BAR HEBRAEUS. Crusade of Richard I (portion)

(KURDISTAN).

Kurdistan

19th-century

Syriac transliterated into square Hebrew characters

This manuscript is a copy in Hebrew letters of a portion of an historical book by Bar Hebraeus (1226-1286) composed originally in Syriac. The book chronicles the battles fought between the King of England and Saladin in the 13th-century over possession of the Holy Land. The manuscript portion had been printed in Syriac letters (accompanied by English translation) in the textbook Syriac Reading Lessons (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1934), pp. 42-87. The entire book was translated into English by E.A.W. Budge (1932). It is thought that this copy was made in Kurdistan where the Jews spoke Aramaic (or neo-Aramaic, as it is referred to in the academic literature) and would have no difficulty following the text - once it had been transliterated from Syriac to Hebrew characters. Syriac, a North Semitic language, is remarkably similar to the Aramaic of the Targumim and Talmudim. The most famous work in Syriac is the Peshitta, the Syriac translation of the Bible, which aroused the interest of various Jewish scholars over the years, including the late R. Chaim Heller, who printed in Berlin in the 1920’s an edition of the Peshitta transliterated into Hebrew characters - just as our own manuscript is a Hebrew transliteration of Syriac