The plague and famine under Hisham – from the Chronicle of Zuqnin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation continues:

Of the drought and famine that also took place on the earth in those days.

At that time, God sent us on these most cruel and terrible plagues: the sword, captivity, famine and pestilence, because of our sins and the misdeeds that our hands had engaged in.

“Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul would not incline towards this people. Send them away from before me, and let them withdraw. What if they say to you: Where shall we go? [You shall tell them:] Thus says the Lord: To death he who [is destined] to death; to the sword he who [is destined] to the sword; [34] to famine he who [is destined] to famine; to captivity he who [is destined] to captivity. I will send four plagues upon them, says the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to eat, the birds and beasts of the earth to devour and tear in pieces, and I will deliver them over to the earthquake.” This is what Jeremiah, taught by revelation, has left us. He himself said: “The cry of Jerusalem has gone up before me. The great have sent the small to the water; they have come to the cisterns and have found no water: they have returned with empty vessels, they have been confused and distressed, and they have covered their heads. Because of the works of the earth there has been no rain; the labourers have been confounded, and have covered their heads; the does have given birth in a desert, and they have abandoned their young because there was no grass; the wild asses are keeping to the roads: they have sucked the air like dragons and their eyes are dim because there was no grass.” In truth, all these things which the prophet said were fulfilled in the present time.

This is the carnage that the armies of Arabs have made between them. They have drowned the earth in their blood; the birds, the beasts and even the dogs are filled with their flesh. Men pillage one another. The plague ravages them, so that if someone goes outside the sword stops him; if he stays at home, plague and famine take him. One hears on all sides only sadness and bitterness.

First, the rain that used to descend to earth during the winter has been held back and has not fallen. All the seeds have been dry and nothing has sprouted, so that there has been a great famine throughout the region, so much so that wheat rose to eight or seven qephîzè for a dinar: and yet none is for sale. Some governors sent men who seized wheat wherever they found it, either in houses or in silos, and sent it to him. Men were oppressed to death by the famine, especially the owners of wheat who had not experienced [35] the test of famine and whose corn had been seized by the authorities, so that they died of hunger. Thus the famine was felt even more by the rich than the poor. It also spread throughout the country, so there was no place better preserved than another from its ravages: everywhere was the same oppression. The wild beasts, as well as domestic animals that live on grass, perished because there was no grass. So there was great distress upon men and upon all flesh because of the famine which had not its equal in our time, nor in the time of our fathers. The fountains and streams were empty and the rivers dried up.

Upon the death of Hisham miseries were multiplied upon the earth. All the miseries, and especially the plague and famine, befell us because of our many sins.

 Note how the famine was worsened by seizing grain from those who had it. 

This is why Africa starves.  If what a  man saves will be seized by others, then the poor man has no incentive to save.  Anything he saves will simply be stolen by the local “Big Man” — a concept unknown under the honest colonial administrations.  In consequence everyone does the bare minimum they need to stay alive.  So when drought comes, as it always will, they starve.  Security of property is essential to human life.

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More from the Chronicle of Zuqnin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

 The story continues:

In the year 1047 (735 736), `Attiq rebelled and embraced the sect of the Harourites.

When he rebelled and embraced the sect of the Harourites, he did as the Arabs used to do when they abandon their women and all they have. He went with twenty companions to Sigara. Hisham heard this, and commanded Qaliu and Zohair, generals of the cavalry at Sigara, to march against him and bring him to battle. These, after receiving the order, assembled a large army and went out in pursuit. They met him in the desert at Sigara itself. He asked them to wait until tomorrow to start the battle. As they had with them a large army and the rebels were few, they despised them even though thirst was felt in their camp, because water was lacking in the desert and, again, the light was fading.

 [31] `Attiq, who looked at them all with contempt, was a brave man as were his companions, and he had made this proposal to them by guile. When night fell and they had eaten and drank, they slept unsuspectingly, while `Attiq and his companions took their weapons, fell upon them in the first watch of the night and killed them all. The Lord turned the sword of each against his neighbour and each of the companions of `Attiq passed among them like the stonemasons and like those who drive the plough. With the exception of a few who mounted their steeds and fled, no one escaped; they all perished by the sword. The army chiefs themselves, Zohair and Qaliu, fell among the dead.

In the year 1052 (740-741), the Emperor of the Romans, Leo, died after a reign of twenty-five years and was succeeded by his son Constantine, who reigned thirty-five years.

At that time, Hisham, king of the Arabs, built a bridge over the Euphrates, opposite Callinicus.

In the year 1053 (741-742), one Sunday there was a great and terrible earthquake. All through the night of this Sunday, the noise it was producing was heard, sound like the bellowing of a bull. When the time came for Mass, all the people ran to the church. But the church of Maraq was overthrown by the violence and force of an earthquake which happened suddenly, and it crushed all the people who were assembled there; no one left alive, except the priest who was at that moment offering the sacrifice. The hill on which the church of Maraq was built shook with rumbles and noises for about thirty days.  [32] In the year 1054 (742-743), the great bridge over the Tigris, near Amida, was overthrown. The winter had been hard; heavy snow fell from the sky and had accumulated on the land for many days, so that all flesh was nearing its end. The animals and especially birds perished. Then came cold and rigorous weather, wind and rain for a long time; the snow melted and the ground was thoroughly soaked by the water as it was covered with melting snow. There were floods in all rivers, especially in the Tigris. On this river the banks broke and violent flooding resulted which destroyed many men and countries. It carried with it a lot of wood and the water pressure was so powerful that large trees piled up against the great bridge and heaped one upon another for five or six miles upstream. Thus, due to the violent impact of the timbers and the strength of the flood, the bridge broke and was overturned by the waters. It was not restored, because when Hisham, after gathering the workers and masons with everything needed to rebuild it, was hastening to rebuild it, he was surprised by death and left the work unfinished.

At the same time Edessa was also flooded. There was in fact a great and violent flooding in the river, which crosses the city and called the Daishan.  The waters came in abundance into the city, so that the storm drains in the eastern wall of the city were blocked. The waters did not manage to knock down the wall and flooded back, rising in an extraordinary way, they spread through the streets of the city and destroyed all the shops. Many houses collapsed; but because it happened during the day, nobody died in the flooding: the inhabitants had fled, abandoning their homes.  [33] The breach of the canal also caused great harm throughout the plain of Edessa and Harran.

In the year 1055 (743-744), Hisham, king of the Arabs, died, and after him, Walid [II] reigned eight months.

The tyrant Yezid, `Abbas and Ibrahim, who were brothers, and their parent `Abd al-Aziz, the son of Haddjadj, rose up against him and killed him with the sword near the town of Qore. Yezid [III] ruled after him for six months, but the country did not obey him and he was unable to send governors into Mesopotamia. On the death of Yezid, his brother Ibrahim took his place. That same year, discord arose throughout the country, because of the tyranny of `Abbas and his brother against Walid, whom they had put to death by the sword. As they reigned although royalty did not belong to them, the Arabs would not obey them, especially those in Mesopotamia. But everyone stayed at home and watched over his own affairs. Dissension and brigandage reigned throughout the country and nobody could leave home.

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Good news and bad news.  The good news is that the Bob the typesetter has done all of the ecloge — the abbreviated selection from the full work published by Angelo Mai — and the fragments of the “To Stephanus”.  This is great progress, and looks good.  He’s raised some interesting issues along the way.

The less good news is that it turns out that, while getting the Greek typed up, I managed to forget to include four of the fragments!  Eek!  Thankfully Tom who typed a lot of these is willing to help out again, and save  the day.

I need to spend some more time with the stuff the ISBN agency sent me, but no time today or probably tomorrow.

Another issue is the cover.  I haven’t really thought about this yet, but it needs to be designed.  Also I need to get some testimonials from scholars in the field for the back cover (and probably pay for them).  Finally I need to get a website up to sell the things.  Much still to do, still to do.

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A note from the Chronicle of Zuqnin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m translating the next chunk of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, and was amused by the French of one passage:

At the same time Edessa was also flooded. There was in fact a great and violent flooding in the river, which crosses the city and called the Daishan.  The waters came in abundance into the city, so that the storm drains in the eastern wall of the city were blocked. The waters did not manage to knock down the wall and flooded back, rising in an extraordinary way, they spread through the streets of the city and destroyed all the shops.

Chabot’s French renders “shops” as “boutiques” — the flood destroyed all the boutiques in Edessa.  Very Carnaby Street, hmm?

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ISBN for Eusebius book arrives!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The text and translation which I am bringing out of Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions now has an ISBN – 978-0-9566540-0-7.  Another step forward!

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The conman and the Jews, in the Chronicle of Zuqnin, part 4

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s the next chunk of the 8th century anonymous Syriac chronicle, written at the monastery of Zuqnin, just north of Amida (= modern Diyarbekir), and once wrongly attributed to Dionysius of Tell-Mahre.

In the year 1040 (728-729), Neocaesarea was taken by Maslamah [27] who took captive the people of this town and sold them into slavery like animals, except, however, the Jews who had handed over the city. They had traveled secretly to Maslamah and, after receiving his promise, they treacherously made possible his entry into the city. He made them captives, but did not sell them; he took them with him.

In the year 1045 (733-734), Suleiman invaded the Roman territory and captured Polozonium where he took all the inhabitants into captivity. These are the circumstances. Artabas, son of the Roman emperor Constantine, revolted and took control of the city of Constantinople, and he assumed tyrannically the imperial crown. While the Emperor Constantine marched with his army against the multitude of his enemies, he had left in the city, to keep it, this tyrant Artabas with the garrison of Pelozonium. The latter, forgetting the pact concluded before God with Leo, and seeing that he was occupying the town, tried to take control of the Empire. He then occupied the city, and the imperial army, with Constantine himself, was camped outside, while the whole legion of Pelozonium fought inside against the emperor. As Suleiman was approaching, Leo sent to tell him: “Do not come to me; you risk finding it difficult to escape from me;  but go to Pelozonium, devastate it, demolish it, make of it whatever you please, because there no one will resist you.” He went there, sacked it and despoiled it at his pleasure, carrying off a booty like no one before him had ever won. Leo seized the tyrant, blinded him and deprived of pay the army which had taken his side.

 [28] In the year 1043 (734-735), Malik ibn Sebib, Emir of Melitene, and `Abdallah al-Batal besieged city of Synada. While they were encamped in the meadows that surround that place, a huge army gathered against them to revenge what the Arabs had done the previous year at Pelozonium. When the Arabs, who were about fifty thousand, were unsuspectingly within their camp, the Romans suddenly surrounded it on all sides and made them all perish by the sword. Only a few escaped, thanks to the time of day which was late: they fled, defending themselves with the sword, spear and bow, and they marched all night. Of the fifty thousand who had come, just five thousand escaped. The leaders themselves fell in the battle; never did such a misfortune happen to the Arabs.

At that time there was in the western region a seducer who deceived and ruined a great number of the Jews. Satan, who is pernicious and malignant from the outset, always tries to deceive people, not just some but everyone equally, regardless of their race or language, suggesting to each what seems to be agreeable and capable of misleading. He derives his name from his works: Satan, in fact, means “adversary”. He neglects nothing and does not cease to disrupt or deceive all peoples in all generations. He never gets tired, and he never gives up his ancient wickedness, that he once invented against the first of the human race to ruin it.

 [29] In this time, then, he brought out of Mesopotamia, a man from the village of Phalkat in the Mardin region, and he led him into the western country, near to Beit Shammar. This individual had access to the house of one of the principal men among the Jews, but abusing the hospitality given him, he corrupted the daughter of the latter. When the matter came to the Jews, they promised to put him to death. But as he was a Christian, they inflicted on him cruel and long-drawn out punishments during which he found an opportunity to escape from their hands. He decided therefore to subject them to all sorts of misery. Leaving there, he went down to the Aramoyé country where he plunged into every kind of evil incantation. There he devoted himself to magic and devilish artifices. He made progress in all the evil arts and became a master of them. Leaving this place, so he returned to the area of Beit Shammar. He told the Jews: “I am Moses, the very man who formerly brought Israel out of Egypt, who was with them in the sea and the desert for forty years. I am sent again for the salvation of Israel and to lead you into the desert, so that you may once then come into the inheritance of the Promised Land, so that you will possess it as before. Just as God overthrew all the nations who lived there so that your fathers might take ownership, so also he will make them disappear before you so that you can enter, so that you will own it as previously, and so that all the dispersed Israelites may be gathered according to what is written: ‘He will bring together the dispersed of Israel.’” As he spoke such language to them daily and constantly excited their admiration by his incantations, they went astray after him. Sometimes he made them wander in the mountains and threw them from craggy peaks and killed them, sometimes he shut them up in caves and caverns, where they perished. [30] He made them suffer so much misery, in killing and slaying many. He also took from them a lot of gold, persuading them by his incantations that he was leading them in the desert. When he had had his fill of the misery that he made them suffer daily, he deceived them by his tricks, took all the gold and all the property that he had acquired from them and fled to his own country. The Jews, come to themselves and seeing the evil that had made them suffer, chased him across the world, questioning and inquiring about him. Having finally discovered him, they took him before the Emir of the believers, Hisham. The latter abandoned him to them, so they made him suffer tortures and torments in Babylon and finally crucified him. So he died, and God gave him the sort of reward he so deserved.

Note how the term “Christian” refers to a group, not a belief; and how there is a Moslem emir charged with the affairs of the Christians (=”believers”). 

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Gregory of Nyssa fails to adapt to then contemporary attitudes on slavery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Look at who is linking to you, and you can find some interesting things!  One was this post, and of course I shall have to read this blog some more!

Another of these is an extract from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes here (over-paragraphing by me).  This is from Homily 4, on Ecclesiastes 2:7.

‘I got me slave-girls and slaves.’ For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God?

God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller?

To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.

But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?

This from St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes; Hall and Moriarty, trs., de Gruyter (New York, 1993) p. 74.

It is a pity that only the page reference to the translation is quoted, not the text reference with homily, chapter, etc.  But it is in fact I find from Homily 4, in the Greek p.335,4 – 338,22.[1]

What a world away this is, from the attitudes expressed in Martial, a man whose idea of a pleasant afternoon is to summon one of his slaves, and the girl-slave that the lad loves, and rape both of them.

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  1. [1]As given in the Hall translation pp.73-4.  The edition translated is In Ecclesiasten homiliae. Edidit Paulus Alexander in Gregorii Nysseni opera. Auxilio aliorum virorum doctorum edenda curavit Wernerus Jaeger. Volumen V (Leiden 1986), pp. 195-442.↩

Quiet flows the Don

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Everyone must be on holiday.  The usual forums are quiet, and the volume of emails has dropped to almost nothing.  Not that I am complaining, you understand, but it is curious. 

Everyone, evidently, has better things to do than sit in front of the evil machine.  There’s a lesson there for those of us still doing so.

Turn off your computer and go outside and do something!

PS: You can tell it’s summer here in England — it’s still raining, but it just isn’t cold.

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Scythians worship Zalmoxis, and serve them right!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

According to Herodotus, the Getae were a godless lot, but they worshipped a certain Zalmoxis.  Herodotus also repeats a story current in the local Greek settlements that made this Zalmoxis a pupil of Pythagoras, who worked a con on the ignorant Scythians.  He hid in a cave in the ground for three years, and was mourned as dead.  Then he reappeared.  Apparently this made them think his teaching must be true.  Here’s what he says:

The belief of the Getae in respect of immortality is the following. They think that they do not really die, but that when they depart this life they go to Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. To this god every five years they send a messenger, who is chosen by lot out of the whole nation, and charged to bear him their several requests. Their mode of sending him is this. A number of them stand in order, each holding in his hand three darts; others take the man who is to be sent to Zalmoxis, and swinging him by his hands and feet, toss him into the air so that he falls upon the points of the weapons. If he is pierced and dies, they think that the god is propitious to them; but if not, they lay the fault on the messenger, who (they say) is a wicked man: and so they choose another to send away. The messages are given while the man is still alive. This same people, when it lightens and thunders, aim their arrows at the sky, uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own.

I am told by the Greeks who dwell on the shores of the Hellespont and the Pontus, that this Zalmoxis was in reality a man, that he lived at Samos, and while there was the slave of Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus. After obtaining his freedom he grew rich, and leaving Samos, returned to his own country.

The Thracians at that time lived in a wretched way, and were a poor ignorant race; Zalmoxis, therefore, who by his commerce with the Greeks, and especially with one who was by no means their most contemptible philosopher, Pythagoras to wit, was acquainted with the Ionic mode of life and with manners more refined than those current among his countrymen, had a chamber built, in which from time to time he received and feasted all the principal Thracians, using the occasion to teach them that neither he, nor they, his boon companions, nor any of their posterity would ever perish, but that they would all go to a place where they would live for ever in the enjoyment of every conceivable good.

While he was acting in this way, and holding this kind of discourse, he was constructing an apartment underground, into which, when it was completed, he withdrew, vanishing suddenly from the eyes of the Thracians, who greatly regretted his loss, and mourned over him as one dead. He meanwhile abode in his secret chamber three full years, after which he came forth from his concealment, and showed himself once more to his countrymen, who were thus brought to believe in the truth of what he had taught them. Such is the account of the Greeks.

I for my part neither put entire faith in this story of Zalmoxis and his underground chamber, nor do I altogether discredit it: but I believe Zalmoxis to have lived long before the time of Pythagoras. Whether there was ever really a man of the name, or whether Zalmoxis is nothing but a native god of the Getae, I now bid him farewell. As for the Getae themselves, the people who observe the practices described above, they were now reduced by the Persians, and accompanied the army of Darius. — Book IV, 93-96.

I discovered yesterday that some people online believe that Zalmoxis is somehow like Jesus, at least to the extent that he has a resurrection in his myth.

When I encounter stuff like that, my first reaction is always to ask to see the data.  I compiled all the references I could find about Zalmoxis, which I put here.  There isn’t a lot.  All the later material reads to me as if it is an embellishment of the account of Herodotus.  Finding links between people, and deities, and writing stories about this, was how ancient syncretism worked.  By the time of Iamblichus the theurgist, in the mid-4th century, it has to be questionable whether any real information remained on this subject.

So … did Zalmoxis rise from the dead?  Herodotus does not say that people thought so.   The text would bear that meaning; but it would also bear the meaning that he pretended to be a god or spirit who was appearing to them.

We need to avoid imposing any preconceptions on the text.  Which means, of course, that sometimes we cannot say what the text means.

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Google funding for discovery of ancient texts online — and some unforeseen difficulties

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Stephan Huller has drawn my attention to a press release from the university of Southampton:

A University of Southampton researcher is part of a team which has just secured funding from Google to make the classics and other ancient texts easy to discover and access online.

Leif Isaksen at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is working together with Dr Elton Barker at The Open University and Dr Eric Kansa of the University of California-Berkeley on the Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus project, which is one of 12 projects worldwide to receive funding as part of a new Digital Humanities Research Programme funded by Google.

The GAP researchers will enable scholars and enthusiasts worldwide to search the Google Books corpus to find books related to a geographic location and within a particular time period. The results can then be visualised on GoogleMaps or in GoogleEarth.  The project will run until September next year.

The PR people don’t seem to have really understood what is involved here.  This isn’t about placing ancient texts online, as far as I can see.  Rather it is about indexing volumes in Google books, so that they can be searched for using region and date.   The information will be accessible using a webservice.

There is one obvious difficulty with all this, tho.  Most books on Google books are not accessible in the United Kingdom!  This is because European publishers lobbied and threatened Google if it made material prior to 1923 available, for fear that some of it might still be copyright somewhere in the EU, and that that copyright might belong to one of them, and that maybe, just maybe, they might lose some money. 

Google listened this contemptible nonsense, scratched its head at the idea that people wanted to prevent access, and said, “Fine.  Do without!” They chopped access to Google books material after 1880 or something like that.  The euro-nuts lose, the US gains.

So … most of the results returned by this new webservice will be of no service to anyone.

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