A Syriac Hymn on the Crusades from a Warda Collection

The poem On the laying waste of Jerusalem is part of an East-Syriac collection of hymns, traditionally entitled Kthava d-warda «The Book of the Rose» and usually attributed in the manuscripts to a certain Giwargis «George», surnamed Warda «the Rose». The poem is preserved in only one manuscript of the Book of the Rose (Berlin 65, dated 1715) and was published in 1873 by Theodor Nöldeke, with German translation and ample commentary. It is here re-published in vocalized East-Syriac script and English translation. The pro-Western, filo-Crusades ideology of the text is presented in the context of the late East-Syriac sympathy for Latin (Frankish) Christianity. A survey of early (mainly 19th-century) and recent publications of or on Warda precedes analysis and text edition.