Moses (or Mushe) of Nisibis ( 904–943) was a West Syriac monk and scribe. He was the abbot (''riš dayro'') of Dayr al-Suryan, the Syrian monastery in the

Wadi al-Natrun Wadi El Natrun (Arabic: "Valley of Natron"; Coptic: , "measure of the hearts") is a depression in northern Egypt that is located below sea level and below the Nile River level. The valley contains several alkaline lakes, natron-rich salt ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, from 914 at the latest. He brought together and helped preserve one of the most important collections of ancient

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

manuscripts, which is still of critical importance to scholars today. Moses is first attested as a scribe of Dayr al-Suryan in 903 or 904. He acquired for the monastery a 6th-century copy of the

Peshitta The Peshitta ( syc, ܦܫܺܝܛܬܳܐ ''or'' ') is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition, including the Maronite Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the ...

, the Syriac Bible, from a family of

Tikrit Tikrit ( ar, تِكْرِيت ''Tikrīt'' , Syriac language, Syriac: ܬܲܓܪܝܼܬܼ ''Tagrīṯ'') is a city in Iraq, located northwest of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul on the Tigris River. It is the administrative center of the Saladin Gover ...

in 906 or 907. It is now kept in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

, Add MS 12142. As abbot, Moses undertook major renovations of the interior of the monastery. The

screens Screen or Screens may refer to: Arts * Screen printing (also called ''silkscreening''), a method of printing * Big screen, a nickname associated with the motion picture industry * Split screen (filmmaking), a film composition paradigm in which m ...

separating the sanctuary and the choir from the nave in the main church were put up during his abbacy. They are still standing. He also had the murals decorating the

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In ...

painted and the chapel dedicated to the Forty-Nine Martyrs of Scetis built. Moses is mentioned by name in two inscriptions commemorating the renovations dating to 914 and 926 or 927. A

Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...

inscription in the dome of the main church also refers to Moses: ''Papa Moyses pi-hikoymenos'', "Father Moses the abbot". In 925, the new governor to Egypt,

Takin al-Khazari The takin (''Budorcas taxicolor''; ), also called cattle chamois or gnu goat, is a large species of ungulate of the subfamily Caprinae found in the eastern Himalayas. It includes four subspecies: the Mishmi takin (''B. t. taxicolor''), the golde ...

, imposed the

poll tax A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...

on Christians who had until then been exempt (bishops, monks and the infirm). To protest this change of policy, the monasteries of Egypt elected Moses of Dayr al-Suryan to be their envoy to the Caliph

al-Muqtadir Abu’l-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn Ahmad al-Muʿtaḍid ( ar, أبو الفضل جعفر بن أحمد المعتضد) (895 – 31 October 932 AD), better known by his regnal name Al-Muqtadir bi-llāh ( ar, المقتدر بالله, "Mighty in God"), wa ...

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

. He went east with a delegation around 926 or 927 and remained there for five years, navigating the caliphal bureaucracy and acquiring books for his monastic library. He appears to have stayed there for some time after successfully completing his mission. He returned to Egypt in 931 or 932. The story of his embassy is recorded in the notes of several Syriac manuscripts and by the Muslim historian

al-Maqrizi Al-Maqrīzī or Maḳrīzī (Arabic: ), whose full name was Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn 'Alī ibn 'Abd al-Qādir ibn Muḥammad al-Maqrīzī (Arabic: ) (1364–1442) was a medieval Egyptian Arab historian during the Mamluk era, kn ...

. Moses brought back 250 Syriac

codices The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

collected in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, in places like Tikrit, Reshaina and

Harran Harran (), historically known as Carrhae ( el, Kάρραι, Kárrhai), is a rural town and district of the Şanlıurfa Province in southeastern Turkey, approximately 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Urfa and 20 kilometers from the border cr ...

. They were both purchased and received as gifts. Most of these were distributed to western libraries in the 18th and 19th centuries, and only a small portion of the collection remains in Dayr al-Suryan today. Moses added a note to each of the codices describing how it was acquired. Some of these are quite long. Sometimes they were placed over previous notes, thus destroying records of the manuscripts' earlier history. It is only from Moses' collection that complete Syriac texts of the works of

Ephrem Ephrem is a masculine given name, a variant spelling of Ephraim (also spelled ''Efrem'', ''Ephraem''). It is the name of biblical Ephraim, a son of Joseph and ancestor of the Tribe of Ephraim. People First name Pre-Modern * Saint Ephrem, one o ...

and

Aphrahat Aphrahat (c. 280–c. 345; syr, ܐܦܪܗܛ ''Ap̄rahaṭ'', ar, أفراهاط الحكيم, , grc, Ἀφραάτης, and Latin ''Aphraates'') was a Syriac Christian author of the third century from the Persian / Sasanian Empire who composed a ...

survive. Among these 250 was also British Library, Add MS 12150, the oldest dated codex in any language. The latest mention of Moses as abbot is found in a note to another Syriac biblical manuscript in the British Library, Add MS 14525, which dates to 943 or 944.

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{refend 10th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate Syrian Oriental Orthodox Christians Syrian Christian monks Egyptian Oriental Orthodox Christians Egyptian Christian monks Egyptian abbots Syriac writers