TheKthābhā d-wardā ‘Book of the Rose’ is a collection of hymns for the various festivals of the liturgical year, usually attributed in the mss. to a certain Gewargis, surnamed Warda. Most of the hymns belong to theʿOnithā genre and parts or the whole of the corpus have been incorporated, especially in the 19th cent., in larger collections ofʿonyāthā by other hymnographers. So far, only 31 of the ca. 150 items have been published or translated. The ms. transmission presents a high degree of variation in the number and order of the texts. No systematic study of the text history of theKthābhā d-wardā or of the hymns attributed to Gewargis is available, and it is therefore difficult to define criteria of authenticity. The two poems ‘On the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin’, preserved in only one ms., probably do not belong to the original nucleus.
There is no reliable information on the life or birthplace of the alleged author (and/or compiler?). One poem is an outcry against an infidel deacon of a village nearArbela, and in one ms. (Sachau 64) it is said that Gewargis was from Arbela, perhaps because he has been confused with the 10th-cent. E-Syr. authorGewargis of Arbela, or in order to distinguish him from a Gewargis ofMosul, mentioned in the same ms. LikeKhamis bar Qardaḥe (also connected with Arbela), Gewargis is not included in the ‘Paradise of Eden’ byʿAbdishoʿ bar Brikha. Attempts to place Gewargis in the first half of the 13th cent. at the time of the events described in poems of theWardā collection (famines and the Mongol raids of 1223/4–1235/6) are in contradiction with, e.g., the mention of Timotheos II ( patr. from 1318 to 1332) in the ‘ʿOnithā on the Catholicoi of the East’.
TheWardā contains exhortations to repentance, hymns for the various feasts, commemorations of saints, martyrs, and calamitous historical events. The melody and the liturgical occasion for which the text is fitted are noted above each poem. The use of biblical texts and exempla is often rich and felicitous. Some texts elaborate on apocryphal material, e.g., ‘In praise of Mary’ lists the traditional names of the twelve kings (as inShlemon of Baṣra) and ‘On the Childhood of Christ’ possibly derives from a lost E.-Syr. source, parts of which are preserved in the ‘History of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ (ed. E. A. W. Budge, 1899). A ‘memrā on Man as Microcosm’ appears to derive from Greek medical and philosophical traditions via the Syr.Traité d’Ahoudemmeh sur l’homme (ed. F. Nau, PO 3.1, 1905). The hymns on historical events have recently been read as examples of theological reflection on history. More properly, they should be interpreted as liturgical texts, as their function was stated to be. Referring to specific historical events or, more in general, to disasters which were dramatically recurrent, they probably functioned as textual supports for public commemorations, as prayers of supplication, or to avert disaster.
Alessandro Mengozzi
