Remarks on some European names in the Syriac life of Mar Yabalaha

摘要

The biography of the Nestorian patriarch Mar Yabalaha Ⅲ and of his teacher Rabban Sawma is a well-known book, arguably the most interesting historical work in Syriac, and an important source for the history of the Ilkhanate and its relations with Western Europe. The Syriac text was published by Paul Bedjan in 1888 on the basis of one modern manuscript, then republished by him in a second edition, with a slightly better manuscript basis, in 1895 (I cite it by page and line of Bedjan's second edition). In 1893-4 the eminent Syrianist J. B. Chabot published (from Bedjan's first edition) a complete French translation, with extensive and useful notes. In 1889 Noeldeke published a valuable review of Bedjan's first edition. An annotated English translation of the first part of the work (the account of Sawma's voyage to the West) was published by J. A. Montgomery (London, 1927), and a complete English version (with a long introduction, but no annotation of the text) by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1928; a reprint of the latter, with a new introduction by the esteemed dedicatee of this volume, appeared in 2014. A Russian translation by N. V. Pigulevskaya came out in 1958, and a German version of the first part of the text by F. Altheim and R. Stiehl in 1961. M. Rossabi published a summary of the book in 1992. Most recently, P. G. Borbone has produced a complete Italian translation (with introduction, notes, extensive commentary, bibliography etc.) in 2000.