20 July 2025, Sunday

15:00

Registration and Coffee

16:20

Welcoming and Greetings

17:00

Gründler, Beatrice (FU Berlin): Kalila wa-Dimna and the Role of the Syriac Versions

17:25

Hartmann, Elke Shoghig(FU Berlin): The Ottoman Eastern Provinces in the 19th Century

17:50

Hölck, Lasse (FU Berlin): Natural Selection? Small Scale Indigenous Groups between Extermination, Genocide and Ethnocide. A Global View from Latin American History

18:15

Reception

21 July 2025, Monday

08:30

Registration

Section I: 3rd Arba’ilu International Conference on Syriac and Sureth Studies (3rd AICSSS)

Chair: Klimiuk, Maciej

09:30

Askar, Kawther Najeeb (SU Erbil): Deviation in Khamis Bar Qardahi’s Poem (ܢܲܦ̮ܫܵܐ ܣܲܘܝܵܐ ܘܲܪܓܼܝܼܓܼܵܐ): A Stylistic Study

الإنزياح في قصيدة (ܢܲܦ̮ܫܵܐ ܣܲܘܝܵܐ ܘܲܪܓܼܝܼܓܼܵܐ) لخاميس بر قرداحي :دراسة أسلوبية

10:00

Pritula, Anton (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg): The Erbil Poetic Circle during the Syriac Renaissance Period: Manuscripts, Authors and General Features

10:30

Muraviev, Alexey (Moscow State University): Khizhniakova, Stanislava (HSE University): Eye Diseases in Syriac Medieval Medical Literature

11:00

Coffee Break

Chair: Furman, Yulia

11:30

Younansardaroud, Helen (FU Berlin): An Amulet Scroll with Incantations for an Assyrian Woman from Ardishay (Urmia)

12:00

Gross, Simcha (FU Berlin): Divorcing Demons in Jewish Aramaic and Syriac: Reflections on Transmission and Religious Contact in Late Antique Iraq

12:30

Abousamra, Gaby (Lebanese University Beirut): A Syriac Magical Bowl in Manichaean Script

13:00

Lunch (by Invitation Only)

Chair: Kuzin, Nikita

14:00

Furman, Yulia (FU Berlin): Šurṭē: Prisoners of War or Arabic Militia? Evidence from Syriac Sources

14:30

Čéplö, Slavomír (BBAW); DiRusso, Giovanni (Harvard University): Syriac Linguistics in the Age of AI

15:00

Grenert, Briana (Duke University); Čéplö, Slavomír (BBAW): Religion in Syriac: A Word Vector Analysis with Simtho Data

15:30

Coffee Break

Chair: Hakeem, Salam Neamah Hirmiz

16:00

Yohanna, Samer Soreshow (SU Erbil): Textual Study of ܠܟܬܼܵܒܼܵܐ ܕܲܙܡܝܼܖ̈ܬܼܵܐ by the Forgotten Author Father Elias Sher

دراسة نصّيّة لـ"ܟܬܼܵܒܼܵܐ ܕܲܙܡܝܼܖ̈ܬܼܵܐ" للكاتب المنسي الأب إلياس شير الراهب

16:30

Mustață, Radu (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): New Words in Syriac from South India: The Witness of Kadavil Chandy Kattanar’s Poetry

17:00

Eramia, Rony (FU Berlin): David Barzani — His Biography and Literary Works

17:30

Jasim, Anmar Abduljabbar (University of Al-Qadisiyya): Gravestone Inscriptions in the Church of the Monastery of Our Lady, Protector of the Crops, in Alqosh/Mosul

نقوش شواهد القبور في كنيسة دير السيدة العذراء حافظة الزروع في القوش/الموصل

22 July 2025, Tuesday

Chair: Kouriyhe, Yousef

09:30

Alhameedawi, Adnan Shibeeb Jasim (University of Baghdad); Baybuzi, Amel Adee Polus (University of Baghdad): The Semantic Overlap of Phonetically Similar Roots in Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic: A Comparative Study

التداخل الدلالي للجذور المتقاربة لفظاً في السريانية والعبرية والعربية: دراسة مقارنة

10:00

Muhammad, Himdad Abdulqahhar (SU Erbil); Hakeem, Salam Neamah Hirmiz (SU Erbil): A Stylistic Analysis of Symbolism in the Syriac-Kurdish Poem ‘Shuraya Daqyamta’

تحليل أسلوبي للرمزية في القصيدة السريانية الكردية "ܫܘܼܪܵܝܵܐ ܕܲܩܝܵܡܬܵܐ"

10:30

Al-Khailani, Laith Hasan Mohammed (University of Baghdad): Pseudo-Interrogative Sentences in Arabic and Syriac: A Comparative Study

الاسْتِفْهَام الغير حقيقي في الجملة العربية والسريانية: دراسة مقارنة

11:00

Coffee Break

Chair: Askar, Kawther Najeeb

11:30

Tawfeeq, Barween Badri (SU Erbil): Discovery of the Site of the Monastery of Sabrishoʿ in Adiabene: A Historical, Documentary and Archaeological Study

الكشف عن موقع دير سبريشوع في حدياب: دراسة تأريخية وثائقية – اثرية

12:00

Najm, Amer Abdullah (University of Mosul): The Book of Prelates by Thoma d-Marga as a Source for Urbanism and Monasteries: An Urbanistic Study and Investigation

كتاب الرؤساء لتوما المرجي مصدراً من مصادر البلدانيات والديارات: دراسة وتحقيق بلداني

13:00

Lunch (by Invitation Only)

Chair: Yohanna, Samer Soreshow

14:00

Voigt, Rainer (FU Berlin): On the Verbal Stem Morphology of Syriac

14:30

Khudher, Luma Aphraim (SU Erbil): The Debate Between Cain and Abel: A Comparative Study in Syriac and Mesopotamian Literature and Jewish Traditions

المناظرة بين قايين وهابيل: دراسة مقارنة في الأدب السرياني والرافديني والتقاليد اليهودية

15:00

Cherkashina, Anna (Tel Aviv University): New Textual Evidence for the ‘Syriac Treatise of Shem’

15:30

Coffee Break

Chair: Park, Grace

16:00

Birol, Simon (Universität Göttingen): Transmission and Reception of the Syriac Ahiqar Story

16:30

Rucki, Mirosław (Casimir Pulaski Radom University): References to Syriac in Talmud

17:00

Edmonds, Alexander (Universität Münster): The Last of Gilgāmeš. A Mesopotamian King in Theodore Bār Kōnay’s Kṯāḇā d-ˀeskōlyōn

17:30

Aho, Shemunkasho (University of Salzburg): 150th Anniversary of the Visit of Patriarch Peter IV to Queen Victoria

23 July 2025, Wednesday

Chair: Khudher, Luma Aphraim

09:30

Friestad, Kjetil (University of Agder): Pilgrimage Practices of the Christians of Beth Qatraye in the 6th–8th Centuries

10:00

Hager, Anna (University of Vienna): Defining the Terms ‘Assyrian’ and ‘Suryān’ in the Context of Modern Lebanon

10:30

BarAbraham, Abdulmesih (Munich): Regulation and Improvement of the Nestorian Districts in the Hakkari Region during the Late Ottoman Empire

11:00

Coffee Break

Section II: 19th Century Turabdin in Syriac Sources

Chair: van Ginkel, Jan

11:30

Turgut, Ramazan (Mardin Artuklu University): The Church of the East in Qudshanis: Ottoman Policies, Internal Rivalries, and Western Intervention (19th–20th Century)

12:00

Talay, Shabo (FU Berlin): Turabdin in the 19th Century — an Overview

12:30

Üzel, A.-S. Barbara (FU Berlin):Notable Figures of 19th Century Tur Abdin

13:00

Lunch (by Invitation Only)

Chair: Üzel, A.-S. Barbara

14:00

Atas, Nicolas (KU Leuven, BEL): Ṭuroyo Manuscripts from the Sachau Collection in Berlin as a Source for the History of the Turabdin Region in the 19th Century

14:30

Birol, Simon (Universität Göttingen): Echoes of Turmoil: Syriac Voices on Encroachments in 19th-Century Tur Abdin

15:00

Kouriyhe, Yousef (FU Berlin):Western Missionaries in 19th Century Turabdin and the Reaction of the Syriac Orthodox

15:30

Coffee Break

Chair: Yildiz, Efrem

16:00

Bcheiry, Iskandar (Chicago SOK): Sacred Places in Ṭūrʿabdīn in a Collection of Syriac Orthodox Archives from the Late Ottoman Period

16:30

van Ginkel, Jan (FU Berlin): On the Informal Connections between Syriac Orthodox Communities in Eastern Turkey and the Syriac Communities in India at the End of the 19th and Early 20th Century

17:00

Barthoma, Soner (Uppsala Universitet, SWE): Early Results from a Survey Study on Community Resilience among Assyrians in Turkey

17:30

Zeitoune, Abboud (Wiesbaden): Role of Naum Faiq in Documenting the Sayfo Period

24 July 2025, Thursday

Section III: Sayfo 1915

Chair: Barthoma, Soner

09:00

Al-Jeloo, Nicholas: The Story of the Massacre of Assyrians in the District of Cizre, 1915

09:30

Yildiz, Efrem (University of Salamanca): The Written and Oral Sources from the Botan Region on the Assyrian Genocide

10:00

Hofmann, Tessa (FU Berlin): Sayfo 1915 — Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans

10:30

Ninos, Sanherib (Frankfurt University): The Assyrian/Aramean Genocide of World War I: Memory, Identity and Recognition of the ‘Sayfo’ in the European Diaspora

11:00

Coffee Break

Chair: Birol, Simon

11:30

Binder, Matthias (Marburg University): Theology of the Sayfo? A Survey of Discourses within the Syriac Orthodox Church

12:00

Mor Polycarpus A. Aydin (Netherlands SOK): Faith, Liturgy, and Collective Memory: The Syriac Orthodox Church’s Response to Sayfo

12:30

Beth Turo, Yawsef (Enschede): New Eyewitness Accounts of the Sayfo Published in Turkiye

13:00

Lunch (by Invitation Only)

Chair: Mor Polycarpus A. Aydin

14:00

Abdalla, Michael (Poznań University): Nisibis and its Population at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

14:30

Talay, Shabo (FU Berlin): Sayfo 1915: The Cultural and Linguistic Dimensions of Genocide

15:00

Mate, Parween Shamoon (Syriac Writers Union-Erbil): We Will not Forget Sayfo لن ننسى سيفو

15:30

Final Discussion

16:00

Coffee Break and Fingerfood

11:00–11:30

Registration and coffee break / Greetings

Grammatical and Lexical Peculiarities in Arabic Dialects

Chair: Werner Arnold

11:30–12:00

Maria Persson

Functions of bədd-/bidd-/badd- in Syrian Arabic

12:00–12:30

Gabriel M. Rosenbaum

Lexical Peculiarities in the Spoken Language of Christians in Egypt: What They Say and What They Don’t

12:30–13:00

Taku Kumakiri

Semantic Change of the Verb wallaː of Tunis Arabic

13:00–14:00

Lunch

Linguistic Variation and Contact in Arabic Varieties

Chair: Maria Persson

14:00–14:30

Volkan Bozkurt

Contact-Induced Linguistic Change in Khorasan and Khamse Arabic

14:30–15:00

Shomoukh Sami Alyami and Munira Ali Al-Azraqi

The Variation in the Usage of the 2nd Masculine Singular Suffix in Najrani Arabic

15:00–15:30

Julie Lowry and Andrea Boom

Notes on Salient Linguistic Variation in Harūb, Jazan, Saudi Arabia

15:30–16:00

Coffee break

Dialectology and Oral Traditions in Modern South Arabian Languages

Chair: Letizia Cerqueglini

16:00–16:30

Andrea Boom and Fatimah al-Mahri

Dialectology of Mehri, Contrasting Beit Thuwar and Zaabanot Linguistic Variations

16:30–17:00

Giuliano Castagna

Towards a Dialect Atlas of the Jibbali/Śḥerɛt Language

17:00–17:30

Saeed Al-Qumairi and Andrea Boom

Dialectal Comparison between Haswayn and Hawf Dialects of Mehri: An Analysis of Four Children’s Stories

17:30–18:00

Amir Azad Adli al-Kathiri and Anton Kungl

Šiʿr ar-Riǧāl (hēb iź-ʁāg): An Extinct Poetic Genre in Jibbali/Shahri. An Introduction to the Genre, Its Linguistic Peculiarities and Its Arabic and Mehri Influence

18:00

Dinner

Phonetic and Prosodic Structures in Semitic Languages and Dialects

Chair: Wiktor Gębski

9:30–10:00

Hammal al-Balushi

Pharyngealisation or Glottalisation: The Case of Ḥarsūsi Emphatic Stops

10:00–10:30

Maria Lipnicka

Juncture and Utterance in Arabic Dialects: Haim Blanc’s Prosodic Feature Theory Compared with Data from Gozo, Malta

10:30–11:00

Mahmut Ağbaht

New Findings on Pausal Phenomena: A Major Revision of Processes in Pausal Forms

11:00–11:30

Coffee break

Documenting Jewish Arabic Dialects

Chair: Maciej Klimiuk

11:30–12:00

Wiktor Gębski

Gender-Based Linguistic Variation in the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Ghardaïa (Saharan Algeria)

12:00–12:30

Ori Shachmon

Aden Arabic: A Mosaic of Archaisms and Linguistic Innovations

12:30–13:00

Assaf Bar Moshe

The Jewish Arabic Dialect of Mosul: Insights from New and Existing Data

13:00–14:00

Lunch

Studies in NENA and Turoyo Dialects

Chair: Mila Neishtadt

14:00–14:30

Geoffrey Khan

Progressive Constructions in NENA Dialects

14:30–15:00

Ablahad Lahdo

Adult Language Learners, the Case of Turoyo

15:00–15:30

Shabo Talay

Characteristics of the Turoyo Dialect of Bissorino

15:30–16:00

Coffee break

Bridging Dialectology and Semantics in the Semitic Languages

Chair: Assaf Bar Moshe

16:00–16:30

Mila Neishtadt

Integrating Dialectal Data: Reconstructing the Semantics of Semitic kmr

16:30–17:00

Anat Sageev and Letizia Cerqueglini

Language, Cognition, and Communal Dialects: Animal Taxonomy in Secular and Ḥaredi Israeli Hebrew

17:00–17:30

Yair Grossman and Letizia Cerqueglini

Late-Bronze Northwest Semitic Dialectology between Languages and Scribal Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Formulaic Phraseology

17:30–18:00

Aharon Geva-Kleinberger

The Christian Transjordanian Arabic Dialect of as-Salṭ at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

18:00

Dinner (Profesorium/Terrace at the Institute of Semitic Studies)

Morphosyntactic and Phonological Features in Neo-Aramaic Dialects

Chair: Julia Furman

9:30–10:00

Nikita Kuzin

Quadriradical Verbs in Neo-Aramaic Revisited

10:00–10:30

Werner Arnold

Aki’o Nakanos Western Neo-Aramaic Text from Ǧubbʿadīn about Firewood

10:30–11:00

Lidia Napiórkowska

The Markedness of the Fronted Rounded Vowels in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic

11:00–11:30

Coffee break

Spoken Semitic Languages in Context

Chair: Nikita Kuzin

11:30–12:00

Letizia Cerqueglini

Ancient Futures, Future Passives: Upper Galilean and Muṯallaṯ Arabic Verbal Pragmatics and Their Elicitation

12:00–12:30

Rainer Voigt

Ethiosemitic Dialectology

12:30–13:00

Fabio Gasparini

Was I that Bad? Reflections upon Earlier Fieldwork

13:00–14:00

Discussion and closing of the conference / Lunch

Shabo Talay

Begrüßung und Einführung

Polycarpus Augin Aydin (Glane/NL)

„The role of Jacob of Serugh for the church”

Sebastian Brock (Oxford)

„Malphono Jacob and his Key to the Law, Prophets and Writings (Tanakh)”

Andy Hilkens (Gent):            

„Three Syriac Lives of Jacob of Serugh”

Simon Birol (Bochum):

„The Syriac hagiographic sources on Jacob of Serugh revisited: Preliminary results”

Philip Forness (Frankfurt a.M.):

„Jacob of Serugh and His Relationship to Edessa“

PAUSE

14:30

Vasiliki Chamourgiotaki (Berlin):

„The Arabic version of Jacob of Serugh’s homily on the Council of Nicaea“

15:10

Yousef Kouriyhe (Berlin):

„Die theologischen Hintergründe Jakob von Serughs in der Diskussion der Thesen von Barsudelli“

15:50

Rebekka Nieten (Berlin):

„Der Parallelismus membrorum als Stilmittel in den Gedichten von Jakob von Serugh“

Welcome and opening remarks 

Metin Bağrıaçık (Boun) and Shabo Talay (FU Berlin)                                                                                                                                                                               

Narrative verbal Forms in the NENA dialects

Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge)

Neo-Aramaic markers of definiteness and indefiniteness: a typological overview in areal perspective

Fabio Gasparini (FU Berlin) and Alessandro Mengozzi (University of Turin)

Analyzing interborrowings between Modern Eastern Aramaic languages and Classical Syriac

Anna Cherkashina (Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute / Tel Aviv University) [Online] 

High and low ordinals in NENA: historical development or contact induced?

Ariel Gutman [Online]

New lexical findings in Ṭyare Neo-Aramaic

Hezy Mutzafi (Tel Aviv University) [Online]

Verbless and existential clauses in Modern Western Aramaic

Anna Bromirskaya and Nikolay Grishin (HSE University Moscow)

Morpho-phonological alternations in Maaloula Aramaic feminine nouns

Ghattas Eid and Ingo Plag (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Evidentiality in Modern Western Aramaic

Alexey Duntsov (HSE University Moscow)

How Arabicized is the Modern Western Aramaic lexicon?

Charles G. Häberl (Rutgers University) and Sergey Loesov (HSE Moscow)

On the Periphery

Samuel E. Fox 

Morpho-phonological analysis of verbs in the Alqoshi Neo-Aramaic

Catrin Seepo (University of Florida)

A corpus-based study of word order change in Neo-Aramaic 

Paul M. Noorlander (University of Cambridge). In collaboration with Geoff Haig and Dorota Molin 

What is Central Neo-Aramaic?

Shabo Talay (FU Berlin)

The NENA variety of Nudiz

Elizaveta Zabelina (RAS Institute for Linguistic Studies, Saint Petersburg)

The definite article with proper nouns in Ṭuroyo

Sergey Loesov (HSE Moscow) and Charles G. Häberl (Rutgers University) 

Adnominal possession marking in Ṭuroyo

Ksenia Kashintseva (HSE Moscow)

A finer look at the Christian Urmi verbal stems

Elena Shvedova (HSE Moscow)

Intransitive clauses in NENA and Qəltu Arabic, and their implications for typology and diachronic change

Dorota Molin (University of Cambridge)

Documentation of NENA varieties spoken in Urmiya (Krasnodar Krai, Russia)

Kirill Kozhanov (University of Potsdam), Natalia Logvinova (HSE Moscow), Alexey Lyavdansky (HSE Moscow), Maria Ovsjannikova (University of Potsdam), Alina Russkikh (HSE Moscow), Ivan Sarkisov (HSE Moscow), Sergey Say (University of Potsdam), Elena Shvedova (HSE Moscow), Elizaveta Zabelina (RAS Institute for Linguistic Studies, Saint Petersburg)

Linguistic variables in NENA speakers from Urmiya, Krasnodar Krai: A dialectometric study

Maria Ovsjannikova and Sergey Say (University of Potsdam)

Significant differences in the phonology of glottal consonants between Western Neo-Aramaic and Syrian Arabic 

Ivri Bunis (University of Haifa) [Online]

Relative clauses in the Neo-Aramaic dialect of Telkepe

Eleanor Coghill (Uppsala University) 

Crowdsourcing machine learning datasets for Northeastern Neo-Aramaic: groundwork for language revitalization 

Matthew Nazari (Harvard University & University of Cambridge)

Practical issues in building an Aramaic lexicon: a case study from Syriac with Neo-Aramaic implications

George Kiraz (Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute / Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)