Ethiopian Synaxarium Dataset (የኢትዮጵያ ስንክሳር)

Dataset Description

This dataset contains the complete Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Synaxarium (ስንክሳር) - a collection of daily readings commemorating saints, martyrs, and biblical events according to the Ethiopian calendar.

The Synaxarium is an essential liturgical book used daily in Ethiopian Orthodox churches, containing hagiographies and spiritual readings for each day of the year.

Key Features

• Complete Coverage: All 366 days of the Ethiopian calendar (12 months × 30 days + 6 days of Pagumen)
• Rich Content: Daily commemorations including saints' lives, martyrdoms, miracles, and biblical events
• Cultural Heritage: Preserves ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Christian traditions and hagiographical literature
• Amharic Language: Text in Amharic (አማርኛ), one of Ethiopia's official languages

Dataset Structure

Schema

Column	Type	Description
ወር	string	Ethiopian month name (መስከረም, ሕዳር, ታኅሣሥ, የካቲት, መጋቢት, ሚያዝያ, ግንቦት, ሰኔ, ሐምሌ, ነሐሴ, መስከረም, ጥቅምት, ጳጉሜ)
ቀን	int32	Day number within the month (1-30, or 1-6 for Pagumen)
መጽሃፍ	string	Full text content of the day's reading in Amharic

Ethiopian Calendar Months

The Ethiopian calendar has 13 months:

1. መስከረም (Meskerem) - September/October
2. ጥቅምት (Tikimt) - October/November
3. ሕዳር (Hidar) - November/December
4. ታኅሣሥ (Tahsas) - December/January
5. የካቲት (Yekatit) - January/February
6. መጋቢት (Megabit) - February/March
7. ሚያዝያ (Miyazia) - March/April
8. ግንቦት (Ginbot) - April/May
9. ሰኔ (Sene) - May/June
10. ሐምሌ (Hamle) - June/July
11. ነሐሴ (Nehase) - July/August
12. ጳጉሜ (Pagume) - August/September (5-6 days only)

Data Source

This dataset was generated from the mezgebe_haymanot_assets repository, which contains digitized Synaxarium texts in Markdown format organized by month and day.

Processing Pipeline

The dataset was created using a custom Python script that:

1. Parses the directory structure (ስንክሳር/{month}/{day}/)
2. Extracts content from Markdown files
3. Removes YAML front matter
4. Organizes data into tabular format
5. Exports to Parquet format with compression

Usage

Using Hugging Face Datasets Library

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the dataset
dataset = load_dataset("Nexuss0781/synaxarium")

# Access the data
train_data = dataset["train"]

# Get a specific day's reading
for example in train_data:
    if example["ወር"] == "መስከረም" and example["ቀን"] == 1:
        print(f"Meskerem 1: {example['መጽሃፍ'][:500]}...")
        break

# Filter by month
meskerem_data = train_data.filter(lambda x: x["ወር"] == "መስከረም")
print(f"Meskerem has {len(meskerem_data)} days")

Using PyArrow Directly

import pyarrow.parquet as pq

# Read the parquet file
table = pq.read_table("synaxarium_dataset.parquet")
df = table.to_pandas()

# Query the data
meskerem_1 = df[(df["ወር"] == "መስከረም") & (df["ቀን"] == 1)]
print(meskerem_1["መጽሃፍ"].values[0])

Using Pandas

import pandas as pd

# Read directly
df = pd.read_parquet("synaxarium_dataset.parquet")

# Group by month
monthly_counts = df.groupby("ወር").size()
print(monthly_counts)

# Get random day's reading
sample = df.sample(1)
print(f"{sample.iloc[0]['ወር']} {sample.iloc[0]['ቀን']}")

Example Data

Sample Entry (መስከረም 1)

Month: መስከረም
Day: 1
Content Preview:

አንድ አምላክ በሆነ በአብ በወልድ በመንፈስ ቅዱስ ስም የእግዚአብሔርን ረድኤት አጋዥ በማድረግ...

This day commemorates:

• New Year (ርዕሰ ዓውደ ዓመት)
• Saint Bartholomew the Apostle
• Saint Melkios (Miracle Worker)
• Saint Raguel, Archangel
• Saint Job the Ascetic
• Saint Melios, Bishop

Statistics

• Total Records: 366 days
• Months: 13 Ethiopian months
• Language: Amharic (አማርኛ)
• Format: Parquet (compressed with Snappy)
• Average Content Length: ~15KB per day

Distribution by Month

Month	Days
መስከረም	30
ጥቅምት	30
ሕዳር	30
ታኅሣሥ	30
የካቲት	30
መጋቢት	30
ሚያዝያ	30
ግንቦት	30
ሰኔ	30
ሐምሌ	30
ነሐሴ	30
ጥር	30
ጳጉሜ	6

Potential Use Cases

Research Applications

• Religious Studies: Analysis of Ethiopian Orthodox hagiographical traditions
• Linguistics: Amharic language processing and NLP research
• Digital Humanities: Preservation and study of Ethiopian cultural heritage
• Historical Research: Study of saint veneration patterns and liturgical calendars

NLP Tasks

• Text Classification: Categorizing saints by type (martyr, apostle, bishop, etc.)
• Named Entity Recognition: Identifying saints, places, dates, and biblical references
• Question Answering: Building QA systems about Ethiopian Orthodox traditions
• Text Generation: Generating liturgical texts or saint commemorations
• Machine Translation: Amharic-to-other-languages translation training data

Cultural Applications

• Liturgical Apps: Daily reading applications for faithful
• Educational Tools: Teaching Ethiopian Orthodox traditions
• Calendar Applications: Integrating saint commemorations into calendars
• Audio Books: Text-to-speech for daily readings

Limitations

• Language: Currently only available in Amharic
• OCR Errors: Some digitization errors may exist in the source text
• Formatting: Original formatting variations may affect consistency
• Context: Some references assume familiarity with Ethiopian Orthodox theology

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

@dataset{synaxarium2024,
  author = {Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church},
  title = {Ethiopian Synaxarium Dataset},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Nexuss0781/synaxarium},
  version = {1.0}
}

License

This dataset is released under the MIT License.

Acknowledgments

• Source Repository: mezgebe_haymanot_assets by nexuss0781
• Original Text: Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Synaxarium
• Digitization Effort: Community volunteers who digitized the texts

Contact

For questions or issues related to this dataset:

• GitHub: nexuss0781
• Hugging Face: Nexuss0781

Related Resources

• Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
• Geez Language Resources
• Ethiopian Calendar