Muriel Debié. L’écriture de l’histoire en syriaque. Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellénisme et islam.

Abstract

Muriel Debié’s L’écriture de l’histoire en syriaque represents the consolidation of a recent dam-burst in the study of a long neglected aspect of the pre-modern Middle East. It is nothing less than a compendium of historical writing in Syriac in the late antique and medieval periods. It puts Syriac historiography on the map. It treats this thousand-year-long tradition with the same seriousness as the other great ventures in historical writing associated with the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, with the formation of medieval Western Europe and with the stunning historiographical output connected with the rise and establishment of Islam.