Brief accounts of Makkika's patriarchate are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (fl.
The following account of Makkikha's election is given by Bar Hebraeus: In the same year in which the Nestorian catholicus Sabrishoʿ Bar Masihi died, namely the year 654 of the Arabs [AD 1256/7], the bishops gathered together at Baghdad, and a quarrel arose between the men of Baghdad and the bishops over the election of the catholicus.
After wrangling amongst themselves for six months, they began to outbid one another in offering bribes to the caliph, so that the sum of money promised rose as high as 45,000 gold dinars.
Mar Denha of Erbil raised this sum and handed over 4,000 gold dinars as a down payment, but his enemies slandered him, saying, 'He is a friend of the Tartar kings, and any money you accept from him now he will soon take back from you twofold.'
And so he went down to the church of the third ward, and the fathers accompanied him to Seleucia and consecrated him on the fifth Sunday of Lent.