245. Bar Wuhayb (d. 1333)

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Bar Wuhayb
(d. 1333)

He is Zakhi, or as it is reported, Yusuf Badr al-Din, son of Ibrahim, known as Bar Wuhayb. He was a native of Mardin and by origin from Korinsha in Tur Abdin. He became a monk and studied at the monastery of Mar Hananya.488 He was ordained a metropolitan for Mardin assuming the name Ignatius and then consecrated a patriarch of Mardin in 1293. He died in 1333 after he ordained twenty metropolitans and bishops. Although ambitious for higher position yet he was a man of great poise and learning.

He wrote a treatise on the dimensions of church prayers,489 a booklet in thirty pages called The Fundamentals, at the request of the monk Yusuf al-Kalshi, in which he interpreted the letters of the Syriac alphabet and included some spiritual themes. He wrote a similar book in Arabic in thirty-six pages,490 a tract on the six letters of the Syriac alphabet which are affected by hardness or softness. He also issued ten short canons in a council he held in 1303491 and in this same year he drew up a lengthy and eloquent liturgy in twenty-eight pages beginning thus: “O God the invisible and incomprehensible, the high and graceful who are above test,”492 and followed it by a husoyo beginning thus: “Praise to the divine nature, the high and invisible.”493