Seert, the Zuqnîn of the Orient

I am digesting Philip Wood on "Seert". This is Siʿrt in Syriac mangled to Sirta in Greek; it is not to be confused with Sîrt in Libyan Arabic lacking ʿayin. There was a chronicle compiled out in the Kurdestan, covering AD 251-423 and 483-650 but probably composed in the 900s AD. Addai Scher in 1900 found two MSS, one Siʿrt and one Nineveh / Mosul; these, both Arabic, make up our text. Wood is trying to make sense of that. Like James Howard-Johnston on Pseudo-Sebeos.

In 2000, Butrus / Peter Haddad published another chronicle from Iraq closely paralleling up to about AD 400 of Siʿrt. This helps reconstruct that Siʿrt likely started before its extant start AD 251. Likewise Siʿrt assuredly had something about AD 423-83.

So far Wood has compared the first three quarters of Nineveh-Siʿrt to other Late Antique chronicles, in what they report and what they don't report, or in what they sometimes fail to report. Compare how historians have traditionally handled "Pseudo-Dionysius" from Zuqnîn. Where Zuqnîn's early movements tracked John of Ephesus; Wood for Siʿrt finds the best match in the Church Of The East.

Hence why Andrew Palmer in 1993 - concentrating on West-Syria - relayed Zuqnîn but not Siʿrt. Zuqnîn rode with the Miaphysite West. Siʿrt would ride with thoroughly Dyothelete Khuzestan and Bar Penkayé. Not that the Zuqnîn Chronicler would have had a problem with the Siʿrtî material, nor the Siʿrtîs with that Chronicler; both were mutually tolerant, as Christians went, living under a common heretical Islam. But anyway Wood's quarters go only to AD 585. Their sources weren't, at that time, always so mellow.

As intimated, chroniclers sometimes cherished theological disagreements which prevented them from taking each other seriously. But also, sometimes a chronicle simply didn't spread very far. Zuqnîn's effort did not get copied at all; our MS is its autograph. For our topic, Siʿrt did not use Bar Penkayé's world-history, nor Khuzestan. We might suggest Siʿrt was making stuff up like "the Augustan History" or - as Wood notes - the Arbela. However Siʿrt seems to get the facts right, where they can be checked. Again - like Zuqnîn.

Wood finds that Siʿrt's material (beside Haddad) matches best Abulpharagius Barhebraeus and Mari b. Sulayman - "ʿAmr b. Matta" too but Wood won't be talking much about him. By "Mari" and "ʿAmr" both, Wood refers to the Gismondi: so please read "Majdal", so Bo Holmberg (pdf) as endorsed by Hoyland, 716. Barhebraeus belonged to the Miaphysite colony in the East, so aligning with Maruta of Tikrit and indeed PseudoMethodius. But Barhebraeus nonetheless needed Eastern sources. Compare Dionysius (the real one) of Telmahré pinching his nose as he relays Theophilus.