The Chronicle of Seert, ca. 580–660

The Chronicle of Seert, a Middle Arabic history written in the late tenth or eleventh century, draws on earlier Syriac sources from the Church of the East dating back to the sixth and seventh centuries and is the richest repository of these earlier materials. It is a monument to a literature that is now mostly destroyed and an invaluable source for those studying Late Antique history, Eastern Christianity, and the medieval Christians who lived under Muslim rule.

This volume is the first English translation of the portion of the Chronicle covering the period from 580 to 660. It narrates the constant wars fought between the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia as well as the arrival of Muhammad and the Muslim armies that upended the Late Antique world. However, the Chronicle also includes extensive accounts of the theological controversies that beset the Church of the East, the monasteries and holy men that dotted the landscape, and political events within the Roman Empire from an outside perspective.

Preserving a remnant of a lost, yet influential, history, the Chronicle allows us to see adaptations to a genre that was created in a Christian Roman Empire.