ABSTRACT
While the most recognizable name of the Syriac-speaking church and its literature is Ephrem (306–73), the deacon and poet has always been elusive to pin down geographically. Most identify him with his home city Nisibis (Nuseybin, Turkey), where he lived until the last ten years of his life. Others attach him to Edessa (modern Urfa, Turkey), where he lived that last decade and wrote some of his most significant works. Ephrem’s works and fame would spread far beyond the Syriac-speaking world, places where the two famous cities were unfamiliar, so he came to be known by a generic epithet: Ephrem the Syrian.
