RESOURCESabout the Persian court obtained from envoys. The Greek text was
published with an English translation by H. B. Dewing in the Loeb
Classical Library (London and New York, 1914). G. Carratelli eval-
uates the kind of information which Ammianus and Prokopios provide
about the Sasanians, especially Prokopios' account of the Mazdakis,
in "La Persia dei Sasanidi nella storiografia romana da Ammiano a
Procopio," in La Persia nel Medioevo, pp. 507-604. See also A. Per-
tusi, "La Persia nelle fonti bizantine del secolo VII," ibid., pp. 605-
32.
Two Syriac chronicles cover local events in northern Iraq in the
fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The History of Karkii dhe Beth Sel6k
is a local history of fifth-century Kirkuk composed in the sixth century
and is mostly an account of Christian martyrs; but it contains im-
portant information about Sasanian administration. The text, edited
from a seventh- or eighth-century manuscript, was published by
G. Moesinger in Monumenta syriaca ex Romanis codicibus collecta
(Innsbruck, 1878),11: 63-75; in P. Bedjan's Acta martyrum et sanc-
torum (Leipzig, 1891), 11: 507-37; and in the Chrestomathie of
K. Brockelmann's Syrische Grammatik (Berlin, 1899). It is translated
'in G. Hoffmann's Auszuge aus syrischen Akten persischer Martyrer
(Leipzig, 1880), pp. 43-60. For a positive evaluation of this text, see
J. M. Fiey, "Vers la rehabilitation de l'histoire de Karka d'Bet SI69,"
AB 82 (1964): 189-222. MeshiQ.a-Zekha's ecclesiastical history of Adi-
abene (the Chronicle of Arbela) was composed in about the middle
of the sixth century. It has been published with a French translation
by A. Mingana as "Histoire de l'eglise d'Adiabene sous les Parthes et
les Sassanides," Sources syriaques, I (Leipzig, 1908), and by F. Zorelli
as "Chronica Ecclesiae Arbelensis," Orientalia Christiana Num. 31,
vo!. 8, no. 4 (1927): 145-204. The argument over the reliability of
this text concerns the flagrant anachronisms in its account of early
Christianity during the Parthian period. There does not seem to be
such a problem with its account of late Sasanian conditions and the
anonymous continuation added in about 820 provides useful infor-
mation about the monastery of Beth Qoqa in the seventh and eighth
centuries (Mingana, Sources syriaques, I: 171-267).
A contemporary account of the reign of the Byzantine emperor
Maurice (582-602) was provided by the Egyptian Theophylactus Si-
mocatta. His Greek text in eight books is a good source of information
for events in the western part of the Sasanian empire, especially the
revolt of Bahriim Chubin and the flight and restoration of Khusraw