Catalin-Stefan Popa is Research Professor in Church History at the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. He holds his Ph.D. from Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany (2016). In 2021 he received the venia legendi (habilitation) at Karl Franzens University of Graz, Austria. He published articles, and edited volumes on Syriac and Oriental ecclesiastical history, exegesis, and literature, including the monograph G¿warg¿s I. (660-680). Ostsyrische Christologie in frühislamischer Zeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016). He is the editor-in-chief and founder of The Syriac Annals of Romanian Academy (SARA).

Part I: The Beginnings of Syriac Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land; 1 Early Syriac Pilgrims to Palestine; 2 The Four Legendary Pilgrimages to Jerusalem of the West; 3 Rabbula of Edessa and Benjamin of Nehardea: Jerusalem as a Stage in the Formation of the Monk; 4 The Ideal of aksenoyutho: John of Ephesus Portraying Syriac Women as Pilgrims to Jerusalem; 5 Against the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem: Philoxenos of Mabug, ¿š¿¿yahb I, Rabban Hormizd, and the Promotion of Local Tradition; 6 The Motif of Travelling to Jerusalem in the Monastic Histories of Thomas of Marga and ¿š¿¿den¿h ¿ of Basra; 7 A Survey into Syriac Liturgical Theology and its Genealogical Interrelation with Jerusalem; 8 The Symbol of the Holy Wood of Jerusalem in the Consciousness of Syriac Christians; Part II: Syriac Christians and the Tradition of the Holy Places of Palestine following the Islamic Conquest of Jerusalem (638-639); 1 Syriac Sources and the Muslim Conquest of Jerusalem: Myths and Compilations in Syriac Sources; 2 ¿š¿¿yahb III and the Syriac Christians of the Holy City; 3 Timotheus I and the East Syriac Bishopric of the Holy Land; 4 West Syriac Bishops of Jerusalem; 5 A Brief Attempt at a Patristic Perspective: Jerusalem as Viewed through Political and Interreligious Identitary Clichés; Part III: The Portrayal of Jerusalem in Syriac Chronicles and Poems on the Second Islamic Conquest and Subsequent Period, and the Presence of Syriac Pilgrims in Palestine in the Late Medieval Period; 1 ¿al¿¿ ad-Din's Conquest of Jerusalem in Syriac Literature; 2 Syriac Communities in the Holy Land and the Holy City of the Middle Ages; 3 Syriac Pilgrimages to the Holy City after the Second Muslim Conquest