Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Mardin
Tfinkdji's treatment of the diocese of Mardin, where he was himself an Assyrian Chaldean Catholic priest, is more than usually detailed, but although containing much valuable information is not free from error.
From the middle of the eighteenth century onward, most of the Chaldean bishops of Mardin were buried in the city's church of Rabban Hormizd and the dates of their deaths were recorded in their epitaphs.
The Chaldean diocese of Mardin appears to have been founded in the second half of the sixteenth-century, either by Yohannan Sulaqa or (more probably) his successor ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron, after Saluqa broke from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1553 AD.
The earlier title may have been intended to challenge the authority of Sulaqa's metropolitan Eliya of Amid, and both styles may be evidence that Mardin was at this period loyal to Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb and did not yet have its own bishop.
He was certainly a supporter of the union with Rome, as the catholicus ʿAbdishoʿ IV is mentioned in the colophon of his earliest manuscript.
He also copied a manuscript in the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob near Seert in 1569, the patriarchal residence of ʿAbdishoʿ IV.
Hnanishoʿ was one of the signatories of a letter of 1580 from the fourth Catholic patriarch Shemʿon IX Denha to pope Gregory XIII.
An archbishop Hnanishoʿ 'of Mansuriya', probably the same man, is included in Leonard Abel's 1587 list of 'the most literate men in the Nestorian nation'.
The title of Timothy, metropolitan of Amid between 1615 and his death in 1621/2, also included Mardin, suggesting that Yohannan's reign began in 1622 or later.
The metropolitan Yohannan of Mardin, said by Tfinkdji to have died in Nisibis in 1641, is mentioned in the dating formulas of manuscripts of 1635 and 1645.
The name and (presumably incorrect) reign-dates of the metropolitan Joseph were contained in a note in an East Syriac manuscript copied in 1679 and seen by Tfinkji in a Jacobite church.
In 1782, he intervened to secure protection for the Syriac Catholic patriarch Michael III Jarweh, who was persecuted by the Jacobites of Mardin after his conversion to Catholicism.
According to the patriarch Yohannan VIII Hormizd, whose account is quoted by the Anglican missionary George Percy Badger, he was consecrated between November 1793 and 14 February 1794 in an irregular manner on the initiative of Augustine Hindi: All this time I had received no letters from Diarbekir or Mardeen, for it appears that they would not receive the orders of our lord the Pope; on the contrary, Kasha Agostîn went to Sert, where there was a presbyter named Michael.
[2] Because of the irregularity of his consecration, Mikha'il was excommunicated by the Vatican but was absolved by pope Pius VI in 1795 and confirmed as bishop of Mardin.
Mikha'il was succeeded by Ignatius Dashto of Alqosh, a monk of the monaster of Rabban Hormizd, who was born in 1794 and ordained a priest in 1821.
He was succeeded by Peter Timothy ʿAttar, who was consecrated metropolitan of Amid in 1870 and transferred to Mardin in 1873 on Farso's premature death.
In 1913, the diocese of Mardin consisted of 1,670 believers, with 6 priests, a church, 2 chapels, 3 schools, and 2 mission stations (Tfinkdji).
There were also small Chaldean communities living alongside much larger groups of West Syriac and Armenian Christians in Midyat, Nisibis, Derik, Viransehir, and the village of Tel Armen.
