Tahal (diocese)

The region of Beth Garmai (Syriac: ܒܝܬܓܪܡܝ) in northern Iraq, bounded by the Little Zab and Diyala Rivers and centered on the town of Karka d'Beth Slokh (Syriac: ܟܪܟܐ ܕܒܝܬ ܣܠܘܟ, modern Kirkuk), was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the fifth and fourteenth centuries. Several bishops and metropolitans of Beth Garmaï are mentioned between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, residing first at Shahrgard, then at Karka d'Beth Slokh, later at Shahrzur and finally at Daquqa. The known suffragan dioceses of the metropolitan province of Beth Garmaï included Shahrgard, Lashom (ܠܫܘܡ), Khanijar, Mahoze d'Arewan (ܡܚܘܙܐ ܕܐܪܝܘܢ), Radani, Hrbath Glal (ܚܪܒܬܓܠܠ), Tahal and Shahrzur. The suffragan dioceses of 'Darabad' and 'al-Qabba', mentioned respectively by Eliya of Damascus and Mari, are probably to be identified with one or more of these known dioceses. The diocese of Gawkaï, attested in the eighth and ninth centuries, may also have been a suffragan diocese of the province of Beth Garmaï. The last known metropolitan of Beth Garmaï is attested in the thirteenth century, and the last known bishop in 1318, though the historian ʿAmr continued to describe Beth Garmai as a metropolitan province as late as 1348. It is not clear when the province ceased to exist, but the campaigns of Timur Leng between 1390 and 1405 offer a reasonable context.

Before the fourteenth century the Kirkuk region was included in the East Syrian metropolitan province of Beth Garmaï, one of the five great 'provinces of the interior' of the Church of the East.

The bishop of Karka d’Beth Slokh was recognised as metropolitan of Beth Garmaï in Canon XXI of the synod of Isaac in 410. He ranked sixth in precedence (after the metropolitan bishops of Seleucia, Beth Lapat, Nisibis, Prath d'Maishan and Erbil), and was responsible for the suffragan dioceses of Shahrgard, Lashom, Arewan, Radani and Hrbath Glal.

There were several suffragan dioceses in the province of Beth Garmaï at different periods. Within Beth Garmaï itself (the region between the Lesser Zab and Diyala rivers) there were dioceses for Radani, Shahrgard, Lashom, Shahrzur and Tirhan. All of these dioceses except Tirhan (an outlying diocese in the province of the patriarch) were in the province of Beth Garmai. The dioceses of Hrbath Glal and Mahoze d’Arewan in the Lesser Zab valley were geographically in the Erbil region but seem to have been included in the metropolitan province of Beth Garmaï. The seat of the bishops of Mahoze d'Arewan was later transferred to the nearby town of Konishabur, also known as Beth Waziq, and this diocese still had a bishop in 1318. Within the Beth Garmaï region proper, however, only the metropolitan diocese of Daquqa and the diocese of Tirhan (the district between the Tigris and Jabal Hamrin) in the province of the patriarch seem to have survived into the fourteenth century. The last-known bishop of Tirhan, Shemʿon, was present at the consecration of Timothy II in 1318, and the diocese may have met its end during Timur's campaigns in the 1390s. No further bishops are recorded in the Kirkuk region until the early years of the nineteenth century, when a Catholic diocese of Kirkuk (which persists to this day) was established in the 1820s by the patriarchal administrator Augustine Hindi. Later in the nineteenth century a second Catholic diocese was established for the Sehna region in Persia, hitherto part of the diocese of Kirkuk.

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