Ma'na of Pars

While being in Pars, he dedicated himself for the evangelization of the local Persians and the people from distant regions that was under his metropolitan authority by the translation of Syriac religious and liturgical texts into the vernacular Pahlavi language.

Following the Nestorian controversy of the 5th century in the Roman Imperial church, the perceived pro-Nestorian tendencies of the school eventually led to its censure and later in 489, its complete closure by the Emperor Zeno.

[1] This necessitated Maʽna and his colleagues led by their leader Narsai to take refuge in the Sassanid Empire where they would eventually settle at and revitalize the ancient school of Nisibis.

[2] Maʽna was one of the bishops involved in the election of Aba as catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in a move to heal the schisms within the church that had been resulted from the parallel administration of the rival catholicoi Elisha and Narsai and political interference from the Empire.

[6] Contemporary Persian Christian presence in the Indian Subcontinent and islands, such as Sri Lanka and Socotra, is confirmed from the account of Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Alexandrian disciple of Mar Aba.

[9][10] Pars, especially in its urban centers like Shiraz and Rev Ardashir, is known to have housed, since the time of the Babylonian exile, an important settlement of Jews, who gradually ended up being a Persian speaking community.