{"collection":"asia","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/asia/lsbh/index.htm","path":"asia/lsbh/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/asia/lsbh/index.htm","text":"Bar-Hebraeus was a 13th century bishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church.\nBorn in 1226 in what is now Turkey, Bar-Hebraeus was renowned as a scholar\nand theologian.\nHe died in 1286 in Persia.\nWriting mostly in Syriac and Arabic, Bar Hebraeus wrote on philosophy, poetry,\nlanguage, history and theology, including a comprehensive history of the\nworld, the Chronicon Ecclesiasticum.\nThe Laughable Stories are a sequence of anecdotes categorized by\nthe story-teller: starting with Persian, Indian, Hebrew and Christian sages,\nand including stories of Misers, Clowns, Thieves, and Animals and so on.\nMany of these stories have been included in compilations much\nfurther away in time and space.\nWhile a streak of sexism runs through the collection, in a couple of\ninstances, the shoe is on the other foot.\nWhile many of these tales were probably pretty funny in the original\n13th century cultural context, some of them will be totally mysterious\nto moderns.\nProduction notes: The translation, by E.A.W. Budge, who also did\nmany of the Ancient Egyptian texts at this site, used a 19th century\nform of quotation in which quotes are inserted at the start of each line\nin multi-line quoted blocks; this has been modernized.\nThis made the transcription difficult, since in some cases I had to\nmake editorial decisions as to the location of the modern quotes.\n--J.B. Hare, October 9, 2009.","title":"The Laughable Stories of Bar-Hebraeus Index","type":"page"}