Till about this time Syriac influence was strong in Armenia, and some Syriac works have survived only in Armenian translations. In the opening years of the 6th century the Persian-Roman War (502-506) found a chronicler in the anonymous Edessene history known till recently as the Chronicle of Joshua Stylites. Whether Edessa received from the emperor Justin I. the additional name of Justinopolis may be uncertain (see Hallier, _op. cit._ p. 128); but it seems to have been renewed and fortified after the "fourth" flood in 525 (Procop. _Pers._ ii. 27; _De aedific._ ii. 7). About this time, according to Nöldeke, an anonymous Edessene wrote the Romance of Julian the Apostate, which so many Arab writers use as a history. Chosroes I. Anushirwan succeeded in 540, according to the last entry in the Edessene Chronicle, in exacting a large tribute from Edessa; but in 544 he besieged it in vain. A few years later Jacob Baradaeus, with Edessa as centre of his bishopric, was carrying on the propaganda of Monophysitism which won for the adherents of that creed the name of Jacobites (q.v.). The valuable Syriac Chronicle just referred to probably was compiled in the latter half of this century. _Islam._--In the first decade of the next century Edessa was taken by Chosroes II., and a large part of the population transported to eastern Persia. Within a score of years it was recovered by the emperor Heraclius, who reviewed a large army under its walls. The prophet of Islam was now, however, building up his power in Arabia, and although Heraclius paid no heed to the letter demanding his adhesion which he received from Medina (628), and the deputation of fifteen Rahawiyin who paid homage in 630 were not Edessenes but South Arabians, a few years later (636?) Heraclius's attempts, from Edessa as a centre, to effect an organized opposition to the victorious Arabs were defeated by Sa'd, and he fell back on Samosata. The terms on which Edessa definitely passed into the hands of the Moslems (638) under Riyad are not certain (Baladhuri). As it now ceased to be a frontier city it lost in importance. In 668 occurred another destructive flood (Theophanes, p. 537), and in 678 an earthquake which destroyed part of the "old church," which the caliph Mo'awiya I. is said to have repaired. To the latter part of the century belongs the activity of Edessa's bishop Jacob, whose chronicle is unfortunately lost. It may have been the impulse given by the final supremacy of the caliphate to the long process which eventually substituted a new branch of Semitic speech for the Aramaic (which had now prevailed for a millennium and a half), that led Jacob to adopt the Greek vowel signs for use in Syriac. A century later Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785), author of a lost history, translated into Syriac "the two books of the poet Homer on the Conquest of the city of Ilion." When the Bagdad caliphs lost control of their dominions, Edessa