Baghdad (West Syrian Diocese)

Baghdad was a diocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church, attested between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The diocese was probably established soon after Baghdad became the capital of the ʿAbbasid caliphate in the 770s. Eight Jacobite bishops of Baghdad are mentioned in the narratives of Michael the Syrian, Bar Hebraeus and other sources.^[1]

Sources

The main primary sources for the Syrian Orthodox bishops of Baghdad are the Chronicle of the Syrian Orthodox patriarch Michael the Syrian (1166–99) and the Chronicon Ecclesiasticum of the thirteenth-century Jacobite polymath Bar Hebraeus.

Bishops of Baghdad

Eight Jacobite bishops of Baghdad are attested between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.

The bishop Laʿzar bar Sabtha of Baghdad was deposed by the patriarch Dionysius of Tel Mahre (818–45) in 826.^[2]

The bishop Yohannan of Baghdad was consecrated by the patriarch Dionysius of Tel Mahre (818–45) in October or November 829 to replace the deposed bishop Laʿzar bar Sabtha.^[3]

The diocese of Baghdad seems to have lapsed around the end of the thirteenth century.

Notes

1. Fiey, POCN, 173–4
2. Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, i. 366–72
3. Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, i. 372

References

• Abbeloos, Jean Baptiste; Lamy, Thomas Joseph, eds. (1877). Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum (3 vols). Paris.
• Fiey, J.M. (1993). Pour un Oriens Christianus novus; répertoire des diocèses Syriaques orientaux et occidentaux. Beirut. ISBN 3-515-05718-8.
• Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d'Antioche (1166-1199). Éditée pour la première fois et traduite en francais I-IV (1899;1901;1905;1910; a supplement to volume I containing an introduction to Michael and his work, corrections, and an index, was published in 1924. Reprinted in four volumes 1963, 2010).