Böcker av Iskandar Bcheiry

In the Ottoman Empire, Syriac communities kept their own baptismal books, marriage, funeral and other records and many of these can be found in various libraries, churches, monasteries in the West and East.

This volume provides an analysis of a late fifteenth century document, a hitherto unpublished narration of the life and accomplishments of Yuhanun Bar Say Allah, a fifteenth-century Syriac Orthodox Patriarch. It also supplies descriptions of events that brought important changes to the Syriac Church in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford currently holds an unpublished historical document in Syriac containing precious historical information about the ordination of bishops, priests, monks, and deacons.

The year 652 marked a fundamental political change in the Middle East and the surrounding region. An important and contemporary source of the state of the Christian Church at this time is to be found in the correspondence of the patriarch of the Church of the East, Isu'yahb III (649-659), which he wrote between 628 and 658.

Saints Jacob of Serugh and Severus of Antioch provided monastic interpretations for Syriac Orthodoxy. Bcheiry highlights St. Jacob's exegesis of Jonah as a spiritual struggle with ascetic appearances. St. Severus address the movement from self-deial to purity in his Lenten homilies.

This monograph presents an unpublished historical resource in the form of a register of dues collected for the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate during the second half of the nineteenth century. Bcheiry provides the original text, an English translation, and an extensive socio-economic study.