pour un Oriens Christianus Novus: Repertoire des dioceses syriaques orientaux et occidentaux.

• Author: Harrak, Amir
• Position: Review

By JEAN MAURICE FIEY. Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 49. Beirut: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1993. Pp. 286. DM 98, OS 765 (paper).

More than two and a half centuries ago. Michel Le Quien published his monumental Oriens Christianus, in which he studied the jurisdictions of the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch (East and West Syriac), in addition to those of the Maronite Patriarch and Latin bishops in the Near East and Byzantium. Divided into provinces. this "Christian Orient" has been investigated throughout our time in terms of dioceses, lines of patriarchs and bishops, and geographical ecclesiastical borders. Scholars attempted to update the three-volume work but failed, because of its wide scope. Nevertheless, in the book under review, J. Fiey, a French Dominican Father, has succeeded in largely rewriting volume II (the Syriac world).

Fiey's "Oriens Christianus Novus" is divided into two major parts (pp. 43-145 and pp. 147-284), related to the two branches of the Syriac Church. The first part deals with the East Syriac churches. the "Nestorian" and the Chaldean united with Rome since the sixteenth century. The second part deals with the West Syriac churches, the "Jacobite" and the uniate Syriac Catholic. Each part of the book consists of a long geographical list of the Syriac episcopal sees. After naming a place, Fiey identifies its location whenever possible, and then proceeds to list the names of the bishops who presided over it. At the end of each entry, bibliographical references are given. The chronology extends from the earliest centuries of the Syriac churches to the most recent episcopal sees in the Middle East and the diaspora (see for instance pp. 81 and 284). The book includes a short introduction (pp. 9-11), basic bibliography (pp. 15-16), and a table listing all the patriarchs (pp. 19-41)

Fiey's book is useful for many reasons. Its list of geographical names and the information about their identifications are of interest not only to students and scholars of Syriac, but also to Assyriologists, Arabists, and Byzantinists, since many of the toponyms occur in cuneiform, Byzantine, and mediaeval Arabic sources. The form of some geographical names barely changed throughout the centuries. One such (p. 134) is Syriac Shiggar, Arabic Sinjar, and cuneiform Singara. Another, though less familiar, is Syriac Hanzit (read Hanzit.), known in Arabic sources as Hisn Ziyad, "fortress of Ziyad"; in classical sources as...