RESOURCESemmeh et de Marouta, metropolitiansJacobites de T agritetde l'Orient,"
PO, III (1909): 7-96. J. M. Fiey argues that the church which Al.1U-
demmeh built at 'Ainqenoye survives as the ruins at Qasr Saruj in
"Identification of Qasr Serej," Sumer 14 (1958): 125-27. Scholarship
on early Jacobite ecclesiastical history in Iraq tends to focus on the
metropolitan (later called "maphrian") at Takrit. Such works include
P. Hindo, Primats d'Orient, Catholicos nestoriens et Maphriens syriens
(Rome, 1936); I. Armalet, "Les catholicoi d'Orient et les maphriens
syriens," al-Mashriq 40, (Beirut, 1942): 182-92, 272-81, 364-72,
417-27, 519-27, 604-14; and P. Behnam, "T akrIt dans I 'histoire,"
al-Mashriq,l (Mawsil, 1946): 36-41, 85-90, 131-34, 167-70,215-
- A. Voobus's "Reorganisierung der westsyrischen Kirche in Per-
sien," OC 51 (1967): 106-11, also concerns the foundation of the
metropolitan ate of T akrit.
Scholarship on Monophysitism among Arabs goes back at least to
I. Guidi's "Mundhir III und die beiden monophysitischen Bishofe,"
ZDMG 35 (1881): 142-46. The classic studies are those by F. Nau,
Les Arabes chretiens de Mesopotamie et de Syrie du VIle au VIlle
siecle (Paris, 1923), and by H. Charles, Le Christianisme des Arabes
nomades sur les limes et dans le Desert syro-mesopotamien aux alen-
tours de I'Hegire (Paris, 1936). The most recent study is J. S. Trim-
ingham's Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-lslamic times (London,
1979).
On the Melkites in the east in the late Sasanian period, see J. Nasrallah's
"L'Eglise Melchite en Iraq, en Perse et dans I' Asie centrale," P-OC 25
(1975): 135-173. For the Islamic period, see P-OC 26 (1976): 16-
Pagans and Gnostics
There is hardly any literature on pagans in late Sasanian and early
Islamic Iraq. This is partly because no one thought there were any and
partly because traditions with pagan origins or import survived in-
tertwined in other religious and intellectual traditions. There is of
course an immense literature on religion in ancient Iraq which it is
neither necessary nor appropriate to survey here since the main concern
is with the conditions of paganism at the time of the Muslim conquest.
Although the affinities between paganism at that time and the ancient
indigenous religious traditions of Iraq are sometimes pointed out, there
seems to have been very little interest in how these traditions survived
and developed locally after the fall of the Chaldaean state or how they