A newly discovered chronicle from the early eighth century is giving medieval historians a rare new window onto the political shocks and religious debates that reshaped the eastern Mediterranean in the decades before and after the rise of Islam.Roger Pearse has more information, including a draft AI translation of the first part, and another human-produced draft translation in the comments to that post.Researchers at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) have discovered and analysed the text in a manuscript held at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt. It was part of a collection of documents discovered at the monastery when a walled-up room was opened up in 1975. Known officially as Sinai Arabic 597, the manuscript dates from the 13th century and has significant water damage.
The chronicle within it dates from the year 712-13 CE, and covers the history of the world up to the year 693, making it one of the earliest surviving Christian sources to discuss the expansion of the Arab-Islamic empire. It narrates sweeping change across Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period, including the Arab–Byzantine wars and the shifting theological landscape of eastern Christianity.
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Machine-translated portions of the new Maronite Chronicle of 713 in English
The media coverage of this story is confused and confusing in places. The information in the Medievalists article is correct, but incomplete. It has taken me some time to parse out fuller and correct information. As far as I can tell, it is as follows.
The manuscript dates to the thirteenth century. But it is a manuscript of a chronicle written in 712-13. It covers the history of the world from Adam to the early 690s CE. It was originally written in Syriac, but the Syriac original is lost. This sole manuscript of the chronicle is an Arabic translation of the Syriac.
Also, a word on the dates in the manuscript. The AI sometimes got confused about the dates in the machine translation. Sometimes it correctly gives the dates as "xxx Sel.," meaning that they are in the ancient Seleucid dating system, which continued in some use up into the Middle Ages. At other times it incorrectly gives the dates as "xxx CE" or even "xxx AH" (the Islamic system, whose year 1 is 622, the year of the Hijrah).
Almost all of the dates in the chronicle are actually according to the Seleucid system. To get the proper Common Era reckoning, subtract 312. That will be right within a year or so. The chronicle also occasionally gives a correct date according to "the Arab calendar," that is, the Islamic one. These dates are in the double digits. All the three- and four-digit dates are in the Seleucid reckoning.
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