Chronicle of 819


The Chronicle of 819, also called the Chronicle of Qarṭmin, is a chronological table of important events and people from the birth of Jesus down to the year AD 819 written in Syriac by an anonymous Miaphysite monk from the monastery of Qarṭmin. It contains lists of the Abbasid caliphs for 785–813 and the Syriac [Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East|Syriac Orthodox patriarch]s for 788–819.

Authorship and transmission

The Chronicle was discovered in a large 9th-century codex unearthed by Aphrem Barsaum in the village of Basabrina in 1911. A search for the codex could not locate it in 1984, and it seems likely that it was destroyed during the Assyrian genocide in 1915. A transcription of the chronicle made by Barsaum may still be kept somewhere in France. According to a marginal notice, the codex was copied by one Severus for his uncle David, bishop of Ḥarrān. This David was a former monk of Qarṭmin who is known to have been consecrated as a bishop by Patriarch John IV of Antioch between 846 and 873. The codex also contains church canons and patriarchal letters. The Chronicle appears as a "self-contained collection of historical notices". A later hand added a historical notice of the drought of 1094–95, which places the manuscript in Basabrina by that date. The Chronicle of 819 was incorporated almost in its entirety into the Chronicle of 846. It is the later chronicle's main source for the Islamic period.
The Chronicle of 819 may be the work of up to three authors, with changes in authorship coinciding with the periods 728–733 and 775–785. The signs of Qarṭminite authorship in the work are extensive and conclusive. Out of 125 entries, 15 mention the monastery. In 1959, the Syriac Orthodox patriarch Philoxenus Dolabani claimed without citing his source that the chronicle was the work of the "renowned scribe" Manṣur, abbot of Qarṭmin and son of Marzuq, a priest of Basabrina. This appears to have been a mere conjecture.

Editions