Athanasius VI bar Khamoro was the Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1091 until his death in 1129.
[1] Abu al-Faraj was born in the 11th century in the city of Amid into the Camra family, and went on to become a monk at the Monastery of Mar Barsoum where he studied Syriac, Arabic and religious sciences under Dionysius Modyana.
The Syriac Orthodox population of Edessa, however, requested to elect their own bishop, to which Athanasius agreed on the condition that gospel books that had belonged to a previous patriarch were returned.
[4][3] The crusaders allowed the patriarch to go to the Syriac Orthodox Church of the Mother of God in Antioch, but was forbidden from leaving the city until a solution to the conflict had been found.
Athanasius bribed Roger of Salerno, regent of the Principality of Antioch, to allow him to leave the city and travel to the Monastery of Qanqart, southwest of Amid, and outside of crusader territory.
The patriarch ordered the closure of the Syriac Orthodox cathedral of Edessa, exacerbating tensions and led to fights between the two factions.