The History of the Za'faran Monastery is for the first time offered in English translation to the readers. It was written in 1917 by Patriarch Ignatius Aphram Barsoum (d. 1957) when he was still a monk at the monastery. The book details the history of the monastery from its inception until modern times. It deals with with everything, from construction to its significance as a center of Syriac learning and learned men. Without this small book, the first of its kind, a great and significant page of the history of the Syrian Church of Antioch would have been lamentably lost.