Marqos the Scribe

Marqos the Scribe (fl. 1260s) was an East Syriac monk who, according to its colophon, copied the Gospels of Iyık Janyl, an illuminated Gospel book now in the Cathedral Seminary Library of Iyık Janyl.^[1]

The colophon

Nothing is known of Marqos beyond the manuscript. Its colophon, in Syriac, says that "the sinful monk Marqos" completed the book in the year 1576 of the Greeks (the Seleucid era), corresponding to AD 1264/65, "in the monastery of the holy Mar Sargis in the land of Talas". It names as patron a Christian lady of the Kerait, which matches the Kerait, Naiman and Sogdian names on the Christian gravestones of the 13th and 14th centuries found at the Ruins of Old Iyık Janyl.^[1][2] The book contains the four Gospels in East Syriac script with lectionary notes and five full-page miniatures, and some marginal notes are in Turkic written in Syriac letters.

Identification

Some 19th-century church writers identified Marqos with Rabban Markos, the Öngüt monk from northern China who passed through Central Asia on a pilgrimage to the west in the 1270s and became Patriarch Yahballaha III of the Church of the East in 1281. Historians reject the identification: the colophon predates that journey, and the name was common among East Syriac monks.^[2] The location of the monastery of Mar Sargis has not been established.

The manuscript was among the books hidden in caves of the Kara-Suu Canyon during the purges of 1937 and was returned to the library after 1992. Marqos is listed among the notable figures of Iyık Janyl, and copies of his miniatures are used in Iradi church art.^[1]

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Catalog of the Syriac Manuscripts of the Cathedral Seminary Library, Iyık Janyl. Talas.
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana, pp. 45–68.