Category: Syriac

This continues as follows:

In the year 1057 (745-746), Marwan went out from the Gate of the Turks.

It is written in the prophet Jeremiah: “Therefore thus says the Lord: See I will put pitfalls before this people: fathers and son will fail together; neighbour and friend will perish.”

All these things happened to the Arabs, because brothers and nephews fell into pitfalls because of their ambition.

The supporters of Abbas and those of Hisham, the son of Walid and the supporters of Marwan, who were brothers and nephews, neighbours and friends, threw themselves on one another, perished themselves and perished with them a great many men.

Jeremiah also spoke about the journey even of Merwan: “See a people comes from the land of the north; a great nation comes out of the confines of the earth; they are armed with bows and spears, they are cruel and merciless; their voice is like the sound of a rough sea; they are mounted on horses and are prepared like brave men for battle. We have learned their design and our hands have grown weak; tribulation and pain have seized us, like a woman who gives birth. Do not go out in the fields and do not walk at all in the road because of the sword of the enemy.” And Isaiah also said, speaking of them: “I have raised him up from the north, he will come from the East, he will call on my name; they will take the judges and treat them like the mud that the potter tramples under his feet,” and again: “From the north the evil will spread over all the inhabitants of the earth.”

When Marwan had invaded Mesopotamia and subjected it, he established governors in all the cities, and even in Mosul. Then, having assembled a large army, he made it advance rapidly with workers and engineers.

The supporters of Abbas went to the West. Yazid, who had killed Walid, died after a reign of six months, and [45] his brother Ibrahim took his place.

The latter, on learning that Marwan had crossed the Euphrates with a large army, and that Mesopotamia had submitted, was seized with fear. “They shook and staggered like drunken men.”

He first sent Nouaim Ibn Thabit against Marwan, with a considerable army. It is reported of this man that he had seventy sons.

They then marched against each other and engaged in battle: the whole army of Ibn Thabit was destroyed and cut to pieces in the presence of Marwan.

The supporters of Ibrahim seeing that Marwan had triumphed in this first battle were afraid, and gathered innumerable forces, bringing even the country people to fight with slingshots.

Both armies advanced against each other, and having met, encamped at `Ain Gara.
After numerous engagements, and after many men had fallen continuously on both sides, Marwan finally gained the victory and cut Ibrahim to pieces and his brothers, who had run away, and Soliman, son of Hisham. No similar battle ever happened in the world; never in any place was so much blood as in this place. Even the people of the countryside — more than five thousand men — perished.

Merwan after his victory besieged Emesa, captured it and threw down its walls. He also removed the corpse of Yazid from its tomb and had it crucified head downwards.

He also took, from a certain Jew, four hundred thousand [pieces] of gold.

The plague is raging in the East in the 740’s AD.  We’ve already seen quite enough about it, but the chronicler is not finished.  He ends his description of it as follows:

Everywhere, those who remained – a very small-number –removed the dead, and all day without pause carried them away, threw them down as one would throw a stone on a mound, then back, take another, and go out again, to throw it down the same way. Many lacked neighbours: they were seen lying on the streets and eaten by dogs, because there was no one to bury them. Each was only sufficient for his own house: several workers were even hired just to carry the corpses from the house or from public places because of their putrefaction. And so was fulfilled the saying: “I have brought up the smell of their rotting to your nostrils,” and another: “The earth wept and lamented.”

Soon there were no more tears, no sorrow nor pain: because every man was already knocking on the door of the tomb. Gold and silver were despised as dung: so that if on the wives or virgins there was gold, silver or precious ornaments, no-one would stretch out their hand to take anything, not even the parents of their children: because they felt that soon they would come with them into the tomb and their rottenness would mingle with theirs.

And now, my beloved ones, is it not so reasonable that I weep tears? What sobbing can suffice? What breaking of the heart, what grief, what lamentations, what groans, what pains will be sufficient when I see old men, and men of all ages and sizes, slaughtered and lying down like cedar tree-trunks!

The great mercy of God appeared even in this scourge: firstly because it fell first on the poor who were lying in the streets of cities: everywhere it was through them that it began, [42] and when they were all dead, then this terrible rod turned against the rich and the lords of the cities.

These two things happened by the divine mercy, so as to benefit both parties. First for the city-dwellers, because they showed their zeal for justice and gained for their souls great benefit from their care for the poor, while they were taking care of them; they buried them, organised their funerals and buried them with great mourning, with care, with fear and zeal. Then [for the poor], because if the scourge had hit them at the same time as the others, how would it have been possible, because of their stench, for their fleshless bones to be removed from the streets? For they would have lacked those who could deal with them, if it had not first visited them, when everyone was healthy, upright and well: then care was taken to remove them, in order to bury them, those who had no one to bury them. Subsequently, the scourge caused the powerful, who were relying on their tombs and funeral directors, to remain without graves, so that not one of them had a burial service. The scourge, in fact, turned on the great when the poor had been buried, and death overtook them all, from the smallest to the greatest: none of them was left. Even those who escaped this calamity, and did not die, withdrew, as they could, away from the towns. At the end, those who survived were struck with a terrible wound, in the groin: some with one, the others with two. What had happened to the dead took place among the living.  They were suddenly seized with pain [43] in the groin, and soon, by this sign, those who had escaped death acquired the certainty of suffering more severely thus than by the cruel death. Their groins swelled up, became swollen and burst, and it produced large, deep ulcers that produced a flow of blood, pus and water, day and night, like a spring. After that there was a great languor in which they remained, some one month, others two, five, six months to a year, many even two years. Many of them were affected forever.

Then was fulfilled the prophecy which says: “The water will flow from all the knees,” and: “Every human heart will rot.” and another: “On all their heads will be baldness.”

It happened so in the present time. Anyone who had survived his family or tribe would fall into this infirmity. It happened that his two legs were left running with water and even blood and pus, until his head became bald, and because of that, those who survived, few in number, were not recognizable, at least they were not recognized and were distinguished by their clothing. We could not discern the priests and monks: all had become bald. As it was in the groin, so it was at the armpit and neck. Most were quickly released from this evil, others were after some time, others will never fully recover their health.

But, while this calamity was enveloping the region on all sides like the pains of childbirth oppress pregnant women, the Arabs did not cease to fight and injure each other. When Merwan went out from the Gate of the Turks, the whole earth was troubled and agitated. [44]

The next passage of the anonymous 9th century Syriac chronicle is as follows.  After the widespread flooding, which of course polluted the water supply, the inevitable plague struck.  This is happening towards the end of the Ummayad caliphate, in the early 700’s.

It is interesting to note that, while the Arabs and Jews buried their dead in “innumerable” pits, both were clearly a very small minority.  The population of Syria was mainly Christian, almost a century after the Moslem conquest. 

Of the great plague which happened in that time.

Here the prophet Jeremiah comes to  help us, he who knows better than anyone lamenting over the miseries by which we are surrounded on all sides: “Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears? and I shall weep day and night for the dead of the daughter of my people.” And again: “On the mountains I abandon myself to tears and lamentations, and in the desert to complaints because they are desolate and there is nobody there.  Let our eyes shed tears, let our eyelids flow with water. Therefore, listen, women, to the word of the Lord; let your ears capture the speech of his mouth, teach your daughters lamentations, and let each learn the plaintive chant of his neighbour; because death is come through our windows, it came into our homes to exterminate children in the streets and young men in public places. The bodies of men shall fall like manure upon the face of the earth, like the grass behind the mower, and there is no one who collects them!”

[36] Let him come now [the Prophet], and let him weep about, not one people, nor only the city of Jerusalem, but over all nations and many cities, that the plague has made like a press, trampling and crushing them underfoot and plucking without mercy their inhabitants like beautiful grapes; — over the whole earth, because the punishment, like the reaper in the middle of the ripe corn on foot, has threatened and cut off all ages, all conditions, all ranks, without distinction of persons;  — over decaying and mangled corpses [which lie] in the streets of the whole world: their fluids flow like water, and there is nobody to bury them; — over houses, large and small, beautiful and pleasant, which have suddenly become the graves of their inhabitants, in which suddenly servants fell with their masters, and no-one escaped to drag the corpses out of the interior; — over the roads, which are desolate; — over many villages, whose inhabitants have all perished at once; — over the palace where each trembles at the other; — over the nuptial chambers decorated for brides, who have there died suddenly; — over young virgins kept in the women’s quarters, awaiting the celebration of their wedding and who suddenly have been carried to the grave; — over many similar things that surpass speech and the narratives of all the rhetoricians; — over these things, I say, the prophet would have reason to weep and say: “Woe is me!” not because of “the defilement of the daughter of my people,” but because of the ruin of all the inhabited earth, and the world that the plague has completely destroyed because of its sins. It would be right to use the prophetic words of his colleagues: “Let him come and tell the rest of those who survived: Weep, mourn, you ministers of the altar; enter, spend the night in the hair shirt, ministers of my God,” not “because the offering has been removed [37] from the house of God,” but because of men, who have been cut off from the world; and again: “Let the earth live in mourning, let all its inhabitants lament. Call the mourners and let the chanters of lamentations all come to celebrate together, not over an only son,” nor a single corpse, but over peoples and kingdoms. “By the tearing the earth will be torn, by the breaking the earth will be broken, by the shaking the earth will be shaken, by the trembling the earth will tremble. It will be delivered to the fire like a terebinth lined with leaves, like an oak tree fallen from its base.”

All these things have been fulfilled in the present time: great disturbances and violent earthquakes; armies, wars, the enmities of the Arabs between themselves over power; the famine which so raged that in the southern and eastern region the entire population arose and spread themselves all over the countries of the north and west; discord with every misery.

“I will send after them,” says the prophet, “the sword and captivity, famine and plague too.”

All these things have happened today without exception. Here is the sword of the Arabs [turned] against themselves; here are depredations so that it was impossible to go out without being pillaged and robbed of one’s property; here is famine which rages within and without. If someone enters his house, there he finds famine and pestilence, if he goes outside, the sword and captivity run to meet him. On all sides there is nothing but cruel oppression and terrible pain, suffering and disturbance.

“They are drunk, but not on wine, and they stumble, but not from spirits.”

Men began to wander and to travel from city to city and place to place; they stumbled as if they were drunk; they asked for bread and there was none, just as the prophet said.

First, a large number of the heads of families began to sicken and die from a corruption of the blood and from ulcers. Things went thus [38] during the whole winter. They could not be buried. Men were lying in the streets, the porticos, towers, temples, in every home, tortured by the violence of the disease and the great strictness of the famine, so that the number of those who perished from starvation was greater than that of those who died from disease.  It was especially those who had eaten bread until they were full who were seized by the disease. When the days became warmer, tumours appeared on the sick, who began to fall dead in public places, like manure in the face of the earth, and there was no one to bury them!

The plague began to rage among the poor, who were abandoned in the streets. They buried them with honour, singing hymns, and they were buried properly, and when there were no more poor, mortality raged with such violence against the lords of the villages and the towns that, when the priests wanted to do a funeral, there were gathered in the morning at the same place fifty to seventy to eighty or a hundred coffins, in each of which there were two or three dead, or even four children. And so all day, without truce or rest, the corpses of men were buried.

The Arabs covered the earth with pits, and the Jews likewise. The tombs of the Christians were so full that they themselves were forced to dig holes in the earth. In a single day, over five hundred coffins came out by a single door. Throughout the day the doors were only used for the goings and comings of those who carried the corpses: they went out, deposited them, and returned to take others.

So, except for a few, there was no {burial} service, because of the swiftness of death, the small number [39] of priests and the innumerable multitude of buryings. In the morning, the priests prescribed that anyone who had a deceased should come to the nearest crossroads and the whole region or district would assemble in this place. The priests divided themselves up in the morning to go in all directions to perform the office of the dead and to put them in the ground in groups. It happened that one group was over a hundred coffins, in which there were more than two hundred or two hundred and fifty dead, because they were piled next to each other without pause throughout the day. Here there was no distinction between servant and master, between serving-girl and mistress, between the hired man and the hirer, but one storm of destruction and fury was prepared for them all: servants and masters were equally struck down without distinction of persons; the man of the people and the leaders fell, and were groaning next to one another.

Let everyone admire the divine decree and be filled with astonishment and stupour in presence of these judgments of God, unfathomable, incomprehensible, incommensurable for men. Certainly “a deep abyss is the judgments of the Lord!”

The plague spread its devastating hand over those who hold power, who enjoy opulence, or who revel in grandeur. The houses of many of them were left without an heir, because there remained in them neither servant nor master. Men suddenly abandoned to their companions their possessions, their riches, their crops, even their beautiful homes. How splendid and opulent mansions, how many families perished because there did not remain a single heir!

The human language is incapable of expressing the prodigious disasters [40] that occurred in the country which stretches from the Euphrates to the west, as well as in the other cities of Palestine, in the North and the South, as far as the Red Sea as well as in the rest of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Asia [Minor], Bithynia, Lysynie [Lydia?] Galatia, even in Cappadocia: because the oppression of this cruel suffering was felt throughout the world. As the rain descends upon the whole earth, or as the sun’s rays are spread equally in all places, the plague spread equally over the whole world. However it was prevalent more in the countries previously designated. In these regions, towns and numerous villages became suddenly deserted, and no-one stayed there or passed that way. They were filled with rotting dead bodies, lying on the ground like dung upon the face of the earth, with no one to bury them: because not one of their inhabitants remained; so that men lay in the middle of them, swollen, full of pus, and rotting. The houses were opened as tombs and their owners putrefied in the middle of them. Their furniture, their gold, their money, their possessions were scattered in the streets and there was nobody to collect them. Gold and silver were despised, and riches were abandoned everywhere and found no master. Old men and old women, adorned with white hair, who had hoped to be buried with honour by their heirs, lay open-mouthed in the streets, in houses, in public places, dying and putrefying. Pretty virgins, beautiful young girls who were waiting for their happy nuptials and the adornment of precious clothing were found lying and decomposing, and became an object of pity for those who saw them. Would to God that this was happening in the tombs! But it is in the houses in the streets [41] that charming and cheerful young people have become livid, deceased, and that their pus was mingled with that of their parents.

That is what happened in these countries.

I have a tendency to have Word documents on my Windows Desktop.  A couple of these have been staring at me for a while now, and I decided that I needed to do something about them.  What, I wondered, was “denys.doc”?

Well, it related to this post; the opening portion of the fourth part of the Syriac Chronicle of ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre, otherwise known as  the Chronicle of Zuqnin from the place where the manuscript was found.  I must have scanned the opening pages — although I don’t seem to have that scan now — and perhaps I worked on them on another PC.  Anyway I have tidied them away.  But the material was certainly interesting, relating to the end of the Roman period and the Moslem invasions.  The French was easy enough, and online.  I may look at this a  bit more this evening.