THE CHURCH OF THE EAST

The Church of the East is currently the only complete history in

English of the East Syriac Church. It covers the periods of the Sas-

sanians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, and the twentieth century, with

information about the Syriac, Iranian, and Chinese documentation

of this unique and almost forgotten part of Christendom.

“This is an important book. It tells the story concisely of the

‘Church of the East’ . . . established in east Syria but principally in

Parthia beyond Rome’s eastern frontier. . . . It was associated with

the doctrinal view of the deposed patriarch of Constantinople,

Nestorius, and was known as the Nestorian Church. . . . Today, it

has survived as a small minority in parts of Persia and Iraq, and it

has more adherents in the US than in its ancient homeland. . . . This

is the best short history of the Church of the East to date . . . a fine,

scholarly work, bringing to the notice of students the wealth of the

spiritual and theological legacy as well as the sheer missionary drive

of this now half-forgotten Church. As a book it will not easily be

replaced, and it is a credit to its authors and publishers alike.”

W. H. C. Frend, University of Cambridge

“There has long been a need for a reliable book in English on the

history of the Church of the East which also gives good coverage to

the position of this ancient Syriac Church in the context of modern

ecumenical discussion. It is most welcome that this need is now met

by Baum and Winkler in this translation of their German book.”

Sebastian Brock, University of Oxford

“Baum and Winkler have done us good service in providing this

easily accessible account of the Church of the East . . . the first full

history of the Church of the East since the work of Cardinal

Tisserant.”

Stuart Munro-Hay

The authors

Wilhelm Baum is Associate Professor and teaches Medieval History

at the Universities of Graz and Klagenfurt, Austria. He is the author

of The Transformation of the Myth of Prester John (1999) and

Ethiopia and Europe in the Middle Ages (2001).

Dietmar W. Winkler is Associate Professor and teaches Patristics

and Ecumenical Theology at the University of Graz and the Cister-

cian School of Theology Heiligenkreuz, Austria.

THE CHURCH OF

THE EAST

A concise history

Wilhelm Baum and

Dietmar W. Winkler

First published 2000 as Die Apostolische Kirche des Ostens

by Verlag Kitab, Klagenfurt

English translation published 2003

by RoutledgeCurzon

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by RoutledgeCurzon

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2000 Verlag Kitab Klagenfurt

English translation © 2003 Verlag Kitab Klagenfurt

English translation by Miranda G. Henry

Produced with the support of the Foundation Pro Oriente (Austria)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Baum, Wilhelm

The Church of the East: a concise history/Wilhelm Baum

& Dietmar W. Winkler.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Nestorian Church–History. 2. Nestorians. I. Winkler, Dietmar W.

II. Title.

BX153.3 .B38 2003

281′.8′09–dc21

2002036712

ISBN 0-203-42309-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-42483-2 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–29770–2 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

ix

Preface

xi

The “Apostolic Church of the East”: a brief

introduction to the writing of church history and to

terminology

1

DIETMAR W. WINKLER

1

The age of the Sassanians: until 651

7

DIETMAR W. WINKLER

The beginnings of Christianity in Persia 7

The question of apostolic foundation 11

The centralization of the Church and the reception of

the faith of Nicaea 14

The acceptance of other Western synods (420) 17

Declaration of independence of the Church of the East in

424? 19

The school of the Persians in Edessa and the Council of

Ephesus (431) 21

The school of Nisibis 26

Acceptance of Nestorianism at the synods of 484

and 486? 28

The Church of the East in the sixth century 32

From Babai the Great to the Arab conquest 37

v

C O N T E N T S

2

The age of the Arabs: 650–1258

42

WILHELM BAUM

The period of Catholicos Ishoyahb III and the dawn of

Islam 42

The China mission in the seventh and eighth

centuries 46

East Syriac Christianity in India 51

Timotheos I (780–823) and the Abbasid

period (749–946) 58

East Syrians as cultural mediators 64

Church history and church law 69

Missionary activity in Central Asia 73

The image of the Apostolic Church of the East in

thirteenth-century Europe 81

3

The age of the Mongols: thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries

84

WILHELM BAUM

The Church of the East and the Mongols 84

The Church of the West discovers the Church of

the East 89

The era of Catholicos Yahballaha III (1281–1317) 94

The period of Catholicos Timotheos II (1318–32) 101

The dark centuries of the Church of the East 104

4

The age of the Ottomans: fifteenth to nineteenth

centuries

112

WILHELM BAUM

Chaldean and Indian unions 112

The “Mountain Nestorian” Catholicate and further

unions with Rome 116

Russian and Western missionary activity in the

nineteenth century 123

5

The twentieth century

135

DIETMAR W. WINKLER

vi

C O N T E N T S

World War I 136

Postwar diplomacy and the question of an Assyrian

state 139

The end of the British mandate in Iraq 142

Emigration and diaspora 144

Ecclesiastical reorganization and patriarchal schism 146

The patriarchate of Mar Dinkha IV Khnanaya and

ecumenical efforts 150

Present situation and structure 154

6

Language and literature of the Church of the East

158

Syriac literature 158

DIETMAR W. WINKLER

Iranian literature 165

MANFRED HUTTER

Turkish, Uighur, and Chinese literature 171

WILHELM BAUM

Appendices

173

List of the catholicoi of the Church of the East 173

WILHELM BAUM

List of sovereigns 176

DIETMAR W. WINKLER

Bibliography

178

Index

195

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Map of the Church of the East in the Sassanian empire

(around ad 500)

31

2.1 Nestorian monument of Xian/Sianfu (781)

48

2.2 Coins from Bukhara (eighth century)

50

2.3 First copper plate (the reverse is blank) of the older

series from the times of King Stanu Ravi (ninth

century) with privileges for the Terispalli Church in

Quilon. Kottayam, Kerala (India)

55

2.4 Front and reverse of the third copper plate with

Pahlavi, Kufic, and Hebrew signatures. Tiruvalla,

Kerala (India)

56

2.5 Stone cross with Pahlavi inscription. Valiyapalli

Church in Kottayam, Kerala (India)

57

2.6 Nestorian cross, found in Mantota, the port of the

former capital of Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura (destroyed

in the eleventh century)

58

2.7 Front of a page from an East Syriac lectionary (Luke

16) from the Sogdian Turfan Psalter found in Bulayiq,

north of the Turfan oasis (ninth/tenth century)

75

2.8 Gravestone from Kirgistan (thirteenth/fourteenth

century)

77

3.1 Tombstone of Elizabeth, the wife of the Christian

government official Xindu, in Yangzhou (1317)

93

3.2 Imprint of the seal which the great khan Mongke

had given to the Catholicos of the Church of the

East (1302/4)

95

3.3 Map of the general view of the Church of the East in

the Middle Ages

98

3.4 Ruins of the former East Syriac monastery Mar Augin

(Tur Abdin), founded in the early fourth century

106

ix

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

4.1 Monastery Rabban Hormizd near Mosul (Iraq)

118

4.2 Former church of the Catholicos in Kotchannes in the

mountains of Hakkari

121

4.3 Catholicos Shimun XVII Abraham (1820–60),

lithograph (1852)

123

5.1 Parish Church of the East Syriac Metropolitanate of

Trichur, Kerala (India)

149

5.2 Catholicos Mar Dinkha IV Khnanaya and Pope John

Paul II in Rome (1994)

152

x

PREFACE

It is still the case that the Orient is commonly regarded as belonging

to Islam. Western consciousness is not very much aware of the facts

not only that Christianity has its roots in the Middle East, but that it

is still alive in the various Oriental Christian churches, which have a

troubled and eventful history as well as a rich theological, spiritual,

and liturgical heritage.

We have followed the track of one of those apostolic churches:

the “Church of the East” which spread outside the Roman empire

and is today the smallest among the Oriental churches. However, in

the European Middle Ages, it was geographically far larger than

any Western church, with followers along the Silk Road, in Central

Asia, China, and of course in India.

This book aims to provide a concise history of this remarkable

church. It is based on the current state of research and covers the

periods of the Sassanians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottomans, and the

twentieth century. It also describes the Syriac, Iranian, and Chinese

literature of this unique part of Christendom. However, our inten-

tion was to present the history of the Church of the East in a com-

prehensive manner, not only for students of church history or Syriac

scholars, but also for a wider public and the general reader, in an

understandable language. Those who are interested in culture,

religion, and theology can gain access to an almost forgotten part of

Christianity with a marvellous literary and spiritual heritage. This is

even more important since many (East) Syriac Christians found a

new home in Europe, America, and Australia.

As the volume was written with a non-specialist audience in

mind, we refrained from using scholarly transcription of names

with diacritical signs, and there are no footnotes. For the most part

we follow the style of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the bibli-

ography at the end enables the reader to find more detail than the

present account is able to provide.

xi

P R E F A C E

We would like to thank Prof. Manfred Hutter (Bonn, Germany)

for his contribution on the Iranian literature of the Church of the

East. Prof. Wolfgang Hage (Marburg/Lahn, Germany) provided

valuable comments on the German first edition, Prof. Herbert

Franke (Gauting, Germany) on the chapters concerning China. We

would also like to thank Helga Anschütz (Reinbeck, Germany) for

the pictures from Kotchannes, Aleksander Naymark (Indiana, USA)

for the ones of the coins from Bukhara, and Christoph Baumer

(Switzerland) for the photographs of the copper plates from India.

Last but not least, we would like to thank Miranda Henry (Pitts-

burgh, USA) for the translation into English, and the Foundation

Pro Oriente (Austria) for their support.

Dietmar W. Winkler, Wilhelm Baum

Graz and Klagenfurt, Austria

October 2002

xii

THE “APOSTOLIC CHURCH OF

THE EAST”

A brief introduction to the writing of

church history and to terminology

Dietmar W. Winkler

The “Apostolic Church of the East” is, in the West, the least-known

church of Christendom and is currently the smallest of the Eastern

churches.

Until the present day, little consideration was shown in church

history and theology for the fact that early Christianity spread not

only within the Roman empire – i.e. Europe and the Mediterranean

region – but also beyond the imperial boundaries. Already in the

first century there were Christian communities in Mesopotamia,

which was part of the empire of the Parthians, superseded by the

Persian Sassanians in the third century. As early as the fifth century

the Oxus had been crossed, and Sogdians and Turks, as well as

the South Indian Malabar coast, had been reached. East Syriac

Christianity gained a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula and, in the

seventh century, reached the Chinese imperial court of the Tang

Dynasty. In the eleventh century, those Turkish-Tartar tribes in

Central Asia which eventually formed part of the Mongol kingdom

were won, entirely or in part, for Christianity. Thus the “Church of

the East” achieved the greatest geographical scope of any Christian

church until the Middle Ages. For reasons of historical and political

circumstance, the church has become a minority today and is

represented in the countries of Iraq, Iran, and India, as well as in the

diaspora in North America, Australia, Syria, the Caucasus, and

Lebanon. The Apostolic Church of the East has preserved an

important heritage of theology, history, and spirituality, which has

1

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

been rejected as heretical – “Nestorian” – by the rest of

Christendom.

Deficiencies of church history

Knowledge of this branch of Christendom is slight, although Syriac

Christianity constitutes its third strand, alongside the Latin-Western

and Greek-Byzantine traditions. Today several churches belong to

this tradition: in the so-called West Syriac tradition stand the Syrian

Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Malankara Orthodox

Church of India, as well as the Maronite, Syro-Malankara, and

Syriac Catholic Churches. The East Syriac tradition includes two

branches of the Apostolic (Assyrian) Church of the East and the

Chaldean and Syro-Malabar Churches, which are in union with

the Catholic Church.

Although the gospel has its origin in a Syro-Aramaic setting, and

there has been continually throughout history a Christian Aramaic

tradition – which we encounter in the various Syriac churches – this

has moved to the background and has been largely forgotten in

theological discourse. In many cases the discussion addresses only

the “Latin West” (including the churches of the Reformation and

the Anglicans) and the “Greek East” (including Slavic Orthodoxy),

while the third important tradition, the “Syriac Orient” receives no

consideration. Sebastian Brock, of the Oriental Institute at Oxford

University, traces this narrow historical viewpoint to several fac-

tors, including the following:

1

First of all, there is the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of

Caesarea († 339), whose perspective became the model for

nearly every subsequent foray into church history until the

twentieth century. Eusebius concentrated on an account of

Christianity in the Roman empire, which led him to pay height-

ened attention to Europe. This Eurocentrism, including Byzan-

tine Orthodoxy as well as the Latin Church, overlooked the fact

that a large part of Christianity – above all those variations of

Syro-Aramaic provenance but also the Armenian, Coptic, and

Ethiopian branches – took hold outside of the Roman empire

and spread across all of Asia and parts of Africa. As the third

branch, the “Syriac Orient,” encompassing India and China,

represents an authentic Asian Christianity, while the Greek-

Slavic East and the Latin West demonstrate the way Christian-

ity developed in Europe.

2

T H E “ A P O S T O L I C C H U R C H O F T H E E A S T ”

2

On the basis of the fifth-century controversies over Christology,

those churches which accepted the definition of faith estab-

lished by the Council of Chalcedon (451) – the fourth “ecu-

menical council” – judged Syriac Christianity, i.e. the “West

Syriac” (“Monophysite”) and “East Syriac” (“Nestorian”) tra-

ditions, as schismatic at best but in most instances as heretical.

Thus this branch of Christianity soon became marginalized in

Western church history and disappeared from common ecclesi-

astical awareness.

3

Within European academic theology the Syriac tradition con-

tinued to be disregarded, on the one hand because the Council

of Chalcedon led to a concentration on the Latin West and

Greek East and on the other hand because Oriental languages

such as Syriac were studied more often in academic programs at

institutes of Oriental studies and philology than in theological

schools. Syriac literature is comprised of religious texts, yet the

study of Syriac Christianity was almost totally ignored by the

other Christian traditions.

In the twentieth century the Eurocentric perspective of Eusebius

was occasionally rejected, and the present ecumenical dialogue has

renewed interest in the churches of the Orient. Nevertheless, the

Syriac tradition is making its way only fitfully into the awareness of

Western academic theology.

Terminology

It is appropriate here to offer a few remarks on terminology, that is,

on the various names by which the “Apostolic Church of the East”

has been known.

From the perspective of Christendom in Late Antiquity, the name

refers to those churches which lay outside the Roman empire.

Regarding these, the sources speak of the “Church of the East,” that

is to say, the “Apostolic Church of the East” whose patriarch

(catholicos) had his see at the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

The patriarchates of the Roman empire – Rome, Constantinople,

Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem – are considered “Western” by the

Church of the East. The term “Apostolic Church of the East” is

regarded by ecumenists and historians well-versed in the area, as

well as by scholars of Syriac and Oriental Studies, as the most useful

and accurate.

A second, equally correct term is the “East Syriac Church.” This

3

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

name refers to the liturgical tradition and the Syriac-Aramaic lan-

guage which has been maintained to the present day in the Apos-

tolic Church of the East.

Naturally, appropriate names are also “Holy Apostolic Catholic

Assyrian Church of the East” and “Ancient Church of the East,”

favored by the two jurisdictions of the church itself. In early East

Syriac sources the preferred term was for the most part simply

“Church of the East.” Under the influence of Anglican missionaries

in the second half of the nineteenth century the term “Assyrian”

was retrieved from the ancient Orient. In the course of the Assyrian

nationalist movement arising in the early twentieth century, this

attribute was eventually adopted as a self-description and was

added to the name officially in 1976.

An additional designation, found from time to time in the litera-

ture and sources, is only partially correct: “Persian Church.” Since

the Persian empire of the Sassanians was conquered by the Arabs in

the seventh century, and the missionary efforts of the Church of the

East extended as far as Central Asia, China, and India, this term is

too narrow both chronologically and geographically.

Further, there are those terms which are familiar in the West but

are also incorrect or valid only in a very limited sense. Until the

present time, the most common designation in theological and

church-historical literature has been the “Nestorian Church.” In

this way, the rest of the Christian world attributed to the Church of

the East a heterodoxy dating back to the fifth century. At that time,

Christendom was rent by the difficult theological question of

whether Jesus Christ can be both true God and true man while

remaining a single subject. How should one conceive of the rela-

tionship between God the Son made man and God the Father? In

this bitter debate, some were of the opinion that the patriarch of

Constantinople, Nestorius, supported the doctrine of two sons, two

persons, that is, two subjects. Christ is both fully God and fully

man, united only morally but not ontologically. According to the

position of currently available sources, one can conclude that

Nestorius did not support this doctrine, that Nestorius was himself

no “Nestorian.” Nevertheless, the term “Nestorian” has found a

secure place in theological history, to denote a Christology which

understands the one Savior made man as two subjects. Indeed, even

up to now scholars have been of the opinion that the Apostolic

Church of the East adopted this heterodoxy in the fifth century. As

we will see in the following pages, the designation “Nestorian

Church” is incorrect in a formal theological sense, although the

4

T H E “ A P O S T O L I C C H U R C H O F T H E E A S T ”

theologian Nestorius is honored by the Church of the East as a

teacher and saint.

In this context, the Church of the East is also referred to as the

“Pre-Ephesian Church” because the aforementioned conflict over

Nestorius found its first highpoint in the Council of Ephesus (431),

the third “ecumenical council.” In its synods, the Church of the East

formally accepted only the decisions of the first two councils

(Nicaea, 325, and Constantinople, 381); nevertheless, a name based

on the rejection of a synod of the Roman empire is of limited value,

especially since the Church of the East extended beyond its borders.

Finally, another term is used, referring to the part of the ancient

Church of the East which since the sixteenth century has been

in communion with the Roman Catholic Church: the “Chaldean

Catholic Church.” It is the Catholic counterpart of the “Church of

the East” in the Near East and the Diaspora. The part of the Church

of the East in India which is in communion with Rome is called the

“Syro-Malabar Church.” All these Christian churches share a

common East Syriac liturgical, linguistic, spiritual, and theological

heritage.

5

1

THE AGE OF THE SASSANIANS

Until 651

Dietmar W. Winkler

The Apostolic Church of the East first surfaces in ecclesiastical and

dogmatic history only in the fifth-century debates in the Roman

empire over orthodox Christology. In nearly all reference books one

finds information about this branch of Christianity under the head-

ing “Nestorian Church.” Thus a heresy is attributed to the East Syr-

iac Church, a heresy the church itself has rejected as incorrect since at

least the sixth century. In 1298 the distinguished East Syriac theo-

logian and canonist Abdisho bar Brika († 1318) wrote in his Book of

the Pearl (Margarita) that East Syriac Christians “never changed

their faith and preserved it as they had received it from the apostles,

and they are called Nestorians unjustly, especially since Nestorius

was not their patriarch, and they did not understand his language.”

Theological use of the epithet “Nestorian” has persisted even into

the present day. Many historical accounts begin with the events of

the Council of Ephesus (431) and with the controversy between

Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople. This also

suggests that the Church of the East separated itself on account of

the council’s events or that it found its beginning with this council.

In this first section, the beginnings of the Apostolic Church of the

East until the entrance of the Arabs into its history will be traced,

and we will inquire whether a heretical theology, the so-called

“Nestorianism” was adopted.

The beginnings of Christianity in Persia

While Christianity in the Roman empire was subjected to persecu-

tions prior to 313, it could for a time develop in peace on the other

7

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

side of the Euphrates in the Iranian kingdom of the Parthians (until

224). Presumably Christianity found its way into the regions east of

the Tigris – Adiabene and Khuzistan – as early as the beginning of

the second century. However, the sources are scanty, and the origins

of Christianity are shrouded in legends of apostolic foundation. In

contrast, beginning with the early third century, Christianity can be

well explored in both literary and archeological sources. In the final

chapter of the “Book of the Laws of the Countries” written by

Philippus, a pupil of the Aramaic philosopher Bardaisan, mention is

made of Christians in Parthia, Kushan, Persia, Media, Edessa,

Hatra, and Fars, among other places. On the island of Kharg, third-

century Christian graves testify with Syriac inscriptions from Chris-

tian communities around the Persian Gulf.

One can assume that Christianity spread from Osrhoene and its

capital Edessa (Urfa) and from the region surrounding Nisibis

(Nusaybin) – where Christianity is evidenced by the second-century

epitaph of Aberkios – into the Parthian empire. The chronicle of

Edessa offers a series of dates from the earliest history of Christian-

ity in that city. This source allows us to conclude that Christianity

gained a foothold in Osrhoene in the second century. Before the

historically well-established flood in the year 201, the faith was

already being shaped by Marcion († 160), Bardaisan († 222), and

finally Mani († 276), all of whom the great Syriac poet-theologian

Ephrem challenged as heretics. Only at the beginning of the fourth

century, with Bishop Qune, did Christianity become orthodox in

the normative sense known to church history. Since early Christian-

ity in Edessa presented itself as extremely diverse, only conjectures

can be put forth regarding the first Christians in Persia.

Very probably, the first Christian congregations emerged in the

Jewish communities of the Parthian empire, which, like the inhabit-

ants of Osrhoene and the Roman province of Syria, were Aramaic-

speaking. Judaism had been present in Mesopotamia and across the

Tigris at least since the Babylonian exile. At the time of the Parthi-

ans, the silk trade with China was under Jewish control. The first to

bring Christianity to the East were the merchants who traveled the

trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and across

Central Asia to China. As Edessa occupied a position where signifi-

cant trade routes intersected, and Antioch on the Mediterranean

was the most influential metropolis of the Roman province of Syria,

the gospel traveled a route from Jerusalem through Antioch and

Edessa to Mesopotamia. Edessa’s significance for Syriac Christian-

ity extends finally to the fact that the Aramaic dialect of this city (i.e.

8

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

“Syriac”) became the definitive biblical and liturgical language of

this branch of Christianity.

An additional factor contributing to the development of Christi-

anity in Persia was the expanding movement of refugees. Wartime

deportations are reported up to the sixth century. With the

strengthening of the Persian empire under the Sassanians (224), a

state of perpetual conflict arose between the Persians and the

Roman empire. This situation had consequences for the spread of

the gospel above all during the reign of Shapur I (240–72). Shapur I

and his army advanced far into Roman territory and finally reached

Antioch in 260. Many Christians from Antioch, Cappadocia, Cili-

cia, and Syria were deported to Persian provinces and established as

tradesmen and artisans in Babylonia, Persia, Parthia, and Susiana.

Among them was Bishop Demetrius of Antioch, who subsequently

served as the first bishop of Beth Lapat (Gundeshapur). These

deported Christians, to the extent that they belonged to Greek-

speaking communities, appear not to have integrated themselves

into the local Christian population before the fifth century, since

separate churches and two hierarchies, with Greek and Syriac-

Aramaic as liturgical languages, are reported. The inscription of the

Zoroastrian magician Kartir (Kerdir) – who occupied an important

position under Shapur I, Hormizd I († 273), Bahram I († 276), and

especially Bahram II († 293) – speaks of “Nazarenes” ( nasraye) and

“Christians” ( krestyane). This could be a significant indication of

the double community. Although an exact interpretation of the

inscription of Kartir remains to be determined, it can be assumed

that the first term denotes the local Aramaic Christian congregation

and the second designates those Greek-speaking Christians

deported from Syria under Shapur I.

In the time of Shapur I, i.e. the second half of the third century,

Christianity in Persia already had an episcopal structure, as evi-

denced by the conflict over Papa, who as bishop of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon should have held a position of primacy over the other

bishops. The sources, however, exhibit contradictions. Seleucia-

Ctesiphon probably became a diocese only in the third century. As

early as the end of the third century or beginning of the fourth, Papa

attempted to gain supremacy, in the face of opposition from the

other bishops. According to the (disputed, possibly fabricated)

account of the Chronicle of Arbela, this claim was founded on the

fact that he was bishop of the royal residence. Besides this purely

political argument, also of interest is the fact, preserved in the

chronicle, that Papa, because of the continued opposition, turned to

9

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

the bishops of the “West” (i.e. the Roman empire) and especially

Sada, bishop of Edessa. The Chronicle of Arbela makes Papa, with

Western help, the first supreme head of the Persian Church. It is

striking that Papa appealed to the bishop of Edessa rather than that

of Antioch. The Chronicle of Arbela appears here actually to be

more historically reliable that the lists and biographies of the patri-

archs, which locate the origins of the episcopal see of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon in the apostolic era. Over and above that, the conflict and

the intervention of the Western fathers are also mentioned in the

speech of Agapet, recorded in the acts of the Synod of Dadisho

(424), which are included in the collection of East Syriac synodical

documents ( Synodicon Orientale).

Nevertheless, certain questions remain open: Why is this

undoubtedly noteworthy Western intervention mentioned in no his-

torical source of the Church of the Roman Empire? Additionally, is

it possible that a “patriarchate” of the East was supported by the

Western bishops even before the time of the Council of Nicaea

(325), where the prerogatives of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch

were first recognized? The questions surrounding the first

catholicos-patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon seem impossible to

answer satisfactorily with the currently available sources. In any

case, one can nonetheless conclude from the opposition to the claim

of primacy made by the bishop of the capital city that already at the

dawn of the fourth century a series of independently organized

dioceses existed in the Persian empire.

Persian martyrologies provide further clues to the ecclesiastical

structure of the time. While in the times of the Parthians, because of

their liberal religious policies, Persia was a refuge for Christians

persecuted by the Roman empire in its outlying provinces, Chris-

tians at times also endured various forms of repression under the

succeeding Sassanians and the dominance of Zoroastrian religion.

Among others we find the Acts of the Persian Martyrs an extensive

account of the life and execution of Mar Shimun I (+ 341), who was

the successor of Papa in the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

Violent persecution tormented Christians most notably between

339 and 379 under Shapur II (309–79), and these events are

reflected in the Syriac writings of a contemporary witness, the theo-

logian Aphrahat († 350), called the “Persian Sage.” Causes of the

persecution included not only the increasing strength of the Zoroas-

trian religion but also the political circumstances. The Roman ruler

Constantine considered himself a Christian emperor and true lord

of the Church. In a 337 letter preserved by Eusebius, he wrote to

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T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

Shapur II that the Christians ought to be protected. The

undiplomatic demand of Constantine, who as earthly leader of the

Church considered all Christians his subjects, could attract little

sympathy in Persia. Moreover, the Roman–Persian conflict also

involved Armenia, which had been a Christian state since 301. Thus

the Sassanian rulers of the time, recognizing that Christianity in the

Roman empire was on its way to becoming the state religion, saw

the Christians of Persia as a threat to their interests.

The major developments of the Church of the Roman Empire

since the Edict of Milan, such as the Arian controversy at the Coun-

cil of Nicaea (325), had no impact whatsoever on the Persian

church. On the contrary, while under the Parthians the attitude

toward the Christians was tolerant, and under the first Sassanians

there were only isolated, localized persecutions for apostasy from

Zoroastrianism, the reign of Shapur II brought, in response to

developments in the Roman empire, the first systematic persecu-

tions of the region’s Christians. These persecutions, as well as the

destruction of churches in the fourth century, are described in detail

in the Persian martyrologies. Even if they include legendary charac-

teristics and tend toward exaggeration, they nonetheless offer suf-

ficient material to grasp the scale of the persecutions. Furthermore,

references are made to bishops, priests, deacons, and monks from

various towns and provinces, attesting to the extent of Christianity

and so providing information about the Church of the East.

Besides Aphrahat, another outstanding theologian of the time,

Ephrem the Syrian, was eyewitness to the Persian–Roman clash. He

lived through the fall of his native city Nisibis, which after three

futile sieges (338, 346, 350) was peacefully ceded to Shapur II in 363

during negotiations with the Roman emperor Jovian (363/4).

Bishop Abraham fled the city with his Christian community, and

many educated Christians went to Edessa, the nearby capital of

Osrhoene. Among them was Ephrem himself, with whom the found-

ing of the school of the Persians in Edessa would later be associated.

The question of apostolic foundation

The sources regarding the origins of Christianity in Persia do not

suffice to enable one to draw a reliable picture. As we have seen,

Christianity may have been spread in the Persian empire first by

traders, then by refugees from the Roman empire, and eventually

through what is called the deportation. Christian names testify

also to conversions among the Iranian population. Nomadic Arab

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

tribes around Hatra also came into early contact with the gospel.

Nevertheless, the majority of Christians arose from the Aramaic

population, which gradually absorbed the congregations of the

deported Greek population as well.

However, the tradition of the Apostolic Church of the East traces

its origins back to the apostle Thomas and to Addai and his dis-

ciples Aggai and Mari. In this regard, the sources are conflicting and

complex.

The best-known and most widely disseminated version of this

missionary tradition appears to be the one transmitted by the patri-

archal chronicle of Mari b. Suleiman (twelfth century). This trad-

ition can be verified as early as the ninth century and has been

preserved in East Syriac literature (Elias Damascenus, c.893;

Abdisho bar Brika) as well as West Syriac ( Chronicon anonymum,

846; Doctrina Apostolorum, ninth century; Barhebraeus, Chronicon

Ecclesiasticum). According to these, the East was evangelized by

Thomas from the circle of the Twelve and by Addai, Mari, and

Aggai from the Seventy. Edessa, Nisibis, Mosul, Arbela, Beth

Garmai, and Babylonia are credited to Addai and his disciples. Fol-

lowing Addai’s return to Edessa, Aggai continued on to Gibal

(Media), al-Ahwaz (Khuzistan), and to the border of India, as well

as to the neighboring regions of Gog and Magog (China). The East

Syriac canonist Ibn at-Taiyib († 1043) designated the East as a whole

the missionary territory of Addai, Aggai and Mari, while India and

China belonged to the territory of Thomas.

In particular, the Mari tradition views this student of Addai as the

missionary of Persia, as well as founder and liturgical organizer of

the Church of the East. According to the East Syriac historian Amr

b. Matta (fourteenth century), it was Mari who established the

patriarchal see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, thus serving as the first

catholicos. Beforehand he also appointed a bishop of Kashkar, who

because of this apostolic foundation served as vicar to the patriarch.

With this, Amr portrayed in his missionary account an ecclesiastical

organization corresponding to that of the sixth century, because

only at the Synod of Joseph (554) was the function of the patri-

archal vicar explicitly assigned to the bishop of Kashkar.

According to the vita of Mari, Papa was personally ordained by

Mari as his successor. However, Papa is historically verifiable only

in the early fourth century. Therefore the account of his primacy

and the placement of the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in apostolic

succession is historically difficult to comprehend.

Why is the connection to Mari or Aggai – and thus to their

12

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

teacher Addai – of such import? The answer to this question requires

a look at the evangelization tradition of Edessa, the mother city of

Syriac Christianity. This tradition is preserved in the Ecclesiastical

History of Eusebius, produced between 311 and 325, and above all

in the Doctrina Addai ( c.400). According to these reports, the king

of Edessa, Abgar Ukama, suffered from a serious illness and learned

of the work of Jesus in Palestine. Through his secretary Hannan, he

sent a letter to Jesus, with the request that he come to Edessa and

heal him. He also offered Jesus protection from his persecutors. In

his response, Jesus praised Abgar as blessed, for he believed without

seeing (cf. John 20.21), but he did not accept Abgar’s invitation, for

he had to return to his Father in fulfillment of his mission. In a

dictated letter, he promised Abgar that after his death and resurrec-

tion he would send him one of his apostles. This apostle was Addai,

who was chosen by Thomas after the Ascension. Addai healed

Abgar, preached the gospel, and founded the church in Edessa. After

Addai’s death, his disciple Aggai was selected as his successor.

The Abgar legend has been interpreted many times. The historical

kernel within the story is believed to be that Christianity was

adopted as the state religion under King Abgar VIII the Great (177–

212); this was then conflated with the historically unsubstantiated

Abgar V (13–50). That Abgar VIII was the first Christian king of

Edessa cannot be verified. This missionary account is definitely his-

torical fiction. Eusebius of Caesarea provided the first version of this

story around 303 or 312; before, it was unknown. The Chronicle of

Edessa, a reliable source, says nothing about an apostle Addai, the

correspondence with Jesus, or Abgar’s conversion. According to

this, a Christian apostle Addai is purely legendary. Eusebius called

Addai in his Ecclesiastical History “Thaddeus,” because Addai was

unknown to him, and he included him in the circle of the seventy-

two commissioned apostles (cf. Luke 10.1). However, Addai was the

best-known Manichean missionary of the Syriac-Mesopotamian

region, whom the Doctrina Addai, as an anti-Manichean document

of Edessan orthodoxy, wove into the Abgar legend (Han J. W.

Drijvers). The intention of the fourth-century Doctrina Addai is

the defense of an orthodoxy going back to Jesus, in opposition to

other sects, such as those of Mani, Bardaisan, or Marcion.

In the diary of her pilgrimage through the Holy Land, Egeria also

reports letters from Jesus kept in the archives of Edessa. In 384 she

spent three days in Edessa. According to Egeria, in addition to Jesus’

letter to Abgar, the grave of the apostle Thomas, whose corpse was

brought back to Edessa from India, was also venerated in the city. A

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

later insertion into the Doctrina Addai added that the famous

Mandylion, a portrait of Jesus which Hannan made for Abgar, was

also venerated in Edessa. However, the Mandylion is first men-

tioned only by Evagrius Scholastikos in 593. Because of the letters

from Jesus, the grave of Thomas, and the portrait of Jesus, Edessa

was one of early Christianity’s most important sites.

The legends of Addai, Mari, and Aggai, which developed later,

projected the founding of the episcopal see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon

back into the apostolic era. Through the correspondence of Jesus

with Abgar, the missionary activity of Addai was traced back

through the apostle Thomas finally to Jesus himself. This assures

not only the apostolic nature of the church but also its directly

divine origins. In other sources, the ordination of the bishops of

Kashkar and Seleucia-Ctesiphon is attributed directly to Mari.

In the East Syriac synods, the attribute “apostolic” appears in

reference to the see of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon for the first

time in 497. Interestingly, there is no reference to the missionary

tradition in the records of East Syriac synods, known as the Synodi-

con Orientale. Mari and Aggai are never mentioned; Addai is

named but once and not until 612.

The centralization of the Church and the reception of

the faith of Nicaea

As a consequence of the deaths of Shapur II (379) and his successor

Ardeshir (Ardaschir) II († 383), the situation of the Christians

improved toward the end of the fourth century. Above all Yazdgird

I (399–421) sought to ease political tensions with the Roman

empire and began to integrate Christians into imperial politics.

Thus began the period of diplomatic exchanges between the two

great empires of Late Antiquity, exchanges in which the Christian

hierarchy of Persia played an essential role. Several Persian diplo-

matic missions to the neighboring Christian empire were led by

bishops and patriarchs of the Church of the East. Likewise the

Roman empire was represented by delegates at Persian courts.

Under the influence of one of the Roman delegations, led by

Marutha, the respected bishop of the border city Maipherkat,

Yazdgird permitted the release of Christians and the rebuilding of

churches.

Christianity had spread as far as Merv, which had been a diocese

since the second half of the fourth century. The individual dioceses

were still not collectively organized. The diplomatic skills of the

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T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

Aramaic bishop Marutha contributed, however, to the first East

Syriac council documented in the Synodicon Orientale. This synod,

held under the “Grand Metropolitan” Isaac in 410, reorganized the

church after the persecutions and provided an essential contribution

to the establishment of the East Syriac Church and the primacy of

the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

The impulse for the first recorded synod came from Marutha of

Maipherkat, a bishop from the Roman empire. However, the synod

was convoked by the Sassanian king Yazdgird I. In the first session of

the forty assembled bishops, a letter from the “Western” fathers was

read, which Marutha had brought. The letter, signed by bishops

Porphyry of Antioch, Akakios of Aleppo, Pakida of Edessa, Eusebius

of Tella, Akakios of Amid, and others, was translated from Greek

into Persian and had been brought to Yazdgird’s attention earlier.

The letter included three demands or recommendations, which were

eventually adopted by the synod and defined more precisely in the

canons: (1) in each city and its surrounding region there should be

only one bishop, ordained by three bishops, who possess the full

authority of the metropolitan and head of bishops, i.e. the bishop of

Seleucia-Ctesiphon; (2) liturgical feasts should be celebrated

together and on the same days; Epiphany, Lent, and Easter were

mentioned explicitly. Calendrical evidence indicates that at the time

there was in this regard still no unity in the Persian church; (3) the

creed and canons of the Council of Nicaea (325) should be adopted.

The first demand was intended to oppose the persistent double

hierarchy of genuine Aramaic Christians and those Greek Chris-

tians deported from the Roman empire. Thus the twenty-one

canons of the Council of Nicaea were not simply reproduced but

rather were adapted to the specific situation of the Church of the

East. Final authority over ordination was granted to the bishop of

Seleucia. With this the bishop of the imperial capital became the

definitive head of the Church of the East – with the approval of the

king who had called the synod. The bishop of the imperial capital

was thus granted primacy over the other bishops, following the

model of the patriarchal structure of the Roman empire. Later

the order of succession of the metropolitans was established, with

the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon named first, followed by the

metropolitans of Beth Lapat (Khuzistan), Nisibis, Prat de Maishan

(Basra), Arbela (Irbil), and Karka de Beth Slokh (Kirkuk).

The East Syriac church was at the Synod of Isaac in Seleucia-

Ctesiphon (410) on the way to becoming centrally organized.

Maintaining that the bishop of Seleucia was already being addressed

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

as Catholicos in the acts is considered anachronistic and reflects a

later projection. The characterization presented in Canon 21,

“Grand Metropolitan and Head of Bishops,” is surely more accurate.

Through this synod the Church of the East was to be not only

reorganized and centralized, however, but also brought into har-

mony with the faith of the West. In the Synodicon Orientale the

creed of the Council of Nicaea (325) appears before the synodical

canons as adapted for the Persian church. The problem now

encountered is that the Syriac text of the creed adopted in 410 has

been transmitted in two distinct versions, a West Syriac and an East

Syriac. The first version includes theological elements from early

East Syriac theology, which were combined with the Nicene confes-

sion of faith. The second offers an exact translation of the Nicene

creed into Syriac. There has been a continuing debate over which of

the two versions was actually accepted in 410. The research of

André de Halleux has demonstrated that the West Syriac version is

the older original and that the East Syriac form, preserved in the

Synodicon Orientale, is not the original one. Conformity with the

beliefs of the Church of the Roman Empire was firmly established at

the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410, though the canons and the

creed were not simply assumed. The canons were adjusted to meet

the needs of the Church of the East, and the creed was altered on the

basis of a local Persian creed:

We believe in one God, Father, who in his Son made

heaven and earth; and in him were established the worlds

above and that are below; and in him he effected the resur-

rection and renovation for all creation.

And in his Son, the Only-Begotten who was born from

him, that is, however, from the essence of his Father, God

from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; he

was born and was not made; who is of the same nature as

his Father; who for the sake of us human beings who were

created through him, and for the sake of our salvation,

descended and put on a body and became man, and suf-

fered and rose on the third day, and ascended to heaven

and took his seat at the right hand of his Father; and he is

coming in order to judge the dead and the living.

And we confess the living and holy Spirit, the living Para-

clete who (is) from the Father and the Son;

And in one Trinity and in one Essence and in one will.

(Trans. S. P. Brock)

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T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

This creed is a wonderful historical example of an agreement of

faith despite differing formulations. The conformity with the Coun-

cil of Nicaea is expressed in words the Persian fathers deemed

adequate for their church.

Like the councils of the Roman empire, the first synod of the

Church of the East was called and supported by the state author-

ities. The impulse came from outside, and communion with the

Church of the Roman Empire was accomplished through the co-

moderation of Grand Metropolitan Isaac of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and

Bishop Marutha of Maipherkat, as well as by the acceptance of

Nicene orthodoxy and the adoption of a standardized calendar. The

establishment of the primacy of the bishop of the imperial capital

was based on purely political grounds. In the synodical acts of 410

there is no evidence or mention of an apostolic origin for the see.

The letter from the Western fathers was signed by the bishop of

Antioch and his suffragans, but he signed in the name of the Church

of the Roman Empire. In their letter the Antiochene bishops

made no claim of jurisdiction over the Persian church. There is no

indication in the synodical acts of a historical dependence upon the

patriarchate of Antioch. The Persian church made decisions

autonomously following their own synodical procedures. It under-

stood itself as an autonomous and autocephalous church standing

in communion with the Church of the Roman Empire.

The acceptance of other Western synods (420)

The decisions of the synod of 410 did not take effect everywhere at

once, as is indicated by the acts of the next council, under Grand

Metropolitan Yahballaha I (420), which was again held with the co-

moderation of a Western bishop, Akakios of Amid, who had signed

the letter addressed to the synod of 410.

In 418 Yahballaha I was the leader of a diplomatic delegation of

the Persian king to Constantinople, where, according to the Chron-

icle of Seert, the common faith of the churches of the Roman and

Persian empires was confirmed. When Akakios traveled to the

Sassanian capital as head of the Roman delegation, he supported

Yahballaha and his synod. Reasons for the synod included not only

internal church difficulties but also the unease among Zoroastrians

regarding the growth of Christianity, especially in the higher levels

of society. These nobles, in turn, occasionally influenced the leader-

ship of the church or the appointment of bishops. The twelve

bishops of the synod therefore recognized Yahballaha as “head and

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

regent over us and all our brother-bishops in the whole of the

empire.” The unity of the Church of the East under the leadership of

the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was strongly emphasized at the

synod. The decisions of 410 were confirmed, the Council of Nicaea

was again accepted, and additional synods of the West, those of

Ancyra (314?), Neocaesaria (between 314 and 325), Gangra (343),

Antioch (341), and Laodicea ( c.365), were accepted.

The process of accepting the Council of Nicaea and the other

synods is significant insofar as one bears in mind that the ecu-

menical councils were at first limited to bishops of the Imperium

Romanum. In each case they were called by the emperor there, who

had no power outside the Roman empire. Claims the Roman

emperor had made to “Christian subjects” in the Persian empire

had resulted in bloody persecutions. During periods of open conflict

between the Roman and Persian empires, such as the reign of

Shapur II but also the first half of the fifth century under the shahs

Yazdgird I (399–421), Bahram V (421–39), and Yazdgird II (439–

57), the situation of the Christians deteriorated. This means that

regarding the synods of the Roman empire, the creeds and canons

had significance only for the oikoumene of the Roman imperial

church, even though the Church of the East – with Western assist-

ance – later adopted some of them. Despite this process of accept-

ance, one cannot assume a priori that a synod which has achieved

“ecumenical” validity in the history of the Christianity of the

Roman empire is necessarily an ecumenical council for the Church

as a whole. After all, as imperial synods, even these councils had

first a local character, that is, they were reacting to political and

theological events within the Roman empire.

In this way, one can reflect on the causes and meaning of the

adoption of a corpus of Western synods, as happened in the Church

of the East in 420. In Laodicea, for instance, Novatianists, Photians,

Quartodecimans, and Montanists were condemned, and in Ancyra

the local sect of Eustathians. None of these groups existed in Persia,

nor was any of them relevant to the Church of the East. These

synods, without exception, reflected a specific context in the Roman

empire. It can thus be assumed that their acceptance took place

under the influence of the legate Akakios of Amid. However, in the

acts of the synod of 420, canons and particulars were not selectively

adopted, rather, the Western synods were simply accepted as a

whole; there is no recorded reflection on this process. This places

beyond doubt the unity with the Church of the Roman Empire;

otherwise the acceptance would appear strange and senseless. Only

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T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

in the later East Syriac canonical tradition were these synodical

decisions examined in detail. The work of Ibn at-Tayib is one

example. The situation was entirely different at the synod of 410,

where the creed was specifically cited and each canon adapted to the

needs of the Persian church.

Declaration of independence of the Church of the

East in 424?

The persecution of Christians which had begun anew toward the

end of the reign of Yazdgird I († 421) continued under Bahram V

(421–38). The reasons for this lay in doubts about the loyalty of

Christians during the war with the Roman empire and in conflicts

with Zoroastrianism. Christianity was no longer limited to the

Syriac-Aramaic-speaking population and could point to conver-

sions particularly in the Persian upper class. At this time there were

internal disputes in the church over the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

Bishop Dadisho was slandered as a Roman sympathizer and placed

in prison. Around 422 a peace treaty was concluded between

Emperor Theodosius II (408–50) and Bahram V. Bishop Dadisho

was released and returned to his monastery, and wanted to resign.

At the Synod of Markabta the bishops – all six metropolitans as

well as thirty-one bishops participated – persuaded him to resume

his office in order to reorganize the church after the persecutions.

This time no “Western” bishop from the Roman empire was present

to direct or influence the fate of the synod, as had happened in 410

and 420.

The synod of 424 is widely regarded as the occasion on which the

Church of the East stated its claim to autocephaly through the rejec-

tion of the “right of appeal” to the West. It has been assumed that

in this year the Church of the East declared itself independent of the

patriarch of Antioch. One must realize, however, that such a declar-

ation of independence from the patriarch of Antioch need not have

taken place, as this presupposes an earlier dependence. The Church

of the East can be considered to have been autocephalous since the

Synod of Isaac in Seleucia-Ctesiphon (410).

The acts of the Synod of Dadisho in Markabta (424) show that

the resolutions of the Synod of Isaac (410) could not be entirely

carried out. That is why the primacy of the bishop of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon deserves special emphasis. After the introductory speech

of Dadisho, that of Metropolitan Agapet of Beth Lapat has

been preserved in the Synodicon Orientale. In this address, the

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

metropolitan established that while in the past the Western fathers

had been “supporters and helpers in a shared fatherhood” with the

Church of the East, now “persecution and afflictions [prevent] them

from caring for us as they did before.” Consequently, the primacy

of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon again came to the fore, as it had

in 410. This time, however, it was undergirded by stronger argu-

ments: the head of the Church of the East is head in the same sense

that Peter was head of the apostles. It was thereby expressed that no

further Peter – the patriarchal thrones of Rome and Antioch each

serve as a cathedra Petri – was necessary. Since the head of the

Church of the East occupies the same level as Peter, there can be no

other earthly authority over him. It follows that the outrage of

supervision or intervention by bishops of the Roman Empire should

cease. In the past – Agapet continues – it was always conceded that

the head of the Church of the East is right and that any who turned

against the patriarch and appealed to a patriarch in the West

acknowledged his own guilt and was punished for his transgression.

Thus an appeal to the Western patriarchs against the catholicos of

the Church of the East is neither necessary nor allowed.

The synod stressed the unity of the Church of the East under its

own single head, who was subsequently called “Catholicos”; the

title Patriarch is, for this time, still anachronistic, though it was

added before the end of the fifth century. According to the synod of

424, disputes internal to the church, especially those concerning its

head, should not be settled by calling upon other patriarchs from

outside but rather solved within their own sphere. None of the

earlier documents included in the Synodicon Orientale mentions a

“right of appeal.” One cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of

such a right to call upon ecclesiastical heads of the Roman empire.

However, it is at least interesting that the possibility of such a

canonically significant appeal is not mentioned in the Greek and

Latin sources.

The autonomy of the Church of the East was without doubt

established by 410. The Synod of Markabta reiterated this

explicitly. The political necessity of such a clear formulation is evi-

dent in the historical context, especially in the fact that a Western

appropriation of influence would have been viewed with anger by

Persian authorities. A definitive statement that bishops of the

Roman empire should not interfere in the affairs of the Church of

the East could have only positive results and is entirely

understandable.

Concerning relations with the patriarch of Antioch, no claim of

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T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

Antiochene jurisdiction over the Church of the East during the

synods of 410, 420, and 424 can be found. In fact, none of the

ancient ecclesiastical sources claims a dependence of the East Syriac

church upon Antioch as mother church. Certain texts of the Middle

Ages (e.g. Ibn at-Taiyib; the lists of patriarchs of Mari b. Suleiman

and Amr b. Matta) are the first to present the idea of the ordination

of the catholicos of the Church of the East in Antioch or Jerusalem.

The school of the Persians in Edessa and the Council

of Ephesus (431)

Through the synods of 410, 420, and 424, the Church of the East

was reorganized, and the primacy of the bishop of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon was established and secured. The intervention of

the Western bishops, i.e. the bishops of the eastern provinces of the

Roman empire, ceased with the decision of 424. Contact with

the Roman imperial church was in no way broken off, however, and

Western theological developments found another way into the

Church of the East, through the school of Edessa and later through

the school of Nisibis.

In 363 the city of Nisibis fell into the hands of the Sassanians.

Among the many Christians who fled to Edessa was Ephrem the

Syrian. In Nisibis at the time of the first bishop known to us, Jacob

of Nisibis († 338), who was one of the fathers of the Council of

Nicaea (325), Ephrem offered exegetical instruction at a kind of

school. The Persian conquest brought an abrupt end to this “first

school” of Nisibis.

Ephrem is also associated with the founding of the school of the

Persians in Edessa. Tradition traces the origin of the school all the

way back to the legendary Addai. Neither is historically accurate,

and the date of the founding of this educational institution is

unknown. It may be assumed that as an important intellectual cen-

ter, Edessa had long had a variety of teacher–student circles for the

transmission of theological and philosophical instruction. This can

be indirectly inferred from the diversity of Edessan Christianity.

However, a school in the sense of a theological academy first

acquired stable organization in the fourth century, and it eventually

achieved renown through Ephrem.

Even after the death of the great teacher from Nisibis, the school

stood in full flower. Its theological training and scholarship attained

an excellent reputation. Many Persian students, who during the

Sassanian persecutions of the first half of the fifth century had found

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

in Edessa an intellectual refuge, were educated there. Edessa was the

gate through which theological developments of the Roman

imperial church entered the Church of the East.

In the first half of the fifth century Christological conflicts in the

Roman empire had severe consequences for Edessa. Where previ-

ously the theology and teachings of Ephrem and the early Syriac

writings had been authoritative, now – on the basis of a massive

translation effort from Greek into Syriac accomplished by theo-

logians of the school of the Persians – new Christological trends

came into favor.

Since about 430 the school had stood under the influence of

Theodore of Mopsuestia († 428). Even during his lifetime, under

the guidance of Qiore († 437), an excellent and ascetical leader of

the school of Edessa, virtually all of Theodore’s works – as well as

those of his teacher Diodore of Tarsus – were translated into Syriac.

Through this translation, Antiochene theology became influential in

Edessa. Above all, the exegetical and theological works of Theodore

of Mopsuestia were enlisted for instruction at the school. In this

way, graduates of the school, who during peaceful times returned to

the Persian empire, spread a Diphysite (two-nature) theology in the

Sassanian empire even before the Council of Ephesus (431).

Since Theodore stands as the classic representative of the Antio-

chene theology, who opposed Arianism and Apollonarianism, and

since his work was studied intensively at the school of Edessa, it is

hardly surprising that the delegates from Edessa opposed Cyril of

Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus (431). Together with John of

Antioch, Ibas of Edessa († 457), the most prominent teacher of the

Persian school and his bishop Rabbula († 435) spoke up against

Cyril.

The debate at the Council of Ephesus was provoked by the cen-

tral question of Christianity: How can the One who, according to

the Council of Nicaea, is of the same nature as the Father, be both

perfect God and perfect man, and, at the same time, the one Jesus

Christ?

Two theological approaches competed: the Antiochene and the

Alexandrian. For the Antiochene theology, which tended in its exe-

gesis toward literary, literal, and historical interpretations, the pre-

cise differentiation of the divine and human natures (Diphysitism

or two-nature doctrine) was important. The divinity of the Word

as well as the integrity of Christ’s humanity had to be preserved.

Because of this, the Antiochene theologians opposed above all the

teachings of Apollonarius of Laodicea, who de-emphasized the

22

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

humanity of Christ because he believed that the Logos occupied the

place of human reason (Gr. nous). The fundamental Antiochene

concern is soteriological: salvation is attainable for humanity only

by Christ’s taking on a perfect human nature. If complete humanity

is a soteriological prerequisite, then it is also necessary to emphasize

its distinction from the incomprehensible Godhead. This differen-

tiation between divinity and humanity aroused the suspicion that

the Antiochenes (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius of Constanti-

nople, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodoret of Cyrus) saw in Christ two

subjects, two persons, or two Sons (classical Nestorianism).

The Alexandrian school with its allegorical exegesis and under

the influence of Platonism began theological reflection with the

Logos; in this view, emphasis on the unity of divinity and humanity

in Christ, the “one nature ( mia physis) of the Word incarnate” is

central. From an Antiochene perspective this concept of unity gave

the impression that divinity and humanity are mingled and that the

divinity absorbs the humanity (classical Monophysitism).

The feud between Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople (428–

31), and Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria (412–44), over the unity of

the perfect divinity and perfect humanity of Christ involved the

entire Mediterranean region. Cyril stressed the ontological unity of

Christ as a physical or hypostatic union. The primary concern of

Nestorius, a student of Theodore of Mopsuestia, was to emphasize

both complete natures of Christ, the divine and the human. The

debate came to a head over a theological tangent, the disagreement

concerning the title theotokos (God-bearer). Nestorius believed that

the expression theotokos should be replaced by christotokos

(Christ-bearer) because the Virgin could only have borne the human

nature. Nestorius’s concern escalated into a serious altercation,

because of his own unfortunate conduct, the mercilessness of Cyril,

and the interests of contemporary church politics.

As patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, like his predecessor The-

ophilus, took little pleasure in the fact that the second ecumenical

council (381) had placed the church of Constantinople, as the “new

Rome” in second position ahead of Alexandria. Earlier, at the

Council of Nicaea (325), the order of the patriarchates had been

established as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. Since then, argu-

ments over pre-eminence in the east of the empire had been a smol-

dering source of conflict and had contributed greatly to the

controversy.

During the summer of 430 Cyril informed Pope Celestine of

Nestorius’s teachings from his special Alexandrian perspective. In

23

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

response, Celestine called together a synod in Rome, which con-

demned Nestorius and entrusted Cyril with the privilege of speak-

ing with the authority of the Roman apostolic see. For his part,

Cyril held a synod in Alexandria, which reiterated the judgment of

Rome, and wrote a letter to Nestorius, demanding that he agree.

This letter included twelve anathemas, which unwisely sought to

impose the terminology of Alexandrian theology upon Nestorius.

The Emperor Theodosius II (408–50) was concerned about the

peace of the empire and called a council at Ephesus. However, there

were actually two synods at Ephesus: the council could not open as

planned on June 7 because John of Antioch and the Roman dele-

gates had not yet arrived. John wrote to Cyril that he and the Antio-

chene bishops had already been traveling for thirty days, and their

arrival would be delayed a few days because of difficulties. Never-

theless, Cyril opened the council on June 22, 431. Sixty-eight of the

153 bishops present protested in writing, and the imperial represen-

tative Candidian objected. Thus Cyril’s synod began with several

defects. Nonetheless, Nestorius was summoned before the assembly

by Cyril, acting without imperial authority. Understandably,

Nestorius refused and did not appear. They decided to settle the

divisive questions of the creed of Nicaea. The creed was solemnly

confirmed, and after that they read the second letter from Cyril to

Nestorius, written in June 430, and its response. The correspond-

ence of Cyril’s letter with the Nicene creed was established, while

they determined that Nestorius’s letter deviated from orthodoxy.

Mary could properly be called God-bearer because she had

received, carried, and borne the already unified Christ. Cyril’s the-

ology was accepted as the true expression of Christian belief and

as the faithful explication of the creed of Nicaea (325), while

Nestorius, following the testimony of a few witnesses, was deposed.

Although they tried to make up for the illegality of the summon-

ing by following an orderly process, there were serious weaknesses:

Cyril was simultaneously head of the synod, prosecutor, and judge.

Additionally, the theological positions of Nestorius were not dis-

cussed, and the judgment was handed down in the absence of the

accused and without his testimony.

After John of Antioch arrived in Ephesus, he – along with the

bishops accompanying him, a part of the sixty-eight bishops who

had protested against Cyril, and the imperial legate Candidian –

called another Ephesian council. Ibas and Rabbula also took part

in this council. It resolved to depose Cyril and break from com-

munion with the participants in Cyril’s synod. The papal delegates,

24

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

who had finally arrived, although too late, remained in union with

Cyril, following Pope Celestine’s orders. They examined the acts

and agreed with Cyril’s decision because Nestorius had not

recanted his teachings as the 430 Synod of Rome had demanded.

Nothing was asked regarding the circumstances. The council ended

with a schism between the church of Antioch, which remained loyal

to Nestorius, and the church of Alexandria. Emperor Theodosius

sought in vain to summon a new council and annul everything that

had happened at Ephesus.

About a year after Ephesus, Bishop Rabbula of Edessa changed

sides, turning from the Antiochene theology to Cyril’s position. As a

consequence, there followed a serious controversy with the school of

the Persians, which maintained its Antiochene stance. Rabbula had

the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia burnt and sent the respected

translator Ibas into exile. The writings of Cyril were then translated

into Syriac, and thus the foundation for a Syriac Miaphysite (later

anti-Chalcedonian, Syrian Orthodox) literature was laid.

The struggles after the council brought the Antiochene and

Alexandrian parties closer together and led to a Christological

agreement, the so-called Formula of Union (433) between John of

Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria. This agreement was based on the

council John had led at Ephesus (431), with substantial contribu-

tions from the important Antiochene theologian and opponent of

Cyril, Theodoret of Cyrus († c.466). Theologically, the Formula of

Union was the real result of the Council of Ephesus, and it built a

bridge between the councils of Constantinople (381) and Chal-

cedon (451). Nestorius was a victim of this alliance – although he

could have agreed to its substance – as the Antiochene bishops also

approved his dismissal. He was banished to Egypt. Several bishops,

who could not accept the Formula of Union and were consequently

dismissed from the dioceses of the Roman empire, emigrated and,

along with their clergy, joined the East Syriac church in Persia.

After the death of Rabbula (435) things changed again in Edessa.

Ibas became his successor as bishop, and in 437 the Persian Narsai

became head of the theological school. Edessa turned once again,

for one final time in its history, to the Antiochene Diphysite the-

ology. Ibas was strongly opposed and condemned at the Second

Council of Ephesus (449), for which Pope Leo the Great coined the

term “Robber Synod” ( Latrocinium). The Council of Chalcedon

(451) rehabilitated Ibas but dismissed Cyril’s successor Dioscorus

of Alexandria, which led to the loss of the Egyptian (Coptic) church

during the debates surrounding the council.

25

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

The Antiochene position could no longer be maintained in the

Roman empire, and the Persian school in Edessa was in dire straits.

During the episcopacy of Bishop Qurâ (471–98), the school of

Edessa was severely suppressed. Presumably on account of an

attempt to murder him, Narsai fled to Nisibis.

In 489 Emperor Zeno, under the influence of Bishop Qurâ, had

the school closed and the teachers expelled. The Persian school was

transformed into a church, characteristically dedicated to the

Mother of God (Theotokos). The removal of the school of Edessa

by Emperor Zeno was a significant step toward the development of

the theology of the Roman empire in a certain direction. The elim-

ination of the Antiochene Christology, which had presented a legit-

imate counterweight to the Alexandrian legacy, could not be

reversed by the Council of Chalcedon (451). Through the condem-

nation of the so-called “Three Chapters” – the person and writings

of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret of Cyrus,

and the letter of Ibas of Edessa to the Persian Mari – by the imperial

synod of Constantinople (553), the fifth “ecumenical” council, the

displacement of the Antiochene theology reached its final

conclusion.

The school of Nisibis

At the time of Narsai’s flight from Edessa, Barsauma († 496), a

former student of the school of the Persians, was bishop of Nisibis.

Barsauma offered Narsai sanctuary and made the former head of

the school of Edessa the founder of the famous school of Nisibis.

Actually the politician Barsauma functioned as organizer of the

school, while Narsai’s theological genius shaped the content of

instruction and the reputation of the school in Nisibis for four

decades.

The school of Nisibis was modeled on the example of Edessa and

furthered its tradition. When Emperor Zeno closed the school in

Edessa, many teachers and students fled over the border into the

Persian empire and joined Narsai. Nisibis developed into an intel-

lectual center and became the theological power station of the East

Syriac church in the Sassanian empire. In its heyday, it numbered

about 800 students. It was there that, until the seventh century,

almost every great East Syriac church leader and theologian

received his education in reading, writing, rhetoric, philosophy, and

above all exegesis in a carefully regulated three-year program of

study.

26

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

Narsai, the Persian poet, preacher, exegete, and theologian, called

“the harp of the Spirit,” was perhaps the most important poet-

theologian of the East Syriac church – as Aphrahat the “Persian

sage” († c.350) and Ephrem the Syrian († 373) belong to the com-

mon West and East Syriac heritage. Over 300 verse homilies

( mêmrê) have been attributed to Narsai, of which about eighty

have been preserved. He stood in the tradition of Ephrem and was

furthermore a vehement supporter of the Antiochene theology as

elaborated by Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

That he also held Nestorius in high regard is indicated by a verse

homily on the three Greek fathers Diodore, Theodore, and Nesto-

rius. It can be argued, however, that Nestorius had no theological

significance for Narsai. Rather Narsai was responsible for the

authoritative position Theodore’s biblical commentaries held in

exegetical instruction at the school of Nisibis. For the East Syriac

church Theodore’s work was therefore the most influential of all

the Greek fathers.

Likewise, Narsai’s Christology also grew out of that of Theodore

of Mopsuestia. Despite the distinction of natures, which the totality

of divinity and humanity in Christ ensured, Narsai denied the idea

of two prosopa (persons) in Christ: “And we call (them) one person,

the two who are distinct from one another: the Word is the nature of

the (divine) substance and the body the nature of the humanity. One

is the Begotten and one the Begetter. They are one in a single unity”

(from Homily 81).

Primarily because he was the founder of the school of Nisibis and

a Persian theologian, Narsai was accused of being a “Nestorian,”

that is, denying the unity of Jesus Christ. He was held responsible

for the influx of Nestorianism into the Persian church. Even a pass-

ing glance at Narsai’s verse homilies shows that this is unjustified.

He emphasized the unity of the two distinct, concrete natures and

vehemently rejected a two-person doctrine.

The comparison of Narsai’s homilies with the writings of Theo-

dore of Mopsuestia shows how closely Narsai followed Theodore’s

arguments. Narsai’s work is pervaded by Theodore’s exegesis, doc-

trine of creation, Christology, soteriology, and eschatology. The

speed with which Theodore’s work was integrated is demonstrated

by homilies written while Narsai was still in Edessa. Beginning as

early as 420, the school of Edessa had a Diphysite, Antiochene and,

from 430 on, a specifically “Theodoran” character. This orthodox

tradition lived on in the school of Nisibis, which contributed sub-

stantially to the elaboration and dissemination of an Antiochene

27

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

Christology in the East Syriac church, modeled on the work of

Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Acceptance of Nestorianism at the synods of 484

and 486?

The synods of Beth Lapat (484) and Seleucia-Ctesiphon (486) have

been and are still seen as those at which the Church of the East

officially adopted the Nestorian faith and thus the schism with the

Church catholic took place. The Synod of Beth Lapat (484) is

reputed to have accepted Nestorianism at the instigation of

Barsauma of Nisibis, and this acceptance is further reputed to have

been confirmed at the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (486). However,

the sources in no way allow this conclusion; though it has been

tirelessly disseminated.

The synod of Barsauma at Beth Lapat (484) is not included in the

official records of East Syriac synods. It was the result of a serious

conflict between Catholicos Babowai († 484) and the metropolitan

of Nisibis. Barsauma had the support of the Persian shah Peroz

(459–84), who first imprisoned Babowai for two years as a Zoroas-

trian apostate and finally had him executed. However, in the same

year, Peroz also died. His successor Balash (484–8) appointed as the

new catholicos not Barsauma but rather Aqaq, likewise a former

student of Edessa. Soon Barsauma’s opposition seemed to crumble.

In six recorded letters from the metropolitan of Nisibis to Aqaq it

becomes clear that Barsauma regretted the synod of 484 and sub-

ordinated himself to Aqaq. At a small synod in Beth Adrai (485),

unity was restored, and the Synod of Beth Lapat was annulled.

Barsauma officially recognized Aqaq as catholicos, and they

decided to hold a synod in the capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (which

eventually took place in 486). The peace and restored communion

were celebrated with a shared Eucharist.

The acts of the Synod of Beth Lapat have not been preserved for

us, and only a handful of fragments are available as sources. A few

canons against simony, the buying of offices, and invalid ordin-

ations, which clearly indicate abuses during the catholicate of

Babowai, are cited in the writings of Elias of Nisibis († 1046) and

Abdisho bar Brika. The writings of the canonist Ibn at-Tayib

suggest further that because of the misconduct of the catholicos,

Barsauma did not consider the centralized primacy established by

the synods of the early fifth century as appropriate. He insisted, for

instance, that the catholicos not ordain the metropolitan, but rather

28

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

that the bishops of each metropolitanate do so, and that this

required no confirmation by the catholicos.

The only remaining theological fragment is a citation in the acts

of the Synod of Gregory (605), which states positively that the

Synod of Beth Lapat emphasized the authority of the commentary

and homilies of Theodore of Mopsuestia. This comes as no surprise,

as Barsauma had co-founded the school of Nisibis with Narsai. The

gradual turning away from the Antiochene theology in the Roman

empire forms the background of this explicit defense. Had the

Synod of Beth Lapat composed a Christological creed, it would

most probably have expressed Antiochene concepts based on

the theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia. However, we have no

evidence to support this. There is de facto no indication that the

Christological definition of the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (486)

repeated or confirmed an earlier, now lost, creed of 484.

The officially recognized synod of 486, in which Barsauma was

supposed to have participated but, for reasons unknown to us,

did not, produced the first preserved Christological creed of the

Church of the East after the imperial synods of Ephesus (431) and

Chalcedon (451):

Further, let our faith in the dispensation of Christ be in the

confession of the two natures, of the divinity and of the

humanity, while none of us shall dare to introduce mixture,

mingling or confusion into the differences of these two

natures; rather, while the divinity remains preserved in

what belongs to it, and humanity in what belongs to it, it is

to a single Lordship and to a single (object of) worship that

we gather together the exemplars of these two natures,

because of the perfect and inseparable conjunction that has

occurred for the divinity with respect to the humanity.

And if someone considers, or teaches others, that suffer-

ing and change have attached to the divinity of our Lord,

and (if) he does not preserve, with respect to the union of

the prosopon of our Saviour, a confession of perfect God

and perfect Man, let such a person be anathema.

(Trans. S. P. Brock)

Until the present day, this profession was unjustly condemned as

heretical. Here, in Diphysite terms, the necessity of the existence-in-

itself of each complete nature, without mixing or change, is set

forth. Nevertheless, there is an inseparable bond between divinity

29

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

and humanity, a union of the person. As with Narsai, here the

theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia and the position of the Antio-

chenes, each of which excludes Theopaschism (the suffering of the

divinity), is determinative. This Christology respects the integrity of

divinity and humanity and admits no hint of “Nestorianism.”

After the preceding expositions of the schools of Edessa and Nis-

ibis, the spread of the Antiochene theology prior to the Council of

Ephesus (431), and the significance of Theodore of Mopsuestia in

the East Syriac church, it is hardly surprising that at the Synod of

Seleucia-Ctesiphon (486), the Church of the East composed their

profession of belief in Christ along Antiochene-Diphysite lines.

Over the course of the sixth century, nearly all the synods of the

Church of the East included Christological creeds displaying essen-

tially the same character: a strict but orthodox Antiochene Chris-

tology, strongly opposing any theopaschism. In these synods it was

again established that the correct biblical and Nicene faith is main-

tained especially in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Interestingly, the Council of Ephesus is not mentioned in the East

Syriac synodical records. Since it was a synod outside the Persian

empire, the Church of the East presumably did not find it necessary

to react. Nevertheless, it should also be emphasized that the Church

of the East did not condemn the Council of Ephesus. Likewise, the

theological decisions of the Council of Chalcedon had no direct

impact on the synods, although some canons were adopted at the

Synod of Aba (543). Through the two-nature doctrine of Chalcedon

and the rehabilitation of Ibas, this council could certainly have

aroused the sympathies of the Church of the East. However, the

Chalcedonian terminology was unclear for the Church of the East.

Indeed, the authority of Theodore of Mopsuestia is emphasized

in the synods of the fifth and sixth centuries, while Nestorius is

never mentioned. This patriarch of Constantinople, deposed at

Ephesus, appears for the first time in the religious disputation of

612 and only in 680 in the acts of an official East Syriac synod. The

teachings of Nestorius seem to have had no significance for the

official Church. The earliest East Syriac document to make mention

of Nestorius is Narsai’s Homily on the Three Greek Doctors. How-

ever, this very homily demonstrates that Nestorius was insignificant

for the theological discussions of the Church of the East. Narsai

knew quite a lot about Diodore and of course much about his model

Theodore but hardly anything about Nestorius. Nestorius is above

all the symbol of a martyr of Antiochene Christology. However the

teachings of Nestorius might be judged, the term “Nestorian” in a

30

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D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

heretical sense is inaccurate for the Church of the East. Christianity

in the Persian empire of the Parthians and Sassanians did not begin

with Nestorius nor was there a dogmatic split from the Church of

the Roman Empire in the fifth century named after him.

The Church of the East in the sixth century

At the start of the sixth century, under Catholicos Babai (497–502),

Christianity had spread across Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, those

metropolitanates lying in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates

were the best organized. Along with the catholicos-patriarch of

Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the bishop of Kashkar was assigned to the

patriarchal province. According to canon 21 of the synod of 554,

he, as vicar of the catholicos, was responsible for organizing the

election of a new patriarch upon the vacancy of the see. Further

metropolitanates which could be named include Beth Lapat

(Gundeshapur), Nisibis, Prat de Maishan (Basra), Arbela (Irbil),

Karka de Beth Slokh (Kirkuk), and Merv, as well as Rewardashir,

which became the metropolitanate for the Persis in the sixth cen-

tury. In addition there were several bishoprics independent of met-

ropolitan control that were under the immediate authority of the

patriarch. This was the case especially in those regions lying outside

the Persian empire. However, the sources permit no definite conclu-

sions regarding this matter, especially since the Arab and Turkish

tribes were nomadic or at least semi-nomadic. As early as 410

Christianity was represented in Arabia by the bishop of Hira, who

was placed under the authority of the metropolitan of Rewardashir

in the sixth century. Christianity came to Turkestan through the

temporary flight of King Kawad I (488–531), the legitimate succes-

sor of Balash, on account of usurper Djamasp (496–8). His retinue

included Christians, who until 498 successfully carried out mission-

ary activities among the local Central Asian population.

When Kawad I was able to regain his throne, a period of religious

tolerance began. As members of a Persian church independent of

the Christianity of the Roman empire, East Syriac Christians

enjoyed relative peace. With canon 3 of the Synod of Aqaq (486)

celibacy was abolished and consequently the influence of monasti-

cism was curbed. This aroused sympathies particularly among

Zoroastrian Persians, for whom marriage was imperative. Never-

theless, there were occasional conflicts with this religion.

Both Catholicos Babai and his successor Silas (503–23) were

married. Before his death, Silas designated his son-in-law Elisha as

32

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

his successor. Because no consensus could be reached regarding his

appointment, he was uncanonically installed as catholicos under the

direction of the bishop of Merv. An opposing candidate, Narses, a

man from Khuzistan, was nominated and ordained. Though Narses

soon died, the tiresome matter nonetheless resulted in a fifteen-year

schism within the church. At a synod in 539 it was proclaimed that

neither Elisha nor Narses had been, nor continued to be, a legitim-

ate patriarch. Elisha stepped down, and Paul of Khuzistan was

selected as the new catholicos. Paul enjoyed great favor with King

Chosroes I, and there was hope that he would heal the wounds of

the patriarchal schism. However, Paul died just two months after

his election. The Church of the East then chose Aba I (540–52), one

of the most outstanding figures of the sixth century, as its new

patriarch.

Mar Aba I was once a high-ranking Zoroastrian and secretary to

the governor of the province of Beth Garmai. He converted to

Christianity and studied at the school of Nisibis. It was written that

he traveled to Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, Athens, and

Corinth. Cosmas Indicopleustes reported that he received his great

knowledge of Holy Scripture from this “exceedingly holy man and

great teacher.” Following his return to Persia, this far-ranging trav-

eler taught in Nisibis, wrote biblical commentaries, and translated

Greek texts into Syriac. After his election as catholicos, he founded

his own theological school in Seleucia-Ctesiphon and began ener-

getically to reform the church. He summoned a synod in 544, clari-

fied the hierarchical structure and diocesan boundaries while on a

visitation trip through the Persian empire, and annulled unlawful

ordinations. However, he fell victim to the new political situation.

Danger always threatened Christians during conflicts with the

Roman empire, and the Persian–Roman war (540–5) was a good

opportunity for the Zoroastrian magicians to slander the apostate

who sat upon the patriarchal throne. Aba had to go into exile for

several years and was placed under house arrest. Nevertheless, he

seemed to have succeeded in consolidating the Church and giving it

inner cohesion during the renewed persecutions of Christians under

Chosroes I.

The aforementioned synod under Mar Aba (544) sought above

all to restore the unity of the Church under the patriarchal See of

Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which had been destroyed by the schism of the

preceding fifteen years. Mar Aba settled the patriarchal election in

the epistola pragmatica of the 544 synod. It is established therein

that the bishops of the patriarchal province would assemble the

33

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

metropolitans of Beth Lapat, Prat de Maishan, Arbela, and Karka

de Beth Slokh, each of whom would travel to Seleucia-Ctesiphon

with three of his bishops, in order to elect an incontestable

catholicos-patriarch.

A letter of Catholicos Aba on the “orthodoxy of faith” is also

included in the acts of the synod. In it he described the economy of

salvation, beginning with the creation, through the life, death, and

resurrection of Jesus, the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the end of

the world. The avoidance of any technical Christological termin-

ology is astonishing, especially since the highly educated Aba

undoubtedly had knowledge of theological developments in the

Roman empire and brought various works of Nestorius back with

him when he returned to the Persian empire after his travels. Pre-

sumably it was he – or his pupil Cyrus of Edessa – who translated

the Book of Heraclides into Syriac in 539–40.

Despite Aba’s opposition to simony and other external influences

on the regulation of the patriarchal election, the Persian shah inter-

fered once again. Chosroes I intervened, so that Joseph (552–67), a

man of dubious character who was apparently his physician, was

elected as the next catholicos. The synod which took place under

him established – contrary to the appointment of Joseph himself –

that the catholicos should be chosen from among the metropolitans

(Canon 13). The professions of faith in Christ produced by the

synod confirmed the councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople

(381), and rejected teachings of two persons in Christ. Each nature

maintains its characteristics, though they are one without confu-

sion, mixing, transformation, or change. The text recalls the well-

known four adverbs of the Council of Chalcedon, which, like the

Synod of Joseph, opposed any Christology involving mixing or div-

ision. However, no direct relationship between the two synods is

indicated.

Since the displeasure regarding the appointment and installation

of Catholicos Joseph endured, he was finally removed from office.

Not much is known about his successor Ezechiel (570–82), who

was a student of Aba. He held a synod in 576, and his time in office

was marked by plague and a new Persian–East Roman war (572–

91). Perhaps this explains the dearth of sources. During Ezechiel’s

period, the expansion of the Persian empire reached well into the

Arabian peninsula, where the Ethiopians were besieged and Yemen

was captured. Bishops could now be found in Sana and on the

island of Sokotra, indicating the spread of Christianity among the

pre-Islamic Arabs.

34

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

With Ezechiel’s successor Ishoyahb I of Arzun (582–96), another

former student of Nisibis became catholicos of the Church of the

East. At the synod held under him the hierarchy of the Church of

the East was given a theological foundation. The ecclesiastical

structure was placed parallel to the heavenly one. By this reasoning,

church order was set forth as divine, the patriarch equated with the

apostles Peter and Paul, and the patriarchal see placed on an apos-

tolic footing.

In canon 29 of the same synod one reads further that the Holy

Spirit “designated four patriarchs in the West, and he chose a fifth

patriarch for the Orient.” The Church of the East thus considered

itself one of the five patriarchates of the universal Church. The four

Western patriarchates were those established at the Council of Con-

stantinople (381) in alignment with Roman provincial administra-

tion: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Since the

Church of the East accepted only the first two Roman imperial

synods – the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) –

the decision of the Council of Chalcedon (451) that the bishop of

Jerusalem be removed from the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of

Antioch and granted autonomy had no significance for it. If Rome,

Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem formed the

pentarchy of the Church of the Roman Empire, the Church of the

East also had a “pentarchy” including the patriarchate of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon. The East Syriac canonist Ibn at-Taiyib saw the bishop of

al-Maidan (Seleucia-Ctesiphon) as the fifth patriarch of the Church.

In addition, the Synod of Ishoyahb strongly emphasized the

importance of the writings and tradition of Theodore of Mopsues-

tia with a separate apology. Occasionally various scholars have

sought to identify here evidence of a reaction to the condemnation

of Theodore at the Council of Constantinople (553) and the Three

Chapters Controversy. However, this cannot be verified. The

Church of the East had offered no response to the Council of Ephe-

sus (431) and did the same in the case of the posthumous condem-

nation of the person (!) and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia in

the Roman empire.

The emphasis on the doctrinal authority of Theodore is rather

linked to the critique offered by Hnana of Adiabene. Hnana was a

highly respected and exceptional teacher in Nisibis who inspired

many with his exegetical works, his humility, and his ascetic life-

style. He had great influence on East Syriac monasticism, which

since 486 and the abolition of celibacy had decreased in signifi-

cance. However, in his writings Hnana deviated from the official

35

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

doctrinal consensus of the Church of the East and attacked the

obligatory authority of Theodore of Mopsuestia. He favored

instead the writings of John Chrysostom. Babai the Great († 628),

of whom more will be said later, rejected him as an Origenist, Theo-

paschist, and Monophysite. During the controversy, Ishoyahb’s

synod (585) not only supported the doctrinal authority of Theodore

but also affirmed that John Chrysostom himself had admired the

bishop of Mopsuestia. Eventually the debate escalated to the

school, and some three hundred students, among them Ishoyahb II

of Gdala and Ishoyahb III of Adiabene, two later catholicoi, left

Nisibis. The resolution of the synod of 585 remained ineffective not

least because Metropolitan Simon of Nisibis did not take part in the

synod and supported Hnana. In about 590, Hnana was even able to

draw up new statutes for the school.

During the long Persian–East Roman war (572–91), repeated diplo-

matic efforts were made to bring hostilities to an end. One of these

missions took place under the leadership of Ishoyahb I of Arzun. It

was sent by Shah Hormizd IV (579–90) to Emperor Maurice in

586/7. Ishoyahb was received with honors by Emperor Maurice and

in addition to the Persian–Roman peace negotiations was also

asked about his faith. The catholicos presented a written creed,

which Maurice handed over to the patriarchs John of Constantino-

ple and Gregory of Antioch. These judged the creed to be orthodox

and without error. This agreement on belief between the Byzantine

church and the Church of the East found its expression – 156 years

after the Council of Ephesus – in a shared eucharistic celebration.

After the violent death of Hormizd IV, Chosroes II (591–628)

deposed the usurper Bahram Chobin in 591 and assumed power.

Under his rule the Sassanian empire reached the height of its expan-

sion. Ishoyahb I did not support Chosroes’ seizure of power, and the

relationship between patriarch and shah was correspondingly

strained. Ishoyahb finally fled to the Christian Arab king Numan III

in Hira and died in 596 during this hurried escape.

Chosroes II elevated to catholicos the ascetic bishop of Lashom,

Sabrisho, as Ishoyahb’s successor at the synod of 596. The Chris-

tian second wife of Chosroes, the Aramaic Shirin, had interpreted

an aged monk she saw in a dream, who stood beside the Persian

shah, as Sabrisho. For this reason, Chosroes held Sabrisho in high

regard, and Sabrisho supported the shah in his dealings with the

eastern Roman empire.

Even under Ishoyahb I, but especially under Sabrisho I (596–

604), who had once been a hermit himself, monasticism was again

36

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

fully integrated into the church. This was made easier by the renais-

sance of monasticism under Abraham of Kashkar, who was a

student in Nisibis and who, following an eremitic sojourn in the

Egyptian desert, renewed East Syriac monasticism on this model.

The great monastery he founded on Mt Izla, on the southern edge of

the Tur Abdin, became a spiritual center and theological wellspring

for the Church of the East in the sixth and seventh centuries.

During Sabrisho’s time the conflict over Hnana of Adiabene per-

sisted. Because of the close relationship of Hnana’s movement to

monasticism, the conflict was addressed only in general terms at the

synod of 596, which had ostensibly wanted to resolve the problem.

Nevertheless, Theodore of Mopsuestia was again extolled and

defended as commentator par excellence. Even under the next

leader, Catholicos Gregory (605–8), the conflict with Hnana

remained unsettled. The first synod of the seventh century (605)

thus proclaimed Theodore of Mopsuestia the irrefutable standard

of East Syriac orthodoxy. Anyone who opposed Theodore, whether

in the past, present, or future, was expressly condemned.

From Babai the Great to the Arab conquest

In 602 Shah Chosroes II had the opportunity to expand the Persian

empire to the west, an action which had not been possible militarily

against Justinian, nor against Maurice. When Maurice was vio-

lently deposed by the usurper Phokas, an action Chosroes con-

sidered sufficient grounds for ordering the Persian army to march

on the Roman empire. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Damascus, and Anti-

och were captured, and the Sassanians advanced as far as Chal-

cedon, at the threshold of Constantinople. The Arab kingdom of

Hira was also annexed to the empire of the Sassanians. During the

campaign of 604 Catholicos Sabrisho accompanied the Persian

shah. However, the old man remained behind at Nisibis, where he

died after a short time.

Chosroes II and the bishops considered the zealot Gregory of

Kashkar a suitable successor. He had vehemently opposed Hnana.

However, through the influence of Shirin and the court physician

Gabriel of Sinjar, Shirin’s moderate countryman Gregory of Phrat

(605–8), by clever use of the similarity of names, was elevated as the

new catholicos. Gabriel of Sinjar, who originally belonged to the

Church of the East, had been excommunicated by Gregory of

Kashkar on charges of bigamy, upon which Gabriel turned to the

non-Chalcedonian Miaphysite (West Syriac, Syrian Orthodox) side,

37

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

for political much more than theological reasons. The doctor had

cured Shirin’s barrenness and so was able to win her support for his

plans to obstruct Gregory of Kashkar. Nor was Gregory of Phrat

any great blessing for the church, as he was interested above all in

his own personal gain. After his death, his property was confiscated

by Chosroes II, and the shah forbade further occupation of the See

of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Consequently the office of catholicos-

patriarch remained vacant from 608 to 628. During this period

Babai the Great (551–628) and Archdeacon Aba of Seleucia led the

East Syriac church.

Babai the Great was one of the most outstanding theological fig-

ures of the East Syriac church at the turn of the seventh century. He

was born in Beth Zabdai and studied medicine and theology at

Nisibis. He then turned to the monastic life in the great monastery

at Izla, whose archimandrite he became in the year of Gregory’s

election as catholicos (604). During the years of the vacant patri-

archal see, Babai was administrator of the catholicate and visitor of

the monasteries. The literary legacy of this important thinker is

enormous; in Abdisho bar Brika’s catalogue of literature, it com-

prises eighty-three books.

In Babai’s day two problems presented themselves most promin-

ently: on the one hand, the conflict with Hnana remained

unresolved, and on the other, the Miaphysites (anti-Chalcedonian,

Syrian Orthodox) were gaining strength in the Persian empire. In

the Roman empire the Miaphysites were deemed heretical on

account of their opposition to the Council of Chalcedon (451).

However, the Church of the East, which spoke of two natures, could

also see only heterodoxy in “one nature ( mia physis) of the Logos

incarnate.”

With the support of Empress Theodora, the exiled Alexandrian

patriarch Theodosios (535–66) had ordained two bishops in 542:

one was Theodore of Arabia, who concerned himself primarily with

Arab Ghassanians in the Syriac desert and Transjordan region. The

other was Jacob Baradaeus. While on adventurous journeys from

Syria to Isauria, he ordained priests and bishops and thus laid the

groundwork for a West Syriac anti-Chalcedonian church organiza-

tion. Jacob became the symbolic figure of West Syriac Christianity,

which is sometimes called “Jacobite” after him. In 558/9 Jacob

Baradaeus succeeded in ordaining Ahudemmeh of Beth Arabaye as

metropolitan of Takrit. With this event, the basis of a West Syriac

(Miaphysite) hierarchy was established in Persia, although the East

Syriac church with its catholicos-patriarch at Seleucia-Ctesiphon

38

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

still represented the majority of Christians in the Sassanian empire.

Besides Takrit, the monastery of Mar Mattai was a center of Syrian

Orthodoxy in the Persian empire.

In 612, at the suggestion of the subversive physician Gabriel of

Sinjar, Chosroes II arranged for a religious disputation between East

and West Syriacs, that is, between representatives of the Diphysite

Church of the East and the Miaphysite Syrian Orthodox, which had

gained strength in the Persian empire during the sixth century. The

significance and influence of the theology of Babai the Great may be

measured by the fact that his Christological terminology was

adopted by the Church of the East in the presentation of its faith at

the disputation, though Babai himself did not participate.

The creed of the Church of the East of 612 speaks of the insepar-

able unity of the God-Logos and the human nature, recognized in

Jesus Christ as one person ( prosopon). It is further expressed in

Babai’s terminology that “Christ is two kyane (natures) and two

qnome.” In the past, the Syriac term qnoma had been equated with

the Greek hypostasis or even translated as “person.” Thus the mis-

conception developed that the Church of the East believed in two

natures and two persons in Christ. However, for neither Babai nor

the creed of 612 did qnoma denote a self-existent hypostasis. Kyana

refers to the general, abstract nature, that is, the human being and

the God being, while qnoma describes the concretization and indi-

vidualization of this nature. Babai thus usually employed the formu-

lation “the two natures and their qnome” which are united from the

moment of conception. Both Babai’s most important treatment of

the matter, the Book of Union and the document of 612 clearly

express that each nature needs a qnoma in order to exist concretely.

Were one to equate qnoma with hypostasis, one would reach a

faulty understanding of the statement; a translation of “person” is

incorrect. Because of this terminology, the East Syriacs were also

unable to comprehend the definition of the Council of Chalcedon,

which speaks of two natures in one person and hypostasis. This

finds clear expression in the Christological letter of the future

catholicos Ishoyahb II of Gdala, which was written in 620 and used

Babai’s terminology.

Babai’s Christology, which was accused of being real Nestorian-

ism, ought to be seen as an orthodox and specifically East Syriac

approach to the mystery of Christ. Through the creed presented by

Shah Chosroes II in 612, Babai’s concepts attained significance for

the entire Church of the East, and they remain valid today.

Following the high point of Sassanian power, the capture of

39

D I E T M A R W. W I N K L E R

Palestine and Egypt under Chosroes II, the beginning of the seventh

century was marked by the advance of the Byzantine emperor Her-

aclius (610–41). Since his rise to power, he had reorganized the

Roman empire. Most important to him was strengthening the east-

ern provinces, which eventually led him to mount a noteworthy

campaign against Persia (622–8). The military successes of Emperor

Heraclius shook the Sassanian empire and resulted in a revolt

against Chosroes II. In 628 he was murdered in a plot involving his

son Shiruye (Shiroi). The efforts of the Sassanians to achieve polit-

ical stability were doomed to failure by rapid changes in imperial

leadership. In less than four years five shahs and two queens – Boran

and Azarmdukht – followed one another in quick succession.

With the death of Chosroes II the vacancy of the See of Seleucia-

Ctesiphon also came to an end. Babai the Great was chosen as the

new catholicos. He refused the appointment, however, and died in

the same year. The bishop of Balad, Ishoyahb II of Gdala (628–46)

then became the new patriarch of the Church of the East. Like most

East Syriac scholars of the sixth and seventh centuries, he had been

educated at the school of Nisibis, though he was among those stu-

dents who abandoned the school and the city under the influence of

Hnana. In Balad, north-west of Mosul, he was retained by the local

bishop as a teacher for the newly founded theological school. As

early as the religious disputation of 612, he appeared as bishop of

this city.

After his election as catholicos, Ishoyahb began reorganizing the

Church of the East and placed special emphasis on theological edu-

cation. Many schools were reopened or newly founded. In his opin-

ion, besides an appropriate education, only an episcopacy with

moral integrity could be persuasive, especially in the debate with the

Miaphysites. In this regard, he tried to gain the favor of state

authorities.

Queen Boran wanted to calm the situation in the Persian empire

with a definitive peace treaty, and in 630 she sent an official diplo-

matic delegation to Emperor Heraclius with this goal. This delega-

tion consisted of the highest dignitaries of the Church of the East

under the leadership of Catholicos Ishoyahb II. Accompanied by the

metropolitans of Nisibis, Beth Garmai, Adiabene, and Gustra, and

the bishops of Mahoze, Damascus, and Nineveh (the future catholi-

cos Ishoyahb III), the delegation met the Byzantine emperor in

Aleppo. Beyond the peace treaty, the discussion again turned to

religion, and the catholicos presented his faith. The debate resulted

in Ishoyahb II’s being permitted to celebrate the East Syriac liturgy

40

T H E A G E O F T H E S A S S A N I A N S

in Aleppo. The Byzantine bishops present and the emperor himself

received communion from the hand of the catholicos of the Church

of the East.

The diplomatic mission was also crowned with political success

and brought the region a few more years of temporary peace. At this

time, the expansion of East Syriac Christianity reached China. As

the 781 stele of Xian (Changan, Singan-fu), the capital of China

under the Tang dynasty, recorded, a group of missionaries sent by

Ishoyahb II reached China in 635. Additional metropolitanates

were subsequently founded by Ishoyahb II at Hulwan (Iran), Herat

(Afghanistan), Samarkand (Uzbekistan), China (with sees at Xian

and Lo-yang), and eventually also in India, whose Christians had

already been mentioned by Cosmas Indicopleustes and which had

been under the influence of the Church of the East since at least the

end of the third century.

In 632 the final Sassanian ruler, Yazdgird III, assumed the throne,

while the Arabs were already advancing from the south and begin-

ning to conquer the Near East. When they captured the Persian

capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 632, Yazdgird fled to the area around

Merv. With his violent death in 651 the Sassanian empire vanished

from history.

In 637 Ishoyahb II moved his see to Karka de Beth Slokh and

tried to find a modus vivendi with the new rulers. Arab Christian

literature mentions a correspondence with the prophet Muhammad

and the caliph Omar. Ishoyahb II is reputed to have received from

each a letter of protection for Persian Christendom. However, these

letters were produced much later, in order to show the Muslims who

then opposed Christians the amicable relations between the first

catholicos under Islamic rule and the prophet himself, as well as the

caliph. In the seventh century an epochal change took place in the

Near East. In 646 Ishoyahb II died, having been the last catholicos

under the Sassanians and the first of the era of the Arabs.

41

2

THE AGE OF THE ARABS

650–1258

Wilhelm Baum

The period of Catholicos Ishoyahb III and the dawn

of Islam

The relationship between Islam and the Church of the East varied

according to the political situation. Muhammad is said to have had

an East Syriac teacher named Sergius Bahira. While this may be

merely legend, the Prophet of Islam was nonetheless influenced by

the Christian missionaries with whom he became acquainted in

Yemen and along the trade route to Iraq. Thus his view of resurrec-

tion, for example, may have been colored by the East Syrians he had

known in his youth. The earliest suras of the Qur’an suggest apoca-

lyptic influences. In the tenth century the Arab author Abu l-Farag

al-Isbahani († 967) reported that Muhammad had heard the

eschatological preaching of the East Syriac bishop (?) Quss b. Saida

while in Ukaz, and this shaped his thinking. In any case, Muham-

mad had a positive impression of the Church of the East.

However, Christians soon had to pay a poll tax and wear distinct-

ive clothing. It is nevertheless presumed that Muhammad concluded

a treaty with Sayyid, king of Najran, and the East Syriac bishop Abu

l-Harith of Nadjran, which guaranteed the Christians certain privil-

eges for payment of the poll tax, and priests and monks were

exempted from this payment. It is clear that a similar treaty was

established under the second caliph, Umar. Treaties of this type were

later also forged, in order to legitimate earlier treaties which had

been lost. As previously noted, such a thing was reported by Patri-

arch Ishoyahb II of Gdala, who claimed he knew Muhammad and

had received from him privileges for the Church of the East. Caliph

Umar confirmed this, and Ali extended it because the Christians had

fed his troops.

Even long after the Arab conquest, Christians outnumbered

42

T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

Muslims in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Gunde-

shapur, Nisibis, and Merv remained intellectual centers of the

Church of the East, where writers, teachers, translators, and clerks

were educated.

In the ensuing years, the Islamic rulers gained ever greater influ-

ence over the naming of the new catholicos, who was elected only

by those metropolitans and bishops designated as delegates. East

Syriac secretaries or physicians often had their candidates named by

the caliph or his deputies. Between 650 and 1050 twelve of the total

thirty catholicoi of the Church of the East were imposed by the

Islamic rulers.

Ishoyahb III of Adiabene (650–8) – one of the most important

catholicoi of the Arab era – was born in 580, became bishop of

Nineveh-Mosul in 628, and was named metropolitan of Adiabene

in Arbela around 637. In 630 he took part in the delegation the

Persian queen Boran sent to Emperor Heraclius, and in 650 he was

elected catholicos. The historian at-Tabari reported that Ishoyahb

III mediated the return of the cross of Christ to Heraclius. As

catholicos he occupied in the East the same universal position as the

pope did in the Latin church of the West. In a letter to the metro-

politan of Rewardashir (present-day Zaydun), he summarized his

views regarding primacy in the East and mentioned congregations in

India. Ishoyahb had to contend with efforts for independence in the

Persian province of the church – his rival Simeon of Rewardashir

produced a law book in the Persian language – and only through a

personal visit to Rewardashir was the catholicos able to persuade

the metropolitan to recognize the supremacy of Ctesiphon.

After the Arab conquest of Ctesiphon, Ishoyahb left the imperial

capital and moved his residence to the monastery of Beth Abe far-

ther north-west in Mesopotamia, where he also wanted to found a

theological school. However, as the monks there expressed hostility

toward his ascetic manner, he located the school in his birthplace in

Adiabene.

Ishoyahb III authored a biography of the monk Ishosabhran, who

died in 620 as the last martyr of the Sassanians, as well as theo-

logical tracts, sermons, and letters. His Liber epistolarum contains

106 letters, which have been edited by Ruben Duval on the basis of

the manuscript Vat. Syr. 157, dating from the tenth century and

taken to Rome in 1716 by Joseph Simon Assemari. His Book of the

Overturning of Opinions, dedicated to the bishop of Beth Lapat

(Gundeshapur), has not survived. During his term in office the

catholicos, together with the learned monk Henanisho, compiled

43

W I L H E L M B A U M

the hymnal Hudra. Consequently the church year was divided into

eight series of weeks (Annunciation, Nativity, Epiphany, Lent, Res-

urrection, Apostle, Summer, Elias, Moses, and Consecration of the

Church). The “responses” form the foundation of the work; the

oldest fragments of the Hudra can be dated to the ninth or tenth

century. The Taksha, a compilation of liturgical texts including the

rites for the consecration of water, the consecration of the altar, and

baptism, was also edited by Ishoyahb and made binding upon the

whole church, including the Malabar coast. Manuscripts of the

definitive edition of the Taksha go back as far as the fifteenth cen-

tury. In addition, Ishoyahb III reformed the statutes of the school of

Nisibis. Besides the theological disciplines of dogmatics, exegesis,

canon law, and liturgy, philosophy, medicine, logic, and music were

also taught. Additionally, the catholicos endeavored to prevent the

Arab tribes of Oman and Bahrain from converting to Islam. When

he died, Metropolitan Elias of Merv, author of a history of the

Church, was with him.

In the early years of Islam, numerous new monasteries were

founded, and many writings and anthologies about the lives and

works of founders and monks were produced. Through the studies

of Jean-Marie Fiey, the locations of some 150 East Syriac monaster-

ies have been determined, of which eight lay in the outlying

provinces and 142 in the central provinces, especially in the north.

In the literature of the Apostolic Church of the East a phase of

critical analysis of church-historical and juridical questions began;

philosophy and medicine subsequently came under similar scrutiny.

From the hermitage of Abraham of Kashkar (491–588), the

“Great Monastery” also called the Monastery of Mar Abraham

developed on Mount Izla, a southern ridge of the mountainous high

plateau north of Nisibis. Aged over ninety years, Abraham died

here c.588 as a hermit. Later there were also married monks here,

though they were expelled by Abbot Mar Babai the Great († 628/

30). One of the monks who left the monastery was Jacob, who then

founded the monastery of Beth Abe. We are well informed of his

story by the Book of the Abbots written around 840 by Thomas of

Marga, who was later himself abbot of the monastery. Today

almost nothing remains of this famous monastery. At the death of

its founder Jacob, the monastery had about eighty monks; the num-

ber later grew to over 300. Over the course of some 200 years the

monastery produced several catholicoi, and under the eighteenth

abbot, Kyriakos ( c.800), David of Beth Sinaye traveled to China.

That monks from Beth Abe were chosen as metropolitans in China

44

T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

and Yemen attests to the reputation of the monastery, which was

called the “mother of patriarchs and bishops.”

In the second half of the seventh century Beth Abe became a

center of East Syriac academic life, where, in particular, biographies

and sayings of Mesopotamian and Egyptian monastic fathers were

collected. One member of this monastery was the aforementioned

Henanisho, who not only reworked the Hudra with Ishoyahb III

but also, at the request of Ishoyahb’s successor Catholicos Giwargis

I (George) assembled the legends and sayings of Egyptian monks

under the title Paradise of the Fathers. In this extensive work many

strands of tradition were brought together, including the Historia

monachorum attributed to Jerome. A second edition of the volume

includes in its 177 chapters accounts of Mesopotamian ascetics, as

well. In 676 on the Bahraini island of Dirin, Giwargis held a synod

whose canons were preserved together with a circular letter to a

Persian priest. On the island of Kharg outside of Rewardashir, an

East Syriac monastery dating from the fifth to eleventh centuries

was discovered and gravestones with “Nestorian crosses” found.

Among the monasteries, that of the legendary apostle Mar Mari,

lying about 90 kilometers south-east of Baghdad, played a special

role as a pilgrimage site. The future patriarchal seat of Rabban

Hormizd, north of Mosul, also belonged among the most famous

foundations. Nine patriarchal graves and a library have survived

there. Like most of the eight monasteries still functioning in Iraq

today, it is now in the hands of the (Uniate) Chaldean Church.

Many manuscripts were produced in the monasteries, among them

liturgical texts and legends. The sixth-century Cave of Treasures – in

which the passion of Christ is interpreted with reference to the story

of Adam – was translated into Arabic early on and formed the basis

for the second and third parts of the Ethiopian Book of Adam.

One successor of Giwargis I was Henanisho I († 700). His legacy

included a series of theological writings, letters, and a commentary

on Aristotelian analysis, as well as a commentary on a few books of

Aristotle’s Organon. A memra (verse homily) on his teacher Ishoy-

ahb III is preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript. Under the

Umayyads (661–750), Henanisho was banished in 692 by the gov-

ernor of Iraq, who appointed John the Leper as his successor.

Catholicos Henanisho fled to a monastery in Nineveh. No new elec-

tion took place during his lifetime, so the seat remained vacant for

fourteen years. The governor interfered repeatedly in the election of

the catholicos, in addition to encouraging rivalries among the high

clergy – conduct which was also seen in the period of the Abbasid

45

W I L H E L M B A U M

caliphate. Following the death of Catholicos Saliba († 728), the

electors were unable to choose a successor, but after another

vacancy of three years, Caliph Hisham ordered that Pethion (731–

40) be elected.

The China mission in the seventh and eighth centuries

The Syriac colonies, trading posts, and bartering places became

areas of expansion for East Syriac Christianity. Although it is not

entirely impossible that even before the period of the Tang dynasty

isolated Christians made their way to China, reports such as those

of the missionary activity of the apostle Thomas must be considered

legendary. The Hodoiporia, a short Greek geographical text of the

fourth century, reports that Christianity had spread as far as “the

land of the Huns, Diaba (Sielediva = Ceylon), Greater India, Lesser

India (Nubia), and Aksum.” The “Nestorians” were the apostles to

the Huns, the Turks, the Malabar coast, and the island of Sielediva-

Taprobane (Pigulewskaja).

According to the account in the Chronicle of Seert, the Church of

the East had already gained a foothold in Arab territory. Abdisho,

an Arab from Mesene, had founded the first monastic community in

Hira, and Bishop Abraham of Kashkar had begun to evangelize

Arab nomads in Mesopotamia. Around 520, Catholicos Silas (503–

23) supported his co-religionists in Yemen with the Jews against the

“Monophysite” Ethiopians. In this case, he was indirectly serving

the Persian shahs, who often employed representatives of the

Church of the East as diplomats. During the persecution of non-

Chalcedonians by the Byzantine emperor Justin I, Silas accepted

refugee “Monophysite” monks into the Persian empire. The West

Syriac bishop Simeon opposed East Syriac efforts in Hira, and John

of Ephesus reported that Simeon had converted many “heretics” –

by which he meant East Syrians. In response, the East Syrians called

upon the Persian state authorities for help against the “Byzantines.”

The entire situation shows that a decision in favor of one of the

competing expressions of Christianity among the East Syrians, as

well as the Armenians, Ethiopians, and Copts, was always deter-

mined in part by political considerations.

As early as about 360, Merv, on the way to Central Asia in

present-day Uzbekistan, may have been Christianized by Bishop Bar

Shabba. This is mentioned in the Chronicle of Seert and also in

fragments from the East Syriac monastery of Bulayiq in the Turfan

oasis. In the seventh century, according to the report of an anony-

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T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

mous chronicle compiled around 680, Metropolitan Elias of Merv

converted the khagan of the Turks, who apparently belonged to the

Turkish tribes living in the south of Syr-Darja in the mid-seventh

century. These could not, however, have been the first Christian

Turks, since as early as 581 Turks with crosses on their foreheads

had been placed in Byzantine prisons. Catholicos Timotheos I (780–

832) also wrote in one of his letters of the conversion of the king of

the Turks.

Even during the Sassanian era Christianity had advanced from

Central Asia into the Far East, with missionary activity beginning

during the reign of Emperor Tai-tsung of the Tang dynasty. It is

known that in 552 two East Syriac monks smuggled silkworms to

Byzanz, which was the beginning of a sericulture in the West. In 635

the monk Alopen arrived at the imperial court bearing pictures and

books and was received by the emperor, who commissioned him

to translate the books into Chinese. Alopen may have come from

Sogdia, since the imperial courtiers were able to converse with him

in his native tongue. The emperor subsequently issued an edict, in

which he granted the “religion of enlightenment” freedom to

preach and permission to found a monastery in the imperial capital,

since Christianity emphasized goodness and benefited the people. In

638 in the I-ning quarter of the imperial capital, Xian, an East

Syriac monastery was established, which was later occupied by

twenty-one monks. Later Catholicos Saliba (714–28) named

metropolitans for Herat, Samarkand, and China.

In Chinese texts Christianity is referred to as the “Persian

religion.” In 642 the translation of a Christian text into Chinese was

completed, and under Emperor Kao-tsung (650–83) churches were

built in all of China’s provincial capitals. One gets the impression,

however, that Christianity was spread primarily by foreigners,

especially Persian merchants. Under the empress Wu (690–705)

Christianity was regarded as competition for Buddhism and was

persecuted. Not until 745 did Emperor Hsüan-tsung again legiti-

mate Christianity and present the monasteries with tablets express-

ing this official recognition.

On the stele dedicated to Issu (Jesbuzid), a priest from Balch,

which was erected in Xian in 781 and discovered in 1625, the entire

early history of the East Syriac missionary endeavors is recorded,

and Catholicos Henanisho is mentioned. The stele praises the

imperial official Issu, who devoted himself to the study of Chinese

culture. Two texts from the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas in

Tun-huang may also be attributable to him. Because Christianity

47

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Figure 2.1 Nestorian monument of Xian/Sianfu (781). Photo: courtesy of

Kitab-Verlag, Klagenfurt.

emerged from the Far West, that is, East Rome (Chin. Ta-Tsin), the

East Syriac monasteries were to be called “Ta-Tsin monasteries” in

the future. A total of eighty seven priests and Bishop King-tsing

(Adam), all of whom may have been foreigners, are named on the

stele. In addition, there is talk of a second group of Syriac missionar-

ies, who entered the country some fifty years after Alopen. The

Chi-lieh named here is also mentioned in 714 in the Chinese

sources. He was active in Canton, where he had difficulties with

censorship, and is referred to as a member of a Persian delegation in

732. In the following years still more delegations came to China,

perhaps some traveling by sea.

The writings from Tun-huang, the Radiant Teaching from Ta-

Tsin Sutra and the Mysterious Peace and Joy Sutra, which were

written between 717 and 720, are also among the Christian texts of

the ninth and tenth centuries. Both texts were edited in 720. Ninth-

and tenth-century Turkish letters from Christians, bearing the

names David and Sergius, were also found at Tun-huang, as well as

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T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

a silk painting depicting Christ as the Good Shepherd, discovered in

1943. A Tibetan book from Tun-huang, dating from the period

from the eighth to the tenth centuries, is entitled Jesus the Messiah,

and Syriac grave inscriptions have been found as far away as the

harbor of Hang-tschou.

The powerful general and minister Kuo Tzu-i appears to have

sympathized with the East Syriac church; he donated large amounts

of money for the restoration and enlargement of the churches and

for conferences of the hierarchy of the Church of the East. His

companion Issu – the priest mentioned on the 781 stele – was vice-

commander of the army in 756.

The early flowering of the East Syriac church in China, with

Xian as its center, persisted until the middle of the ninth century.

A Buddhist list of instructional texts from around 800 indicates

that between 782 and 788 an Indian scholar named Pradschna

came to Xian, where, with the help of the “Persian” monk King-

tsing (Adam) of the Ta-Tsin monastery, he translated texts from

Uighur. It is said that he translated numerous Christian texts into

Chinese, and he was among the most striking personalities of the

Church of the East in China. By the turn of the millennium, more

than 500 writings, including the entire New Testament and a few

books of the Old Testament, had been translated from Syriac into

Chinese.

In the eighth century Kashgar was ruled by a Christian prince,

and around 810 a Bishop David held office in “Beth Sinaye”

(China). The further development of Christianity may also be

observed in travel reports from China. In about 850 the Arab mer-

chant Suleiman visited China; his report, conveyed by a fellow

traveler, Ahmed Abu Said († 934), was used by the cosmographer

al-Masudi († 956). He mentioned the revolt of Huang Chao, which

was mounted against Charfu (Canton) in 874. Following this popu-

lar uprising, the Tang dynasty collapsed. Al-Masudi reported that

the city, whose residents included Christians, Jews, Muslims, and

Zoroastrians, was beseiged. Abu Said also learned from a man

from Basra that in 872 he had had an audience with Emperor I-

tsung, who had shown him a picture of Jesus. Clearly the Chinese

emperor had access to Christian literature in his library. Al-Masudi

also noted that the adherents of the Church of the East rejected the

designation “Nestorian,” which had originated with the Melkites;

they preferred to call themselves “Ibad” (servants of God). In 942

Abu Dalaf, a poet at the court of the Samarids in Bukhara, accom-

panied a Chinese delegation on the return to their homeland and

49

W I L H E L M B A U M

Figure 2.2 Coins from Bukhara (eighth century). Photo: courtesy of

Aleksander Naymark, Indiana, USA.

reported that in a number of cities he encountered Christians and

visited their churches.

In the meantime, Christianity also made strides in the kingdom of

Tibet. On the route from Kashgar to Lhasa, early ninth-century

inscriptions relating to the Christianity of the Transoxus region

were found south of the oasis of Chotan – where there were three

Christian churches – in the vicinity of Drangtse (east of Leh on the

upper Indus). In 841/2 the monk Nösh-farn was sent to the khan of

Tibet. This expedition was documented by a Sogdian inscription in

Tankse with “Nestorian crosses” (eighth century). In Kansu, in the

“dead city” Kara Khoto of the Tangut kingdom, Persian manu-

scripts, two Syriac works, and a Christian Turkish text were found.

One of the Syriac texts includes a prayer with a plea for rain, and

the other is a hymn to the Resurrected One. In addition, an East

Syriac metropolitan served among the Tanguts. Christianity was

spread primarily by merchants, though it remained the faith of a

small minority and, because of this, can be seen as the antithesis of

the imperial Christianity of Byzantium and Rome.

There was soon a setback in the missionary movement, and the

Christians lost the good will of the court. In 845, under Emperor

Wu-tsung, persecution of Christians, who numbered about

260,000, began. Countless churches were destroyed, and 2,000

monks and nuns are believed to have been laicized. Catholicos

Theodosius I (853–68) noted that China did not participate in his

synod.

50

T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

In his Kitab al Fihrist Ibn at-Nadim († 995) recounted the story of

Muhammad, the son of Isaac, called Abu l-Faradj, who in 987

heard of the persecution of Christians and destruction of churches.

In Baghdad he met an East Syriac monk who had been sent to China

by Catholicos Abdisho I seven years earlier in order to ascertain the

situation of Christians under the rule of the Sung Dynasty. The

monk found the churches ruined and communities obliterated and

had returned home because he had been assigned no further tasks.

However, after the year 1000, the canonist Abdallah b. at-Taiyib

still referred to Christian bishops in India and China. In the second

half of the eleventh century, the metropolitan of Chorassan, who

had been consecrated by Catholicos Sabrisho III, journeyed to

China, where he remained for the rest of his life. There are neverthe-

less very few witnesses to the continued survival of East Syriac

Christians in China after the middle of the eleventh century. Delega-

tions from the West still arrived at the imperial court of the Sung,

and merchants continued to travel via the sea route to the “Middle

Empire,” but only in the period of the Mongols did the Church of

the East again begin unambiguously to grow, this time clearly less

among the native Chinese than among immigrants from the north.

East Syriac Christianity in India

According to Indian tradition, in the year 52 the apostle Thomas

landed on the Malabar coast, where he founded seven churches at

Palayur, Cranganore, Parur, Kokkamangalam, Niramun, Chayal,

and Quilon. Then he is said to have arrived on the Coromandel

coast, at Mylapore near Madras, where he suffered martyrdom in

ad 68. The earliest written verification of this legend dates from the

sixteenth century. Eusebius and Socrates reported that Thomas had

been a missionary in Parthia, while the church fathers of the fourth

and fifth centuries traced Indian Christianity back to Bartholomew,

a tradition which arose in the mid-second century. Christianity was

perhaps transmitted along the trade route from Egypt to the Mala-

bar coast. The Thomas tradition may have been accepted only after

the breakdown of regular trade between Egypt and India in the

third century.

According to the Acts of Thomas, which originated in Edessa in

the early third century, the apostle came to a Parthian king, Gundo-

phares, who has been historically verified by the discovery of coins

from his time and who reigned during the first century in what

is today Pakistan. Thomas was first described as Apostle to the

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W I L H E L M B A U M

Indians in 378 by Ephrem the Syrian, then in 389 by Gregory of

Nazianz, and again in 410 by Gaudentius, in 420 by Jerome, and

in 431 by Paulinus of Nola. The Thomas tradition came to be

rooted in Edessa, where the bones of Thomas – brought from

India – were an early object of veneration. In the seventh century

Pseudo-Sophronius referred to the grave of the apostle Thomas in

“Calamina” in India, and Isidore of Seville adopted this in his ety-

mology. The age of the shrine of St Thomas at Mylapore near

Madras is unknown. Gregory of Tours reported that Thomas’s

corpse was transported from India to Edessa.

According to records from the Portuguese period, some 345

Syrians were believed to have come to Cranganore with seventy-

two Jewish Christian families under the leadership of one Thomas

of Cana. The doubtful nature of this tradition is made clear by the

fact that in other reports the arrival of this Thomas of Cana is

variously dated to 745, 774, or 795 (Gillman and Klimkeit). A

tradition which first appeared in writing after the arrival of the

Portuguese in India located this arrival from Persia in the fourth –

though also in the eighth ( sic! ) – century. Their descendants have

been called “Southerners” (in Malayalam, Tekkumbhagar) up to

the present day, while the numerically larger group of earlier resi-

dent Christians are referred to as “Northerners” (in Malayalam,

Vatakkumbhagar). Each group claims social superiority over the

other. The Southerners maintain they are descended from the legit-

imate wife of Thomas of Cana, while the Northerners trace their

lineage to an indigenous concubine or second wife, and both sides

try to “prove” their positions with publications. The Northerners

also draw on the tradition of the apostle and claim descent from

Brahmans proselytized by Thomas. Their spiritual leader, whose

seat was in Mylapore or Cranganore and later in Angamala, bore

the title “Metropolitan-Bishop of the Seat of St Thomas and the

whole Christian Church of India,” and a hereditary archdeacon

held jurisdiction over the clergy.

Another founding myth of the beginnings of Christianity in

Kerala was first recorded by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century.

In 1533 Miguel Ferreira asked an abuna, who was not referred to

by name, about the East Syriac Christians in India. He consequently

heard the story of the two saints Sapor and Prot, who were said

to have come to India from Armenia in the eighth or ninth century.

In 1730 a West Syriac priest, Mathew Kathanar, wrote a history

of the church in south India, in which he also discussed the 823

arrival of the two priests Sapor and Prot in Quilon, where they

52

T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

apparently received from the king a parcel of land on which to build

a church.

In the mid-twelfth century the Arab cosmographer Idrisi noted

that the king of Ceylon had in his royal residence Aghna not only

four Jewish, Muslim, and Ceylonese viziers, but also four Christian

ones from the community of Thomas Christians. A “Nestorian

cross,” dating back perhaps as far as the early Middle Ages and

discovered on a pillar in the ancient royal city of Mantota, the port

of the capital Anunadhapura, preserves the memory of the former

Church of the East in Sri Lanka. Other stone monuments include six

surviving East Syriac crosses with a Pahlavi inscription – one on

Mount Thomas in Mylapore near Madras, four in the vicinity of

Kottayam, and one in Travancore in Kerala – which all bear the

same Middle Persian inscription, including the appeal of Gabriel,

son of Chahabokht, that the Messiah have mercy on the donor of

the cross. The crosses may date from the period of the sixth to ninth

centuries. Only recently, in 2001, another “Nestorian cross” was

discovered in Goa.

The Chronicle of Seert reports that a Bishop David of Basra

engaged in missionary activity in India around 295/300, and it

seems that Joseph of Edessa was named bishop of India by the

catholicos of the Church of the East in 345. From Byzantine sources

it is known that sometime after 354 Emperor Constantius sent

Theophilus, who is assumed to have come from the Maldives, as a

missionary to India. According to the Chronicle of Seert, in 420 the

catholicos sent his translation of Diodore of Tarsus to the “Lands of

the Islands” and to India. Before the fifth century, the geographical

treatise Hodoiporia apo Eden was written, in which it was stated

that Christians had reached the territory of the Huns, “Diaba”

(Ceylon), “Greater India” (Aksum), and as far as “Lesser India.”

According to the account of Ishodad on Merw, Mar Komai, with

the help of an Indian priest named Daniel, translated the Letter to

the Romans from Greek into Syriac around 425. The Chronicle of

Seert reports that around 470 Metropolitan Mana of Rewardashir

sent all the books he had translated from Greek into Syriac “to all

the islands in the sea and to India,” in order to ensure correct theo-

logical instruction of the clergy.

Catholicos Sabrisho (596–604) also expressed interest in the

Indians, to whom Ishoyahb II (628–46) eventually sent additional

bishops. The jurisdiction of the Church of the East over the Chris-

tians of the Indian Malabar coast was clearly established under

Catholicos Ishoyahb III († 658) around 650. He addressed two

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W I L H E L M B A U M

letters to Mar Simeon of Rewardashir, who refused to consecrate

a bishop for India. There one can read that the Church of the East

extended to “qalah,” which “lay 200,000 parasangs” from Persia.

But here “qalah” does not mean Quilon, which did not exist at that

time, but Qalang in Malacca. The community, ecclesiastically

dependent on Rewardashir, paid taxes to the bishop and thus

acknowledged the sovereignty of the church. Between 650 and 850

a separate metropolitanate of India was established, which was

mentioned around 1350 by Amr b. Matta in his Book of the Tower.

However, the earliest detailed knowledge we have of Christians in

this region comes from the Christian traveler Cosmas Indicopleus-

tes, who evidently followed the usual route of East Syriac traders

and around 547/50 reported that he had visited Christians in Ethio-

pia, India, and Ceylon. In addition to the caravan routes, port cities

also became sites of Christian expansion. In his youth, Cosmas met

Catholicos Mar Aba (540–52) and possibly belonged to the East

Syriac church. He did not place the East Syriac church in the cat-

egory of Christian “sects.” Cosmas particularly emphasized that he

did not know if there were still Christians in Ceylon, and he noted

the presence of Christians in “Kalliana.” Researchers have searched

for this location in the vicinity of Bombay; historians such as Peter

Kawerau identify it with Quilon. Cosmas also cited a Syriac church

in “Male,” by which he probably meant the Malabar coast of

Kerala. He mentioned priests from Persia on the island of Socotra,

as well. The testimony of Cosmas is the earliest evidence for the

spread of Christianity from Persia to India.

Unfortunately, no Christian structures from the Middle Ages

remain standing today. However, there are a few documents of local

kings of Kerala inscribed on copper plates. The dating and inter-

pretation of the plates, however, are ambiguous. It is unclear

whether the Church of the East expanded here mainly among

immigrant merchants or indigenous Indians. Over time, some cop-

per tablets from the eighth century have been lost. However, a total

of five plates from two series of ninth-century plates have been

preserved. Dating from c.880, the period of King Stanu Ravi, are

two deeds from Governor Ayyan Atikal Tiruvatikal of Venad for the

Terisapalli church in “Kurakkeni Kollam” (Quilon), which had

been built by a certain Maruvan Sabrisho, founder of the city of

Quilon around 825. These older deeds of donation consist of three

copper tablets; one tablet has been lost. Clearly the king bequeathed

the city to the Christian merchant Sapir Iso (Sabrisho) – who is

presumably to be identified with the church founder Eso da Tapir.

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T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

Figure 2.3 First copper plate (the reverse is blank) of the older series from

the times of King Stanu Ravi (ninth century) with privileges for

the Terispalli Church in Quilon. Kottayam, Kerala (India).

Photo: courtesy of Christoph Baumer, Switzerland.

The older series includes two plates; the conclusion is missing. One

side of the first plate is blank; a total of 27 lines of text in Old Tamil,

written in Vatellatu script, remains, in which the founding of the city

and the church is recounted and the privileges detailed. A number of

families were given to the church as serfs. Three plates from the third

series have been preserved, two in the Syrian Orthodox seminary of

Kottayam and the third, which includes the signatures, in the Mar

Thomas church in Tiruvalla. The beginning of the second privilege,

which resembles the first and of which 89 lines remain (the begin-

ning is missing), is perhaps a later copy of the privilege and may

originate from the same period as the first privilege.

According to the plates, Christians were guaranteed privileges by

Ayyan; for instance, they were permitted to sit on carpets and ride

elephants – special rights to which only the aristocracy was entitled!

In addition, Christians were granted a monopoly over weights and

measures and administration of the king’s seal, and a merchants’

guild and a union of Jewish traders were placed under the protec-

tion of a Christian merchants’ guild. The witnesses, Jews, Muslims,

and Zoroastrians, signed in Pahlavi, Arabic (in Kufic script), and

Hebrew. The copper plates were handed over by the Syriac bishop

Mar Jacob to the Portuguese trading post in Cochin for safekeeping

and were subsequently forgotten. In 1806 they were discovered by

the Englishman Macaulay and given to the seminary in Kottayam.

The second set of the somewhat more recent plates is made up of

four plates; the first of these has been lost. It includes the privileges for

the Manigraman, the leaders of the Christians in Quilon. The most

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W I L H E L M B A U M

Figure 2.4 Front and reverse of the third copper plate with Pahlavi, Kufic,

and Hebrew signatures. Tiruvalla, Kerala (India). Photo: cour-

tesy of Christoph Baumer, Switzerland.

recent plate, from c.1320, is a privilege of King Vira Raghava

Chakravarti for a certain Iravi Korttan in Cranganore, from which it

follows that at least some of the Christians in Kerala were prosperous.

Three plates may be seen today in the Malankara Orthodox Sem-

inary in Kottayam and two in the episcopal palace of the Mar

Thoma Christians in Tiruvalla. The East Syriac Christians had evi-

dently formed a merchants’ guild in Kerala. John of Marignola

reported in 1348 that the Christians were owners of the public

scales. These sources confirm the existence of the Church of the East

in Kerala in the eighth century and permit the conclusion that the

founding myths recorded in the sixteenth century contain a kernel of

historical truth. As a rule, those church buildings which have sur-

vived in India date back to no earlier than the sixteenth century, but

in the Church of Mary in Manarcad near Kottayam, gravestones

from 910/20 with Malay and Tamil inscriptions have been found.

In a Syriac document of 874, the region of Quilon is called “qali-

maya.” The Muslim Suleiman reported in 841 that from Quilon,

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T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

Figure 2.5 Stone cross with Pahlavi inscription. Valiyapalli Church in Kot-

tayam, Kerala (India). Photo: courtesy of Wilhelm Baum.

“bethuma” the grave of Thomas, could be reached in ten days.

Ishoyahb of Nisibis referred to the grave of Thomas in India, as did

his contemporary Salomon of Basra. Marco Polo was one of the

first Europeans to visit it, followed around 1291 by John of Mon-

tecorvino. In 1340 Amr b. Matta mentioned Thomas’s grave in

India, and the Muslim Mufazzal b. Abil-Fazail reported in 1358

that the hand of the apostle was venerated at his burial site. It

appears that the Hindu rulers of Viyajanagar also honored the

grave. In 1547, on the great Mount Thomas near Mylapore, the

Portuguese found an East Syriac stone cross from the sixth to

the ninth century with Pahlavi inscription, which had clearly been

copied many times. Additional stone crosses were discovered in the

region around the city of Kottayam, which remains to this day

the intellectual center of Kerala. From the chronicles of Amr b.

Matta and Saliba b. Yuhanna (fourteenth century) it is known

that India had a metropolitan in the Middle Ages. In the times of

Yahballaha III (1281–1317) the metropolitan of India is listed in

fifteenth place (alongside China, Tangut, Tabaristan, Turkestan,

and Samarkand). However, it is not known where the see was.

Documents from the beginnings of Christianity in India agree

with the oldest travel reports from Europe; King Alfred the Great of

England (871–901) was devoted to the apostle Thomas and as early

as 883 sent Bishop Sigelmus of Sherborne to India to venerate the

apostle’s grave. The ties between the Thomas Christians and the

Church of the East remained in place throughout the Middle Ages.

57

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Figure 2.6 Nestorian cross, found in Mantota, the port of the former cap-

ital of Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura (destroyed in the eleventh

century). Photo: courtesy of Wilhelm Baum.

Moreover, the Armenian Abu Salih (fourteenth century), in his

Description of the Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Neigh-

boring Lands cited not only the shrine of Thomas in Mylapore and

the churches in Quilon but also “Fashur” in Sumatra as centers of

the East Syriac church. In modern historiography, this has been

taken as an indication that East Syriac Christianity had also spread

as far as beyond India and South-East Asia (Gillman and Klimkeit).

Timotheos I (780–823) and the Abbasid

period (749–946)

The East Syriac church also expanded to the west and north and

soon reached Egypt. As early as the sixth century, Abraham the

Great of Kashkar traveled to Egypt, where he acquired ideas for his

future monastic reforms from the region’s desert fathers. Mar Aba

(741–52) installed a local bishop for the faithful of the Church of

the East in Egypt, but the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria was not

pleased with the “sectarians” who had emigrated from Mesopota-

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mia. In the ninth century an East Syrian, Gabriel Bochtisho,

addressed the governor of Egypt with a letter from the caliph; he

sought to transport the bones of Nestorius to the church of Kokhe

in Ctesiphon. However, it was no longer known where Nestorius

had been buried. The Copts were in conflict with the members of

the Church of the East because the latter often served the Arab

government. One Ibn Nestorius even rose to the office of vizier in

the tenth century. South of Cairo there was an East Syriac monas-

tery near Al-Adaweyah, whose great church stood until the thir-

teenth century and was later turned into a mosque. For the large

East Syriac community in Cairo, Catholicos Abdisho I consecrated

a separate bishop around 965. In the ninth century the Coptic patri-

arch condemned the “heterodoxy of the Nestorians.” Around 1015

a metropolitan with jurisdiction over three suffragan bishops, forty-

seven priests, and 7,300 families, was named for Cairo, and in

Alexandria there was another metropolitan, who oversaw two suf-

fragan bishops, twenty-three priests, and 4,025 families. Beginning

in the twelfth century, however, the numbers of the Church of the

East again declined.

After the fall of the Umayyad caliphs, the center of Islamic power

shifted under the Abbasids to Mesopotamia, and the Church of the

East gradually adapted itself to the new circumstances. Under

the Abbasids, restrictions were again placed on Christians, and the

government interfered with the selection of the catholicos. Caliph

al-Mansur, founder of the new imperial capital Baghdad, either

supported the catholicoi or took them prisoner, according to the

political circumstances. Aba II lived for a time in his homeland

Kashkar, though he then returned to his residence at the Kokhe

church in Ctesiphon. He produced theological writings and wrote a

commentary on Aristotle’s Organon.

Catholicos Henanisho II (775–80) had a collection of earlier acts

and synodical resolutions of the Church of the East edited. During

his time in office, severe persecution of Christians occurred under

Caliph al-Mahdi (775–85). As a result, many Christians migrated to

the Byzantine empire and settled there, and those who remained

behind were viewed with suspicion by the Muslims. Again under

Caliph al-Mamun (813–33), who founded the “House of Sciences”

in Baghdad, there was an exodus of Christians to such places as

Sinope on the Black Sea.

The catholicos became the official representative of the Christians

to the Abbasid caliphate. In the ninth and tenth centuries members

of the Church of the East played a significant role at the court of the

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W I L H E L M B A U M

caliph, gaining respect in particular as personal physicians and

court doctors, but also in the administration of Syria, Iraq, and

Egypt. The monasteries educated an outstanding new generation of

civil servants. High officials could rise to the post of vizier; however,

as a rule, attainment of this position required them to convert to

Islam.

Timotheos I (780–823) came to office through simony but

developed into one of the most important ecclesiastical writers and

most capable organizers of the Apostolic Church of the East, which

by then extended into India and China. Timotheos was elected after

an eight-month vacancy of the patriarchal seat; his ordination in

May 780 followed a two-year schism with opposing synods. He had

to acknowledge the metropolitan of Kashkar’s right of convocation

and the metropolitan of Elam’s right of consecration after the elec-

tion of the catholicos. Timotheos transferred the residence of the

catholicos from Ctesiphon to the newly founded city of Baghdad

and settled on the western bank of the Tigris in the “Deir Kalilisho”

(in Arabic, Dayr al-Jathaliq, that is, “monastery of the catholicos”).

However, the catholicos was still consecrated in the church of

Kokhe in Ctesiphon.

As a result of the victories of the Byzantine emperor Leo IV,

Caliph al-Mahdi had many churches destroyed. The Christians

were accused by the caliph of praying day and night for the triumph

of the Byzantines. The East Syriac physician Isa defended his fellow

believers before al-Mahdi and explained that the Greeks hated the

East Syrians even more than the Jews. The caliph questioned a

Byzantine captive about this, and the prisoner replied that the

“Nestorians” ought hardly to be considered Christians and stood

nearer the Arabs than the Byzantines.

Because of his good relations with the court, Timotheos I suc-

ceeded in having several churches rebuilt. He was held in high

regard by the caliphs al-Mahdi and Harun ar-Rashid; he worked

under a total of five different caliphates and promoted missionary

activity in India, China, Turkestan, Yemen, and around the Caspian

Sea. Timotheos established six new ecclesiastical provinces, of

which the Syriac and Armenian endured the longest, and he named

a metropolitan for Tibet. He appointed a bishop in Yemen; under

him, China received a metropolitan. In a letter, Timotheos referred

to the ordination of a metropolitan in Turkestan. In another docu-

ment, this one addressed to the monastery of Maron, he reported

that the “khagan” (king) of the Turks had requested missionaries

from him and that he had named a metropolitan. In the twelfth

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century, in his Book of the Tower, Mari b. Suleiman spoke of the

conversion of the Keraits; Timotheos also brought the khagan of

the Turks to the faith and sent him letters. He sent four monks to the

peoples of Dailam and Gilan south-east of the Caspian Sea. In this

regard, Timotheos wrote that the missionaries in the East traveled

just as far as the traders and merchants, and he declared in one letter

that professionally educated missionaries had journeyed to the

lands of the barbarians, “to the ends of the East,” where there was

neither wheat nor barley, only rice and other kinds of “dry grain.”

During the 43-year catholicate of Timotheos I, the Church of the

East claimed tens of millions of adherents in 230 dioceses with

twenty-seven metropolitans. In a letter to the monks of the monas-

tery of Mar Maron, the patriarch affirmed the Church of the East’s

understanding of “orthodoxy”: “For us the word of orthodoxy has

remained correct and unchanged, and we would never have contra-

dicted our creed by embellishing or diminishing the pearl of truth

which the holy apostle preserved in this region of the East. Where

you are, however, Christian heretics reign. Whether Christians or

heretics, those who enjoyed the sympathies of the rulers of the time

induced the priests and the faithful to conform. Because of this,

there have been additions to and excisions from the creed in your

area. That which Constantine the Great confirmed, his successors

have cast off and rejected.” Statements such as this make clear that

the development of Christianity proceeded from more than one cen-

ter and cannot be understood as a “top-down” movement of the

“imperial church.”

Several works of Timotheos, such as the Treatise against the

Council of Chalcedon, have been lost. He saw in the Islamic rulers a

purifying strength for Christianity. His disputation with Caliph al-

Mahdi, translated from the original Syriac into Arabic and repro-

duced in several editions, offers insight into the Christology of the

catholicos. The discussion between Timotheos and the caliph, who

was well-disposed toward him, is said to have taken place at court

over the course of two days; it is possible, however, that this is a

literary fiction. The fifty-nine letters that have been preserved –

Abdisho b. Brika mentions 200 – provide a glimpse into the exten-

sive philosophical and theological knowledge of the catholicos, as

well as his pastoral efforts. The high level of theological reflection is

evident in his forty-seventh letter, which contains the earliest

example of the use of the “Syro-Hexapla.” The catholicos refers to

the transmission of this work to him and to errors in the translation

of Greek names.

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From Aristotle he cited in particular the Topics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and De generatione et corruptione. The synods of 790/1 and 804,

which addressed the preservation of East Syriac doctrine and the

subordination of bishops to the catholicos, must also be numbered

among the successful accomplishments of his term in office.

A collection of ninety-eight canons has been preserved under his

name. Timotheos endeavored to provide the clergy with a foun-

dational theological education and to make missionary activity eas-

ier through the study of other cultures. He also took Melkites

(Orthodox) and Jacobites (Syrian Orthodox) into his service if there

were manuscripts to be obtained from Byzantium or the library of

the Jacobite monastery of Mar Mattai.

At the time of Timotheos I, the Thomas tradition was in evidence

among Christians in India, and it was used to restrict the jurisdiction

of the catholicos. The church historian Grigorius Abu l-Faraj (Barhe-

braeus) reported that Christians in the East declared to the patriarch

that they were disciples of the apostle Thomas and wanted nothing to

do with the seat of Mar Mari in Seleucia-Ctesiphon. This represents

the earliest reliable evidence that the Indian Christians portrayed

themselves as “Thomas Christians.” The dependence of the so-called

“Thomas Christians” on the church in Persia indicates that Indian

Christianity was not of apostolic origin (de Vries). When Timotheos I

was asked by a bishop for payment of travel expenses to a synod, the

catholicos replied that monks journeyed to India and China with

only a staff and a satchel – and without any monetary compensa-

tion. In his legal collection, the East Syriac theologian Ibn at-Taiyib

preserved two letters of the catholicos which concern India. One

letter to the Indian Christians includes instructions for the election

of the metropolitan, which should be announced first to the king if

the catholicos confirms it. In the second letter, to the archdeacon of

India, Timotheos complained about abuses occurring in the election

of bishops. Writings such as these clearly demonstrate the broad

reach of the Church of the East, which at the time of Timotheos I

was certainly wider than that of the pope in Rome. There was even

an East Syriac community in Jerusalem, as we know from the mid-

seventh-century correspondence of Ishoyahb III. However, Timoth-

eos was the first to set up a bishopric in Jerusalem, which came

under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Damascus. The first

bishop was appointed by name in 893. The ruins of an East Syriac

monastery with a mosaic inscription have been found between Jeri-

cho and the Jordan, and in 1165 John of Wurzburg referred to

Jerusalem’s “Nestorian” community, which in the mid-thirteenth

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century included four churches in the city. In the Church of the

Holy Sepulcher, the Church of the East had its own altar to the left

of the sacred tomb.

Beginning in the early ninth century, the move among East Syrians

away from Syriac toward the Arabic language became more notice-

able. Catholicos Timotheos first wrote his disputation in Syriac but

held it in Arabic; discussions of the validity of Muhammad’s ideas

and the Qur’an were widely disseminated in the latter language. The

secretary to the catholicos, Abu l-Fadl Ali b. Rabban an-Nasrani

(the “Christian”), wrote a polemical work against Muhammad and

the Qur’an. He also compiled the East Syriac synodical documents

into the Synodicon Orientale and produced the Rules for Resolu-

tions of Canon Law and Inheritance and a treatise on civil law.

Around 840 Amar al-Basri authored an apology ( Book of Questions

and Answers) in Arabic. In his theology of the Trinity, he rejected

the Islamic concept of the divine predicates, and the Arab side

responded with a written refutation. Israel of Kashkar also defended

the dogma of the Trinity against the Muslim group, the Mutalizites.

Among the most significant theologians of Timotheos’s time was

the exegete and apologist Theodore bar Konai, whose book of

Scholia from 792 offered an apologetic presentation, similar to a

catechism, of East Syriac Christianity. It contains a valuable over-

view of heretical doctrines and non-Christian religions such as

Islam, with which Bar Konai sharply disagreed. His Scholia and his

Church History are also of interest regarding the history of the

catholicoi. His work provides fragments of the official position of

the Church of the East toward Islam and set the standard for later

works of its kind.

Catholicos Sabrisho II (831–5) wrote a report of his inspection of

ecclesiastical schools and issued an order regarding their operation.

When the caliphs transferred their residence to Samara, Abraham II

(837–50), who had been elected by the laity, also moved there. The

catholicos intended Metropolitan Ishodad of Merv, who had writ-

ten commentaries on books of the Bible, to be his successor. How-

ever, Ishodad could not assume the office at the caliphal court on

account of enmity between him and the physician Gabriel

Bochtisho. The bishops elected an opposing candidate, who was

also unable to assert himself against the doctors at court. Theodo-

sius (853–8), who had been taken prisoner by the caliph, was

finally, after a protracted conflict and with the protection of

Bochtisho, able to act on his election. The catholicos subsequently

ordered that metropolitan synods be held every four years. In 850

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Caliph al-Mutawakkil instituted new measures against the Chris-

tians, who had gained access to public office in large numbers. The

Muslims, however, could have no friends among the infidels.

Catholicos Sergius (860–72) was finally able to return to Bagh-

dad in 865. With the election of Catholicos John IV bar Abgar

(900–5) the people of Baghdad asserted their right to select the

catholicos. His writings on ecclesiastical law are preserved in part in

Syriac and in part in Arabic translation; twenty-eight canons

regarding the ordination of priests were included in the compilation

of Ibn at-Taiyib. In 913 Catholicos Abraham III (906–37) received a

document assuring his priority over the Melkite and Jacobite patri-

archs. In 1074 Catholicos Sabrisho III (1064–72) – who likewise

had his precedence over the Jacobites (Syrian Orthodox) and Mel-

kites (Orthodox) confirmed by the caliph – was entrusted with the

enforcement of Islamic law. The relationship between Islam and the

Church of the East was ambivalent and tense; it changed according

to the political situation of the caliph.

East Syrians as cultural mediators

In the Islamic provinces of Assyria and Babylonia (Iraq), the East

Syriac church used its position as the dominant Christian church

against the other Christian groups. From the mid-eighth to the

mid-eleventh century, East Syriac physicians exercised significant

influence at the caliphal court.

As a rule, these doctors came from the medical school at Gunde-

shapur, where Syriac and Indian, as well as Greek, medicine was

practiced. Prior to 376/7, a monastery was founded in Gunde-

shapur. The city’s theological school, where Rabban Hormizd stud-

ied from 587 to 595, was first mentioned at the end of the sixth

century, and at the end of the seventh century, the future catholicos

John visited this school. The Bochtisho family also enjoyed great

influence there. A letter from Patriarch Timotheos indicates that the

theological and medical schools were two separate institutions, but

both came under the leadership of the metropolitan. A letter from

Metropolitan Ephrem of Elam to Gabriel Bochtisho, the future

personal physician of the caliph, states that Gabriel had received

exegetical, patristic, and philosophical instruction from Ephrem at

Gundeshapur. The school also possessed an extensive library. In the

ninth century, the significance of the school of Gundeshapur

declined, and Baghdad assumed its position.

Also of great importance was the monastery of Deir Kunna in

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Iraq and its school of Mar Mari. Among the scholars of the monas-

tery was the logician and Aristotelian Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus

(† 940), who was praised by the Arab philosopher al-Biruni. His

translation of Aristotle’s Poetics is the earliest textual source for this

writing, and all other extant, reliable Arab, Syriac, and Hebrew

translations since the tenth century, as well as the Latin revisions,

may be traced back to this work.

The secular scientific and literary work of the “Nestorians” flour-

ished during the first phase of the Abbassid period. There were

entire dynasties of physicians who for generations held prominent

positions at court. Most notable among them was the Bochtisho

family, who over the course of three centuries produced physicians

and professors of medicine and philosophy, as well as writers. In

765 George, the progenitor of the line, was summoned from

Gundeshapur to the caliphal court by al-Mansur. He translated

works from Greek into Arabic for his patron. George’s son

Bochtisho entered the service of Harun ar-Rashid in 787. In 807

Bochtisho’s son Gabriel successfully eased the clothing restrictions

on Christians, and he pushed through the elections of the two suc-

cessors of Timotheos I. Bochtisho’s son Gabriel worked with the

young Hunain b. Ishaq († 873). In Paris there is a manuscript (BN,

Ms. Ar. 2859) from Hunain’s translation of Galen’s “About the

direction of medical schools for students” which has two comments

regarding the ownership of the manuscript: “acquired from the

Christian physician Gabriel ibn Bochtisho” and “acquired in the

year 407 (1016/17) from Husayn ibn Abdallah ibn Sina” (= Avi-

cenna). It was Gabriel who obtained a letter from the caliph to the

governor of Egypt authorizing the transfer of the bones of Nestorius

to the church of Kokhe; however, the location of Nestorius’s grave

had already been forgotten.

The East Syriac doctors and philosophers often translated from

Greek into Syriac and only then into Arabic. Also of great import-

ance were their accomplishments in the fields of grammar and lexi-

cography. It is possible that an East Syriac physician traveled to

Japan in 739 as a member of the entourage of a Japanese official

and while there assisted with Emperor Shomu’s († 748) plans for a

hospital. However, nothing is known of the establishment of East

Syriac Christian congregations in Japan.

The employment of Christian physicians at the court of the

Abbasids often worked to the advantage of the church because, in

the face of discriminatory measures, they could exploit their con-

nections and often also their considerable wealth. In this way,

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punishments and taxes were averted and approval for the founda-

tion, that is, the rebuilding, of monasteries was obtained. However,

corruption and simony plagued these arrangements. Christians

were likewise influential in financial management and bureaucracy,

leading to the development of a new caste, which soon adopted the

Arabic language, causing Syriac to fall increasingly into disuse.

Occasionally, to further their careers, officials such as these con-

verted to Islam. They then pursued an ambiguous religious politics

because their wives and other relatives often remained Christians.

Over the course of the ninth century, the school of Gundeshapur

lost its significance, and its eventual fate is unknown.

Hunain b. Ishaq, the most important of the East Syriac trans-

lators, did not come from the Iranian Gundeshapur. He was the son

of an apothecary from the Arab tribe of Ibad and a lecturer at the

medical academy in Baghdad. Hunain mastered Arabic, Persian,

Syriac, and Greek. This East Syriac Christian from an Arab tribe

had studied medicine and had come to know the cities of the eastern

Roman empire and Alexandria during his many travels. From these

trips, he brought with him back to Baghdad numerous manuscripts,

which served as the foundation of his further studies. He was a

physician, writer, and teacher in Baghdad during the reign of ten

caliphs. As personal physician of the caliph al-Mutawakkil and a

courtier, he had to endure conspiracies against him, as well as their

consequences: a two-year imprisonment in the residence of the

catholicos and excommunication by the catholicos. He was evi-

dently also a deacon of the Apostolic Church of the East. He began

his extensive translation activity at the early age of seventeen; he

translated more than 260 works and wrote over 100. He, his son

Ishaq († 910/11), and his grandson were assigned translations of

Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy. Hunain stated

in a letter about the writings of Galen that of the 400 works of the

Greek physician, 129 had been translated into Arabic or Syriac, 100

of those by Hunain himself. In writing about the translations of

Galen, he offered a glimpse into his methods:

When I was a young man – twenty years old or a bit older –

I translated from an error-ridden Greek manuscript for a

doctor from Gundeshapur. Later, when I was about forty

years old, I asked my student Hubais to correct the transla-

tion. In the meantime, I had added a number of Greek

manuscripts to my collection. I had compared these manu-

scripts and in this way had assembled a single, correct copy.

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Then I compared the Syriac text with this and corrected it.

This is how I usually proceed with all my translations. After

a few years, then, I have translated the Syriac text into

Arabic.

Hunain b. Ishaq also made great strides in healing diseases of the

eye, which was of particular importance in view of the prevalence of

such maladies. In addition, he wrote a Book of Logic and a history

of the world from Adam to his own time (661). Regrettably, his

translation of the Septuagint, which al-Masudi praised for its high

quality, has been lost. Hunain also authored an apology for Christi-

anity and rejected the advice of an acquaintance that he convert to

Islam. In his treatise The Way to Recognize Truth in Religion he

argued against opportunism in religious questions and deficiencies

in education. As a scholar who was at home in both the Syriac and

Arabic languages, he also produced lexicographical and linguistic

works. Through the development of neologisms and the borrowing

of foreign words, he created an academic Arabic terminology and

transformed Arabic from the language of the Bedouins into an

instrument in which complicated scholarly problems could be

expressed. The medical historian Withington referred to Hunain as

the “Erasmus of the Islamic Renaissance.”

A history of pharmacy and physicians originated with Ishaq b.

Hunain; he also translated a Neoplatonic work on the nature of the

human being. In 951 a Christian monk, a Spanish Jew, and Arab

doctors came together in Cordoba to revise Hunain’s old transla-

tion of the pharmacological teachings of Dioscorides; thirty years

later the work was expanded by a Spanish-Arab physician.

Among the theologians of the Apostolic Church of the East, there

were trends which resisted the pressures of Islam. Besides Timoth-

eos I and his secretary, these theologians of controversy included

above all Abd al-Masib b. Ishaq al-Kindi (ninth century). However,

his membership in the Church of the East is doubted by some

scholars, who see him as a Jacobite (Syrian Orthodox). In cor-

respondence with a Muslim, al-Kindi sharply criticized Muhammad

and the inconsistency of Muslim ethics. This work, first made

known by al-Biruni, is an apology for Christianity, and nowhere

else was the dark side of Islam so clearly and unambiguously pre-

sented. Al-Kindi displayed his knowledge of Muhammad’s biog-

raphy and the Qur’an and criticized the superstition of the lower

classes and the indifference of the elite. Because of his historical

knowledge and familiarity with dialectic, it was not difficult for him

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to drive his opponents into a corner. Al-Kindi’s correspondence

partner, who came from the Hashemite family, knew the canon of

the Church of the East and the differences between it, the Jacobites,

and the Melkites, and he also stated that he had already had

religious discussions with Timotheos I. In addition, he mentioned

that the Prophet Muhammad had looked favorably upon the

Church of the East and had assured it protective privileges. He was

familiar with the liturgy and the fasting regulations and referred to

his conversations with bishops. The Trinity and the good news of

the cross were, however, entirely mystifying to him. He tempted his

opponent with the Islamic marriage regulations and visions of

paradise and hell. However, his claim that Abraham was the first

Muslim was rejected by al-Kindi, who characterized the wars of

Islam as raids, like those of the Bedouins. Al-Kindi criticized

Muhammad’s murderous plans, vindictiveness, and polygamous

marriages to fifteen wives. “Muhammad preached nothing that we

did not already know and that our children learn in school.” The

military successes of the Muslims are divine punishment for sinful

peoples. Muhammad’s teachings were deliberately distorted by

later leaders. In the area of ethics, al-Kindi compared the law of

retaliation to the teachings of reason and the Christian doctrines of

forgiveness and mercy. He maintained that the internal contradic-

tions of the Qur’an may be explained by its varied transmission.

The affected rhyming language of the Qur’an offers no proof of its

divine origin. The promise of sensual pleasure reflects only the lux-

urious life which Muhammad had come to know at the Persian

court. Circumcision as a religious act was rejected; the pilgrimage to

Mecca was traced back to the ceremonies of sun worshipers. The

demand for “holy war” was contrasted with the Christian law of

love, the death in war of Muslims with the martyrdom of many

Christians. Al-Kindi contemptuously rejected the plea to convert to

Islam for the allure of sensual pleasures or the material advantages

it offered. In conclusion, he put forth the good news of Jesus and

invited his (discourse partner) to compare the two religions and

then reach a judgment.

Around the year 1000, the Arab philosopher al-Biruni used this

possibly fictitious correspondence in the Chronology of Oriental

Peoples. Manuscripts of this work, which was published and trans-

lated several times, date back as early as the sixteenth century, and

the work was known in Europe from the 1141 Latin translation of

Peter of Toledo. Just as the later “Bahira legend” does, this apology

demonstrates that despite the more or less peaceful coexistence of

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Christians and Muslims and their influences upon one another, they

remained fully conscious of their differences.

The Church of the East mediated the culture of antiquity to the

Arab Bedouin religion and, despite the military and political suc-

cesses of the Muslims, never abandoned its intellectual conflict with

Islam. The position of the Christians grew weaker with each passing

century. This is indicated, for instance, by the amount of the poll

tax the Christians paid. At the beginning of the ninth century,

approximately 130,000 dirham were collected, a century later, only

some 16,000. According to Islamic law, the return of an apostate

Christian to the Church was punished by death. Around 970 the

Shiite Fatimids succeeded in conquering Egypt and established a

second caliphate in Cairo. The Christians there also paid the poll

tax and in return received the protection ( dhimma) of the govern-

ment. The invasion of the Seljuks eventually led to a strengthening

of the Sunni branch of Islam. Christianity withstood the Islamic

invasion, but divisions in the oriental churches of the Jacobites (Syr-

ian Orthodox), Copts, and Melkites (Orthodox) weakened their

opposition; in addition, more and more Christians converted to the

religion of the conquerors. Greek gradually disappeared as a col-

loquial language; it lived on only in the liturgy of the Orthodox

(Melkites). Because of Islamic language laws, Syriac also became a

purely liturgical and literary language, as Arabic became the lingua

franca of the Christians.

Church history and church law

It seems that the writing of church history played a less significant

role in the Church of the East than among the Orthodox and Jaco-

bites. The Syriac churches calculated time from the era of Alexan-

der, which began on October 1, 312 bc; a few East Syriac writers,

however, calculated time according to the ascension of Christ,

which was fixed in the year 30. These standards were maintained by

East Syrians up until the modern era.

The Syriac legend of Abgar was composed perhaps as early as the

mid-third century; in the form of the surviving Teaching of Addai,

however, it originated in the fifth century and included more

legendary embellishments than Eusebius.

The Chronicle of Arbela is the subject of scholarly dispute. It

purports to have been written by Meshiha-Zeka in the first half of

the seventh century. The surviving section includes the period from

100 to 550. According to its account, Arbela was converted by

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Addai in the first century. Peter Kawerau is persuaded of its authen-

ticity. He produced a new edition of the chronicle, based on the

Berlin manuscript Ms. Or. Fol. 3126, found by the Orientalist

Alphonse Mingana in the village of Ergur, where around 1750 an

East Syriac bishop’s seat had been plundered. Julius Assfalg pointed

out its linguistic inconsistencies, and Jean-Maurice Fiey believes it

to be a forgery by Mingana.

The sixth-century Chronicle of Edessa cannot be unambiguously

classified as “Nestorian.” It recounts the history of the Edessan

monarchy from its beginnings around 133 until ad 540.

In the first half of the ninth century Thomas of Marga, who was

for a time secretary to Catholicos Mar Abraham II and eventually

became metropolitan of Beth Garmai, wrote his Book of the

Abbots, a history of the East Syriac monastery of Beth Abe.

The Chronicle of Seert – also called the Nestorian Chronicle – is

an anonymous Arabic work which was composed on the basis of

earlier Syriac sources shortly after 1036. Its name comes from the

episcopal seat of Seert in Kurdistan, where the East Syriac arch-

bishop and scholar Addai Scher († 1915) discovered a manuscript

which had been written before the fourteenth century. The surviv-

ing sections of the Chronicle of Seert describe the Roman imperial

period from 251 to 422 and from 484 to 650. They report the

campaigns of the Sassanian Shapur I against the Roman emperor

Valerian and the deportation of captured Christians to the East. The

chronicle includes among others a report of the Christianization of

Merv under Bar Shabba.

One source for the Chronicle of Seert is the church history of

Daniel bar Maryam (seventh century), who was a contemporary of

Ishoyahb III. He wrote an Ecclesiastical History ( Ekklesiastike) in

four volumes. Around the year 800, Catholicos Timotheos referred

to Daniel’s method of briefly reiterating the reports of the catholi-

coi. Daniel was familiar with the alleged correspondence between

Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa and discussed the date of the death

of Jesus.

In 1018 the theologian Elias bar Shinaya of Nisibis (975–1049)

wrote a chronicle of the world in Syriac and Arabic, which is of

great significance for cultural history. It is preserved in a single

bilingual manuscript, which is in part an autograph (London, Brit.

Mus. Add. 7197). The first section includes excerpts from earlier

historical works and chronological tables. Elias relied on Eusebius

and a series of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic authors. He was among

the most prolific Syriac- and Arabic-writing authors of the Church

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of the East; his works encompass linguistics, history, church law,

and theology. An apology for East Syriac Christianity, The Confer-

ence (al-Magalis), took the form of a letter concerning his discus-

sions with the vizier Abu l-Qasim al-Hunain b. al-Magribi in July

1026 in Nisibis. Another work dealt with the Evidence of the Truth

of Faith. Also presented in the form of a letter was the treatise On

the Merit of Abstinence, in which he defended celibacy. Elias’s

Book of the Removal of Care cited a series of ancient authors but

also the Arabic philosopher al-Kindi; the earliest manuscript of this

book dates to 1357. His Book on the Right of Inheritance is pre-

served in an Arabic translation. Among his secular academic works,

of greatest significance are an Arabic–Syriac glossary and a gram-

mar of the Syriac language, published in Rome in 1636 under the

title Thesaurus Arabico-Syro-Latinus. His brother, the physician

Abu Said, authored a medical textbook for students and a work on

the healing of diseases of the eye. Elias of Nisibis, who always

specifies his sources, also uses a Chronicle of the Catholicoi, which

is unfortunately lost. He quotes it in the context of the death of

Catholicos Saliba Zhaka (+728). Elias is one of the first East Syriac

historians and counts the years according to the Muslim calendar,

i.e. after the Hedschra. But he adds also the dates of the Seleucid

era. It is remarkable that he tries to synchronize the dates of the

catholicoi with those of the caliphs. Although Elias gives an account

of world history his chronicle offers de facto the oldest chronology

of the catholicoi, because the list in the manuscript of the Vatican

Library which follows the work of Elias Damascenus, who lived in

the ninth century, was added in the thirteenth century (Cod. Arab.

157, Fol. 82r). Therefore the oldest lists are provided by Mari b.

Sulaiman and Salomon of Basra, as well as by the work of Barhe-

braeus. All modern lists like E. Tisserant and J.-M. Fiey are depend-

ent on Elias of Nisibis, the Chronicle of Seert, Mari b. Sulaiman,

Salomon of Basra, and the anonymous list in the Vatican

manuscript.

The student of Elias bar Shinaya, Ibn Butlan (called al-Muhtar

Yuwanis), worked as a doctor and philosopher in Baghdad. After a

trip to Egypt and Constantinople, he was a witness to the schism

between the churches of Rome and Constantinople in 1054. Besides

his satirical novel Banquet of the Physicians, the descriptions of his

travels to the cities of Aleppo, Antioch, and Laodicea are of special

significance. His almanac of health was translated into German as

early as the sixteenth century.

Distantly related to the historical works is the historical part of

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the theological encyclopedia Book of the Tower (Kitab al-Majdal) of

Mari b. Suleiman († c.1160), which contains the biographies of the

catholicoi of the East up to Abdisho II. The work, which was based

on lost chronicles from the seventh and eighth centuries and drew on

the Chronicle of Seert, thus belongs among the most important

sources for the history of the Church of the East and its relationship

with shahs and caliphs. Around 1350, modeling his work on this

example, Amr b. Matta wrote an encyclopedia of the same name,

which was subsequently copied in large part by the only slightly

younger Saliba b. Yuhanna. The work is preserved in an autograph

copy (Cod. Vat. Ar. 110). This represents the most extensive presen-

tation of the relationship between Islam and Christianity at this time.

The Church of the East also strove to assemble the sources of

religious and secular law. The Synodicon Orientale ( Sunhados)

developed gradually out of the church orders and canons of the

synods. As early as the fifth century, Catholicos Mar Aba I authored

a book on the laws of inheritance. The Canons of Rewardashir

(seventh century) were translated from Persian, and the legal code

of Catholicos Timotheos I, written in 804/5, became well-known.

Presumably, the Synodicon Orientale dates back to this catholicos,

as well.

Among the most prolific of theologians and authors of the

Church of the East in the eleventh century was Abdallah b. Taiyib

(† 1043). He was a philosopher, monk, priest, and jurist, who stud-

ied medicine in Baghdad and worked as secretary to the catholicoi

John VI (1012–16) and Elias I (1028–49). Ibn at-Taiyib disagreed

with the writings of Aristotle on logic and metaphysics and com-

mented on the Isagoge of Porphyry. He also produced commen-

taries on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen on the natural

sciences. He concerned himself with improving education for the

people and the clergy and founded a few schools, in which he lec-

tured on his works. A twelfth-century manuscript of his commen-

tary on the entire Bible survives. According to the Syriac tradition of

the “catholic letters,” he wrote commentaries on only James,

1 Peter, and 1 John. His essay Paradise of Christendom is a com-

mentary on all possible theological questions; a manuscript from

Diyarbakir dates to 1332. For his commentary on the Psalms ( The

Blossoming Garden) he translated the Psalms from Syriac into

Arabic. His Commentary on the Four Gospels was completed in

1018; the oldest manuscript comes from the eleventh century. The

work itself is preserved in numerous manuscripts. He translated

the famous Diatesseron of Tatian from Syriac into Arabic. In the

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Treatise on the Trinity Ibn at-Taiyib defended Christian dogma. The

collection The Law of Christendom, in which he systematically

organized earlier sources, belongs among his most important

canonical writings. The work includes a series of canons of various

synods, beginning with the Council of Nicaea and the canons of

Chalcedon and continuing up to the collections of Timotheos I and

the catholicoi of his time. It presents a brief summary of the East

Syriac synodicon with a special section on the Regulations of the

Fathers for Worldly Affairs. East Syriac church law was systematic-

ally summarized in this compilation; it even served as an example

for the Coptic church law collections. Separate chapters dealt with

engagements and marriage, rights of inheritance, guardianship,

debts, partnerships, taxes, and deeds, but also questions about

hospitals and prisons.

Of the East Syriac authors of the thirteenth century, Salomon of

Lake Van in Armenia, who became bishop of Basra in 1222, is

particularly worthy of note. His Book of the Bee is one of the few

East Syriac universal histories, from creation to the last things. In

this work, the conveyance of the bones of the apostle Thomas to

Edessa after his martyrdom is reported, while others assert that he

was buried in “Mahluph” in India.

One of the most learned East Syriac writers of the time was John

b. Zobi (late twelfth or early thirteenth century), a monk from the

monastery at Beth Qoqa in Adiabene. Today only a few of his writ-

ings – commentaries on baptism and the eucharist and assorted

grammatical and philosophical works – have been edited.

Missionary activity in Central Asia

Literary and archeological sources testify to the early expansion of

the Church of the East into Central Asia. The 549 vita of Mar Aba

mentions that he consecrated a bishop for Turkestan. In Djambulin

(Kazakstan) a clay jar from the fifth or sixth century bearing a

Syriac inscription was found. Around the mid-ninth century,

Samarkand on the Silk Road was one of the “exterior metro-

politanates.” About 35 kilometers from Samarkand in the modern-

day region of Urghut some 25 Syriac rock inscriptions were

discovered. In Pendjikent (Tajikistan) a clay fragment with the first

two psalms in the Peschitta version from the seventh or eighth cen-

tury was found; orthographic errors indicate that the writer was

Sogdian. In the tenth century the Arab historian Ibn Haukal

referred to an East Syriac monastery in Sogdia. In Kirgistan an

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eleventh- or twelfth-century inscription on a tile was found, and in

the village of Aq-Beshim an eighth-century Christian church was

unearthed in 1954. Also noteworthy are coins minted by Christian

rulers which bear the “Nestorian cross” and which are preserved

today at the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

In the ninth century East Syriac Christianity reached the south of

Lake Balkash. In the eleventh century, initially as a consequence of

the religious persecutions in Iraq and Persia, the Apostolic Church

of the East gradually expanded into Central Asia. In addition to

Jewish and Zoroastrian groups, both West and East Syriac Chris-

tians traveled there. In 1897, in the vicinity of Perm a paten with a

Syriac inscription, resembling the codex Rabbula of 586, was

found. A silver bowl from the fifth or sixth century displayed in

three scenes the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus;

beneath these can be seen Daniel in the lions’ den and the denial of

Peter. The Syriac inscriptions are written in Estrangelo.

With the shift farther east, competence in Syriac declined and the

change to Turko-Tartaric began. In Bulayiq in the oasis of Turfan,

where Christianity constituted a minority, an East Syriac monastery

has been discovered. Some 350 fragments of a Sogdian vita of Bar

Shabba, the first bishop of Merv, were found there. A Sogdian trans-

lation of the Antirrheticus of Evagrius Ponticus also belonged to the

library of the church. Only a small sample of the monastery’s 400 to

500 Syriac texts have been published to date. Bilingual Syriac–

Sogdian texts, as well as about a dozen Turkish writings, have also

been uncovered. The martyrdom of St George is patterned on earl-

ier Syriac examples. The “Magi fragment” discusses the visit of the

Magi to Bethlehem. A topic of the Bar Sabba fragments is the resur-

rection of the body. The Sogdian Christian and Turkish Christian

texts are not original works but rather translations from Syriac, and

in this way, the mother church remains present in the diaspora.

Although Syriac continued to be the language of the church there,

vernacular psalm fragments and lectionaries indicate that Sogdian

was used in the liturgy. This corresponds to the politics of the

catholicos, who desired maintenance of the vernacular. We know

nothing, however, of a metropolitan entrusted with the care of the

monastery. The church in Central Asia was loosely structured; for

reasons of distance, regular participation in the synods of the

Church of the East was not possible.

Beginning with the Uighurs in the eighth century, the oases,

which had their center at Chotscho (Kao-chang), became progres-

sively more Turkish. In this Uighur realm, East Syriac Christians, as

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Figure 2.7 Front of a page from an East Syriac lectionary (Luke 16) from

the Sogdian Turfan Psalter found in Bulayiq, north of the Turfan

oasis (ninth/tenth century). Photo: courtesy of Berlin-

Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Turfan–

project).

well as Manichaeans and Buddhists, had established themselves. A

church erected around 900 and decorated with frescos is found

there. Portrayed in the fresco is a Sogdian priest with a chalice in

one hand standing before two Turks and a Chinese woman. Like-

wise, Christian texts, among them a large number of apocryphal

writings, reached Central Asia through Manichaeism. In the ninth

and tenth centuries there was also an East Syriac monastery in

Talas. In 1265 the metropolitan left the city of Hami (Komul) for

the consecration of the catholicos Dinkha. Discoveries relating to

Christianity there originated in the period from the ninth to four-

teenth centuries and show that Christianity clearly was part of the

Uighur kingdom of Chotscho. The literary remains are written in

Sogdian and old Turkish.

The coexistence of different religions fostered syncretism; there are

texts, for instance, in which Jesus is portrayed as Buddha; one

fragment states that after his crucifixion, Jesus entered nirvana.

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Nevertheless, the East Syrians sought to preserve the “purity” of

their faith; for “world,” they more often used the Greek loan word

“cosmos” than the Indian “samsara” favored by the Manichees. In

Turkish texts, Buddhist and Christian expressions were often used

together.

From the victory of the Seljuks at the battle of Manzikert (1071)

to the Mongol invasion, the political influence of the Christians in

the Orient decreased in favor of that of Islam; this can be seen in the

way use of the Syriac language among Syriac Christians was grad-

ually reduced to only the liturgy and theological literature. As a

minority, the Christians had to adapt to the will of the majority; this

is reflected in oracular texts and a Turkish wedding blessing, which

recall Buddhism and other neighboring religions. Nevertheless, the

influence of other cultures on Christianity was less here than it was

in China. The Muslim philosopher al-Biruni described the celebra-

tion of the “Rose Festival” among the Christians of Choresmia as a

commemoration of Mary bringing a rose to the mother of John the

Baptist. He further indicates that the majority of the people in Syria,

Iraq, and Chorassan belong to Nasturiyun (Arab. “Nestorians”).

In the thirteenth century the Islamic cosmographer Kaswini por-

trayed the Turkish people of Ghozz as Christian.

The Jacobite historian Grigorius Abu l-Faraj (Barhebraeus, ibn

al-Ibri † 1286) reported in his Church History that East Syriac mis-

sionaries proselytized the Mongol tribe of the Keraits after one of

their chiefs was rescued by an appearance of St Sergius and accepted

Christianity. He requested that Abdisho, the East Syriac bishop of

Merv, send him priests to baptize the people. Around 1012 the

metropolitan wrote to Catholicos John VI that the khan of the

Turkish Keraits had been surprised by a snowstorm and had feared

for his life. He experienced a vision, in which he saw St Sergius, who

promised he would be rescued if he allowed himself to be baptized.

Two hundred thousand Turkish Keraits were baptized, and the

bishop requested that the catholicos send priests and deacons. In

questions of liturgy, the Church of the East proved willing to adapt

to local usages. For example, it is known that the Mongols espe-

cially prized mare’s milk. At the beginning of the eleventh century

the first Christian prince of the Keraits provided his successors with

an example by keeping a special mare, whose milk he placed before

the cross and Gospel book, spoke prayers over, blessed with the

cross, and then drank. Later the East Syriac priests were also present

at the spring festival, when the Mongols brought the mares

together, blessed them, and sprinkled the earth with the koumiss

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T H E A G E O F T H E A R A B S

Figure 2.8 Gravestone from Kirgistan (thirteenth/fourteenth century).

Photo: courtesy of Ulrike Baum, Klagenfurt.

(mare’s milk). Some khans of the Keraits adopted Christian names.

In the fourteenth century the Persian historian Raschid ad-Din also

referred to the spread of Christianity among the Keraits.

Christianity also gained acceptance among the Kitan in northern

China, who moved west in the twelfth century to make way for the

Kin people and founded the Karakitai kingdom, which was par-

tially Christian. The Naiman, north of the Keraits, were also won

for Christianity. The Turkish-Tartar peoples were the chief sup-

porters of the second wave of missionary activity at the turn of the

millennium.

Among the most significant memorials of Central Asian East Syr-

iac Christianity are the surviving gravestones. In Kazakstan many of

these, with Syriac and Turkish inscriptions, have been preserved. In

1886 in Semirjetschie (Semiryechensk), south of Lake Balkash near

Pischpek and Tokmak in northern Kirgistan, two East Syriac cemet-

eries were found in the villages of Burana and Karadzigac with 568

gravestones from the mid-ninth to mid-fourteenth centuries, where

over 3,000 people had been buried. Among them were also Indians

and Chinese. Some of the corpses had been brought there from

distant places, indicating the international contacts of the Turks.

The Russian historian Daniel Chwolson published the inscriptions,

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which show that the Syriac language had been used there. In the

vicinity of the village of Pokrovka on the south bank of the Issyk

Kul Sea and in Amalyk (Mazar), the residence of the khan of

Tschagatai, there were other East Syriac cemeteries. Amalyk and

Navakat near Pischpek were the seats of East Syriac metropolitans.

Only 15 percent of the inscriptions were in Turkish, the rest in

Syriac, and they indicated that between 1337 and 1339 many Chris-

tians died of the plague. Relatives of the khans were also buried

there. Near the town of Ak-Besim a church from the eighth or ninth

century was found, which in the eleventh century was turned into a

mosque.

Among the Onguts in Hoangho-Bogen in China the Christians

used Turkish exclusively, though they wrote it with Syriac letters.

This also makes clear that knowledge of Syriac declined the farther

east one traveled; many gravestone inscriptions contain grammat-

ical errors. In Olon-Süme, the center of Ongut territory, a church

surrounded by a great number of such inscriptions from the Mon-

gol period was found. Many amulets showing Christian motifs with

Buddhist and shamanistic elements were discovered nearby.

In southern China gravestones inscribed with the Syriac and

Uighur scripts were found. While it had been believed in the nine-

teenth century that Uighur writing had developed out of the East

Syriac script, today it is known that it was further developed out of

the Sogdian. However, East Syriac vertical script influenced the

writing customs of the Manchurians. Syriac was carried to China as

an ecclesiastical language and left its mark on Uighur. Out of the

Uighur alphabet the Mongol was subsequently developed. In Zay-

ton the East Syriac cemetery lay to the north of the city. Other

Christians, such as Armenians, were also buried in the cemeteries.

Catholicos Elias III (1176–90) founded the metropolitan seat of

Kashkar near the Gur-Khanen on the Silk Road, where there had

already been a bishop since the eighth century. In the ninth century

there was also a Christian church east of Kashkar on the southern

route of the Silk Road in Khotan. In addition, East Syriac crosses

with Sogdian inscriptions were found in Ladakh.

Besides the Keraits and Onguts the people of Merkiten on Lake

Baikal also converted to Christianity. Likewise finds from the tenth

to thirteenth centuries prove that the Tunguzic Kitan or Kitai in

Manchuria converted in part to the Church of the East. Over time,

they spread as far as Mongolia. Burial crosses were also found in the

region of Liaoyang. In the mid-twelfth century in the oasis of Khotan

on the southern fork of the Silk Road a Christian king governed. In

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the thirteenth century the Christian prince Najan (Naiyen), who was

mentioned by Marco Polo, reigned, then rebelled against Kublai and

was defeated and murdered in 1287. The Kitai had ruled in Peking

until 1125, then migrated west, where the Karakitai founded a new

kingdom following the collapse of their kingdom in China. In 1141

their Gur-Khan (ruler of the people), Khan Yeh-lü Ta-shih († 1142),

defeated the Muslims of Choresmien under the leadership of their

sultan Sanjar at a great battle on the Aral Sea. The Gur-Khan may

have been Buddhist, but East Syriac Christians fought in his army.

The severe defeat of the Muslims in 1141 was known even in

Europe. Around 1144/5 the European historian Otto of Freising

heard in Italy of a Syriac bishop, the “priest-king John” who had

conquered the Muslims in Asia and was ready to advance to the

Holy Land. The rumors of the existence of Christian khans among

the Mongols and the victory over the Seljuk sultan Sanjar may have

grown into the myth of the Christian king behind Islam, which for

many centuries inspired ever renewed hope in Europe that alliance

with Christian rulers in Asia would enable the warding off of the

Islamic threat. In the first place, European knowledge in this area

remained very vague; around 1220 they identified the Mongols

under Genghis Khan with the priest-king. Only with increased

knowledge did they understand that the great khan was not pre-

pared to accede to the wishes of European Christians for a coalition

and that the Mongols were not themselves Christian, though the

Church of the East was, as a rule, tolerated in their realm. When

Marco Polo found the Christian Onguts, he saw in their king the

priest-king John (Prester John).

The number of metropolitan seats increased from nineteen in 820

to twenty-five in the fourteenth century; the number of bishoprics

fell from 105 in 820 to 96 in the year 1000, then increased to about

200 by the fourteenth century. A survey of the extent of the Apos-

tolic Church around 1054 shows that the Church in the West was

weakened by the split between the patriarchates of Rome and Con-

stantinople, while the Church of the East, despite its minority sta-

tus, expanded. The seat of the catholicos was as before in Baghdad.

There were twenty metropolitan sees of the Church of the East:

1 Ctesiphon (Iraq)

2 Gondeshapur (Iran)

3 Nisibis (Iraq)

4 Teredon (Iraq)

5 Mosul (Iraq)

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6 Adiabene (Arbela, Iraq)

7 Grarmai

8 Halwan (Iran)

9 Rewardashir in Fars (Iran)

10 Merv in Chorassan (Turkmenistan)

11 Tabriz in Atropatene (Iran)

12 Herat in Segestan (Afghanistan)

13 Haran (Iraq)

14 Ray (Iran)

15 Dailam (Iran)

16 India

17 Xian/Changan (China)

18 Samarkand in Turkestan (Uzbekistan)

19 Damascus

20 Jerusalem

There were bishoprics in Cyprus, Mopsuestia, Melitene, Manbij,

Otrar (Kzyl-Orda) on Syr-Darja, Xian, Kalah (Malakka), Mylapore

near Madras, Cranganore, Kottayam, Quilon, and on the island of

Kuria Muria south of Arabia. The Tangut, Ongut, Naiman, Kerait,

and Makrit peoples converted to the Church of the East. “Persian”

Christians lived in large sections of China and Manchuria. The

church certainly lost many bishoprics in Mesopotamia, Syria, and

Iran through the Arab conquest. In 1142 the catholicos Abdisho III

and the Jacobite (Syrian Orthodox) Maphrian Dionysius reached a

reconciliation of Syriac Christians, which lessened the internal dis-

cord of the Church of the East. In Arabia and Yemen Christianity

was largely extinguished, but the island of Sokotra continued to have

East Syriac bishops until 1280 and eventually belonged to the church

on the Malabar coast. The missionary activity among the Mongols

opened new perspectives for the church. It encountered “a constella-

tion, which has never been repeated: with the conversion of the

Mongols to Roman Christianity and a union with the Nestorians –

which, for political reasons, many were prepared to accept – it could

have become the universal religion of Asia” (von den Brincken).

Among the peoples of the Central Asian steppes, Christianity

became the dominant culture with far-reaching consequences. In

Europe knowledge of these events was as good as nothing since there

were hardly any relations between Rome and Byzantium on the one

side and between Rome and the Oriental churches on the other.

Only occasionally, while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, did West-

erners encounter members of the Church of the East.

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The image of the Apostolic Church of the East in

thirteenth-century Europe

In Europe the East Syrians were first mentioned in 1110 by Petrus

Alphonsi in his dialogue between a Jew and a Christian, in which

Muhammad and his alleged contact with an East Syriac monk were

discussed. However, his name was not given until 1141 when Peter

of Cluny, in a letter to Bernard of Clairvaux about Muhammad and

his “Nestorian” teacher, mentioned Sergius Bahira. Thus the Bahira

legend was known in Europe as well. Bahira, who was expelled

from the church, was sent by Satan to Arabia, where, as Muham-

mad’s teacher, he became in a way responsible for the advent of

Islam.

At the beginning of the crusades, hardly any East Syriac Chris-

tians were known to the crusaders; they dealt primarily with Mel-

kites (Orthodox), Maronites, Jacobites (Syrian Orthodox), and

Copts. In the crusader states there were few East Syriac Christians.

In Jerusalem there were a few East Syriac merchants and perhaps

also a bishop; there was a congregation in Edessa. An East Syriac

monastery in the vicinity of Jericho was established in the fifth cen-

tury but was abandoned in the early ninth century. Until the con-

quest of Jerusalem by Saladin (1187), the Church of the East was

hardly ever mentioned by European authors, although beginning in

1098 there must have been contact between East Syriac Christians

and crusaders, especially in the region around Antioch. The rela-

tionship of the crusaders to the “Nestorians” was thus marked

above all by ignorance and misunderstanding.

In 1055 the Seljuk leader Togoril Bey seized power in Baghdad; in

1071 the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines in the battle of Manzikert.

They conquered Damascus and occupied inner Asia Minor. During

a conflict of Catholicos Abraham III with the Orthodox patriarch of

Alexandria, the head of the Church of the East wrote to the grand

vizier that “we Nestorians are the friends of the Arabs and pray for

their victory. Far be it from you to view the Nestorians, who have

no other king than that of the Arabs, in the same light as the Greeks,

whose king refuses to cease making war against the Arabs.” He won

the debate not only through his arguments, however, but also

through the payment of 2,000 gold pieces.

The Abbasid caliphate stood until the conquest of Baghdad by

the Mongols (1258), but since the tenth century, the Buyids and

Seljuks had been the de facto rulers. During this phase, relations

between Christianity and Islam deteriorated. The Persian Shiite

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Buyid dynasty – like the Fatimids in Egypt – adopted a more toler-

ant attitude toward the Christians than the Sunni Seljuks. In 1055

the transfer of power from the Buyids to the Seljuks resulted in the

first destruction of Christian churches and monasteries. However,

the expansion of Seljuk rule created new missionary opportunities

for the Church of the East. In 1122 a purported Indian archbishop,

John, attracted attention in Rome when he appeared before Pope

Calixtus II and claimed that he lived in Hulna in India, the burial

site of the apostle Thomas, whose corpse on his death day was

sat upon a throne and distributed communion. The pope did not

believe him. Around 1126 the French abbot Odo of Rheims

noted that the Indian archbishop had also been in Byzantium. To

this day it remains unclear if the alleged archbishop was truly a

representative of the Church of the East. All the same, the arch-

bishop is always associated with the grave of the apostle Thomas.

This report may also have been a reason for the adoption of the

legend of the priest-king John. Around 1145 Otto of Freising por-

trayed the priest-king as a “Nestorian” and possible redeemer, who

eventually became the great hope of Christendom threatened by

Islam.

Gradually people seem to have come to believe that Prester John

was a real person, as Pope Alexander III wrote him a letter in 1177

stating that he had heard the priest-king wished to be instructed in

Catholic doctrine; to this end, he sent his personal physician to

John. However, he had to recognize the supremacy of the pope. We

do not know if a letter from the Church of the East preceded the

pope’s letter, nor is anything known of a reply to the letter. It is also

assumed that it was possibly addressed to the Christian ruler of

Ethiopia, of whom Europeans likewise had heard.

The chronicler Richard of San Germano reported in 1223 that a

“Nestorian” king, popularly called Prester John, had set out from

India carrying with him the relics of the apostle Thomas. He was

robbed and murdered in Russia. In this case, the Thomas myth is

clearly linked to the Church of the East.

In 1217 during the campaign of the crusaders against Damiette,

Jacques de Vitry († 1240), the bishop of Akko, arrived at the mouth

of the Nile together with East Syriac Christians who had no bishop

of their own. In his letter of 1217 he portrayed the inhabitants of

the kingdom of the priest-king John as “Nestorian,” though they

were, in fact, Jacobites. At that time he had no knowledge of East

Syriac (“Nestorian”) rulers in the East. During his stay in Damiette,

Jacques de Vitry had the opportunity to improve his understanding.

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In 1220/1 outside of Damiette he wrote in his Historia Orientalis

that the “Nestorians” were named after the arch-heretic Nestorius,

who had infected the lands of the priest John between the Saracens

and India with his teachings. Combined with the Jacobites, their

numbers would have exceeded the Latin and Orthodox Christians.

Although they defended themselves against Islam, they denied that

Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two

persons. They consecrated leavened bread and used the “Chaldean”

(Syriac) language. He sensed for the first time how great the influ-

ence of the East Syriac church must have been.

In his seventh letter, Jacques de Vitry wrote to the pope in 1221

and reported on the Relatio de Davide rege, translated from Arabic,

which recounted the myth of David, the great-grandson of the

priest-king John. Jacques identified the Christians under King

David with the adherents of the Church of the East. David invaded

Choresmien, captured Kashkar, Samarkand, and Bukhara, and

demanded the submission of the caliph. He stood just five days’

march from Baghdad. The caliph requested mediation from the

catholicos “Iaphelech” (Jaffeleth) and the “Patriarch of the Indi-

ans.” Jacques clearly had some vague knowledge of the advance of

the Mongols under Genghis Khan, who in 1221 had conquered the

Muslim rulers in Central Asia and the Caucasus. His contemporary

Oliver of Cologne visited the East Syriac church in Antioch and

expressed his views thereof cautiously, for only God knew whether

their doctrine was truly heretical. His judgment contrasted with

that of most Latin Christians. Cardinal Pelagius reported the matter

to Pope Honorius III, who authored an encyclical which brought

these concerns to the attention of the whole of Europe. At the same

time, Oliver of Cologne brought word of a prophecy popular in

East Syriac circles that the Christian king of the Nubians would

destroy Mecca. In the years 1217 to 1220, through the reports of

Jacques de Vitry and Oliver of Cologne, the West was made familiar

with the East Syriac church, of which they had previously had

almost no knowledge. It was thus linked with the advances of the

Mongols toward the West.

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3

THE AGE OF THE MONGOLS

Thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

Wilhelm Baum

The Church of the East and the Mongols

The Mongol empire was founded at the end of the twelfth century

by Genghis Khan. He first allied himself with the Christian prince of

the Keraits, Togoril, who did not lead a particularly Christian life

but who very probably became the original model for the priest-

king John. Togoril first had to prove himself against his uncle Gur-

Khan; with help from the Kin people of Peking he defeated the

Tartars and as a reward received the title “Wang-Khan” or “Ong-

Khan” from the Chinese court; with this title, he entered history.

Genghis Khan’s father, Jesügei, also helped Togoril achieve victory

over his uncle. However, disagreement later developed between

Genghis Khan and Togoril, and Togoril was murdered in 1203

while trying to escape. Over several generations, the family of the

great Mongol khan intermarried with the family of the “Gur-

khans.” From the Persian historians Juvaini and Raschid ad-Din,

we have precise information about these genealogical connections.

Genghis Khan wed Togoril’s daughter Ibaqa-Beki, his eldest son

Jochi her sister Bek-Tumish, and his son Tolui († 1231) her sister

Sorqaqtani-Beki. The latter became mother of the great khans

Mongke and Kublai, as well as the Il-Khan Hulagu, who were fond

of the Church of the East because of their mother, though they did

not themselves convert to christendom.

After Genghis Khan, first his son Ogdai († 1241) came to power,

followed by Ogdai’s son Kuyuk († 1248), of whom it was said he

was a Christian. After the death of her husband, Sorqaqtani-Beki

became the head of the line of the house of Tolui, and in 1250 she

obtained for her son Mongke the position of great khan; eighty

years after her death, East Syrians still venerated her picture in the

church at Kanchow. The great khan Mongke appointed the East

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Syriac Keraiten Christian Bolghai as chancellor. Already at the

beginning of the thirteenth century the Christian Chinkai – a Kerait

or Ongut – had served as Mongolian chancellor and governor of the

colony in the Altai mountains; in northern China, for all practical

purposes, he controlled the government. Following the conquest of

the Keraits, the Christian Qadaq became commander of the army

and under Kuyuk eventually even “Atabek” (administrator of the

empire).

After seizing power the great khan Mongke sent his brother Hul-

agu on a campaign against the Muslims in Mesopotamia. In 1258

Hulagu captured Baghdad and became founder of the empire of the

Il-Khans in Persia. In accordance with Mongol custom, he married

Doquz-Khatun, one of his father’s wives, who was a daughter of

Itiko, the younger son of Togoril. Doquz-Khatun became a special

patron of East Syriac Christianity and even had her children bap-

tized. The Persian historian Rashid ad-Din reported that Hulagu

undertook nothing without first asking her advice, and her piety

was particularly emphasized by Armenian historians. Her confidant

was the Armenian monk Vartan, whom she told that she hoped

Christianity would increase with each passing day. East Syriac

Christians, who had for centuries been members of a minority, were

now pushed to the center of political power. Makika II (1257–65)

maintained the caliphal palace in Baghdad as his residence. As

Kirakos of Ganzag reported, East Syrians, Jacobites, and Armeni-

ans saw the Mongols as avengers of oppressed Christianity; they

were pleased by the fall of the capital of Islam.

Acting on the counsel of Doquz-Khatun, Hulagu directed a cam-

paign against Syria and conquered Nisibis, Harran, and Edessa, and

among the advancing Mongol troops were many adherents of the

Church of the East. During the capture of Aleppo, he was greeted by

the historian Grigorius Abu l-Faraj (Barhebraeus). In March 1260

Kitbuqa, a Naiman who belonged to the Church of the East and

who had earlier taken part in the seizure of Baghdad, marched on

Damascus. The Arab historian Maqrizi noted that the Christians

celebrated the conquest of the city as the victory of the cross over

Islam. However, on September 3, 1260 the Mongol troops were

defeated by the Egyptian Mamluks at Ain-Galut. With this the

expansion of the Mongols in the Orient came to an end. After the

reconquest of Syria by the Mamluks, the Christians had to pay a

high price for their alliance with the Mongols. For their part, the

Mongols abandoned their plans for a worldwide empire. The khans

of the Golden Horde favored Islam and Orthodoxy, while the

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Il-Khans had striven for decades to enter an alliance with the pope

and Western Christianity against Islam. These political arrange-

ments also influenced the relationship of the Church of the East to

the Church of the West. A delegation of the Il-Khan Abaqa

appeared at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, indicating the

good relations of the khan family with the Christians.

In the meantime, in China Kublai Khan (1260–94) made Taitu

(Khanbaliq, Peking), established instead of Karakorum, the new

residence of the great khans. After the death of Mongke († 1259),

he assumed power – in a not entirely legal fashion – as great khan.

Presumably his brother, Khan Arikboge, who had converted to

Christianity and was supported by the Christian chancellor Bolghai,

opposed Kublai’s seizure of power. Beginning in 1262, more and

more East Syriac Christians appear in Chinese documents. In 1248

Peking became an East Syriac bishopric.

The Christian Ongut people, whom the Chinese called the “white

Tartars” ( Pai-Tata) inhabited present-day Sui-yuan in northern

China, north of the Yellow River on the passes from Mongolia to

China. Emperor Tai-Tsung (1123–36) authorized their settlement

there. Through their participation in Genghis Khan’s battles against

the Naiman, the Onguts became allies of the Mongols. The royal

dynasty in Kosang (Olon-sume, north of the modern city of Kuei-

hua) cultivated contact with the family of the great khan. The Chris-

tian Ongut king Gorguz (George, † 1298) married a granddaughter

of Kublai. In the middle of the year 1260 Gorguz also became

acquainted with the merchants Nicolo and Marco Polo, whom the

great khan eventually sent to the pope with the request to send

scholars to China. In southern China, in Hang-chou and Yang-

chou, East Syriac churches were also built. At the Vatican there is a

1298 Gospel from Diyarbakir (Cod. Vat. Syr. 662), which according

to Kolophon was created for Sara-Araol (Chin. Ye-li-wan), sister of

the Ongut prince Gorguz. Evidently the princess was able to read

the Gospel in Syriac. John (Chin. Chu-an, † c.1314), Gorguz’s son,

converted to the Church of the East.

Also among the East Syriac Christians who pursued their careers

at the court of the great khan Kublai was the physician Isa (Ai-

hsieh, Ishohua, † 1308), whom Rashid ad-Din called “Isa Tarsa

Kelemechi,” Isa the Christian and translator. Kublai appointed him

head of the office of astronomy and medicine in 1263, and in 1284

sent him to Il-Khan Argun in Baghdad, which he reached in 1285.

Following a visit to Rome – he was perhaps the first Chinese to

make such a visit – he returned to his homeland. In 1291 he became

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commissioner of the office of Christian affairs, which had been

established in 1289, and his contributions were described in the

Yuan-Shih (chapter 134). It was said that he understood all the

languages of the West. Isa died highly regarded as the “Prince of Fu-

lin” and left behind five sons. A tombstone inscription was pre-

served in the work “Hsueh lou chi.” After his death his son Yeh-li-ya

(Elias) took over the position of commissioner for Christian affairs.

The Church of the East could operate freely throughout China.

Around 1275 an East Syriac archdiocese was set up in Peking, over

which the metropolitan Mar George presided. Kublai also sent

envoys, Marco Polo’s father and uncle, to the pope in order to

obtain scholars and relics from Palestine for Peking. The Church of

the East enjoyed freedom from taxes and a variety of other privil-

eges. Through the office of the commissioner for Christian affairs,

even lists of functionaries’ salaries were preserved. In the fourteenth

century, however, the khans withdrew their favor from the Church

of the East. In 1311 the Mongol Yuan Emperor Buyantu (1311–20)

issued a decree ordering that certain newly founded Christian mon-

asteries be turned into Buddhist shrines. In the substantial literature

of Chinese government officials, some may be recognized by their

Christian names as members of the “Yeh-li-ko-wen,” as Christians

were called in China.

For some forty years the East Syriac Christians in Mesopotamia

lived under Mongol rule. The Armenians also succeeded in estab-

lishing good contacts with the Mongols. In late 1247 the Armenian

general Sempad traveled to see the great khan and offer him submis-

sion in the name of King Hethums I. At first the Europeans found it

difficult to categorize the “Mongol storm” politically. On the one

hand, in 1220 the Mongols destroyed Samarkand and Bukhara

with particular ferocity; churches and Christian congregations were

annihilated; during the destruction of the Christian metropolitan

seat of Merw in 1221 over a million people are thought to have

been killed. However, on the other hand, as undisputed conquerors,

the Mongols tolerated Christianity in their newly won territories.

Additionally, the undisturbed traffic over the Silk Road during the

period of Mongol rule made contact between the catholicos of the

Church of the East and the missionary regions of Central Asia eas-

ier. Merchants and missionaries disseminated Christianity. A series

of East Syriac metropolitanates stood along the Silk Road. There is

talk of metropolitans in Sin (China), Katai, and Khanbaliq (Peking);

however, the jurisdictional relationships between them was not

clear.

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At first there were six ecclesiastical provinces in the Church of the

East. According to the synodical resolutions of the fifth and sixth

centuries, the metropolitans were obligated to appear at synods

called by the catholicos every two and later every four years. Only

the “metropolitans of the outer lands” were explicitly excused

from this duty, for which was substituted a requirement that they

submit a written report to the catholicos every six years. In the

second half of the seventh century there were two metropolitans in

East Asia with over twenty bishops each. A 1315 edict mentioned

seventy-two dioceses in the Yuan empire of the Mongols in China!

The Far Eastern metropolitan seats were – especially among the

nomads – no longer tied to specific cities, such as Amalyk, Samar-

kand, Kashkar, Navekath, Xian, and Khanbaliq. We hear of metro-

politans in “Turkestan,” among the “Onguts,” or in the region of

“Tangut.” At the death of a metropolitan, due to the tenuous con-

nection with the catholicate, a diocese often had to be jointly admin-

istered with a neighboring one, as for instance Samarkand by

Turkestan, Kashkar by Navekath, Amalyk by Khanbaliq, or Sin by

Tangut. Because of political relationships along the Silk Road, the

approval of the catholicos was often difficult to obtain; the catholi-

cos did not feel himself obligated to grant dispensations. Thus the

requirement that at least three bishops take part in the consecration

of another bishop was not always obeyed. In many cases, a Gospel

book, representing Christ himself, was laid in the place of the miss-

ing third bishop.

The Church of the East sought to adapt itself to the circumstances

in Asia and had greater success than the later missions of the Cath-

olic Church, which always tried to maintain Roman centrality and

the Latin liturgy. This “inculturation” of the East Syriac church also

led to a corresponding influence of such religions as the shamanism

of the Mongols. The prohibition of mixed marriages – particularly

among the clergy – which had been decreed as early as the synods of

554 and 585, was no longer strictly enforced, especially among the

princely families. The clergy no longer recognized any obligation of

celibacy. There were also deacons who had taken minor orders,

exorcists, and sacristans. Archdeacons served as vicars general and

liturgists. Despite all this, however, the Church of the East – apart

from the almost entirely Christianized Turkish peoples – was

viewed as a church of foreigners and as a minority. Contributing

to this image were above all the facts that, on the one hand, Syriac

was maintained as the liturgical language – although knowledge

of it decreased the farther east one traveled – and, on the other,

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that the higher clergy came mostly from the regions of Syria and

Persia.

The relationship between the Church of the East and other Chris-

tians – Armenians, Georgians, Russians, and scattered Melkites –

was good. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that they

sometimes shared cemeteries. This “ecumenical cooperation” was

first disrupted at the end of the thirteenth century, when Latin mis-

sionaries attempted to conduct their activities in the territories of

the Church of the East and among its members.

The Church of the West discovers the Church of

the East

East Syriac Christians fought in the armies of the Mongols. The

myth of the Christian priest-king John beyond the lands of Islam

was therefore projected to the Mongols. The closer the Mongols

came to Europe, however, the more it became apparent they would

not enter into an alliance against the Muslims.

Matthew of Paris repeatedly opposed the Mongols; he handed on

the 1237 letter of the Dominican prior Philipp: an East Syriac arch-

bishop, Jafelinus (Jaffeleth), under whose jurisdiction India and the

realm of the priest John stood, expressed his intention to convert to

the Roman church. At the end of July 1237 Pope Gregory IX

authorized a delegation to the “archbishop of the Nestorians in the

Orient,” but the results of this undertaking are unknown. Before

1251 the Frenchman Alberic of Troisfontaines wrote his world

chronicle, which ended with the year 1241. He portrayed the Tar-

tars as a hostile power who had killed the priest-king John. He

described the Europeans’ limited knowledge prior to their first con-

tact with the Mongols and no longer placed any special hope in the

Church of the East.

After the first Mongol invasion of Europe, Pope Innocent IV, who

had been elected in 1243, energetically supported a clash with them.

In 1244 Jerusalem was conquered for a second time by the Muslims.

At the First Council of Lyons – to which the Church of the East was

also invited – the pope recommended measures against the Mongols

and sent the Franciscan John of Piano Carpine to the great khan

Kuyuk in Mongolia. Under the influence of his Christian advisors,

Chancellor Chinkai and army commander Qadaq, Kuyuk pursued

policies friendly to the Christians.

The report of John of Piano Carpine included the first account of

East Syriac Christians in Europe. The “Nestorians” were numbered

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among the peoples subjugated by the Mongols. Thus Carpine

described the Uighurs as adherents of the “sect of the Nestorians”

( de secta Nestorianorum), although the greater part of this people,

from whom the Mongols adopted their writing, were Buddhists.

Carpine wrote that in front of the tent of the great khan – who,

according to courtiers, wanted to convert to Christianity – stood a

portable chapel, in which the Christians conducted their worship

services. Carpine also observed the Christians at the great khan’s

court and became acquainted with the chancellor Chinkai, although

he neither pursued theological disputations nor showed any particu-

lar interest in the members of the Church of the East.

At the same time, Andreas of Longjumeau established contact

with the Tartars; however, he first had to return to the Orient and

reached the great khan only in 1251. In 1246 the East Syriac Chris-

tians in the crusader states received a letter of protection from Pope

Innocent IV, in which a bishop of Jerusalem was also mentioned.

This represents the first official contact between the Roman papacy

and the Church of the East.

Also during this period, Vincent of Beauvais produced his histor-

ical encyclopedia. Through the Dominican Simon of St Quentin he

was familiar with the remarks of the East Syriac monk Simeon Rab-

banata (Chin. Li-pien-a-tai), whom Andreas of Longjumeau had

met in Tabriz at the end of 1246. He was the first East Syriac to have

contact with European intellectuals. Around 1247 he presented

himself to the pope as vicar of the Orient of the East Syriac church.

Innocent IV finally permitted Rabbanata through Andreas of

Longjumeau to request union with Rome. The bishop of Nisibis

sent a creed of the Church of the East to Rome to verify its ortho-

doxy. The Dominican Andreas learned Rabbanata’s life history. He

reported that in his youth, following Togoril’s murder, he had taken

Togoril’s niece to the court of Genghis Khan because he was her

father confessor. Between 1233 and 1241 the great khan Ogdai had

sent him to Azerbaijan as commissioner for Christian affairs. The

Armenian historian Kirakos of Ganzag referred to Rabbanata in his

historical works, as did Grigorius Abu l-Faraj (Barhebraeus). The

West, however, failed to understand this representative of the

Church of the East. The Dominicans disparaged him as a magician,

a trader, a usurer, and an anti-Catholic heretic who was doomed to

hell. In this matter, the fact that Rabbanata considered Frederick II

guardian of the Holy Sepulcher probably played a role, as well;

Matthew of Paris also knew of his commitment to the emperor. In

1259 Rabbanata died at a great age in Persia.

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Establishment of additional direct Western contact with represen-

tatives of the Church of the East occurred in 1248 when King Louis

IX of France landed in Cyprus on the way to Palestine. There he

received a legation from the Tartar general Eljigidei, which offered

to cooperate with the Christians. The letter, written in Persian, was

handed over by David and Markos, Christian envoys from Mosul.

After centuries without any such relations, between 1245 and 1255

direct contact between the churches enabled each to increase its

knowledge of the other’s world.

The first detailed report of the life and doctrines of the Church of

the East in Central Asia was contained in the travelogue of the

Franciscan William of Rubruk, who, under orders from King Louis

IX of France, journeyed to the great khan. On the Tartar steppe in

present-day southern Russia, William first encountered Sartaq, the

representative of Batu, the lord of the khans of the Golden Horde,

who also recommended him to the great khan. He learned that

contrary to all rumors, Sartaq was not a Christian. Nevertheless, in

1254 Pope Innocent IV congratulated him on his “conversion.”

Although the chroniclers Juvaini and Barhebraeus also mentioned

that Sartaq was a Christian, it appears that he was only well dis-

posed toward Christianity. While among the Christian Naiman,

William learned that they were familiar with the myth of Prester

John, who was portrayed as a member of their tribe. Besides

adherents of the Church of the East, however, no-one else knew of

this matter. At the court of the great khan, William became

acquainted with the East Syrians, who worshiped the cross without

the corpus. They were educated, could almost all read, and had a

bishop in the city of Segin (Siking in Shansi). They continued to use

Syriac in the liturgy, though some no longer understood it. Since

bishops only rarely visited the region, often mere children were

ordained priests. On the steppe they had adapted to the Mongol

way of life. Rubruk described the priests, some of whom had mul-

tiple wives, as drunkards and simoniacs. According to his report,

the new great khan, Mongke, had a Christian wife, who had borne

him a daughter. Besides Chancellor Bolghai, an Armenian monk

was another Christian at court. Mongke attended church and also

read the Bible. The representative of Christianity remained united,

although William was repelled by the drinking customs of the East

Syrians. In 1254 he celebrated Easter with the other Christians at

court. In the process, the East Syrians implied they were prepared to

recognize the pope. Except marriage and anointing of the sick, they

accepted all the sacraments. They permitted the remarriage of

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priests. At the Mass, they used a horse blanket blessed by the

catholicos instead of a consecrated altar. A few priests of the church

were in the process of writing a chronicle of world history. On the

Sunday before Pentecost, a religious discussion was held at the

court of the great khan. Nevertheless, the contact with the hierarchy

and theology of the Apostolic Church of the East seems to have

been merely superficial. The primary point of conflict between the

Catholic Church and the Church of the East, the doctrine of Christ,

was never discussed during the trip. According to Rubruk, out of

the family of the great khan, Arikboge, Mongke’s brother, was par-

ticularly inclined toward Christianity.

William’s works also contain many misunderstandings, which

can be found repeated by Western Christians. For instance, concern-

ing the display of the cross without the corpus: as Timotheos I had

written in his apology for the caliph, the empty cross symbolized

hope and immortality. It had nothing to do with the prohibition of

human images in Islamic art. Frescos with religious scenes could

certainly be found in monasteries along the Silk Road. A marble

cross discovered in Fang-shan, some 60 kilometers south-west of

Peking, bears the inscription: “Look at the cross (Sliba), at the cru-

cified and risen Lord, and hope on him.” In 1255 while in Paris

during his journey home, William met Roger Bacon, who borrowed

Rubruk’s descriptions for his “Geography,” William’s often harsh

judgments against the “Nestorians” stem in many cases from ignor-

ance. Nonetheless, his work is one of the chief sources for informa-

tion about the Church of the East in Central Asia in the thirteenth

century.

Marco Polo lived in China from 1271 to 1293, and his report

includes some information about the Church of the East. In Mosul

Marco Polo referred to the “Nestorians” and the “Jacobites.” Like

the pope in Rome, the “Jatolic” (catholicos) also sent his intel-

lectuals to India, China, and Baghdad. From Baghdad Marco Polo

reported conflicts between Christians and Muslims. He recounted

that Chaghatai, the founder of the Central Asian khanate (1227–

42), had converted to Christianity, and he mentioned the construc-

tion of the Church of John in Samarkand, though only a tenth of its

inhabitants belonged to the Church of the East. In the province of

Tangut in northern China, especially in the cities of Su-chou and

Kann-chou, he encountered Turks who had converted to Christian-

ity. Marco Polo also told the story of Prester John, whose daughter

had married Genghis Khan. He referred to the Christian king

George – the Ongut prince Gorguz – in the Tenduc province; here it

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was claimed that the East Syriac Christians were Turks. In addition,

he found Christians of the Church of the East in Kashkar, Urumchi

(Chichintalas), and on the border with Korea, as well as in Manchu-

ria. In Chen-chiang (Zhenjiang) on the Yangtze Kiang Marco Polo

made note of two churches built by Mar Sarkis, the governor of the

great khan, in 1278. In this same regard, the Chronicle of Chen-

chiang also reported about the Christians that in 1281 a Mar Sergis

(Sarkis) built a monastery as well as six churches. His grandfather

had been a doctor in Samarkand and had cured a son of Genghis

Khan. In the chronicle, 196 Christian family members and 109

other Christians were mentioned. A 1295 request has been pre-

served, in which Mar Sarkis sought a tax reduction for the monas-

tery he had endowed, where candles were manufactured. In 1311

the Christian frescos in the monastery church were painted over

with Buddhist motifs. In Zaitun (Quanzhou) East Syriac grave-

stones with bilingual inscriptions in Turkish and Chinese (in Syriac

script) were found. In Yangzhou (Yang-chau-fu) on the Great

Canal, where Odorico of Pordenone discovered three East Syriac

Figure 3.1 Tombstone of Elizabeth, the wife of the Christian government

official Xindu, in Yangzhou (1317). From Ural-Altaische Jahr-

bücher 14 (1976): 172a.

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churches, a church was founded in 1317 by a wealthy merchant

named Abraham. In 1981 there was found a tombstone inscribed in

Chinese and Turkish (the latter in Syriac script), commemorating a

woman called Elizabeth, who was the wife of Xindu, a government

official known from Chinese literature.

On his return trip through India, Marco Polo came into contact

with the Thomas cult on the Malabar coast (Coromandel coast). He

visited the alleged grave of Thomas in Mylapore near Madras,

which was also venerated by the Muslims. Clearly the church of the

apostle’s grave was also visited by non-Christians. Marco Polo

mentioned peacocks at the hermitage of the apostle, to which the

name “Mylapore” (city of peacocks) can apparently be attributed.

In Quilon (“Coilum”) he encountered Christians as well as Hindus

and Jews. As he continued his travels towards Arabia, he visited the

island of Socrata, where a Christian archbishop resided. This arch-

bishop did not stand under the jurisdiction of the pope but rather

the archbishop in “Baudac” (Baghdad), that is, the catholicos of the

Church of the East.

The era of Catholicos Yahballaha III (1281–1317)

Two representatives of the Church of the East in China achieved

great renown: Rabban Bar Sauma († 1294) of Khanbaliq (Peking)

and Marcus (1245–1317), an Ongut from the present-day city of

Toqto (Tung-shen) on the border of Sui-yuan and Shansi. They

probably lived at first in the “Monastery of the Cross” in the Fang-

shan district of western Peking. Their biography, written in Syriac

and based on an earlier Persian edition, has been preserved and

provides a contrast to Marco Polo’s travelogue.

Around 1275/6 the Christians Bar Sauma and Marcus decided to

make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They traveled first through the

land of the Tangut, in the modern province of Kansu, where many

East Syriac Christians lived, and eventually through the Gobi Desert

to Kashkar, the trading center in far western China. Kashkar was a

bishop’s seat, but the city had been devastated by a civil war within

the family of the khan. Since the direct route to Persia was blocked,

they journeyed north to Talas on the Issyk-Kul Sea, where the

Ogedai khan Qaidu welcomed them. He sent them on to the empire

of the il-khan, where Hulagu’s son Abaqa then reigned. In Maragha

they met Catholicos Dinkha I (1265–81), who had been elected at

Abaqa’s request after the death of Makika. They traveled past

Arbela to Mosul (Nineveh), visited Nisibis, and viewed the East

Syriac monasteries along the Tigris, including the shrine of Mar

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Mari in Badreia. In Ctesiphon they stopped at the patriarchal basil-

ica of Kokhe. Since 1268 the catholicos of the East had no longer

lived in Baghdad but rather in Oshnou (Azerbaijan) and later in

Urmia and Maragha.

Bar Sauma and Marcus were unable to travel to Jerusalem

because the city was under the control of the Mamluk sultan Baibar

I († 1277). The catholicos had recommended them to the il-khan,

who had also given them a letter of introduction, but the war of the

khans of the “Golden Horde” and the Mamluks with the il-khan

prevented the pilgrimage. The two visitors from China first tried to

travel through Armenia and Georgia and reach Palestine by sea, but

the catholicos ordered them to return, as he planned to transfer

leadership of the Church of the East in China to them. He con-

secrated Marcus, then some 35 years old, as bishop of Cathay

(northern China). As such, he adopted the name Yahballaha. Bar

Sauma was named vicar general. The wars in Central Asia made

an immediate return impossible, so they passed two years in a

Figure 3.2 Imprint of the seal which the great khan Mongke had given to

the Catholicos of the Church of the East (1302/4). From I. Gill-

man and H.-J. Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500, Ann

Arbor, MI, 1999, pl. 8.

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monastery near Mosul. When Dinkha I died in 1281, the East Syriac

bishops elected Yahballaha as the new catholicos of the East

because of his understanding of relations with the Mongols. It was a

political election, as the new catholicos had little command of Syr-

iac and knew no Arabic at all. In the presence of the metropolitans

of Mosul, Arbela, Azerbaijan, Jerusalem, Samarkand, and Tangut,

he was consecrated Catholicos Yahballaha III in the Kokhe church

on November 21, 1281. He received a seal, which his predecessor

had been given by the great khan Mongke. Bishops, priests, and

other notables were not to approach the great khan without a letter

bearing this seal. It can be seen on a 1302 letter to Pope Boniface

VII, as well as one to Benedict XI dated 1304.

From the Chinese imperial annals (Yuan-Shih), under the heading

“Barbarian Lands,” we learn of the situation of the Church of the

East in India and read that in 1282 a delegation from the Christian

king of Quilon (Chu-lan) traveled to Peking. The Christian ruler

sent gifts, which were interpreted by the Chinese as tribute. One can

assume that the Church of the East in Kerala had at the time an

established church structure.

A report on the condition of the Church of the East in Jerusalem

in the second half of the thirteenth century shows that the metro-

politan of Jerusalem had four suffragan bishops, in Aleppo, Persia,

Diyarbakir, and Nisibis. At that time, there were four East Syriac

churches in Jerusalem: St Jacob (today Armenian), John the Baptist,

Transfiguration of Christ, and Assumption of Mary. In the Church

of the Holy Sepulcher, the Church of the East possessed the altar to

the left of the Holy Sepulcher behind the column. In 1516 a pilgrim

noted that the East Syrians no longer had a monastery in Jerusalem.

However, a 1546 illuminated Syriac codex with Sunday lessons,

now found in the Museo Borgiano in Rome, was, according to its

subscription, written for the East Syriac church in Jerusalem.

Il-Khan Abaqa died in 1282, shortly after his defeat by the Mam-

luks. His brother and successor Taqudar converted to Islam and

offered to make peace with the Mamluks. The “old Mongol” party

in Iran (East Syriac Christians and Buddhists) opposed his position.

Taqudar accused Yahballaha III and Bar Sauma of intervening with

Kublai. The catholicos was thrown in prison; he had the khan’s

mother Qutui-Khatun, who was probably a Christian Keirat, to

thank for his survival. In 1284 Taqudar’s brother Argun (1284–91)

succeeded him as il-khan. He was married to a niece of Doquz-

Khatun, who in 1289, to honor Pope Nicholas IV, had one of her

sons, the future Il-Khan Oljaitu, baptized with his name. The church

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of Maragha, which had been destroyed by Argun’s predecessor, was

rebuilt.

In 1287 Argun wrote to Pope Honorius IV that the great khan

Kublai had commissioned him to liberate the “land of the Chris-

tians.” Argun appointed the Uighur Bar Sauma to make the mission

to Europe. Bar Sauma traveled through Constantinople, where he

visited Emperor Andronicus II, and in June 1287 he reached

Naples. He reported how many Mongols, Turks, and Chinese were

Christians and that the children of several rulers had been baptized.

Bar Sauma established an alliance between the Europeans and

Argun, which sought the liberation of Jerusalem from the Muslims.

In Rome the cardinals asked him which apostles had conducted

missionary work in his regions, and Bar Sauma answered that Mar

Thomas, Mar Addai, and Mar Mari had been there. From Rome he

traveled on to Paris, where Philip the Fair received him. In Bordeaux

he met King Edward I of England. Then he journeyed back to Rome

where, in the meantime, Nicholas IV had been elected pope. The

pope allowed him to participate in all the religious ceremonies of

Holy Week and personally offered him communion. The sought-

after alliance, however, never came to be. In the summer of 1288 he

returned to Persia. The il-khan named him court chaplain and sent

additional delegations to Europe.

Under Argun’s successor Gaichatu (1291–5) relations between

the Mongols and the Church of the East remained good. However,

Il-Khan Ghazan, Argun’s son, helped the Muslims in Iran win a

decisive victory over the Christians, whose churches he then had

destroyed. Thereafter Christians and Jews had to wear distinctive

clothing. Despite his age, Catholicos Yahballaha was imprisoned,

hung upside-down, and would certainly have been killed if the

Armenian king Hethum II had not rescued him. During the year

1296 Yahballaha was returned to office, although just one year later

the patriarchal residence in Maragha was plundered and destroyed

by the Muslims. Arbela in Kurdistan became the new center of the

Church of the East in Mesopotamia. The Persian historian Rashid

ad-Din became minister at the court of Ghazan, who had moved the

seat of the government to Tabriz. The il-khan ceased the persecution

of the Church of the East and in 1303 visited the rebuilt monastery

in Maragha, where the catholicos now lived.

In 1289 the Dominican Ricoldo of Montecroce traveled to the

Orient, where he remained for ten years. In his Liber peregrina-

tionis (before 1291) and the Libellus ad nationes orientales he

described his experiences with the East Syriac church. The king of

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Figure 3.3 Map of the general view of the Church of the East in the Middle Ages.

Map: D. W. Winkler.

W I L H E L M B A U M

Mosul was a “Nestorian,” for whom ritual played a greater role

than dogma. The liberal marriage rules with the possibility of

divorce and remarriage did not please him. They also occasionally

practiced circumcision – even of women! – as he himself had

observed. They accepted the eucharist, which they received under

both kinds, in their hands, and they did not recognize the anointing

of the sick. They practiced abstinence and rejected the consumption

of meat. Catholicos Yahballaha III had renounced their “hetero-

doxy” and in 1290 permitted him to preach in Baghdad. The elite

appeared prepared to accept union with Rome, though mostly for

political reasons. In the Libellus Ricoldo emphasized that the East

Syriac Christians did not want to be called “Nestorians,” as they

were not such and did not emulate Nestorius. They referred to

themselves as “Nazantarei” or “Nazareni.”

Around 1300 the Armenian Hethum reported that in Chaldea

and Syria there were, in addition to the Muslims who used Arabic,

many “Nestorians,” who favored the Chaldean language. Doquz-

Khatun came from the line of the holy three kings and became a

Christian. He recorded that the apostle Thomas had converted

many Christians in India; in the intervening centuries, however,

many had fallen away from the church because the country was too

far removed from other Christian territories. Personally, he knew

no Christians from India. Hethum also stated that there was only

one small city left in India which was inhabited by Christians; most

had left the church.

Around 1302 Yahballaha undertook negotiations with the

Roman curia regarding union. On May 18, 1304, he wrote to Pope

Benedict XI, enclosing a creed with the letter. The new Il-Khan,

Oljaitu (1304–16), although baptized, persecuted the Christians.

The Kerait prince Irandjin, a nephew of Doquz-Khatun, prevented

the conversion of the church of Tabriz into a mosque. In Arbela the

Church of the East had a mountain fortress, which also provided

military security, but on July 1, 1310, the fortress was captured by

the Mongols, who massacred all its inhabitants.

Mar Yahballaha III died on November 13, 1317. He was the

most significant catholicos of his time and consecrated a total of

seventy-five bishops and metropolitans. His church extended from

the Near East, across Central Asia to China and India. However, he

also had to suffer the decline of his church in Mesopotamia and

Persia. The period of Mongol sympathy for the Church of the East

sending Christians to Europe to work out an alliance with the pap-

acy had passed – a passing certainly not hindered by Oljaitu. Under

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Oljaitu’s son Abu Said (1316–35), the empire of the Il-Khans col-

lapsed completely as it annihilated itself in civil wars.

The period of Catholicos Timotheos II (1318–32)

After the death of Yahballaha III, Timotheos II, onetime bishop of

Arbela, was elected catholicos. His extensive work on the Christian

mysteries, the Book of the Seven Foundations of the Mysteries of

the Church, has been preserved in manuscript form. In it he con-

sidered as mysteries (Syr. raze; Lat. sacramenta) priestly ordination

(the laying on of hands), the consecration of the altar, baptism,

eucharist, the taking of monastic vows, burial, betrothal, and mar-

riage. In addition, thirteen canons of Timotheos from his first

synod (1318) have been preserved and were edited and translated

in 1838.

During this time, the papacy sought to gain a foothold in the

Orient. As early as 1291 Nicholas IV sent the Franciscan John of

Montecorvino to Peking; Clement V appointed him archbishop. In

1305 John reported that he had spent thirteen months at the Church

of the Apostle Thomas in Mylapore before traveling on to China,

where his work was hindered by the “Nestorians.” The Ongut king

Gorguz, a member of the Church of the East, had converted to

Catholicism and died in the meantime. Gradually conflicts intensi-

fied between the East Syriac Christians and the Latin missionaries as

the latter attempted to convert adherents of the Church of the East

to the Roman church.

In 1318 Pope John XXII established a new province of the church

for Asia with its center at the Persian capital of Sultaniya. In connec-

tion with the 1321 martyrdom of the Franciscans of Tana near

Bombay, we learn that there were also Christian communities in

this region of north-western India. Whether these can be traced

back to the community of “Kalliana” mentioned by Cosmas Ind-

icopleustes is not known. At the same time, the China missionary

Odorico of Pordenone and the Dominican Jordanus Catalanus were

also staying in Tana, where fifteen houses were inhabited by

“Nestorians.” In Mylapore Odorico also found fifteen houses of

East Syrians, whom he described as “useless heretics.”

Around 1330 in his Book of the Great Khan, John de Cori wrote

of the more than 30,000 “Nestorians” in Peking, who fiercely

opposed the mission of the Franciscans. They received special priv-

ileges from the great khan, who nevertheless also supported the

other Christians. If a union with the “Nestorians” in China were

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achieved, the entire land, along with the khan, could easily be won

for Catholicism.

When Pope John XXII named Jordanus Catalanus bishop of

Quilon in April 1329, he also informed him about the “Nestorians

of Quilon” in a letter written in Latin. It is doubtful that the Pope

had access to detailed knowledge of the situation or was in contact

with Catholicos Timotheos II. His point was rather that if they sent

two or three hundred missionaries to India, they could easily win

over 10,000 of the schismatics. We know little more of the fate of

the East Syriac Christians in India; only shortly before the arrival of

the Portuguese do we hear of them again. In the end the Latin

church’s understanding of and conflict with the East Syriac church

in the Middle Ages remained superficial. Jacob of Verona

encountered “Nestorians” in Famagusta on Cyprus, and Nicolo da

Poggibonsi, a traveler to Jerusalem, mentioned East Syrians in the

Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the fourteenth century there was

also a monastery of the Church of the East in Damiette on the

mouth of the Nile. In the popular anonymous travelogue Nieder-

rheinische Orientbericht ( Orient Report of the Lower Rhine),

Prester John, who ruled over forty kingdoms, was portrayed as

belonging to the Church of the East. King Balthasar came from his

realm to Bethlehem, and St Helena exchanged his corpse with that

of the apostle Thomas. Ludolf of Sudheim confused the East Syrians

with the West Syrians. In his legend of the three kings, John of

Hildesheim reported that the apostle Thomas had preached the

gospel to the holy three kings in India; Prester John and the patri-

arch Thomas had also lived there. Hatred of the East Syrians

reached its zenith in John of Sultaniya; Muhammad was the son of

Christian parents and had been led astray by the “Nestorians.” The

accounts of the fourteenth century offer no new information.

John of Marignola, who traveled to China in the fourteenth cen-

tury, was the last of the Latin missionaries. He journeyed to China

via the land route, through the realm of the “Golden Horde.” On

the way, he reorganized the Christians in Almaliq in the khanate of

Chagatai. In 1347, on his return trip to Europe from Peking, he

found there was no longer a bishop in Quilon, but he noted that the

Christians there controlled the pepper trade. He observed the East

Syriac Christians’ prohibition of the figurative representation of

Jesus on the crucifix, though they permitted icons.

During the term of Catholicos Timotheos II, the theologian

Abdisho (Ebedjesus) bar Brika († 1318) was also active. He was the

last of the great East Syriac authors and the most important literary

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historian of the Church of the East. In 1285, as bishop of Siggar, he

completed a Syriac Gospel. His catalogue of writers, which he

wrote in 1315 as metropolitan of Nisibis and Armenia, is an invalu-

able source; it is preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript.

Abdisho also arranged the Gospel readings for Sundays and holi-

days. In addition to literature, he also wrote works on church law,

an essay on the measurement of time and making of calendars, and

a description of East Syriac doctrine (the Book of the Pearl).

Abdisho also compiled the laws of the Church of the East in a two-

volume work, completed no later than 1290. A manuscript from

this year has been preserved in Trichur (Kerala, India). Abdisho’s

work was the last great medieval law collection of the Church of the

East and was approved at a synod of Timotheos II.

The Book of the Pearl, written in 1297/8, treated in five chapters

God, Creation, the Christian economy of salvation, the sacraments,

and the Last Things. In the preface Abdisho explained that he wrote

the work in an easily readable style to fulfil Catholicos Yahballaha

III’s desire to use it for instruction. In the first section, he began with

the conception of God, favoring the approach of negative theology:

“If we then say, ‘not visible’ and ‘not composite’ and ‘not passible’

and ‘not changeable,’ these words do not describe what He is, but

rather, what He is not.” In the second section, the Jewish age of the

Old Testament was discussed as a preliminary stage of Christianity.

He analyzed salvation history in the third section. In his view,

Christianity is an agreement of theory and practice. “The sum total

of theory is truth, and the sum total of practice is virtue.” All

Christians agree with the doctrine of the Trinity in the dogma of

Nicaea. Neither the prophets nor the apostles had called Mary

“mother of God”; the term “mother of Christ,” however, is correct.

The name “Nestorian” is incorrect, as Nestorius neither spoke the

language of the Church of the East, nor was he its patriarch. It did

not follow Nestorius, rather he followed it, which maintained as its

immutable foundation the faith transmitted by the apostles.

Abdisho portrayed the Church of the East in the spirit of Dionysius

the Areopagite. In the fourth chapter he discussed the seven raze

(mysteries, sacraments): the priesthood, baptism, anointing oil

(from pure olive oil; only the Indian members of the church used

coconut or sesame oil), the eucharist, the forgiveness of sins, holy

sour leaven ( fermentum), and the sign of the life-giving cross. This

list remains valid in the Church of the East today. According to

Abdisho, the apostles of the East, Thomas and Bartholomew, as

well as Addai and Mari, gave the Church of the East the holy

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leaven, that it might be used for the eucharist. The fact that the

West did not share this tradition proved that the faith had been

altered there. The fifth chapter treats the Second Coming of Christ,

the liturgy, fasting, prayer and alms, the resurrection, and the last

judgment. When at prayer, Christians should put on a belt and face

east, where the lost paradise lay. Faith is awaiting the return to life

of all living things through Christ.

Also among the important writings of this time is the anonymous

biography of Catholicos Mar Yahballaha III. The Book of the

Tower by Amr b. Matta ( c.1350) – bearing the same title as the

work by Mari b. Suleiman of c.1150 – is significant as well and has

been preserved in an autograph copy. Amr recounts the history of

the patriarchs through Timotheos II, quoting many lost works and

providing a biography of Yahballaha III, and emphasizes the

advantageous position of the Church of the East. Saliba b. Yuhanna

of Mosul produced an apparently plagiarized excerpt from this

work, which also included a list of those bishops who had partici-

pated in his consecration. Among them were the metropolitans of

Almaliq and of Tangut. In his conclusion, Saliba referred to the

apostolic origins of the Church of the East and the apostles Thomas

and Addai, as well as to Mari, the apostle of Mesopotamia, whose

memory was celebrated in the famous monastery of Deir Mar Mari,

named in his honor.

The dark centuries of the Church of the East

In the East Syriac cemetery in Pischpek in Kirgistan, the most

recently dated tombstones come from the year 1345. The most

recent Turkish tombstones from Amaliq date from 1368, and the

most recent Syriac gravestones from the same location on the mod-

ern border between China and Kirgistan are from 1371/2. As early

as the fourteenth century, the Church of the East had died out in

large parts of Central Asia, China, and Persia. Because of the cutting

off of China from the West beginning in 1368 under the Ming

emperors, Christianity no longer received support there, and the

Christians of the East in the Orient relocated to the mountains of

Kurdistan. Thus began the “dark centuries,” from which we have

hardly any reports of the church. The seat of the catholicos moved

from one location to another, depending upon where he believed he

was most secure. Dinkha II (1332–64) resided in Karamles, his suc-

cessor Shimun II in Mosul. His successor was Shimun III, followed

by Elias IV († 1437). We do not know the precise length of time any

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head of the church spent in office, whether living in Maragha,

Urmia, or Mosul. Around 1400 John of Sultiniya made reference to

the “Suriani” in Kurdistan and Mosul, where the catholicos

(“cathalech”) also wielded secular authority.

Beginning around 1370 the empire of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane)

arose in Central Asia with Samarkand as its center. During his cam-

paigns, thousands of Christians were slaughtered, bringing about

the de facto destruction of the Church of the East in Central Asia,

which lived on only in the mountains of Kurdistan and in India.

Tamerlane’s campaign of conquest had the character of a “holy

war.” In 1393 he laid waste to Iran and continued on to Kurdistan

and Diyarbakir. In 1400 he invaded Syria and had erected the

infamous pyramids of skulls, which stood as reminders of his hor-

rific military tactics. In 1402 he defeated the Ottomans in the battle

of Ankara, and in 1403 he destroyed Christian churches in Georgia.

He even established contact with Christian Europe and threatened

to cross into Europe. The Spaniard Clavijo visited the ruler of Asia

in Samarkand in 1404. In light of the unimaginable atrocities, it is

difficult to believe that there are a handful of monasteries and

churches in Iraq and Kurdistan which survived Tamerlane’s era.

The Church of the East never recovered from this disastrous period.

There were no major scholarly and spiritual institutions any more.

The Gospel book ( Evangeliar) of Tell Ziqufa near Mosul, produced

by one Elias of Mosul and containing numerous miniatures, indi-

cates that even the “dark ages” were not without great cultural

achievements (the book is found today in the British Library, Add.

7174).

Around the mid-fifteenth century the catholicate became heredi-

tary and passed in most cases from uncle to nephew. Under the

influence of mothers and older sisters, the honor of the catholicate

was also bestowed upon children. As his predecessors had, Shimun

IV Basidi (1437–97) resided in Mosul. In 1450 he is thought to have

issued a decree firmly establishing the hereditary succession of the

Bar Mama family; written sources supporting this, however, have

not been found.

Some individual bishops’ seats endured still longer. In 1430 one

Timotheos was named metropolitan of Nisibis, followed by

Abdisho in 1458 and Elias in 1483. The bishopric of Tarsus lasted

until the middle of the fifteenth century. In Mardin (Tur Abdin) –

seat of the West Syriac (Syrian Orthodox) patriarchate from 1293

to 1915 – a Gospel book contains a list of bishops including East

Syriac bishops up to 1512; evidence of Chaldean bishops has been

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Figure 3.4 Ruins of the former East Syriac monastery Mar Augin (Tur

Abdin), founded in the early fourth century. Photo: courtesy of

Hans Hollerweger, Austria.

preserved from 1553 on. In Arbela, Ishoyahb bar Mqaddam, also

known as a writer, held office from 1443 until 1452.

The information about India is somewhat better. The manuscript

Syr. 204 in the Vatican Library offers a glimpse into the situation of

the Church of the East before the arrival of the Portuguese in India.

At the time of Catholicos Shimun IV, who had lived since 1491 in

the Mar Aba monastery near Gazarta (Cizre) in modern south-east

Turkey, Christians in India had had no bishop for several gener-

ations; evidently the connection with the catholicate in Kurdistan

had been broken off. In 1490 Shimun sent a metropolitan to south-

ern China, which at this time formed a single diocese with India. In

1491 the archdeacon, who stood at the head of the Christians of the

Malabar coast, sent three envoys to Mesopotamia – to the catholi-

cos and to the West Syriac and Coptic patriarchs – to request that a

new bishop be consecrated for India. On the journey to Baghdad,

one of the delegates died. In Gazarta they met with the catholicos,

who instructed them to go to the monastery of Mar Augen and

select monks for the office of bishop. The monks Mar Thoma and

Mar Yuhanon were chosen and consecrated bishops. They traveled

to India with the two envoys and were enthusiastically welcomed

there. Thus ties to the catholicate were reestablished. The bishops

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ordained priests, consecrated churches, and rebuilt the hierarchical

structure. After some time, Bishop Mar Thoma returned to Meso-

potamia to report to the catholicos. The new patriarch, Elias V

(1502–3), consecrated three additional monks – Rabban David

(Mar Yahballaha), Rabban George (Mar Dinkha), and Rabban

Masud (Mar Jakob) – as bishops for India, Java, and China. In

1504 the bishops journeyed to India, where they continued their

work of rebuilding the church. The monk Abraham of Karka de

Beth Slokh (Kirkuk) produced a report on the relations of the

Church of the East with the Malabar coast of India in the years

1489 to 1503; he preserved the impressive writings of the three

Indian bishops Thoma, Yahballaha, and Dinkha about the earliest

arrival of the Portuguese in India and the intrigues of the Muslims

against the Europeans. The report of the monk Abraham is pre-

served in Cod. Syr. 59 in the state library of Berlin. In the letter, he

writes of 30,000 Christian families in India; Cranganore, Palor, and

Quilon were the most important Christian towns. A series of

churches were built, such as the one in Mylapore, which lay a 25-

day journey from the Malabar coast and preserved the grave of the

apostle Thomas. The letter gives the impression that the Thomas

Christians were doing well at that time.

That the East Syriac Christians in India were known in Europe

even before the voyage of Vasco da Gama is demonstrated not only

by the travelogue of Nicolo de Conti ( c.1447), in which he stated

that there were some 1,000 “Nestorites” at the Basilica of Thomas

in Mylapore and that they were scattered across the whole of India

like the Jews in Europe, but also in the travel report of Girolamo of

San Stefano from around 1492. He wrote that there were Christian

churches in Quilon which had frescos and crucifixes and about

1,000 worshipers – but no longer any priests of their own. In 1498,

during his first trip to India, Vasco da Gama encountered Christians

in Mombasa, who had emigrated from Ethiopia, Mesopotamia, and

Egypt. The Portuguese also came into contact with Christians dur-

ing the voyage of Pedro Alvarez Cabral in 1500 and the second

journey of Vasco da Gama in 1502. An appendix to Vasco da

Gama’s first travel report notes that there were approximately

25,000 Christians in Quilon who paid the poll tax and some 300

churches, named in honor of apostles.

Vasco da Gama seems not to have come into contact with any

Christians during his first journey to India; the conquistadors mis-

took the Hindus for Christians! In July 1499 Girolamo Sernigi

reported to a Florentine friend that people around Calcutta had

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heard of Prester John. On August 26, 1499, King Manuel I of Por-

tugal informed Emperor Maximilian I that there were Christians in

India who had been cut off from the rest of the Christian world by

the Muslims and whom he now wanted to support with monks and

religious implements. In his letter of March 1, 1500, to the samorin

of Calicut, King Manuel wrote that he had heard there were Chris-

tians in his region; in that regard, he referred to the preaching of the

apostles Thomas and Bartholomew in India. In 1500 Pedro Alvarez

Cabral encountered members of the Church of the East in Cranga-

nore and Quilon, and Christians in Cranganore were mentioned in

an anonymous travelogue. The Portuguese noted, however, that the

king of Calicut was not, as Vasco da Gama had believed, a

Christian.

On the return trip to Europe Cabral’s fleet encountered at Cape

Verde a ship in which the Italian Amerigo Vespucci was traveling.

On July 4, 1501, Vespucci wrote to Lorenzo de Medici that he had

heard from the Portuguese that the city of Enparlicat lay in India,

and there the body of the apostle Mark was buried! There were also

many Christians there. The Venetian ambassador to Portugal

reported even before Cabral’s arrival that he had found the island in

India with the grave of the apostle Thomas. The Florentine ambas-

sador reported the same. In July 1501 Manuel I offered the Catholic

king of Spain an account of Cabral’s experiences in Cochin: “In

each kingdom one finds many true Christians, who were converted

by St Thomas; and their priests rigorously follow the apostolic life,

calling nothing their own save that which they receive as alms. And

they live in complete chastity and have churches in which they cele-

brate Mass and consecrate unleavened bread and wine, which they

prepare out of dried grapes and water, as they know no other way.

In the churches they display no images besides the cross, and all

Christians wear apostolic garments and never cut their beards or

hair. There he obtained reliable information regarding the location

where the body of St Thomas was buried, namely 150 leagues away,

on the seacoast in a city called Maliapor, which is only sparsely

inhabited. . . . And he also received a reliable report of great Chris-

tian peoples living beyond this kingdom who made pilgrimages to

the so-called house of St Thomas.”

The Indian Christian Joseph of Cranganore, who had in 1490

participated in the journey of Thomas Christians to the catholicos

in Gazarta-Beth Zadbai between Mosul and Diyarbakir, traveled

with his brother Mathias to Europe in late June 1501; they both

wanted to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Rome. Mathias died

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shortly after their arrival in Lisbon, but Joseph remained in Lisbon

for six months and spoke there, as well as in Venice and Rome in

1502, about the situation in India. He was received by Pope Alex-

ander VI, whom he informed that there were many Christians in

Cranganore. He referred to the bishop of Cranganore and stated

that the catholicos in Mesopotamia (“Armenia”) also ordained

bishops for China and India. He had patriarchs, archbishops, and

bishops under him. He wore his hair shaved into the form of a cross.

He also reported to the pope that the inhabitants of Cathay were

white Christians. In Malabar, they were only familiar with Rome,

Venice, and France. In 1507 his report was published in Vicenza

with additional documents from Francesco da Montalboddo under

the title Paese novamente retrovati. Joseph’s account tempered the

Europeans’ exaggerated notions about the Thomas Christians, and

his report of religion in India is among the earliest such reports in

Europe.

On November 19, 1502, during Vasco da Gama’s second voyage

to India, another encounter of the Thomas Christians with the Por-

tuguese occurred in Cochin, as reported by Thomé Lopes. The dele-

gates presented gifts and expressed their pleasure at the arrival of

the Portuguese. The rajah of Cochin wanted to enter into an alliance

with them. They offered the Portuguese a base of operations and

spoke of their liturgy and their six bishops. In Cranganore there

were more than 30,000 Christians, who came under the jurisdiction

of the catholicos of “Armenia.” In the port cities one could still find

mementos of the apostle Thomas. They expected above all protec-

tion from their Muslim neighbors and gave Vasco da Gama a staff

which may have been a scepter of an earlier Christian rajah. Among

Christian communities, Cranganore and Quilon received by far the

most attention, although there were also Christians in such other

places as Mylapore.

Around 1500 the Christians in India belonged primarily to the

upper class; they enjoyed certain privileges relating to clothing, the

use of carpets, etc. The archdeacon represented the communities to

non-Christians. In a letter to the catholicos from the four above-

mentioned bishops, Mar Yahballaha, Mar Dinkha, Mar Jacob, and

Mar Thomas, the landing of the “Frankish brothers” is mentioned.

Among them was Mar Jacob of Cranganore (1503–50), who

received gifts of money from the Portuguese king. In 1503 Alfonso

de Albuquerque traveled to India, and the Thomas Christians pre-

sented him with a gold cross for King Manuel. The Christians

enjoyed a kind of autonomy, of which the Portuguese wanted to

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take advantage. For their part, the Christians sought the Europeans’

help in regaining former privileges. Giovanni de Empoli, a com-

panion of Albuquerque, described this early harmony in Quilon.

Between 1505 and 1507 Ludovico de Varthema from Bologna

was in India. The grave of St Thomas was only eleven miles away

from his place of residence. He produced an account of his travels,

published as early as 1510, in which he told of Christian merchants

in “Caicolon” (Kayankulam), 40 kilometers from Quilon, and

noted that a priest came from “Babylon” every three years to bap-

tize them. “These Christians observe Lent and celebrate Easter as

we do and also have the same holidays and saints’ days as we have,

but they celebrate mass like the Greeks and venerate four more

saints than all others: Sts John, Jacob, Mathias, and Thomas.” He

mentioned a non-Christian king in Quilon. Varthema also

encountered Thomas Christians on the Coromandel coast, where

they were persecuted and massacred. Peculiarly, Varthema seems

also to have met Christians in Siam. Apparently there were also East

Syriac Christians, who must have come from China, in the Siamese

capital Ayutthaya. However, it is doubted that Varthema was him-

self in South-East Asia. Admittedly, if the city Catholicos Ishoyahb

III (seventh century) called “Kalah” – which al-Masudi described

lying in South-East Asia “halfway between Arabia and China” – is

identified with the port in Malaya, and the “Fashur” of Abu Salih

(fourth century) is found on Sumatra, the existence of Christians in

South-East Asia appears not entirely ruled out. Perhaps about 1,500

and certainly more than 1,000 Christians lived in Pegu and Burma,

where Varthema claimed to have seen them. As they had along the

Silk Road, Christian merchants may have settled here along the

“Silk Road of the sea” as well.

In 1514 Duarte Barbosa († 1521) referred to the existence of a

Christian community in Mylapore. He mentioned the church of

Quilon, allegedly built by the apostle Thomas, where the local king

maintained the receipts from the pepper trade. He also noted the

contact with the catholicos, who had sent a bishop and priests.

A 1509 document written on palm leaves discusses an arch-

deacon of the Thomas Christians, the head of his caste. Evidently

both religious and political leadership lay in his hands. Since the

archdeacon also commanded a Christian army of the rajah of

Cochin, he was portrayed as the “Indian prototype of Prester John”

(Athapilly).

Latin missionaries soon began to baptize Syriac Christians, but

they had no understanding of the Oriental rite. Portuguese scholars

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tried to Latinize the Christians, an effort the Thomas Christians

bitterly opposed. Mar Jakob of Cranganore complained about this

in a letter to the king of Portugal. In 1517 the Portuguese, who two

years earlier had established the “Estado da India,” arrived in

Mylapore, where they built a church near the legendary grave of

St Thomas. The Portuguese soon consulted one of the four bishops

who had come to the country in 1504. The bishop, who had come

from Mesopotamia, explained that he had been living in Mylapore

for fifteen years already, and he recounted the tradition of St

Thomas, reinforcing his testimony by swearing an oath. At this time

the East Syriac Christians used the East Syriac breviary ( Hudra)

revised in the seventh century, which on July 3 recalled the story of

the missionary journey of St Thomas.

The papacy gradually established a Latin hierarchy in India. In

1533 the bishopric of Goa was founded and Joao de Albuquerque

elevated as its first Latin bishop. King Manuel of Portugal had

already informed the pope that there were Christians on the Mala-

bar coast, in whose church only a cross was found, and that the

apostle Thomas was buried in India. Portugal continued its expan-

sion into India and captured Goa and Malakka. As early as 1542

the Jesuit Francis Xavier was in India and tried to subject the East

Syriac Christians in Quilon to the papacy and make them into Latin

Uniates. In 1545 he came into contact with Mar Jacob at the Fran-

ciscan monastery in Cochin, and he recounted his experiences with

the Indian Christians to Ignatius Loyola in 1549. The Franciscans

established a seminary in Cochin, but the East Syriac Christians

refused to accept priests who neither knew nor understood their

traditional liturgy. The Latinization measures of the Jesuits led in

the following period to a split among East Syriac Christians, who

wanted to preserve the authenticity of their traditions.

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4

THE AGE OF THE OTTOMANS

Fifteenth to nineteenth centuries

Wilhelm Baum

Chaldean and Indian unions

The first union of the Church of the East with Rome was concluded

at the Council of Florence. The Mediterranean island Cyprus was

home to a group of East Syriac Christians who had since the thir-

teenth century repeatedly been the object of papal missionary

endeavors. On August 7, 1445, following the acceptance of the

creed before Archbishop Andreas Chrysoberges of Rhodes by

Archbishop Timotheos of Tarsus ( Archiepiscopus Chaldaeorum,

qui in Cypro sunt), union was established between the Apostolic

Church of the East and Rome. Timotheos petitioned the Lateran to

allow him to take part in the Council of Florence, and his request

was granted by a bull. As early as 1450 some of the converted left

the Church of Rome. Since then the term “Chaldean,” used by the

pope, has referred to those East Syrians in union with Rome, though

the efforts at Latinization and the problem of two hierarchies finally

led to a collapse of this union in Cyprus.

At the beginning of the modern period the Church of the East had

been reduced, outside of India, to a regional church in Kurdistan. In

1516 the Ottoman Turks conquered Kurdistan. According to the

terms of a treaty with the Persians, the Nestorian regions were div-

ided between the Ottoman empire and Persia. The Turks utilized the

millet system, which permitted individual religious and ethnic

groups broad rights of self-governance under the guidance of the

ecclesiastical leader, who was required to collect taxes and enforce

the laws. Under this system the catholicos of the East Syrians was

the highest authority in the Christian region of Kurdistan. However,

the Church of the East was first recognized as a “millet” in the

Ottoman empire only in the year 1844!

In 1562 there were five bishops’ seats in the vicinity of Urmiyah.

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The catholicoi Shimun VI (1504–38) and Shimun VII bar Mama

(1538–51) resided in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd in Alqosh

near Mosul in Mesopotamia. Shimun VI designated his brother as

hereditary successor; his brother, Mar Shimun VII, named in turn

his nephew. When, upon the death of Shimun VII, the catholicate

passed to the nephew, Mar Shimun VIII Dinkha (1551–8), the

bishops of Arbela, Urmiyah, and Salmas voiced their opposition to

this method of succession, and in 1552 elected John Sulaqa, the

abbot of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, as anti-patriarch; he

adopted the name John VIII. John Sulaqa established contact with

the Franciscans and took a step unprecedented in the East Syriac

church: he traveled through Jerusalem to Rome, accepted the Cath-

olic creed in the presence of Pope Julius III, was consecrated patri-

arch in 1553, and received the pallium. The pope sent him back to

the Orient with two Dominicans, who were to instruct the Chris-

tians in the Roman faith. Evidently Sulaqa had given the pope the

impression that Shimun VIII had died. Shimun had, however,

declared his opponent’s election illegitimate, and only the faithful of

Mardin and Diyarbakir recognized Sulaqa, who returned in

November 1553, as patriarch. On orders from Shimun VIII, he was

arrested by the Turks and murdered in 1555. Abdisho IV was sub-

sequently elected (anti-)patriarch; the first schism in the Church of

the East had occurred. Sulaqa’s successor Abdisho IV (1555–70)

could not immediately travel to Rome; he received recognition from

Pope Pius IV first in 1562. His successor fared similarly. In 1556

Abdisho IV sent the Chaldean bishops Mar Joseph and Mar Elias,

accompanied by the two Dominicans, to Rome. Since then a dis-

agreement had arisen over the question of whether the Thomas

Christians stood under the patronage of the Portuguese crown or of

the Chaldean patriarch (united with Rome). Beginning in 1553 the

Thomas Christians in India were placed under the authority of the

line of the Chaldean patriarch Sulaqa until Rome transferred their

jurisdiction to the Latin Portuguese church in 1599. The Chaldean

bishop for India, Mar Joseph, eventually had to answer to the king

of Portugal in Lisbon, but he made such a good impression that he

was sent back to India in 1565. Two years later he was again

accused of heresy because he supported the doctrine of the Chal-

dean church. When he died in 1569 in Rome, the rumor arose that

the pope had wanted to elevate him to cardinal.

In the following period it mattered to the popes only that the

patriarch subscribed to the creed. Rome showed little concern for

the realization of the union in practical terms. A copy of the creed

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written in Syriac in Abdisho’s own hand is preserved at the Vatican.

The pope asked the Catholic bishop of Nachitjewan to support the

work of Patriarch Abdisho, who lived in Seert. He was to introduce

the resolutions of the Council of Trent into the Orient, though noth-

ing came of this. The people did not want Rome to control the life

of their church, and they cared little whether the catholicos was

recognized by the pope or not. In 1565 the pope granted the Chal-

deans the retention of their traditional rites and customs. After the

death of Abdisho IV and following an extended period of confu-

sion, the bishop of Jezireh was elected as his successor; he took the

name Yahballaha IV (1577–80). His successor Shimun IX Dinkha

revived the system of a hereditary partiarchate for the Uniate Chal-

dean Church, and in 1581 he received his confirmation from Rome.

To escape the oppressive measures of the Turks, he moved the seat

of his rule to Salmas on Lake Urmiyah (Persia). Consequently, the

Christians in the Ottoman empire no longer had contact with him,

leading to the establishment of another patriarchate in Ottoman

territory in Diyarbikar. Patriarch Shimun XIII Dinkha moved the

patriarchal seat to Kotchannes and dissolved the union. The first

union of the Chaldeans with Rome lasted from 1551 until 1672.

When in 1503 Catholicos Elias V consecrated three bishops for

Christians in India, he conferred upon Mar Yahballaha the title

“Metropolitan of India and China.” The initially good relationship

of the East Syriac Christians to the Portuguese had gradually

deteriorated, and the Portuguese sought to hinder the arrival of the

new bishops from Mesopotamia. Bishop Mar Dinkha had to flee

inland in 1534. In 1558 the Latin diocese of Goa was elevated to an

archdiocese. At this time, basing his claim on a papal bull, John

(Yuhannan) Sulaqa extended his jurisdiction over India. The East

Syriac catholicos Shimun VIII Dinkha finally opposed this action,

consecrated Mar Abraham bishop in 1557, and sent him to India.

The influence of the catholicos was still in force, though there were

in India at this time East Syrian, Chaldean, and Latin hierarchies

operating in parallel. Since the colonial power Portugal had spon-

sored first the Latin and then the Chaldean church, the direction of

development during this time was clear. After the Chaldean bishop

Mar Joseph was handed over to the Inquisition, Patriarch Abdisho

IV named a new metropolitan, who tried to come to an arrange-

ment with Rome. He was, however, recalled by the pope. Regarding

this matter, the archbishop of Goa declared that in the future the

Thomas Christians would come under the authority not of the

patriarch of the “Chaldeans” but rather of the king of Portugal. It is

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difficult to say whether this political decree took effect at the grass-

roots. A prayer book written in 1562 in Angamaly – the seat of an

East Syriac archdiocese – indicates that the East Syriac liturgy was

still in use there. In 1585/6 the Jesuit F. Roz, who knew Malayalam

and Syriac, examined several liturgical books and determined that

the “heterodoxies” of Nestorius, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore

of Mopsuestia could be found within. A 1585 synod tried to cut off

the Thomas Christians’ contact with the Chaldeans.

In 1599, in order to avoid a schism, the so-called Synod of Djam-

per was held under the leadership of Archbishop Menezes of Goa.

There the decrees of the Council of Trent were declared binding, the

Roman calendar introduced, and the liturgy revised on the Roman

model. Nestorius was condemned as a heretic, and allegedly Hindu

customs were forbidden. Under duress, 150 priests and 660 laymen

signed decrees stating that the Church of the East in India should be

entirely subjected to Roman central authority. The Portuguese

gathered the manuscripts of the Thomas Christians and systematic-

ally burned them. Thus the Syriac medieval Christian literature of

India was almost completely lost. A notable exception is MS 64

from the library of the metropolitan of Trichur in Kerala, which

contains the Nomocanon of Abdisho bar Brika from 1290, that is,

from within the lifetime of its writer. This is therefore the earliest

known East Syriac manuscript from India.

The Thomas Christians became a filial church of the Latin

church, and their connection to the catholicos was severed. 1599 is

portrayed as the darkest year of Indian church history. It is never-

theless typical that the Jesuit F. Roz, who eventually became the

Latin hierarch of the Thomas Christians from 1599 to 1624,

reached the conclusion: “These Christians are certainly the earliest

in this part of the Orient. . . . Although they have lived under hea-

thens, Jews, and Muhammadans, they have remained steadfast in

their faith to this day.”

After some fifty years of forced union, the priest Thomas Pala-

komatta took action against the union. He turned first to the East

Syriac catholicos, then also to the Coptic and Jacobite (Syrian

Orthodox) patriarchs, to obtain a bishop independent of Rome.

The East Syriac catholicos sent a Mar Ahatallah as bishop to India,

but he fell into the hands of the Portuguese, was handed over to the

Inquisition, and ended up on a pyre in Goa. Subsequently there

developed in Cochin in 1653 the “oath on the Coonan Cross”

against Roman jurisdiction in India. The Thomas Christians split:

twelve priests elected Thomas Palakomatta metropolitan. Out of

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about 200,000 Thomas Christians, a mere 400 remained with

Rome. The majority established contact with the West Syriac

church in Antioch and the Syriac Orthodox patriarch in Mardin.

The conquest of Cochin and Quilon by the Dutch (1661) made the

break from Portugal and Rome easier. In 1665 the West Syriac

bishop Mar Gregorius traveled to India and consecrated the leader

of the uprising Mar Thomas I († 1670) as head of the Thomas

Christians who had revolted against the Portuguese, thus establish-

ing the jurisdictional connection to Antioch.

One segment of the opposition also turned to the catholicos of the

East. In 1720 one Mar Thomas tried to established contact with the

Church of the East, which was finally achieved with Dutch support

in 1730. However, reestablishment of the Church of the East in

India did not occur until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1874

the catholicos sent Bishop Mar Elias Mellos to India to assert his

jurisdiction in India. Mar Elias remained there from 1874 until

1882. Under the leadership of Antonius Thondanatta a group of

about fifty families in Trichur rebelled against the authority of

Rome. They represented the kernel of the “new” Church of the

East, which developed in the modern state of Kerala. Antonius was

consecrated bishop by the East Syriac patriarch and took the name

Mar Abdisho; his successor was Bishop Mar Timotheos from

Kurdistan.

The “Mountain Nestorian” Catholicate and further

unions with Rome

Little is known of the catholicoi of the Church of the East from the

sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Of those recorded in the lists

of names, not even the dates in office are known for some. Follow-

ing Elias V was Shimun VI (1504–38), who lived and was buried in

Rabban Hormizd. His successors were Shimun VII Ishuyau bar

Mama (1538–51), Shimun VIII Dinkha (1551–8), Elias VI bar

Giwargis (1558–91), and Elias VII (1591–1617). Cardinal Tisserant

and Jean-Maurice Fiey postulate that there were two catholicoi of

the same name in the time of Elias VI. Nevertheless, as the most

recent research of Helene Murre-van den Berg demonstrates, the

grave inscriptions preserved in Rabban Hormizd clearly show that

Elias, who died on May 26, 1591, had governed for thirty-two

years. On the whole, however, these are rough dates.

Around 1551 the East Syriac community in Tabriz disappeared,

as Baghdad’s did in 1553, and even that of its early center Nisibis in

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1556. In Jerusalem, where there had been an East Syriac bishop

since 1065, the office remained occupied until 1616. In the six-

teenth century, possession of the monastery of Mar Augen in Tur

Abdin was transferred to the West Syriac church. The Church of the

East dwindled to a region bounded by Lake Van, Lake Urmiyah,

and Mosul. For centuries the East Syrians led secluded lives among

the Kurds, Persians, and Turks. During this time the Church of the

East also lost the theological competence it had possessed for cen-

turies, and the catholicos became a tribal prince, who exercised

secular as well as spiritual jurisdiction. Often appointed while still a

child, he stood under the influence of his mother and sisters, and

decisions regarding the naming of bishops were also made in famil-

ial clans. However, during this period the first modern Syriac folk

literature developed. In the early seventeenth century, the priest

Jausip († 1666) composed a poem in 112 stanzas about the Last

Judgment, remorse, repentance, the life of Christ, etc. One Israel of

Alqos († 1632) and Bishop Mar John of Mawana ( c.1662)

belong among the earliest representatives of the modern Assyrian

literature, which has continued to exist into the present day.

While the Chaldean patriarchs no longer sent their creeds to the

pope after 1670 and paid little attention in practice to the union

with Rome, the catholicoi of the East grew closer to the pope. The

catholicos of the East himself now took up the idea of union. In

1606 two messengers of Catholicos Elias VII appeared in Rome to

prepare for union. In 1607 Catholicos Elias VII sent the pope a

profession of faith, which was accepted. With this the formal

church union was concluded between the catholicos of the East and

the papacy for the first time. The “old” line of catholicoi became the

“uniate” church, while the uniate line of Sulaqa in Urmiyah fell

away from Rome.

In September 1610 the archimandrite Rabban Adam traveled to

Rome to present Pope Paul V with a statement of faith. The pope

gave this to his secretary, who, with the Holy Office, spent three

years examining the theological views of the Church of the East. In

the spring of 1614 the pope gave Rabban Adam a letter and gifts for

Catholicos Elias VII to take with him; two Jesuits were to prepare

for the conclusion of the union. The catholicos assembled his

bishops for a synod in March 1616, and the pope was given an

official document on the establishment of union. However, the East

Syriac prelates protested against the oppressive measures of the Por-

tuguese in India and turned to the pope for assistance. The two

Jesuits returned to Rome and declared the statements of the synod

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insufficient. On June 29, 1617, the pope then asked the Church of

the East to adopt a creed. When the papal envoy arrived at Rabban

Hormizd in 1617, Catholicos Elias VII had already died. The uniate

patriarch Shimun X, who resided in the monastery of Mar Yuhan-

nan in Salmas near Kotchannes, also participated in the synod of

union. The 1629 travelogue of the Minorites Francesco Quares-

mino and Tommaso of Milan noted with regard to these events that

the new catholicos, Elias VIII (1617–60), distanced himself from

the politics of his predecessor and returned to “Nestorianism.” He

was in contact with Rome in 1619, 1629, 1638, and 1653, yet

established no union. He, too, was buried in Rabban Hormizd.

The Chaldean patriarch of the Sulaqa line, Shimun XIII Dinkha

(1662–1700), who had been united with Rome, dissolved that

union in 1672 and founded a new “mountain Nestorian” patri-

archate at the monastery of Kotchannes, which lay west of Lake

Urmiyah in the region of Hakkari in Kurdistan. Thus while the

former “Chaldean” patriarchate ceased to exist in Mosul, it lived

on in the “mountain Nestorian” patriarchate in Kurdistan. Shimun

XIII Dinkha lived first in Khosrowa and beginning in 1672 in

Kotchannes. After his move, he had no further contact with Rome.

The East Syriac catholicate of today is the legal successor of the

initially uniate patriarchate of the Sulaqa line! There are accord-

Figure 4.1 Monastery Rabban Hormizd near Mosul (Iraq). Photo: cour-

tesy of Initiative Christian Orient, Austria.

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ingly two East Syriac patriarchates: one at Alqosh, that is, Rabban

Hormizd, and the formerly Chaldean in Kotchannes.

Rome succeeded, nevertheless, in winning back a part of the

“Chaldeans.” New negotiations for union soon took place between

Rome and the catholicos. After the death of Elias VIII of Rabban

Hormizd, his nephew Yuhannan Maraugin succeeded him; as

catholicos he took the name Elias IX (1660–1700). In 1668 he

established contact with Rome, and on November 22, 1669, he

wrote to Pope Clement IX expressing his desire to set up a school

for priests in Rome. Despite much negotiation, however, union was

never established. The successors of Elias IX in Rabban Hormizd

were Elias X Maraugin (1700–22) and Elias XI Dinkha (1722–78).

After the monastery of Rabban Hormizd was destroyed by the

troops of the Nadir shah in 1743 – it was not rebuilt until 1808 –

Elias XI Dinkha resided in Alqosh.

In the seventeenth century a third hierarchy was established. In

1667/8 Metropolitan Joseph of Diyarbakir renounced “Nestorian-

ism” before two Capuchins and pledged union with Rome. At the

end of 1673 he traveled to Rome and then returned to Diyarbakir;

he received the pallium from the pope in 1681. In this way a second

Chaldean patriarchate was founded in Diyarbakir in 1681 (1681–

1828). Besides this, there were the two (non-uniate) patriarchates of

Alqosh and Kotchannes. Before 1655, 40,000 Persian East Syriac

families had become Catholic. The first patriarch was Joseph I

(1681–96), who was appointed by Pope Innocent XI. His successor,

Joseph II Sliba Beth Marcuf (1696–1712), also stands out as an

author in both Syriac and Arabic, and he translated several Catholic

writings into these languages.

As a rule, the Chaldean patriarchs of Diyarbakir took the name

Joseph, while the “mountain Nestorian” patriarchs of Kotchannes

favored the name Shimun (Simon), to emphasize their succession to

Peter, who had written his first letter (1 Peter) from Babylon.

In 1711 the Chaldean patriarch Joseph II announced to the Vati-

can the success of his efforts and was praised by the pope. Pope

Clement XI lauded Patriarch Joseph III for his steadfastness in the

face of persecution. He and his successor Pope Innocent XIII

(1721–4) directed the scholar Augustin Scandar to bring to Rome

East Syriac manuscripts from the region around Mosul. Among the

manuscripts acquired by Scandar was Cod. Vat. Syr. 204 with texts

from India dating from the time of the Portuguese arrival. The

Maronite Orientalist Joseph Simon Assemani (1687–1768) became

one of the most important patrons of Syriac literature in Rome; the

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third volume of his great work Bibliotheca Orientalis (Rome 1728)

included the first systematic presentation of East Syriac literature. In

the first section of the third volume the invaluable book catalog of

Abdisho bar Brika was reproduced in full, offering an impression of

the richness of East Syriac literature.

At the end of the eighteenth century, beside the catholicate of

Alqosh stood the “mountain Nestorian” patriarchate of Kotchan-

nes under Shimun XVI Yuhannan (1780–1820) and the “Chal-

dean” patriarchate of Diyarbakir under the administrator Joseph V

(1781–1828). Patriarch Shimun appealed, because of the persecu-

tions, to the king of East Georgia, Irakli II (1762–98). Since that

time many East Syriac Christians came to the land in the Caucasus.

In the years 1925 to 1938 the Syrian journal Kokva d-Madinkha

( Star of the East) was published there, and even Assyrian schools

existed in Georgia. Today there are about 9,000 Assyrians (East

Syrians) living in the country.

Elias XI Dinkha of Alqosh (Rabban Hormizd) reestablished con-

tact with Rome in 1751 and in 1772 began negotiations regarding a

new union, as the “mountain Nestorian” patriarch Shimun XV

Michael Muktes (1740–80) of Kotchannes had before him. Thus, in

1772 the catholicate and the two patriarchates – the “mountain

Nestorian” and that of Diyarbakir – stood together in union with

Rome! The union with the “mountain Nestorians” rapidly disinte-

grated after a few years. Catholicos Elias XI of Alqosh died in 1778

in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd. Following his death, his

nephews John Hormez and Ishoyahb – who had with his uncle

concluded the union with Rome – battled for the catholicate. On

April 30, 1778, John Hormez submitted himself to the pope. The

pope, however, recognized his cousin Ishoyahb, who governed as

Elias XII (1778–1804). Like his predecessors, he presented a profes-

sion of faith to Rome; in the end, however, union was not estab-

lished. John Hormez was acknowledged by the pope as archbishop

of Mosul; five bishops and the greater part of the East Syrians of

Mosul followed him. The approval of Rome became an asset in

questions of succession; it had no theological significance.

In May 1779, soon after he was recognized by the pope, Catholi-

cos Elias XII of Alqosh dissolved the ties to Rome and reestablished

the catholicate of the Church of the East in Alqosh, though it came

to an end with his death in 1804. Also in 1781, the (uniate) Chal-

dean patriarch Joseph IV of Diyarbakir, to whom Clement XIII had

sent the pallium in 1760, abdicated. He died in 1791. Now Rome

had a free hand to set up a single uniate patriarch opposed to the

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Figure 4.2 Former church of the Catholicos in Kotchannes in the mountains

of Hakkari. Photos: courtesy of Helga Anschütz, Germany.

W I L H E L M B A U M

catholicate of the East. However, two candidates portrayed them-

selves as the new “Chaldean” patriarch: in Diyarbakir the nephew

of the last patriarch, Augustin Hindi, as Joseph V (1781–1828), and

in Mosul John VIII Hormez, nephew of Elias XI of Alqosh. Now

there were two uniate and two non-uniate patriarchates! In 1818

Pius VII relieved John Hormez of his title as archbishop of Mosul

and administrator of the patriarchate. Joseph V of Diyarbakir, the

administrator of the patriarchate, was appointed by the pope apos-

tolic delegate for the entire “Chaldean patriarchate of Babylon.”

The venerable monastery of Rabban Hormizd was revitalized by

Gabriel Dqanbo; the monks recognized the Chaldean patriarch

Joseph V as their head.

In 1830 Rome succeeded in normalizing relations with the

(uniate) Chaldeans. After thorough investigation, John VIII

Hormez (1830–8) was acknowledged by Rome as “Babylonian

patriarch of the Chaldeans” with his seat in Baghdad. He wrote an

autobiography in Syriac, which was published by the Anglican mis-

sionary George Percy Badger in 1853. John VIII had to follow the

pope’s order that he not consecrate any relatives as bishops. This

was part of an effort to impede in any way possible the hereditary

transmission of the patriarchate. In 1838, before the death of John

VIII, Rome named an administrator: Joseph VI Audo (1848–78),

who was confirmed by Pius IX. From then on, Baghdad stood as the

Chaldean patriarch united with Rome, while the patriarchate of

Diyarbakir was abolished and ceased to exist in 1804. Now only

two leaders remained: the “Nestorian” catholicos of Kotchannes

and the uniate Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad.

In 1869 the pope decided that in the future the Chaldean bishops’

synods should elect the patriarch. However, the nephew of John

VIII Hormez, Elias, had declared himself opposed to the abolition

of the system of hereditary succession to the patriarch and termin-

ated the union with Rome in mid-1831 in order to have himself

consecrated metropolitan of Urmiyah by the “mountain Nestorian”

patriarch Shimun XVII Abraham of Kotchannes (1820–1860). A

synod of East Syriac bishops elected Elias (XIV) catholicos of the

East in 1831, and he established his seat in Alqosh. He attempted to

obtain the recognition of the “Nestorians” on Lake Urmiyah,

though with little significant success; most Persian Christians

remained loyal to the “mountain Nestorian” patriarch of

Kotchannes.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of

“mountain Nestorians” lived in the Hakkari region at an elevation

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Figure 4.3 Catholicos Shimun XVII Abraham (1820–60), lithograph

(1852). From George Percy Badger, The Nestorians and their

Rituals, vol. II, London, 1987.

of some 4,000 meters in the region of today’s borders of Turkey,

Iran, and Iraq. Under the jurisdiction of the catholicos were about

twenty bishops in the Ottoman empire and Persia, of whom three or

four had the status of metropolitan. In Persia the Syriac Christians

lived under the rule of the Muslim Kurdish aga. Initially Kurds and

“mountain Nestorians” (Assyrians), who divided themselves in the

villages into tribes under the leadership of a “malik” (head of the

tribe), lived together in relative peace. However, the exertion of

European influence in favor of the Christians and against the

Muslims destroyed this equilibrium.

Russian and Western missionary activity in the

nineteenth century

The start of the eighteenth century brought the renewed discovery

of the “Nestorians” in the West. In his 1684 historical account of

the peoples of the Orient, the French biblical critic Richard Simon

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discussed the “Chaldeans,” whom he designated “Nestorians.” In

the eighteenth century, the rediscovery of the “Nestorians” in the

West began with the aforementioned Bibliotheca Orientalis of

Assemani. In 1776/7 August Friedrich Pfeiffer published excerpts

from this work in German. In the fourth section of his Thoughts on

the Philosophy of the History of Mankind ( Ideen zur Philosophie

der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1791), the German philosopher

Johann Gottfried Herder wrote of the Nestorians, with reference to

Pfeiffer, and noted, “A separate history of the Christian Orient,

particularly of Nestorianism in its context, remains but a wish.” He

also mentioned Prester John and the translation of Christian litera-

ture into Persian. Nevertheless, he found in the Christian Syriac

literature “no spark of that poetic gift which blazes from the soul

and warms the heart; it is a wretched affectation. Their poetry con-

sists in writing in verse form lists of names, sermons, and chronicles.

They brought the riches of invention to none of the sciences they

pursued.”

In 1820, following a visit to Mosul, Claude James Rich, an

employee of the East India Company, made Britons and Americans

aware of the fate of Syriac-speaking Christians. Their use of the

“language of Jesus” inspired great sympathy in the West. In 1825

the priest Joseph Wolf brought back to England and had published

the manuscript of a Syriac Bible from Kurdistan. He, too, informed

the general public about the situation of the Syriac Christians. Two

thousand copies of the Gospel in the East Syriac language were

printed in 1829. It is unclear if a copy ever reached the Church of

the East.

The Austrian Anna Hafner Forneris, a native of Carinthia who

traveled from Tifliz to Tabriz in 1830 and visited Urmiyah in 1840,

has provided us in her 1849 account of her journeys with an impres-

sive portrait of the life of the so-called “Nestorians,” who had lost

their scholarly institutions centuries earlier:

Regarding another sect: among the Nestorians, baptism is

administered only twice a year, and if a child dies without

having been baptized, they believe that if the father and

mother are Christian, this quality was passed on to the

child. They receive communion in both kinds, and this

communion is in fact remarkable. The priest has a pile of

thin wafers in the corner of a large cloth, which is draped

over his head and covers his upper body. The communi-

cants press forward anxiously, for each wants to be the first

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to receive. One calls out, “I must go out to the fields,”

another, “I to the mountains,” the third, “I have workmen

in the house,” and so on. After receiving his share, each

goes to a tub filled with wine and, using the ladle hanging

there, takes from this a generous sip. Once all have had

their fill, the priest, along with the elder of the village, turns

his attention to the wine remaining in the tub, and they

imbibe so much, until both shepherd and flock are entirely

besotted, that they tumble from their seats and usually

sleep off their inebriation in pleasant harmony on the

church floor.

The Austrian also described the baking of the hosts and a curious

custom which followed the death of a Christian, in which the priest,

with regard to the Son, takes over the role of judge of the world.

Accounts such as this make clear the situation of the “mountain

Nestorians” before the advent of the Anglo-American mission.

In 1831 the Americans Eli Smith and H. G. O. Dwight entered the

region of the Persian Christians in Azerbaijan; in 1833 they pub-

lished their researches in Boston. They reported that none of the

Christians possessed a Bible in classical Syriac. In 1834 Justin Per-

kins – the first American missionary to the Church of the East –

arrived in Urmiyah as leader of a missionary outpost and remained

there for thirty-six years; his book, A Residence of Eight Years in

Persia, Among the Nestorians with Notices of the Muhammedans,

appeared in New York in 1843. Through the missionary efforts of

Perkins, there gradually developed an “Assyrian Evangelical

Church with certain Nestorian characteristics” (Latourette). In

1835 Dr Asahel Grant traveled to Urmiyah. Six years later he pub-

lished the book The Assyrians or The Lost Tribes in New York, in

which he asserted the romantic thesis that the Assyrians were the

descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, a thesis which caused a

sensation among his contemporaries.

Around this time, the Kurds began to persecute the Christians,

actions against which the European consuls protested at the High

Gate. The protests of the Europeans led in 1830 to the Turks’

requesting that Governor Rashid Pascha work to restore peace,

which he accomplished in 1834.

The next great Christian power to show interest in the East Syr-

ians was the empire of the tsars, which sought to extend its influence

in the region of Lake Urmiyah. The “mountain Nestorians” waited

in vain for the mighty tsar who was to liberate them. In 1827 groups

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of East Syriac Christians moved over the border into Russia because

they anticipated support from the tsar against the Muslims, and in

1828 the Russians occupied Urmiyah and a part of Azerbaijan.

With the peace treaty, the Russians withdrew from Urmiyah, and

the border between Iran and Azerbaijan (then Russia) was estab-

lished in its present location. Some of the Assyrians recognized the

Russian church as their head; as further aid failed to materialize,

they returned to the faith of their fathers.

The Anglican and Presbyterian Smith and Davies, who traveled

to Urmiyah in 1830, were impressed by the aversion to the pope, the

cross without corpus, and the unadorned churches of the Assyrians,

whose veneration of the Virgin Mary reminded them of their own.

In the Romantic era, they saw in the “mountain Nestorians” the

authentic “ancient” Protestants. They were not particularly con-

cerned with the splitting up of the church, nor with proselytism;

they sought to help them by building schools and social facilities. In

1836 American Protestants succeeded in persuading the East Syriac

Christians to write not only in the ancient classical Syriac script but

also in the “Modern Syriac” dialect. In 1840 the first printing press

was put into operation and used to print a Syriac edition of the

Psalter. Following the first published work in Modern Syriac, an

edition of the New Testament appeared in 1846 and of the Old

Testament in 1852. In 1849 the monthly magazine Zahire d-Bahra

( Rays of Light) began publication, which continued until 1915. In

these ways a Modern Assyrian literature was successfully created.

The systematic study of the situation of the Church of the East

began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. After 1825

the Basel missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander worked in Mesopota-

mia; he gave the catholicos books in Syriac and Persian. German

Protestants also showed an interest in the Church of the East. In

1875 the northern German Protestant institute opened a missionary

post in Urmiyah, which operated until 1939. In 1840 the English

geologist William Ainsworth traveled with the Chaldean Christian

Isa Rassam by order of the British Geographical Society and the

Society for Christian Knowledge to the Hakkari region, where

Catholicos Shimun explained his fears about the Roman missionary

efforts. In 1842 he published his book Travels and Researches in

Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armeni in London with the

support of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

American Presbyterians began missionary work in the region of

Lake Urmiyah around 1830. George Percy Badger, an Anglican

theologian and printer, lived in Beirut in 1835/6 and, with the

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support of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London,

began to work on behalf of East Syriac Christians at the end of

1842. In March 1843 he asked the English ambassador to the High

Gate to work to persuade the rulers to recognize the catholicos as

head of the civil government in Hakkari. Shortly thereafter, in July

1843, massacres instigated by the Kurdish leader Bedr Khan began,

resulting in many thousands of East Syriac casualties. Bedr Khan

used the tensions between Egypt and Turkey since 1840 to establish

a free Kurdish state. The Kurds opposed the Ottoman central

authority and sought to subjugate the Christians, in order to estab-

lish a national state. Only in 1847, upon the deposition of Badr

Khan, did the situation settle down. In 1847 the catholicos, accom-

panied by Rassam and Badger, fled to Mosul and sought refuge in

the English consulate, and afterwards to Urmia in Persia. The Brit-

ish and Russians then began to interfere with the internal relations

of the Ottoman empire. The number of members of the Church of

the East at this time is thought to have been between 100,000 and

150,000. In 1892, in La Turquie d’Asie, the French scholar Cuinet

estimated there were 10,000 in Persia and 90,000 in Turkey; of

these, 40,000 lived in cities and 50,000 among the tribes of the

mountains.

In his two-volume work The Nestorians and their Rituals (1852),

Badger noted that at the time of his visit, the East Syrians possessed

hardly any manuscripts besides those of their religious rituals. In

1832 the Kurds under Muhammad Pascha had reduced the monas-

tery of Rabban Hormizd to ashes. The church was ruined, the

monks massacred, and every book they could find destroyed. By

Badger’s time the Chaldeans possessed only manuscripts, and the

patriarchate in Mosul had about fifty. Badger heard that the Chal-

dean bishop of Seert still had a few books; there were also thought

to be small collections in Baghdad and Mardin. He himself was able

to obtain for the Society of Christian Knowledge over one hundred

manuscripts, among them a New Testament from the tenth century.

Badger made it clear to the catholicos that the Anglican Church was

not interested in missionary activity but rather in offering help.

The involvement of the English government at the High Gate

brought the massacres to an end. So in 1847/9 Catholicos Shimun

XVII Abraham stayed in Urmiyah, where the French had been

involved in missionary work since 1838. In 1845 the English

and Russians succeeded in appointing a “sarparast” in Persia,

who was to look after the interests of the Christians. However,

political instructions from the capital often came to naught in the

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countryside, where feudal lords paid them no heed. In 1863 the

British secretary of state Lord Russell cautioned Teheran against the

consequences of a policy of oppression. Shah Nasruddin contrib-

uted toward the construction of a church in 1865. Christians did

not enjoy legal equality in Persia; the witness of a Christian against

a Muslim was not accepted by the courts. In 1881 the British

ambassador to Teheran brought about a change in policy. In future,

Christians would be permitted to stay anywhere in the region of

Urmiyah; disputes with Muslims would in future be handled in the

civil courts. In the same year the British consul in Tabriz reported

to London that Christians in Azerbaijan had in the meantime

received schooling and were learning English. Nevertheless, the

complaints did not cease; many Christians longed for a Russian

protectorate. Beginning in 1883 the American ambassador to Per-

sia also supported the cause of the Christians. An evangelical

Nestorian church also emerged in Persia and received a civilian

spokesman in 1880.

In 1856, during the Crimean War, the British learned that in the

so-called “Hatt-i Humayun Decree” the old Ottoman millet system

had been reestablished. In 1863 the Syriac Christians for the first

time turned directly to Queen Victoria of England for help; in 1868

they appealed to the archbishop of Canterbury. In this impressive

document, signed by fifty-three bishops, priests, and maleks, the

East Syrians protested their 700-year imprisonment, during which

the Christians of the West had forgotten them. Rome was portrayed

with the papacy as the “Muhammad of the West”; as for what they

could expect from America, one should look to the fact that after

thirty-five years of missionary activity, not one of the “converted”

was in a position to read the biblical writings and offer commen-

tary. Although the catholicos had turned to the brother of the tsar

for assistance on April 14, 1868, the leaders of the Assyrians placed

their greatest hopes on England. The consequence was the founding

of the Assyrian Christian Aid Fund. In England the term “Nesto-

rian” was from then on replaced by “Assyrian.”

In this fashion a new self-consciousness gradually emerged in the

Church of the East, whose members believed themselves to be the

oldest autochthonous community in the region. The English church

determined to support the Assyrians against their oppressors and to

enable the publication of religious writings and the education of

clergy. In 1876 an English commission led by Edward L. Cutts

traveled to Kotchannes and afterwards to the Persian Urmiyah,

where the situation of the Assyrians appeared to be even worse than

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in Turkey. Cutts published his impressions in the book Christians

under the Crescent in Asia. The archbishop of Canterbury also sent

Rudolf Wahl, an Austrian converted from Judaism, as a missionary

to the Assyrians. The English ambassador Henry Layard, however,

warned against too great an involvement, as this would only lead to

further persecutions. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury wrote person-

ally to the catholicos and warned him of cooperating too closely

with the English church. In 1878, at the time of the Berlin congress,

England entered into a treaty with Turkey to establish a protector-

ate governing Cyprus. As a consequence, England considered itself

the guardian of the Christians in Kurdistan. The new archbishop,

Edward White Benson, continued the Anglican Church’s support of

the Assyrians. Arthur John Maclean and William Henry Browne

journeyed to Kotchannes in 1886 and met with Catholicos Shimun

XVIII Ruben (1861–1903). Although the local authorities mounted

opposition in Persia, the delegation was able to carry out its activ-

ities in Urmiyah, as well. Subsequently an education system was

established among the Assyrians. Despite several diplomatic inter-

ventions by England, the Persian authorities sought to thwart this

development. For twenty-three years Browne remained at the side

of the catholicos in Kotchannes. Conflicts also developed with

Catholic missionaries. Catholicos Shimun XVIII had greater sym-

pathy for the Catholics than had his uncle and predecessor. In 1865

the Dominican prior Lion of Mosul visited him in Kotchannes.

In 1869 Shimun XVIII, like the non-uniate Oriental patriarch,

was invited by the Dominican Vincent Lemée to attend the Vatican

Council as an observer. However, the catholicos did not go to

Rome.

In 1884 in the journal Année dominicaine, the Dominican Bon-

voisin reported that sentiment among the East Syrians in favor of

union with Rome was increasing. This was, however, mostly wish-

ful thinking. In 1886 Bonvoisin visited the patriarch in Kotchannes.

Catholics and Anglicans each tried to win the catholicos over to

their side. In 1891 he turned to the pope, through the Dominicans,

with the request for help in building schools and seminaries. Thus

the rumor emerged in 1892 that the catholicos was negotiating with

the Chaldean patriarch Elias XIII Abolyonan regarding recognition

of the pope. Figaro reported that the catholicos had arranged with

the pope that after his death no successor would be elected, rather

the office would be given to Elias. The English theologian F. G.

Coan tried to persuade the catholicos to hold fast to those doctrines

the Church of the East had preserved during the persecutions. The

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catholicos rejected the accusation of defection to the side of the

pope. In 1894 the new Chaldean patriarch Abdisho V Khayyat sent

the catholicos a papal document of November 30, 1894, in which

the pope allowed the Oriental churches use of the non-Roman lit-

urgy and attacked the Protestants. In Persia, Catholic Vincentian

Fathers continued their labors in Salmas and Khosrowa, which was

also called the “Persian Rome.”

Interest in Syriac Christians was also stirring in Germany. The

Orientalist Eduard Sachau visited Syria in 1879/80; he journeyed

through Edessa and Mosul to Jezireh, Mardin, and Diyarbakir. He

carried 250 manuscripts and 50 publications of the missionaries

from Urmiyah back to Berlin; the Sachau Collection in the Berlin

library was constantly expanded and included manuscripts from the

sixth century on. In contained one of the oldest Syriac biblical

manuscripts but also chronicles and literary works of the East Syr-

ians (e.g. poems of Narsai). Sachau also encouraged the East Syr-

ians to write in their vernacular, Fellihi. In the second half of the

nineteenth century, Protestant missionary societies also worked

among the “Nestorians.” Interest in the East Syriac church has

remained especially strong among the Protestant Christians of

Germany since this time. The East Syriac priest John Pera, born in

Urmiyah in 1850, studied at Hermannsburg from 1875 to 1880; he

became the “father of Lutheran Nestorians.” His son Luther Pera

likewise studied at Hermannsburg, then worked until 1915 in

Urmiyah and later in Germany. The catholicos sent Bishop Abime-

lek Timothy, who went to India in 1908, to Urmiyah to counteract

the missionary efforts of the Protestants. In March 1913, Nadolny,

counsel to the German legation, who had been sent to Urmiyah,

intervened on behalf of the interests of the “Lutheran Nestorians”

and the German Empire.

Interest in the “Nestorians” in Germany was also reflected in the

popular novels of Karl May. Particularly in the book Durch das

wilde Kurdistan ( Through Wild Kurdistan), which even included

the letter of Prester John, the author offers a kind of standard char-

acterization of the Church of the East, which shaped the image of

the church for the general public:

In the valleys, which lie between them, live the last of those

Christian sectarians, to whom this Tartar king belonged. At

his time, they were powerful and influential; the seats of

their metropolitans lay scattered across the whole Asian

continent, from the coast of the Caspian Sea to the Chinese

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seas and from the farthest northern boundary of Scythia

to the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. They were

counselors to Muhammad and his successors. The Chris-

tian echoes in the Qur’an were taken mostly from their

doctrines and books. But with the fall of the caliphs,

their power, too, came to an end, and with great speed; for

their inner spiritual constitution lacked that divine purity

which provides the strength for unconquerable resistance.

Already under the rule of Ghazan, a son of Argun and a

grandson of the renowned conqueror of Baghdad Hulagu

Khan, the persecutions against them had begun. Then the

great Tamerlane descended mercilessly upon them. With

insatiable fury he persecuted them, destroyed their

churches, and murdered with the sword all those who

failed to escape to the remote mountains of Kurdistan. The

great-grandchildren of these refugees live today in towns

resembling fortresses. They, the remnants of the once so

powerful Assyrian people, see the sword of the Turks and

the dagger of the Kurds hanging forever over them and

have endured in more recent times atrocities which would

make your hair stand on end. A great part of the guilt for

this belongs to those overseas missionaries, who gave their

schools and temples the appearance of fortifications, thus

arousing the mistrust of the powerful. Through these and

other thoughtless actions they harmed their cause as well as

their supporters.

Karl May used reports he had read in a number of different news-

papers. He also stated that the Nestorians “were made to suffer

great oppression . . . such that after a short time resentment began

to fester and it seemed they might arise and exact revenge.” In this

regard, the Kurds boasted that the “Giaurs” were happy as long as

they were left in peace. Through the novels of Karl May many

people, especially in German-speaking regions, learned the fate of

the “Nestorians,” of whom they were previously unaware. The

hero had to pray the Lord’s Prayer in order to be recognized as a

Christian. The creed was also quoted. He had a woman describe the

massacre by the Kurd Bedr Khan:

They descended on us from all sides, these Kurdish mon-

sters. They destroyed our homes, burned our gardens,

ruined our harvest, desecrated our churches, murdered our

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men, young and old, tore to pieces our boys and girls, and

hounded our women until they fell down dead, menaced by

the monsters even as they breathed their last. The water of

the Zab ran red with the blood of the innocent victims, and

the peaks and valleys of the land were lit by the fires which

consumed our towns and villages. A single, terrible cry

sounded through the whole land. It was the death cry of

many thousands of Christians. The pasha of Mosul heard

this cry but sent no help, for he wanted to share the spoils

with the thieves.

Karl May offered a picture similar to that of Franz Werfel in his

novel of the Armenian massacre, Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh

( The Forty Days of the Musa Dagh). The crime on a bridge was

concretely portrayed:

Our young women were dragged over this bridge, to be

carried off to Tkohma and Baz; they chose, however, to

jump into the water, preferring death to this fate. Not one

remained. Do you see the mountain to the right, with the

stone wall? The people of Lizan escaped to that mountain,

believing they could not be captured from below. But they

had only a little food and water. To avoid starvation, they

had to surrender to Beder Khan Bey. He promised them

with his holiest oath their freedom and their lives; they had

only to hand over their weapons. This they did; but he

broke his promise and had them murdered with sabres and

knives. And when the arms of the Kurds began to ache

from this bloody work, they made it simpler; they threw the

Christians over the nine-hundred-foot-high stone wall: old

men, young men, women, and children. Out of more than a

thousand Chaldani [i.e. Chaldeans/East Syrians] only one

lived to tell what had happened up there.

Through the novels of the popular writer May, generations of

young people learned for the first time of the Turkish-Kurdish geno-

cide carried out on the members of the Church of the East.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Church of the East

got caught in the whirlpool of political interests held by the great

powers Russia, England, and France, who all sought influence over

the “sick man on the Bosporus,” as the Ottoman empire was then

called. The new sultan, Abdulhamit II, allied himself more closely

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with Germany and distanced himself from England, which had

occupied Egypt in 1882. The Kurds were then given by the sultan a

free hand against the Christians.

The Russians pursued their plans for expansion at the end of the

nineteenth century only in the direction of Persia, though without

regard for the Ottoman empire. Nor did they abandon their interest

in the East Syrians. As early as 1851 Bishop Mar Yosip of Ada had

sent an ambassador to Erevan and Tiflis. In 1861 one Michael of

Urmiyah traveled to St Petersburg and requested that Sophoniah, a

member of the holy synod of the Orthodox Church, come to the

Caucasus to study the situation of the Christians. Sophoniah is

thought to have made the trip in 1863, taking with him a petition

for union with Orthodoxy, signed by numerous bishops. In 1882

the Russian general consul in Tabriz reported that several Syrians

and Armenians sought to submit themselves to the Russian gov-

ernment. In 1884 Mar Gabriel in Tiflis negotiated the project of

union. However, the Russian church did not consider the Syrians

trustworthy; they were submitting themselves only to obtain

money. At first they still feared the political complications of

engagement with the Church of the East. The situation changed

when the British lost the tobacco concession in Persia in 1892. Con-

sequently Russian influence in Persia increased. In accordance with

the requests of Mar Yonan and the exarch of Georgia, the holy

synod now began to examine the situation of the Syriac Christians.

Envoys of the Georgian exarch traveled to Tabriz and Urmiyah,

where they were received by Mar Yonan and some eight to ten

thousand people. Of these, however, only three hundred were pre-

pared to enter into a union with Russian Orthodoxy. It was clear

that the realization of union would only be possible if political and

economic aid were to follow. Nevertheless, the Anglicans sought to

preserve the Church of the East. Browne feared the extinction of the

church in a union with Moscow or Rome. The excommunication of

Nestorius and the problem of the Council of Ephesus also appeared

insoluble. The British worked to prevent at least the Christians of

the Ottoman empire and the catholicos from entering a union with

Russia.

In 1898 Mar Yonan traveled with four priests to St Petersburg

and declared himself ready to conclude a union with the Russian

Orthodox Church, in order to obtain the support of the tsar. In

the monastery of Alexander Nevsky Lavra, he was accepted into the

Orthodox Church. At the ceremony, a telegram of greeting from the

tsar was read. Some 20,000 East Syrians converted to the Russian

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Orthodox Church. Village by village, churches were absorbed into

the Orthodox Church and solemnly “absolved” of their “heresy.”

Anyone whose name did not appear in the Russian calendar of

saints had to adopt a new name. Nestorius was condemned as a

heretic, and all were required to recognize the first seven councils.

Bishop Mar Dinkha of Terwaga was among the prelates who did

not participate in this union. He now served as bishop of Urmiyah,

as well, supported by Mar Abimelek Timothy, one of the most

important theologians of the Church of the East.

Mar Abimelek compelled the schools in Urmiyah to replace

Luther’s catechism with Abdisho’s Book of the Pearl. A conflict

developed with the Protestants, who were in part excommunicated

and emphasized their connection to Hermannsburg. With the inva-

sion of the Turks into Urmiyah in 1915, the work of the Lutherans

came to an end for the time being.

The Russians declared they would limit their efforts to Persia and

extended their best wishes to the British for their activities in

the Ottoman empire. The Austrian historian C. F. Lehmann-Haupt

explored the Persian district of Urmiyah in the year 1898. He esti-

mated the number of “Nestorians” there at about 25,000 and those

living in the Ottoman empire at 125,000. While Russia believed

itself to be the protector of the Orthodox in the Ottoman empire,

France saw itself as guardian of the Catholics, and England sup-

ported in particular the Oriental churches. The European colonial

powers France and England, as well as tsarist Russia, used Syriac

Christianity as an instrument in their machtpolitik in the Orient.

The fate of the Church of the East would be decided by this new

form of colonialism. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the

East Syriac Christians had become a plaything in the politics of the

great European powers and their churches.

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5

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Dietmar W. Winkler

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the area settled by the

Apostolic Church of the East had been reduced essentially to the

rough, mountainous land of Hakkari along the present-day border

between Turkey and Iraq. Besides this mountain region, Urmiyah

and Van were the only areas with significant numbers of East Syriac

Christians. The church which had once embraced all of East Syriac

Christianity had, through the unions with Rome and the missions of

the Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Russian Orthodox, as

well as the attacks of the Kurds, become a tribal church, its mem-

bers numbering about 150,000 at the beginning of the century. The

church was made up of more than a dozen Christian tribes, of

which the largest were the Baz, Djilu, Tiari, Tjuma, Diz, and Bar-

war. Western travelers, scholars, and missionaries gave them the

name “Mountain Nestorians,” while they simply called themselves

“Christians” ( mshihaye). In the second half of the nineteenth cen-

tury the missionaries of the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury

introduced the term “Assyrian,” which they eventually adopted to

describe themselves.

The patriarchate, conforming to the social structure of the moun-

tain tribes, had become hereditary and was passed within a family

from uncle to nephew. The offices of bishop and metropolitan were

likewise hereditary and were taken over, in part, by the tribal rulers,

the maliks (kings). Because of this hereditary succession, the epis-

copacy, priesthood, and patriarchate each remained in a closed

group of families. At the start of the twentieth century, the Assyrian

Church had one patriarch, one metropolitan, and seven to ten

bishops.

Since about 1826 the seat of the patriarch had been in Kotchan-

nes, on the right bank of the upper Great Zab. The patriarch was

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both ecclesiastical head and secular leader. After the death of Mar

Ruben Shimun XVIII (1860–1903), his 17-year-old nephew Ben-

jamin Shimun XIX (1903–18) succeeded to the patriarchal throne.

The young ruler, who was still a minor, was supported by the

respected metropolitan Isaac Khnanisho, who had his seat in Nuri.

In 1913 some 100,000 faithful were numbered among those East

Syriac Christians who had established union with Rome and were

called “Chaldeans.” Almost entirely limited to the region of modern

Iraq, they were largely spared the fate of most Assyrians in the

twentieth century. The East Syriac Christians in India – the uniate

Syro-Malabars and the metropolitanate of Trichur, which returned

from these to the Assyrian Church of the East in 1876 – were also

generally undisturbed by the consequences of European politics in

the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century. Nonethe-

less, events during and after World War I brought the Apostolic

Church of the East to the verge of ruin.

World War I

In the decaying Ottoman empire, the idea of the nation-state,

imported from Europe, was not only the ideological argument for

the Young Turk regime, which sought to found a state including all

Turkish peoples, but also the foundation of struggles for autonomy

among the Armenians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Kurds, and Arabs. On

the eve of World War I, the British, French, and Russians delib-

erately used the politics of nationalism to win allies and weaken the

Ottoman empire.

The Young Turks, who at first announced democratic reforms

leading to equality for all peoples represented in the Ottoman

empire, soon feared for their dominant position and championed

instead the idea of a great Turkish empire from Russia to Central

Asia. An agreement for the protection of the Christian millets in the

Anatolian regions was established between Russia and the Young

Turks. However, Russian interests and the politics of their national

government worsened the situation. The Young Turk regime tried

to maintain the cohesion of the empire and finally, with the help of

Kurdish troops, acted against any effort for independence. Already

well-known is the genocide of the Armenians, who were the target

of massacres as early as 1894/6, as well as in 1909, and who even-

tually died by the hundreds of thousands during the deportations

beginning in 1915. The West and East Syriac Christians suffered the

same fate.

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In 1907 an agreement between England and Russia divided the

Persian-Mesopotamian region into Russian, neutral, and British

spheres of influence. North-western Persia came under the control

of the Russians, whose Cossack troops set up military posts in 1909

in Tabriz and Urmiyah, among other places. Consequently the Rus-

sian Orthodox mission among the East Syriac Christians, which

had been operating since the nineteenth century, was strengthened,

and many conversions occurred among their Assyrian fellow Chris-

tians. Eventually, as the Russian troops presented a strategic threat

to the Young Turks, one of the first Near Eastern conflicts of World

War I broke out in neutral Persia.

The Assyrian region of settlement lay on the line dividing the

interests of Turkey and Russia. As late as 1914, Patriarch Benjamin

Shimun XIX approached the Turkish provincial governor to nego-

tiate for the security of his East Syriac tribes. The governor offered

two separate guarantees, but Kurdish-Turkish attacks on Christians

soon followed, because the Christians were seen as allies of Russia.

On the one side, the Turkish and Kurdish troops proclaimed a

“jihad” (holy war), while on the other, the Russians supplied the

Christians with weapons. However, in January 1915, because of the

military situation in the Caucasus, Russia had to withdraw its

troops temporarily from north-western Persia. Turkish troops and

Kurdish volunteers subsequently massacred the Assyrians, and

peace returned only when the Russians advanced to Van. From

here, they established contact with Patriarch Benjamin Shimun XIX

in Kotchannes in the Hakkari mountain region. The news of the

massacres of Christians and the hope for support from the Russians

eventually led to the patriarch’s officially declaring war on Turkey

in the name of his nation (Millet) on May 10, 1915.

Shortly thereafter the strategic situation changed. The Russians

had to withdraw from Van; the Kurds attacked the Assyrians and

forced them higher into the mountains. Many East Syriac villages

and churches were destroyed. These desperate straits led to the

Assyrians’ decision to evacuate all of their tribes from the Hakkari

mountain region. Under the skillful leadership of their malik,

50,000 men, women, and children gathered together and

reluctantly advanced toward Urmiyah, where they hoped to secure

aid from Russian troops. On the plains they joined with the Assyr-

ians they met. The “Mountain Nestorians” had left their homeland

behind, and few would ever see it again.

Urmiyah lay in neutral Persia, where since 1915 starvation and

epidemics had ravaged the large refugee population. The arrival of

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the East Syriac Christians from Hakkari exacerbated the situation.

American aid workers and mission stations provided medical and

other assistance; nevertheless, the death rate among the refugees

may have reached one-third.

In Urmiyah the Russians recruited the battle-tested Assyrians to

oppose the Turkish-Kurdish attacks. In January 1916 Patriarch

Benjamin Shimun XIX traveled to Tiflis to meet with Tsar Nicolas,

with whom he negotiated for an autonomous Assyrian settlement in

their residential areas after the war. However, he had to bow to the

general strategic situation. Due to the fatal conditions in Urmiyah,

the patriarch was at least able to accomplish the transfer of 15,000

of his people into the Caucasus, where they founded a new home-

land in the present-day states of Armenia and Georgia. Those

Assyrians who remained behind were subsequently given military

training by Russian officers, with the patriarch maintaining

supreme command. At his side were placed his father, General

David, and another Assyrian with excellent military training, Agha

Petros de Baz.

In 1917 the British, who had captured Baghdad, had also been

trying to establish relations with the Assyrians. In the battle against

the Central Powers an alliance was formed between the Russians

and British, which included the Assyrians, Armenians, and the

Kurdish tribe of the Shekak. However, after the 1917 October

Revolution, the Russian troops pulled out of the Urmiyah region

and Turkey. According to British plans, the Assyro-Armenian-

Kurdish troops were to form a collective front line to impede a

Turkish offensive. While there were no problems between the

Armenians and Assyrians, cooperation with the Kurds led to catas-

trophe. On March 3, 1918, during talks in the village of Kohinsher,

the Kurdish leader, Ismael Agha Simko, had Patriarch Mar Ben-

jamin Shimun and his party murdered.

One month later the younger brother of the slain ruler was set up

as the new patriarch in Salams. He adopted the name Mar Poulos

Shimun XX. The military leadership of the Assyrians, however, was

taken over by Agha Petros de Baz. Encouraged by the British, the

Assyrian troops withstood the Turkish attacks on Urmiyah until

June 1918, though they were surrounded and could no longer

receive supplies. The Assyrians and their supporters then resolved

to attempt a desperate breakthrough. In a forced march of some

500 kilometers, 70,000 people moved from Urmiyah through west-

ern Iran to Hamedan (Ekbatana). Through hunger, epidemics, and

Kurdish attacks, this undertaking left about a third of the people

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dead. In Hamedan the Assyrians found the British, who provided

emergency care. In 1918, when the capitulation of Turkey became

known, further transport in the direction of Baghdad followed, to a

refugee camp near Bakuba. The opportunity to return the Assyrians

to their homeland in the Hakkari region, which was at the time a

real possibility, was wasted. The camp claimed numerous add-

itional victims among the Assyrians, many of whom died from the

strain of the experience. Among the casualties was the respected

metropolitan Mar Isaac Khnanisho, who died in 1919. In 1920 the

young patriarch Mar Poulos Shimun XX died of tuberculosis, a few

months after he had been transferred from the Bakuba camp to the

Syrian Orthodox (!) monastery of Mar Mattai near Mosul.

With the loss of the Hakkari region during World War I, the

Assyrians lost not only their homeland but also more than half their

population. From an estimated 150,000 before World War I, only

about 70,000 left Urmiyah, and of these, a mere 50,000 made it

through to the British in Mesopotamia. Among the victims were

two patriarchs, the metropolitan, many bishops, and the majority

of priests. This had a catastrophic effect on the church’s situation;

the Apostolic Church of the East appeared to have been entirely

wiped out. However, the common struggle of World War I caused

the particular interests of the Assyrian tribes to give way, in part, to

a sense of solidarity. In place of ecclesiastical union, greater support

developed for an Assyrian national movement, which would repre-

sent as a “nation” the interests of Assyrians and Chaldeans, as well

as Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, and the respective Reformed

churches, regardless of their particular confessions. As early as

1915, the Assyrian National Union of America was founded by

Assyrian immigrants in the USA. In 1918, in the Babuka camp, an

Assyrian National Council was established.

Postwar diplomacy and the question of an

Assyrian state

The allied victory awakened among Christian Assyrians the hope

for their own autonomous state or at least a return to their trad-

itional homeland. At negotiations with the Assyro-Armenian troops

regarding defense of the Urmiyah line, British, Russian, and French

diplomats offered assurance of Assyrian autonomy, sponsored by

the British. However, neither this question, nor the return to their

traditional homeland was explicitly addressed at the Versailles

peace talks. It soon became clear that return to the Hakkari region

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was impossible, and the Assyrians had to remain in Iraq as refugees.

The Assyrians, the “smallest ally,” were not, however, the only

ones to whom the British and French made promises which were

not kept. The Armenians, Kurds, and Arabs had similar experi-

ences. Plans for the Assyrians, Armenians, and Kurds each to have

their own state were stymied by their overlapping territories. At the

start of World War I the Arabs, under the leadership of Sherif Hus-

sain of Mecca, a member of the Hashemite dynasty, were also

promised by the British that following a victory over the Ottomans,

they would receive support for the establishment of an independent

Arab state. Like the Assyrians and Armenians, the Arabs fought as

allies of the Entente. But as early as 1916, the British, French, and

Russians had divided the Near East among themselves with the so-

called Sykes-Picot Agreement. Following this, in 1917, the British

foreign minister Arthur J. Balfour informed the French Baron Roth-

schild that his government had resolved, again without Arab

involvement, to found a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish

people. In 1919 Faisal, Hussain’s son, made a triumphant entry into

Damascus, and many of his supporters saw him as king of an Arab

empire stretching from Antioch to Sinai. Nevertheless, at the peace

talks following World War I, the Sykes-Picot Agreement – without

the Russians, who had pulled out on account of the 1917 October

Revolution – was carried out: Syria and Lebanon went to the

French; Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq with Kuwait to the British.

Many peoples believed they had been cheated out of political prom-

ises which had placed a vision of independence before their eyes.

Thanks to British intervention, Faisal was nominally tolerated as

king of Syria but found himself unprepared to act as a puppet for

the French. For this reason, he was forced out of Damascus in 1920.

The British subsequently gave Faisal the throne of Iraq. This state

was founded in 1921 and stood under British mandate in order to

keep open the lines of communication with India and protect British

interests in the oilfields of Mesopotamia.

In the partition of the Near East and the securing of European

power interests, the question of the Assyrians was but a small detail.

At this time the Assyrians were divided into two groups: one stood

under the leadership of the patriarchal family, the other under that

of Agha Petros. They decided to send a joint representative to the

peace negotiations and finally agreed upon Surma, the sister of the

two deceased catholicoi, who had been educated by Anglican mis-

sionaries. Surma spent 1919/20 in England but failed to obtain

permission to participate in the talks at Versailles.

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In 1920 Surma’s 11-year-old nephew became the new patriarch:

Mar Eshai Shimun XXI. Despite the hereditary succession, a formal

election was held in the Mendan refugee camp, north-east of Mosul,

where a large group of Assyrians had been placed. In 1919, under

new British promises, Assyrian troops were again recruited in Iraq

to quell Arab and Kurdish uprisings. These so-called Iraqi aid

troops (Iraqi Levies) enabled the Sunni Faisal to hold on to his

throne in the face of opposition from the Arab Shiites of Iraq, but as

foreigners and colonial mercenaries, they earned the hatred of the

native population.

The 1920 peace treaty of Sèvres provided for the foundation of an

autonomous Kurdish state, in which the Assyro-Chaldeans and

smaller ethnic and religious minorities would be guaranteed protec-

tion and security. Since in the succeeding years the overall strategic

situation and the interests of the victorious powers changed, no

autonomous Kurdistan was established. The Assyrian question was

also cleared out of the way. In Turkey the troops of Mustafa Kemal

Atatturk achieved victory. In 1923 Atatturk proclaimed the Turkish

republic, and in 1924 he abolished the caliphate in Istanbul. By the

time of the Lausanne Conference (1923), Turkish sovereignty had,

for all practical purposes, been reestablished. Turkey had already

entered into treaties with France and the Soviet Union. As a con-

sequence, the Kurdish question (and with it the Assyrian question)

received scant attention in Lausanne, and Armenia, which had been

a signatory power at Sèvres, was not even invited. In the Lausanne

treaties the individual peoples were not even named but were

merely referred to collectively as “non-Muslim minorities.”

The Assyrians had to eke out an uncertain life in Iraq. With no

solution in sight and the closing of the Babuka and Mendan camps

in 1920, 6,000 mountain and Urmiyah Assyrians attempted, under

the leadership of Agha Petros de Baz, to return to their former

homeland. The operation failed, a group perished in the mountains,

and Agha Petros had to go into exile in France.

Nonetheless, between 1922 and 1923 many Assyrians gradually

returned to their former villages in Hakkari. The borders were not

yet fixed, and the Turkish state not quite firmly established. In this

way, some 8,000 succeeded in returning to their homeland. Most,

however, remained as refugees in the plains surrounding Mosul and

Kirkuk and set their hopes on the Mosul question, left open at

Lausanne.

England, Iraq, and Turkey tussled over the Mosul region. Because

of its oil deposits and agriculture, the area had great economic as

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well as military significance. The borders were not yet firmly estab-

lished, and the British believed an Assyrian buffer state would have

a calming effect on the region. At the 1924 conference of Constan-

tinople, the English representative advocated shifting Iraq’s border

to the north and settling the Assyrians there. However, the negoti-

ations were broken off. The Turks moved into northern Iraq. Kurds

and regular troops attacked Assyrian villages and slaughtered

women, children, and elderly people. The population fled by the

thousands back into Iraq. In 1925 the archbishop of Canterbury

appealed to the British public not to forget the promises made to the

Assyrians. Nevertheless, an investigation by a commission of the

League of Nations led to the creation of the so-called “Brussels line”

dividing Turkey and Iraq, which placed the major region of Assyr-

ian settlement conclusively in the Turkish state. The Assyrian

settlement problem, which had existed since World War I, remained

acute.

The end of the British mandate in Iraq

The British mandate in Iraq lasted over twelve years. During this

time the Assyrian question could not be resolved. The people them-

selves were without a unified leadership as the young patriarch Mar

Eshai Shimun had been living under the care of the archbishop of

Canterbury in England, where he was receiving his education. In

addition, the Assyrian aid troops were identified by the Muslim

Iraqis as Christian supporters of the foreign occupation. Again and

again the British thoughtlessly ordered the Iraqi Levies to oppose

uprisings of Arab and Kurds. The hatred which built up among the

native population made clear that the Assyrians could not be left

behind unprotected after Iraq gained its independence.

At the 1927 Anglo-Iraqi negotiations regarding ending the man-

date, a common Assyrian position could not be agreed upon. Only

about half the Assyrians stood behind the patriarchal family. Other

groups rejected the leader, who had returned from England. His

position in the eyes of both the Assyrians and the Iraqi authorities

was further weakened by his lack of practice in the East Syriac

dialect and ignorance of Arabic. Some bishops’ families desired the

abolition of the hereditary patriarchate and the reintroduction of

patriarchal elections, in hope of increasing the prestige of their own

families and tribes.

Since the Assyrians recognized that British support would not be

provided to the extent that been promised, both the pro- and the

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anti-patriarchal parties inundated the League of Nations with a

flood of petitions between 1930 and 1933. At a 1931 assembly held

under the direction of Mar Shimun, an “Assyrian National Pact”

was adopted, calling for the recognition of the Assyrians in Iraq as

“Millets,” not only as a religious minority, and for their return to

the Hakkari region. Additionally, the secular and religious leader-

ship of the patriarch was emphasized. Their demands concluded

with a declaration of loyalty to King Faisal. In 1932 Mar Eshai

Shimun traveled to Geneva to bring the Assyrian concerns to the

attention of the League of Nations. Nevertheless, it became clear

that a settlement of the Assyrians as a collective ethnic group in a

homogeneous and autonomous region was out of the question

since Iraq wanted a centralized Arab state rather than a federal

structure.

The Iraqi government proposed that the patriarch ought to relin-

quish the political and worldly power which he had held for centur-

ies by virtue of the social structure of his people. In the course of this

debate, the patriarch was placed under house arrest in Baghdad.

The tensions with Iraq, which in 1932 was accepted into the League

of Nations as an independent state, steadily increased. The perilous

situation gradually increased Assyrian sentiment in favor of

emigration.

In 1933 the British mandate in Iraq ended, and a group of Assyr-

ians negotiated with the French for their families to be permitted

into Syria. The Iraqi interior minister was informed of this peace-

able intention. Some 800 men appeared at Little Khabur on the only

recently established boundary between Syria and Iraq. The French

judged the boundary crossing to be illegal; because they lacked

refugee status, the men were sent back. On the Iraqi side, a clash

broke out with the government troops who had taken up positions

there; 530 Assyrians fled back to Syria, where they were interned.

Those who were taken prisoner by the Iraqis were killed, and only a

few were able to make it back to their families.

This border incident and the accumulating aggression against the

Assyrians led in 1933 to the so-called massacre of Semile. A rumor

spread among the Iraqis that the Assyrians were going to plunder

northern Iraq. In response, Kurdish and Arab tribes were stirred up

against the Assyrians. Sixty out of sixty-four villages were des-

troyed. Under the leadership of the Iraqi military, the Assyrians

were gathered together, and all males over the age of ten were shot.

What happened in Semile was a gruesome slaughter by Iraqi troops,

which was celebrated by Iraq as a great victory, the defeat of an

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uprising and the liberation of the country from a great danger. In

Semile alone, the dead numbered 350; the total accounting of Assyr-

ian dead during this time reached 3,000.

The patriarch, who was being held in Baghdad, attempted

through petitions to inform the diplomatic representatives and the

League of Nations of the dramatically intensifying events. This led

to the deportation of the 26-year-old leader from Iraq in August

1933; he was taken by British military aircraft to Cyprus. In the

same year he again presented the concerns of his people to the

League of Nations in Geneva. Excluding the metropolitanate of

Trichur in India, there was at this time hardly an Apostolic Church

of the East to speak of. The people had been terribly decimated, and

the survivors were homeless, the patriarch expelled, the church

leaderless. Of the 20–30,000 Assyrians remaining in Iraq, nearly all

wanted unreservedly to leave.

In 1933 the League of Nations appointed a committee to resolve

the Assyrian question. Various governments were asked to accept

the Assyrians. Several remarkable resettlement plans – including

such destinations as Brazil, East Africa, Latin America, Canada,

and others – were proposed for this old and established mountain

people of the Near East. They failed mostly due to lack of financial

resources, but also because of immigration problems in the nations

suggested.

Emigration and diaspora

While on Cyprus, Patriarch Eshai Shimun submitted numerous

documents and petitions in an attempt to make the League of

Nations aware of his people’s fate. However, even among the Assyr-

ians themselves, opinion regarding his status as a secular leader was

divided. He was expelled from Iraq and denied entry into Syria.

Eventually – after sojourns in Cyprus, Geneva, Paris, and London –

he migrated in 1940/1 to the United States to join his diaspora

community there. The center of the American Assyrian diaspora

was Chicago, where some 30,000 Assyrians lived. As early as the

mid-nineteenth century, the influence of American missionaries

around Lake Urmiyah had led to isolated cases of migration to

America. However, most migrated in response to the pressures of

events during World War I. With the help of the American Episcopal

Church, the Church of the East could again be consolidated. Over

the course of the following years, churches were established in

Gary, Indiana; Flint, Michigan; Yonkers, New York; New Britain,

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Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Turlock, California; and

San Francisco. In 1950 in Chicago the theological center of the

Apostolic Church was set up, and there selections from and transla-

tions of liturgical books were produced in English.

A solution for part of the Assyrians was found in Syria by the

settlement committee of the League of Nations. In 1934 the men

who had been interned since the 1933 border skirmish were given

permits by the French mandate authorities allowing them to move

to northern Syria. Beginning in May 1936, 9,000 Assyrians were

taken from Iraq and settled in the desolate, entirely uncultivated

region of Khabur in the plains of Jezireh. They were divided

between thirty-four villages according to their tribal affiliation, with

some others settling in the cities of Qamishli, Hassake, and Aleppo,

as well. They attained Syrian citizenship in 1941. In the 1950s a

few Assyrians migrated from Iraq or Syria to Lebanon, where they

settled primarily in Beirut.

In Iran prior to the events of World War I the Assyrians lived

almost exclusively in the area around Urmiyah. At that time some

9,000 Assyrians lived in the city itself, with another 30,000 in the

surrounding countryside. After World War I and the emergency

flight to Mesopotamia, a minor reverse migration began in 1922.

About 7,000 Assyrians returned to Urmiyah, which had been

named in honor of Shah Reza Pahlavi Rezaye. In some seventy

outlying villages the Assyrians established scattered settlements.

During World War II, Iranian Assyrians fought alongside Azerbai-

janis for an independent republic. Since about 20,000 Assyrians

lived in the Soviet Union, mostly in the Caucasus, the prospects for

Russian support looked good. However, in 1946, with Stalin’s

approval, only the Kurdish “Republic of Mahabad” was estab-

lished, and it collapsed after just a few months. Iranian troops, who

marched on Azerbaijan, carried out pogrom-like attacks on Assyr-

ians. Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun then turned to the United

Nations, while at the same time assuring the shah of his loyalty. Due

to these events, in the 1950s many Assyrians moved to Teheran or

migrated to the United States. Others settled in the province of

Khuzistan or in Kuwait, where they found work in the oil industry.

In the mid-1960s the Assyrian community in north-western Iran

was, in any case, extremely lively and active. The region around

Urmiyah contained fifty-five churches. Many of those Assyrians

who had, during the decline of their church, sought refuge in the

Anglican, Presbyterian, Chaldean, or Baptist Churches, returned to

their church in the 1950s. In 1965 the total number of Assyrians

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living in Iran (“Nestorians”) reached 40,000; of these, most lived in

Urmiyah and about 15,000 in Teheran.

At the beginning of World War II the 20,000 or so Assyrians who

had remained in Iraq lived in scattered settlements in the north of

the country. Thus they had lost their ethnic unity and were, as a

“nation,” leaderless. The church leadership had been reduced to

Mar Yosip Khananisho. The main areas of settlement were Mosul,

Irbil, and Kirkuk, but also the capital Baghdad. Beginning in 1961

the Assyrians became entangled in the struggles of the Kurds in

northern Iraq. In this matter the Assyrians relied on the treaty of

Sèvres, which guaranteed the Assyro-Chaldeans protection and

security inside an autonomous Kurdish region. Over the course of

the fighting, many Christian villages and churches were destroyed

by the Iraqi troops. In June 1969 the monastery of Rabban

Hormizd near Alqosh also fell victim to plundering. Mar Eshai

Shimun again appealed to the United Nations, as well as to the

World Council of Churches. He organized aid committees and pub-

lic protests against the Iraqi government. Nevertheless, in the West

attention was paid almost exclusively to the problems of the Kurds.

The ten-year struggle led in 1970 and 1974 to promises of Kurdish

autonomy from the Iraqi government, promises President Saddam

Hussein has never fulfilled. In the course of the Iran–Iraq war

(1980–8) more than 1,200 Kurdish villages were destroyed sys-

tematically by the government forces of Iraq.

The events of the first half of the twentieth century almost led to

the complete disappearance of the Apostolic Church of the East.

The drama began with the exodus from the Hakkari mountain

region to Urmiyah. Some fled to the former Soviet Union, especially

to the Caucasus. From Urmiyah, the path of suffering led further to

Mesopotamia, to the camps of Iraq; from there to Syria, where most

settled in Khabur. Many migrated to the United States, where they

established their center in Chicago on Lake Michigan. Small groups

also moved to France and England, the former mandate holders, as

well as to Cyprus and Australia. Aside from the India metropolitan-

ate, the Apostolic Church was fractured, its people spread across

the lands of the Near East and uprooted in the diaspora.

Ecclesiastical reorganization and patriarchal schism

In the United States, through persistent efforts, Patriarch Mar Eshai

Shimun succeeded in reorganizing his church and rebuilding it on a

modest scale. The chief problem for the church was the shortage of

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priests and the reestablishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy which

had been nearly annihilated in the first half of the twentieth century.

The church membership in the 1950s was about 3,200. In the USA

the patriarch appointed a bishop for the newly created Diocese of

America and Canada. Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun maintained a

connection with his congregations and dioceses in the diaspora by

making numerous visits to Iran, Lebanon, and Kuwait. In 1954 the

patriarch and his family clan transferred his residence to San Fran-

cisco. In addition to building up the organization of the church, he

also devoted himself to the translation and publication of the litera-

ture of the fathers of his church.

Beginning in 1958 Iran was also established as a diocese and

placed under the leadership of Bishop Mar Dinkha Khnanaya, who

had been consecrated by Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun. In 1962 he

transferred his seat from northern Iraq to Teheran. The patriarch’s

access to Iran was good, due to his relationship with Shah Reza

Pahlavi of Persia – beginning in 1964 the Assyrians were even repre-

sented by a member in parliament – so it was possible for him to

visit the bishopric of Iran in the same year. The patriarch had hoped

to travel afterwards to Iraq but was unable to obtain an entry

permit.

In Iraq since the exile of the patriarch, his uncle and teacher,

Metropolitan Mar Yosip Khnanisho, had held the leadership of the

church. His diocese lay in the Persian–Turkish border region. In

1963 Mar Khnanisho transferred his see to Baghdad and exercised

his office as patriarchal vicar over all the other dioceses of the Near

East. In the 1960s additional bishops were ordained for Irbil,

Kirkuk, Basra, and Baghdad. Patriarch Eshai Shimun could not

return to his homeland until 1970, thirty-seven years after his

expulsion. At that time he was again recognized by the Iraqi gov-

ernment as the religious head of his church. Nonetheless, the patri-

arch deemed the situation too uncertain to permit him to move his

see back to Baghdad.

The communities of Khabur in Syria were left entirely to them-

selves for nearly thirty years. In 1948 Metropolitan Mar Yosip

Khnanisho had visited the congregations there and thus reestab-

lished a connection with the church, but they have remained until

the present day poor and spiritually neglected. Interestingly, they

were at this time cared for by the Syrian Orthodox Church. When in

1968 Mar Shimun sought to visit his congregations in countries of

the Near East, he could not gain an entry permit for Syria. However,

in Beirut the patriarch was able to ordain Mar Yohannan Abraham

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as bishop of Khabur, and Mar Narsai, who was originally from

Khabur, as bishop of Lebanon.

In 1945 Metropolitan Mar Timothy Abimelech died in India. In

the ensuing years, however, it was impossible for the patriarch to

ordain a new metropolitan for the approximately 14,000 South

Indian adherents of the Church of the East. Not until 1952 was

the Syrian-born Mar Thomas Darmo consecrated in Chicago as

metropolitan of India and Malabar with his see in Trichur. Never-

theless, in 1960 unrest rocked the Church of the East. Metro-

politan Mar Thomas Darmo published a document opposing the

hereditary succession of the patriarchate. Mar Eshai Shimun used

a stay in India on the occasion of the third general assembly of

the World Council of Churches in New Delhi in 1961 to visit the

metropolitanate in South India and reestablish order. However, the

peace resulting from the patriarch’s subsequent reforms was short-

lived.

In March 1964 Eshai Shimun issued a decree to his metropolitans

and bishops, in which he announced some changes in his church.

These included in particular the introduction of the Gregorian cal-

endar, the shortening of Lent, and liturgical reforms. These novel-

ties, which were seen as “Western,” aroused opposition among

some in the countries of the Near East, which was also tied up with

various tribal rivalries. In Baghdad the opposition coalesced around

the priest Ishaq Nwiya, who, despite the warnings of Metropolitan

Mar Khnanisho and the bishop of Baghdad, Mar Joseph Sarkis,

maintained the old Julian calendar and finally named himself head

of the “Ancient Church of the East.” The group supporting Ishaq

Nwiya criticized in particular the more than thirty-year absence of

the patriarch, the hereditary patriarchate, and the reforms which

had not received synodal approval. The opposition won followers

especially from the tribe of Tiari. To remedy the shortage of priests,

they turned to the Indian metropolitan Mar Thomas Darmo; in

1965 the Nwiya party placed themselves under his jurisdiction. Mar

Eshai Shimun subsequently dismissed the Indian metropolitan. In

1968 Mar Thomas Darmo traveled to Iraq and consecrated three

bishops: Mar Poulos and Mar Aprem from Trichur, as well as Mar

Addai from Baghdad. Shortly thereafter these three elected Mar

Thomas Darmo patriarch of the Church of the East and they

deposed Mar Eshai Shimun. Thus there was a duplication of the

hierarchy and a patriarchal schism developed. After Mar Thomas

died in 1969, the metropolitan of Baghdad, Mar Addai II Giwargis,

was elected as his successor. At the beginning of the 1970s the

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Figure 5.1 Parish Church of the East Syriac Metropolitanate of Trichur,

Kerala (India). Photo: courtesy of Dietmar Winkler.

Apostolic Church of the East was split into two jurisdictions of

roughly equal size.

The second crisis after this schism befell the church in the 1970s.

In late 1972 Mar Eshai Shimun decided to resign the patriarchate;

in 1973 he married. In the same year seven Assyrian bishops from

Iran, Iraq (Irbil, Kirkuk, Basra, Baghdad), Lebanon, and Syria

assembled in Beirut to discuss the resignation and marriage of the

patriarch. The most significant outcome of the synod was the aboli-

tion of hereditary succession and the reintroduction of canonical

election of the patriarch. Another synodical meeting concerning this

difficult question for the Assyrian church took place in Beirut 1975.

The problem of the patriarchate was supposed to be solved at a

synod in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, however, Mar Eshai Shimun

was assassinated. An estranged relative, who wanted to reestablish

the family’s honor, shot the patriarch on November 6 in San Jose,

California.

In spite of this tragic end, the contributions of Patriarch Mar

Shimun are difficult to overestimate. He worked hard for his

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church, led it for fifty-five years and consolidated it despite its near

collapse.

The patriarchate of Mar Dinkha IV Khnanaya and

ecumenical efforts

With the death of Mar Eshai Shimun, the hereditary succession of

the patriarchate came to an end. On October 17, 1976, in London,

five Assyrian bishops, two Italian bishops who had been con-

secrated by Mar Eshai Shimun, and representatives of Mar Khanan-

isho of Iraq elected Mar Dinkha Khnanaya as the new patriarch and

120th successor to the seat of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Present were also

three bishops of the Anglican Church. At the age of thirty-three,

Mar Dinkha had been appointed by Mar Eshai Shimun as metro-

politan of Teheran and Iran – thus becoming the nineteenth bishop

in his family. Even before his birth, this Iraqi native had been desig-

nated for the office of bishop, and when he was 11 years old, his

education was entrusted to Metropolitan Mar Yosip Khnanisho. As

bishop in Iran he spoke out publicly about Assyrian concerns, insti-

tuted ecumenical worship services in Teheran on religious holidays,

and established a seminary, in which the candidates not only

attended high school but also were educated in the Syriac language,

liturgy, and church history.

Until the Iran–Iraq war (1980–8), Mar Dinkha had his see in

Teheran; thereafter he transferred it to Chicago. The two wars in

the Persian Gulf region brought renewed hardship to the Christian

minority. In Iran the Persian empire under Shah Reza Pahlavi had

been destroyed by the Islamic Revolution and the return of the

Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in France; a program of Shiite

Islamicization ensued. In Iraq Saddam Hussein sought to institute a

plan of Arabization, affecting in particular the Kurds and Christians

in northern Iraq, who were violently expelled. In 1988 Saddam

Hussein advanced on northern Iraq because the Kurds had sup-

ported Iran during the Iran–Iraq war. In the process, many Chris-

tian villages, churches, and monasteries were destroyed, and a wave

of Kurdish and Christian refugees fled to Turkey, Iran, Jordan, and

Syria. Despite the military clashes in northern Iraq, the Gulf War

(1990–1) drew the world’s attention to Kuwait in the south. The

1991 United Nations ceasefire resolution made no reference to

northern Iraq. In 1992, West European and American initiatives led

to the creation of a kind of “buffer zone” north of the 36th parallel,

though this was not recognized under international law. The Kurds

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hoped for their own state within Iraq. The Assyrians were once

again the forgotten segment of the region’s populace. Since the end

of the Gulf war in 1991 more than 10,000 Christians (Assyrians,

Chaldeans, Armenians, etc.) leave Iraq each year because of the UN

embargo against the regime of Saddam Hussein, because of the

hopeless economic situation and the fear of a new war.

Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV sought to lead the Assyrians

out of their isolation and neglect by focusing particularly on ecu-

menical engagement. As early as 1948 (or 1950) the Apostolic

Church of the East was a member of the World Council of Churches

(WCC). However, only Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun regularly par-

ticipated in its sessions at that time since in many countries his

church had no contact with the ecumenical movement due to dif-

ficult political and personnel situations. The clergy first had to

revitalize itself; theological formation was not possible. Besides the

lack of qualified participants, the accusation of “Nestorianism”

also stood in the way of involvement of the Assyrian Church in

bilateral ecumenical dialogues. Within the WCC the Assyrian

Church has participated in multilateral dialogue with Catholic,

Orthodox, Oriental, Anglican, Reformed, and Lutheran Churches.

Apart from that it was only in the 1980s that the church became

associated with additional ecumenical institutions.

In 1984, on the occasion of its fourth general assembly in Lim-

assol (Cyprus), Mar Dinkha IV sought to gain admission to the

Middle East Council of Churches (MECC). However, the request

was denied, opposed in particular by the Oriental Orthodox

Churches under the leadership of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Their reservations grew out of the fifth-century Christological dis-

putes between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantino-

ple. Only the participation in the 1990 fifth general assembly in

Nicosia (Cyprus) of the seven Near Eastern churches which stood in

union with Rome inspired new impulses. A separate dialogue com-

mittee was established, and several official and unofficial meetings,

with the aim of clarifying theological concerns, took place in the

following years. In 1994 the sixth general assembly of the MECC

instructed the executive committee to proceed with the admission

and integration of the Assyrian Church into the MECC. However,

due to the continued opposition of the Coptic Orthodox Church,

admission remained impossible for the seventh general assembly,

held in April 1999. The Assyrian Church was invited as an observer

only. The synod held a month earlier in Chicago under Catholicos-

Patriarch Mar Dinkha rejected this observer status. While

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Protestant/Episcopal or Oriental Catholic churches can be members

of the MECC, this is currently not possible for one of the oldest

churches of Christianity.

Only at the sixth general assembly of the MECC (1994) had

progress been evident, and the Coptic pope Shenouda III had even

invited an Assyrian delegation to bilateral ecumenical talks. These

took place in January 1995 at the Coptic monastery of Amba

Bishoy (Wadi Natrun, Egypt). A joint declaration on Christology

was worked out, and put forth for consideration by their respective

synods. The Assyrian Church ratified the declaration in the same

year, but the Coptic synod rejected it. The dialogue was stopped by

the Coptic Orthodox Church in 1996.

In contrast, the dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church

achieved success. The first meeting between Mar Dinkha IV and

John Paul II had already occurred, on the occasion of the pope’s

inauguration in 1978. In 1984 Mar Dinkha made an official visit

to Rome, and the two ecclesiastical leaders initiated a process of

Figure 5.2 Catholicos Mar Dinkha IV Khnanaya and Pope John Paul II

in Rome (1994). Photo: courtesy of The Messenger, journal of

the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, 11

(1995).

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theological dialogue. Between 1984 and 1994 there were five

informal meetings, which led to the historic “Common Christologi-

cal Declaration” of Mar Dinkha IV and John Paul II on November

11, 1994. This was also the starting point of an official theological

dialogue between the two churches. From October 1995 to October

1999 five working sessions took place. Following the declaration on

Christology, work was begun on a joint statement on sacramental

theology.

This official process received unofficial support from the “Syriac

Dialogue” of the Pro Oriente Foundation (Vienna, Austria). In June

1994, before the signing of the “Common Christological Declar-

ation,” the first Syriac Consultation took place in Vienna on the

invitation of Pro Oriente. This multilateral ecumenical dialogue

included for the first time representatives of all the churches of the

Syriac tradition: the Assyrian and the Ancient Church of the East,

the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Syrian Orthodox from Antioch,

Malankara Orthodox from India), and the Oriental Catholic

Churches (Chaldean, Syrian, Maronite, Syro-Malabar, and Syro-

Malankara Catholic Churches) – supported by internationally rec-

ognized experts on the history, language, and theology of these

churches. At this consultation the establishment of a coordinating

body, the “Commission on Dialogue within the Syriac Tradition”

(or “Syriac Commission”), was proposed, and in 1994 in Kaslik

(Lebanon) it was finally constituted. This commission also organ-

ized the second, third, fourth, and fifth Syriac Consultations

(Vienna in 1996, Chicago in 1997, Vienna in 2000 and 2002). In

this way, controversial issues of history and Christology, as well as

sacramental theology, have been discussed and could be success-

fully handled.

A positive consequence of the second Pro Oriente Syriac Consult-

ation (1996) was the start of an official dialogue between the Assyr-

ian and Syrian Orthodox Churches, which was initiated in the same

year by the patriarchs Mar Dinkha IV and Ignatios Zakka I Iwas.

However, in 1998 the Coptic Orthodox Church insisted that the so-

called Oriental Orthodox Churches of the Middle East should only

take part in ecumenical dialogues as a family. This was also mani-

fested in a joint document of the Near Eastern patriarchs of the

Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Syrian Orthodox

Churches. Because of this, official bilateral discussions between the

Assyrians and the Syrian Orthodox were temporarily suspended.

Pro Oriente has provided the only forum in which these churches

could engage in ecumenical dialogue, at least on an unofficial level.

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On the basis of the “Common Christological Declaration” of

Mar Dinkha IV and John Paul II, the two East Syriac sister

churches, the Assyrian Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church

began their own dialogue. In 1996 the patriarchs, Mar Dinkha IV

and Mar Raphael I Bidawid, inaugurated this official process of

cooperation on pastoral and practical levels.

In 1994 in Sydney, as a structural measure for this multifaceted

ecumenical engagement of the Assyrian Church, the synod created a

“Commission on Inter-Church Relations and Educational Devel-

opment.” The dynamic and theologically well-educated bishop Mar

Bawai Soro was named its general secretary. The synod also turned

renewed attention to reunion with the “Ancient Church of the

East” led by Patriarch Mar Addai II Giwargis, especially because

there were no theological grounds for the division. As early as 1984

the two patriarchs had agreed on a reunion, but it had not yet

happened for political and tribal reasons. In Chicago 1999 the

Assyrian synod under Mar Dinkha recognized all previous ordin-

ations and ecclesiastical orders from Reader to Patriarch of the

“Ancient Church of the East” under Mar Addai II. In the same year

there was also another meeting of the patriarchs in Chicago.

In the meantime, individual congregations and priests had

returned to the jurisdiction of Mar Dinkha, with the Indian metro-

politanate of Trichur representing the largest group. In November

1995 Metropolitan Mar Aprem, who had been ordained by Mar

Thomas Darmo in 1968 and subsequently belonged to the

opponents of Mar Dinkha, joined, along with all his congregations,

with Mar Dinkha. In January 2000 the catholicos-patriarch visited

the metropolitanate in India, which is once again united with the

larger church.

Present situation and structure

There are no accurate statistics about the number of Christians in

the Middle East. However, the following figures may give at least an

idea of the size and spread of the Church of the East. At the begin-

ning of the twenty-first century, the “Holy Apostolic Catholic

Assyrian Church of the East” under Catholicos-Patriarch Mar

Dinkha IV has approximately 385,000 members. The “Ancient

Church of the East” under Patriarch Mar Addai II Giwargis (Bagh-

dad) has two metropolitans in Iraq (Mosul, Kirkuk) and three

bishops (Syria, Iraq, United States). It numbers perhaps 50–70,000

faithful in total.

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Some 400,000 members belong to the Chaldean Catholic sister

church, whose patriarch Raphael I Bidawid (since 1989) has his see

in Baghdad. It has nine dioceses in Iraq, three in Iran, and one each

in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the United States, as well as

three vicariates in Europe and one each in Canada and Australia.

The Indian Catholics who follow the East Syriac rite, the Syro-

Malabar Church, are by far the largest group. They have about 3.8

million members. Their head since 1999 is Archbishop Major Var-

key Cardinal Vithayatil, whose see is in Ernakulam.

Despite the unions with the Catholic Church, the political events

of the twentieth century, and its present split into two jurisdictions,

the Assyrian Church of the East appears on the cusp of the twenty-

first century to be once again stable and structured. The see of the

catholicos-patriarch is in Chicago. The church has four metro-

politans with seats in Baghdad, Beirut, and Trichur, as well as eight

bishops, whose congregations are spread around the world:

UNITED STATES (APPROX. 100,000)

Patriarchal Diocese of the Eastern United States

Head: His Holiness Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV

(Chicago)

Eight parishes: four in Chicago; one each in Detroit; Flint,

Michigan; Yonkers, New York; New Britain, Connecticut

Diocese of the Western United States

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Aprim Khamis (Phoenix, Arizona)

Six parishes: Phoenix; Modesto, Ceres, Turlock, Tarzana, Fuller-

ton (all in California)

Diocese of Western California

Chancellery: Bishop Dr Mar Bawai Soro (San Jose, California),

General Secretary of the Commission for Inter-Church Relations

and Educational Development of the Assyrian Church of the East

Four parishes: San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle

CANADA (APPROX. 20,000)

Diocese of Canada

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Emmanuel Joseph (Etobikoke,

Ontario)

Four parishes: Toronto, Mississauga, London, Hamilton (all in

Ontario)

One mission in Windsor, Ontario

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AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (APPROX. 25,000)

Diocese of Australia and New Zealand

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Meelis Zaia (Fairfield, New South

Wales, Australia)

Four parishes: two in Sydney; Reservoir (Victoria, Australia);

Miramar (Wellington, New Zealand)

One mission in Manurewa (Auckland, New Zealand)

EUROPE (APPROX. 30,000)

Diocese of Europe

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Odisho Oraham (Norsborg, Sweden,

and London)

Eight parishes: Norsborg, Göteborg, Huskvarna, Linkoping,

Skovde (all in Sweden); London; Brabrand, Denmark; Arnhem, The

Netherlands

Two congregations without priests in Wiesbaden, Germany; and

Vienna, Austria

IRAN (APPROX. 20,000)

Diocese of Iran

Chancellery (administration): Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Dinkha

IV (Chicago)

Four parishes: two in Teheran, two in Urmiyah

LEBANON (APPROX. 5,000)

Diocese of Lebanon and Syria

Chancellery: Metropolitan Mar Narsai de Baz (Beirut), Patri-

archal Vicar

Four dioceses with priests: three in Beirut, one in Zahle

SYRIA (APPROX. 25,000)

Diocese of Hassake

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Afram Athnael (Hassake)

Seven parishes: Hassake, Qamishli, Khabur region

Twenty missions in the Khabur region

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IRAQ (APPROX. 45,000)

Metropolitanate of Iraq

Chancellery: Metropolitan Mar Geevargese Sliwa (Baghdad)

Auxiliary: Bishop Mar Joseph Sarkis (Baghdad)

Seven parishes in Baghdad

NORTHERN IRAQ, RUSSIA, ARMENIA, GEORGIA (APPROX. 90,000)

Diocese of Dohuk

Chancellery: Bishop Mar Isaac Joseph

Northern Iraq (approx. 40,000): four congregations with priests:

two in Dohuk, Sarsank, Mosul

Russia and Armenia (50,000): one congregation with a priest in

Moscow; missions in Erewan (Armenia) and Georgia

INDIA (APPROX. 25,000)

Metropolitanate of India

Chancellery: Metropolitan DDr Mar Aprem Mooken (Trichur)

Twenty-eight parishes in the states of Kerala, Tamilnadu, and

Karnataka, and in Mumbai and New Delhi.

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6

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

OF THE CHURCH OF THE EAST

SYRIAC LITERATURE

Dietmar W. Winkler

In its scope and extent, Syriac literature represents the most import-

ant type of Oriental Christian literature. For the period of ancient

Christian literature (the Patristic period), its notable translations, as

well as its many original creations, can withstand comparison to

contemporary Greek and Latin writings.

Language

As a Semitic language, Syriac belongs to Aramaic as a North-West

Semitic language; it is the local Aramaic dialect of Edessa. This

became the written language of Aramaic-speaking Christianity pri-

marily through the translation of the Bible in the second century. In

the fourth century, through the liturgy and its extensive literature,

Syriac spread across the Persian empire and eastern provinces of the

Roman empire and accompanied the missions of the Church of the

East to India, and to Central and East Asia.

Because of political, geographic, and ecclesiastical divisions, the

language began to diverge in East and West Syriac in the fifth cen-

tury. Under the influence of Greek, West Syriac changed more sig-

nificantly than East Syriac; thus the latter represents a more archaic

step in the development of the language. This is clearly evident in

pronunciation. The differences between classical East and West

Syriac are not, however, particularly significant.

Beginning in the seventh century, as a consequence of the Arab

conquest, Syriac was gradually displaced as a colloquial language,

but it maintained an important position as a liturgical and literary

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language until the fourteenth century. Even today classical Syriac is

used as a liturgical language in both the East and West Syrian

traditions.

As a spoken language, classical Syriac continued to develop and

lives on today through Modern Syriac or Modern Aramaic dialects

in several linguistic enclaves. For example: the Eastern and Central

Modern Syriac is spoken by Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iran

(Urmiyah), Syria (Khabur), and Iraq (Mosul), while Modern West

Syriac is used in particular by the Syrian Orthodox Christians in the

Tur Abdin (south-eastern Turkey). Through the emigration of

Christians from the Middle East, the language is also found in west-

ern countries, where its continued existence is threatened.

Script

Syriac is first attested in quite a number of pagan inscriptions from

the first to the third centuries. The oldest extant Syriac manuscript

(British Museum Add. 12150) was written in 411, also in Edessa.

The most important collections of manuscripts at present are found

in the British Museum, the Vatican Library, Paris, Berlin, Birming-

ham, Manchester, and Oxford, but also in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon,

Tur Abdin, and the United States.

Syriac is written right-to-left, consists of twenty-two consonants,

and has three different forms: the old Edessan script, Estrangelo

(from the Greek strongyle, “rounded”), was used until the thir-

teenth century, and is seen today in most academic texts. In the

course of the eighth century the West Syrians developed the Serto

(“character,” “scratch”) script, while later on the East Syrians

developed a script from Estrangelo referred to by Western scholars

as “Nestorian” or “Chaldean.” The old Estrangelo script lacked

vowel notation. For the East Syriac script – used by Assyrians and

Chaldeans – a punctuation system was created to indicate vowels,

while the West Syriac script – used by Syrian Orthodox and

Maronites – beginning in the seventh century, added vowels deriv-

ing from Greek letters above and below the consonants. Syriac

script was also used for other languages, such as Christian Palestin-

ian Aramaic and Christian Arabic (Karshuni).

Literature

One can, in essence, divide Syriac literature into four major periods

(cf. S. P. Brock).

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From the beginnings to the fourth century

Syriac attained its significance as a literary language through trans-

lations of the Old Testament (Peshitta OT) and New Testament

(Vetus Syra NT). The earliest Old Testament translations were done

directly from Hebrew and can be traced back to the first century.

The Syriac translation of the Gospels is preserved in the Curetonian

(fifth-century parchment manuscript without the Gospel of Mark,

British Library) and in Sinaiticus (fourth-century palimpsest, writ-

ten over in the eighth century, held in the Sinai Monastery). The

standard Syriac translation of the Bible, the Peshitta, was presum-

ably completed in the fifth century. The Gospel harmony of Tatian

( c.170), the Diatessaron, was also used in the Syriac churches.

Also from this early period are The Book of the Laws of the

Countries, which was probably written by Philippus, a pupil of

the Aramaean philosopher Bardaisan (154–222); the Gospel

of Thomas, which presumably was written in Syriac around 150; as

well as the Odes of Solomon, a collection of forty-two lyric poems.

Into the apocryphal Acts of Thomas is incorporated the Hymn of

the Pearl, a poetic fairytale, probably of Parthian origin.

The Golden Age: fourth to seventh centuries

This epoch represents the full flowering of Syriac literature and

produced two extraordinary writers: Aphrahat and Ephrem. Aph-

rahat, called the “Persian Sage” was the first Syriac writer outside

the Roman empire from whom a significant work has survived. He

was the author of twenty-three Demonstrations, dating from 337 to

344 and addressing a variety of religious themes (faith, prayer, fast-

ing, circumcision, care for the poor, Sabbath, etc.). With Ephrem the

Syrian († 373), the beginning and zenith of Syriac poetry were

achieved simultaneously. He was lauded as a poet and theologian

by Jerome, Palladius, and Sozomen. However, Ephrem was also one

of the most important Syriac prose writers. In addition to his out-

standing hymns and verse homilies, he authored biblical commen-

taries and refutations of false doctrines.

Little has been preserved of the works of two other important

writers. Balai († 431) was a writer of verse homilies and liturgical

hymns. He favored a five-syllable meter, which has been named the

meter of Mar Balai. From Cyrilliona’s ( c.400) major works, only six

verse texts based on episodes from the Gospels have survived.

Beginning in the fifth century, through the political-geographical

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division on the one hand, and the theological-ecclesiastical on the

other, separate East and West Syriac literatures developed. For East

Syriac literature the theological school of the Persians in Edessa,

which achieved fame through Ephrem, was most important at first.

Presumably there the anonymous Teaching of Addai ( Doctrina

Addai), recounting the correspondence between Jesus and King

Abgar and the conversion of Edessa, was produced. Following the

closure of the school of Edessa by Emperor Zeno in 489, the school

of Nisibis became influential for the Church of the East. One of the

most outstanding teachers of this educational center was Narsai,

the most important East Syriac poet-theologian of the fifth century.

Some eighty verse homilies have survived. Through the translation

projects of the schools of Edessa and Nisibis, some texts lost in the

Greek original – because they were judged heretical – have been

preserved. For instance, the original Greek writings of Theodore of

Mopsuestia († 428) – exegetical works and catechetical homilies –

were not only rescued by translation into Syriac but also became the

most important foundation for East Syriac theology. For the

Church of the East, Theodore serves as interpreter par excellence.

Also dating from the fifth century is a rich treasury of hagiography,

such as the Acts of the Persian martyrs under Shapur II.

Among the translators of the school of Nisibis, the future catholi-

cos Aba is worthy of mention. He brought with him from his travels

in the Roman empire the works of Nestorius, among others, and

may have translated Nestorius’ Book of Heraclides from Greek into

Syriac. However, this project may have been the work of his student

Cyrus of Edessa, author of six Explanations of the main dominical

commemorations (Fast, Pascha, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension,

Pentecost).

The generally free translations from Greek of the fourth and fifth

centuries gave way in the sixth and seventh to increasingly literal

approaches. Over the course of the sixth and seventh centuries, in

addition to translations of Greek philosophical works, a small

number of Middle Persian works were also translated into Syriac,

among them the tales of Kalilah and Dimnah, which had Indian

roots. Interestingly, the History of Alexander the Great of Pseudo-

Kallisthenes may have been translated from Middle Persian into

Syriac rather than from Greek.

The monastic renewal movement at the turn of the seventh cen-

tury made important contributions to literature and spirituality.

In this arena, the most significant representative of East Syriac

theology is certainly Babai the Great (551–628). With his Book

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of Union he produced the definitive impulse behind East Syriac

Christology. His reputation was so great in his own time that during

the vacancy of the East Syriac patriarchal see, leadership of the

Church of the East was entrusted to him.

Many graduates of the school of Nisibis were later important

bishops or catholicoi of the Church of the East. One of the most

notable was Ishoyahb III of Adiabene, who thoroughly reformed

the liturgy of his church. Special note ought to be made of the

redaction of the Hudra (lit. “cycle”) a choral book for the daily

offices, a joint project with the monk Henanisho. In his extensive

collection of letters, which has been preserved, Ishoyahb combated

the theology of another writer of his time, Martyrius Sahdona,

author of a great Book of Perfection.

Finally, from the time of transition to the Arab period, the com-

mentaries of Gabriel of Qatar and Abraham bar Lipeh represent

valuable commentaries on East Syriac liturgy.

The Arab period until the Syriac Renaissance (seventh to

thirteenth centuries)

The Arab conquest of the second half of the seventh century, which

brought with it a political change in western Asia, did not interrupt

the creation of Syriac literature. East Syriac literature was the medi-

ator between the Greek heritage of the classical age and the Arab

world, between Christianity and Islam. Beginning in the eighth cen-

tury, Syriac was gradually eclipsed by Arabic, though it remained a

literary and liturgical language.

During the Umayyad period (661–750), independent monastic

literature continued to dominate at first. Dadisho of Qatar and

Isaac of Nineveh were the most important representatives of this

trend. Many of the works of Isaac of Nineveh written at the end of

the seventh century were in the eighth and ninth centuries translated

into Greek in Palestine, and thus gained significance in the West

as well. In the twentieth century they influenced the monastic

movement at Mount Athos and in the Egyptian desert. Likewise

important in the West was the (anonymous) Apocalypse of

Pseudo-Methodius, which was written around 700 in northern

Mesopotamia, and in its Greek and Latin translations influenced

other apocalyptic works.

In the eighth century John of Dalyatha and Joseph Hazzaya were

highly influential figures in East Syriac monastic and spiritual litera-

ture. Around 792 Theodore bar Konai wrote his extensive Book of

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the Scholion, which not only introduced biblically based philosophy

and theology but also presented Christianity over against Islam and

refuted a number of heretical opinions. The vitality of intellectual

life in East Syriac Christendom at this time is also shown by the

letters of Catholicos Timotheos I (780–823). Abdisho bar Brika

mentions the figure of 200 letters, of which 59 have survived.

Efforts toward greater understanding of the Bible interested two

important representatives of East Syriac biblical exegesis: Isho bar

Nun produced Select Questions on the Old and New Testaments,

and Ishodad of Merv (mid-ninth century) commented on the entire

Bible.

In the early ninth century Job of Edessa came to prominence,

translating Galen’s commentary on Hippocrates. In his Book of

Treasures he referred to other works of metaphysics, psychology,

astronomy, and medicine, which have unfortunately been lost. As a

historical work, the extensive Book of Superiors (Abbots) of the

monastery of Beth Abe by Thomas of Marga is of particular

significance.

At the court of the Abbassid caliphs (750–1258) in Baghdad the

East Syrians transmitted the intellectual heritage of antiquity to the

blossoming Arab scholarship. Greek works of natural science,

medicine, and philosophy were made available to Islam through the

superb translations of scholars of the Church of the East. This is of

paramount cultural and historical significance. As a consequence,

Greek works translated into Arabic entered the Western world

through Spain and Sicily even before the Greek originals were

known in Europe. Not only East Syriac clerics produced literature,

but also physicians and educated laypersons. One of the best-

known translators was Hunain b. Ishaq († 873), who translated

first from Greek into Syriac and then from Syriac into Arabic. Syriac

Christians had already extensive experience translating complex

Greek texts into Syriac, but at first none in translating directly from

Greek into Arabic. For Hunain, the path from Syriac into Arabic,

that is, within the Semitic linguistic family, was seen as easier. Some

Greek works have only been preserved in their Syriac translations,

such as the compendium of Aristotelian philosophy of Nicholas of

Damascus.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries East Syriac literature experi-

enced a decline. Dating from this period is the work of Elia bar

Shinaya of Nisibis († 1046), which should be considered Christian

Arabic, as well as Syriac, literature. Worthy of note is his world

chronicle, written in Syriac and Arabic in parallel columns.

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Likewise, Elia III Abu Halim († 1190) wrote in Arabic, though he

also produced many Syriac liturgical texts for the morning office.

Syriac literature experienced a renaissance in the twelfth and thir-

teenth centuries. Especially significant among writers of poetry was

Giwargis Warda, many of whose hymns were incorporated into the

liturgy. At present, of his over 150 poems, only twenty-three have

been edited. John b. Zobi was one of the most learned writers of this

time and produced, in addition to his liturgical commentaries on

baptism and the eucharist, a variety of grammatical and philo-

sophical works.

The author of the anonymous History of Yahballaha and Rabban

Sauma (after 1317), which was originally written in Persian and is

preserved in Syriac, was eyewitness of many of the events of the

journey of the two monks from China to the West. Timotheos II of

Mosul († 1332) wrote on the ecclesiastical mysteries as well as

Abdisho bar Brika († 1318), the last great East Syriac writer.

Abdisho wrote in Arabic and Syriac, and his works included biblical

commentaries, theological and canonical writings (e.g. The Pearl,

Nomocanon), and writing in metrical form. Of particular import-

ance is his catalog of Syriac writers, which is an invaluable source of

information about Syriac authors and works.

Fourteenth century to the present

Because of the Mongol invasions under Tamerlane and epidemics of

plague, East Syriac literature reached its nadir in the fourteenth

century. Renewal began in the fifteenth century with Ishaq Qardahe

Shbadnaya, author of several acrostics, and Sargis bar Wahle,

author of a verse biography of Rabban Hormizd. Since then literary

production has been continuous, if modest. However, this literature

is little studied and minimally edited; only bits and pieces are well-

known. For instance, from the end of the seventeenth and beginning

of the eighteenth centuries, the Chaldean patriarch Joseph II

(† 1712) deserves mention.

As early as the start of the sixteenth century, works were also

being written in Modern Syriac, particularly in the Alqosh dialect. It

is folk poetry, which has mainly religious, but sometimes also secu-

lar or historical topics. Modern Syriac literature owed its success

above all to the American missions at Lake Urmiyah, which pro-

moted the use of Syriac as a written language. The most important

witness to this linguistic revitalization was the nearly seventy-year

run (1849–1918) of the missionary newsletter Rays of Light, in

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which questions of phonetics, dialects, and lexicology were dis-

cussed. Among the East Syrians the Chaldean metropolitan of

Urmiyah, Toma Audo (1853–1917), was of outstanding signifi-

cance on account of his compilation of an enormously valuable

Syriac–Syriac dictionary.

In some areas attempts were made to revive classical Syriac.

Today, for instance, it is the instructional language in the seminaries

of the (West Syrian) Syrian Orthodox Church at the monastery of

Mar Gabriel (Tur Abdin) and in Ma’arat Saidnaya (north of

Damascus).

In the twentieth century the trans-confessional Assyrian national-

ist movement championed the development of secular literature.

Syriac was consequently used by authors for lyric poetry as well as

for prose. The journal Kokva ( The Star), founded in 1908 by the

West Syrian Naum Fayeq (1868–1930), published pioneering work.

In the twentieth century, Western secular literature was translated

into Syriac. Examples of such translations include William Shake-

speare’s Merchant of Venice, translated by Benyamin Mushe Bet-

Benyamin d-Ashita, born in Mosul in 1940; Jean Racine’s play

Athalie, by Abrohom Isu (Baghdad, 1978); and Niccolò Machia-

velli’s Prince, by Gabriel Afram (Sweden, 1995).

IRANIAN LITERATURE

Manfred Hutter

Iranian Christianity

In an inscription from the last quarter of the third century, the

Zoroastrian priest Kartir indicated his enthusiasm for the spread of

Zoroastrianism in the Sassanian empire, which had led to the per-

secution of other religions; among the Christians then living in the

western Iranian region, Kartir distinguished between the Greek-

speaking ( krestyane) and Syriac-speaking ( nasraye) communities.

Almost a century later, the Syrian Acts of the martyrs present an

already altered picture, as many of the Christian victims of Shapur

II had Iranian names and some of the persecuted had converted

from Zoroastrianism to Christianity. From these observations it is

evident that beginning at the latest with the fourth century, atten-

tion must be paid to Iranian-speaking Christians. This is confirmed

by a note in a work of John Chrysostom (cf. Patrologia Graeca

59.32), who mentions that during his time the Bible was translated

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into the language of the Persians. Somewhat later Theodoret of

Cyrus also reports knowledge of the Bible among the Persians (cf.

Patrologia Graeca 83.1045). When the Church of the East gained

its jurisdictional independence as the “Persian Church” in the fifth

century, it was advised to develop a separate Iranian Christian lit-

erature in order to underline with language the “Iranian” quality of

Christianity (and thereby simultaneously its political separation

from Byzantium) in the Sassanian empire. The Chronicle of Seert

(cf. Patrologia Orientalis 7.117f), with its reference to Bishop

Mana of Rewardashir, who is said to have translated the entire

body of Syriac ecclesiastical literature into the Middle Persian ver-

nacular at the end of the fifth century, indicates that active efforts

were being made to translate works from Syriac into Iranian. It is

also reported with regard to Catholicos Aqaq († 495/6) that he

translated an account of Christian beliefs into Middle Persian for

the Sassanian ruler Kawad I, in order to help him understand Chris-

tianity. However, the adoption or use of Middle Persian was not

accomplished without controversy; in the autobiography of John

of Dailam, for example, an account is given of a debate between

Syriac- and Iranian-speaking monks over which language ought to

be used in the liturgy. Likewise, as early as the fifth century, there

was a metropolitan of the Church of the East in Samarkand, the

central city in the East Iranian-Sogdian region.

Languages and scripts

As a result of the spread of Christianity, Iranian Christian literature

was written in two languages: Middle Persian and Sogdian. West

Iranian Middle Persian was written in the Pahlavi script, whose

earliest beginnings may be traced back to the third century bc, when

it was first adapted from Aramaic script for use on coins in the

Persis. Beginning in the third century ad it became the dominant

language for everyday use in the Sassanian empire and was even

used for official inscriptions and stone monuments (especially in the

third to fifth centuries) and in italics on papyri (sixth century); with

the increasing Islamicization of Iran in the eighth century, this script

was gradually replaced by the Arabic, and its last traces date from

the eleventh century. As a “religious book script” the widely dis-

seminated Pahlavi script enjoyed active use among both Christians

and Zoroastrians; the Manichees, in contrast, adapted the Syriac

script (probably in the form closest to the script used in Palmyra in

Syria) for their Middle Persian literature. For East Iranian Sogdian

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the Christians used either East Syriac or Sogdian script, while the

Manichees wrote their Sogdian texts in their own Manichean or

Sogdian script. The Sogdian script is also a descendant and adapta-

tion of the Aramaic script. The earliest certain examples of this

script date to the third century ad, and beginning in the sixth

century Sogdians became executives of the administration in Cen-

tral Asia, thus making their language and script the trans-regional

communication medium of the area. It is understandable that the

Christians did not cut themselves off from this; it is, however, also

worth noting that the Syriac texts were used more frequently in the

Church of the East than the Iranian were and that Iranian Chris-

tian texts were largely dependent upon Syriac ecclesiastical litera-

ture. Beginning in the late first century, the linguistic variety of the

Church of the East was further broadened in East Iranian and

Central Asian communities by the addition of Old Turkish – used,

for instance, on gravestones – whose script developed out of

Sogdian.

Literature

Middle Persian texts

Although Middle Persian had been in liturgical use since the fourth

century and was also known among Sogdian-speaking Christians as

an “ecclesiastical language,” only a few Christian texts have sur-

vived. The most extensive text is the Sogdian Turfan Psalter, found

in Bulayiq (about 10 kilometers north of Turfan) in Chinese Turke-

stan (Sinkiang) at the beginning of the twentieth century along with

almost the entire Iranian-speaking Christian corpus of writings,

aside from individual inscriptions. The fragmentary manuscript

includes Middle Persian translations of Psalms 94–9, 118, and 121–

36, for which the textual model is the Syriac Peshitta. On linguistic

grounds it is probable that these psalm translations were completed

as early as the fourth century, though the manuscript at issue could

only have been written in the sixth century at the earliest because

one of the canons of Mar Aba († 552), head of the church in Persia,

was inserted before the first verse of each psalm. Besides their con-

sequences for the dating of the manuscript, these canons also indi-

cate that the manuscript was produced in the East Syrian church

and that it was intended for liturgical use and not for private read-

ings of the Old Testament.

Besides these psalm translations, no Middle Persian Christian is

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extant; only a few South Indian inscriptions with Christian refer-

ences, dating from the ninth and eleventh centuries, remain to be

noted. A copper tablet from Quilon bestowed privileges upon the

church there, and the signatures of the witnesses are written in

Arabic, Middle Persian, and Jewish Persian. Likewise noteworthy

are a few crosses in South India bearing Middle Persian inscriptions

of their donors; up to now, at least six such crosses have been found

in Madras, Kottayam, and Travancore, as well as in Anuradhapura

in Sri Lanka. The material from these inscriptions offers no theo-

logical information, but it shows that Middle Persian was used, at

least on occasion, by Christians of the Church of the East until the

eleventh century.

Despite the relative dearth of extant Middle Persian literature, the

significance of this literature ought not be overlooked. This claim is

also indirectly supported by the Christian law book of Metro-

politan Ishobokht of Rewardashir, originally written in Middle Per-

sian but surviving only in its Syriac translation. Words borrowed

from Middle Persian appearing in Sogdian texts also demonstrate

that the original extent of Middle Persian sources must have been

incomparably greater, such that these texts were also translated into

Sogdian.

Sogdian texts

The majority of Christian Sogdian texts originated in the discovery

of Bulayiq in the Turfan oasis; a few additional texts (most import-

ant is a Christian book of oracles, less so some documents of every-

day life) came from the so-called “Cave of the Thousand Buddhas”

in Tun-huang, farther to the east. A common characteristic of the

manuscripts from Tun-huang and Bulayiq shows that they were

predominantly translated directly from Syriac; a few, however, indi-

cate a direct Middle Persian model. Based on evidence from paleo-

graphical observations – of both the more commonly used East

Syriac and the Sogdian scripts – all these manuscripts date from the

ninth and tenth centuries at the earliest, although even in the fifth

century Sogdia – beginning with Samarkand – had joined the

Church of the East. For our recognition of Samarkand as a center of

Sogdian Christianity we are indirectly indebted to a Sogdian

inscription from Ladakh, left by a Sogdian envoy to the Tibetan

ruler, though this clearly lies outside of the area Sogdian Christians

settled.

If one were to attempt to systematize Christian Sogdian litera-

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ture, one could begin with biblical texts. Many books of New Tes-

tament pericopes have been preserved, most of these in a bilingual,

East Syriac–Sogdian format, whose inclusion of two languages

demonstrates that even in the Sogdian communities in Bulayiq, the

dominant religious and liturgical language remained East Syriac. At

present, the only Old Testament text known is the Sogdian transla-

tion of the Psalms: despite the limited extent of surviving texts, these

two manuscripts enable a few interesting conclusions. In one manu-

script, each psalm is given a Syriac heading; still more instructive is

the section of text in which the Greek text from the Septuagint

replaces the Sogdian version in the opening line of Psalm 32. It may

be presumed that the transmission of knowledge of the Greek bib-

lical text to the Sogdians was accomplished through their contact

with the Melkites, who had had a catholicos in Tashkent since

around 762. An indication that perhaps additional parts of the Old

Testament existed in Sogdian translation can eventually be deduced

from the numerous Old Testament citations in the Antirrhetikos of

Evagrius Ponticus (346–99). That biblical texts fundamentally

shape Christian texts is self-evident; it is nonetheless worth noting

that Sogdian apocryphal texts are not unknown, such as a fragment

about Simon Magus, originating from the Acts of Peter, as well as a

collection of biblical puzzles and a small fragment regarding Mary

Magdalene.

Some Sogdian texts stand directly in the Middle Persian tradition.

Besides linguistic arguments, clues related to content support this

claim. The most important texts with Middle Persian backgrounds

in terms of content include above all the following: a biography of

John of Dailam, who gained renown for, among other accomplish-

ments, the founding of monasteries in Persia at the end of the sev-

enth or beginning of the eighth century; the Acts of the martyrs

under Shapur II, including, for instance, the well-preserved version

of the martyrdom of Pethion. Also mentioned is the legend of the

missionizing of the city of Merv by Bishop Bar Shabba. Besides

missionary successes, another recurrent motif in these texts is that

the successful missionary and his followers had to justify their turn-

ing away from Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in the Sas-

sanian empire, or be persecuted on this account. Although for most

of these Sogdian Christian texts Syriac or, in some cases, Arabic

parallel texts are known, they can also stand as a separate group

within this literature, as they reflect the (ecclesio-political) Persian

background of the East.

In addition to hagiography, and also hymns, one final group of

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texts deserves note, whose content focuses on monasticism and

asceticism. Besides the aforementioned Antirrhetikos of Evagrius

Ponticus and fragments of the Apophthegmata Patrum, other texts

– in some cases not yet identified – have survived, promoting such

values as fasting, renunciation of the world, nocturnal waking, and

the life of solitude. Monastic biographies and commentaries thereof

have been preserved: for instance, that of Abba Ishaya (late fourth

century) from Scetis in Egypt, as well as Dadisho’s commentary on

Abba Ishaya; a fragment of a letter from the Egyptian Makarios

(fourth century); a detailed biography of the hermit Serapion or the

ascetic Eugen. Since East Syriac Christians in the fifth century had

little interest in ascetic or eremitic lifestyles, the adoption and pre-

servation of these Egyptian traditions in the Sogdian “library” of

Bulayiq reflect the result of a development within the Church of the

East, which evidently must have lessened its anti-ascetic stance in

the mid-sixth century, enabling the acceptance of texts from the

Egyptian ascetic tradition. In the monastic context of Bulayiq –

albeit in manuscripts from some four centuries later – this develop-

ment of the Syriac Church of the East remains available to us.

Summary

As the East Syriac church grew out of the Persian regions of the

Sassanian empire into Central Asia, it is natural that Syriac and

Middle Persian were used as ecclesiastical languages in the Central

Asian missions, with the latter increasingly established along the

northern Silk Road through the Sogdian lingua franca. That in the

end the church is considered to be of Syriac origin is accounted for

by the fact that Iranian Christian literature remained almost

exclusively a literature of translation. Nor did this change at the end

of the first millennium, as Sogdian was largely eclipsed as the lingua

franca by New Persian (and to a lesser extent Old Turkish). As a

consequence of this shift, New Persian Christian texts were also

produced, such as a bilingual edition of the Psalms in New Persian

and Syriac, probably dating from the end of the ninth century and

marking the beginning of the process of changing languages. In the

same way, a handful of late Sogdian texts from Bulayiq display

linguistic features suggesting that these manuscripts were products

of writers whose mother tongue was not Sogdian but Old Turkish.

Thus Iranian literature eventually vanished from the Church of the

East.

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TURKISH, UIGHUR, AND

CHINESE LITERATURE

Wilhelm Baum

“Nestorian” texts in Central Asia and China have also been pre-

served in the Old Turkish, Uighur, and Chinese languages.

In Old Turkish fragments of The Martyrdom of St George, pre-

sumably modeled on a Syriac original, and an apocryphal text

regarding the birth of Jesus and the adoration of the prophets have

been preserved. An additional fragment, which defies categoriza-

tion, contains a Christian explanation for the origins of fire worship

and is thus of particular value for the history of religions. Likewise,

the “Nestorian crosses” of the Onguts and Keraits bear Turkish

inscriptions.

In Uighur, a fragment of the book of prophecies is so far known.

In the eighth and ninth centuries the Turfan oasis was the capital of

an Uighur empire. However, in the East Syriac monastery of Bulayiq

there, mostly Sogdian writings (see above: “Iranian literature”)

were discovered.

Texts which presumably can be traced back to the monk Alopen

extend back to the earliest period of the Christianization of China.

Two writings ought to be mentioned: the Jesus the Messiah Sutra,

dating from between 635 and 641, and the approximately con-

temporary Treatise on Monotheism, containing echoes of the

“golden rule” of Confucius and an account of the spread of Christi-

anity up to 641. Around 800 a Buddhist list of instructional texts

from Xian mentioned that in 782 the Indian scholar Prajna, with

help from the Persian monk and future bishop Adam (King-tsing),

translated texts from Uighur. A register of books and people from

around 800 includes those writings which had already been trans-

lated into Chinese. In 1908 King-tsing’s translation of the “Gloria”

from Syriac was found by Paul Pelliot in the monastery of Tun-

huang in the “Cave of the Thousand Buddhas”; the Mysterious

Peace and Joy Sutra and the Radiant Religion of Ta-Tsin Sutra were

found there as well. However, the two sutras were dated to the

period from 750 to 900. The famous and still extant “Nestorian

stele” of Xian dates from after 781, and it recounts the early history

of the Chinese mission. Among the Christian Onguts, Chinese

poems were also produced, but one finds no Christian elements in

them. The liturgical language remained, as a rule, Syriac.

A particularly valuable source for East Syriac Christianity is the

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anonymous Chronicle of Chen-chiang. The text describes the his-

tory of the monastery founded by Mar Sergis (Sarkis) and six other

monasteries which can be traced to him. Finally, the names of vari-

ous Christians are mentioned. The work belongs among the most

influential documents of Christian literature in China. There were

also Christians in China who produced works in Chinese, but these

lack specifically Christian content.

Numerous gravestones of East Syriac Christians in the Mongol–

Chinese region bear Turkish, Uighur, Sogdian, or Armenian inscrip-

tions. In the monastery of Fang-shan, forty miles south-west of

Peking, two inscriptions from 960 and 1355 were found.

For the (East Syrian) Christian communities in Central Asia and

China, additional Chinese, Arabic, and Armenian sources were also

significant. For instance, the imperial annals of the Mongol period,

Yuan-shih, mention many Christian individuals. Among the Arabic

authors, Suleiman, Abu Zaid, and Masudi are worthy of note;

among Armenian authors, Hethum or Kirakos of Gantzag; among

Persians, Rashid ad-Din should be mentioned.

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APPENDICES

LIST OF THE CATHOLICOI OF THE

CHURCH OF THE EAST*

Wilhelm Baum

SELEUCIA-CTESIPHON

Vacant (609–28)

Ishoyahb II of Gdala (628–46)

Papa (310–17, † 329)

Maremmeh (646–50)

Shimun I (329–41)

Ishoyahb III of Adiabene (650–8)

Sahdost (341–2)

Giwargis I (661–80)

Barbahemin (343–6)

John I Bar Marta (680–3)

Vacant (346–63)

Henanisho I (685–92/700)

Tomarsa (363–71)

John the Leper (692–3)

Qayyuma (377–99)

Vacant (700–14)

Isaac I (399–410)

Saliba-Zakha (714–28)

Ahai (410–14)

Vacant (728–31)

Yahballaha I (415–20)

Pethion (731–40)

Maana (420)

Aba II (741–51)

Faraboht (421)

Sourin (751)

Dadisho I (421–56)

Jacob II (754–75)

Babowei (457–84)

Henanisho II (775–80)

Akak (485–95/6)

Babai (497–502)

Silas (503–23)

BAGHDAD

Narses and Elisha (524–37)

Paul I (537–9)

Timotheos I (780–823)

Aba I the Great (540–52)

Isho bar Nun (823–8)

Josef (552–67, † 576)

Giwargis II (828–31)

Ezechiel (570–82)

Sabrisho II (831–5)

Ishoyahb I of Arzun (582–96)

Abraham II of Marga (837–50)

Sabrisho I (596–604)

Theodosius I (Athanasius) (853–8)

Gregory I (605–8)

Serge I (860–72)

* Based on Elias of Nisibis, the Chronicle of Seert, Masib. Sulaiman, and Barhe-

braeus, on which E. Tisserant’s list also depends, and completed by the latest

research of H. Murre-van den Berg.

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A P P E N D I C E S

Israel of Kashkar (877)

Shimun V (1497–1501)

Enos I (877–84)

Elias V (1502–3)

John II bar Narsai (884–92)

John III (893–9)

RABBAN HORMIZD

John IV bar Abgar (900–5)

Abraham III Abraza (906–37)

Shimun VI (1504–38)

Emanuel I (937–60)

Shimun VII bar Mama (1538–51)

Israel I (961)

Shimun VIII Dinkha (1551–58)

Abdisho I (963–86)

Elias VI bar Giwargis (1558–91)

Mari II bar Tobi (987–99)

Elias VII (1591–1617)

John V bar Isa (1000–11)

Elias VIII Shimun (1617–60)

John VI Nasuk (1012–16)

Elias IX Yuhannan Maraugin

Ishoyahb bar Ezechiel (1020–25)

(1660–1700)

Elias I (1028–49)

Elias X Maraugin (1700–22)

John VII bar Tagabi (1049–57)

Elias XI Dinkha (1722–78)

Sabrisho III Zanbur (1064–72)

Elias XII Ishoyahb of Alqosh

Abdisho II bar al-Arid (1074–90)

(1778–1804)

Makika I (1092–1110)

Elias II bar Molki (1111–34)

SULAQUA-LINE (in communion with

Barsauma I (1134–6)

Rome)

Abdisho III bar Molki (1139–48)

Ishoyahb V Baladi (1149–75)

John VIII Sulaqa (1553–5), anti-

Elias III Abu Halim (1176–90)

patriarch of Shimun VIII

Yahballaha II (1190–1222)

Dinkha

Sabrisho IV bar Qayyuma (1222–4)

Abdisho IV (1555–70)

Sabrisho V bar al-Masihi

Abraham (1570–7)

(1226–56)

Yahballaha IV (1577–80)

Makika II (1257–65)

Shimun IX Dinkha (1581–1600)

Dinkha I (1265–81)

Shimun X (1600–38)

Shimun XI (1638–56)

Shimun XII (1656–62)

MARAGHA

Shimun XIII Dinkha (1662–1700),

Yahballaha III (1281–1317)

Union ends 1672

ARBELA

DIYARBAKIR (in communion with Rome)

Timotheos II (1318–32)

Joseph I (1681–96)

Joseph II Sliba Beth Marcuf (1696–

1712)

KARAMLES

Joseph III (1714–57)

Dinkha II (1332–64)

Joseph IV (1759–81)

Joseph V (1781–1828), Union ends

MOSUL

MOSSUL/BAGHDAD (Chaldean

Shimun II

patriarchs, in communion with Rome)

Shimun III

Elias IV († 1437)

John VIII Hormez (1830–8)

Nicholas I (1840–7), † 1855

Joseph VI Audo (1848–78)

JEZIREH

Elias XIII Abolyonan (1879–94)

Shimun IV Basidi (1437–97)

Abdisho V Khayyatt (1895–99)

174

A P P E N D I C E S

Joseph Emmanuel II Thomas

Shimun XVIII Ruben (1861–1903)

(1900–47)

Shimun XIX Benjamin (1903–18)

Joseph VII Ghanima (1947–58)

Shimun XX Poulos (1918–20)

Paul II Cheikho (1958–89)

Shimun XXI Eshai (1920–75), from

Raphael I Bidawid (since

1940/1 on in Chicago and San

1989)

Francisco

KOTCHANNES (until 1920)

BAGHDAD (Ancient Church of the

East)

Shimun XIII Dinkha (1662–1700),

until 1672 in communion with

Addai II Giwargis (since 1969)

Rome

Shimun XIV Salomon (1700–40)

CHICAGO (Assyrian Church of the

Shimun XV Michael Muktes

East)

(1740–80)

Shimun XVI John (1780–1820)

Dinkha IV Khnanaya (since

Shimun XVII Abraham (1820–61)

1976)

175

A P P E N D I C E S

LIST OF SOVEREIGNS

Dietmar W. Winkler

THE SASSANIANS (224–651)

Julian (361–3), Roman Emperor

Jovian (363–4), Roman Emperor

Ardeshir I (224–41)

Valens (364–78)

Shapur I (241–72)

Theodosius I (379–95), from 388

Hormizd I (272–3)

Roman Emperor

Bahram I (273–6)

Arkadius (395–408)

Bahram II (276–93)

Theodosius II (408–50)

Bahram III (293)

Markian (450–7)

Narses (293–302)

Leo (457–74)

Hormizd II (302–9)

Zeno (474–91)

Shapur II (309–79)

Anastasius (491–518)

Ardeshir II (379–83)

Justin I (518–27)

Shapur III (383–8)

Justinian (527–65)

Bahram IV (388–99)

Justin II (565–78)

Yazdgird I (399–420)

Tiberius (578–82)

Bahram V (421–38)

Maurice (582–602)

Yazdgird II (438–57)

Phokas (602–10)

Hormizd III (457–9)

Heraclius (610–41)

Peroz (459–84)

Constantine III (641)

Balash (484–8)

Kawad I (488–531)

Djamasp (496–8), Usurper

THE FOUR PERFECT CALIPHS

Chosroes I (531–79)

Hormizd IV (579–90)

Abu Bakr (632–4)

Bahram Chobin (590–1), Usurper

Omar (634–44)

Chosroes II (591–628)

Othman (644–56)

Ali (656–61)

628–32 Phase of unsettlement with

permanent change of rulers (term

of reign insecure)

THE UMAYYAD CALIPHS (661–749)

Kawad II Shiruye (628)

Ardeshir III (628–9)

Muawiya (661–80)

Boran (629–30)

Yazid I (680–3)

Shahrvaraz (?)

Muawiya II (683–4)

Azarmdukht (?)

Marwan I (684–5)

Hormizd V (630–2)

Abdalmalik (685–705)

Walid I (705–15)

Yazdgird (632–51)

Sulaiman (715–17)

Omar II (717–20)

Yazid II (720–4)

BYZANTINE EMPERORS (UP TO 641)

Hischam (724–43)

Constantine the Great (306–37),

Walid II (743–4)

Roman Emperor

Yazid III (744)

Constantius II (337–61), from 353

Ibrahim (744)

Roman Emperor

Marwan II (744–9)

176

A P P E N D I C E S

THE ABBASID CALIPHS (UP TO 861)

DYNASTIES OF CHINESE

EMPERORS (618–1279)

Abul-Abbas (749–54)

Al-Mansur (754–75)

Tang 618–907

Al-Mahdi (775–85)

Kao-tsu (618–26)

Al-Hadi (785–6)

T’ai-tsung (626–49)

Harun ar-Raschid (786–809)

Kao-tsung (650–83)

Al-Amin (809–13)

Chung-tsung (684 and 705–10)

Al-Mamun (813–33)

Jiu-tsung (684–90 and

Al-Mutasim (833–42)

710–12)

Al-Wathiq (842–6)

Wu-hou (690–705), Empress,

Al-Mutawakkil (847–61)

wife of Kao-tsung

Hsuan-tsung (713–55)

Between 861 and 1258 there are

Su-tsung (756–62)

twenty-seven more Abbasid

Tai-tsung (762–80)

Caliphs, who cease to be

Te-tsung (780–805)

politically or historically

Shun-tsung (805)

important

Hsien-tsung (806–20)

Mu-tsung (820–4)

Ching-tsung (824–7)

THE MONGOL GREAT KHANS

Wen-tsung (827–40)

Wu-tsung (841–6)

Genghis Khan (Temujin) (1162–

Hsuan-tsung (846–59)

1227)

I-tsung (860–74)

Ogdai (1227–41)

Hsi-tsung (873–88)

Kuyuk (1241–8)

Chao-tsung (888–904)

Mongke (1250–60)

Ching-tsung (904–7)

Kublai Khan (1260–94)

The Five Dynasties in the North

907–60

The Ten Kingdoms in the South

THE MONGOL IL-KHANS OF

902–79

PERSIA

Northern Sung 960–1127

Southern Sung 1127–1279

Hulagu (1256–8)

Liao (Kitan) 907–1125

Abaqa (1265–81)

Hsi-Liao (Karakitai) 1125–1211

Taqudar-Ahmad (1282–4)

Hsi-Hsia (Tanguten) 1038–1227

Argun (1284–91)

Chin (Dschurdschen) 1115–1234

Gaichatu (1291–5)

Yuan, or Mongol, dynasty

Baydu (1295)

1206–1368

Ghazan (1295–1304)

Oljaitu (1304–16)

From 1279 the Mongols controlled

Abu Said (1316–35)

the whole Chinese empire

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Chapter 6: Language and literature of the

Church of the East

Syriac literature (Dietmar W. Winkler)

Albert, Micheline, et al. , Christianismes orientaux. Introduction à l’étude

des langues et des littératures, Paris, 1993.

Assfalg, Julius, “Die christlichen Literaturen des Orients,” Kindlers Liter-

aturlexikon 1 (1965): 65–77.

Baumstark, Anton, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der

christlich palästinensischen Texte, Bonn, 1922.

Brock, Sebastian, “An Introduction to Syriac Studies,” in J. H. Eaton (ed.),

Horizons in Semitic Studies: Articles for Students, Birmingham, 1980,

1–33.

Brock, Sebastian, “Bibelübersetzungen I. 4. Die Übersetzung ins Syrische,”

Theologische Realenzyklopädie 6 (1980): 181–9.

Brock, Sebastian, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature, Môrân ’Eth’ô 9,

Kottayam, 1997.

Brock, Sebastian, From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac

and Greek in Late Antiquity, Collected Studies Series CS664, Hamp-

shire, 1999.

Brock, Sebastian, “Syrische Sprache und Literatur,” Lexikon für Theologie

und Kirche 9, Col. 1213–15.

Desreumaux, Alain, and Briquel-Chatonnet, Françoise, Répertoire des bib-

liothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits syriaques, Paris, 1991.

Drijwers, Han J., and Healy, John F., The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa

and Osrohene, Leiden, 1999.

Duval, Rubens, La littérature syriaque, Paris, 1907 (repr. Amsterdam,

1970).

Wright, William, A Short History of Syriac Literature, London, 1894.

Iranian literature (Manfred Hutter)

Important text editions

Andreas, Friedrich C., and Barr, Kai, Bruchstücke einer Pehlevi-

Übersetzung der Psalmen, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie

der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1933, Nr. 1, Berlin, 1933.

Gropp, Gerd, “Die Pahlavi-Inschrift auf dem Thomaskreuz in Madras,”

Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 3 (1970): 267–71 and Table

118.

Hansen, Olaf, Berliner soghdische Texte 1. Bruchstücke einer soghdischen

Version der Georgspassion (C 1), (Abhandlungen der Preussischen

Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1941, Nr. 10 Berlin,

1941.

Müller, Friedrich W. K., Soghdische Texte II. Aus dem Nachlass heraus-

gegeben von Wolfgang Lentz, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akad-

emie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1934, Nr. 21. Berlin, 1934.

193

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Sims-Williams, Nicholas, The Christian Sogdian Manuscript C 2, Berliner

Turfantexte 12, Berlin, 1985.

Literature

Hansen, Olaf, “Die Christliche Literatur der Sogdier,” in Ilya Gershevitch

et al. , Literatur. Lieferung 1, Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1. Abteilung.

4. Band: Iranistik. 2. Abschnitt, Leiden, 1968, 91–9.

Sims-Williams, Nicholas, “Sogdian and Turkish Christians in the Turfan

and Tun-Huang Manuscripts,” in Alfredo Cadonna (ed.), Turfan and

Tun-Huang. The Texts. Encounter of Civilizations on the Silk Road,

Florence, 1992.

Sundermann, Werner, “Byzanz und Bulayïq,” in Petr Vavrouöek (ed.),

Iranian and Indo-European Studies, Praha, 1994, 255–64.

Turkish, Uighur, and Chinese literature (Wilhelm Baum)

Mehlhose, Robert, “Nestorianische Texte aus China,” Zeitschrift der deut-

schen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Suppl. 1/2 (1969): 442–9.

Moule, A. C., Christians in China Before the Year 1550 (1930) New York,

1977.

Rosenkranz, Gerhard, Die älteste Christenheit in China, 2nd edn, Berlin,

1939.

Saeki, Yoshiro, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 2nd edn,

Tokyo, 1951.

Shimin, Geng, Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim, and Laut, Jens Peter, “Eine neue

nestorianische Grabinschrift aus China,” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher NF

14 (1996): 164–75.

Internet

Homepage of the Assyrian Church of the East: http://www.cired.org

194

INDEX

emperors of rome and byzantium

Yazdgird III (632–51) 41

Valerian (253–9) 70

Constantine the Great, Roman

caliphs

emperor (306–37) 10, 61

Omar (634–44) 41f.

Constantius II (337–61) 53

Ali (656–61) 42

Jovian (363–4) 11

Hisham (724–43) 46

Theodosius II (408–50) 19, 24f.

al-Mansur (754–75) 59, 65

Zeno (474–91) 26, 161

al-Mahdi (775–85) 59–61

Justin I (518–27) 46f.

Harun ar-Rashid (786–809) 60, 65

Justinian (527–65) 37

al-Mamun (813–33) 59

Maurice (582–602) 36, 37

al-Mutawakkil (847–61) 64, 66

Phokas (602–10) 37

Heraclius (610–41) 40, 43

khans of the mongols

Leo IV (775–80) 60

Jesügei 84

Andronicos II (1282–1328) 97

Genghis Khan (Temüdschin) († 1227)

79, 83f., 86, 90, 92f.

kings of persia

Ibaqa-Beki, wife of Genghis Khan 84

Shapur I (241–72) 9, 70

Tolui († 1231) 84

Hormizd I (272–3) 9

Sorqaqtani-Beki, wife of Tolui

Bahram I (273–6) 9

(† 1252) 84

Bahram II (276–93) 9

Batu, khan of the Golden Horde

Shapur II (309–79) 10f., 14, 18, 161,

(1237–55) 91

165, 169

Jochi 84

Ardeshir II (379–83) 14

Bek-Tumish, wife of Jochi 84

Yazdgird I (399–420) 14, 18f.

Ogdai (1229–41) 84, 90

Bahram V (421–38) 18f.

Kuyuk (1246–8) 84f., 89

Yazdgird II (438–57) 18

Mongke (1250–9) 84–6, 91, 95f.

Peroz (459–84) 28

Kublai (1260–94) 84, 86

Balash (484–8) 28

Arikboge 86, 92

Kawad I (488–531) 32, 166

Sartaq, khan of the Golden Horde

Djamasp (496–8) 32

(1256–7) 91

Chosroes I (431–579) 33f.

Chaghatai (1227–42) 92

Hormizd IV (579–90) 36

Buyantu (1311–20) 87

Chosroes II (591–628) 36–40

Bahram Chobin (590–1) 36

il-khans of persia

Shiruye/Kawad II (628) 40

Hulagu († 1258) 84f., 94, 130

Boran (629–30) 40, 43

Doquz-Khatun († 1258) 85, 96, 100

195

I N D E X

Qutui-Khatun 96

Abraham II (837–50) 63, 70

Abaqa (1265–81) 86, 94, 96

Theodosius I (853–8) 50, 63

Taqudar (1282–4) 96

Sergius I (860–72) 64

Argun (1284–91) 86, 96f., 131

Israel of Kasgar (877) 63

Gaichatu (1291–5) 97

John IV bar Abgar (900–5) 64

Ghazan (1295–1304) 97, 131

Abraham III Abraza (905–36) 64, 81

Oljaitu (1304–16) 96, 100

Abdisho I (963–86) 51, 59

Abu Said (1316–35) 100

John VI Nasuk (1012–16) 72, 76

Elias I (1028–49) 72

emperors of china

Sabrisho III (1057/64–72) 51, 64

Tai-tsung (626–49) 47

Abdisho II b. Al-Arid (1074–90) 71

Kao-tsung (650–83) 47

Abdisho III bar Molki (1139–48) 80

Wu (empress) (690–705) 47

Elias III Abu Halim (1176–90) 78, 164

Hsüan-tsung (713–55) 47

Makika II (1257–65) 85

Wu-tsung (841–6) 50

Dinkha I (1265–81) 75, 94f.

I-tsung (860–74) 49

Yahballaha III (1281–1317) 57, 94–7,

Tai-tsung (1123–36) 86

100f., 103f.

Buyantu (1311–20) 87

Timotheos II (1318–32) 101–4, 164

Dinkha II (1332–64) 104

catholicoi of the east

Shimun II (1368–75) 104

Papa (285–326/7, † 329) 9f., 12

Shimun III (1385–1405) 104

Shimun I Bar Sabha (326/7–41) 10

Elias IV (1405–37) 104

Isaac I (399/402–10) 15, 17, 19

Shimun IV Basidi (1437–97) 105f.

Yahballaha I (415–20) 17

Elias V (1502–3) 107, 114, 116

Dadisho I (421–56) 10, 19

Shimun VI bar Mama (1504–38) 113,

Babowai (457–84) 28

116

Aqaq (485–95/6) 28, 32, 166

Shimun VII Ishuyau bar Mama

Babai (497–503) 32

(1538–51) 113, 116

Silas (503–23) 32, 46

Shimun VIII Dinkha (1551–8) 118,

Narses (524–39) 33

116

Elisha (524–39) 32f.

Elias VI bar Giwargis (1558–91) 116

Paul I (539) 33

Elias VII (1591–1617) 116–18

Aba I (540–52) 30, 33f., 54, 72f.,

Elias VIII Shimun (1617–60) 118f.

161, 167

Elias IX Yukhannan Maraugin

Joseph (552–67, † 576) 12

(1660–1700) 119

Ezechiel (570–82) 34f.

Elias X Maraugin (1700–22) 119

Ishoyahb I of Arzun (582–95/6) 35f.

Elias XI Dinkha of Alqosh (1722–78)

Sabrisho I (596–604) 36f., 53

119f.

Gregory of Phrat (605–8) 29, 37f.

Elias XII Ishoyahb (1778–1804) 120

Ishoyahb II of Gdala (628–44/6) 36,

Shimun XVII Abraham (1820–61)

39–42, 53

122f., 128

Ishoyahb III of Adiabene

Shimun XVIII Ruben (1861–1903)

(647/50–57/8) 36, 40, 42–5, 53,

129, 136

62, 110, 162

Shimun XIX Benjamin (1903–18)

Henanisho I (685/6–99/702) 45

136–8

Saliba-Zakha (714–28) 46f.

Shimun XX Poulos (1918–20) 138f.

Pethion (731–40) 46

Shimun XXI Eshai (1920–75) 141–51

Aba II (741–51) 58

Dinkha IV Khnanaya (since 1976)

Henanisho II (773–80) 59

147, 150–6

Timotheos I (780–823) 47, 58, 60–4,

67f., 70, 72f., 92, 163

chaldeans

Isho bar Nun (823–8) 163

John (Yohannan, Hanna) VIII Sulaqa

Sabisho II (831–5) 63

(1553–5) 113f., 117

196

I N D E X

Abdisho IV Maron of Yukhannan

Honorius III (1216–27) 83

(1555–70) 113f.

Gregory IX (1227–41) 89

Yahballaha IV (1577–80) 114

Innocent IV (1243–54) 89–91

Shimun IX Dinkha (1580–1600) 114

Honorius IV (1285–7) 97

Shimun XIII Dinkha (1662–1700)

Nicholas IV (1288–92) 97, 101

114, 118

Boniface VIII (1294–1303) 96

Shimun XV Michael Muktes of

Benedict XI (1303–4) 96, 100

Kotchannes (1740–80) 120

Clement V (1305–14) 101

Shimun XVI Yuhannan (1780–1820)

John XXII (1316–34) 102

120

Alexander VI (1492–1503) 109

Raphael I Bidawid (since 1989) 155

Julius III (1550–5) 113

Paul V (1605–21) 117

Elias XIII Abolyonan 129

Clement IX (1667–9) 119

Abdisho V Khayyat 130

Innocent XI (1676–89) 119

Addai II Giwargis 148, 154

Clement XI (1700–21) 119

Innocent XIII (1721–4) 119

popes

Clement XIII (1758–69) 120

Celestine I (422–32) 23–5

Pius VII (1800–23) 122

Leo the Great (440–561) 25

Pius IX (1846–78) 122

Calixtus II (1119–24) 82

John Paul II (since 1978) 152–4

Alexander III (1159–81) 82

Abba Ishaya (Isaias) of Scetis (fourth

Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus († 940) 65

century) 170

Abu Dalaf, poet (tenth century) 49

Abdallah ibn at-Taiyib see at-Taiyib

Abu l-Fadl b. Rabban an-Nasrani 63

Abdisho of Merv (eleventh century)

Abu l-Farag al-Isbahani, author

76

(† 967) 42

Abdisho of Messene 46

Abu l-Harith, bishop of Nadjran 42

Abdisho, bishop of Nisibis (fifteenth

Abu l-Qasim al-Hunain b. al-Magribi

century) 105

(† 1027) 71

Abdisho (Ebedjesus) bar Brika,

Abu Said, doctor (eleventh century) 71

theologian († 1318) 7, 12, 28, 38,

Abu Salih, historian (fourteenth

61, 102f., 115, 134, 163f.

century) 58, 110

Abdul Hamid II, Turkish sultan

Abu Zaid al Balkhi, Arabian

(1876–1906) 132

cosmographer († 934) 172

Aberkios 8

Adam see King-tsing

Abgar V, king of Edessa 13

Adam, Rabban, archimandrite

Abgar VIII the Great, king of Edessa

(seventeenth century) 117

13

Addai 12, 14, 21, 70, 97, 103

Abgar Ukama, king of Edessa 12, 14,

Afram Athnael, bishop 156

69f., 161

Afram Gabriel 165

Abimelek Timothy 130, 134

Aga Petros de Baz, Assyrian general

Abraham (fourteenth century) 94

138, 140f.

Abraham of Karka 107

Agapet, metropolitan of Beth Lapat

Abraham, abbot of Kashkar

(fifth century) 19, 20

(491–588) 37, 44, 46

Aggai 12, 14

Abraham, bishop (sixteenth century)

Ahatallah, bishop of India

114

(seventeenth century) 115

Abraham, bishop of Nisibis (fourth

Ahmed Abu Said, traveler († 934) 49

century) 11

Ainsworth, Adam William († 1882)

Abraham bar Lipeh 162

126

197

I N D E X

Akakios of Aleppo 15

Bardaisan († 222) 8, 13, 160

Akakios of Amid 15, 17f.

Barhebraeus see Grigirius Abu l-Faraj

Alberic of Troisfontaines, historian

Barsauma of Nisibis 26, 28f.

(† after 1251) 89

Bartholomew, apostle 103, 108

Alfonso de Albuquerque, governor of

Bedr Khan (nineteenth century) 127,

India (1453–1515) 109

131

Alfred the Great, king of England

Benson, Edward White 129

(875–900) 57

Al-Biruni, philosopher († 1039) 65,

Alopen, monk in China (seventh

67f., 76

century) 47f., 171

Bochtisho, son of George († 801)

Amar al-Basri (ninth century) 63

65

Amr b. Matta, historian (fourteenth

Bochtisho, Gabriel, doctor, son of

century) 12, 21, 54, 57, 72, 104

Bochtisho († 828) 59, 63–5

Andreas Chrysoberges (fifteenth

Bochtisho, George, doctor, father of

century) 112

Bochtisho († after 769) 65

Andreas of Longjumeau (thirteenth

Bolghai, Mongolian chancellor 85f.,

century) 90

91

Anschütz, Helga 121

Bonvoisin, Father, OP 129

Antonius Thondanatta, Mar

Brock, Sebastian, historian 2, 16, 29,

Abdisho, bishop in India

159

(nineteenth century) 116

Browne, William Henry 129

Aphrahat, the “Persian sage”

Buddha 75

(† c.350) 10, 11, 27, 160

Apollonarius of Laodicea 22

Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, traveler

Aprem Mooken, metropolitan 148,

( c.1467– c.1520) 107f.

154, 157

Candidian 24

Aprim Khamis, bishop 155

Chi-lieh 48

Archimedes, mathematician († 212

Chinkai, Mongolian chancellor 85,

bc) 66

89f.

Aristotle, philosopher (384–324bc)

Chwolson, Daniel Avramovic,

62

historian 77

Assemani, Joseph Simon, Orientalist

Clavijo, Ruy Gonzalez de († after

(1687–1768) 43, 119, 124

1404) 105

Assfalg, Julius, historian († 2001) 70

Coan, F. G. 129

Atatturk, Mustafa Kemal 141

Confucius 171

Audo, Toma († 1917) 165

Cosmas Indicopleustes 33, 41, 54

Avicenna, Husayn ibn Abdallah ibn

Cuinet, Vital 127

Sina, philosopher († 1037) 65

Cutts, Edward L. 128f.

Ayyan Atikal Tiruvatikal (ninth

Cyril of Alexandria († 444) 22–5, 151

century) 54

Cyrilliona († c.400) 160

Cyrus of Edessa 34, 161

Babai the Great, abbot of Mar

Abraham († 628/30) 36–9, 44, 161

Dadisho of Beth Qatraje 170

Bacon, Roger, philosopher

Dadisho of Qatar 162

( c.1219– c.1292) 92

Daniel bar Maryam, historian

Badger, George Percy, missionary

(seventh century) 70

(nineteenth century) 122f., 127

David 91

Baibar, sultan of Egypt († 1277) 95

David (Yahballaha) 106f.

Balai († 431) 160

David (Dudi) of Basra (third century)

Bar Shabba, bishop of Merv 46, 70,

53

74, 169

David of Beth Sinaye, bishop of China

Barbosa, Duarte, traveler († 1521)

(ninth century) 44, 49

110

David, General 138

198

I N D E X

David, great-grandson of Prester John

Fiey, Jean Maurice, historian 44, 70

83

Francesco da Montalboddo (sixteenth

Demetrios of Antioch († c.260) 9

century) 109

Dinkha (Gorge), bishop in India

Francis Xavier, SJ, missionary

(sixteenth century) 114

(1506–52) 111

Mar Dinkha of Terwaga 134

Frederick II, emperor (1212–50) 90

Diodore of Tarsus, theologian († 393/

4) 22, 27, 53, 115

Gabriel of Qatar 162

Dionysius the Areopagite 103

Gabriel of Sinjar, physician 37–9

Dionysius, Jacobite Maphrian

Gabriel, bishop 133

(twelfth century) 80

Gabriel, son of Chahabokht 53

Dioscoros of Alexandria 25

Galen of Pergamon, physician 72,

Dquanbo, Gabriel (nineteenth

163

century) 122

Gaudentius 52

Drijvers, Han J. W. († 2002) 13

Geevargese Sliwa, metropolitan 157

Duval, Ruben (nineteenth century) 43

George (Giwardis) Warda 164

Dwight, H. G. O. 125

George (Gorguz), king of the Ongut

(† 1298) 86, 92

Edward I, king of England (1273–

George (Mar Dinkha) 106

1307) 97

Giovanni de Empoli 110

Egeria 13

Girolamo da S. Stefano, traveler

Elias (sixteenth century) 113

(fifteenth century) 107

Elias (XIV), patriarch (nineteenth

Gorguz see George, king of the Ongut

century) 122

Grant, Ashael 125

Elias of Merv (seventh century) 44, 47

Gregorius, West Syriac bishop of

Elias of Mosul 105

India (seventeenth century) 116

Elias Damascenus (ninth century) 12

Gregory of Antioch, pope 36

Elias Mellos, bishop in India

Gregory of Kashkar 37f.

(nineteenth century) 116

Gregory of Nazianz ( c.390) 52

Elias, bishop of Nisibis (fifteenth

Gregory of Tours, historian († 594)

century) 28, 105, 163

52

Elias bar Shinaya of Nisibis, historian

Grigorius Abu l-Faraj known as

and theologian (975–1049) 70–1

“Barhebraeus” (ibn al-Ibri),

Elisabeth († 1317) 93f.

historian (1226–86) 62, 76, 85,

Eljigidei, Mongolian general

90f.

(thirteenth century) 91

Gundophares, king (first century) 51

Emmanuel Joseph, bishop 155

Gur-Khan, khan of the Keraits

Ephrem the Syrian († 373) 8, 11, 21f.,

(twelfth century) 84

27, 52, 160f.

Ephrem of Elam (eighth century) 64

Hafner Forneris, Anna (nineteeth

Eugen, ascetic 170

century) 124

Eusebius of Caesarea, historian

Halleuy, André de 16

(† c.340) 2, 3, 10, 51, 70

Hannan, legendary secretary 13f.

Eusebius of Tella 15

Hazzaya, Joseph 162

Evagrius Pontikos, mystic (346–99)

Henanisho (seventh century) 45, 162

74, 169f.

Herder, John Gottfried,

Evagrius Scholastikos ( c.536–93/4) 14

philosopher († 1803) 124

Hethum I, king of Armenia (1227–70)

Faisal, king of Syria and Iraq

87

(1883–1933) 140f.

Hethum II, king of Armenia

Fayeq, Naum († 1930) 165

(1289–1305) 97

Ferreira, Miguel (sixteenth century)

Hethum of Korykos, historian

52

(† 1308) 100, 172

199

I N D E X

Hindi, Augustin see Joseph I patriarch

Jacob, founder of Beth Abe (eighth

of Diyarbakir

century) 44

Hippocrates, physician († 377) 72,

Mar Jacob of India (fifteenth century)

163

55

Hormez see John VIII

Jacob of Nisibis (thirteenth century)

Hormizd, Rabban (sixth century) 64,

21

164

Jacob of Verona (fourteenth century)

Huang Chao, revolutionary (ninth

102

century) 49

Jacob Baradaeus († 578) 38

Hubays, translator, nephew of

Jacob (Masud), bishop of Cranganore

Hunain 66

(1503–50) 109–11

Hunain b. Ishaq, translator (=

Jacques de Vitry, historian († 1247)

Johannitius; 808–73) 65–7

82f.

Hussain of Mecca, Sherif 140

Jafelinus 89

Jausip, priest and poet († 1666) 117

Ibas of Edessa († 457) 22, 24–6

Jerome († 420) 52, 160

Ibn at-Nadim, Arab author († 995)

Joao de Albuquerque 111

51

Job of Edessa 163

Ibn Haukal, geographer († after 973)

John (Chu-an) († c.1314) 86

73

John of Antioch (fifth century) 22,

Ibn Nestorius 59

24f.

Idrisi, geographer (1100– c.1166) 53

John of Constantinople, patriarch 36

Ignatios Zakka I Iwas, Syrian

John de Cori, bishop of Sultaniya

Orthodox priest 153

(fourteenth century) 101

Ignatius Loyola, SJ (1491–1556)

John of Dalatha (Dailam) 162, 166,

111

169

Irakli II, king of Eastern Georgia

John of Ephesus, historian (sixth

(1762–98) 120

century) 46

Irandjin, Keraite (fourteenth century)

John of Marignola, historian († 1358)

100

56

Iravi Korttan (eighth century) 56

John of Montecorvino, OFM, bishop

Isa (eighth century) 60

of Peking (1247–1328/9) 57, 101

Isa (Ai-hsieh, Ishoua), doctor

John of Piano Carpine, OFM, traveler

(† 1308) 86f.

(† 1252) 89f.

Isaac of Niniveh 162

John of Wurzburg (twelfth century)

Isaac Joseph, bishop 157

62

Isaac Khananisho, metropolitan 136,

John, bishop of Mawana (seventeenth

139

century) 117

Ishaq ibn Hunayn, translator († 910/

John, bishop of Sultaniya († after

11) 66f.

1412) 102, 104

Ishaq Nwiya 148

John, patriarch of India (twelfth

Ishaq Qardahe Shbadnaya 164

century) 82

Ishobokht of Rewardashir 168

John, Prester 79, 82, 89, 92, 102, 107,

Ishodad of Merv 53, 63, 163

124, 130

Ishosabhran, monk († 620) 43

John bar Zobi (twelfth/thirteenth

Ishoyahb of Nisibis (1187–1222) 57

century) 73, 164

Isidor of Seville († 636) 52

John Chrysostom († 407) 36, 165

Israel of Alqos, poet († 1632) 117

John VIII Hormez, bishop of Mossul,

Israel of Kashkar 63

Chaldean patriarch (1830–8) 120–2

Isu Abraham 165

Jordanus Catalanus, bishop of Quilon

Issu (Jesbuzid), bishop of Kumdan

(† after 1330) 101

(eighth century) 47, 49

Joseph of Cranganore (fifteenth

Itiko, Keraite, son of Togoril 85

century ) 108f.

200

I N D E X

Joseph, bishop of India (sixteenth

Macaulay, Lord 55

century) 113, 114

Maclean, Arthur John 129

Joseph I (Yosep), patriarch of

Makarios (fourth century) 170

Diyarbakir (1681–96) 119

Mana of Rewardashir 53, 166

Joseph II, Sliba Beth Macruf,

Mani, religious founder († 276) 8,

patriarch of Diyarbakir

13

(1696–1712) 119, 164

Manuel I, king of Portugal

Joseph III, patriarch of Diyarbakir

(1495–1521) 108–9, 111

(1714–57) 119

Maqrizi, Egyptian historian († 1442)

Joseph IV (Lazarus Hindi), patriarch

85

of Diyarbakir (1759–81, † 1791)

Marcion 8, 13

120

Mari 12, 14, 97, 103

Joseph V (Augustin Hindi),

Mari b. Suleiman, historian

patriarch of Diyarbakir

(† c.1150) 12, 21, 61, 71, 104

(1781–1828) 120–2

Markos, Mongolian diplomat

Joseph VI, Audo, administrator

(thirteenth century) 91

(1848–78) 122

Markus see Catholicoi of the East:

Juvaini, historian († 1283) 84, 91

Yahballaha III

Marsachis see Sergis

Kartir (Kerdir) 9

Martyrius Sahdona (seventh century)

Kaswini, Arab geographer († before

162

1274) 76

Marutha of Maipherkat († 420) 14f.,

Kathanar, Matthew (eighteenth

17

century) 52

Maruvan Sabrisho (Sapir Iso),

Kawerau, Peter, historian 54, 70

founder of the church of Quilon

Khomeini, Ayatollah 150

(ninth century) 54

Al-Kindi, Abd al-Masib ibn Jabah,

al-Masudi, Arab traveler († 956) 49,

philosopher (tenth century) 67,

67, 110, 172

71

Mathias of Cranganore 108f.

King-tsing (Adam), monk in China

Matthew of Paris, OSB, historian

171

(† c.1259) 89

King-tsing (Adam), bishop of China

Maximilian, emperor († 1519) 108

(eighth century) 48f.

May, Karl, poet (1842–1912)

Kirakos of Gantzag, Armenian

130–2

historian (1201–72) 85, 90, 172

Meelis Zaia, bishop 156

Kitbuqa, Mongolian general († 1260)

Menezes, Alexis de, bishop of Goa

85

(sixteenth century) 115

Mar Komai 53

Meshiha-Zeka, historian (seventh

Kuo Tzu-I, Chinese general (eighth

century) 69

century) 49

Michael of Urmiyah 133

Kyrakos, abbot of Beth Abe (ninth

Mingana, Alphons, theologian

century) 44

(† 1937) 70

Mufazzal b. Abil-Fazail (fourteenth

Layard, Henry 129

century) 57

Lemée, Vincent, OP 129

Muhammad, Prophet († 632) 41f.,

Lion, OP 129

63, 67f., 81, 102, 128

Lopes, Thomé (sixteenth century) 109

Muhammad, son of Isaac known as

Lorenzo de Medici 108

Abu l-Faradj (tenth century) 51

Louis IX, king of France (1226–70)

Muhammad Pascha 127

91

Murre-van den Berg, Helene,

Ludovico de Varthema, traveler

historian 116

(† 1517) 109

Mushe, Bet-Benyamin d-Ashita

Ludolf of Sudheim († 1336/41) 102

Benyamin 165

201

I N D E X

Nadolny 130

Quadaq, Mongolian prince

Najan, Christian prince of Manchuria

(thirteenth century) 89

(† 1287) 79

Quaresmino, Francesco, OFM

Narsai, poet and teacher († after 503)

(seventeenth century) 118

25–7, 29f., 148, 156, 161

Quiore († 437) 22

Nasruddin, Shah 128

Qune, bishop of Edessa (fourth

Nestorius, patriarch of

century) 8

Constantinople (428–31, † 451)

Qurâ, bishop of Edessa (471–98) 26

23–5, 27, 30, 34, 134, 151, 161

Quss b. Saida, bishop of Nagran 42

Nicholas, tsar of Russia († 1918) 138

Nicholas of Damascus 163

Rabbula of Edessa (fifth century) 22,

Nicolo de Conti, traveler († 1469) 107

24f., 74

Nicolo da Poggibonsi, traveler

Raschid ad-Din, Persian historian

(fourteenth century) 102

(† 1318) 77, 84, 86, 97, 172

Nösh-farn, monk (ninth century) 50

Rashid Pascha 125

Numan III, king of Hira († 602) 36

Rassam Isa 127

Reza Pahlavi, shah of Persia 145, 147,

Odisho Oraham, bishop 156

150

Odo of Reims (twelfth century) 82

Richard of S. Germano, historian

Odorico of Pordenone, OFM,

(thirteenth century) 82

missionary ( c.1286–1331) 93, 101

Rich, Claude James 124

Oliver of Cologne ( c.1170–1227) 83

Ricoldo of Montecroce, missionary

Origenes, theologian († c.254)

( c.1243–1320) 97, 100

Otto of Freising, historian and bishop

Rothschild, Baron 140

(1138–58) 79, 82

Roz, F., SJ 115

Rubruk see William of Rubruk

Pakida of Edessa 15

Russell, Lord 128

Palladius 160

Pelagius, cardinal ( c.1165– c.1232) 83

Sachau, Eduard, historian († 1930)

Pelliot, Paul, historian 171

130

Pera, John 130

Sada of Edessa 10

Pera, Luther 130

Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq 146,

Perkins, Justin 125

150f.

Peter of Cluny 81

Saladin, sultan of Egypt (1169–93) 81

Peter of Toledo (twelfth century) 68

Saliba b. Yuhanna 57, 71, 104

Petrus Alphonsi († c.1140) 81

Salisbury, Robert Arthur, English

Petrus Venerabilis, abbot of Cluny

statesman (1830–1903) 129

(1092/4–1156) 81

Salomon of Basra, theologian

Pfeiffer, August Friedrich 124

(thirteenth century) 57, 73

Philip the Fair, king of France

Sanjar, sultan of Choresmien

(1285–1314) 97

(1096–1157) 79

Philipp, doctor of Pope Alexander III

Sapir Iso 54

(twelfth century) 89

Sapor 52

Philippus, pupil of Bardaisan 8, 160

Sara-Araol, sister of George (Gorguz),

Polo, Maffeo 87

king of the Ongut (thirteenth

Polo, Marco, traveler († 1321) 57,

century) 86

78f., 86, 92–4

Sargis bar Wahle 164

Polo, Nicolo, traveler 86f.

Sarkis, Joseph, bishop 148, 157

Porphyry of Antioch 15

Bar Sauma, theologian († 1294) 94–7

Mar Poulos, bishop 148

Sayyid, king of Najran 42

Prot 52

Scandar, Augustin (eighteenth

Pseudo-Kallisthenes 161

century) 119

Ptolemy, geographer (87–150) 66

Scher, Addai, theologian 70

202

I N D E X

Sempad, Armenian general (1208–76)

Theophilus of Alexandria 23

87

Theophilus the Indian (fourth

Mar Sergis (Sarkis), founder of the

century) 53

monastery, from Zhenjiang 93,

Thomas, apostle 12, 14, 52, 57, 62,

172

73, 97, 100, 102f., 107–11

Sergius Bahira 81

Thomas of Cana 52

Sernigi, Girolamo 107

Thomas of Marga, theologian

Shenouda III, Coptic pope (since

(800–60) 44, 70, 163

1971) 152

Thomas Darmo, metropolitan 148,

Shirin, Christian Persian queen

154

(† 628) 36–8

Thomas Palakomatta (seventeenth

Shomu, emperor of Japan († 748) 65

century) 115

Sigelmus, bishop of Sherborne (ninth

Mar Thomas I, bishop of India

century) 57

(† 1670) 116

Simeon, bishop of Rewardashir

Timotheos, bishop of India

(seventh century) 43, 53

(nineteenth century) 116

Simeon Rabbanata (Li-pien-a-tai)

Timotheos, bishop of Nisibis

(thirteenth century) 90

(fifteenth century) 105

Simeon, West Syriac bishop 46

Timotheos, bishop of Tarsus (fifteenth

Simon of Nisibis, metropolitan 36

century) 112

Simon of St Quentin, OP (thirteenth

Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), Turkish

century) 90

khan (1336–1405) 105, 131

Simon, Richard, theologian

Tisserant, Eugène, cardinal (1907–64)

(seventeenth century) 123

116

Smith, Eli 125

Togoril, khan of the Keraits († 1203)

Socrates, historian († after 439bc) 51

84

Sophoniah (nineteenth century) 133

Togoril Bey, Seljuk leader (eleventh

Sozomen, historian (fifth century) 160

century) 81, 85

Stalin, Josef, dictator († 1953) 145

Tommaso of Milan, OFM

Stanu Ravi, king of Malabar (ninth

(seventeenth century) 118

century) 54f.

Sulaqa see John VIII

Vartan Vardapet, Armenian historian

Suleiman, Arab traveler (ninth

(1210–71) 85

century) 56, 172

Vasco da Gama, explorer

Surma 140f.

(1469–1524) 107f.

Vespucci, Amerigo, traveler († 1512)

at-Tabari, Muslim historian

108

(839–923) 43

Victoria, queen of England

at-Taiyib Abu l-Farag, Abdallah ibn,

(1837–1901) 128

canonist († 1043) 12, 21, 28, 35,

Vincent of Beauvais, encyclopedist

51, 62, 64, 73

(† c.1264) 90

Tamerlane see Timur Lenk

Vira Raghava Chakravarti, king of

Tatian, theologian († after 172) 160

Malabar (fourteenth century) 56

Temüdschin see Genghis Khan

Vithayatil, Varkey, cardinal 155

Theodora, empress 28

Theodore of Arabia 38

Wahl, Rudolf, missionary (nineteenth

Theodore of Mopsuestia († 428) 22f.,

century) 129

25–30, 35–7, 115, 161

Werfel, Franz, poet († 1945) 132

Theodore bar Konai (eighth century)

William of Rubruk, OFM, missionary

63, 162

(1215/20– c.1270) 91f.

Theodoret of Cyrus (fifth century) 23,

Withington, Edward Theodore,

25f.

historian 67

Theodosios of Alexandria 38

Wolf, Joseph 124

203

I N D E X

Xindu 93f.

Yohanna Abraham, bishop 147

Mar Yonan (nineteenth century)

Yeh-lü Ta-shih, khan of the Karakitai

133

(† 1142) 79

Yosip of Ada (nineteenth century)

Yeh-li-ya (Elias), son of Isa

133

(fourteenth century) 87

Yosip Khananisho 146–8, 150

204

Document Outline

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Preface

The ~Apostolic Church of the East~: a brief introduction to the writing of church history and to terminology

The age of the Sassanians: until 651

The question of apostolic foundation

The centralization of the Church and the reception of the faith of Nicaea

The acceptance of other Western synods (420)

Declaration of independence of the Church of the East in 424?

The school of the Persians in Edessa and the Council of Ephesus (431)

The school of Nisibis

Acceptance of Nestorianism at the synods of 484 and 486?

The Church of the East in the sixth century

From Babai the Great to the Arab conquest

The age of the Arabs: 650 1258

The China mission in the seventh and eighth centuries

East Syriac Christianity in India

Timotheos I (780 823) and the Abbasid period (749 946)

East Syrians as cultural mediators

Church history and church law

Missionary activity in Central Asia

The image of the Apostolic Church of the East in thirteenth-century Europe

The age of the Mongols: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

The Church of the West discovers the Church of the East

The era of Catholicos Yahballaha III (1281 1317)

The period of Catholicos Timotheos II (1318 32)

The dark centuries of the Church of the East

The age of the Ottomans: fifteenth to nineteenth centuries

The ~Mountain Nestorian~ Catholicate and further unions with Rome

Russian and Western missionary activity in the nineteenth century

The twentieth century

World War I

Postwar diplomacy and the question of an Assyrian state

The end of the British mandate in Iraq

Emigration and diaspora

Ecclesiastical reorganization and patriarchal schism

The patriarchate of Mar Dinkha IV Khnanaya and ecumenical efforts

Present situation and structure

Language and literature of the Church of the East

Iranian literature

Turkish, Uighur, and Chinese literature

Appendices

List of sovereigns

Bibliography

Index

List of illustrations

Preface

The ~Apostolic Church of the East~: a brief introduction to the writing of church history and to terminology

The age of the Sassanians: until 651

The age of the Arabs: 650 1258

The age of the Mongols: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

The age of the Ottomans: fifteenth to nineteenth centuries

The twentieth century

Language and literature of the Church of the East

Appendices

Bibliography

Index