Difference between revisions of "Gregory Abul-Faraj"

Gregory Abul-Faraj <ref name="term_17320" />  

<p> (ABUL-PHARAGIUS, or ABULFARADASCH), (called also Bar-Hebraeus, from his father having been originally a Jew), was the son of Aaron, a physician of Malatia, in Armenia, and was born in 1226, and, like his father, was a Jacobite. He applied himself to the study of the [[Syriac]] and Arabic languages, philosophy, theology, and medicine: in the latter he became a great proficient, and acquired a high reputation among the Moslems. When only twenty-one years of age he was made bishop of Guba by the Jacobite patriarch Ignatius; and in 1247 he was made bishop of Aleppo. About 1266 he was made Maphrian, or primate of the [[Jacobites]] in the East, which dignity he retained till his death, in 1286. His works are very numerous; the best known is the Syriac Chronicle, which is largely cited by Gibbon, and is, in fact, a repository of Eastern history. It consists of two parts: </p> <p> 1. The Dynasties — a Civil Chronicle from Adam to A.D. 1286; </p> <p> 2. An Ecclesiastical History, which again falls into two divisions: </p> <p> (1.) A Catalogue and Chronicle of the [[Patriarchs]] of Antioch, called by this author the Pontiffs of the West; </p> <p> (2.) A Catalogue and Chronicle of the Primates, Patriarchs, and Maphrians of the East. </p> <p> The Civil Chronicle is published in Syriac and Latin, from the Bodleian MS., under the title Chronicon Syriacum, ed. P. J. Bruns and G. G. Kirsch (Lips. 1788, 2 vols. 4to); an abridgment of the whole chronicle made in Arabic by Abul-faraj, in Arabic and [[Latin]] by Pococke, under the title Historia Compendiosa Danastiarum, ab Ed. Pocockio interprete (Oxon. 1663, 2 vols. 4to). A complete edition was proposed in [[Germany]] by Bernstein, in 1847, but nothing beyond the prospectus has yet appeared. The "Ecclesiastical History" exists in MS. in the [[Vatican]] and Bodleian (?) libraries. The autobiography of Abul-faraj is given by Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, tom. 2, See Cave, Hist. Lit. Ann. 1284; [[Christian]] Remembrancer, vol. 30, p. 300. </p>

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