During the First World War there were very significant losses of manuscripts. The library at Ourmiah was destroyed, although a few books were saved. Presumably the ancient ms. of Kotchanes was also lost. The whereabouts of the Van copy is also unknown to me. The Strasbourg and Cambridge copies still exist. If anyone has any additional information, I would be most glad to hear of it.
Roger Pearse
30th September 2006
Postscript
The industrious Steven Ring has discovered that a catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts at Harvard is now online. This of course includes Ms. 95, the Liber Heraclidis , from which I digest the following:
Title : Liber Heraclidis. Syriac
Title : Te'gurta d-Heraqlidos : manuscript, 1899.
Location : Houghton library MS Syriac 95
Finding aids : Goshen-Gottstein, 76; Titterton, Syriac manuscripts in the Semitic Museum , 176.
Description : 1 v. (280 p.) ; 37 cm.
Provenance : Bookplate of former owner J. Rendel Harris with his number (87). Purchased by the Harvard Semitic Museum in 1905 (accession no. 4023). Semitic Museum deposit, ca. 1959.
Notes: Title from colophon, p. 279. This also gives the scribe's name, the priest David from ʻ Anbi in Tergawar. It also states that the ms. was copied from a ms. written by Oshana Saru in March 1889 in Kochanes.
A subscription by Oshana Saru in the original ms. is copied on a front flyleaf by W. A. Shedd. This explains that he left blank spaces corresponding to damage in the ms. from which he worked, and that he added vowels.
Written in a neat East Syriac hand, with vowels, in black with occasional red.
Bound in half tan calf and cloth by Wilsons of Cambridge.
Cite as : MS Syriac 95. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
References : Baumstark, 117.
This is indeed, then, the Rendel Harris copy. The vague descriptions give way to specific information here about scribes and copies. Thus this is not a direct copy of the ancestor Kotchanes manuscript. Steven is going to Harvard; I will ask him to look at this manuscript.
RP
28th July 2007
Bibliography
Paul Bedjan, Nestorius: le livre d'Heraclide de Damas. Leipzig (1910).
F. Nau, Nestorius: le livre d'Heraclide de Damas, traduit en Français. Paris (1910)
The Syriac life of Nestorius is presented by Maurice Brière, La legende syriaque de Nestorius , revue de l'orient chrétien (1910), and reprinted separately by A. Picard & fils, Paris (1910).
Luise Abramowski, Untersuchungen zum Liber Heraclidis des Nestorius . / CSCO 242, Subs. 22. Louvain, 1963, pp. I-II ff. I owe this reference to Nikolai Seleznyov in the HUGOYE-L email list, but I have not seen the volume. This apparently states that the original Ms was lost during the First World War.