Monasticism, also called monachism or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially in the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions as well as in other faiths such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. In other religions, monasticism is criticized and not practiced, as in Islam and Zoroastrianism, or plays a marginal role, as in modern Judaism.
Tur Abdin is a hilly region situated in southeast Turkey, including the eastern half of the Mardin Province, and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris, on the border with Syria and famed since Late Antiquity for its Christian monasteries on the border of the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire. The area is a low plateau in the Anti-Taurus Mountains stretching from Mardin in the west to the Tigris in the east and delimited by the Mesopotamian plains to the south. The Tur Abdin is populated by more than 80 villages and nearly 70 monastery buildings and was mostly Syriac Orthodox until the early 20th century. The earliest surviving Christian buildings date from the 6th century.
The School of Nisibis was an educational establishment in Nisibis. It was an important spiritual centre of the early Church of the East, and like the Academy of Gondishapur, it is sometimes referred to as the world's first university. The school had three primary departments teaching: theology, philosophy and medicine. Its most famous teacher was Narsai, formerly head of the School of Edessa.
Babai the Great was an early church father of the Church of the East. He set several of the foundational pillars of the Church, revived the monastic movement, and formulated its Christology in a systematic way. He served as a monastic visitor and coadjutor with Mar Aba as unofficial heads of the Church of the East after Catholicos Gregory until 628 AD, leaving a legacy of strong discipline and deep religious Orthodoxy. He is revered in the modern Assyrian Church of the East.
Henana of Adiabene was a Christian theologian, and headmaster of the School of Nisibis, the main theological center of the Church of the East (571–610).
Cenobiticmonasticism is a monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a religious rule, a collection of precepts. The older style of monasticism, to live as a hermit, is called eremitic. A third form of monasticism, found primarily in Eastern Christianity, is the skete.
Abraham the Great of Kashkar was the father of the Assyrian monastic revival in the 6th century. He is a doctor and saint of the Assyrian Church of the East.
Thomas of Marga, was an East Syriac bishop and author of an important monastic history in Syriac, who flourished in the 9th century CE. He was born early in the century in the region of Salakh to the north-east of Mosul. As a young man he became in 832 a monk of the monastery of Beth 'Abhe, which was situated at the confluence of the Great Zab with one of its tributaries, about 25 miles east of Mosul. A few years later he was acting as secretary to Abraham, who had been abbot of Beth 'Abhe, and was patriarch of the Church of the East from 837 to 850.
Eastern Christian monasticism is the life followed by monks and nuns of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Church of the East and Eastern Catholicism. Eastern monasticism is founded on the Rule of St Basil and is sometimes thus referred to as Basilian.
At the height of its power, in the 10th century AD, the dioceses of the Church of the East numbered well over a hundred and stretched from Egypt to China. These dioceses were organised into six interior provinces in Mesopotamia, in the Church's Iraqi heartland, and a dozen or more second-rank exterior provinces. Most of the exterior provinces were located in Iran, Central Asia, India and China, testifying to the Church's remarkable eastern expansion in the Middle Ages. A number of East Syriac dioceses were also established in the towns of the eastern Mediterranean, in Palestine, Syria, Cilicia and Egypt.
Dioceses of the Church of the East, 1318–1552 were metropolitan provinces and dioceses of the Church of the East, during the period from 1318 to 1552. They were far fewer in number than during the period of the Church's greatest expansion in the tenth century. Between 1318 and 1552, the geographical horizons of the Church of the East, which had once stretched from Egypt to China, narrowed drastically. By 1552, with the exception of a number of East Syriac communities in India, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of the East was confined to its original heartland in northern Mesopotamia.
The Patriarchal Province of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was an ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, with see in Seleucia-Ctesiphon. It was attested between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. As its name entails, it was the province of the patriarch of the Church of the East. The province consisted of a number of dioceses in the region of Beth Aramaye, between Basra and Kirkuk, which were placed under the patriarch's direct supervision at the synod of Yahballaha I in 420.
The Metropolitanate of Nisibis was an East Syriac metropolitan province of the Church of the East, between the fifth and seventeenth centuries. The ecclesiastical province of Nisibis had a number of suffragan dioceses at different periods in its history, including Arzun, Beth Rahimaï, Beth Qardu, Beth Zabdaï, Qube d’Arzun, Balad, Shigar (Sinjar), Armenia, Beth Tabyathe and the Kartawaye, Harran and Callinicus (Raqqa), Maiperqat, Reshʿaïna, Qarta and Adarma, Qaimar and Hesna d'Kifa. Aoustan d'Arzun and Beth Moksaye were also suffragan dioceses in the fifth century.
Rabban Mar Hormizd was a monk who lived in the seventh century in modern northern Iraq. Rabban is the Syriac term for monk. "Rabban" is also the Aramaic word for "teacher". He founded the Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Alqosh, named after him, which has served in the past as the patriarchate of the Church of the East.
Mount Izla, also Mountain of Nisibis or briefly in the 9th century Mount Kashyari, is a low mountain or ridge near Nisibis in what once a part of Assyria, then Sassanid Persian province of Asoristan, but is now southeastern Turkey, along the border with Syria. The ridge is the location of dozens of ancient monasteries which were built by the Assyrian Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox Church in the early centuries of Eastern Rite Christianity. In modern times, all of the monasteries are in ruins except for that of Mar Melke reconsecrated in the 1930s, Mor Yakub Monastery, founded in Dibek in 2012–2013, and the Monastery of Mor Augin which was refounded in 2008 after being abandoned in the 70's.
Sabrisho I was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 596 to 604, during the rule of King Khosrow II.
Sahdona of Halmon also known as Sahdona of Mahoze and Sahdona the Syrian, Hellenised as Martyrius, was a 7th-century East Syriac monk, theologian and Bishop who later defected to the West Syriac Church.
Dadisho Qatraya or Dadisho of Qatar was a Nestorian monk and author of ascetic literature in Syriac. His works were widely read, from Ethiopia to Central Asia.
ʿEnanishoʿ was a monk, philosopher, lexicographer and translator of the Church of the East who flourished in the 7th century.
Dadishoʿ (528/9–604) was a monk and author of the Church of the East. He was the second abbot of the great monastery of Mount Izla after its founder, Abraham of Kashkar. He has sometimes been conflated with Dadishoʿ Qaṭraya, who lived a century later.
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