Ever since Athanasius extolled Christian monks for transforming the desert into a city, scholars have debated the role of geography in the history of Christianity. This presentation introduces a new reference work, The Syriac Gazetteer (www.syriaca.org/geo), designed to facilitate the geographic study of Christianity in the Middle East. The Syriac Gazetteer is one of a series of collaborative open access tools published by Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal. In this paper, the editors of Syriaca.org will discuss the methodology behind The Syriac Gazetteer, demonstrate its features, and solicit contributions from scholars and the heritage communities. The Syriac Gazetteer currently contains articles about more than 2400 places. This is the first modern reference work aimed at preserving the geographic memory of the Syriac heritage communities (e.g. Chaldean, Assyrian, Aramean, Maronite, Keralite, etc.). The selection criteria of “places relevant to Syriac Studies” include places named in Syriac texts (such as ?arqel - ????), places interesting to historians who work on Syriac texts (such as Dura-Europos), and places where scholarship on Syriac is being produced (such as Japan). There are no temporal or spatial boundaries for The Syriac Gazetteer, which collects places relevant to any period of history useful for Syriac studies, from places mentioned in the Peshitta version of Genesis to places founded recently, and from ancient Edessa to Mongol-era outposts in China and diaspora communities in the United States of America. At least in theory, any type or size of place could be represented in The Syriac Gazetteer, from large empires to single churches or a particular named city gate. Maps are provided for places whose location is known, but the gazetteer also includes places which are not located or even locatable. Note to program chairs: The Syriac Gazetteer will be published at http://syriaca.org/geo in April 2014, before that time it can be viewed privately at http://lib7.library.vanderbilt.edu:8080/exist/apps/srophe/geo/about.html