[1] This
volume is a reprint of the very scarce 1936 Arabic catalogue of
the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts in the Syrian Catholic
Patriarchate of Charfet (Sharfeh), which is located in
Dar’un-Harissa, in the hills above Jounieh, Lebanon. The
convent was founded by Patriarch Ignatius Michael III Jarweh as
his patriarchal see in 1786 (this volume was published to mark
the 150th anniversary of this event), and it subsequently
attracted wealthy donors (such as Viscount Philippe de Tarrazi)
as well as donations from other monasteries and churches,
enabling it to develop into one of the world’s great
collections of Syriac and Christian Arabic manuscripts. The
present catalogue, was produced by Chorepiscopus Isaac Armalet
(Ishoq bar Armalto of Mardin, 1879–1954),
Also frequently listed in library catalogues as
Ishaq Armalah.
who was a
prolific scholar
and an accomplished Syriac scribe,
and lists 586
Syriac manuscripts (pp.1–293, 513–523)
and 569
Arabic manuscripts of both Christian and Muslim origin
(pp.295–512),
ranging in date from the eleventh to the
twentieth centuries. These include biblical, exegetical,
theological, hagiographical, liturgical, legal, philosophical,
lexical, and scientific texts (although the sections are fairly
randomly divided and arranged).
[2] As was
noted by a contemporary reviewer, Willi Heffening, in
1938,
Armalet’s work provides a useful handlist
of the manuscripts, but the descriptions are rather brief and
basic, and fall far short of the best cataloguing standards of
his day. The catalogue’s usability is also reduced by the
lack of any kind of index. In Armalet’s original Arabic
and French prefaces (supplemented in this Gorgias Press
re-edition by an English translation from the French) the
author provides some background information about the history
of the library and earlier attempts to draft catalogues, and
calls attention to certain manuscripts which he finds
interesting.
[3] The
prime virtue of Armalet’s work thus lies simply in the
fact that it records the existence within the Charfet
collection of certain named texts, and provides an approximate
physical description and dating of the manuscripts. Before
being too dismissive, however, we should remember that many
European and North American collections of manuscripts are no
better served by their catalogues, and many collections in the
Middle East still have no reliable published catalogues of any
kind.
[4] It might
perhaps be useful to add a few further comments about
subsequent developments in the Charfet manuscript collection.
In 1956 Patriarch Ignatius Gabriel I Tappouni transferred the
manuscript collection of the patriarchal residence in Beirut to
the library at Charfet. This collection, which has been kept
separate from the earlier manuscript holdings, then numbered
more than 600 manuscripts, of which 305 were Syriac or Karshuni
texts. These are obviously not included in Armalet’s 1936
work, but a simple alphabetic table was provided by Dom
Polycarp Sherwood in 1957.
In 1993 Behnam Sony published a
large Arabic catalogue of this patriarchal collection,
which by
this date had increased in size to 883 manuscripts. Again,
descriptions of the manuscripts are kept to a bare minimum, and
there is no citation of colophons etc., or indeed any use of
Syriac type, but there is still far more information here than
in Sherwood’s table. Sony introduced a new set of
reference numbers for the manuscripts, and amongst his many
useful indexes he also helpfully included a table
(pp.443–448) of correspondences with the numbers cited by
Sherwood. As it happens, the manuscripts in the Charfet
collection are still arranged on the shelves and labelled with
Sherwood’s numbers (inherited from an earlier unpublished
list of Fr. Pierre Saba), rather than those of Sony.
[5] Since
2006 a Franco-Lebanese research group, led by Françoise
Briquel-Chatonnet, Alain Desreumaux, and Muriel Debié of
the CNRS, has been actively engaged in producing a new
scientific catalogue of all of the Syriac manuscripts preserved
in Charfet, although it is clear that this is a task that will
take many years to complete. Once their work is published the
earlier catalogues of Armalet and Sony will be superseded, but
in the meantime these pioneering manuscript catalogues should
find a place on the shelves of any library or institute with an
interest in Middle-Eastern Christianity and its literary
production.
_______
Notes
[2](#FNRef2) Cf. Rudolf Macuch, Geschichte der spät-
und neusyrischen Literatur (Berlin 1976) 438-440. [
](#FNRef2)
[3](#FNRef3) He copied a number of important Syriac manuscripts
from the Charfet collection for the Benedictine monastery of
Montserrat, in Catalonia. [
](#FNRef3)
[4](#FNRef4) This section also includes many Karshuni
manuscripts. [
](#FNRef4)
[5](#FNRef5) A further 18 manuscripts are listed in the preface
which were transferred from Charfet to the Vatican Library
through the agency of Cardinal Augustin Ciasca - an action
strongly resented by Armalet and the local Syrian Catholic
hierarchy. [
](#FNRef5)
[6](#FNRef6)
Oriens Christianus III.13 [35] (1938) 147.
[
](#FNRef6)
[7](#FNRef7) ‘Le Fonds patriarcal de la
bibliothèque manuscrite de Charfet’,
L’Orient Syrien 2.1 (1957) 93-107. [
](#FNRef7)
[8](#FNRef8) فهرس
المخطوطات
البطريركية
في دير
الشرفة
لبنان (Beirut, 1993) 544pp.
[
](#FNRef8)