18 - [ΜΙΧΑΗΛ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΡΟΥ ] Michel Le Syrien: [ΧΡΟΝΙΚΟ] Chronique de Michel le Grand, Patriarche des Syriens Jacobites traduite pour la premiere fois sur la version Armenienne d Ischok. Venice, Typographie de Saint Lazare, [1868]

[ΜΙΧΑΗΛ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΡΟΥ ] Michel Le Syrien: [ΧΡΟΝΙΚΟ] Chronique de Michel le Grand, Patriarche des Syriens Jacobites traduite pour la premiere fois sur la version Armenienne d Ischok. Venice, Typographie de Saint Lazare, [1868] First edition of any part of Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle (1130-1199), an essential history of the Levant during the 11th-12th centuries. Small folio. Contemporary Venetian cloth over boards. Internally very good: some very light scattered spotting, mainly on the title and final page; text clean and bright throughout. Complete: 378 pp. Overall, a very good copy. The autograph of the Chronicon is lost. This first edition was based on the Armenian version produced in 1248 by the Assyrian priest Ishok, which reached Europe and was published in 1868 by Victor Langlois. In the early 20th century another version was discovered in Syria, in the original Syriac, though from a much later manuscript of the 16th century. The two versions differ in several respects. The Chronicle was also translated into Arabic (in manuscript form) in the 18th century, as Syriac was dying out. Michael’s work is by far the most comprehensive account of events in eastern Asia Minor and northern Syria from the first arrival of the Turks in Anatolia in the early 11th century up to the later 12th century. Born in Melitini (eastern Anatolia) while Byzantine rule was still fresh and crusader control was strong, Michael personally witnessed key events, including the fall of Edessa in 1144 and its sack by the Turks. His history provides detailed accounts of the political situation, the fraught coexistence of Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians at the arrival of the Turks, the devastation of their invasions, the arrival and rule of the crusaders, and the partial restoration of Byzantine authority in the 1150s-1170s. As Patriarch of the Syrian Jacobite Church, Michael was often hostile to Byzantine power and its promotion of Greek Orthodoxy. Yet his extensive chronicle records countless events absent from other sources: natural phenomena, cultural and geographical observations, monuments since lost, and detailed portraits of a society under immense pressure from both Turkish and crusader invasions. In its later sections, compassion and sensitivity come through as war and violence become the norm in his homeland. A very rare edition, absent from all major collections of the region, a cornerstone of medieval historiography.