ruled over a mighty Church with suffragans all over Asia, as we shall see in the next paragraph about Nestorian missions (pp. 103–110). So lived the virtuous Lord, Mâr Timothy the first, Katholikos of the East, and he died full of years on May 7 in the year 823.
The Patriarch changed his place of residence constantly. The idea that he was bishop of the twin cities, Seleucia and Ctesiphon, has almost disappeared. The Patriarchate had become an office of itself, independent of any see. Already before Timothy I, Ḥnânyeshu‘ II had moved to the new capital, Bagdad. Timothy resided there, as did most Patriarchs, till the Mongols came in 1258, and for some time after that.
In the early 11th century Albiruni, a Moslem writer from Khiva,[1] mentions the Nestorians as the most civilized of the Christian communities under the Khalif. He says that there are three sects of Christians, Melkites, Nestorians and Jacobites. "The most numerous of them are the Melkites and Nestorians; because Greece and the adjacent countries are all inhabited by Melkites, whilst the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, ‘Irāk and Mesopotamia and Khurāsān are Nestorians. The Jacobites mostly live in Egypt and around it." The Nestorian Katholikos "is appointed by the Khalif on the presentation of the Nestorian community." But he will not allow that the Katholikos is a Patriarch. He says Christians have only four Patriarchs, of Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. He forgets Jerusalem.[2] About a century later the Nestorians are mentioned by another Moslem philosopher, Shahrastāni.[3] In his Book of Religions and Sects[4] he
- ↑ Abū Raiḥān Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad alBīrūnī was born at Khiva in 973, and died in 1048. He wrote a work which he calls Alāthār albāḳiya ‘an-il-Kurun Alkhāliya ("Traces of Former Generations"). It is a description of religions and sects, as he knew them, about the year 1000. He does not mention the Mazdæans (unless this part has been destroyed). His book is translated and edited by C. E. Sachau (London: Oriental Transl. Fund, 1879).
- ↑ Ed. Sachau, chap. xv. pp. 282–284.
- ↑ Abu-lFatḥ Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abdu-lKarīm Ash-Shahrastāni, born a.d. 1086 at Shahrastān by the desert of Khorasan. He lived three years at Bagdad, wrote many philosophical and theological works, and died at Shahrastān a.d. 1153.
- ↑ Kitāb alMilal wanNiḥal. It contains accounts of Moslem sects, then the Ahl alKitāb (Jews and Christians), then people who have something "like a book" (mithl Kitāb), namely Mazdæans, Manichæans, Gnostics, etc. The
