It contains 140 brief biographical notices of ascetic saints, mostly the founders of monasteries in northern Mesopotamia in the late Sasanian and early Arab periods, between about 580 and 660.
[2] The latest event he refers to is the translation of the monk Ishoʿzka in "the third year of Jaʿfar, son of Muʿtaṣim, king of the Arabs [Ṭayyāyē]", that is, 849–850.
[12] In the heading identifying Ishoʿdnaḥ as the author, the scribe notes that he "write[s] the stories in brief of all those fathers who founded convents in the kingdom of the Persians and Arabs", which may indicate either that the notices he was copying were brief or perhaps that he (i.e., the copyist) was abridging them.
[16] The Jacobite historians Michael Rabo and Bar Hebraeus cite an otherwise unknown Dnaḥ Ishoʿ the Nestorian for an event of 793, and this may be a garbled reference to Ishoʿdnaḥ.
[19] The most likely place for Ishoʿdnaḥ in the list of known metropolitans of Baṣra is between Daniel (853) and Gabriel (884), although it is possible that he reigned earlier, his pontificate ending between 849 and 853.