| Title | Miracles of Saint Ephrem |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Legends in the Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Umra d-Shish |
| Contributor | Paul M. Noorlander(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0464.27 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0464/chapters/10.11647/obp.0464.27 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Paul M. Noorlander; |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2025-03-07 |
| Long abstract | The article explores the Neo-Aramaic dialect of Umra d-Shish, a village in northern Iraq, and the legends surrounding Saint Ephrem’s miracles. It provides a detailed transcription and translation of a text recounting healings and other miraculous events attributed to Saint Ephrem, including the curing of mental illness and the granting of fertility to childless women. The study examines linguistic features such as phonological shifts, morphological markers, and syntactic structures that are characteristic of the dialect, including the preservation of certain archaic forms. It also highlights the influence of Kurdish and Arabic on the dialect and the socio-religious context of the legends, shedding light on the role of language in preserving communal identity and oral traditions. |
| Page range | pp. 785–822 |
| Print length | 38 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Landing Page | Full text URL | Platform | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0464/chapters/10.11647/obp.0464.27 | Landing page | https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0464.27.pdf | Full text URL |
Paul M. Noorlander (PhD, University of Leiden) is a Lecturer at the Institute for Area Studies, University of Leiden, and a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. He has published widely in the field of Semitic languages and linguistics and contact between Semitic and Iranian, in particular the areal-diachronic typology of the East Anatolian and Mesopotamian regions of West Asia. The endangered Neo-Aramaic languages and their documentation, typology and history are his main research focus. His recent publications include Ergativity and Other Alignment Types in Neo-Aramaic: Investigating Morphosyntactic Microvariation (Brill, 2021), (with Geoffrey Khan, Masoud Mohammadirad, and Dorota Molin), and Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts (2 vols., University of Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Open Book Publishers, 2022).