This momentous two-volume publication deals with the Christian history of Iraq. The collection of ca. 600 inscriptions reflects in multiple ways the history of the Christian communities from the early days under the Parthians and the Sassanians, through the Islamic and Ottoman period, until the present day. Throughout their history Iraqi Christians have lived as minorities in a non-Christian and non-Syriac environment. They have had to respond, therefore, to the challenges and opportunities that the majority culture presented to them. Furthermore, from the 5th or 6th cent. onwards Syriac Christianity became divided between the followers of the Dyophysite dogma associated with the names of Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia and those that adopted Miaphysite beliefs – both regarded as heretical by the Chalcedonian Roman and later Byzantine Imperial Church (as well as by Western Christianity). In the modern period, all communities were exposed to missionary efforts by the Western Churches, which led to the creation of “Uniate” Churches. The inscriptions studied here, therefore, belong to four different ecclesiastical traditions: the Church of the East or Assyrian Church (Dyophysite, previously known as “Nestorian”); the Syriac Orthodox Church (Miaphysite, previously known as “Jacobite”); the Chaldean Church, which is the Uniate offshoot of the Church of the East; and the Syriac Catholic Church, which separated from the Syriac Orthodox tradition.
Syriac and Garshuni Inscriptions of Iraq, Répertoire des inscriptions syriaques