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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2021
This article examines the complex historiography of the establishment of a Miaphysite hierarchy in Iraq in the early seventh century and proposes a reconstruction of the events themselves. As the Sasanian conquest of the Roman Empire progressed, the monastery of Mar Mattai in particular played a role in staffing and organising Miaphysites in conquered territory. Roman victories in 628 led to a complete reorganisation of the Miaphysite East, with the creation of Takrit as the premier centre for Miaphysites in Iraq and the official down-grading of Mar Mattai. Nevertheless, in practice, Mar Mattai continued to be a significant centre under the Umayyads.
1 See, for example, Varghese, B., ‘The origin of the maphrianate of Tagrit’, The Harp xx (2006), 305–49Google Scholar, and Qozi, Y., ‘Le Maphrianat de Tagrit et de Mossoul Nineve’, Bayn al-Nahrayn xxv (1997), 1–14Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, ‘Miaphysites’ refers to Severan Miaphysites in this article.
2 The evidence is gathered in Philip John Wood, The imam of the Christians: the world of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, c. 750–850, Princeton 2021, ch. v. For the Takriti sponsorship of Deir es-Surian in Egypt see Innemée, K. C. and Rompay, L. Van, ‘La Présence des Syriens dans le Wadi al-Natrun (Égypte): à propos des découvertes récentes de peintures et de textes muraux dans l’Église de la Vierge du couvent des Syriens’, Parole de l'Orient xxiii (1998), 167–202Google Scholar, and Immerzeel, M., ‘The stuccoes of Deir al-Surian: a waqf of the Takritans in Fustat?’, in Immerzeel, M. and van der Vliet, J. (eds), Coptic studies on the threshold of a new millennium, II: Proceedings of the seventh international congress of Coptic studies, Leiden, Leuven 2004, 1303–20Google Scholar, and The narrow way to heaven: identity and identities in the art of Middle Eastern Christianity, Leuven 2017, 98–100, 103–6. For Takriti colonies in other cities see I. Nabe Von-Schönberg, ‘Die Westsyrische Kirche im Mittelalter (800–1150)’, unpubl. PhD diss. Heidelberg 1977, 63, and Fiey, J.-M., Mossoul chrétienne: essai sur l'histoire, l'archéologie et l’état actuel des monuments chrétiens de la ville de Mossoul, Beirut 1959, 27 n. 2Google Scholar. And for Takrit's competition for precedence with Mar Mattai see Fiey, Mossoul, 25, for a brief summary, as well as Mazzola, M., ‘Centre and local tradition: a reappraisal of the sources on the metropolis of Tagrit and Mor Matay’, Le Museon cxxxii (2019), 399–413Google Scholar, and I. Bcheiry, ‘La riorganizzazione della Chiesa Siro-Ortodossa in Persia nella prima metà del vii secolo: studio storicocritico delle fonti’, unpubl. PhD diss. Pontificio Istituto Orientale 2015. The last references to a Takritian community in Cairo are from a manuscript note made in about 1005/6: Immerzeel, Narrow way to heaven, 99.
3 The very complex narrative can be followed in BH, HE. See also B. Snelders, Identity and Christian-Muslim interaction: medieval art of the Syrian Orthodox from the Mosul area, Leuven 2010, 62–7, and, on the medieval period, Fiey, J.-M., L'Assyrie chrétienne: contribution à l'étude de l'histoire et de la géographie ecclésiastiques et monastiques du Nord de l'Iraq, Beirut 1966, ii. 338–40Google Scholar. For the medieval legends, set in the fourth century, that associate the holy man Mar Mattai with the martyrs Behnam and Sara see Fiey, Assyrie, ii. 760–2.
4 Schrier, O., ‘Chronological problems concerning the Lives of Severus bar Mašqā, Athansius of Balad, Julianus Romāyā, Yohannān Saba, George of the Arabs and Jacob of Edessa’, Oriens Christianus lxxv (1991), 62–90 at p. 71Google Scholar.
5 For the reconciliation of 629 see Michael the Syrian x.5 (Chabot edn, iv. 411–13/ii. 414–16). The Aleppo codex of Michael is much easier to read and preserves rubrication: a digital facsimile is published as volume i of G. Kiraz, Texts and translations of Michael the Great, Piscataway, NJ 2009. A useful table in volume xi by Sebastian Brock allows conversion from Chabot's text. On Takrit in general, with useful, if speculative, maps, see Fiey, J.-M., ‘Tagrit: esquisse de l'histoire chrétienne’, L'Orient Syrien viii (1963), 289–342Google Scholar. For the resistance to the imposition of eastern Miaphysites in the countryside during the Sasanian occupation of Roman Mesopotamia see the Life of Cyriacus of Amida, ed. and trans. Nau, F., Revue de l'Orient Chretien vii (1902), 196–217Google Scholar.
6 This story appears in three different versions in Michael's Chronicle. A brief story is appended to Michael's account of Athanasius’ rapprochement with Christopher of Mar Mattai (Michael the Syrian ix.5 [Chabot edn, iv. 413/ii. 417]), emphasising the East as an autocephalous catholicosate and the preservation of episcopal succession at Mar Mattai. A much longer account is placed in the correspondence between Marutha and John Sedra in Michael the Syrian ix.9. This focuses on the history of Nestorius and Barsauma's violent propagation of Nestorian ideas. A third account appears briefly in the course of an account of negotiations between Takrit and Mar Mattai during the reign of Dionysius of Tel-mahre: Michael the Syrian xii.7 (Chabot edn, iv. 494/iii. 29). The third of these stories is the simplest and probably the earliest. ‘Nestorianism’ is a polemical characterisation of the Christology of the Church of the East, both because it is very unclear whether Nestorius subscribed to the extreme Dyophysite Christology that is attributed to him by his enemies and because the Church of the East in the Sasanian period is better characterised by its anti-Theopaschism than by a hard-line Dyophysitism: Brock, S. P., ‘Nestorian Church: a lamentable misnomer’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library lxxviii (1996), 23–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Wood, P., The Chronicle of Seert: Christian historical imagination in late antique Iraq, Oxford 2010, ch. vGoogle Scholar.
7 John of Ephesus, Lives of the eastern saints, ed. and trans. E. W. Brooks, PO xvii. 137 ff.; Chronicle of Seert, ed. and trans. A. Scher and others, PO vii. 142–4 for Miaphysites at Hira, some of whom were expelled to Najran. Many or all of these Hiran Miaphysites were Julianists. Chronicle of Seert, PO vii. 142 states that Miaphysite doctrine was received in Takrit and the nearby towns of Karme and Hassassa in the early sixth century, but this is likely to be an anachronism. In general see Fiey, J.-M., Jalons pour une histoire de l’église en Iraq, Louvain 1970, 127–32Google Scholar, and G. Fisher, P. Wood and others, ‘Arabs and Christianity’, in G. Fisher (ed.), Arabs and empires before Islam, Oxford 2015, 276–372 at pp. 357–63.
8 Life of Ahudemmeh 3–4. I quote from the section numbers of Francois Nau's edition and translation in PO iii. The manuscript is dated to 936: BL, ms Add.14645.
9 Life of Ahudemmeh 5.
10 Ibid. 27–9.
11 Ibid. 32 (his activities near Aqrunta while alive), 48–50 (his burial).
12 Ibid. 50–1.
13 Fisher, Wood and others, ‘Arabs and Christianity’, 350–7. The present paper revises several assumptions of my 2015 commentary, especially the notion that Mar Mattai had a long history as a Miaphysite centre (p. 351). Note also that S. Pierre argues that the names of the Arab groups converted by Ahudemmeh are later interpolations from the Marwanid period: ‘Les Tribus arabes chrétiennes de Haute-Mésopotamie (ier/viie–iie/viiie s.)’, unpubl. MA diss. Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 2017.
14 J.-N. Saint-Laurent, Missionary stories and the formation of the Syriac Churches, Berkeley, Ca 2015, 121. Saint-Laurent accurately notes that this story may overwrite earlier foundation stories that linked the sites to the Church of the East.
15 On the Roman shrine to Sergius and its Persian competitor see E. K. Fowden, The barbarian plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran, Berkeley, Ca 1999, and Fiey, J.-M., ‘Identification of Qasr Serej’, Sumer xiv (1958), 125–7Google Scholar.
16 Yāqūt al-Hamawī describes Takrit as a fortress, constructed at the time of Shapur i, which came to be surrounded by the dwellings of Christian Arabs: Muʿjam al-buldān, ed. Wüstenfeld, F., Jacut's geographisches Wörterbuch, Leipzig 1866–73, ii. 38Google Scholar.
17 Bar Hebraeus also claims, implausibly, that Ahudemmeh built the monasteries of ʿAin Qone and Gaʿtani in Takrit in his own lifetime: BH, HE ii.101.
18 Chronicle of Zuqnin, ed. J.-B. Chabot, Incerti auctoris chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, CSCO xci/104, Scriptores Syri xliii, liii, Paris 1927–33, trans. as, A. Harrak The chronicle of Zuqnin parts III and IV: AD 488–775, Toronto 1999, 110Google Scholar (Chabot edn)/114 (Harrak trans.). The date of this gloss is unknown, but it is likely to be by an author other than John himself.
19 BH, HE ii.99 also presents Ahudemmeh as the successor of fifth-century catholicoi of Ctesiphon. W. Hage notes the different terminologies used to refer to the bishops of Takrit: ‘bishops and metropolitans of Persia’ (Michael the Syrian xi.7 [Chabot edn, iv. 433/ii. 423]), ‘metropolitan of Takrit and the whole orient’ (Life of Marutha, ed. and trans. F. Nau, PO iii. 61) and ‘catholicos’ (Michael the Syrian xi.14 [Chabot edn, iv. 503/ii. 462]): Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche in frühislamischer Zeit nach orientalischen Quellen, Wiesbaden 1966, 25. The title ‘maphrian’, used by Bar Hebraeus, is a later invention that he retrojects onto his sources: Fiey, Jalons, 141; Honigmann, E., Le Couvent de Barṣaumā et le patriarcat jacobite d'Antioche et de Syrie, Leuven 1954, 96 n. 4Google Scholar. The significance of the term ‘catholicos’ is discussed in H. Leclerq, ‘Katholikoi’, in F. Cabrol, H. Leclerq and others (eds), Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Paris 1907–53; Gero, S., ‘The status of the patriarchs of Seleucia-Ctesiphon’, in Garsoïan, N., Mathews, Th. F. and Thomson, R. W. (eds), East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the formative period, Washington, DC 1982, 45–51Google Scholar; and M. Van Esbroek, ‘Primauté, patriarcats, catholicossats, autocéphalies en Orient’, in M. Maccarrone (ed.), Il primato del vescovo di Roma nel primo millennio: richerche e testimonianze, Vatican City 1991, 493–521.
20 Fiey, Jalons, 127.
21 BH, HE ii.103.
22 BH, HE ii.111.
23 For the politics of this period and Khusrau's suppression of the patriarchate of the Church of the East after 609 see Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 199–206.
24 On the progress of the war see Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a world crisis: historians and histories of the Middle East in the seventh century, Oxford 2010, 436–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sarris, P., Empires of faith: the fall of Rome to the rise of Islam, 500–700, Oxford 2011, 226–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 BH, HE i. 265–7; Michael the Syrian x.25 (Chabot edn, iv. 390/ii. 380).
26 History of the patriarchs of Alexandria, ed. and trans. B. Evetts, PO i. 480–3.
27 BH, HE ii. 118–26. However, Bar Hebraeus’ account of Marutha is dominated by the claims of the monastery of Mar Mattai; he says relatively little about Marutha as bishop of Takrit.
28 P. Booth, ‘Chalcedonians and Severans in the reign of Khusrau ii’, forthcoming.
29 Life of Marutha 66. I quote from the sections used in Francois Nau's edition and translation. The manuscript is dated to 936 (BL, ms Add. 14645), the same manuscript that contains the Life of Ahudemmeh.
30 Life of Marutha 69–70.
31 Ibid. 74–6.
32 This is an anachronism, given that Kufa was only founded in 636. This may be a further reason to date the text to Denha ii. I thank Simon Pierre for this suggestion.
33 Life of Marutha 78–9.
34 Ibid. 85–7.
35 Ibid. 92.
36 Ibid. 94.
37 Ibid. 82.
38 Ibid. 74–6.
39 Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 196, 201, 209. Shirin had played a very public role during the reception of the Dyophysite patriarch Sabrisho in Ctesiphon earlier in Khusrau's reign.
40 Athanasius is the only Miaphysite patriarch who receives a section in the Chronicle of Seert, PO xiii. 543–4. The Chronicle of Seert also reports an influx of Miaphysite merchants (both Greeks and Armenians) from the west during the period of Roman occupation: PO xiii.545.
41 BH, HE ii.111.
42 Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 218–19.
43 Michael the Syrian xi.3 (Chabot edn, iv. 409–10/ii. 412–13) describes Athanasius’ meeting with Heraclius. This passage has been highly interpolated and shows the involvement of different authors with various agendas. Its presentation of Heraclius as a persecutor of the Miaphysites is likely to retroject the later breakdown in relations between Chalcedonians and Miaphysites. Letters preserved elsewhere in Michael (Michael the Syrian xi.1–2 [Chabot edn, iv. 403–7/ii. 402–8]) suggest that the theological discussion between Athanasius and Heraclius was civil and collaborative. See further discussion in Booth, P., Crisis of empire: doctrine and dissent at the end of late antiquity, Berkeley, Ca 2013, 202–3Google Scholar, and W. Hage, ‘Athanasios Gammālā und sein Treffen mit Kaiser Herakleios in Mabbūg’, in M. Tamcke (ed.), Syriaca II: Beiträge zum 3. deutschen Syrologen-Symposium in Vierzehnheiligen 2002, Münster 2004, 165–74.
44 Booth, ‘Chalcedonians and Severans’.
45 Ibid.
46 Fiey, ‘Tagrit’; N. Posner, ‘The Muslim conquest of northern Mesopotamia: an introductory essay into its historical background and historiography’, unpubl. PhD diss. New York 1985, 89–90.
47 Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje in Annales quos scripsit Abu Djafar Mohammad ibn Djarir al-Tabari, Leiden 1879–1901, i. 2476–7, trans. Juynboll, G. in The history of al-Ṭabarī, Albany, NY 1985–99, xiii. 54–5Google Scholar; Kaegi, W., Heraclius: emperor of Byzantium, Cambridge 2005, 219, 253Google Scholar and Byzantium and the early Islamic conquests, Cambridge 1992, 152; Posner, ‘Muslim conquest’, 176–7. Al-Ṭabarī, i. 2475 (Juynboll trans. xiii. 54) describes the daʿwa that was offered to the Arabs defending Takrit but not to the Romans or the Persians. Yāqūt ii. 38 says that these Christian Arabs lived in the district before the foundation of the city proper. Cf. Fiey, J.-M., ‘Syriaques occidentaux de “pays des perses”: ré-union avec Antioche et “grand–métropolitat” de Takrit en 628/9?’, Parole de l'Orient xvii (1992), 113–26 at p. 121Google Scholar. Several Miaphysite sees were linked to Arab tribes: Fiey, Jalons, 141–2.
48 BH, HE ii.126–8; Elias of Nisibis, Chronography, ed. and trans. E. W. Brooks and J.-B. Chabot, in Eliae Metropolitae Nisibene: Opus chronologicum, CSCO lxii–lxiii, Scriptores Syri, 3rd ser. vii–viii, Paris 1910, 127(edn)/61(trans.); J.-M Fiey summaries the changes in the ecclesiastical geography: ‘Les Diocèses du Maphrianat syrien, 629–1860’, Parole de l'Orient viii (1977), 133–64.
49 This is summarised in Fiey, ‘Tagrit’.
50 Michael the Syrian xi.4 (Chabot edn, iv. 411–13/ii. 414–16).
51 Ibid. xi. 9 (Chabot edn, iv. 423–8/ii. 433–9); Fiey, Jalons, 117.
52 Chronicle of Seert, PO vii.99–102. This passage is discussed in Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 95–6.
53 Gero, S., Barsauma of Nisibis and Persian Christianity in the fifth century, Louvain 1981Google Scholar. Gero notes (p. 118) that the account of Barsauma should be read as part of Mattean propaganda to explain how the monastery became home to a bishopric and to endow it with a greater number of martyrs. Fiey anticipates several of Gero's conclusions and lists the many incredible features of the martyrdom account, not least the huge numbers of alleged victims: Jalons, 114–16.
54 Life of Marutha 67.
55 Michael the Syrian xii.7 (Chabot edn, iv. 494/iii. 29).
56 Ibid. xi.9 (Chabot edn, iv. 428/ii. 440) refers to additional sources in Arabic that describe the death of Barsauma at Karme near Takrit (for a version of this story in Hebrew see S. Gero, ‘The Nestorius legend in the Toledoth Yeshu’, Oriens Christianus lix [1975], 108–20). But the complexity of this legend suggests that many authors shaped it before it reached Michael in the twelfth century. It is likely that Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, writing in the early ninth century, had access to the simpler version of the story quoted in Michael the Syrian xii.7 (Chabot edn, iv. 494/iii. 29). Source critical issues surrounding Dionysius are discussed in Wood, Imam of the Christians.
57 Fiey, ‘Syriaques occidentaux’, 119.
58 Palmer, A., Monk and mason on the Tigris frontier: the early history of Ṭur ʿAbdin, Cambridge 1990, 153Google Scholar. J. Mounayer (Les Synodes syriens jacobites, Beirut 1963), Hage (Die syrischjakobitische Kirche), Nabe-von Schönberg (Die Westsyrische Kirche) and I. Yacoub (History of the Monastery of St Matthew in Mosul, trans. M. Moosa, Piscataway, NJ 2008, 35–45) are rather credulous in believing in the antiquity of Mar Mattai's claims, as was Wood in Fisher and others, ‘Arabs and Christianity’, 351.
59 Fiey comments that it is very difficult to imagine Mar Mattai having an autonomous metropolitanate since the fifth century: who would have ordained these metropolitans?: ‘Syriaques occidentaux’, 119 n. 32.
60 There is a document that purports to contain the canons of Marutha, embedded in a collection of synodical documents made in 1204, but Fiey argues that these are later forgeries, aimed at bolstering the claims of Mar Mattai over those of Takrit: ibid. However, I think Mazzola, ‘Centre and local tradition’ (developing Bcheiry, ‘La riorganazione’, 137–41) is persuasive in her demonstration that the Canons of Mar Mattai (ed. and trans. Vööbus, A., The Synodicon in the West Syrian tradition, Leuven 1975–6Google Scholar) already underpinned the role of the bishop of Mar Mattai as a substitute for the bishop of Takrit during interregna, as occurred in the mid-seventh century, as well as claims made by the Matteans during debates with Takrit in the ninth century.
61 Miaphysite monks traditionally adopted a tonsure, whereas monks of the Church of the East did not: Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 146.
62 Life of Rabban Bar ʿIdta, ed. and trans. E. A. Wallis-Budge, in The histories of Rabban Hôrmîzd the Persian and Rabban Bar ʿIdtâ, London 1904, i. 158/ii. 239:
63 Ibid. i. 159–60/ii. 240–1.
64 Wood, Chronicle of Seert, 209–10.
65 Fiey ‘Syriaques occidentaux’, 123; Elias of Nisibis 127 (edn)/61(trans) (AG 935):
66 A. Vööbus, Syrische Kanonessamlungen, I: Westsyrische Originalurkunder, Leuven 1970, 100.
67 BH, HE ii.
68 The prime example is John ‘of Mar Mattai and Beth Parsaye’, who acted as arbitrator between the patriarch of Antioch Severus Bar Mashqa and rebel bishops in about 684: Michael the Syrian xi.14 (Chabot edn, iv.439/ii. 460).
69 See Michael the Syrian xi.23 (Chabot edn, iv. 470/ii. 516) for the signature of John of Mar Mattai, who also signed for three other Mattean bishops. Mazzola argues that the bishoprics of the Jacobite east were clustered into two distinct zones, around Mar Mattai and Takrit, which gave Mar Mattai a natural zone of influence: ‘Centre and local tradition’.
70 Robinson, C., Empire and elites after the Muslim conquest: the transformation of northern Mesopotamia, Cambridge 2000, 69–84Google Scholar; Forand, P., ‘The governors of Mosul according to al-Azdī's Tarikh al-Mawsil’, Journal of the American Oriental Society lxxxix (1969), 88–105 at p. 102Google Scholar and al-Hamadhānī, Kitāb al-buldān, trans. H. Massé in Abrégé du livre des pays, Damascus 1973, 156. The link between Mosul and the Jazira seems to have been a later, secondary development of the Marwanid administration: Hamadhānī, Kitāb al-buldān, 155.
71 For the first appearance of Gabriel of al-Qosh, ‘a descendant of the old inhabitants of Persia’ see the Life of Rabban Hormizd, i. 58/ii. 86.
72 Ibid. i. 57/ii. 86 ff.
73 Ibid. i. 61/ii. 90 ff.
74 Ibid. i. 70–1/ii. 104–5.
75 Ibid. i. 75–6/ii. 110–11.
76 Ibid. i. 77–9/ii. 114–16.
77 Ibid. i. 90/ii. 134.
78 Ibid. i. 95–8/ii. 142–5.
79 Ibid. i. 99–103/ii. 147–53.
80 Ibid. i. 104/ii. 154.