CHRISTIANSdeposition of I:Ienanish6' and to have himself made catholicos was
probably contingent on Y6l).annan delivering Nasibin to the Mar-
wanis. At any rate, for the first time under Islamic rule, Bishr deposed
I:Ienanish6' and elevated Y6l).annan of Dasen. Shortly afterwards, Y6-
l).annan's partisans in Nasibin, led by an aristocratic Christian Persian
physician named Mardanshah, helped another brother of 'Abd al-
Malik, the governor of the Jazira, Mul).ammad ibn Marwan, to take
Nasibin. The party of I:Ienanish6' was driven out of Nasibin, and
Mardanshah was entrusted with the administration of the city and the
rest of Ba'arbaya as far as the Tigris River. This alliance only lasted
until Y6l).annan died early in 695 after he had held the patriarchate
for a year and ten months. Bishr had already died and had been
replaced as governor by al-I:Iajjaj, who refused to allow the election
of a new catholicos, marking the first time under Islamic rule that
permission was necessary. The hardening of the government's position
under al-I:Iajjaj coincided with the fall of Mardanshah at Nasibin. He
and his brother were arrested, their property was confiscated, Mar-
danshah's mother and children were sold into slavery, and his brother
was crucified at the Harran gate in Nasibin. Wnanish6' lived until
701 in semiretirement at the monastery of Mar Yiinan near Mawsil,
where he exercised a kind of shadow patriarchate. After his death,
the Nestorians were without a catholicos until the death of al-I:Iajjaj
in 713, when they were able to elect Selibhazekha (713-29}.84
The persistence of factional divisions into the 'Abbasi period en-
sured the continuation of government involvement once it had been
established under the Marwanis. In 752, when the position of cathol-
icos again fell vacant, a Persian aristocrat of the Siirin family who was
metropolitan of Hulwan managed to have the Arab governor of Hul-
wan forcibly make him catholicos. The church fathers appealed to the
first 'AbbasI caliph, Abu l-'Abbas at Kufa, who deposed the governor
and allowed the clergy to depose Surin and elect a new catholicos.^85
The main point of all of this is that it was the Nestorians themselves
and not the Muslims who ultimately were responsible for the reap-
plication of Sasanian policies towards Christians in Iraq because they
- Baethgen, "Fragmente," pp. 32, 34-35, 37-38. Elias of Na~ibin, Opus Chrono-
/ogieum, I, CSCO, Ser. Syri, 21:55-56, 149, 153, 155, 23:31, 72, 73-74; Mingana,
Sources syriaques, p. 184; Sachau, Reehtsbueher, Il, vi-ix, xii-xiv, 30-33; Tabari,
Ta'r"ikh, Il, 750-53, 813, 863, 872.
85 Elias of Na~ibin, Opus Chron%gieum, CSCO, Ser. Syri, 21:56-57, 23:31-32.