Obituary: Syriac writer Dr. Youssef Matti Ishaq dies at age of 90

STOCKHOLM – Syriac writer Youssef Matti Ishaq has passed away at the age of 90 in the diaspora in Stockholm. Matti Ishaq was born in 1931 in the Syriac town of Bartella, Nineveh Plains, Iraq. He joined the Syriac Orthodox Seminary where he studied for 10 years. He then moved to Lebanon to study Semitic languages and received a PhD for his thesis on the Syriac Chronicle of Zuqnin.

In the early 1980s he emigrated to Sweden and worked as a teacher at Stockholm University. Matti Ishaq was affiliated with the Aramaic Cultural Center in Stockholm.

The late writer leaves behind a wide range of more than 30 published works on various topics, including on the Syriac language, culture, Bible, and literature. Matti Ishaq received the Aram Award for Syriac Literature in 2008 for his Syriac poetry book “ܫܘܫܢܬܐ ܕܒܪܐ.”

One of his most prominent books is Manhal al-Azeb (2012) which includes studies on the conduct of life, peoples and cities, and touches on the fields of poetry and literature of wisdom.

For Arabic see SyriacPress Arabic