Yahya of Antioch

Yahya of Antioch (fully Arabic يحيى بن سعيد الأنطاكي, DMG Yaḥya ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī ; * at 975; † around 1066) was the author of Arabic-language annals on the history of his time and theological writings.

Life

Yahya was probably born in Egypt. He was a Melkite Christian and an important doctor. In 1014/1015 he fled after anti-Christian riots under Caliph al-Hākim bi-amr Allāh to Antioch in Syria, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire .

Yahya wrote a continuation of the annals of Eutychios of Alexandria for the years 938 (death of Johannes Tzimiskes ) to 1034 (capture of Edessa by Georgios Maniakes ). The annals contain the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Empire of the Abbassids and the Empire of the Fatimids in Egypt comprehensively and historically reliable, as well as events in the Greater Bulgarian Empire and the Kievan Rus and church events in the patriarchates of Alexandria , Jerusalem , Antioch and Constantinople .

Yahya was the author of theological apologetic writings that dealt with Islamic and Jewish positions.

expenditure

In 1883 the Russian orientalist Viktor Rosen published excerpts from the annals for the first time in «Император Василий Болгаробойца. Извлечения из летописи Яхъи Антиохийского. » ( Emperor Basil the Bulgarian Fighter - Excerpts from the Annals of Yahya of Antioch ), St. Petersburg 1883.

Since 1924 the annals have appeared in the Patrologia Orientalis , Vol. 18, 23, 47 with a French translation.

literature

• Alexander Kazhdan: Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6 , p. 2213
• Georg Graf, History of Christian Arabic Literature , Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1944–1953.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ (online at archive.org)