Shemsdin (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)
The patriarch was assisted by a senior metropolitan, or mutran, invariably named Hnanishoʿ (Syriac: ܚܢܢܝܫܘܥ), in charge of the large diocese of Shemsdin in the Hakkari region, who deputized for him and enjoyed a prestige and power second only to his own.
The metropolitan Hnanishoʿ of 'Rustaqa, Taron [Tergawar] and Urmi', dependent on the third Catholic patriarch Shemʿon VIII Yahballaha, is mentioned in a colophon of 1577.
[2] A metropolitan of 'Sepatkai' named Hnanishoʿ, probably the same man, was one of the signatories of a letter of 1580 from the fourth Catholic patriarch Shemʿon IX Denha to pope Gregory XIII.
[3] The patriarch Eliya VII (1591–1617), in response to a request from the Vatican, provided information on the composition of the rival East Syriac hierarchies in two reports, made in 1607 and 1610 respectively.
A metropolitan named Hnanishoʿ Ishoʿyahb (or Ishaʿya), 'who lives in Mar Ishoʿ of Rustaqa' is mentioned in a colophon of 1761 from the Tergawar district.
[8] A metropolitan of Shemsdin named Hnanishoʿ was mentioned by the Anglican missionary George Percy Badger in 1850: There is another large district in central Coordistan, inhabited by Nestorians, called Be-Shems ood-Deen, under the episcopal jurisdiction of Mar Hnan-Yeshua, who resides at Rustaka.
He fixed his residence at Harir, and after the exile of the patriarch Shemʿon XXI Ishaʿya in 1933 effectively became the head of the East Syriac church in Iraq.
[10] A few years later the mutran had three suffragan bishops, Sabrishoʿ 'of Gawar', Yohannan 'of Tuleki' and Denha 'of Tis', mentioned by Cutts in 1877, by Maclean and Browne in 1884 and by Riley in 1888 (who gave details of their jurisdictions), and by several other sources.
He is last mentioned in 1901, when a group of East Syriacs at Urmi, disenchanted with the Russian missionaries, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to propose forming a separate church under his leadership.
He died shortly before 1911, and was described by the Anglican missionary William Ainger Wigram as 'a feeble old man, noted only for possessing in his house the fiercest fleas in all Mergawar'.
For several years before 1909 he was responsible for those East Syriacs in and around Urmi who did not join the Russian Orthodox church, and in 1909 was transferred to the Sulduz district.
He was among a group of 45 East Syriac Christians executed by the Turkish army after its capture of Urmi in 1915, after an unsuccessful attempt by the Anglican missionary Yaroo Neesan to ransom him.
According to the Anglican missionary George Percy Badger, the Shemsdin district and the Urmi region together contained 4,500 East Syriac families, with 34 priests and 38 churches, in 1850.
A monastery of Mar Ezekiel, located 'near Rustaqa' and therefore to be sought in the Shemsdin district, is mentioned in a number of manuscript colophons between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The colophon of a manuscript of 1826 by his nephew the priest Zerwandad, son of Safar, mentions that the scribe came from 'the village of Mar Ezekiel of Shemsdin'.
A manuscript copied in 1897 in Urmi mentions the mutran's archdeacon Denha of Tuleki, 'archdeacon of the monastery of Mar Ezekiel by Rustaqa'.
