Bar Sahde

To what degree mediaeval East Syria had light on the dark age, this was had via Bar Sahdé, "Martyrides", of "the Seleucian Karka" now Kirkuk.

Nineveh-Siʿrt knew Bar Sahdé, using it in several places, albeit whatever it said about the dark age is lost. Elias of Nisibin (d. AD 1046) cites that part of it... in a "chronicle of disaster" form. Mari bin Sulayman (AD 1140) doesn't tell of Peroz. Mari neglected Elias overall despite being a coreligionist, and likely didn't own Bar Sahdé either. Same goes for ʿAmr b. Matta.

Elias was conversant in both Syriac and Arabic, writing his chronicle in both tongues in parallel. I know not if this holds for Siʿrt; if Bar Sahdé had been translated into Arabic before Siʿrt and Elias got to it. A study of Elias' bilingual might resolve this.

From Siʿrt and Elias we know Bar Sahde discussed shah Peroz - a widely-excoriated failure, unless you're a White Hun I suppose. I have no idea what he made of Barsauma. Bar Sahdé went on to discuss Justinian's Plague AD 540. There's also material on monks and on catholicos Aba. Quite a bit on catholicos Ezekiel.

Wiki dates our man to the eighth century, Philip Wood to the seventh. I would pin him pre-Islamically.

Bar Sahdé seems like an apocalyptically-minded moralist, an earlier Bar Penkayé [UPDATE 3/19/24 or Daniel of Tur-'Abdin]. Now that Mingana's Sources syriaques is out on the interweb it would be interesting to see where those two link up, if at all. Bar Penkayé speaks like a Nisibene theologian with much to say about Cyril and Ephesus (and Armenia!); he doesn't talk about his own place so much, skipping pretty-much straight to "Islam and the countries conquered by it". UPDATE 1/25/22: I'm on the case.