Jacob of Serugh (, ''''; his toponym is also spelt
Serug or
Sarug; c.
451 –
29 November 521) was one of the foremost
Syriac poet-theologians, perhaps only second in stature to
Ephrem the Syrian and equal to
Narsai. Where his predecessor Ephrem is known as the 'Harp of the Spirit', Jacob is the 'Flute of the Spirit'. He is best known for his prodigious corpus of more than seven-hundred verse
homilies, or
mêmrê (), of which only 225 have thus far been edited and published.
Jacob was born around the middle of the
fifth century AD in the village of Kurtam on the
Euphrates, in the ancient region of Serugh, which stood as the eastern part of the province of
Commagene (corresponding to the modern Turkish districts of
Suruç and
Birecik). He was educated in the famous
School of Edessa and became
chorepiscopus back in the Serugh area, serving rural churches of Haura (, ''''). His tenure of this office extended over a time of great trouble to the
Christian population of
Mesopotamia, due to the fierce war carried on by the
Sassanian Shah
Kavadh I within the Roman borders. When, on
10 January 503, the city of
Amid (modern
Diyarbakır) was captured by the Persians after a three months' siege and all its citizens put to the sword or carried captive, a panic seized the whole district, and the Christian inhabitants of many neighbouring cities planned to leave their homes and flee to the west of the Euphrates. They were recalled to a more courageous frame of mind by the letters of Jacob.
In
519, Jacob was elected
bishop of the main city of the area, Batnan da-Srugh (,
). As Jacob was born in the same year as the controversial
Council of Chalcedon, he lived through the intense rifts that split the Church of the
Byzantine Empire, which led to most Syriac speakers being separated from the imperial communion in what was to become the
Syriac Orthodox Church. Even though imperial persecution of anti-Chalcedonians became increasingly brutal towards the end of Jacob's life, he remained surprisingly quiet on such divisive theological and political issues. However, when pressed in correspondece by Paul, bishop of
Edessa, he openly expressed dissatisfaction with the proceedings of Chalcedon.
From the various extant accounts of Jacob's life and from the number of his known works, we gather that his literary activity was unceasing. According to
Barhebraeus (
Chron. Eccles. i. 191) he employed 70 amanuenses and wrote in all 760 metrical homilies, besides expositions, letters and hymns of different sorts. Of his merits as a writer and poet we are now well able to judge from
P. Bedjan's edition of selected metrical homilies (Paris 1905-1908), containing 146 pieces. They are written throughout in dodecasyllabic metre, and those published deal mainly with biblical themes, though there are also poems on such subjects as the deaths of
Christian martyrs, the fall of the idols and the
First Council of Nicaea.
Of Jacob's prose works, which are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters, which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his attachment to the
Monophysite doctrine which was then struggling for supremacy in the Syrian churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the opposite teaching of
Nestorius. 
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