The Monk Yeshu Bar Khayrun
(d. 1335)
Yeshu is son of Master Saliba, son of the priest Ishaq bar Khayrun. He was born at the village of Hah around 1275 and became a monk at the Monastery of the Virgin near the village Sidos in the country of Manazgird shortly before 1299. He was ordained a priest and then accompanied his father to the Sayyida (Our Lady) Monastery known as the Qatra Monastery in the mountain of Mardin and died in it on August 19, 1335.495 He was a man of letters and a poet. He composed a husoyo for the night of the Wednesday of King Abgar beginning thus, “Praise be to the Eternal King,” and comments on the lexicon of Bar Bahlul, a copy of which is at Zafaran. He also composed four odes in the twelve-syllabic meter, the first unrhymed containing advice to clerics;496 the second rhymed and perfect;497 the third on rebuking a treacherous pupil (most of it is good);498 and the fourth on the pillage of the church of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin and the destruction of the churches and monasteries of the East in 1333.499 Furthermore, He composed seven lines on flowers, poetical rhymed pieces of mediocre quality500 and some lines in the twelve-syllabic meter eulogizing the book Storehouse of Secrets.501