Shigar was a diocese in the Nestorian metropolitan province of Nisibis

Nisibis (East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province)

The Nisibis region was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the fifth and seventeenth centuries. The province of Nisibis had a number of suffragan dioceses at different periods in its history, including Arzun, Beth Rahimaï, Beth Qardu , Beth Zabdaï, Qube d’Arzun, Balad,...

, centred on the town of Sinjar. The diocese is attested between the sixth and fourteenth centuries.

Background

The Nestorian diocese of Shigar was founded in the sixth century, probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the region. The full name of the diocese was Shigar and Beth Arabaye, and it covered the desert region to the north of Sinjar, where there were several Nestorian monasteries. Six Nestorian bishops of Shigar are attested between the sixth and the fourteenth centuries. The first of these bishops, Bawai, is mentioned in 563. The last, Yohannan, was present at the consecration of the patriarch Timothy II in 1318.

It is not clear when the diocese of Shigar came to an end. The Shigar region seems to have had a small Nestorian community up to the seventeenth century, and may even have had a bishop from time to time. A metropolitan 'Glanan Imech' (possibly Maranemmeh), of 'Sciugar' is mentioned in the report of 1607, and may have been a bishop of Shigar. According to a Yezidi tradition, the last Nestorian 'metropolitan' of Sinjar died around 1660, and the region's few remaining Nestorian Christians become Yezidis. It is difficult to say whether there is any truth in this tradition.

Bishops of Shigar

An itinerant bishop in the Shigar region named Main, previously a general in the Persian army, is attested between 374 and 411, but no bishops from the Shigar region attended any of the fifth- and sixth-century synods. A regular Nestorian diocese for Shigar is not attested until the second half of the sixth century.

The bishop Bawai of Shigar is attested in 563.

The bishop Shemon of Shigar is attested towards the end of the tenth century.

The bishop Mushe of Shigar was present at the consecration of the patriarch Makkikha I

Makkikha I

Makkikha I was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1092 to 1110.- Sources :Brief accounts of Makkikha's patriarchate are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus and in the ecclesiastical histories of the fourteenth-century Nestorian writers Amr and Sliba...

 in 1092.

The bishop Mari of Shigar was present at the consecration of the patriarch Makkikha II in 1257.

The Nestorian author Abdisho Bar Brikha, who flourished during the reign of the patriarch Yahballaha III (1281–1317), was bishop of Shigar and Beth Arabaye before his consecration as metropolitan of Nisibis between 1285 and 1291.

The bishop Yohannan of Shigar was present at the consecration of the patriarch Timothy II

Timothy II (Nestorian Patriarch)

Timothy II was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1318 to ca.1332. He became leader of the church at a time of profound external stress due to loss of favor with the Mongol rulers of Persia.- Timothy's consecration :...

 in 1318.

Nestorian monasteries and villages in Beth Arabaye

The Beth Arabaye region lay between Mosul and Nisibis. Its main centres were the towns of Balad (modern Eski Mosul) and Shigar (Sinjar), both of which had Nestorian bishops, and therefore presumably Nestorian communities, as late as 1318. At an earlier period there were Nestorian communities in the villages of Kfar Zamre (the seat of a Nestorian bishop in 790), Awana (home of the monk Ahron, founder of an eighth-century monastery near Balad), and Beth Ushnaya (mentioned by Amr as the scene of a miracle in 1201); there was a Nestorian monastery of Bauth not far from Kfar Zamre (mentioned also by Amr in 1201); and there were several Nestorian monasteries in the immediate vicinity of Balad, including the sixth-century monasteries of Mar Ishozkha (mentioned in the History of Rabban Bar Idta) and Mar Denha (mentioned by Amr), the monasteries of Mar Pethion, Rabban Ahron and Rabban Joseph (mentioned around the end of the eighth century in Thomas of Marga

Thomas of Marga

Toma bar Yacoub was an ethnic Assyrian bishop and author of an important monastic history in Syriac, who flourished in the 9th century CE. He was born early in the century in the region of Salakh to the north-east of Mosul...

's Book of Governors), and a nunnery in Balad itself (mentioned in the tenth century in the Life of Rabban Joseph Busnaya). There are no references to any of these communities after the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it is not known whether they survived into the fourteenth century. Only one manuscript has survived from the region, copied in 894 in the monastery of Rabban Joseph near Awana, on the east bank of the Tigris opposite Balad, by the scribe Sliba-zkha.