Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Сериа III. Филология (Dec 2019)
The Kiev manuscript of “Beirut church chronicle”: general survey
Abstract
The article deals with the manuscript version of the well-known source on the history of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, named in original Muhtaṣar tārīh al- ’asāqifa al-lazīna raqū martabat ri’āsat al-kahanūt al-ğalīla fī madīnat Bayrūt, preserved at the Manuscript Institute of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (fund І, No. 25709). This text that has reached us in several manuscript versions, is written in the genre of chronicle and was compiled during the 18th — 19th centuries mostly in the Arab Orthodox milieu of Beirut. The present Kiev manuscript, acquired by A. Krymsky in Lebanon, was copied by Khalīl Fayyāḍ between 1885 and 1891. Comparison of the textological peculiarities of the Kiev manuscript and the manuscript version from the library of the Patriarchate of Antioch, used as a basis for the critical edition by Nā’ila Qā’idbeyh (2002), demonstrates a high degree of similarity between them. At the same time, the Kiev manuscript, not taken into account in the critical edition, contains a number of variant readings, representing more archaic language forms and fi lling some gaps in the manuscript of the library of the Patriarchate of Antioch. This may be an evidence of its direct connection with the original version that had been lost.
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