Category: Announcements

General announcements

Back into the time machine – Greek words embedded in the Syriac of the “Life of Mar Aba”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in 2013 I translated the “Life of Mar Aba” from the German translation into English, with an introduction.  Unless I am mistaken, this remains the only English translation of this very interesting text.  It captures the period in the 6th century when Christianity began to become acceptable in the Sassanid Persian empire.  At the start of his episcopate, Christianity was an illegal religion, practised only by the lower classes.  By the end of it, when Mar Aba died, the King of Kings promptly appointed a trusted friend as patriarch.

The process of change is visible within the “Life”.  Mar Aba himself was a Persian nobleman, and could deal with the nobles as equals.  What we see in the “Life” is the gradual realisation, by the Sassanid monarch, that the presence of the Christians might be a solution to a perpetual problem for these monarchs, namely the power of the Zoroastrian clergy.  The Sassanids were always threatened by these fire priests, who even deposed one king and ruled directly themselves for a few years.  But priests distracted by a religious problem are much less of a threat to the secular power.  Again and again we see demands for the execution of Mar Aba.  And every time the king loudly agrees with the priests, expresses his outrage, and … does not execute him.  The king becomes more powerful, and the fire priests have to come to him with their problem.  By the time of the Muslim conquest, there were Christians everywhere, and the Sassanids openly used them as a counter-balance to the Zoroastrian clergy.

Today I received an enquiry about my translation, asking why it has Greek words embedded in it.

The short answer is that they were present in the old German translation in the BKV series that I used (online as electronic text here, and in PDF here).

The longer answer is that I do not know.  The introduction told me that the Syriac was printed by Paul Bedjan in 1895, and happily I found the volume here.  The Life of Mar Aba is section 20, and begins on page 206.

The Archive.org scan is not the best in the world, as you can see.  Unfortunately the days when I could read any Syriac are now behind me.

But I suspect that the words given in Greek in the German translation are what the Syriac uses – Greek words transliterated into Syriac characters and used in the absence of a native Syriac word for the item.

Interesting anyway!

UPDATE (22 August 2024): Grigory Kessel has kindly answered the question, in the comments:

Those are Greek loanwords. Many of such loanwords have a long history and were naturalised rather early.

By the way, there is now a new edition of the life of Mar Aba with a French translation:

F. Jullien (ed.), Histoire de Mar Abba, Catholicos de l’Orient; Martyres de Mar Grigor, général en chef du roi Khusro Ier et de Mar Yazd-Panah, juge et gouverneur (CSCO 658/659; Scriptores Syri 254/255), Louvain: Peeters, 2015.

Thank you!

Share

English translation of letters on the Acacian schism in the early 5th century

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just come across this rather marvellous blog post, “The Libellus of Hormisdas and the Failure of Policy”. This is at the Ubi Petrus Ibi Ecclesia blog, previously unknown to me.

The following are translations of key letters in the Acacian Schism and will be added to over time.

A fairly niche subject, but wonderful to have these texts!

Share

Fragments of two lost plays by Euripides discovered in Egypt

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In November 2022 a Colorado classical scholar, Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, was sent a digital photograph of a papyrus containing 98 lines of text, and measuring 10.5 inches square, by Basem Gehad, an Egyptian archaeologist with the ministry of tourism and antiquities.  The papyrus came from Philadelphia, and the two scholars had been working together also at Hermopolis Magna.

Investigation of the find using the TLG quickly revealed that the material was Greek tragedy: 22 of the lines proved to be a slightly different version of material from two plays by Euripides, the Polyidus and the Ino.  The rest was new, and probably from the same source.

There is a little more information here.  Unfortunately there is no photograph of the papyrus, or other details of the find.  Let us hope that this swiftly becomes available.

It’s out there, people.  There is more of the literature of antiquity just sitting there, awaiting discovery.  Rather good news, all the same.

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I finished OCRing the Novesianus edition of Ephraem Latinus, De Beatitudine Animae, although with some difficulty.  The text grew more and more abbreviated, until on the last page every single word was abbreviated somehow, anyhow.  It looks as if the editor/printer had allocated a certain amount of space, and got it wrong.  Very odd.

I saw some more marginal notes, and these seem to be corrections, or emendations.  The publisher is clearly printing a manuscript, but these are places at which he thinks the text before him is in error.

The text is divided into four chapters, each with a short introduction, just as in the incunable; but the introductory text is not always the same as the incunable.

It seems that there is a 6th century manuscript of this ancient Latin translation of Ephraem, at the Vatican Library, and it is online!  I’ve not got my hands on it yet tho.

I don’t feel like doing any text critical stuff at the moment, so I’ve started passing the electronic text into Google Translate and ChatGPT, and working on the output.  The text is addressed to monks, and those living a monastic life.  The Latin seems fairly simple.  It starts with a series of beatitudes, and then moves into exhortations to the brothers.

This little collection (parva corpus) of sermons by “Effrem” seems to have been popular.  There were copies in a good many libraries in the Dark Ages.

I confess that I am getting a little fed up of medieval monasticism and hagiography – I would like to return to the hard mediterranean light of antiquity – but I’ll make an English version of this.

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very strange summer here, with hardly any summery weather.  I’ve been feeling rather stale for a while now, as you do, so I was looking forward very much to my holiday.  We had booked a trip away to a seaside town and left ten days ago.  Unfortunately my girlfriend got norovirus on day one of the holiday, and I followed a day later.  We endured an awful week in pyjamas in our hotel rooms.  Then, at the end, we we were obliged to vacate before we were actually fit to travel.  I am extremely thankful to God that I was able to drive us home safely.  The day before a short walk had left me trembling.  Thankfully my recovery is now well in hand.  But the process of putting my system back together means sitting up for a good hour after meals.  This in turn lends itself to doing some light work!

So I’ve started to create an electronic text of Ephraem Latinus, De Beatitudine Animae, from the 1547 Novesianus edition.  While I already have an electronic text of the later Menchusius edition of 1563, it would be handy to have both.  Then you can machine-compare the two.  It’s also an undemanding task, which I can pick up and put down.

The number of abbreviations in the printed text seems to be increasing, however.  These are sometimes a bit weird.  A few minutes ago I found this section.

I.e. “anima, frater * confuge semper ad Deum, …”  I liked the “per” at the end, which I have never ever seen before.

I’m expanding abbreviations as I go, and putting an “@” in the text where I am unsure, for later attention.  Rightly or wrongly, it is almost as if it is the printer who is doing the abbreviating, rather than any editor.  Who knows?  Paper can hardly have been a factor.  Possibly this was just what was in his exemplar.

The marginal note “confurge” is also interesting.  Where does it come from?

The earlier incunable with the same divisions and chapter introductions – unlike the Menchusius – gives no help.  And this is even more abbreviated:

The “semper” also has the “per” abbreviation at the end, preceded by simply “s”!  I am so glad that I didn’t try to transcribe that.

Lots of mysteries here, none of which need attention now.  I shall just keep correcting the OCR output in Abbyy Finereader, expanding the abbreviations, and we’ll see where we get to.

Share

From my diary: more on Ephraem Latinus, “De Beatitudine Animae”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Finding myself slightly at a loose end yesterday, I found myself thinking about Ephraem Latinus.  This is a small collection of sermons in Latin (the so-called “paruum corpus sermonum”), mostly translated from Ephraem Graecus in antiquity.  I thought about making a post on these; and then I discovered that I did just that in 2018, here.

The post suggested that making an electronic text might be a helpful thing to do, and so I thought that  I might give it a go.  I’ve written elsewhere about De beatitudine animae, and so that was the obvious candidate.  The ancient Latin translation is CPL 1143ii.

But where to find a text to transcribe?  These texts have never been edited critically.  The link on my original post suggested only two sources; an incunable by Piscator, and Assemani’s 18th century edition.  But the latter turned out to contain only a modern translation, not the ancient Latin translation.  The incunable certainly had the stuff, and there was a link to the Darmstadt university copy.  But then I found that the online copy was too low a resolution to read!  I dropped a note to Darmstadt – after all nobody can use what they had there – and I got a very quick reply and a zip file of .jpg files in a better resolution.  I was rather impressed with their professionalism.

Here’s the opening portion of the text (ugh!).  Note how “Ca.I” is 4 lines before the first words of the text, “Beatus qui odio”?

Ephrem Syrus, Sermones, ed. Kilianus Fischer (Piscator), Freiburg im Breisgau c. 1491, fol. 12-13v.

But meanwhile I had started to look at manuscripts.  These were mostly in Bavaria, at the BSB library.  Reluctantly I started to transcribe the text from one of them, with some difficulty.  Here’s another, BSB Clm 14364:

Thankfully then I learned of another edition, printed in 1563 by Menchusius.  This was not hard to find, and proved to have the text, in a form that could be OCR’d.  Unfortunately it also contained the long-s – why can’t OCR do this now? – but I could cope with that.  The text has a small amount of abbreviation, but probably not more than I could handle.

Jacobus Menchusius, Opuscula Quaedam Divini Beati Ephraem, Mayer (1563), f.10v f.

That’s a whole lot better to work with.  It did take a little while to OCR and create a basic text of De beatitudine animae.  I then started to compare it to the Piscator edition.  Immediately I saw that the text in Menchusius is divided into 7 chapters, with six unnumbered headings, while Piscator is divided rather confusingly into four.  The manuscripts accessible to me do not seem to have any system of divisions.

The Word document that I now have probably contains some OCR errors, and a few places where I have expanded the abbreviations wrongly or whatever.  So the next stage is to go through it. A spell-check seems indicated, for one thing.  We’ll see!

Share

Letter 43 of the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I, on translating Greek philosophy into Arabic

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The newly discovered text of Porphyry, On Principles and Matter, (see yesterday) is actually mentioned in a letter written by the Nestorian patriarch Timothy I.  I find that an English translation of this exists, by Sebastian Brock, “Two letters of the Patriarch Timothy from the late eighth century on translations from Greek,” in: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 9 (1999), 233-46, together with a detailed commentary.  The author consulted several manuscripts to correct the text.

We all know that “Greek science comes to us from the Arabs.”  Christians living in the conquered lands were the translators, so it is interesting to see a letter from one of them.  The “king” referred to below is the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi.  Apparently Syriac texts of this period all use the term “king” for the caliph.

LETTER 43, TO PETHION

1.  To the God-loving priest and teacher, Rabban Mar Pethion: Timothy the sinner greets you and hopes to see you.

2.  The royal command required of us to translate the Topika of the philosopher Aristotle from Syriac into the Arabic tongue. This was achieved, with God’s help, through the agency of the teacher Abū Nūh. A small part was done by us as far as the Syriac was concerned, whereas he did it in its entirety, both Syriac and Arabic; the work has already reached a conclusion and has been completed. And although there were some others who were translating this from Greek into Arabic – we have written to inform you how and in what way it happened that all this took place – nevertheless (the king) did not consider it worth even looking at the labours of those other people on the grounds that they were barbaric, not only in phraseology, but also in sense, whether because of the natural difficulty of the subject (hypothesis) – for you are aware of the style (eidos) of the Philosopher in matters of logic, and how and to what extent he infuses obscurity into the beauty of (his) meaning and sense -, or as a result of the lack of training of those who approached such things. For you know the extent and magnitude of the toils (agōnes) and labours such a task requires. But (the king) entirely approved of our labours, all the more so when from time to time he compared the versions with each other.

3.  Let your Eminence sagely ask and enquire whether there is some commentary or scholia by anyone, whether in Syriac or not, to this book, the Topika, or to the Refutation of the Sophists, or to the Rhetorika, or to the Poetika; and if there is, find out by whom and for whom (it was made), and where it is. Enquiries on this should be directed to the Monastery of Mar Mattai – but the enquiries should not be made too eagerly, lest the information, (the purpose of the enquiry) being perceived, be kept hidden, rather than disclosed.

4.  Job the Chalcedonian told me that he has seen a small (number) of scholia on the Topika, but only, he said, on certain chapters. But let your Chastity doubly enquire about scholia or a commentary on these books.

5.  Send us the other volume of Athanasius, so that we can copy it out. We have the first. I think the translation is by Paula, for on the title (kephalaion) of the book the following is inscribed: ‘First volume (pinakidion) of the holy God-clothed Gregory the Theologian, which the Abbas Mar Paula translated from Greek into Syriac in the island of Cyprus’. The revision, so it says, is by Athanasius. So much for this.

6.  Search out, too, for the treatises on the natural principles (lit. heads) of bodies, written by someone of the Platonic school (dogma); it begins: ‘Concerning the natural principle of bodies some have said…’. The first treatise gives the opinion of all the earlier philosophers and sets out the Ideas (ideai) and Platonic Forms. The second treatise begins by speaking of matter (hylē), species (eidos) and negation, following Aristotelian teaching (dogma). (The author) deals with it in five sections, but the treatise is incomplete. Search out to see if these treatises can be found – both what remains from the second treatise, and the rest of what follows on from these.

7.  Search out for a work by a certain philosopher called Nemesius, on the structure of man, which begins: ‘Man is excellently constructed as a rational soul and body…’. He brings the subject to an end in roughly five sections; at the end he promises to deal with the soul, but this second part is missing.

8.  Please search out and copy for us Dionysius in the translation of Athanasius or that of Phokas.

9.  Peace to you and to all the brethren.

The reference to the Porphyry text is in section 6, and this was of course opaque to Dr B. back in 1999.  He tells us that “Job the Chalcedonian” was the Melkite patriarch Job.  “Athanasius” is not the famous bishop of Alexandria but Athanasius II of Balad, the monophysite patriarch who revised an existing translation by Paul of Edessa (“Paula”) into Syriac of the homilies of Gregory Nazianzen (“Gregory the Theologian”).  The same Athanasius and also translated ps.Dionysius the Areopagite, whose translation was itself revised by Phocas of Edessa.  The latter version is still preserved in a number of Syriac manuscripts.  The Nemesius text is De natura hominis (CPG 3550), but only fragments of the Syriac version survive.  The still famous monastery of Mar Mattai near Mosul was then and still is a monophysite monastery.  It was evidently well-stocked with books.  Timothy, as patriarch of the the rival Nestorians, had to conceal that he was the originator of the enquiry.

The letters of Timothy I have all been edited with German translation in the magnificent CSCO series by M. Heimgartner (list of volumes).  The relevant volume is M. Heimgartner, Die Briefe 42 – 58 des Ostsyrischen Patriarchen Timotheos I, CSCO 644 and 645, Peeters (2012).  Sadly I was unable to access this volume, however, but no doubt a PDF exists somewhere.

Share

A lost Greek philosophical text rediscovered in Syriac: Porphyry’s “On Principles and Matter”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The discovery of a lost text from ancient times is not something that happens every day.  Obviously it’s exciting when it does!  Strangely a recent discovery seems to have passed mostly unnoticed.

The text in question is On Principles and Matter, a text written by none other than the famous Porphyry, the late 3rd century neoplatonist philosopher.  He was a disciple of Plotinus, whose Isagoge (Introduction to Logic) was translated into every ancient language.  He is also known as the author of a lost text against the Christians.

The original Greek remains lost, but the work was discovered in a Syriac translation by researcher Yuri Arzhanov of the University of Salzburg.  It then turned out that the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I (778-820 AD) references the work in his Letter 43.

The manuscript was discovered at Deir al-Surian (= “Monastery of the Syrians”), the famous monastery in the Nitrian desert that preserved an enornous haul of Syriac literature, brought to England in 1842 by Archdeacon Tattam.  In recent years there has been a Polish mission at work at the monastery, sponsored by the Levantine Foundation (website seems to be down).  A catalogue of the 48 manuscripts (mostly a single quire) and fragments (some 200+) was published in 2014 by Sebastian Brock and Lucas Van Rompay.[1]  This was inaccessible to me, but thankfully Syriacist Grigory Kessel published a review which is accessible on his Academia page here.  This review tells us quite a bit:

Regrettably, the authors do not give any further information on the history of the remaining Syriac manuscripts. According to Murad Kamil, the manuscripts in fact were found during restoration works (“a few years ago Anba Tawfilus, the bishop of the monastery, when he was repairing a wall, found a case with a number of Syriac mss”). …

Frgm. 27 belongs to the famous codex BL Add. 12150, the oldest dated Syriac manuscript (411); Frgm. 9 comes from the Codex Curetonianus (BL Add. 14451), one of the two known manuscripts of the Old Syriac Gospels; and Frgm. 8 belongs to BL Add. 14528, an early list of biblical lessons. As far as the Patristic texts are concerned, Frgm. 4 belongs to BL Add. 14552, a unique witness of the Homilies on Luke by Cyril of Alexandria. Frgm. 7 once formed a part of BL Add. 12159, which contains the Cathedral Homilies of Severus of Antioch. Two flyleaves attached to the manuscripts Syr. 1, Syr. 9 and Syr. 31 turn out to derive from BL Add. 17270, our only witness of a commentary on the works of Mark the Solitary presumably written by Babai the Great (the text remains unedited).

Murad Kamil was a Coptic scholar who visited the monastery in 1951, and drew up a list of the manuscripts there, but never published it.

The Porphyry text is found in MS. Deir al-Surian Syr. 27, which contains a number of other texts. Our text is given there without author or title.  However the author calls himself a disciple of Longinus and Plotinus, and comparison with extant fragments of Porphyry leaves no doubt as to the author.  The title is modern.  At least one scholar has wondered whether it is, in fact, not a separate work, but a portion of Porphyry’s lost commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.

A scribal note at the bottom of f.111r indicates that the manuscript was given to the monastery by Abraham b. Zur`a, when he was Coptic patriarch between 975-8 AD.   The patriarch must have brought a number of Syriac manuscripts with him to Egypt.

Dr Arzhanov published the Syriac text with an English translation: Yury Arzhanov, Porphyry, ‘On Principles and Matter’: A Syriac Version of a Lost Greek Text with an English Translation, Introduction, and Glossaries, DeGruyter (2021).  Series: Scientia Graeco-Arabica 34.  It is currently accessible on Archive.org here.

Dr A. also edited a volume of papers about the discovery: Yury Arzhanove (ed.), Porphyry in Syriac: The Treatise ‘On Principles and Matter’ and its place in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac philosophical traditions, DeGruyter (2024).  From the introduction:

In 2021, a previously unknown work by Porphyry of Tyre (d. 301/305 AD) preserved in a Syriac translation was made available to historians of philosophy (Arzhanov 2021). The treatise, which has come down to us without any title, was published as On Principles and Matter (abbreviated as PM). This text not only enlarges our knowledge of the legacy of the most prominent disciple of Plotinus but also serves as an important witness to Platonist discussions of first principles and of Plato’s concept of prime matter in the Timaeus, since it contains extensive quotations from Middle Platonist philosophers (e.g., Atticus and Severus).

Soon after the edition of the PM, Alexandra Michalewski published a review of it in the journal Etudes platoniciennes (Michalewski 2022), stressing the importance of the newly discovered text both for our understanding of Porphyry’s views and for our knowledge of the Middle Platonist interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. In addition, the French scholar pointed out the similarity between some portions of the PM and the final part (De Silua) of the commentary on the Timaeus composed in Latin in the fourth century AD by Calcidius (see Michalewski 2022, §§19–21). The close proximity between the published Syriac treatise and the Latin text of Calcidius has been established independently by Michael Chase (see his chapter in the present volume).

Parallels between the treatise preserved in Syriac translation and the Latin text of Calcidius turn out to be one of the most important keys to our interpretation of the PM. These parallels further strengthen the attribution of the original Greek text that underlies the PM to Porphyry, since scholars long assumed that the section De Silua in Calcidius’ commentary depended on a work of Plotinus’ disciple. In addition, a number of publications which appeared after the edition of 2021 made apparent the value of the quotations from other philosophers (which mostly belong to the period of Middle Platonism) preserved in the PM (Ge 2022).

The work itself is philosophy, which will appeal mainly to specialists.  But all the same, it is wonderful to have a bit more of antiquity.

Share
  1. [1]Brock, Sebastian, and Lucas Van Rompay, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts and Fragments in the Library of Deir al-Surian, Wadi al-Natrun (Egypt), Peeters (2014).↩

Moses the Black: A Fake Quote?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The following quotation has begun to spread online through “quotation” websites:

You fast, but Satan does not eat. You labor fervently, but Satan never sleeps. The only dimension with which you can outperform Satan is by acquiring humility, for Satan has no humility. – Saint Moses the Black.

Indeed this was posted on Twitter yesterday, with the comment: “An absolute banger of a quote from Moses the Black.”  The source is the OurChurchSpeaks site, also on Instagram.

But is it genuine?

Moses the Black, also known as Moses the Robber, is one of the Desert Fathers who appears in the various collections of sayings and lives.

The Apothegmata Patrum collection exists in two versions, the “alphabetical” collection, and the “systematic” collection (there is a third version, of anonymous sayings, known as the “anonymous” collection).  The “alphabetical” collection was translated by Sr Benedicta Ward, “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers – The Alphabetical Collection” (1984), and Moses the Black is on p.138-143.  But this contains nothing like our quotation.

The “Systematic” collection was translated by John Wortley, The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Systematic Collection, (2012).  This contains a number of sayings by Moses the Black, but not ours.

The “Anonymous” collection was also translated by John Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cambridge (2013).  The section on humility does not contain our saying.

The “Lausiac History” of Palladius also devotes a section to Moses the Black, here known as Moses the Ethiopian.  The ACW 34 (1965) translation gives this on pp.67-70.  But this too contains nothing like our quotation.

This raises questions about whether the saying is authentic.

A search in Google Books produces no results.  This is surprising, because books of sayings and quotations are in there.  It tends to suggest that this is a very recent coinage, and from an online source.

A Google search using a custom date range produced decent results only from 2022 onwards.  There were a few hits before then, but these seemed in fact to date later or otherwise be illusory.

In the absence of definite evidence, I would recommend caution.  But it looks like a fake quote.

Update: My thanks to Dr Sever Voicu who points out in the comments that this is indeed a saying of the desert fathers, although not attributed to Moses the Black.  It can be found in the “Systematic Collection”, chapter 17, paragraph 32, and is translated by John Wortley thus:

32. The fathers used to say, “The devil can imitate everything. As for fasting, he never ate; as for watching, he never slept. But humble-mindedness and love he cannot imitate. So let there be a great effort on our part to have love within us and to hate pride, through which the devil fell out of heaven.” – John Wortley, p.308.

So the saying is authentic – obviously paraphrased slightly – but the attribution is not.

Thank you, Dr V.!

I had forgotten, but I found that in 2018 I wrote a bibliographical post on the various collections of sayings.  It’s here.

Share

From My Diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s almost midsummer, and the weather is definitely settling into hotter weather.  The brightness, the intensity of the sun, gives energy and we all start rushing about.  I’ve been in my garage, pulling stuff out on to the driveway, and throwing things away, donating others, and repacking.  There is little urge to sit in front of a screen.  This morning I walked along the promenade by the sea in my shirt, with no coat.  It’s important to get away from the web.

I have a couple of folders on my desktop seeking attention.  The first is a folder on Homer.  I’ve been trying to get a feel for the text tradition.  It is remarkable how some obvious questions do not seem to be answered, despite the voluminous literature.  I’d like to know when the first quotation from Homer is recorded in some other writer.  A simple question; but I have yet to discover the answer.  Surely there are lists of testimonia?

The second is a folder on the Easter Bunny, started in April, it seems.  I think it can wait.

The third is a link to my Eutychius working directory, with the materials to revise my translation of that Arabic Christian author.  At the moment I do not feel drawn to it.

I did look at Bar Hebraeus, Book of the Dynasties.  There is an 18th century German translation, printed in the Fraktur typeface.  But if you go to Google Books and display text rather than the page, Google Chrome will automatically turn the result into quite passable English.  I don’t know that the world needs me to labour through this stuff.

I have a folder in my email with ideas for blog posts; and another for material connected to Mithras, for upload.  Neither appeals at the moment.

So I do nothing, and instead I fritter my time away.  But it is summer, so maybe that’s allowed.  I feel a bit stale, and it’s probably time for a holiday.

In fact I hope to go away for a week in a month or so, which should provide a much-needed break.  I’m also mulling over a short trip – perhaps a couple of days – that I would like to do by myself to look at a medieval site.

A link tells me about a city-tour of Istanbul in September.  That would be nice to do, although the prices are rather frightful, and I am not quite sure that my other half is fit enough to do it.  It is generally best to visit such exotic places with a tour, however.  You get much the best rooms, rather than the worst. This knowledge brings back a few memories for me, indeed.

My parents once visited Rome independently.  On arrival they were put into a terrible room at their pricey hotel.  My mother was reduced to tears.  The reason for this poor room was that a tour had co-opted all the best rooms.  But the tour departed the following morning.  Thankfully the management took pity on the old couple and moved them to a good room with a view of St Peters.  That brightened their mood greatly; and then they walked down into the ancient centre, and walked, and walked all the way from the Borghese Gardens to the Vatican.  Such was the charm of the city upon my generally frail mother, that she wore out my father in walking.  In the end they had an excellent time, and they remembered their visit to Rome all their lives.  They always intended to return, but sadly never did.  But they fell into this trap which awaits the independent traveller.

The same practice of preferring tour guests to everyone else also applies in other countries.  I stayed away from home a lot during my working life.  In one hotel in Cambridge, where I was staying for several months on  business, I witnessed the same phenomenon.  All the best rooms – the ones you could get some sleep in – were on the fifth floor.  Needless to say, I had arranged with the staff to stay in the same room each week upon that floor.  But if a tour party came in, I sometimes had to hustle a bit to get my room!  Tours are big money.  But I made sure that the staff were on my side.

There’s no point wishing that things was otherwise.  The hotel business must work like this.  After all, the hotel staff see the tour representative every week, and although the tour members may be strangers, they know that the tour rep has real spending power.  A solo traveller or couple arriving for a one-off couple of nights may be treated as they please.  This fact explains some of the worst hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.

I always found that it was advisable to make friends with the hotel reception staff.  I always used to go and chat to them a little, and make sure that I wasn’t just another face.  They are, after all, the people upon whom you will rely if anything goes wrong.  And sometimes it does go wrong.  I remember checking into a hotel once and discovering that my booking for that week had vanished.  And not just my booking: all the bookings for that week had miscarried, and so other people had been booked in!  But I had arrived early on the Monday, before anyone else – always a good idea -, and I was there every week, and the staff knew me.  With a wink they gave me my usual room, and they booted someone else, some unknown stranger who had been assigned my room and was yet to arrive.  A little later I came down to reception where there was a huge queue of tired and frustrated businessmen, all with the same problem.  I came back to the hotel a couple of hours later and the queue was still there.  But I, their friendly regular visitor, whom they saw every week, had got my room.

Likewise it’s worth staying in better hotels, especially in the Middle East.  Things go wrong, even in the best hotels.  But the staff are embarrassed, and they will try to fix things and help you out.  Just don’t shout, and keep smiling, and they will keep trying.  In lesser hotels your query will be met with a shrug and a look of “what do you expect in a dump like this?”

There is something to be said for a tour where you only stay in a hotel for a night or two, and are then off to some other point of interest.  Even if something goes wrong, you only must endure it for a night or two.

I suppose all this is the musings of a man who spent twenty years on the road from Monday to Friday, and learned how to manage.  Most hotels are awful.  Coming home can be the nicest part of the holiday!

Share