In search of the true cross... monastery

In Syriac, santa-cruz is "Mar Salîba". Ishoʿdnah #53 puts such a monastery near the Seleucian Karka, in Beth Garmay. To us that is Kirkuk.

In the wake of Khusro II's conquests the cross of Christ had gone East. We'd assume the Cross would land down in the Mahoze instead but, you know: no Catholicos. But... in Syriac, Salîba is a personal name too.

Ishoʿdnah #101 notes an Abba Salîba, who founded a monastery at the Bet-Nûhadra mountain (the translator Chabot had trouble with the exact site: "Beit Asya(?)"). The main town there today is the Kurdish city Duhok. Two different places; two different monasteries.

Abba Salîba's most famous disciple was one Cyriacos who succeeded him as abbot until metropolitan Cyprian of Nisibis installed him as bishop of Balad. [UPDATE 3/27: "Quryaqos" is in the Baladene diptych from Vosté 150 < Mingana 564. Brock 1971 10.1484/J.ABOL.4.02898.] In Cyriacos' place Mar Atqen was the next abbot. Bar Dayra the hermit was a famous Cyriacos follower, eventually landing in the newer(?) convent which Mar Afnimaran built on the same mountain.

Most famous of all Cyriacos' disciples, one might even say apostles, was Joseph Ḥazzaya - either "the Seer" or else "of Ḥazza" a known town near Arbela. Ishoʿdnah devotes #125 to Joseph, about the most comprehensive entry in his castitis book. Ishoʿdnah even relates his source: the history by bishop Nestorius of Bet-Nûhadra. At some point - says Mar Nestorius - Joseph had passed through le monastère d'Abba Çeliba, dans le pays de Beit Nouhadra so, "local boy makes good", commending this account further to Ishoʿdnah.

Joseph didn't always enjoy, er, universal support. Catholicos Timothy's synod "170 of the Banî Hishâm" - the infamous "council of 786/7" - will anathematise Joseph along with John of Dalyatha. Although, as Ishoʿdnah notes, the next pope Ishoʿbarnûn ("Joshua", we might call him) immediately retracted John's anathema and came to ignore Joseph's as well.

INTERJECT 3/6: This whole farrago postdates our Ishoʿyahb. NEXT

Ishoʿdnah has one more santa-cruz monastery. Per #67, Mar Shimʿon ran another monastery near Kirkuk, Mar Ganiba; where he taught Mar Afnimaran. When Shimʿon died, he was buried in a Mar Salîba at the Nahr-Sarsar. This fleuve shares a name with an ʿAbbâsî-era canal from the Euphrates eastward to the Tigris... just west of Baghdad and not quite twenty kilometres above/north-of the Madain (pdf). Ishoʿdnah, although a Mayshanî himself, was presumably familiar with this canal.

Chabot couldn't assume these were all the same so - correctly - sequestered 101, 102, 115, 119, 125 in the index, all for abbot Salîba's monastery near what's now Duhok. This left #67 with #53.

I do not think #53 belongs with #67. I think that #53 belongs up in Kirkuk and that #67 belongs in the Bet-Aramaye with Baghdad and the Madain.