Dioceses of the Syrian Orthodox Church

Dioceses of the Syrian Orthodox Church: In the period of its greatest expansion, in the tenth century, the Syrian Orthodox Church had around 20 metropolitan dioceses and a little over a hundred suffragan dioceses. By the seventeenth century only 20 dioceses remained, reduced in the twentieth century to 10. The seat of Syrian Orthodox Patriarch was at Mardin before the First World War, and thereafter in Deir Zaʿfaran, Mosul, from 1932 in Homs, and finally from 1959 in Damascus.

When the Syrian Orthodox movement began in the sixth century, the Christian world was organised into five patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem. The Syrian Orthodox movement was initially confined to the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, in the territory of the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. The West Syrians envisaged their church as the legitimate patriarchate of Antioch, and appear to have tried to duplicate the hierarchy already existing.

Over a hundred West Syrian dioceses and around a thousand West Syrian bishops are attested between the sixth and thirteenth centuries. The main source for these dioceses and bishops are the lists of Michael the Syrian, compiled in the twelfth century. Many other dioceses and bishops are mentioned in other literary sources, particularly the works of Bar Hebraeus, written in the second half of the thirteenth century. Several bishops not known either to Michael the Syrian or Bar Hebraeus are mentioned in the colophons of surviving West Syrian manuscripts.

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