Mar Yaballaha III

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Christianity in China Portal

Mar Yaballaha III was Patriarch of the Church of the East (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Nestorian church) from 1281 to 1317.

Born near Beijing and of Uyghur descent according to Bar-Hebraeus (Chinese sources state that he was an Ongud from the Christian tribe's homeland in Inner Mongolia near Shanxi), his given name was Markos.^[1] He was consecrated as a monk and decided, along with Rabban Bar Sauma, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In the course of the pilgrimage, having paused in the region of Baghdad, Markos was appointed Metropolitan of China, and shortly thereafter was elected Patriarch (taking the name Yaballaha) to succeed the deceased Patriarch Mar Denha. For the latter part of his term his see was located at Maragheh, the capital of the Ilkhanate Empire.

Yaballaha held contacts with the Byzantine Empire and with Latin Christendom. In 1287, his former teacher Rabban Bar Sauma, had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Europe by the Ilkhans of Persia on the recommendation of Yaballaha. In May 1304 he made profession of the Catholic faith in a letter addressed to Pope Benedict XI. But the union was refuted by his fellow Nestorian bishops.

1 See also
2 Footnotes
3 References
4 External link

[edit] See also

List of Patriarchs of Babylon

[edit] Footnotes

^ Moule, Christians in China before 1500, 94 & 103; also Paul Pelliot in T'oung-pao 15(1914), pp.630-36.

[edit] References

James A. Montgomery, History of Yaballaha III, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927).
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, (London: Religious Tract Society, 1928).
Paul Bedjan, Histoire de Mar Jab-Alaha, Patriarche, (1888, 2nd ed 1995; reprint Gorgias, 2007). Syriac text on which the translations of Montgomery and Budge are based.
Gregory Barhebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. J. B. Abbeloos and T. J. Lamy, (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1877), 3: II, cols.451ff.
Ian Gillman & Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 140, 252.
A. C. Moule, Christians in China before 1550 (London: SPCK, 1930).