A COMPENDIUM OF THE

DESCRIPTION OF SYRIA,

written for the light and assertion of the

gospel of the kingdom and the eternal Monarchy.

What things of the holy Chorography of Syria are to be placed before in consideration, so that any listener or reader may easily judge how valuable this treatise is: and to what scope this has been prepared, he should strive to demonstrate by judging and doing.

Moved by the happiness and fame of the region alone, when I was acting as a royal reader on a stipend, I began to attend to the treatise on describing Syria, until, from that desire, the true scope of that description shone upon me. For in this, I judged above all that this work ought to be undertaken, so that the Chorography and Topography of it might bring light to the most excellent discipline of the whole world, which is placed in the sacred books and their interpretation and use. But indeed, I had done this while rich only from the reading of authors, but now that I have visited the region itself in person, and have labored to describe it as long as I was in it, as has been handed down in the sufficiently ample work, "On the most recondite history of the East or on the origins of Syria," it seemed good to pre-taste a few things in that compendium which I, as royal reader, had published, and if there are any...