Welcome to SPEAR
A prosopographical database providing information about persons
and their relationships within the context of historical events.
Browse the collection
SPEAR: Syriac Persons, Events, and Relations is a digital prosopography project drawn from Syriac source material that is relevant to Syriac Studies, Byzantine Studies, Classics, Islamic Studies, and the Mediterranean World. It contains information on people and groups appearing in the Syriac texts included in the database. SPEAR offers multiple search fields enabling researchers to return hits for a wide variety of queries including parameters such as ethnicity, language spoken, occupation, etc. Each piece of data directs the user to a specific citation in one or more primary source texts and keyword tagging used throughout the dataset links this prosopographical material to Syriaca.org's bibliography database.
- About page: an overview of SPEAR and its project team.
- Basic browse: browse the data by person, place, or keyword.
- Advanced browse: faceted browse by person, occupation, relationship, gender, etc.
- Abgar VIII: a featured person page.
- Sophene: a featured place page.
- Monasticism: a featured keyword page.
- Event 3120-1: a featured factoid page.
Publication Status: Beta
SPEAR is a publication of Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal . Funding for SPEAR was provided by:
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or any of the other sponsors.