syH7 Images ©

The manuscript abbreviated syH7 (s.n., HMML project DFM 00829) is a witness of the Syriac Harklean translation of the Gospels: it contains Matthew (fol. 4r-47v), Mark (f. 48r-88v) and Luke (f. 88v-117v). Mark 16 can be found on folios 87v to 88v with the longer ending. As signaled by Mina Monier (MF Norwegian School of Theology), the shorter ending is present in a marginal note on folio 87r. The information we currently have about this manuscript’s dating and provenance comes from the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library reading room as cataloged by James E. Walters: it is tentatively dated to the 13th century and is part of the Dominican Friars of Mosul repository, with a modern administrative stamp on f.3v. It was digitized in Erbil in 2017 with the collaboration of the Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (CNMO), a center for digitizing manuscripts founded in 1990 by Father Najeeb Michaeel to preserve Irak’s rich cultural heritage. Father Najeeb is now the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul and, in his book Sauver les livres et les hommes (Grasset, 2017), he tells the story of how he saved hundreds of manuscripts from Daesh jihadists by moving them from Mosul to Qaraqosh first, and again to Erbil where he kept his digitization efforts going. It is possible that syH7 was one of the manuscripts that Father Najeeb conveyed within the trunk of his car, reaching Erbil under the extremists’ bullets, or that it was one of the many manuscripts from churches or private families that he digitized. It does not seem to have been recorded by Benham (2005) in his Catalogue des Manuscrits du Couvent des Dominicains Mossoul (in Arabic) and is not mentioned either in Yohanna’s edition of Mark’s Gospel in the Syriac Harklean version (2014). Elisa Nury, SNSF MARK16 project and David Taylor, SIB Lausanne (CH); © CC-BY 4.0.