RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESNestorian village in Margha towards the end of the eighth century.185
The persistence of sectarian conflict was recognized by Yo~annan Bar
Penkaye as one of the reasons for the weakness of Christianity in the
face of Islam. As he put it, the very success of Christianity in the
Roman empire had led to sectarian divisions and the multiplication
of synods and sects when "every year a new faith was invented," and
God had sent the Arabs as punishment.^186 A less bitter but more
significant reaction to the consequences of sectarianism was that of
his contemporary, Isaac of Nineveh, who took refuge in ecumenical
mysticism and advised others not to read books "which accentuate
the differences between the confessions with the aim of causing
schisms."187 Perhaps the ultimate irony, as well as a very good indi-
cation of the strength of sectarian prejudices, is the way Isaac allowed
himself to be led into the kind of patronizing toleration in which he
says "therefore deem all people worthy of bounty and honor, be they
Jews or miscreants or murderers."188
CONCLUSIONS
The period between 590 and 630 thus emerges as particularly im-
portant for the formation of the characteristic relationships between
Christians and their rulers and of the distinctive institutions of the
Christian communities of Iraq. By the end of the Sasanian period, both
Nestorians and Monophysites were organized as religious communi-
ties with their own separate ecclesiastical organizations, churches,
monasteries, schools, and doctrine embedded in the liturgy. The Nes-
torians, in addition, had begun to extend canon law to cover the entire
community and had their own ecclesiastical judges. The final sepa-
ration of the Eastern church into Nestorian and Monophysite sects
occurred in this period, and the consequences of the bitter conflict
between them resulted in competitive conversions and the permanent
separation of the two sects in Iraq, contributing to an increasing self-
isolation on all sides.
Such exclusive religious identification, however, must be balanced
185 Thomas of Margha, Governors, I, 164-66; 'II, 330-33.
186 Mingana, Sources Syriaques, pp. 172-73. Compare Sa'id ibn jubayr's (d. 712)
contemporary accusation that Dharr ibn 'Abdullah invented a new religion every day;
see M. A. Cook, Early Muslim Dogma (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 80-8l.
187 Isaac of Nineveh, "Mystic Treatises," p. 34.
188 Ibid., p. 39.