Ishoyahb II

Ishoʿyahb II of Gdala was patriarch of the Church of the East from 628 to 645. He reigned during a period of great upheaval in the Sassanian empire. He became patriarch at the end of a disastrous war between Rome and Persia, which weakened both powers. Two years later the Moslem Arabs began a career of conquest in which they overthrew the Sassanian empire and occupied the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Ishoʿyahb lived through this momentous period, and enjoyed the remarkable distinction of meeting both the Roman emperor Heraclius and the second Moslem caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab.

The Syriac name Ishoʿyahb means 'Jesus has given', and is spelled variously in English. Alternative spellings include Yeshuyab and Ishu-yahb. Ishoʿyahb II is commonly known as Ishoʿyahb of Gdala, to distinguish him from two near-contemporary Nestorian patriarchs, Ishoʿyahb I of Arzun (582–95) and Ishoʿyahb III of Adiabene (649–59).

Sources

Ishoʿyahb's patriarchate, the Arab conquest of Iraq and Ishoʿyahb's dealings with the Moslem leaders are described in considerable detail in the Chronicle of Seert.^[1] Briefer accounts are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (thirteenth-century), and the ecclesiastical histories of the Nestorian writers Mari (twelfth-century), ʿAmr (fourteenth-century) and Sliba (fourteenth-century).

Life

Ishoʿyahb was a native of the village of Gdala in the district of Beth ʿArabaye between Nisibis and Mosul.^[2]

Ishoʿyahb studied at the School of Nisibis when it was under the presidency of the controversial theologian Hnana, who searched for common theological ground between the Nestorianism of the Church of the East and the Chalcedonian doctrines held in the Roman empire. He was one of the 300 students who left the college when Hnana was expelled. He was elected patriarch of the Church of the East in 628, after a long vacancy in the patriarchate, and was sent to Aleppo in 630 by Boran, the daughter of the Persian king Khusro II Parvez, to negotiate with the Roman emperor Heraclius. During the Arab conquest he successfully extracted a charter of protection for Christians living under Arab rule from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph. He died at Karkh Guddan in 645 while journeying to Nisibis to compose a dispute between the city's Nestorian Christians and their metropolitan Quriaqos, and was buried there. Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the seat of the Nestorian patriarchs, fell to the Arabs in the same year.^[3]

Relations between the Church of the East and the early caliphs

Ishoʿyahb was patriarch during the Arab conquest of Persia, and approached the Moslem leaders to win guarantees for the treatment of Christians in the Sassanian empire. The Chronicle of Seert records two approaches to the Moslems, one by Ishoʿyahb's emissaries to Muhammad's successor Abu Bakr, and a second by Ishoʿyahb himself to the caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab. ʿUmar is said to have granted the Church of the East a charter of protection.^[4]

Literary achievement

Ishoʿyahb II is included in the list of Syriac authors compiled by the fourteenth-century Nestorian writer ʿAbdishoʿ of Nisibis. According to ʿAbdishoʿ, his principal writings were a commentary on the Psalms and a number of letters, histories, and homilies. A hymn of his has survived in a Nestorian psalter (MS BM Add. 14675).^[5]

Nestorian mission to China, 635

The first recorded Christian mission to China arrived in the Chinese capital Chang'an in 635, during Ishoʿyahb's reign. The mission, whose history was recorded on the famous Nestorian Stele, erected in Chang'an in 781, was led by a Nestorian monk with the Chinese name A-lo-pen. It is possible, but by no means certain, that Ishoʿyahb was behind this initiative.

See also

• List of Patriarchs of the Church of the East

Notes

1. ^ Chronicle of Seert (ed. Scher), ii. 234–305
2. ^ Chronicle of Seert (ed. Scher), ii. 234
3. ^ Chronicle of Seert (ed. Scher), ii. 304–5
4. ^ Chronicle of Seert (ed. Scher), ii. 298–304
5. ^ Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature, 169–70

References

• Abbeloos, J. B., and Lamy, T. J., Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum (3 vols, Paris, 1877)
• Assemani, J. A., De Catholicis seu Patriarchis Chaldaeorum et Nestorianorum (Rome, 1775)
• Brooks, E. W., Eliae Metropolitae Nisibeni Opus Chronologicum (Rome, 1910)
• Gismondi, H., Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria I: Amri et Salibae Textus (Rome, 1896)
• Gismondi, H., Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria II: Maris textus arabicus et versio Latina (Rome, 1899)
• Scher, Addai (ed. and tr.). Histoire nestorienne inédite: Chronique de Séert. Première partie. Patrologia Orientalis 4.3 (1908), 5.2 (1910).
• Scher, Addai (ed. and tr.). Histoire nestorienne inédite: Chronique de Séert. Seconde partie. Patrologia Orientalis 7.2 (1911), 13.4 (1919).
• Wigram, W. A. (2004). An introduction to the history of the Assyrian Church, or, The Church of the Sassanid Persian Empire, 100–640 A.D. Gorgias Press. ISBN 1593331037. 
• Wright, W., A Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1894)

External links

Preceded by Gregory (605–609) Vacant (609–628)

Catholicus-Patriarch of the East (628–645)

Succeeded by Maremmeh (646–649)

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