The Syriac Chronicle

If you further ask what the true capacity of this measure was, the Chronicle will also suffice, if you wish to compare one of its passages on page 524, line 4, with the Arabic text on page 511, line 1. For what is named ܡܟܘܟܐ makuka in Syriac is مكوّك makuk and مكوك in Arabic, and the measure is by no means unknown. But let these things suffice for me, hindered by the shortness of time, regarding the utility of this Chronicle.

I spared no labor, however heavy, so that the Syriac text might be published as correctly as possible from the manuscript. I changed nothing in the text, mindful that it was not asked of me to express in print what I consider to be the best reading of the text, but what I found in the manuscript codex. For this reason, wherever I encountered words that seemed to have some defect, lest they be believed to be corrupted by the fault of the typesetters, I preferred to indicate by placing this sign † that they were read thus in the text, and to leave judgment to learned men. There is no doubt for me, indeed, that some words were poorly written by the fault of the old scribes. Thus, a double yodh (ܝܝ) in my judgment was sometimes poorly contracted into a heth (ܚ), and the concurring letters yodh and heth, e.g., in ܐܝܣܚܩ Isaac for ܐܝܣܚܩ, or lamed and ayin, e.g., in ܣܠܡܘܢ Salmon for ܣܥܡܘܢ, seem to have been confused; because, however, they were openly in the manuscript and sometimes not without all doubt, as I had found them, I left them and several times endeavored to correct them in the Notes. Proper names are not always written in one and the same way. For sometimes alaph is added to the o and yodh, sometimes it is omitted; sometimes they are written jointly, sometimes separately; which had to be noted here, lest anyone suspect that it was done by the fault of the printers.

Diacritical points and vowels were placed above and below the consonants to which they were applied in the manuscript, although,