Brief accounts of Aba's reign are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (floruit 1280) and in the ecclesiastical histories of the Nestorian writers Mari (twelfth-century), ʿAmr (fourteenth-century) and Sliba (fourteenth-century).
[2] The following account of Aba's reign is given by Bar Hebraeus: After fulfilling his office for eleven years, he (Pethion) died in the year 123 of the Arabs [AD 740/1] and was succeeded by Aba Bar Brikh Sebyaneh from Kashkar.
Meanwhile the clerics seized the revenues from his school and removed it from the authority of the catholicus.
Then the clerics suppressed his proclamation by removing his name from the diptychs, but after he wrote them soothing letters and returned to them they welcomed him back.
The catholicus Aba, after fulfilling his office for ten years, died at the age of over a hundred and was buried in Seleucia.