Seert (Chaldean Diocese)

Seert was a diocese of the Chaldean Church during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The diocese was ruined during the First World War.

There is no evidence for an East Syrian bishop or metropolitan of Seert before the schism of 1551. From just before the end of the fifteenth century Seert seems to have been under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan Eliya of Nisibis, who was styled 'metropolitan of Nisibis, Mardin, Amid, Hesna d'Kifa and Seert' in a colophon of 1477; 'metropolitan of Nisibis, Armenia, Amid, Hesna d'Kifa and Seert' in 1480; and 'metropolitan of Nisibis, Armenia, Mardin, Amid, Seert and Hesna d'Kifa' in 1483. In 1504 another Eliya, perhaps the same man, was styled 'metropolitan of Amid, Gazarta and Seert' in the colophon of a manuscript copied in the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob.

According to Tfinkdji, followed by Fiey, the first bishop or metropolitan of Seert was Joseph, brother of the patriarch Yohannan Sulaqa, who would have been among the bishops consecrated by Sulaqa in 1554. The source for this assertion is not clear, and it is possible that Joseph was instead metropolitan of Gazarta, where a metropolitan of that name is attested between 1555 and 1568. In any case, Joseph Sulaqa did not remain long in his office. In 1555 he was sent to India with Eliya Asmar by the patriarch ʿAbdishoʿ IV and was there consecrated metropolitan of India. He did not return to Mesopotamia, and after struggling for several years to maintain his authority in the face of harassment by the Portuguese authorities, he died in 1569 in or on his way to Rome.

Although there are no references to a bishop of Seert in manuscript colophons from the second half of the sixteenth century, the monastery of Mar Yaʿqob in the Seert district was the seat of the patriarch ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron and his successor Shemʿon VIII Yahballaha, and a number of manuscripts were copied there by ʿAbdishoʿ himself and by the Catholic metropolitans Eliya Asmar of Amid and Hnanishoʿ of Mardin. The district would therefore have come under strong Catholic influence at this period, and it is not surprising to find Seert listed by ʿAbdishoʿ IV in 1562 as a metropolitan see under his jurisdiction, with a suffragan bishop at 'Azzen', possibly Hesna d'Kifa.

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