CHRISTIANSthe presence of the cross.140 The Synod of George also required that
litigation between Christians be judged in the church by judges chosen
by the bishop with the consent of the community. Such judges were
to be selected from among those priests known for their love of truth
and fear of God who possessed the knowledge and understanding
sufficient for such matters. No one was to take it upon himself to
judge the faithful without the order of the bishop and the consent of
the community unless obliged to do so by the government.^141
The best examples of how the application of church law in early
Islamic Iraq contributed to a reinforcement of the Nestorian Church
as a religious community are in the legal correspondence of the ca-
tholicos I:IenanishO' I (686-93). A system of legal administration emerges
from the correspondence in which the priest as judge was in charge
of the church at the local level and shared responsibility with a civil
authority (Syr. sho/tanii 'almanayii). Both were subject to the ca-
tholicos, to whom legal decisions were appealed by unsatisfied liti-
gants. The legal responses in such cases served as precedents upon
which general statements of law were based. Written documents were
regarded as the most acceptable evidence once they had been sealed
by the ecclesiastical inspector. Much of I:Ienanishi)"s correspondence
dealt with complicated questions of inheritance, the freeing of slaves,
the alienation of church property, and taxation.14^2 The church itself
claimed the right to inherit the estates of those who died without heirs
"in order to take responsibility for the taxes levied on them."143
NESTORIANS: COMMUNAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE
LIMITS OF SOCIAL BARRIERSIt is thus possible to describe a Nestorian religious community al-
ready in existence in Iraq towards the end of the Sas ani an period. A
140 Chabot, Synodieon, pp. 223-24, 487-89; Duval, Liber Epistuiarum, CSCO, Ser.
Syri, 11:153-54, 12:114.
141 Chabot, Synodieon, pp. 219-20, 484-85. This provision would suggest that the
Islamic government had adopted the practice of appointing judges for the Nestorians
sometime prior to 676, probably when Ziyad was governor of Iraq for Mu'awiya. This
practice found its way into l:Ianafi law, and according to Abii l:Ianifa the appointment
of a non-Muslim as a judge among the members of his own religion was valid (Tyan,
Organisation judiciaire, p. 90). This may be compared to the way the exilarch was
given authority to appoint judges for the Jewish community; but, in any case, there
does not seem to be a Sasanian precedent for this practice.
142 Sachau, Reehtsbueher, 11, 12-29.
143 Ibid., 11, 36-37.