Chronicle of Edessa

The Chronicle of Edessa (Latin: Chronicon Edessenum) is an anonymous history of the city of Edessa written in the mid-6th century in the Syriac language. "Chronicle of Edessa" is a conventional title; in the manuscript it is titled Histories of Events in Brief (Syriac: ܬܫ̈ܥܝܬܐ ܕܣܘܥܪ̈ܢܐ ܐܝܟ ܕܒܦܣܝ̈ܩܬܐ, Tašʿyātā d-suʿrāne a(y)k da-b-pāsiqātā).^[a]

The Chronicle of Edessa is generally agreed to have been written around 540–550 CE.^[b] The Chronicle primarily used old Edessan royal archives as its source, as well as some more recent church records,^[1] and accordingly is thought to be historically reliable.^[2][3][4] It may make use of a lost history of Persia.^[5]

It is extant only in an abbreviated version in a single manuscript, Vatican Syriac 163 (Vat. Syr. 163).^[6][7] This manuscript, from the Syrian Convent of Our Lady in the Wadi El Natrun,^[5] was acquired by Giuseppe Simone Assemani during a trip to the Near East from 1715–1717 taken at the request of Pope Clement XI.^[6] Some excerpts of the lost full version of the text—sometimes called the Original Chronicle of Edessa—are preserved in other Syriac chronicles.^[7]

The Chronicle covers the period from the founding of the kingdom of Osrhoene in 133/132 BCE until 540,^[7] but few events are recorded before the 3rd century.^[5] The Chronicle picks up with a record of a flood of the river Daysan during the reign of Abgar VIII in November 201, which damaged a Christian church building in Edessa.^[8][9] This is the earliest mention of a building dedicated exclusively to Christian worship,^[10] as well as one of few records of Christianity in Edessa at this time.^[11][9] Unlike other Syriac literature, the Chronicle does not contain any legends of the Apostle Thaddeus.^[3][4]

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