The chronography of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, the son of Aaron, the Hebrew physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus : being the first part of his political history of the world / translated from the Syriac by Ernest A. Wallis Budge.
- Bar Hebraeus
- Date:
- 1932
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The chronography of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, the son of Aaron, the Hebrew physician, commonly known as Bar Hebraeus : being the first part of his political history of the world / translated from the Syriac by Ernest A. Wallis Budge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![to arm themselves. And when the sons of Canaan, the son of ham, the son of noah, saw that the land of Palestine and the land of lebhnan (Lebanon) were good, they sat down there and they did not wish to go to their inheritance, which was the western maritime regions of EGYPT. After palagh [came] ’ar'o (reu) his son. When he was one hundred and thirty-three (?) years old he begot serogh (serug) ; all [the days of] his life were three hundred and thirty and seven years. And in the seventieth year of reu the building of the Great Tower in the land of sen'ar (shinar) began, and nemrodh (nimrod), the son of rush, fed the builders on the beasts which he hunted. And forty years after the Tower was finished God sent a wind and the Tower was overturned, and nemrodh died in it. It was he who after the flood reigned in babil. Now his royal crown was of woven work, even as ’Asaph wrote. And nemrodh built three cities ’arach (erech), ’akhar (akkad), and kalya (calach), that is to say ’urhai (edessa), nisibis, and salik (seleucia). And the speech of them (i.e. the builders of the Tower) was divided into seventy languages. And the land of sen'ar (shinar) was called ‘babhel’, that is to say, ‘Con¬ fusion’. And Saint [9] basil and mar ’aprim (ephrem) have decided that the first (i.e. oldest) language which existed before the division of tongues was syriac, even as the word ‘bhulbala’ itself testifieth. But the pious jacob and JOHN of yathreb think that Hebrew was the first (i.e. oldest) language—the Hebrew which was preserved with 'abher (eber), for he was a righteous man and did not agree to the building of the Tower. Others think that the word ‘Hebrew’ is so called from ’abhraham, who crossed the rivers (Tigris and Euphrates), and crossed the divided pieces (see Genesis xv. 17), and passed from the paganism of his father to the Faith which is in God. After reu [came] serugh his son. When he was one hundred and thirty years old he begot nahor, and all [the days of] his life were three hundred and thirty years. Now in his days money and [womens’] chains (i.e. jewellery) appeared from ophir. And men made idols for the devils, and they relied for help upon demons. And after nemrodh arose the second king in babel, kambiros; he reigned eighty-five years in the days of serugh. And he made war on the people who are called ‘kalto’, and conquered [them], and he set their boundary in the mountains that were in their midst. And after kambiros rose up samiros, the third king of the Chaldeans ; [he reigned] seventy and two years. And he made war on the Greeks (ionians) and the canaanites and conquered them, and he built cities for the parthians and Chaldeans. And he was the first among them to make weights (or, measures) and scales, and in his day silk and dyed fabrics appeared. And it is said that he had three eyes and horns. And at this time there rose up a second governor ’apIphanyos [who reigned] for forty and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31365334_0094.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
