Mor Ignatius Yaʿqub III was born on October 12, 1913, in the Touma Mari family of Bartalla village in Iraq.

He visited the Syriac Orthodox Church in Kerala, India, in 1933 as Rabban ʿAbdel Ahad where he served as a malphono (teacher) at the Mor Ignatios Dayro.

In 1946, he returned to the Middle East to teach at the Mor Ephrem Seminary in Mosul and was ordained Metropolitan of Beirut and Damascus in 1950.

He was endowed with a sharp memory that enabled him to memorize over 700 melodies of the Beth Gazo including variants (Shuhlophe).

He learned the Beth Gazo from another master of Syriac music, Mor Yulios Elias Qoro, then Patriarchal Delegate in India.