A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic
|II. Reader
32. A Disgruntled bishop: a Garshūnī letter from bishop Dinḥā of Midyat to patriarch Peter III
Texte intégral
- 1 I am grateful to Mor Philoxenus Saliba Özmen, archbishop of Mardin, for giving me permission in 200 (...)
1Beth Mardutho K2005.72–731
- 2 Peter III was later renumbered by Aphram Barsoum as Peter IV, counting the Apostle Peter as Peter I
2Document BM K2005.72–73 belongs to a larger set of documents at the archives of Deir al- Zaʿfarān near Mardin. The archive was digitised between 2005 and 2010 and the digital copies are being preserved at the Beth Mardutho Syriac Institute in New Jersey. The archive consists of ca. 10,000 documents, mostly petitions written to various Syriac Orthodox Patriarchs from Elias II (Patr. 1838–1847) to Elias III (Patr. 1917–1932). The current letter, dated 23 August 23 1882 (Julian), is from Bishop Dinḥā of Midyat and addressed to Patriarch Peter III (Patr. 1872–1894).2
- 3 I obtained the information about the three Dinḥās from Elio Aydin, who replied to my Facebook post (...)
- 4 Reply to my Facebook post of 24 October 2017.
3We do not know much about Bishop Dinḥā. An account by the contemporary ʿAbdallah of Ṣadad (later Patriarch ʿAbdallah, 1906–1915), written in 1870, mentions three monks with this name: Dinḥā of Mashta, Dinḥā of the Monastery of Qarnā in Beth Debe (Badibe), and Dinḥā of Anḥil.3 While Dolabani, in his history of the Patriarchs (Dolabani 1990), does not mention Peter consecrating a bishop by this name, our Dinḥā has been identified by Abraham Garis as the monk from Anḥil.4 Dinḥā’s mother tongue was Neo-Aramaic Ṭūroyo (Surayt). A native of Mosul, Peter III’s mother tongue was Arabic.
Transcription
Recto
Verso
Subscript
Arabic Transcription
4Syro-Arabic garshunography is a transliteration scheme. As the 22 Syriac consonants are insufficient for the 28 Arabic ones, a number of extensions are used:
51. The bgadkpat letters provide double usage where:
- ܓ <g> stands for ج and غ .
- ܕ <d> stands for د and ذ .
- ܟܟ <k> stands for ك and خ .
- ܬ <t> stands for ت and ث .
Recto
Verso
Subscript
Translation
Recto
6(1) In the name of the Lord your protector and the exalter of the rank of your high-priesthood, our Father, (2) Mor Ignatius, Patr [iarch] of the Apostolic See of Antioch, who is (1.5) Peter III.
7(3) After kissing your fingertips with duty, honour, and respect, and procuring your Apostolic blessings which are answ- (4) ered all the time. It is petitioned to Your Beatitude:
Çünkifirmānmajlismilletmajlis6ṭāʾifaÇünkiwālīsmutaṣarrifswazirsVerso
filsghirshwaqfwaqfwaqfÇünkiSubscript
Commentary
8Line 1
- 7 For the use of liturgical barekhmor as a greeting, see Borbone (2015, 479–84).
9It is common to address the Patriarch in Syriac and end with Barekhmor7 (verse ln 13).
10Line 3
11Line 4
12Line 5
13Line 6
14Line 7
çünkiçünkü15Line 10
16Lines 12–13
17Line 13
18سب /bas/. Colloquial for ‘only’.
19Line 17
20Line 18
majlismajlis21Line 19
22Line 21
tanwīn23Line 25
24Line 26
25Line 28
26Verso
27Line 3
28Line 5
29Line 6
hizmetkâr30Line 8
31Line 9
Notes
1 I am grateful to Mor Philoxenus Saliba Özmen, archbishop of Mardin, for giving me permission in 2005 to digitise the archive. Thanks are due also to Ephrem Aboud Ishac, who read the penultimate version and gave many valuable suggestions. For the historical background of this period, see Dinno (2017), The Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period and Beyond: Crises then Revival (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press).
2 Peter III was later renumbered by Aphram Barsoum as Peter IV, counting the Apostle Peter as Peter I.
3 I obtained the information about the three Dinḥās from Elio Aydin, who replied to my Facebook post of 24 October 2017.
4 Reply to my Facebook post of 24 October 2017.
5 Microsoft Word 2000 up to XP allowed one to add Arabic diacritics above Syriac-script text, but it seems that later versions do not permit this! As of May 2021, one can write Arabic diacritics on Syriac using Notepad and then copy the text into Word, though this risks the text being broken during typesetting by publishers.
6 This would be a parish majlis, to be distinguished from the secular town majlis.
7 For the use of liturgical barekhmor as a greeting, see Borbone (2015, 479–84).
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