Alphonse Mingana

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Alphonse Mingana

Alphonse Mingana ( Syriac-Aramaic : ܐܠܦܘܢܨ ܡܢܥܢܐ baptismal name: Hormizd; * December 23, 1878 or 1881 in Sharanesch near Zakho (northern Iraq ); † December 5, 1937 in Birmingham ) was a Christian theologian and orientalist .

Hormizd, the eldest of eight children of the Chaldean Catholic priest Paolos Mingana and his wife Maryam Nano, received his education from 1891 at the Séminaire Saint Jean, the Chaldean seminary in Mosul . There he learned Turkish, Persian and Kurdish. Latin, French, Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew. In 1902 he was ordained a presbyter ("priest") by Patriarch Emmanuel II Thomas (1900-1947) and took the name Alphonse. After a short pastoral activity in his home village, he was appointed professor of Syriac and Arabic at the seminary. He collected Syrian manuscripts and worked as a proofreader for the Dominican printing house in Mosul.

In 1905 the learned and ambitious Mingana began with his own publications, a Syrian grammar and an edition of the works of Narsai of Nisibis- Edessa. In 1907 he published the soon-to-be-famous Chronicle of Arbela in Syriac and French . Her only manuscript was acquired on October 21, 1907 by the Prussian State Library in Berlin. Mingana concealed the fact that it was a contemporary, artificially aged manuscript. The publication of this text led to a dispute with the patriarch, as a result of which Mingana left the seminary in 1910. Eventually he broke with the Chaldean Church and left Mosul on January 7, 1913.

Mingana went to England in 1913 , where he was promoted by James Rendel Harris and David Samuel Margoliouth . On July 14, 1915, he married the Norwegian Lutheran Emma Sophia Floor from Stavanger. The marriage produced a son and a daughter. In 1920 Mingana was granted British citizenship . He never obtained his doctorate, but had it entered on his passport.

From 1915 to 1932 he was manuscript curator in Manchester , from 1932 as successor to Harris in Birmingham . On three trips to the Orient, 1924, 1925 and 1929, he acquired almost 600 manuscripts, some of which were previously unknown, and which became the basis of the “Mingana Collection” in Selly Oak.

His edition of the "Chronicle of Arbela" (1907) is considered controversial and brought Mingana the charge of manuscript forgery, not least because this oldest source on early Syrian church history, dated to the 7th or 6th century, is only in a manuscript from the 19th century, which mentions events from the 17th century is available, which also shows considerable deviations from Mingana's edition. His colleague Jean-Baptiste Chabot (1860–1948) also reported that Mingana held the manuscript in front of a fireplace in his presence in order to artificially age it. In 1967 Jean-Marie Fiey ( Auteur et date de la Chronique d'Arbèles . In: L'Orient Syrien XII . Paris 1967, pp. 265-302) proved that it was a forgery. Nevertheless, the discussion has not died down since Peter Kawerau , who like his successor Wolfgang Hage believed the chronicle to be genuine, published it in 1985 as a facsimile .

Works (selection)

  • Clef de la langue araméenne, ou Grammaire complète et pratique des deux dialectes syriaques occidental et oriental (Mosul 1905)
  • Narsai doctoris syri homiliae et carmina prime edita (Mosul 1905)
  • Sources syriaques , 2 vols. (Leipzig undated), in vol. 1 the "Chronicle of Arbela" (pp. 1–168)
  • The Ordes and Psalms of Salomon , 2 vols. (Manchester 1916/20) with Rendel Harris
  • Remarks on the Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia . In: Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14 (1930)
  • Woodbrooke Studies , Vol. 1-7 (Cambridge 1927-1934)
  • Catalog of the Mingana Collection of Manuscripts , 2 vols. (Cambridge 1933/36)
  • Catalog of the Arabic Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library (Manchester 1934)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mingana, Alphonse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mingana, Hormizd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iraqi theologian
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: December 23, 1878 or December 23, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Sharanesh near Zakho ( Iraq )
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 1937
Place of death Birmingham