Contributions can be made online at this link.
Dear Colleagues,
Would you consider becoming a financial supporter of Syriaca.org?
For fifteen years, Syriaca.org has been building free and open access digital reference works for the study of Syriac literature and culture. We have published historical data on 3,030 places, 3,029 persons (including 948 Syriac authors and 1,153 Syriac saints), and 1,840 Syriac texts. We also helped bring online several partner projects including e-GESDH, The Digital Syriac Corpus, The Beth Qaṭraye Gazetteer, and The Comprehensive Bibliography on Syriac Studies.
This month, however, we suffered a setback when the U.S. government implemented a mass cancellation of research grants. Our contract with the National Endowment for the Humanities originally had an end date of June 30, 2026, but on April 3 we were informed that it was terminated April 1, 2025 without any review. Syriaca.org also receives separate support from Vanderbilt University’s Digital Lab, so we have funding to keep Syriaca.org online. We are, however, concerned for our staff who will lose employment due to the loss of funding.
We are trusting that we can find donors who recognize the value of our mission.
Would you be willing to support our research to preserve the earliest records of the history of Christianity in its birthplace and document the culture of the Christians of Iraq and Syria?
We have an immediate need to raise $7,500 to keep our staff working, but are also seeking donors who might want to sustain our project long term. A short description of the interrupted project is below and we would also be happy to meet one-on-one to provide more details with anyone interested in supporting our research. Donations can be made to Vanderbilt University and will be tax deductible in the U.S.
Contributions can be made online at https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/57408/donations/new?designation=syriacaorgthesyriacreferenceportal&a=10225688
Please contact Prof. David Michelson to let him know of your contribution or to discuss other ways to donate (david.a.michelson@vanderbilt.edu).
Thank you for your consideration,
Daniel L. Schwartz, Director, Syriaca.org
Associate Department Head of History, Texas A&M University
Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, Associate Director, Syriaca.org
Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Marquette University, jeannenicole.saint-
David A. Michelson, General Editor, Syriaca.org
Associate Professor of the History of Christianity, Vanderbilt University
About Syriaca.org
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic spoken since the first century A.D. which became the language used by the earliest Christians in the Middle East. Sources in Syriac hold immense value for understanding the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. More than twenty thousand manuscript fragments in Syriac survive today. The oldest are over 1,500 years old and include the earliest illuminated Bible manuscript. After the fourteenth century, Syriac-speaking Christian communities in the Middle East began to suffer a violent decline. Although they continue today as minorities in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, their culture is threatened by the genocides and civil wars of the modern Middle East.
Over the last decade, Syriaca.org has created high-quality digital reference works for the study of Syriac. Our current project: “Linking Texts and Data from the Medieval Middle East” will increase public access to the literature and history of the Syriac Christian communities. This project will publish an online database of Syriac literature in English translation for use by students of the history of Christianity, academic researchers, Syriac community members, and the general public. The database will include a next-generation “linked open data” search tool making the riches of Syriac easily available online.
Other projects in development include:
- Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library: A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue
- The Comprehensive Bibliography on Syriac Studies – a new HMTL version of this Zotero library
- Syriac Persons, Events, and Relations (SPEAR) – a new prosopographical database
- A Guide to John of Ephesus, two databases drawn from the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus
The faculty affiliations of Prof. Schwartz, Prof. Mellon Saint-Laurent, and Prof. Michelson are mentioned here for identification purposes and do not imply institutional endorsement of this message.