Second AHRC grant for research into Syriac and Sogdian texts
Syriac fragment discussing the Trinity. Copyright: Depositum der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie er Wissenschaften in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz Orientabteilung Syr HT 94.
13 March 2012
Dr Erica Hunter, Department of the Study of Religions and Chair of the Centre of Eastern and Orthodox Christianity, has received a three-year £531,138 research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project, entitled 'The Transmission of Texts from Turfan' will commence in September 2012 and conclude in August 2015.
'The Transmission of Texts from Turfan' is investigating the relationship between liturgical works used at Turfan with the East Syrian tradition. Early in the twentieth century, more than one thousand Syriac and Christian Sogdian texts were found at the monastery site of Bulayïq, near Turfan, Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Province, China. The reconstruction of these texts, which were written between the 9th and 13th centuries, will chart the transmission of major liturgical works from Mesopotamia to China, along the Silk Route. This will be of major importance to scholars working in Eastern Christianity and Syriac, but will also impact the communities and clergy in Iraq and in the diaspora.
Dr Hunter said she was thrilled to have been awarded funding for a second time to continue the important research. Joining the project team is His Grace, Mar Awa, Bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East (California diocese). “We are very fortunate to have this expertise,” Hunter said. “Mar Awa will act as consultant advisor to our team and provide a vital conduit in liaising findings to those who still use in worship some of the texts that have been found at Turfan.”
Dr Hunter’s co-investigator in the project is Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams FBA, who will focus on the Christian Sogdian texts, all of which were translated from Syriac originals. Professor Sims-Williams is planning to produce a trilingual Syriac-Sogdian-English dictionary covering both edited and unedited Christian Sogdian texts that will open new dimensions in Central Asian philology.
This is the second grant awarded to Dr Hunter by the AHRC. In 2008, she was awarded £554,804 for a 42 month project, 'The Christian Library at Turfan', that sought to identify and catalogue more than a thousand texts written in Syriac script that were found at the monastery site of Bulayïq, near Turfan. The success of this project, which concluded in September 2011, led to the current grant being awarded to continue this research.
