Alphonse Mingana
Mingana Alphonse (born Hurmiz Mingana) was born in 1878 in Sharansh, a small village near Zakho (then part of the Ottoman Empire , today in Iraq ). He died December 5, 1937 in Birmingham in England. He was both priest of the Assyrian Church , theologian, historian and orientalist. It is famous for having collected and preserved the Arabic and Syriac manuscripts which now Mingana Collection of the University of Birmingham. As the majority of Assyrians from Zakho, his family was Catholic Chaldean. Alfonso was born and Maryam Paolus Nano and had 7 brothers and sisters. He changed his birth name (Hurmiz Mingana) after becoming a priest to adopt the name of Alphonse Mingana.
Summary |
His arrival in England
In 1913, Mingana arrived in England at the invitation of biblical scholar James Rendel Harris , director of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Center in Birmingham. Mingana Woodbrooke remained at two years and met his future wife, Emma Sophie Floor, a Norwegian student. The couple married in 1915. He remained at Manchester until 1932, year of birth of her two children John and Mary.
The collection Mingana
In 1924, Mingana made the first of his three voyages from the Middle East to collect ancient manuscripts of the Syriac and Arabic. The expedition was sponsored by the Library John Rylands and Dr Edward Cadbury.
The collection contains Mingana:
- 660 Christian manuscripts in Syriac and garshuni (from the Arabic alphabet Syriac noted) containing ecclesiastical documents, hymns, homilies, saints' lives ... Among the earliest manuscripts include a large number of fragments from the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai.
- 270 Christian manuscripts in Arabic with the oldest fragment of the Acts of Thomas and an old copy of the Arabic translation of the writings of St. Ephrem.
- 2000 Arab Islamic manuscripts on various topics of Islam and many copies of the Koran and two collections of fragments of the Koran written in Kufic script dating from the seventh and ninth century. Other manuscripts contain comments from the Koran, Hadith, codes of law, literature, treatises on science and mysticism.
- Some manuscripts Armenian , Coptic , Georgian , Greek , Hebrew , Persian , Samaritan and Sanskrit.
Bibliography
- Alphonse Mingana, 11 Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1927.
- Alphonse Mingana, western and eastern, Impr. Dominican Fathers, 1905.
- Alphonse Mingana, Mshiha-Zkha, Yohannun Bar Penkaya, Syriac Sources, Harrassowitz, 1908, 475pp.
- JFA Coakley, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol. 75, No. 2, Summer 1993.
- Lucy-Anne Hunt, Edward Cadbury Charitable Trust, Birmingham, 1997.
- DS Margoliouth & G. A. Woledge, A Biography and Bibliography, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, 1939.
- Kahil Samir Samir SJ, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, 1990
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