Abstract

In southeastern Turkey, Ṭūr ʿAbdīn is an essential region for Syriac Christianity owing to its many churches and monasteries and to its religious importance during Middle Ages. Nevertheless, despite literary evidence of a figural painting tradition in Syriac church, most of the churches in Ṭūr ʿAbdīn have today no surviving painted decoration because of the ravages of time and long neglect. This paper offers a depiction and analysis of what seems to be the only monumental painting surviving in the region: the apse decoration of Mor-Stephanos Church in the village of Kfarbe. Recently discovered, these paintings warrant analysis of their iconography and stylistic interpretation. Using written sources and examples of Syriac figurative paintings outside Ṭūr ʿAbdīn, this article offers a hypothesis about the dating, style, and iconography of such an important testimony for Syriac art history.