A few months ago, my friend @FKrimsti showed me this manuscript, Oxford, Hunt. 595. It contains works by Syriac writer Jacob of Serugh (d. 521). But what caught my eye were the scribal & reader notes. A on #Syriac #wine #poetry on the margins. /1

Here, next to a readership note in Garshūnī (Arabic written in Syriac script), we find a poem jotted down by the reader him/herself. It deals with themes of grief, anxiety, and... has something to say about wine! /2

Today I worked out that the poem is by the famous Syriac writer Gregory Abū l-Faraj bar ʿEbrōyō, alias Barhebraeus (1225/6-1285/6). Barhebraeus is better known as a writer of chronicles. But few outside have fully understood him as a poet, theologian, & philosopher. /3

The poem is dodecasyllabic, i.e. in the 'Metre of Jacob', named for its populariser Jacob of Serugh, and is structured in rhyming couplets. You can find it in a collection of Barhebraeus's poems edited by Yūḥannā Dolabani ( 2nd ed. 1983). /4

My translation (erring on the literal):

'How will I shake off the wine of my sorrows on which I have become drunk?
With what will I wash the garment of my heart that anxiety has sullied? ... /5

In our bad times, the path to consolation is fenced off by rocks,
And there is no end of lover[s] whose wine is not mixed with the water of deceit.'

(Ms. Hunt 595, cf. ed. Dolabani, pp. 24-25) /6

To give a sense of metre & cadence to the Syriacless, here's a translit. (West Syriac):

l-ḥamrō d-ʿōqōṯay da-b-hēn rwīṯ ʾaykan ʾafīḡ
l-ḵutīn lebō d-ṣaʾyōh renyō b-mōnō ʾašīḡ

b-zabnan bīšō šbīl buyōʾē b-qatōrē sīḡ
u-layt sōḵ rōḥmō da-b-may nēḵlō ḥamreh lā mzīḡ

/7

Such bacchanalian themes and their attendant motifs were not uncommon in the Syriac poetry of Barhebraeus' time. The 13th century was a critical period of encounter between Syriac & #Arabic literary models – a period that's often been referred to as a 'Syriac renaissance' /8

(I have tweeted about another poet from this period, John bar Maʿdanī (d. 1263), here: https://twitter.com/salam_rassi/status/1330264753818759172?s=20) 9/

But equally interesting is the poem's afterlife. It deals with themes of adversity & disquiet. Why, then, did the reader of Hunt. 595 jot it down? Does it reflect a state of mind? Or were they just fond of the poem? Unfortunately, little else is known of the reader. /10

But this isn't the 1st example of paratextual Syriac poetry I've come accross. A while back, I found one in a manuscript of an Arabic translation of Gospel readings from the Church of the East lectionary (incidentally, containing a royal statement of ownership! ): /11

Digitised thanks to @visitHMML: https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/130082

Here, the scribe indicates in Garshūnī that these two poems were written as a pen trial or probatio pennae (tajrīb al-qalam), i.e. a writing exercise usually involving a few words – but in this case a Syriac poem! /12

Here's my transcription & transl. (again, on the lit. side) of the 1st of these:

'The heart longs with an ineffable tongue,
The spirit's yearning is utterly unfulfilled,
The soul is befuddled & no longer knows what it sings,
And now is drunk on a love better than wine.'

/13

And a transliteration for the Syriacless (this in time East Syriac pronunciation):

sawyūṯ lebbā b-yaḏ leššānā lā meṯʾamrā
wa-lhīqūṯā d-rūḫā la-ḡmār lā meṯgamrā
u-nawšā tewraṯ u-lā tūḇ yāḏʿā mānā zāmrā
u-hā men ḫubbā rāwyā ṭāḇ men ḫamrā

/14

Again, the poem is dodecasyllabic, but I haven't managed to trace its author. A good candidate in the E. Syriac tradition is 13th-ce. poet Khāmīs bar Qardāḥē. Unfortunately, I only have an incomplete scan of his Syriac dīwān (published 2002 in Duhok, Iraq by Sh. Khoshaba)./15

Khāmīs' wine songs (soḡyāṯā d-ḫamrā) speak to the Arabic genre of khamriyyāt as typified by Abū Nuwās (d. 814) & others. As well as wine-drinking, themes in both Ar. & Syr. traditions included spiritual intoxication (though adapted to a Xian context in case of former). /16

Despite his popularity in Assyro-Chaldean communities over the centuries, Khāmīs' poetry has occasioned little interest from scholars. One excellent exception is this study by David G.K. Taylor. /17

I'm also working on an article re: Syriac praise poetry in conversation with Arabic madāʾiḥ (among several competing projects!)

Returning to subject of thread though, I hope to've shown how these neglected poets' popularity was reflected in a living reading tradition... /18

... and that Christian-Muslim relations were not always polemical, apologetic, or even ecumenical. Sometimes they manifest in entangled literary genres–in this case wine poetry–that speak beyond one confessional community. Think Marshall Hodgson's 'shared lettered tradition'./19

P.S. I initially wanted to record my recitation of the poems in this thread to give people outside Syriac studies a sense of metre. But I'm not currently set up for that, so decided to transliterate instead. I hope to do some recordings in my next Syr. poetry-related thread! /20