Syriac (ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries,Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries, the classical language of Edessa, preserved in a large body of Syriac literature.

It became the vehicle of Syriac Christianity and culture, spreading throughout Asia as far as the Indian Malabar Coast and Eastern China, and was the medium of communication and cultural dissemination for Arabs and, to a lesser extent, Persians. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a fundamental cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic, which replaced it towards the end of the 8th century. Syriac remains the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity.

Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language, and as such a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family.

Sebastian Paul Brock (born 1938, London) is generally acknowledged as the foremost and most influential academic in the field of Syriac language today. He is a former Reader in Syriac Studies at the University of Oxford's Oriental Institute and currently a Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Sebastian Brock completed his BA degree at the University of Cambridge, and a DPhil at Oxford. He is the recipient of a number of honorary doctorates and has been awarded the Medal of Saint Ephrem the Syrian by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch and the Leverhulme prize and medal of the British Academy. He is a widely published author on Syriac topics. His best selling books are The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian (Kalamazoo: Cistercian. ISBN 0-87907-524-4) and The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo: Cistercian. ISBN 0-87907-601-1).

He is married to Helen Hughes-Brock, an archaeologist specialising in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece.