Chronicon Anonymum Ad Annum 1234 References Open this page in a new tab

Translations and Original Texts

There are two volumes to this Chronicle. Vol.1 deals with secular history and Volume 2 deals with ecclesiastical history.

Chabot (1916) Both Volumes in Syriac with a Preface in Latin - bookmarked to the start of the secular section - note that pagination for this text is right to left - open access at archive.org

Chabot (1937) Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon Ad Annum Christi 1234 Pertinens - Latin translation - open access at archive.org - bookmarked to the page which describes the 749 CE Sabbatical Year Quakes

Chronicon anonymum ad annum 1234 (ed. J. B. Chabot, CSCO, Scr. Syri, 36, 155-67).

Note about translations

Chronicle of 1234: this Syriac text was edited with a Latin translation by J.B. Chabot, Chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens (CSCO 81/109 sen syri 36/56; Paris, 1916/1937). It is available in an English translation for the years 582-717 (Palmer, WSC, 111-221), and in French for the period after 775 (A. Abouna, CSCO 354 scr. syri 154; Louvain, 1974). But the period 717-75 is still only available in Latin, and so my translation here represents the first translation into a modern language. The translation of Palmer is quite free (as befits the fact that he was trying to make a large body of text accessible and readable) and so I have done my own translations, making it as close to the text as is stylistically possible, except for a few very long passages, where readability is more important, and so I have then used Palmer’s translation (as noted in the footnotes).118 The chronicler of 1234 seems to make very little recourse to any other source besides Theophilus (via Dionysius of Telmahre’s history) for civil matters of the period 590-750s, except for the Arab conquests and the first Arab civil war, for which he draws on Muslim sources, and so what is translated below represents almost all of his non-ecclesiastical notices for this period.

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