Chronicle of 846
The Chronicle of 846 is a fragmentary universal chronicle written in Syriac by an anonymous author sometime between 846 and 873. Its focus for the later centuries, where it is most valuable, is ecclesiastical history. It is written from a Syriac Orthodox perspective.
Date, authorship and transmission
The Chronicle is found on folios 1–36, 40 and 41 of a single manuscript, Brit. Mus. Add. MS 14642, which was copied in the early 10th century in Esṭrangela script. The copy is a palimpsest: the folios were taken from five different Greek language|Greek] manuscripts, erased and written over. A "perfectly distinct work", the Chronicle of 813, is bound immediately after it in the codex but was originally a separate manuscript. The original text of the Chronicle of 846 began with Creation, but this part has been lost. The text as it stands begins with the birth of Levi to the Hebrew patriarch Jacob. Owing to damage and loss, there are lacunae in the preserved text for the periods 30 BC–AD 37, 230–275, 431–449, 540–574, 582–601 and 610–679.The end of the text is not defective. The last event recorded being the ordination of John IV of Antioch in 846, it was probably put in its final form shortly after this date and before John's death in 873. The original chronicle may have ended in 784, before a second compiler extended it with a list of names and dates down to 846. The text's first editor, E. W. Brooks, suggested that, to judge from the number of references to the bishops of Ḥarrān, it may have been composed in that location. He later suggested that it may have been written at the monastery of Qarṭmin, but Ephrem Barsaum points out that the connection to Qarṭmin derives from the chronicle's reliance on the Chronicle of 819, which probably was composed there.
The only surviving copy of the Chronicle of 819 was made by a certain Severus for his uncle David, a monk of Qarṭmin consecrated bishop of Ḥarrān by John IV. Andrew Palmer therefore suggests that the Chronicle of 846 is the work of David, who commissioned his nephew to make a copy of an earlier chronicle for this purpose. Even he is not the main author of the Chronicle of 846, he may be the compiler who extended it from 784 to 846 and interpolated information from the Chronicle of 819. Elsewhere, Palmer suggests that Nonnus of Ḥarrān, a monk of Qarṭmin who became bishop of Ṭur ʿAbdin shortly before 845, may have been the final redactor of the Chronicle of 846.