Habbi, Yusuf (1938–2000) [Chald.]

Notable Iraqi scholar, priest and educator.

Notable Iraqi scholar, priest and educator. Yusuf Habbi was born in Mosul on 23 Dec. 1938. After attending the Chaldean Seminary School in Mosul he was sent to Rome (1954) to study, first at the Urbinian University, and then at the Lateran University where he wrote his doctorate (1966) on Patr. Yawsep Audo. On his return to Iraq (1967) he was engaged in both pastoral and academic work. In 1972, with some colleagues he founded the periodical Bayn al-nahrayn, of which he remained an editor until his death in a car accident the night of 14/15 Oct. 2000. Also in 1972 he was elected to the Syriac Academy (later, the Syriac Corporation of the Iraqi Academy). From 1975–81 he taught Syriac and French at Mosul University, and then in 1982 he was appointed Associate Professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome. From 1991 he was closely involved with the raising of the Patriarchal Seminary in Baghdad to a Pontifical Faculty, named the Babel College of Philosophy and Theology, of which he became President. Particularly notable among his many publications was the edition of Bar Bahlul ’s newly discovered ‘Book of Signs’ (1987). Besides writing two histories of the Ch. of E. (1989, 2001; both in Arabic), he published a new edition of the ‘Catalogue’ of ʿAbdishoʿ (1986), and Arabic translations of various chronicles ( Eliya of Nisibis , 1975; Chronica Minora, 1983), and of the Synodicon Orientale (1999). He also contributed a number of important articles in French and Italian publications.