Nicolas Atas

KU Leuven

Hagiography in Ṭuroyo as a part of the local history of Ṭur ʿAbdīn

During his journey in Syria and Mesopotamia in 1879–1880, Eduard Sachau encountered a young deacon in Qəlləṯ, a village of the Ṭur ʿAbdīn region. This deacon, called Ešaʿyo (Isaiah), was a teacher at the school of the American Mission and had translated the Gospel of John into Ṭuroyo Neo-Aramaic for the needs of the mission. Eduard Sachau, who was eager to document the spoken Aramaic languages, missioned Ešaʿyo to translate a corpus of texts into Ṭuroyo: Biblical and extrabiblical texts, hagiography and profane texts. The texts written by Ešaʿyo are preserved for the most part at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.The hagiographic texts chosen by Ešaʿyo were all linked with the local history of Ṭur ʿAbdīn: the Qartmin Trilogy (stories of Samuel and Simeon, the founders of the Qartmin monastery and the story of Gabriel) followed by the story of Simeon of the Olives, the story of Jacob the Recluse and the story of Abay. Ešaʿyo uses mentions of Ṭur ʿAbdīn localities in the lives of the saints to give geographical information or longer descriptions of the places. We can also find an addition to the story of Gabriel mentioning a miracle of a girl becoming a boy that is reported to have happened in 1866, more or less 15 years before the redaction of the text.