Nisibis (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
In 363 the Roman emperor Jovian was obliged to cede Nisibis and five neighbouring districts to Persia to extricate the defeated army of his predecessor Julian from Persian territory.
These were the Syriac names for Arzanene, Corduene, Zabdicene, Rehimene and Moxoene, the five districts ceded by Rome to Persia in 363.
By 497 a diocese had been established at Balad (the modern Eski Mosul) on the Tigris, which persisted into the fourteenth century.
[5] The famous School of Nisibis was an important seminary and theological academy of the Church of the East during the late Sassanian period, and in the last two centuries of Sassanian rule generated a remarkable outpouring of East Syriac theological scholarship.
The bishop Artashahr of Armenia was present at the synod of Dadishoʿ in 424, but the diocese was not assigned to a metropolitan province.
The bishops of Armenia appear to have sat at the town of Halat (Ahlat) on the northern shore of Lake Van.
The Arab conquest allowed the East Syriacs to move into western Mesopotamia and establish communities in Damascus and other towns that had formerly been in Roman territory, where they lived alongside much larger Syriac Orthodox, Armenian and Melkite communities.
Some of these western communities were placed under the jurisdiction of the East Syriac metropolitans of Damascus, but others were attached to the province of Nisibis.
[7] Changes in the formal and informal titles borne by the metropolitans of Nisibis reflect the shifts in the province's centre of gravity over the centuries.
ʿAbdishoʿ Bar Brikha listed thirteen suffragan dioceses in the province of Nisibis at the end of the thirteenth century, in the following order: Arzun, Qube, Beth Rahimaï, Balad, Shigar, Qardu, Tamanon, Beth Zabdaï, Halat, Harran, Amid, Reshʿaïna and 'Adormiah' (Qarta and Adarma).
The only dioceses in the province of Nisibis definitely in existence at the end of the thirteenth century were Armenia (whose bishops sat at Halat on the northern shore of Lake Van), Shigar, Balad, Arzun and Maiperqat.
[51] The bishop Theodore of Qardu was appointed metropolitan of ʿIlam by the patriarch Yohannan III immediately after his consecration on 15 July 893.
[53] The bishop Ishoʿyahb of Gazarta is mentioned together with the patriarch Abraham III (906–37) in the colophon of an East Syriac manuscript of 912.
[83] The bishop Shemʿon 'of Balad and al-Jaslona (Gaslona)' was present at the consecration of the patriarch Yahballaha III in 1281.
[85] The Diocese of Shigar was founded in the sixth century, probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the Sinjar region.
The full name of the diocese was Shigar and Beth ʿArabaye, and it covered the desert region to the north of Sinjar, where there were several Nestorian monasteries.
A ritual for the consecration of the bishop of Qarta and Adarma has survived in the works of the patriarch Eliya III (1176–90).
Finally, a manuscript was copied in 1186 in the monastery of Mar Awgin near Nisibis for the village of Tel Mahmad 'in the diocese of Qarta'.
[89] Qarta has been identified by Fiey with the monastery of Mar Gabrona and Mar Shmona (Arabic: Dayr al-Qara) near the Lailah Dagh, twenty kilometres to the southeast of Gazarta, and Adarma with the small town of Adarma, seventy kilometres east of Nisibis, near the modern Tel Rmelan al-Kabir.
The seat of the bishops of Qarta and Adarma may have been the monastery of Gabrona and Shmona, mentioned in the colophons of manuscripts of 1213/4 and 1217/8.
[90] The Nestorian diocese of Armenia, whose bishops sat in the town of Halat (Ahlat) on the northern shore of Lake Van, is attested between the fifth and fourteenth centuries.
The patriarch Timothy I created a metropolitan province for Armenia, presumably by raising the status of the diocese of Halat.
[93] A diocese was founded around the middle of the thirteenth century to the north of the Tur ʿAbdin for the town of Hesna d'Kifa.
[94] The bishop Emmanuel of Hesna d'Kifa was present at the consecration of the patriarch Yahballaha III in 1281.
He was required to proclaim the patriarch's name in the traditional ceremony in the church of Mar Pethion, 'because all the bishops of the great eparchy [Beth Aramaye] had died, and their thrones were vacant; something which had never happened before'.
