Syriac is the Christian destiny of the Aramaic script. The city of Edessa in upper Mesopotamia, modern Urfa, wrote an Aramaic dialect in a graceful cursive that is attested in inscriptions from the first centuries CE, and when Edessa became an early centre of Christianity its dialect and letters became the literary vehicle of Aramaic-speaking Christendom. The classical book hand, Estrangela, whose name is usually derived from the Greek for rounded, carries the great early manuscripts.
After the church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox church divided in the fifth-century christological controversies, the script itself divided with them: the western communities developed the compact Serto hand, while the east elaborated its own style, and the two traditions also devised different vowel systems, the west adopting small Greek vowel letters placed above the line, the east a refined system of dots. Syriac scribes were among the great translators of antiquity, carrying Greek philosophy and medicine into Syriac and onward into Arabic, so the script sits at a hinge of intellectual history. Written right to left in twenty-two letters, it remains instantly recognisable across its styles, one alphabet with three liturgical faces.