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This photograph shows a Syriac Christian family from Persia (modern Iran), perhaps at the end of the 19th century. In this period, Syriac communities (under a variety of names including Assyrian, Aramean, and Chaldean) were widespread across the…

This modern brass oil lamp from Kerala, India is used for light during celebration of the “Divine Mysteries” (the Sunday Eucharistic worship service). Similar oil lamps can be traced back to the Syriac churches of Late Antiquity. Fire holds deep…

Traditional East Syriac design

This edition of the Syriac New Testament with a parallel Latin translation (1717) was edited by J. Leusden of Utrecht and C. Schaaf of Leyden, improving on the earlier edition of Aegidius Gutbier. Leusden’s work had only progressed to the middle of…

Aegidius Gutbier (1617-1667) was a professor of Oriental languages in Hamburg, Germany and one of the preeminent European scholars of Syriac of the early modern era. Gutbier’s scholarship reflected a Protestant interest in Syriac Christianity as a…

In the 16th century, western interest in Syriac Christianity began to grow. Beginning with editions of the Syriac Bible, publishers sought out and printed Syriac texts as witnesses to the early history of Christianity. A variety of lead type fonts…

The Syriac script is an Aramaic alphabet derived from earlier Northwest Semitic scripts (a family of languages which has flourished for over 3 millenia). Over time, three distinct Syriac scripts developed. The oldest literary script, Estrangela, was…

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