[1] Brief accounts of Yohannan's patriarchate are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (fl.
[2] He ordained Elijah, the future archbishop of Nisibis, at the monastery of Mar Shemʿon in his role as bishop of Shenna on 15 September 994.
When the nobles of Baghdad heard that he had assumed the leadership uncanonically, by going to the governor's palace without being either elected or acclaimed, they were deeply offended, but were unable to oppose the edict.
[4] Yohannan consecrated Elijah as bishop of Beth Nuhadra (present-day Dohuk, Iraq) on 15 February 1002.
[3] Bar Hebraeus also reported in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle that Abdisho, the Metropolitan of Merv, wrote and informed Catholicos Yohannan between 1007 and 1009 concerning the conversion of 200,000 Keraites to the Church of the East requesting directions concerning the observance of Lent for the Keraites lived almost exclusively on milk and meat and could not give up both.