Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre

The Syriac text also known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin is now thought to have been composed by a monk from the Zuqnin monastery rather than Dionysius of Tell-Mahre - hence the cognomen Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre. The chronicle consists of four parts.

• Part I goes from "creation" to the Emperor Constantine (r. 306-337 CE).
• Part II goes from Constantine to Emperor Theodosius II (r. 402-450 CE) and contains an addition - a copy of the so-called Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite (covering events in and around Edessa from 497 to 506/7 CE).
• Part III spans from from Theodosius II to Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565 CE).
• Part IV ends in 775/776 CE.
(Neuhäuser et al., 2021:4).

There apparently is (or was) a debate over its date of composition with some scholars suggesting it was composed in the 9th century CE rather than the late 8th century CE as the text would indicate - it ends in 775 CE. Harrak (1999) opines on the opening page of his translation that it was composed in 775 CE by a West Syrian Monk - probably Joshua (the Stylite) of the monastery of Zuqnin. The work is preserved in a single handwritten manuscript and is not known to have been copied or disseminated. It was transferred to the Monastery of the Syrians in Wadi El Natrun in Egypt sometime in the 9th century CE where it was found and bought for the Vatican (Neuhäuser et al., 2021:4). Neuhäuser et al. (2021:4) notes that

the text survived in one manuscript of 173 folios located as Codex Zugninensis at the Vatican Library (shelf mark Vat. Syriac 162 or Cod. Vat. 162), and the remaining six folios are found in the British Library (Add. 14.665 folio 2-7); in Codex Zugninensis, 129 folios are palimpsest, one even a double-palimpsest (Harrak, 1999). Some of the folios in the British Library which cover the last years are partly worm-eaten and very fragmentary. Its first and last folios are lost together with the name of the author (Harrak, 1999). The Chronicle is divided into four parts, all translated to English (Harrak, 1999, 2017) and French (Chabot, 1895).

Neuhauser et al (2021:4) noted that Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre used a used a variety of sources, some of them otherwise lost (Harrak, 1999, 2017) and knew that some of his sources did not provide a perfect chronology. Neuhauser et al (2021:4) suggested that, for Pseudo-Dionysius, it was more important to convey his message gleaned from history than it was to give a perfect chronology. Neuhauser et al (2021:5) also reports that Pseudo-Dionysius systematically used the West Syrian version of the Seleucid (A.G.) Calendar which had an annual start date of 1 October; something which was standard for Syriac writers of this time (Sebastian Brock, personal communication, 2021).