church of St Mary and the dispersal of its
manuscripts? Since otherwise the latest certain date for the continued exist-
ence of the church of St Mary is the presence of a poem by Shleymon Shak,

32 Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p. 71, suggests he may be the same person as the

scribe of St Mark’s, ms 200.

33
 As Rifaat Ebied pointed out to me, this will refer to the Easter ‘light’ from the miraculous
fire, rather than to Epiphany (ta phota in Greek, but the counterpart to this term does not seem to
be found in Syriac).

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 196 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

added in 1733 to Patr. Syr. 5, it seems best (at least until other evidence to the
contrary is found) to suppose that Khodada visited the Syrian Orthodox mon-
astery, came across this East Syriac manuscript in its collection, and added this
note.

(6) MANUSCRIPTS REBOUND BY PILGRIMS

A number of notices in manuscripts record the fact that visitors to the

church of St Mary helped with the rebinding of old manuscripts. The earliest
such record is that of the priest Yar, for 1647. What was evidently a much
larger operation, including the reorganisation of the manuscripts, was under-
taken by the priest Kanun over four years following his arrival in 1718. Only a
few years after Kanun’s work, in 1724, Giwargis son of the priest Daniel, from
Alqosh, rebound a Psalter dated 1588 (Patr. Syr. 7), while he served as sacris-
tan in the church in Jerusalem. The very next year he left a note in another
Psalter, dated 1585, (Patr. Syr. 27) to the same effect. This Giwargis was also
the scribe of several manuscripts that survive,34 but these were written later
(1730-1) and not in Jerusalem.

Under which Patriarch?

Since 1553 there had been two patriarchal lines in the Church of the East,
Catholic and non-Catholic (though in practice relations with Rome vacillated
over time in each line).35 The vast majority of the manuscripts connected in
one way or another with St Mary’s church in Jerusalem were written by
scribes owing allegiance to the non-Catholic Mar Eliya line, residing at the
monastery of Rabban Hormizd, near Alqosh. Only in three manuscripts (Patr.
Syr. 22, 44 and 50) does the name of a Catholicos Shem‘on appear.36 The first
of these, containing Anaphoras and copied in 1655, was written in the monas-
tery of Mar Pethion in Amid, and also mentions Metropolitan Shem‘on of
Amid.37 Even though the Shem‘on line’s links with Rome were often fairly
tenuous by this time,38 Amid was always a stronghold of Catholic influence,
and was some twenty five years later to become (in 1681) the seat of another
Catholic line of Patriarchs.
34
 See Kaufhold, ‘Der Ehrentitel’, p.54; Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p. 247.
35 See especially H.L. Murre-van den Berg, ‘The Patriarchs of the Church of the East from
the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, Hugoye 2:2 (1999).
36 I exclude the case of Patr. Syr. 8, copied for the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd in 1554,

since the Catholicos Shem‘on mentioned in it will be Shem‘on Sulaqa.

37
 The scribe was Abdulkarim, who also copied Mingana Syr. 121 and Berlin Sachau 90 in
the same year.
38
 Thus, for example, already in 1617 Pope Paul V finds the profession of faith made by
Catholicos Shem‘on [X] inadequate: Giamil, Genuinae Relationes, pp. 190-1.

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 S. BROCK 197

The second manuscript that mentions Shem‘on is Patr. Syr. 44, a Sacerdotal,
copied in 1650. This surprisingly mentions both Eliya and Shem‘on as
Catholicoses, though there is a marginal note saying that the latter ‘persecuted
our diocese’; the scribe, evidently exasperated by the situation, prays ‘May
our Lord Jesus establish peace between them’. The only other dated Syriac
manuscript from the seventeenth century known to me which mentions both
Catholicoses is Seert (Scher), no. 34, a Hudra dated 6th April 1611, and written
in the monastery of Mar Jacob the Recluse, commissioned by Mar Eliya bar
Tappe, metropolitan of ‘Gazarta, Amid and Se‘ert’.
The third manuscript, Patr. Syr. 50, containing the betrothal service, was
complete on 6 November 1654, in Amid.
It is quite striking that in surviving dated manuscripts from the seventeenth
century Simeon features only rather rarely, and with one exception (Diyar-
bekir, Scher no.21, dated 1608 and written in the Monastery of Jacob the Rec-
luse), the metropolitan who is mentioned alongside the Catholicos is the same
Simeon of Amid, who features in Patr. Syr. 22: these range in date from 1638
(Diyarbekir, no. 32) to 1655.39
It is important to recall that allegiance to the Eliya line at this period did not
always imply a anti-Catholic stance. Thus, for example the Metropolitan Eliya
Asmar Habib of Amid, who is mentioned alongside Catholicos Eliya ‘Patri-
arch of the Nestorians’ in Borgia Syr. 169 of 1576, was one of the bishops
consecrated by Sulaqa, and was in correspondence with Cardinal Caraffa in
1581.40 Furthermore, various Catholicoses of the Eliya line were in contact
with Rome: thus, for example, on 23rd December 1586 Eliya VI (VII)41 –
the same man who in 1576 had been described as ‘Catholicos of the Nesto-
rians’42 – made a Catholic profession of faith in the monastery of Rabban
Hormizd.43
A particular problem surrounds a note in Patr. Syr. 3 (of 1582) which states
that in 1614 some manuscripts were entrusted to the Franks, since ‘there was
no priest or deacon in the monastery of the Chaldeans’ in Jerusalem. This is
puzzling since only the previous year Vat. Syr. 151 had been written in Jerusa-
lem. Also, in 1612 Patr.Syr. 17 had been donated to ‘the church of the
Nestorians’, and this has a note which states that the priest ‘Abdisho‘ of Atel
39
 Besides Patr. Syr. 50 (1654) and 22 (16550): Diyabekir no. 47 (1651), no. 6 (1652),
Mingana Syr. 121 (1655) and Berlin Sachau 90 (1655).
40
 Giamil, Genuinae Relationes, pp. 96-7.
41 See Appendix for the numbering.
42
 Borg. Syr. 169 was written in December 1576, by which time Eliya VII will have become
Catholicos according to Fiey’s list (based on Hindo and Tisserant), which provides two Eliyas
(VI and VII) between 1558 and 1591, whereas it is now known that there was only one, Eliya VI
(1558-91); see the Appendix.
43 Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p.260, citing Vatican Arab. 141. (The profession

was however rejected on the grounds that it was insufficient: Giamil, Genuinae Relationes,
p. xxxiv note).

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 198 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

visited Jerusalem in 1614 (if the figure given by Chabot is correct – which
may well not be the case: see above, note 17); likewise, Patr. Syr. 32 would
appear to have been sent to Jerusalem in 1614 (see note 18 for the uncertainty
of the date). From a somewhat earlier source, of 1607, we learn that the
Chaldeans in Jerusalem had the use of the ‘chapel of the crucifixion’ in the
Holy Sepulchre.44 A few years later Eliya VII (VIII) wrote to Pope Paul V ask-
ing for the return of the use of a chapel in the Holy Sepulchre, and this was
granted in a letter sent by Pope Paul to the Franciscan Custodia in 1613/4.45
How these different sources of information are to be reconciled is far from
clear, but it would look as if a group opposed to Rome had taken over control
of the church in Jerusalem and had tried to keep out those in favour of union –
including those whose allegiance was to Eliya VII (VIII). From Patriarch
Eliya’s point of view the matter was happily resolved, thanks to the Pope’s in-
tervention, and in a synodal letter of 8th March 1616, he announced to the Pope
that ‘we have put our affairs in Jerusalem in the hands of Mar Timothy’, and
requested the beneficence ‘of your brethren there’.46
Finally, it might be noted that no names of East Syriac pilgrims seem to
have been carved on the pillars by the entrance door to the Holy Sepulchre.
This is in sharp contrast with the practice of Syrian Orthodox pilgrims, for
quite a number of these have recorded their visits by carving their names there.
Several of these names can actually be identified with persons mentioned in
colophons and other notices in manuscripts belonging to the late fifteenth and
sixteenth century.47 Thus, for example, one inscription gives the names of
Addai and his son Qawme of Beth Sbirino (in Tur ‘Abdin), who are known to
have travelled to Jerusalem with several others in 1492.48

APPENDIX: The origins of a ghost Patriarch

The Patriarchal lists given by (e.g.) Tisserant and Fiey49 provide the fol-
lowing for the latter part of the sixteenth century:
44
 Giamil, Genuinae Relationes, p. 519.
45
 See L. Lemmens, ‘Relationes nationem Chaldaeorum inter et custodiam Terrae Sanctae
(1551-1629)’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19 (1926), pp. 17-29; see also A. Rabbat,
Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire du christianisme en Orient (XVIe – XIXe siècle), II.3
(Beirut, 1921), pp. 421-32 (‘Mission auprès du patriarche chaldéen Elie en 1614’); Tisserant,
‘Nestorienne (Église)’, cols. 235-7; Sbardella, L'Unione della chiesa caldea, p. 403.
46 Giamil, Genuinae Relationes, p. 144. Mar Timothy is the Rabban Adam, who before his

consecration as bishop of ‘Amid and Jerusalem’, had spent some time in Rome whither he had
been sent in 1611 by Patriarch Eliya as an envoy.
47 These are the subject of a publication by Haim Goldfus and Aryeh Kofsky and me below,

pp. 415-425.
48 The account (which well illustrates how hazardous pilgrimage could be) is preserved in the

Continuation of Barhebraeus’ Chronicon; an English translation is given by A.N. Palmer, ‘The

history of the Syrian Orthodox in Jerusalem’, Oriens Christianus 75 (1991), pp. 22-4.
49
 Likewise A. Abouna, Adab al-lugha al-aramiya (Beirut, 1970), p. 669.

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 S. BROCK 199

Eliya VI 1558-76
Eliya VII 1576-91
Eliya VIII 1591-1617,
whereas those of Lampart (p. 366) and Murre-van den Berg have only:
Eliya VI (1558-91)
Eliya VII (1591-1617).50
That Eliya VI died in 1591, and not 1576 is made clear by his funerary inscrip-
tion in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, which states that he was patriarch
for 32 years. The text of this inscription was only published in 1930, by
J. Vosté, ‘Les inscriptions de Rabban Hormizd et de N-D des Semences près
d’Alqosh (Iraq)’, Le Muséon 43 (1930), pp. 263-316 (the inscription in ques-
tion: pp. 288-9).51 Vosté did not comment on the fact that this contemporary
evidence ruled out the existence of another Eliya for the period 1576-91, and it
seems that the first person to point this out was Beltrami, La chiesa caldea,
p. 81 (note 71).
How did Tisserant (and others) come to introduce the extra Eliya? Murre-
van den Berg comments that ‘the reasons for this are unclear’. In fact there
seems to be a solution at hand.
In his Bibliotheca Orientalis III.1 (dated 1725) J.S. Assemani lists on p. 622
only two Eliyas for this period, with accession dates 1559 and 1591 (he does
not number them); he mentions that the first Eliya was patriarch for 32 years
(where this piece of information came from is unclear). Right at the end of
III.2 (dated 1728), on p.cmxlviii, he relates that, in the church where the
Nestorian patriarchs of the Eliya line reside the tomb inscriptions of five patri-
archs are to be seen, and he then gives the texts of these, saying that the text of
these has been careful copied and recently sent to him by ‘Codsus ejus
Ecclesiae Diaconus’. This will be the deacon Qodsi who is known from colo-
phons as the scribe of a few surviving manuscripts52, and who was one of the
converts to Catholicism in Mosul who, on 13th June 725, wrote to the authori-
ties in Rome commending the priest Kheder (who arrived in Rome on 17th Au-
gust).53 Assemani gives Eliya’s profession of faith, which forms the main part
of the inscription, and then he provides what must be just a paraphrase of the
surrounding text, which gives the date of his death, since the wording is rather
different from that recorded by Vosté in his publication of the inscriptions.
Assemani thus has ‘Mar Eliya died and departed from this world in the month
Iyyar, the year 1902 of the Greek (era) [= AD 1591], and he governed the
throne for fifteen years’. By contrast, Vosté’s text reads: ‘In the year 1902 of
Alexander the king of the Greek<s> there departed from the world Patriarch
50 Wilmshurst likewise only has two, but he retains Tisserant’s and Fiey’s numbers, i.e. Eliya

VII and Eliya VIII (with no Eliya VI).

51 See also for these inscriptions A. Harrak, in Hugoye 6:2 (2003).
52
 Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, p. 209.
53
 J. Vosté, ‘Qas Kheder de Mossoul’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 10 (1944), pp. 45-90
(here, p. 61; cp also pp. 48, 77).

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 200 EAST SYRIAC PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM IN THE EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

Mar Eliya, on 26th Iyyar…’. Two further pieces of information are also given:
that ‘he served the metropolitanate for 15 years’ and ‘he governed the throne
of the patriarchate for 32 years’. Evidently the deacon Qodsi had inadvertently
allocated the years of his metropolitanate to his patriarchate.
On the basis of this unfortunate piece of misinformation Assemani (on
p.cml of III.2) ‘corrects’ his earlier list (III.1, p. 622) where there was just one
Eliya as patriarch for 1559-91, and he now introduces a second, with the dates
1576-91. J.S. Assemani’s new list of 1728 was followed by his nephew
J.A. Assemani in his De Catholicis seu Patriarchis Chaldaeorum et Nesto-
rianorum Commentarius historico-chronologicus (Rome, 1775), p. 231. It was
the combined authority of the two great Assemani’s which led most subse-
quent scholars, including Tisserant54 and Fiey, to suppose that there was a new
patriarch in 1576. One important exception to this general trend is to be found
in M. Le Quien’s great Oriens Christianus (Paris, 1740), where he follows
Assemani III.1, without taking into account the (as it turns out) erroneous cor-
rection in III.2.
Neither J.S. nor J.A. Assemani had introduced a numbering for the patri-
archs, and it would seem that Le Quien was the first to do this; thus he calls
the two patriarchs in question Eliya V and Eliya VI (corresponding to Eliya VI
and VII in Murre-van den Berg’s list).55 In view of the resultant confusion
over the numbering of the Eliya line, it may be helpful to set out the different
enumerations:
Beltrami Wilmshurst Tisserant Le Quien
Lampart Fiey
Murre-van
den Berg

Eliya VI (d.1591) Eliya VII Eliya VI (d.1576) Eliya V

– – Eliya VII (d.1591) –
Eliya VII (d.1617) Eliya VIII Eliya VIII (d.1617) Eliya VI

Now that the ghost Eliya between Eliya VI and VII has been definitely dis-
posed of (in theory since 1930), it would seem advisable to abandon the num-
bering used by Tisserant and Fiey, and employ that of Beltrami, Lampart and
Murre-van den Berg. (It might be noted that G. Fedalto, Hierarchia Eccle-
siastica Orientalis II (Padua, 1988), p.894, has the extra Eliya, but – like the
Assemanis – he does not number the series).
54 Tisserant was of course writing before Vosté’s publication of the correct text of the inscrip-

tions.
55
 Likewise, independently, they are Eliya VI and VII in the Syriac history of the eastern pa-
triarchs by Mar Elia Aboona (d. 1955), for which see J.F. Coakley, ‘Mar Elia Aboona and the
history of the East Syrian patriarchate’, Oriens Christianus 85 (2001), pp. 119-38 (esp. 122).

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 S. BROCK 201

One final point is worth mentioning. Mingana Chr. Arab. 72 (Catalogue, II,
no. 110) contains various pieces by the priest Kheder of Mosul, including his
Diary.56 Following the Diary (on ff.48b-49a) he gives the text of the epitaphs
of the East Syrian patriarchs buried at the monastery of Rabban Hormizd. The
first (of six) reads (according to Mingana’s Catalogue, II, p.155):
‘Mar Eliya died and departed from this world in the month Iyyar, the year
1902 of the Greeks, and he governed the throne for fifteen years'.
This is virtually identical with the text communicated to J.S. Assemani by
the deacon Qodsi, with the same confusion that allocated the years of his
metropolitanate to his patriarchate. What remains unclear is whether the erro-
neous copying of the inscription was due to Qodsi, who then gave his copy to
Assemani by way of Kheder (who arrived in Rome on 17th August 1725),57 or
whether it originated with Kheder himself and was communicated to Assemani
by way of Qodsi; on the whole the former seems more likely.58 Also unclear is
the source from which Assemani got the (correct) ‘32 years' of Eliya' VI's
patriarchate in Bibliotheca Orientalis III.1.

56
 The Diary was published (from a different manuscript) by L. Cheikho in Mashriq 1910.
57 Vosté, ‘Qas Kheder de Mossoul', p. 73; i.e. after the publication of Bibliotheca Orientalis
III.1, but well before III.2 (1728).
58 It is known that Kheder was used by Assemani as a source of information: Vosté, ‘Qas

Kheder de Mossoul', p. 56.

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