SEAT · Syriac Education, Abbasid Times: Reclaiming the Place of Syriac Intellectual Training under Muslim Rulers

Syriac Christian intellectuals played a crucial role in translating Greek science and philosophy into Arabic between the 8th and 10th centuries. Syriac groups had been translating the “wisdom of the Greeks” into their Late Aramaic variety, Syriac, since the late 5th century. Therefore, when the Abbasids took control over West Asian regions inhabited by Syriac-speaking Christians, these locals were called to action alongside other minorities living in the Empire, such as Zoroastrian Persians, to translate Greek texts. Although the role of translators played by Syriac Christians is starting to be recognised in scholarship, almost nothing is known about the kind of education these intellectuals received, which enabled them to hold prestigious intellectual positions in Abbasid Iraq.This project shifts the focus away from the product — translations of Greek works into Syriac and Arabic — and onto the people responsible for this massive intellectual achievement. Specifically, it investigates the education received by Syriac-speaking students in monastic schools, particularly on philosophical, grammatical and rhetorical training. Syriac curricula have been investigated in some recent studies (Becker 2006, Tannous 2018), but most scholarship stops at the 7th or 8th century, when the Islamic conquests changed the socio-political makeup of West Asia. My project investigates neglected intellectuals in a neglected period in Syriac history: the 9th century, a transitional but pivotal period between the Golden Age (4th to 7th c.) and the Syriac Renaissance (10th to 13th c.). By investigating a rich array of Syriac texts and through combined approaches from various disciplines, the project reconstructs the scholastic curriculum available to Syriac students, aiming to bring to the fore a crucial piece of the intellectual history of a minority living under the Abbasid caliphs.