Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Seert

In 1504 another Eliya, perhaps the same man, was styled 'metropolitan of Amid, Gazarta and Seert' in the colophon of a manuscript copied in the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob.

Although there are no references to a bishop of Seert in manuscript colophons from the second half of the sixteenth century, the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob in the Seert district was the seat of the patriarch ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron and his successor Shemʿon VIII Yahballaha, and a number of manuscripts were copied there by ʿAbdishoʿ himself and by the Catholic metropolitans Eliya Asmar of Amid and Hnanishoʿ of Mardin.

The district would therefore have come under strong Catholic influence at this period, and it is not surprising to find Seert listed by ʿAbdishoʿ IV in 1562 as a metropolitan see under his jurisdiction, with a suffragan bishop at 'Azzen', possibly Hesna d'Kifa.

According to Peter Strozza, the Catholic patriarch Shemʿon IX Denha (1580–1600) was archbishop of Jilu and Seert before his election, and therefore might have been consecrated by ʿAbdishoʿ IV.

[2] His letter of 1580 written to pope Gregory XIII shortly after his election was witnessed, among others, by the bishops Sargis of Jilu and Joseph of Seert, both probably consecrated by the new patriarch.

Eliya Bar Tappe died on 1 March 1618, the third Sunday of Lent, and was buried in the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob the Recluse near Seert.

Two of his letters imploring the patriarch to return from Rome, written on 28 December 1737 and 5 March 1739 respectively, have survived in the Vatican archives.

As a result of this association he was deposed from his diocese by the Vatican in 1823, and was then employed by Leeves as an agent of the Society, visiting the patriarch Shemʿon XVII Abraham in 1824 with Syriac copies of the Psalms and the New Testament.

He was succeeded by Peter Mikha'il Bartatar of Khosrowa, who had been educated by the Propaganda and served as a priest at Baghdad and then at Mosul before his ordination.

He retired to the monastery of Mar Guriya in 1878 following a dispute with the newly elected patriarch Eliya Abulyonan, and died in the village of Piroz in 1885.

He was murdered on 20 June 1915 during the massacre of Christians in the Seert district, and it is said his final hours were spent in an attempt to conceal the precious collection of manuscripts in the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob.

In 1896 the diocese had a population of 5,000 Chaldeans, and contained 22 parishes (plus a further 15 Nestorian villages in the process of conversion to Catholicism), 21 churches, and 17 priests (Chabot).