Robert G. Hoyland is Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle East History at the Institute for Study of the Ancient World of New York University. Previous publications include 'Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam' (LUP, 2011).
The introduction, notes and scholarship within this book are all exemplary - a pattern which we are coming to expect from Liverpool University Press. In this fine addition to the celebrated 'Translated Texts for Historians' series, Robert Hoyland pieces together the extant fragments of Theophilus of Edessa's Chronicle and provides scholars and students with an accessible guide to this most important historical source for the 7th and 8th centuries. The Chronicle itself survives only in the form of passages excerpted in the work of Theophanes and Confessor, Agapius of Manbij, Michael the Syrian and an anonymous Syrian historians of the 13th century. Hoyland's composite text places the relevant sections of these four works alongside one another, and thereby gives us the closest approximation we might hope for of their shared progenitor. The work itself represents an immensely important source on the earliest stages of Islamic expansion in N Africa and the East and of the early centuries of the struggle with Byzantium. As is typical of the historiography of the period it also includes some unexpected ephemera, including report of a storm so strong that it uprooted trees and sent stylites toppling from their perches, and a surprisingly vicious assault of monkeys on the inhabitants of Yemen. The introduction, notes and scholarship within this book are all exemplary - a pattern which we are coming to expect from Liverpool University Press. The Chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa, an astrologer at the Abbasid court in Iraq in the second half of the eighth century which was written in Syriac and charted events in the Near East from 590 to the 750s, does not survive, but was excerpted and adapted by Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818, in Greek), Agapius of Mabij (fl. 940s, in Arabic), Michael the Syrian (d. 1199, in Syriac), and in the anonymous 'Chronicle of 1234' (also in Syriac). The two Syriac sources draw on Theophilus indirectly via the no-longer-extent chronicle of the Syrian patriarch Dionysius of Telmahre (d. 845). This enterprising translation presents what survives from Theophilus' work by offering renderings of the excerpts from the four surviving sources in sequential blocks to facilitate comparison. There is a detailed introduction, wide-ranging notes, and an exemplary appendix with a gazetteer, maps, genealogies, a bibliography, and an index. This enterprising translation presents what survives from Theophilus' work by offering renderings of the excerpts from the four surviving sources in sequential blocks to facilitate comparison. There is a detailed introduction, wide-ranging notes, and an exemplary appendix with a gazetteer, maps, genealogies, a bibliography, and an index. MEDIUM AeVUM Vol. LXXXI 2012 This volume, which appears in the Translated Texts for Historians series, is not only a set of useful and accessible translations, but also an impressive example of scholarship in its own right. The Chronicle, written in the eighth century by Theophilus, an astrologer at the court of the Abbasid caliphs, does not survive, although its influence can be seen in the works of a number of later authors, particularly Theophanes, Agapius of Manbij and Dionysius of Telmahre. To complicate matters further, the chronicle written by the last of these three does not survive, although its contents can be reconstructed from two later works which employed it heavily: the Chronicle of 1234 and the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. Using these four extant texts (one in Greek; one in Arabic; two in Syriac), as well as extracts from a small number of other works, Hoyland has methodically demonstrated the similarities and divergences between them and thus illuminated their use of Theophilus' lost chronicle. In addition, comparisons between the surviving accounts have also allowed Hoyland to suggest a number of emendations to the texts, adding to the value of the volume. The introduction begins with a brief historical overview, running from the overthrow of the Persian king Hormizd IV in 590 to the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in the middle of the eighth century, as this is the period covered by the translated selections from Theophilus' literary dependants. This is followed by a discussion of each text in turn, as well as a consideration of the lost Chronicle and its sources. Scholarship of this sort is notoriously difficult, as seen with other lost late antique texts, most notably the so-called Kaisergeschichte. Hoyland is, however, careful and measured in his arguments, providing tentative conclusions that avoid any descent into the sort of speculation and unjustified pronouncements that can easily plague such reconstructions. This is followed by a thoughtful discussion of historiographical practices in the late antique Near East and a salutary warning concerning the dangers posed by any attempt to see religious affiliation or identity as possessing 'an all-encompassing power to direct patterns of social relations in such a way as to prevent external influence or positive response to that influence' (p. 34). The translations, which extend over more than 250 pages, do not provide each of the relevant texts one-by-one, since Hoyland's aim is to interrogate them as witnesses of Theophilus' Chronicle. The book therefore proceeds by presenting the reader with a sequence of episodes from the period 590-767, placing together the accounts of each event from all those texts which appear to draw upon Theophilus. These notices are, in turn, arranged chronologically by Hoyland, sometimes correcting dating errors within the original works. Thus, one may turn to pages 114-17 to find the four versions of the Muslim capture of Jerusalem in 638, or consult pages 224-5 for three accounts of the iconoclasm of Leo III (since the fourth text, the Chronicle of 1234, makes no mention of this). Hoyland also omits any material which does not appear to have been derived from Theophilus, although (as he states at pages 35-6), the translations provide almost the entire account of this period found in Agapius and the non-ecclesiastical sections of Michael the Syrian and the Chronicle of 1234. Anyone wishing to read one of these texts in isolation will therefore find themselves somewhat frustrated, since, as well as being incomplete, the translations are spread throughout the volume and have been reordered to suit the chronological arrangement of the work, with digressions sometimes removed from their original positions within another 'episode' and placed under a separate title. This structure does, however, allow Hoyland to achieve his aim for the volume by demonstrating clearly the correspondences between the works and their use of Theophilus as a common source. In addition, direct verbal correspondences between Michael the Syrian and the Chronicle of 1234 are marked in bold, giving a clear sense of the different ways in which these two texts adapted their common source, Dionysius of Telmahre. The translations themselves are clear and fluent, despite the opacity of some sections of the original texts. For Theophanes, Hoyland reproduces the translation of Cyril Mango and Roger Scott, first published in 1997, while also making use of some sections of the partial translation of the Chronicle of 1234 by Andrew Palmer in The seventh century in the west-Syrian chronicles, an earlier Translated Texts for Historians volume from 1993 (although Hoyland frequently provides his own translation of this text, as well as correcting Palmer's version on a number of occasions). Importantly, Hoyland also suggests emendations to Chabot's Syriac text of Michael the Syrian (from 1910) and Vasiliev's edition of Agapius (from 1912) on the basis of his own readings of the manuscripts. Moreover, in the case of Agapius, Hoyland has discovered that the unique manuscript had been restored during the last century, allowing him to add two new passages as supplements to Vasiliev's text. These are translated at the relevant points in the volume, with the Arabic text being supplied in an appendix. All the translations in the book are supplied with copious notes, which are particularly helpful in providing cross-references to other texts, as well as biographical and geographical information, which is supplemented with a gazetteer, maps and family trees. Apart from a couple of repeated footnotes and a very small number of typos, the volume is well edited, especially when one considers the amount of information that it contains. In sum, therefore, this is a very useful and scholarly publication which will bring these interesting texts to a wider audience, as well as furthering the study of both Theophilus' lost Chronicle and those writings which made use of it. ... this is a very useful and scholarly publication which will bring these interesting texts to a wider audience, as well as furthering the study of both Theophilus' lost Chronicle and those writings which made use of it.
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
