Mar Shemʿon IV Basidi (died 20 February 1497) 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 Cath ...

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 revised by modern research. Thomas Carlson puts the start of his reign in 1477, while David Wilmshurst places it about 1450. Shemʿon's

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

surname, Basidi, indicates that he or his family came from the village of Beth Sayyade in the vicinity of

Erbil Erbil (, ; , ), also called Hawler (, ), is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The city is the capital of the Erbil Governorate. Human settlement at Erbil may be dated back to the 5th millennium BC. At the h ...

. According to a document from 1552: "A hundred years ago we had a patriarch who would only consecrate a metropolitan from among his own stock, clan and family, and his family has maintained that custom during the past century." Shemʿon IV has thus been see as the patriarch responsible for making the office hereditary. This he did by only appointing metropolitans from his family and designating his successor as '' natar kursya'' (guardian of the throne). A different picture from that of the document of 1552, which was drawn up by enemies of the patriarchal family, is painted by a note in a manuscript copied at

Mosul Mosul ( ; , , ; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ...

in 1484 by the archdeacon Ishoʿ, who was attached to the patriarchate. According to him, "the Church was at peace, the convents and brothers enjoyed freedom, the ruined monasteries were restored, the degrees of priests and levites multiplied, and the faithful were blessed by the intercession of" the

Aq Qoyunlu The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans (, ; ) was a culturally Persianate society, Persianate,Kaushik Roy, ''Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750'', (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two trib ...

ruler Yaqub Beg. Another manuscript note from 1488, specifically states that Shemʿon IV successfully intervened with Yaqub to have churches reopened in the eastern districts. Apparently, one of Yaqub's subordinates had begun enforcing the restrictive laws against Christians strictly sometime before 1484, leading the destruction and closure of many churches. Shemʿon died on 20 February 1497 and was buried in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd near

Alqosh Alqosh (, , , alternatively spelled Alkosh, Alqoš, or Alqush) is a town in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq, a sub-district of the Tel Kaif District situated 45 km north of the city of Mosul. The inhabitants of Alqosh are Assyrian peopl ...

, where he may have spent most of his patriarchate. An epitaph records his burial.

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* * * * * * {{Patriarchs of the Church of the East 1497 deaths 15th-century bishops of the Church of the East Patriarchs of the Church of the East