Ignatius Afram I Barsoum

Who was Ignatius Afram I Barsoum?

Ignatius Afram I Barsoum was the 120th Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church. He wrote, translated and published many works all of which are very scholarly. He wrote books on the tradition, liturgy, music, and history of Syriac Orthodox Church.

He was born on June 15, 1887, in Mosul, Iraq. He received his early education in a private Dominican school, studying French and Turkish as well as religious literature and history; later he learned Arabic under the training of Muslim scholars. At the Deir al-Za`faran monastery in Mardin, Turkey, where he started his theological training in 1905, he studied the Syriac language and literature. After his ordination as a priest in 1908, he remained at the monastery to teach, and in 1911 he assumed the additional responsibility of managing the monastery press. Later that year he began a scholar's visit to the monasteries and churches of Mesopotamia and Turkey. Soon after his return in 1913 he made a similar trip to examine Syriac manuscripts in the great libraries of Europe.