The Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE by Strategius of Mar Saba
by Sean W. Anthony and Stephen J. Shoemaker
In 614 CE, the armies of Sasanid Persia shocked the Eastern Roman Empire when they besieged and captured Jerusalem, taking a large swath of its population into captivity along with the city’s patriarch and the famed relic of the True Cross. This astounding Persian victory over Christian Jerusalem was a key episode in the last war between Rome and Persia in 602-628 CE and occurred at the high tide of Persian advances into the Roman territories in Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt. Among those taken captive was a certain Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, who subsequently took it upon himself to compose a homily recounting the events leading up to the Persian siege of the Holy City and its aftermath. Strategius presents his pious and harrowing account as that of an eyewitness to many of the events he recounts. For events he did not himself witness, he purports to rely on contemporary informants who did, making his treatise a source with few parallels in late antiquity. Although Strategius’s original account in Greek is lost, it survives via later translations into Georgian and Christian Arabic, two languages that attained prominence in the monasteries of Palestine during the Islamic period. This volume provides, for the first time, a complete side-by-side English translation of both the Georgian and the Arabic recensions.
- By (author) Sean W. Anthony
- By (author) Stephen J. Shoemaker
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Ḫattušaš utnē išḫameški
Hittite and Other Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Piotr Taracha on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
Pre-Christian Religions, Rituals, and Beliefs in Central and Northern Europe
Interdisciplinary Investigations
Volume 5
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Telling Contexts
Archaeological and Textual Studies in Honor of Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Mark S. Smith
The Body
Lived, Cultured, Adorned: Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox
