Cardahi, Gabriel (1845–1931) [Maron.]

Lebanese Maronite priest and scholar.

Lebanese Maronite priest and scholar. Born in the village of ʿAshqūt, he went to study in Rome, where he spent several years and made the acquaintance of Syriac scholars such as Ignazio Guidi . It was in Rome that he published in 1875 his first major work, his Liber thesauri de arte poetica Syrorum (1875), which is an anthology of mainly later (classical) Syriac poets with Arabic introductions. For several of these poets, such as Isḥaq Qardaḥe Shbadnaya , Israel of Alqosh , and Khamis bar Qardaḥe , Cardahi’s preliminary and fragmentary editions have not yet been replaced. In his grammar, also published in Rome (1880), Cardahi paid particular attention to Syriac meter (two later additions to his grammar followed in 1903 and in 1923). In addition to a two-volume Syriac-Arabic dictionary (published by the Imprimerie catholique in Beirut in 1887–1891), he did two major editions of later Syriac texts: the ‘Paradise of Eden’ by ʿAbdishoʿ bar Brikha (Beirut, 1889) and the ‘Book of the Dove’ by Bar ʿEbroyo (Rome, 1898 — the same year in which the same text was published by P. Bedjan ).