The Short Chronicle is probably part of a Church History that is no longer extant, and it was written by an Ecclesiastic living in the north of Mesopotamia and belonging to the Church of the East. It is an eyewitness report on a crucial historical period, the mid-7th century that witnessed the demise of two contending world empires, the Sasanian and the Byzantine, and their replacement by Islam, thus signaling the end of Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The Chronicle may be the earliest Syriac document which relies heavily on official Sasanian sources, including Khwadāy-nāmag, when it discusses secular history, and on church histories when dealing with ecclesiastical matters. It may also be the oldest Syriac chronicle which deals with the advent of Muḥammad and the ensuing Arab conquest, and which mentions Arab cities for the first time ever, including Mosul, Kufa, and Baṣra.
NASIR al-KAʿBI: Post-Doctoral Fellow at the university of Toronto (2014-2016) and Assistant Professor of history at the Department of History, University of Kufa, Iraq. Among his publications: Sasanian State in Arabic Sources: A Study of Political History (Damascus 2008; in Arabic); The Debate between State and Religion in the Sasanian Era (Beirut 2010; in Arabic).