Assyrian Christians in the Sasanid Empire (1)

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There was one area where a significant subcurrent of local self-identity was current among Christians in the Sasanid Empire. This is to be found in the ecclesiastical provinces of Adiabene (Hadyab) and Beth Garmai, whose metropolitan seats were Arbela and Karka d-Beth Slokh (modern Erbil and Kirkuk in north Iraq). Here there was evidently a continuing awareness of the past Assyrian empire, and the terms Athor, Athorāyē (Assyria, Assyrians) are sometimes used (in a purely geographical sense) in preference to the names of current administrative usage, whether ecclesiastical or secular. The semi-legendary 4th century martyr Qardagh is said to be “of the stock of the kingdom of the Assyrians”, his mother’s side going back to Sennacherib, later in the Acts of Qardagh we find him made ‘prefect of Athor’, and Arbela is described as ‘the capital of the Athorāyē’. This sort of usage occasionally finds its way into official church documents: at the synod of 585 the archdeacon Aba from Arbela signs ‘on behalf of Henana, metropolitan of Athorāyē’, the usual terminology being ‘of Arbela and the whole region of Adiabene’. A little further south, in Beth Garmai, the local history of Karka d-Beth Slokh in Syriac sources starts with Sennacherib’s son Sardana and ends with the martyrdoms under Yazdgard II. There was liturgical rationale for this, hinted at by a Syriac chronicler when he says that it was during Sardana’s reign that Jonah preached to the Ninevites: it was a metropolitan of Karka, Sabrisho, who in the late sixth century introduced the pre-Lenten ‘Fast of Nineveh’ into the calendar of the Church of the East.

Sources (list of abbreviations)
Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum vol. 2, 507 (Bedjan)
Acts of Qardagh 3.5.6

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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