The ''Chronicle of 1234'' ( la, Chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens) is an anonymous West Syriac

universal history A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...

from

Creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...

until 1234. The unknown author was probably from

Edessa Edessa (; grc, Ἔδεσσα, Édessa) was an ancient city (''polis'') in Upper Mesopotamia, founded during the Hellenistic period by King Seleucus I Nicator (), founder of the Seleucid Empire. It later became capital of the Kingdom of Osroene ...

. The ''Chronicle'' only survives in fragments, from which it is known to be divided into two parts: the first on

ecclesiastical history __NOTOC__ Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual ...

, the second on secular. It was critically edited and translated by the French Orientalist

Jean-Baptiste Chabot Jean-Baptiste Chabot (16 February 1860 – 7 January 1948) was a Roman Catholic secular priest and the leading French Syriac scholar in the first half of the twentieth century. Life Born into a viticultural family at Vouvray-sur-Loire, Chabot ...

in 1920 (volume I covering ecclesiastical history) and by

Albert Abouna Albert may refer to: Companies * Albert (supermarket), a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic * Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands * Albert Market, a street market in The Gambia * Albert Productions, a record label * Albert C ...

in 1974 (volume II covering secular history). Unique among Syriac chronicles it depends in part on the ''

Book of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees, sometimes called Lesser Genesis (Leptogenesis), is an ancient Jewish religious work of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as well as Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews), where it is ...

''. The author also used the lost ''Ecclesiastical History'' of Dionysius of Tell Maḥrē for his coverage of the eighth through ninth centuries. He also uses

Theophilus of Edessa Theophilus of Edessa (Greek: Θεόφιλος, 695–785 CE), also known as Theophilus ibn Tuma and Thawafil, was a Greco-Syriac medieval astrologer and scholar in Mesopotamia. In the later part of his life he was the court astrologer to the Abbas ...

(possibly through an

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

translator) and al-Azdī, an Arabic author. Some of Theophilus's history now lost to us survives in the ''Chronicle of 1234'', such as his account of the

Trojan War In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has ...

. The ''Chronicle'' also uses the late twelfth-century correspondence of the Syriac patriarch

Michael the Great Michael the Syrian ( ar, ميخائيل السرياني, Mīkhaʾēl el Sūryani:),( syc, ܡܺܝܟ݂ܳܐܝܶܠ ܣܽܘܪܝܳܝܳܐ, Mīkhoʾēl Sūryoyo), died 1199 AD, also known as Michael the Great ( syr, ܡܺܝܟ݂ܳܐܝܶܠ ܪܰܒ݁ܳܐ, ...

for its most recent history. The ''Chronicle of 1234'' is best as a

primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...

for events surrounding the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

and the

Kingdom of Cilicia The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (Middle Armenian: , '), also known as Cilician Armenia ( hy, Կիլիկեան Հայաստան, '), Lesser Armenia, Little Armenia or New Armenia, and formerly known as the Armenian Principality of Cilicia ( hy, ...

in the late twelfth century and early thirteenth.

Editions and translations

* ''Anonymi auctoris chronicon ad annum 1234 pertinens'' nonymous Syriac chronicle of 1203-1204 ed. by J.-B. Chabot, Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, Scriptores syri, series iii, 14-15 (Paris, 1920), pp. 118-26 dition * ''Anonymi auctoris chronicon ad a.c. 1234 pertinens, vol. II'', trans. by Albert Abouna, Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, Scriptores syri, tomus 154, vol. 354 (Louvain, 1974
archive.org
* 'Un épisode de l'histoire des croisades, ou la prise d'Edesse en 1144, par l'atabek de Mossoul, d'après une chronique syriaque', trans. by J.-B. Chabot, in ''Mélanges offerts à m. Gustave Schlumberger, membre de l'Institut, à l'occasion du quatre-vingtième anniversaire de sa naissance (17 octobre 1924)'', 2 vols (Paris: Geuthner, 1924), I 169-79 artial translation * A. S. Tritton and H. A. R. Gibb (trans.), 'The First and Second Crusades from an Anonymous Syriac Chronicle', ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland''
1 (January 1933), 69-1012 (April 1933), 273-305
artial translation

References

Sources

* * *Ciggaar, Krijna Nelly and Teule, Herman G. B., edd. (1999). ''East and West in the Crusader States: Context, Contacts, Confrontations II: Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle in May 1997''. Peeters Publishers. . * * * * *Robinson, Chase F. (2000). ''Empire and Elites After the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * * {{refend

External links

''The Chronicle of 1234''
at the ''Encyclopedia of Syriac Literature'' 13th-century history books Middle Eastern chronicles 1234 Christian texts of the medieval Islamic world