On Metropolitan Epistle 10

As Metropolitan at Arbela, for the first time, Ishoʿyahb mentions Nûhadra which bêt is now Kurdish Duhok... back home in what has become the Sultanate's province of Mosul. Bcheiry, 103 summarises this (due credit to his translation of the taxes which informed mine). Abba Seliba will build a monastery there. That time is not yet.

Ishoʿyahb is following up on his first journey as Metropolitan when he did, in fact, return to Mosul. Thus the apologia opening letter #17 to one bishop Abba not in that region: Whilst I wished to give a satisfying argument to [your] first and last epistles, a pressing matter of the Lord's ministry seized me, and compelled me to change my seat and place, and make my journey from plain to mountain for official business, so that, for the Lord's ministry, on the north side of our region I might appoint a priest elected and holy - as you have heard. As metropolitan "north" implies Mosul which has no metro'. I'd figured he was appointing his own replacement for Nineveh herself but, he's got time for other matters.

"Qardawaya" in this Syro-Latin means I think the man of Qardu. I know not if modern Arabic "Qaraḍāwī" stems from the same root.

This #10 concerns a Mar Abraham monastery which had been administered for fifty years by the same "bishop". Ishoʿdnah #68 says Mount Izla had been under Habiba since at least AD 628. Other sources think Mar Babay was running the place - I refer to Siʿrt and to Thomas of Marga. Ishoʿdnah counters: the man was in semiretirement in his last decades. Looking around elsewhere Babay didn't contribute to, say, the disputations against Gabriel of Sinjar. Per Ishoʿyahb #17 as bishop we learnt that Dadishoʿ, abbot, had heirs; Babay, teacher, had disciples. Therefore the bishop of Bet-Nûhadra must be Dadishoʿ's heir - Habiba.

Of other potential Mar Abraham sites, I cannot see them in Bet-Nûhadra. Mar Job might have named his convent after another Abraham, the hermit of Nethpar; but Ishoʿdnah's #43-4 imply this for Hidyab. Letter #15 is to an Abraham archimandrite but, come on.

That father patriarch who whacked Qardawaya with anathema was probably Ishoʿyahb II; Maremmeh, recently from that monastery, may have reinstated him.

FIEY 4/17/23: M. X footnoted chapter V p. 8, in confused frustration.