Erica C. D. Hunter and Mark Dickens, eds., Syrische Handschriften. Teil 2: Texte der Berliner Turfansammlung /
Syriac Texts from the Berlin Turfan Collection
Grigory
Kessel
Austrian Academy of Sciences / University of Manchester
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2018
Volume 21.1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv21n1prkessel
Grigory Kessel
Review of: Syrische Handschriften. Teil 2: Texte der Berliner Turfansammlung /
Syriac Texts from the Berlin Turfan Collection
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol21/HV21N1PRKessel.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2018
vol 21
issue 1
pp 218–223
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
File created by James E. Walters
Erica C. D. Hunter and Mark Dickens, eds., Syrische Handschriften. Teil 2: Texte der Berliner Turfansammlung /
Syriac Texts from the Berlin Turfan Collection, Verzeichnis der
orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland 5.2 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014).
Pp. vi + 505. € 84.
The catalogue of the Syriac fragments under review has been long awaited
and fills one of the major desiderata in the field of Syriac studies. It
contains a detailed description of the fragments that were found during the
four missions conducted by the German Turfan Expeditions between 1902 and
1914 and that are kept at present in three different locations in Berlin:
the largest number is at the Staatsbibliothek (shelfmark SyrHT), and two
smaller sets are at the division of Turfanforschung of the
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Museum für
Asiatische Kunst, respectively.
The volume appeared in the series Verzeichnis
der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, committed to
cataloguing the Oriental manuscripts preserved in German collections, and
thereby constitutes a sequel to the catalogue of Julius Assfalg.
J. Assfalg, Syrische
Handschriften: syrische, karšunische, christlich-palästinische,
neusyrische und mandäische Handschriften, Verzeichnis der orientalischen
Handschriften in Deutschland 5 (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1963).
Although the appearance of the catalogue
marks the completion of the general enterprise of cataloguing the Syriac
manuscripts in Germany, there still remains some work to be done.
Particularly indispensable is an up-to-date list of the actual holdings of
libraries and collections as many changes took place over the course of the
20th century. For example, some
manuscripts that feature in the catalogue of the Staatsbibliothek (then
Königliche Bibliothek) prepared by Eduard Sachau
E. Sachau, Verzeichniss der syrischen Handschriften der Königlichen
Bibliothek zu
Berlin, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1899).
are no longer in Berlin (but, for instance, in Krakow),
whereas a large group of manuscripts described by Assfalg (those in Tübingen
and Marburg) were returned to Berlin in the 1970s; the private collection of
consul C. W. Adam in Goslar forms now a part of the Schøyen collection. The
whereabouts of some private collections that once belonged to Syriac
scholars in Germany are unknown (for instance, the one of Gustav Bickell).
Moreover, some German libraries acquired a number of manuscripts that thus
far remain uncatalogued. Likewise, an unknown number of Syriac manuscripts
is preserved among the Syriac diaspora (coming mostly from the Tūr ʿAbdīn
region), both at churches and in private hands.
The cataloguing of the Syriac Turfan materials was implemented within a
project The Christian Library from Turfan
(2008–2011) that was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of
the United Kingdom and was based at the School of Oriental and African
studies in London under the leadership of Dr. Erica C. D. Hunter. The
present catalogue is a companion to other volumes in the same series dealing
with Turfan manuscripts.
It happens all too seldom that the Syriac ecclesiastical authorities
express manifestly their appreciation of an academic research project. That
is why it is all the more gratifying to see a formal preface by the late
Catholicos of the Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV (1935–2015). One may
hope that this is a valid token of a positive attitude that will lead to
mutual cooperation in the future, particularly with regard to the study of
manuscript collections and archives that belong to ecclesiastical
bodies.
Most of the Syriac fragments were discovered in the ruins of a former
monastery of the Church of the East, located at Shuïpang near the village of
Bulayïq, about ten kilometers north of Turfan (for other locations see
Appendix VI). One should bear in mind that the Berlin fragments form just a
part of all the Syriac fragments discovered in the Turfan region. Whereas
most of the Syriac fragments were transferred to Berlin, smaller sets were
brought to St. Petersburg
N. Smelova, “Manuscrits chrétiens de Qara Qoto: nouvelles perspec-tives de recherche,” in P. G. Borbone and P. Marsone, eds., Le
christianisme syriaque en Asie centrale et en Chine, Études
syriaques 12 (Paris: Geuthner, 2015), 215–36.
and other libraries.
For example, Dr. Hidemi Takahashi kindly informs me that a few fragments are preserved at the Ryukoku University in Japan.
The volume consists of three parts of uneven length. The Introduction (pp.
1–7) provides a historical background to the Syriac manuscript material from
Turfan, including its discovery, transfer to Berlin, and scholarship. Then
follows a catalogue arranged by current holding institution (pp. 8–424). The
authors of the catalogue spared no pains and prepared seventeen informative
appendices (pp. 425–496), aimed at effective usage of the material
described.
The catalogue is well designed and provides elaborate description of each
fragment, taking into consideration all possible aspects of both physical
form and content (overview on pp. 8–12). Physical description includes
measurements (line spacing, line length, and size of the margins),
condition, number of lines, presence of ruling, colour of the inks used for
text and punctuation, palaeographic features, system of punctuation, quire
marks, rubrics, corrections, etc. (the fragments are grouped according to
the presence of some of those physical features in Appendix X).
For a synthetic survey, see M. Dickens, “Scribal Practices in the Turfan Christian Community,” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 13 (2013),
3–28.
The entries follow a sequential order within each of the three collections.
The total number of entries amounts to 481 (Staatsbibliothek 388,
Turfanforschung 86, Museum für Asia-tische Kunst 7), but some of those
occasionally contain more than one fragment. If fragments belonging to the
same manuscripts could be identified, this is indicated at the end of the
entry (as well as in Appendix XI). Each entry explicitly acknowledges the
scholar responsible for the identification of the text (overview in Appendix
XVI). Given the fragmentary nature of the material, it is understandable
that some fragments remain unidentified (listed in Appendix II). If the text
is not identified the authors offer a provisional characterization of its
genre.
The main part of the catalogue covers the fragments in Syriac (including
those transcribed in Uighur script as well as bilingual, usually
Syriac-Sogdian ones) from the Turfan collection, whereas Appendix XV
describes the fragments in Sogdian, New Persian and Uighur with embedded
Syriac citations and rubrics (33 in total).
The vast majority of the fragments is limited to a page or even a part of
it, bifolia are rare (listed in Appendix V), and there is just one single
substantial manuscript (MIK III 45) which is considered to be the earliest
witness to the text of East Syriac Ḥudra.
The edition has recently been published: E. C. D. Hunter and J. F. Coakley, eds., A Syriac
Service-Book from Turfan. Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin MS
MIK III 45,
Berliner Turfantexte 39 (Turnhout: Brepols,
2017).
In terms of ecclesiastical affiliation, the vast
majority of the fragments belongs to the Church of the East, whereas one
fragment, described as a ‘draft letter to an unnamed Byzantine official’
(SyrHT 2), possibly bears traces of Melkite authorship.
A possible connection to Melkite tradition was also discerned in the Sogdian material, namely in two fragments from a Psalter in Sogdian script with Greek incipits; see N. Sims-Williams, “A Greek-Sogdian Bilingual from Bulayïq,” in La Persia e
Bisanzio, Atti dei Convegni Lincei 201 (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2004), 623–631; N. Sims-Williams, “A New Fragment of the Book of Psalms in Sogdian,” in D. Bumazhnov, E. Grypeou, T. B. Sailors, and A. Toepel, eds., Bibel,
Byzanz und Christlicher Orient: Festschrift für Stephen Gerö zum 65.
Geburtstag (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 461–66.
As far as the dating is concerned, none of the fragments contains a
colophon, but a range between the 9th
and 13th century is usually accepted
(for some fragments a more precise dating is offered).
In terms of genre (overview in Appendix VII), the most frequent one is
liturgy. Thus, one finds liturgical Psalters, New Testament lectionaries,
Ḥudra and prayer books. There are at least two hagiographic texts (the Life of Mar Barshabba and the Life of Mar George), as well as calendrical and
pharmaceutical fragments. Among the unidentified texts are fragments that
appear to belong to a polemic dialogue between a Christian and a Jew, as
well as one philosophical text (seemingly related to Aristotle’s Categories that might be a paraphrase or a
commentary).
Apparently, the critical value of the Syriac material from Turfan lies in
its contribution to the study of the East Syriac liturgical tradition. As
shown in a number of studies,
E. C. D. Hunter, “The Christian Library from Turfan: SYR HT 41-42-43, An Early Exemplar of the Ḥuḏrā”, Hugoye:
Journal of Syriac
Studies 15.2 (2012), 281–291, S. P. Brock and N. Sims-Williams, “An Early Fragment from the East Syriac Baptismal Service from Turfan”, Orientalia
Christiana
Periodica 77.1 (2011), 81–92.
the liturgical texts found among the Turfan fragments are the earliest
witnesses for some of the East Syriac liturgical books.
The same applies to other genres. As demonstrated by Miklós Maróth,
M. Maróth, “Eine unbekannte Version der Georgios-Legende aus Turfan,” Altorientalische
Forschungen 18.1 (1991), 86–108.
the Life of Mar George (SyrHT 95, 359, 360,
361, 362, 364, 365, 381) represents a previously unattested ancient
recension of the text. The prayer-amulets contained in the collection are
the ancient predecessors of the much later East Syriac books of charms that
were proudced from the 18th century
onwards.
E. C. D. Hunter, “Traversing Time and Location: A Prayer-Amulet of Mar Tamsis from Turfan,” in Li Tang and D. Winkler, eds., From the
Oxus River to the Chinese Shores: Studies on East Syriac
Christianity in China and Central
Asia, Orientalia ‒ Patristica ‒ Oecumenica 5 (Zürich / Münster: LIT, 2013), 25–41.
Over the course of the 20th and
beginning 21st century many Syriac
fragments have been studied and published (a list with relevant bibliography
can be found in Appendix XVII). Nevertheless, much still remains to be done
and there can be no doubt that this catalogue will attract scholarly
attention and lead to new research. This is all the more feasible now as all
the fragments are freely accessible at the website of the International
Dunhuang Project ().
The catalogue itself is also freely available at (accessed on April 4, 2018).
Cataloguing fragments is not a gratifying labour, and the work becomes all
the more painstaking if one deals with ancient witnesses to texts that can
hardly be compared with the extant (usually more recent or simply different)
versions. The Syriac fragments from Turfan is a unique treasure-trove for
the study of the missionary activity of the Church of the East, and we all
should commend the authors for their responsible work and attention to
detail.