East Syrian Identity in the Early Qajar Period (Early 19th c.): Sāḇā of Ūlā’s Book of the Rule on Syriac Language and Ethnicity

Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. 2023. Vol. 26. No. 2. P. 415–465.

Minov S.

This article contributes to current research on the development of Syriac Christian identity during the modern period by bringing into discussion a previously unknown literary source, the Book of the Rule, composed in the year 1829 by Sāḇā, an East Syrian priest from the village of Ūlā in the Salmas district of the Urmī region. In this apologetic work, aimed to protect his community from the pervasive influence of Western missionaries, the parish priest Sāḇā offers an exposition of the origins and early history of the Syriac people and their language. While doing that, he asserts the superiority of the East Syrian Christians over other Christian denominations by emphasizing Syriac as the language of biblical patriarchs and Jesus himself and by claiming that by way of his human nature, Jesus belonged to the Syriac nation.

Keywords: коллективная идентичность, ethnicity, collective identity, сирийское христианство, Syriac christianity

Publication based on the results of: From Antiquity to Modernity: epistemology and conceptualization of the development of the material and spiritual cultures of the East (2024)