The Nestorian diocese of Shigar was founded in the sixth century, probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the 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.
At an earlier period there were Nestorian communities in the villages of Kfar Zamre (the seat of a Nestorian bishop in 790), Awana (home of the monk Ahron, founder of an eighth-century monastery near Balad), and Beth Ushnaya (mentioned by ʿAmr as the scene of a miracle in 1201); there was a Nestorian monastery of Baʿuth not far from Kfar Zamre (mentioned also by ʿAmr in 1201); and there were several Nestorian monasteries in the immediate vicinity of Balad, including the sixth-century monasteries of Mar Ishoʿzkha (mentioned in the History of Rabban Bar ʿIdta) and Mar Denha (mentioned by ʿAmr), the monasteries of Mar Pethion, Rabban Ahron and Rabban Joseph (mentioned around the end of the eighth century in Thomas of Marga's Book of Governors), and a nunnery in Balad itself (mentioned in the tenth century in the Life of Rabban Joseph Busnaya).
Only one manuscript has survived from the region, copied in 894 in the monastery of Rabban Joseph near Awana, on the east bank of the Tigris opposite Balad, by the scribe Sliba-zkha.
[8] The Nestorian author ʿAbdishoʿ Bar Brikha, who flourished during the reign of the patriarch Yahballaha III (1281–1317), was bishop of Shigar and Beth ʿArabaye before his consecration as metropolitan of Nisibis between 1285 and 1291.