[2] Though his tenure as catholicos saw Christians in the region threatened during the Persian-Roman wars and attempts by both Sassanid Persian and Byzantine rulers to interfere with the governance of the church, his reign is reckoned a period of consolidation,[3] and a synod he held in 544 as (despite excluding the Diocese of Merv) instrumental in unifying and strengthening the church.

[3][6] After his death in February 552, the faithful carried his casket from his simple home across the Tigris to the monastery of Mar Pithyon.

[11] Aba is also remembered as the author of original works including Biblical commentaries, homilies and synodal letters.

[11] Aba's tenure as catholicos followed a 15-year period of schism within the church, during which remote areas had elected their own rival bishops.

This agreement was, however, substantially subverted in later years, not least when the Persian ruler Khosrau I influenced the selection of Joseph, Aba's successor as catholicos.

Some of its prescriptions indicate the particularly Persian character of the church in the East,[17] including a set of marriage rules prohibiting unions between close kin, apparently formulated in deliberate response to Zoroastrian practice.

[19] Tensions between the Persian and Byzantine empires ran high during Mar Aba's lifetime, and, after the outbreak of the Lazic War in 541, persecution of Christians in Persia became more common.

He was allowed to return to the See after seven years and continued as Catholicos until 552,[1] when he died – in some accounts, as a result of torture and exposure inflicted during his imprisonment.