‘This story may provide proof’. History and authority in Syriac excerpt collections and beyond.

Combining intellectual history with material philology, this project studies the authority attributed to
histories in Syriac excerpt collections (6-10th c). It uses unstudied material to analyse the
intertwining of identity formation and historical narratives, to provide the first cross-cultural study of
late antique excerpt collections, and to study the changing status of historical knowledge compared
to other types of knowledge.