A Melkite Arabic Synaxarion on Vellum, (calendar with Gospel readings and saints' and feast days), probably Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai Peninsula, 10th/11th century

Arabic manuscript on paper, 55 loose leaves, 18-22 lines to the page, written in naskh script in brown ink, some marginal glosses, headings, subheadings and key words picked out in red, decorative horizontal bands used to separate months in the calendar comprising open triangles in black with red dots in the middle, red morocco binding with tooled borders and trellis decoration, with flap  

The Collection of Phocion J. Tano (d.1971) and thence by descent.

In fair overall condition, leaves damaged with losses and staining, ink faded, binding worn with wormholes, as viewed.
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These leaves are part of an Arabic Melkite (i.e. Chalcedonian) synaxarion, which lists for each day of the 'fixed' calendar year, starting with 1 Aylūl [September] the saints or, occasionally, other notable events (for example, the foundation of Constantinople) to be commemorated and the Gospel readings to be recited. The leaves also contain a number of Gospel readings related to 'unfixed' days in the liturgical calendar, for example those based on Lent (al-ṣawm), Easter (al-fiṣḥ) and Pentacost (al-khamsīn); these readings were presumably to be recited on the relevant days in the liturgical year.

The saints for each day are simply named, and there are no extracts from any saints' lives, as can be found for example in the Arabic Jacobite synaxarion (Le synaxaire arabe jacobite (rédaction copte), ed. and trans. René Basset, Patrologia Orientalis 1 (1907): pp.215-379; 3 (1909): pp.243-545; 11 (1915): pp.505-859; 16 (1922): pp.185-424; 17 (1923): pp.525-782; 20 (1929): pp.735-90). Sometimes the text of the Gospel readings is provided, but more frequently a cross-reference is provided to another day's reading. Some verses are provided with commentary, occasionally (where it is possible to tell) over a page in length, usually from a scholar identified as 'the commentator' (al-mufassir), but occasionally also from someone identified as 'the holy one' (al-qiddīs). The saints and events commemorated are mostly those to be expected from a tentative comparison with other Arabic Melkite synaxaria, which are of course related closely to the Constantinopolitan liturgical calendars (see, for example, Juan Mateos, Le typicon de la grande église: Ms. Sainte-Croix n^o 40, x^e siècle, 2 vols. (Rome, 1962-63). Fairly frequently, however, saints are commemorated in this synaxarion on different days. That said, some saints appear listed here which may not be in comparable synaxaria. Those saints commemorated for whom no potential parallel could be found easily in other Melkite synaxaria or the Constantinopolitan synaxarion are:

·         Mīniyūs the martyr (al-shāhid) (1 Tishrīn al-Awwal [October]).
·         Janādhiyus = Gennadius (?) (20 Tishrīn al-Thānī [November]).
·         Yūlūs/Būlūs al-Muʿīdī (15 Kānūn al-Thānī [January]).
·         Anāwafīṭū (31 Ādhār [March]).

It remains to be seen if the saints and events commemorated in this synaxarion can offer any possibilities for ascertaining its date and provenance. All that can be said is that superficially it seems very Constantinopolitan, which is of course to be expected; see for example the entries commemorating the foundation of Constantinople, and the restoration of the 'temple' (haykal) of the Theotokos in the Khalkoprateia in Constantinople (18 Kānūn al-Awwal [December]).

The work from which these leaves come may originally have been divided into at least two sections, a 'fixed' calendar and an 'unfixed' one. Some support for this suggestion may derive from the fact that the page (14908_z_037 [left page]) which precedes the start of the 'fixed' calendar (on 14908_z_036 [right page]) is clearly the end of something. The main text finishes halfway down this page after only eleven lines, and then a different hand has added some comments in the remaining space. This could be the end of the 'unfixed' calendar, or perhaps the end of another, separate work that was bound in at some point with this one.

There is one partially-extant note from a later writer, presumably a reader of the work, on 14908_z_037 (left page). This writer seems to have been called Simʿān b. Yūsuf b. al-Ḥājj Mūsā b. al-Ḥājj ... [the text is lost here].  

As far as we are aware, there are no comparable editions of Arabic Melkite synaxaria and Gospel lectionaries. It is worth emphasising therefore, that because so few such works survive from this period anything that does can be considered important. A small number of partially comparable manuscripts survive, a large proportion of which seem to be still in St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (for example, manuscripts of at least another thirteen (complete or partial) synaxaria and another twenty-nine Gospel lectionaries (complete or partial) survive in St. Catherine's Monastery; see respectively Kāmil, Catalogue of All Manuscripts, nos.169-81, 198-226. A few more have since been discovered; see Meimaris, Katālūj al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya. That a relatively high proportion of extant Arabic Melkite synaxaria come from St Catherine's Monastery is clear from the most important study of such texts by Sauget, Premières recherches; the Arabic manuscripts upon which his research was based include nine from Sinai and eight from five other libraries). The fifty-five leaves under discussion here contain a relatively large proportion of the 'fixed' and 'unfixed' liturgical calendars, whereas other manuscripts of Arabic Melkite synaxaria can run to the hundreds of folios (see Sauget, Premières recherches, esp.pp.37-108. Cf. also the enormous Arabic-Jacobite synaxarion referred to above, n.9 (and this, in a fine example of the confusing usages of the term synaxarion does not include the Gospel readings). However, in spite of this possible brevity, the presence of some commentary on particular verses seems noteworthy, as does the leaves' provision of extensive translations into Arabic of sections of the four canonical Gospels.

Please see the online version of this catalogue for a more detailed analysis of this manuscript.