Page 3 - Adiabene letters_Neat

44 1SIIOCYAIIB III ()!• ADIABENE

details of this dispute. It would seem that the Syriac community in
Beth Qafraye were behaving independently of the authorities in
bars and Seleuca-Ctcsiphon to his dismay. The Catholicos also
complains in these letters about the fact that many members of the
church were resorting to non-Christian courts to settle disputes.
1'Expressing his fears for the future of the church in Beth Qafraye
he refers on a number of occasions to the Christians in
neighbouring Mazun (Oman) who had converted to Islam in order
to avoid paying the poll-tax. In terms of toponymic information
these five letters mention Beth Qafraye on numerous occasions in
addition to many other place names of specific locations within the
Gulf region.
These five letters, published and fully translated here for the
first time, thus represent an invaluable primary source for the study
of the Church of the East within this region and early Christian
interaction with a nascent Islam in the Arabian peninsula.

A Note on the Manuscripts
This edition is based on the two extant manuscripts (Vat. sir. 157
and Paris BnF syr. 336) that contain the letters of Isho'yahb III.
The more important of the two is Vat. sir. 157, an 8’ vellum codex
containing 123 folios and dated to the tenth century.1 This was
formerly ms. 16 of die Scandar Collection, brought from the East
by the Maronite Andrew Scandar (professor of Arabic at Rome’s
Sapienza) for Pope Innocent XIII (1721-24). The collection is
divided into three groups: a. those from the time that lshocyahb
was bishop of Nineveh (fol. la-46a); b. those written when he was
metropolitan of Arbela (fol. 46a—94b); c. those written when he
was Catholicos of the Church of the East (fol. 94b—124b).
Paris BnF syr. 336 is a codex containing 181 folios and dated
27 May 1896. The name of the copyist is Petros bar Yawsep bar
Yuhanon bar Estefanos bar Abraham of Bet Gangi who states in
the colophon that he completed tliis work in the village of Telkcf.
It is a copy of a manuscript from Alqosh dated 1696.

1 I am very grate!ul to Dr. Kristian S. Heal for generously providing
me with a copy of tliis manuscript.