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PATRIARCH, SHAH AND CALIPH A Study of the relationships of the Church of the Bast with the Sassanid Empire and the early Caliphates up to 820 A.D. with special reference to available translated Syriac sources which is submitted with HANDBOOK OF SOURCE-MATERIALS for Students of Church History up to 650 A.D. by WILLIAM G. YOUNG, M.A. (Hons.), B.D. for the degree of Ph.D. of the University of Glabgow December, 1972 ProQuest Number: 11017964 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11017964 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 FOREWORD The unusual course of presenting a thesis accompanied by a printed book calls for explanation. This is to be found in the history of my course of studies. It has to be borne in mind that I am a working missionary in Pakistan, and have done most of the study involved during furloughs. 1. I originally planned to do a year's study for M.Th., under the guidance of Dr John Foster. The work involved was to be the preparation of a handbook of source-materials for Asian students of Church History, the choice and arrangement of which was to illustrate the method of teaching Church History to be advocated for an Asian theological college. The handbook was to have been presented along with a short thesis on ”The Teaching of Church History in Asia”. 2. I started the research for this in the summer of 1965> by January 1966 it was evident that there was so much Asian source- material accessible in Latin and French translations, and in out of print English books and articles, but not available in English in a collected form, that it was better to confine my researches to the period up to 650 A.D. Under Dr Foster’s guidance, I then modified the plan. This was now to complete the volume up to 650, and present it with a brief apologia for the method used, and accompanied by some notes on interesting and significant source-material brought to light in the course of my researches. 3. Later in the spring of 1966 it became clear that,if the book iii was to be adequately prepared during my furlough, I would not have time before my return to the field in Autumn 1966 to write the apolofeia as well. It was then that, on Dr Foster’s advice, and with University permission, I changed over from studying for an M.Th. to studyimg for a Ph.D. I was permitted to pursue my second year of research furth of Scotland. If. During that "second year", which extended from £utumnlil966 to summer 1971, I did the following: a. Completed the Handbook of Source-Materials. and got it published. This involved, among other things, further research in the autumn of 1967 at the United Theological College, Bangalore, South India, where I revided the book, added more than twenty further extracts from source-material, and prepared it for the press. I was in particular guided by the experience and helped by the translations of Dr V.C. Samuel, of the Syrian Orthodox Church in India, who3let me read his thesis on the non-Chalcedonian position, and other unpublished work, and use fourteen of his own translations from the Syriac. b. Prepared an Urdu textbook on Church History, and got it published. This follows the arrangement of the source-material in the Handbook, and quotes much of it in Urdu translation, but also writes round it a good deal of historical explanation and background information. In particular, I took great care with the section on "Church and State in the Iranian Empires", using the material set out on pages 272-290 of the Handbook, but supplementing it with a fuller explanation of the Zoroastrian background in the Sassanid Empire, the reasons for opposition to Christianity, and the lessons to be drawn from it by a Church in a iv minority situation in Pakistan today. I later translated this section of the Urdu textbook back into English, and sent it to Dr W.H.C. Frend, who had by then succeeded Dr Foster as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. This was in the summer of 1970. c. Used the source-materials on pages 316-327 of the Handbook, along with material from Thomas of Marga and elsewhere, for an article on The Church of the East in 630. which was published in the Indian Church History Review of June, 1968 (pp. 35-71). 5. After seeing the English text of my section on "Church and State in the Iranian Empires", Dr Frend agreed provisionally in the autumn of 1970 that I should prepare a thesis on Church-State relation­ ships in the East covering the years 410-820, i.e. the relationships between the Church of the East and the Sassanid Empire and Early Caliphates from the Council of Seleucia in 410 till the end of the patriarchate of Timothy I. Glasgow University agreed that if I were to pursue my research in the year ended September 1971, and Professor Frend be satisfied with my fulfilling the requirements, I should be permitted to complete the work in the autumn term of 1971-72. 6. I returned to Scotland in July 1971, and from the beginning of August 1971 I have continued my researches steadily, mainly on the period of the Early Caliphates. My most important field of research was in the letters of the Patriarch Timothy I. I translated many extrants from Latin into English, and classified the information they gave as to Church-State relationships. 7. The thesis now presented incorporates the greater part of the source-material which I had translated and made available in English for the first time in the Handbook. It is the logical outcome of much V of the research to which I was led in the preparation of the Handbook, though of course confined to one area of it - perhaps the areai most relevant to the Church in Pakistan. For these reasons of natural growth and close connection,it has seemed the logical thing to present the Handbook along with the thesis. vi A Note on Original Work In the Handbook of Source-Materials, there are over 60 translations; otherwise the original work is mainly in selection, arrangement and presentation of material from an Eastern point of view. In the thesis originality is claimed for the following: 1. the theme. I believe that there has not before been a systematic approach to the subject of Church-State relations which links the Synod of 410 and the acceptance of the Christians as a subject community with both the Shahs and the Caliphs. 2. the statistical work of Chapter IV, and the maps, which represent, I believe, something not before attempted seriously. 3. the large extracts from original and as far as possible contemporary writers, and their slecetion and arrangement to illustrate Church-State relations. Most of them are not readily available in English, and much translation from French and Latin has been done. I believe that the presentation of extracts from Thomas of Marga in this way is something not before attempted, though they were available in English, and the account of the Synod of 410 with its Record, Mashiha^zakha's evidence, the Life of Mar Aba, and John of Penek*s historical survey are the main records translated from the French, while the letters of Timothy I and Ishu*-Tab III are mostly taken from Latin translations. 4* The attempt to see the relevance of the experiences of a minority-Church in the East for present-day minority Churches in the East. vii A Note on Words Absolute consistency is not claimed in the transliteration of words. In general, Eastern names have been given in their Persian or Arabic, rather than Syriac forms, and as pronounced in Pakistan. Occasionally where the Persian form was not known, a Syriac name has been given in the Syriac form. Treatment of Greek and Western names has varied - for some English forms like Theodore, Cyriac, George, etc. have been used. Biblical names are usually, but not always, given in either an Arabic or an English form. Only a few names are likely to be unfamiliar - Hedayab for Adiabene, Nisibin for Nisibis, Jibrail for Gabriel, Khusrau for Chosroes, Shapur for Sapor, millat for melet, and perhaps a few others. The use of "Rome” and "Roman” needs explanation. To the East, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Constantinople was Rome, or Rum. Eastern writers call the Byzantine Empire both "Roman" and "Greek"; only by the time of Timothy I do we get the term "Byzantine". The term "Church of the East" means the Church in the Sassanid Empire and later the Nestorian Church in the Muslim Caliphates. Prom its point of view, which is taken throughout, both Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians were "the West" and "Westerns". When we use the term "Eastern", therefore, we never signify the Greek Orthodox Church in this study.

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