The Syriac language, also known as Syriac Aramaic and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ, is an Aramaic language. The language is a dialect that emerged during the first century AD from a local Aramaic dialect that was spoken in the ancient region of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa. During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac rites. Following the spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India and China. It flourished from the 4th to the 8th century, and continued to have an important role during the next centuries, but by the end of the Middle Ages it was gradually reduced to liturgical use, since the role of vernacular language among its native speakers was overtaken by several emerging Neo-Aramaic dialects.
An 11th-century Syriac manuscript
The Syriac alphabet
Late Syriac text, written in Madnhāyā script, from Thrissur, Kerala, India, 1799
An ancient mosaic from Edessa, from the 2nd century CE, with inscriptions in early Edessan Aramaic (Old Syriac)
Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, southeastern Anatolia, Eastern Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula, where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over three thousand years.
This clay tablet represents a classroom experiment; a teacher imposed a challenging writing exercise on pupils who spoke both Babylonian-Akkadian and Aramaic. The pupils had to use traditional syllabic signs to express the sounds of the Aramaic alphabet. c. 500 BC. From Iraq
The Carpentras Stele was the first ancient inscription ever identified as "Aramaic". Although it was first published in 1704, it was not identified as Aramaic until 1821, when Ulrich Friedrich Kopp complained that previous scholars had left everything "to the Phoenicians and nothing to the Arameans, as if they could not have written at all".
Syriac inscription at the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church's Major Archbishop's House in Kerala, India
Late Syriac text, written in Madnhāyā script, from Thrissur, Kerala, India (1799)