Ecclesiastical Chronicle, Volume 1

Thence, all of Mesopotamia and Syria were ravaged by the armies. The city of Aleppo was also captured by Hulagu himself, and while Barhebræus had approached him to intercede for his own people, a great slaughter of Greeks and Jacobites was carried out within the city by the Mongols1. Barhebræus remained in Aleppo until the year 1264, during which interval of time the dominion of the city again passed to the Saracens, and was once more recovered by the Mongols.

He is appointed Maphrian.

In the year 1264, Barhebræus attended the election of a new patriarch, Ignatius III, or Joshua. He, desiring to appoint a maphrian the second-highest rank in the Syriac Orthodox Church, serving as the primate of the East for the diocese of the East—that is, eastern Mesopotamia, Chaldæa, and Assyria—which had been deprived of one for six years due to the tumults of war, promoted Barhebræus to this dignity, which is the first among the Jacobites after the patriarchal. This took place on the nineteenth day of January in the city of Sis, the royal city of Cilicia, in the presence of the Jacobite bishops, Aytōn the King of the Armenians and his sons and magnates, together with a multitude of people, as well as bishops and doctors of the Armenians. It remained for the maphrian to obtain a diploma from the civil authority by which he would be confirmed in his dignity. For from the time the Christian East became subject to the power of the Mohammedans, such a diploma, which was usually granted only for a large sum of money, was necessary so that the patriarch in the western parts, and the maphrian in the eastern parts, could freely exercise jurisdiction over their subjects and judge the cases of those litigating according to ancient laws. To seek such a privilege from the new ruler, Barhebræus approached the most powerful king or Khan of the Mongols, Hulagu, whose favor he won for himself and from whom he obtained three diplomas: namely, for himself, for the patriarch, and for the Jacobite bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia.

Soon he set out for the East, traveled through his very wide diocese with frequent journeys, and conducted himself in its governance in such a way that those who were immediately under patriarchal jurisdiction in Syria, Armenia, and Cilicia justly envied the peace and prosperity he procured for the Christians in that ill-fated age.

1: Cf. Barhebræi Chronicon Syriacum, which P. J. Bruns and G. G. Kirsch published together, Leipzig, 1789, vol. I (Syriac) p. 533, vol. II (Latin) p. 555.