Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Amadiya

In 1913 it included ʿAmadiya city itself and sixteen villages in the Tigris plain near the town of Dohuk and in the Sapna and Gomel river valleys.

Before the fourteenth century the Sapna valley was part of the diocese of Dasen and Beth Ture ('the mountains'), which lay to the north of Marga and also covered the Berwari region and the Zibar and Lower Tiyari districts.

The last-known bishops of Beth Nuhadra and Dasen, Ishoʿyahb and Mattai, were present at the consecrations of Makkikha II in 1257 and Yahballaha III in 1281 respectively, and it is unclear when either diocese came to an end.

Some years earlier a Catholic diocese had been established in the region with the consecration by Yohannan Hormizd of his nephew Mattai Shemʿon for ʿAmadiya on 5 May 1790.

There is no need to doubt the sincerity of Yohannan Hormizd's commitment to the Catholic faith at this period, but the appointment was of course also directed against his rival Eliya XII (1778-1804).

After his consecration Shemʿon made a determined effort to convert a number of villages in the Sapna plain and the Zibar district to Catholicism.

Basil Asmar of Telkepe, a monk of the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, was consecrated for ʿAmadiya at Amid by the patriarchal administrator Augustine Hindi in April 1824, but seems to have had no contact with his diocese.

He resided in his home village of Telkepe until 1827, apparently in fear of the governor of ʿAmadiya, known to be a friend of Yohannan Hormizd, and in 1827 fled to Amid, becoming its metropolitan in 1828.

Rabban Al-Qas was also apostolic administrator of the Chaldean archdiocese of Erbil, vacant since the death of Yaʿqob Denha Scher in 2005, until the appointment of Bashar Warda in 2010.

In 1913 the diocese included ʿAmadiya and sixteen villages, most of them in the Sapna and Gomel valleys, and contained 4,970 Chaldeans, with 19 priests and 10 churches (Tfinkdji).

This is a remarkably high figure for the Sapna and Shemkan villages, exposed to Catholic influence for over a century; and as Chabot did not mention a substantial traditionalist population in the diocese in 1896, it probably included the population of the East Syriac villages in the Berwari region, perhaps considered nominally part of the diocese of ʿAmadiya after the conversion of the traditionalist bishop Ishoʿyahb of Berwari in 1903.