Mar Mar, mar or MAR may refer to: Culture * Mar or Mor, an honorific in Syriac * Earl of Mar, an earldom in Scotland * MAA (singer) (born 1986), Japanese * Marathi language, by ISO 639-2 language code * March, as an abbreviation for the third month ...

Eliya IV (or IV) was the

patriarch of the Church of the East The Patriarch of the Church of the East (also known as Patriarch of the East, Patriarch of Babylon, the Catholicose of the East or the Grand Metropolitan of the East) is the patriarch, or leader and head bishop (sometimes referred to as Catholic ...

from 1405 until 1425. His reign falls in a period of obscurity owing to the limited contemporary evidence. He appears in a contemporary list of patriarchs in a 15th-century manuscript copy of the ''

Book of the Bee __NOTOC__ The ''Book of the Bee'' ( syr, ܟܬܒܐ ܕܕܒܘܪܝܬܐ / Ktābā d-debboritā) is a historiographic and theological compilation, containing numerous Biblical stories. It was written around 1222, by Solomon of Akhlat, who was Bishop of ...

'' between two patriarchs named Shemʿon. Traditionally these are

Shemʿon III Mar Shemon III was the patriarch of the Church of the East in the early 15th century. There is uncertainty over his existence, his dates and his place in the order of patriarchs. Traditionally, Shemʿon III is listed between patriarchs Shemʿon I ...

and

Shemʿon IV Mar Shemon IV Basidi (died 20 February 1497) was the patriarch of the Church of the East in the last quarter of the 15th century. Traditionally his reign is said to have begun in 1437, but this results in an improbably long tenure and has been revi ...

, but David Wilmshurst has argued on the basis of the aforementioned manuscript that there was only one Shemʿon between

Denha II Mar Denha II (also written Dinkha II) was patriarch of the Church of the East from 1336/7 to 1381/2. Although no history of his reign has survived, references in a number of Nestorian, Jacobite and Moslem sources provide some details of his patr ...

and Eliya IV, and that this must be Shemʿon II. He suggests placing Shemʿon III after Eliya IV. In view of the upheavals in Iraq in his time, it is unlikely that he was consecrated in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

. Probably he was consecrated and resided in a monastery in northern Iraq. Traditionally his death has been placed in 1437, since in that year a patriarch named Shemʿon is mentioned in a dating clause in a manuscript colophon. A colophon in a manuscript copied by the scribe Masʿud of Kfarburan, dating to 1429/30, also mentions a patriarch Shemʿon, which would push back Eliya's death date to the 1420s.

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Bibliography

* * * * {{Patriarchs of the Church of the East 14th-century births 1420s deaths 15th-century bishops of the Church of the East Patriarchs of the Church of the East