Printed by Anglo-Catholics in Iran
[SYRIAC.]
ܟܘܪܣܬܐ ܕܥܢܝܕܵܐ ܒܢܵܝ ܥܠܡܐ … [Kurasta d-ʻanide bnay ʻalma … ; ‘The Burial Service for Laypeople …’]. Urmia, Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission, 1900.
4to, pp. 7, [1 (blank)], [1 (errata)], [1 (blank)], (176) ܩܥܘ, the errata bound after preliminaries rather than at end of text; printed in red and black, woodcut borders to section titles; slightly browned, a few minor stains; else a very good copy in the publisher’s black quarter sheep with black cloth sides; boards a little scuffed.
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ܟܘܪܣܬܐ ܕܥܢܝܕܵܐ ܒܢܵܝ ܥܠܡܐ … [Kurasta d-ʻanide bnay ʻalma … ; ‘The Burial Service for Laypeople …’].
Extremely rare edition of the Syriac liturgy for the burial of the dead, printed by Anglo-Catholic missionaries at Urmia in present-day Iran.
Founded by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the High-Church Anglican mission to the Church of the East gave non-proselytising support to Assyrian Christians in Turkey and Persia from 1886 to 1915. No conversions were to be made, the aim being simply to help the Assyrians in their efforts to reinvigorate and reform their church. One particular need was for liturgical and educational books, for which reason the Mission set up a Stanhope press at its headquarters in Urmia in the Persian province of Azerbaijan, commissioning a set of new Syriac types from local Armenian workmen. From this press were issued some fifty-five editions in classical and modern Syriac, most of them exceedingly rare today.
The present work, printed on thick cartridge paper imported from England and preserving here the Mission bindery’s distinctive black sheep-backed cloth binding, gives a critical text of the Assyrian burial rites. ‘The scholarly apparatus is the fullest in any of the Mission books’ (Coakley), much of the editing having been done by a young Assyrian deacon, Joseph DeQelaita.
Only one complete copy is known to Coakley (CUL), who also lists a defective copy at Bonn. OCLC and Library Hub add none.
Coakley, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission Press: a Bibliography’, Journal of Semitic Studies 30/1 (1985), no. 37.