Marga (East Syriac diocese)

In the middle of the eighth century the diocese is known to have included the districts of Sapsapa (the Navkur plain south of ʿAqra, on the east bank of the Khazir river), Talana and Nahla d'Malka (two valleys around the upper course of the Khazir river) and Beth Rustaqa (the Gomel valley), and it probably also included several villages in the Zibar district.

By the second half of the thirteenth century the names of two villages in the Gomel valley, Tella and Barbelli (Billan), were also included in the title of the diocese.

[10] The Christian topography of the ʿAqra region before the fourteenth century is known in unusually fine detail.

The seventh-century History of Rabban Bar ʿIdta and Thomas of Marga's ninth-century Book of Governors supply the names of a large number of nearby monasteries, sanctuaries, and villages, many of which can be localised.

[11] The monastic histories also mentioned over sixty East Syriac villages either in the Marga region or not far beyond it, some of which still had Christian communities in 1913.

[12] A striking passage in the Book of Governors also describes how schools were founded in a number of monasteries and villages in the Marga region by the eighth-century reformer Rabban Babaï.

Evidently the importance of education was recognised by several influential East Syriacs in the region, and at least some villages were sufficiently prosperous to maintain schools: When this blessed man had come to the country of Marga, he first of all gathered together the scholars and founded the hudra, and revised and corrected the sections.