ABSTRACT
From its origins in Mesopotamia to its continuing development among a worldwide diaspora, the history of Syriac cultures and literature stretches widely across time and space. Conveying a range of nearly two millennia with its diversity of cultural contact from Asia to Africa to Europe and beyond is an inescapable challenge for geographers of Syriac cultures. It is impossible for traditional printed maps to exhaustively represent this extent. At the very least, one would need an entire atlas. Accordingly, the aim of these maps is more modest. Their primary purpose is to illustrate geographically the themes of this book, reflecting in a small way the current state of research on the historical geography of Syriac cultures. By extension, these maps offer a general, but abbreviated, cartography of Syriac cultures and their geographic contexts. As an aid for readers, this introduction explains the design principles of these maps and offers xxviiireferences for additional resources. The study of Syriac cultural geography is only in its beginning stages. It is hoped that the maps will spur further research. In particular, they are being released under an open license that will allow them to be widely used and re-published.
