The Medieval Church · c. 775
The Chronicle of Zuqnin
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What it is
A world chronicle whose final book is a monk's eyewitness account of plague, famine, locusts, and Abbasid taxation in northern Mesopotamia.
Why it lasted
One of the most vivid descriptions of ordinary suffering to survive from the early Middle Ages, written from inside a village rather than a court.
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below. The Library catalogues it; it does not host the text.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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