Eliya XII

Eliya XII (Syriac: ܐܠܝܐ / Elīyā, d. 1804) was Patriarch of the Church of the East, from 1778 to 1804, with formal residence in Rabban Hormizd Monastery, near Alqosh, in modern Iraq.

[6][7][8][9] After the resolution of several chronological questions, he was designated again as Eliya XII,[10][11][1] and that numeration is generally accepted in recent scholarly works,[12][4][13][14][15][16][17][18] with some exceptions.

His cousin and long-time rival Yohannan Hormizd later claimed that in the spring of 1776, patriarch Eliya XI dismissed Ishoyahb and appointed him (Yohannan) as metropolitan and designated successor,[22] but later scholarly research of primary sources, including those from 1777, showed that Ishoyahb was still serving as metropolitan and patriarchal successor.

In the same time, both sides were faced with additional challenges, caused by the ever-worsening position of local Christian communities in frontier war-torn regions between two mighty empires (Ottoman and Persian).

Already in 1784, Eliya XII appointed his nephew Hananisho (d. 1813) as metropolitan of Amadiya, thus intending to secure the future patriarchal succession in his family.