Qumul/Hami

Before addressing whether Mingana and those who followed after him (named above) are correct in their assertion that there was a Christian bishop in Kamul/Hami, let us review what is known about this Central Asian city located roughly 400 km east of Turfan and another 400 km north-northwest of Dunhuang, known in modern Uyghur as Qumul (قۇمۇل, pronounced Qomul) or in Chinese as Hami (哈密). Pelliot, who wrote an excellent entry on “Camul” (as it is spelled in Polo’s text)Footnote ²in his Notes on Marco Polo (Pelliot Reference Pelliot1959: 153–56), suggests the city was first mentioned in the form Km’yδ, to be read as *Kamēl, in a Sogdian document (Sogdian Ancient Letter II),Footnote ³perhaps from the end of the second century. However, this reading in the Sogdian letter was corrected to Kmzyn, representing the city of Jincheng (金城), by W.B. Henning, who also adjusted the date of the letter to c. 311 (Henning Reference Henning1948: 604, 606, 610).Footnote ⁴

It is thus in the mid-eleventh century that we get our first verifiable reference to Qămūl (قمول) by the Persian historian Gardīzī (Martinez Reference Martinez1982: 137). Marco Polo himself (1298–99) says of Camul that “the people of that province are all idolaters [i.e. Buddhists] like the others narrated above” (Moule and Pelliot Reference Moule and Pelliot1938: 154), an observation which should give us pause regarding Mingana’s assertion above. We shall return to the Venetian historian below.

In contrast to Polo’s description, the Tarikh-i Khataʾi (1494/95), the report of an embassy to China from the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh in Herat which passed through the region in the summer of 1420, observes of Qāmul/Qāmïl (قامل) that there was “a large idol-temple. In it the image of a marvellous cross was set up … In front of that cross a copper image representing a ten year old boy was set up” (Bellér-Hann Reference Bellér-Hann1995: 159). Presumably, this account is describing the results of religious syncretism; in the absence of direct ties with their co-religionists in the Middle East, Christians in Qamul gradually adopted local (i.e. Buddhist) religious practices, while still retaining symbols important to them, such as the cross.

Returning to Pelliot’s essay on Camul, we read also of two Latin missionaries who spent time in Qamul: John Marignolli (1340–42) (Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1914: 265–66) and Benedict Goës (1604–05) (Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1916: 239). It was also a significant enough place to be noted on important medieval maps such as the Catalan Atlas (c. 1375) and the World Map of Fra Mauro (d. 1459) – where it appears as “Camul” (Cresques Reference Cresques1975: 129) or “Chamul” (Falchetta Reference Falchetta2006: 624–25) – as well as a map attached to the encyclopaedic Chinese work Jingshi dadian (經世大典), assembled c. 1330. Moreover, there are frequent references to the city in the dynastic history Yuan Shi (元史), compiled in 1370.

Before leaving Pelliot, we must note the following in his entry on Camul:

Pelliot (Reference Pelliot1959) takes a very different approach here from the work referred to previously (Pelliot Reference Pelliot1973), where he all but accepts the idea, without any mention of the need for substantiation:

It is unclear which work was written first, as they were both published posthumously, but it is nonetheless interesting to see the difference in perspective between the two.

A plethora of witnesses?

It may be instructive to see the sources referenced in the works mentioned above, from Mingana to Gillman and Klimkeit. Apart from references to Mingana (Reference Mingana1925), Dauvillier (Reference Dauvillier1948), van Lantschoot (Reference van Lantschoot1949), Saeki (Reference Saeki1951) or Pelliot (Reference Pelliot1973) in later works, the new sources are, in chronological order: Assemani (Reference Assemani1721: 455–56); Le Quien (Reference Le Quien1740: col. 1311–12); Pauthier (Reference Pauthier1865: 156–59); Yule (Reference Yule1866: 390, 578–79); Gismondi (Reference Gismondi1896–Reference Gismondi97: 70, 121, 122); Sachau (Reference Sachau1919: 47–48); Yule and Cordier (Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 211); and Moule and Pelliot (Reference Moule and Pelliot1938: 154–56). We will deal with Assemani, Le Quien and Gismondi separately below.

Not surprisingly, many of the secondary sources mentioned by writers from Mingana onwards are various translations of Marco Polo. The Venetian’s description of “the province of Camul” is rather long (Pauthier Reference Pauthier1865: 156–59; Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 209–12; Moule and Pelliot Reference Moule and Pelliot1938: 154–56; Latham Reference Latham1958: 87–88). After mentioning some basic geographical information on the province, we encounter the aforementioned statement that “the people of that province are all idolaters like the others narrated above”. Polo tells us that “they are men of very cheerful looks and all greatly given to amusement, for they are devoted to nothing else but the playing of instruments and singing and dancing and briefly in taking great bodily enjoyment” (Moule and Pelliot Reference Moule and Pelliot1938: 154).

Further down, we read of a common custom in the province which would have sounded scandalous to Polo’s readers: when a stranger passed through the region, they were welcomed by the inhabitants of Camul into their homes, after which the host left for several days so that “the stranger stays with his [the host’s] wife in the house and does as he likes and lies with her in a bed just as if she were his wife, and they continue in great enjoyment” (Moule and Pelliot Reference Moule and Pelliot1938: 154). The rest of Polo’s description of Camul concerns the efforts of the Mongol ruler Mongu (Möngke Khan) to bring this custom to an end, efforts which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Needless to say, Polo, who is usually very quick to mention whether Christians are present in a given place, has nothing to say about Christians in Camul. However, he does contribute something important to the idea that there was a Christian bishop in the region, namely the spelling (in Franco-Italian) of Camul. We shall see below why this was so crucial in the development of the notion we are examining.

However, before leaving Polo, we should consider what the above translators or commentators say in their notes regarding a Christian bishop. Pauthier has nothing to say about it; neither do Moule and Pelliot or Latham. Only Yule and Cordier (Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 211) mention it in the notes that follow “Chapter XLI”: “Kamul appears to have been the see of a Nestorian bishop. A bishop of Kamul is mentioned as present at the inauguration of the Catholicos Denha in 1266. (Russians in Cent. Asia, 129; Ritter, II. 357 seqq.; Cathay, passim; Assemani, II. 455–456.)”. The first two references – Valikhanov (Reference Valikhanov1865) and Ritter (Reference Ritter1832) – contain absolutely no information on a bishop in Kamul, although there are interesting observations on the city and its role in history. The third reference, to Yule’s (or Yule and Cordier’s) Cathay and the Way Thither is scarcely more helpful with its “passim”. This leaves only “Assemani, II” (Assemani Reference Assemani1721), which (as noted above) will be addressed below.

Cathay and the Way Thither (mentioned by van Lantschoot Reference van Lantschoot1949) was published initially in two volumes by Henry Yule in 1866, with a revised edition in four volumes, appearing between 1913 and 1916 and including additional material by Henri Cordier. Van Lantschoot refers the reader to page 390 of the 1866 edition (which corresponds to Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1914: 265–66) and to pages 578–79 (which correspond to Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1916: 239). The first extract concerns John Marignolli and deserves to be quoted at length, due to its subject matter:

Since we know nothing more about this than what Marignolli tells us, it is hard to perceive what exactly happened at this “conversion event”. Whether the locals were merely agreeing to perform a religious rite in order to benefit financially from these foreigners (which seems the most likely reading of Marignolli’s account) or there was a genuine religious conversion which led to the establishment of a Christian community (which might explain the remnants encountered by Shah Rukh’s embassy), there is certainly no mention of a local bishop or existing ecclesiastical structures that could validate the idea that such a bishop existed in 1265 (Pelliot) or 1266 (Mingana, Pelliot), a mere 75 years before Marignolli’s visit to Kamul. The second extract from Yule (Reference Yule1866), concerning the visit of Benedict Goës to the city, en route to Khanbaliq (Beijing), is of no concern to us, having nothing whatsoever to do with any religious matters. In short, these two extracts really tell us nothing about the existence of our (thus far) elusive bishop. Moreover, nothing is said about this bishop in the relevant footnotes on “Kamul, Komul, Qomul, or Kamil” (Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1914: 265; cf. Yule and Cordier Reference Yule and Cordier1916: 239).

The final reference, also given by van Lantschoot, is found in Eduard Sachau’s Zur Ausbreitung des Christentums in Asien, which also deserves to be quoted in full:

Although Sachau is not sure of the exact location of “Kemûl”, he places it somewhere near Jebel Judi – Mount Cudi in southern Turkey, one of the reputed places where Noah’s Ark came to rest – just north of where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey meet, and about 170 km northwest of Mosul. As Sachau notes, Kemul belonged to the (former) country of Gordyene (or Corduene), a Roman province located roughly 100 km south of Lake Van and 170 km west of Lake Urmia. Although Sachau is not able to locate it more precisely, it is clear that he is describing a monastery, the Monastery of MarFootnote ⁷Yoḥannan of Kamul, in northern Mesopotamia, not the Central Asian city we are concerned with here. So far, we have failed to find a primary source for the idea that there was a bishop in Qamul in Central Asia in the thirteenth century.

Back to Assemani

Since none of the references examined thus far have provided anything approaching proof that there was a bishop from Qumul/Hami who attended the consecration of the new patriarch Denḥa in 1265, it is time to look back at the earliest sources mentioned by the authors cited above, from Mingana to Gillman and Klimkeit. The very earliest is Volume II of the Maronite scholar Joseph Assemani’s magnum opus, the Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana. In his list of the “Eastern patriarchs” (i.e. patriarchs of the Church of the East), under “Machicha” (Makkika II, 1257–65), he notes that when the patriarch died on 18 April in the Greek (Seleucid) year 1576 (1265), the funeral liturgy was celebrated by Simeon, metropolitan of Mosul; Emmanuel, bishop of Ṭirhan; Brikhishoʿ, bishop of al-Wasiṭah; John, bishop of Susa; and John, bishop of “كمول Camulæ” (Assemani Reference Assemani1721: 455). Let us, from here on, replace the English name John with the Syriac name Yoḥannan.Footnote ⁸Assemani then moves on to the next patriarch “Denha” (Denḥa I, 1265–81), who was ordained (or consecrated) patriarch on 15 November in the Greek year 1577 (1265). Present at his consecration were a great number of metropolitans and bishops (16 by my count), including (again) Yoḥannan, bishop of “Camulæ” (Assemani Reference Assemani1721: 456).

This seems to be as far back as we can go in our search for proof. Obviously, a bishop of Kamul (كمول) named Yoḥannan was present at both the funeral of Makkika II and the consecration of Denḥa I, in April 1265 and then again in November of the same year (the new Seleucid year begins on 1 October), but where was this Kamul that he came from? Was Bishop Yoḥannan from Central Asia? If so, travelling from Hami to Baghdad (approximately 5,650 km) would have taken him somewhere between 23 and 31 weeks, travelling 30–40 km per day in a camel caravan over a rugged route that would have included the Taklamakan Desert and the Tien Shan or Pamir mountain ranges. In order to arrive in time to attend Makkika’s funeral, the trip from Central Asia could not have been planned with the patriarch’s death in mind; it must have been embarked on for some other reason. Given the distance, time, costs and dangers involved, it looks less and less likely that our bishop was from Hami.

Even the Arabic form of the name (كمول) should give us pause, especially if we compare it to the forms found in Gardizi (قمول) and the Tarikh-i Khataʾi (قامل), not to mention the modern Uyghur rendering of Qomul/Qumul (قۇمۇل). The name of the Central Asian city begins with /q/ (ق), not /k/ (ك). Given the presence of two distinct sounds /k/ and /q/ in all the relevant languages – Arabic, Persian, Chaghatai Turkish, Syriac – there would be no need to render the initial letter in the Central Asian placename Qamul/Qomul/Qumul with the sound /k/ in the Arabic source that Assemani is using (more on that below). Put another way, our bishop came from Kamul, not Qamul; none of the languages we are concerned with would have confused the two (not so with Latin, as we shall see below).

Assemani has more to say about Kamul elsewhere in his four-tome work. In Volume III,1 – an expansion on the Catalogue of Syriac Writers written c. 1318 by ʿAbdishoʿ bar Berikha – we read the following Syriac entry: ܒܗܝܫܘܥ ܟܡܘܠܝܐ ܣܡ ܟܬܒܐ ܕܥܠ ܕܝܪܝܘܬܐ, “Behishoʿ Kamulaya composed the Book about the Monastic Life”. The gentilic ending on Kamulaya (ܟܡܘܠܝܐ) indicates that Behishoʿ is from Kamul (ܟܡܘܠ). Below this, in the accompanying notes, Assemani gives more information about Behishoʿ, the monk from the monastery of “Camul”, noting that the monastery of Kamul was founded during the time of Shapur, ruler of the Persians (Shapur II, r. 309–79) and Barbaʿshmin, Catholicos of the Church of the East (r. 345–46). This is followed by an extensive quotation from “Amr” (more on him below) which mentions the founding of غمر کمول بالجزیرة “the Monastery of Kamul in al-Jazirah”, the latter referring to a province of the Umayyad and ʿAbbasid Caliphates located in Upper Mesopotamia (Assemani Reference Assemani1725: 275).

There are also some important references in Volume III,2 of the Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana. In an alphabetical list of “Metropolitan and Episcopal Churches, which are subject to the Nestorian Patriarch” (Assemani Reference Assemani1728: 705), we read:

Camul (or rather Kamul) is thus a village with an adjoining monastery, located in the same general part of northern Mesopotamia discussed above by Sachau, referred to here as Zabdicene, “one of the Transtigritanae regions … an Armenian satrapy located on either side of the Tigris including the cities of Bezabde [a shortened form of Beth-Zabde] and Phinika (Finik), ceded to the Persians after 363” (Crow Reference Crow2018: 1605).Footnote ⁹An unpublished Syriac text by Yoḥannan bar Penkaye (on whom, see below) contained in BL Or 9385 provides even more information about the placename Kamul:

Before moving on, we should also consider the quote from the famed Syriac Orthodox prelate and writer Gregory bar ʿEbroyo that Assemani inserts into his discussion of Kamul:

Of note in this quotation is the occurrence of an alternate version of the place name: Akhmul (ܐܟܡܘܠ) in place of Kamul (ܟܐܡܘܠ), something which Bedjan observes in his edition of the Syriac text, noting that Assemani’s text of bar ʿEbroyo seemed to have the latter form. Certainly, Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus considers that ܐܟܡܘܠ Akhmul, “Nestorian monastery at Qardu” and ܟܐܡܘܠ Kamul, “Nestorian village and monastery in Zebadene [Zabdicene]” both refer to the same place (Payne Smith Reference Payne Smith1879–Reference Payne Smith1901: col. 183, 1753; cf. Margoliouth Reference Margoliouth1927: 166, which adds ܟܡܘܠ). We may also recall Sachau’s observation above that the Muslim geographer Yaqut (1224–28) gives the forms دیراکمل (monastery of AKML) or دیراکمن (monastery of AKMN).

Before moving on from Assemani, there is one final quotation to note in his entry on “Camula”:

There can be little doubt that, in Assemani’s view, Kamul was located in northern Mesopotamia, not in Central Asia, a view that is corroborated by the aforementioned extract from Sachau, but we need to go even further back to verify all this, to examine what the primary source that Assemani calls “Amr” has to say.

Back to ʿAmr

The name ʿAmr has come up frequently in our examination of the evidence thus far. ʿAmr ibn Mattā al-Ṭīrhānī, who probably lived between the mid-tenth and early eleventh centuries, composed a work called Kitāb al-majdal li-l-istibṣār wa-l-jadal, “Book of the Tower, for Reflection and Discussion”, “a massive theological and ecclesiastical compendium in seven major sections, written in rhymed Arabic prose” (Swanson Reference Swanson, Thomas, Mallett, Sala, Pahlitzsch, Swanson, Teule and Tolan2010: 627). After much thorough analysis of the text (and the need to discard an earlier, convoluted theory of its origin), scholars now view the seven-chapter work published in Gismondi (Reference Gismondi1899) as the work of ʿAmr, not Marī ibn Sulaymān (as the former theory posited); the latter possibly contributed some additional material for the “patriarchal history found in the fifth chapter” (Swanson Reference Swanson, Thomas, Mallett, Sala, Pahlitzsch, Swanson, Teule and Tolan2010: 628).

This work is to be distinguished from what was published as the second part of the Kitāb al-majdal in Gismondi (Reference Gismondi1896–Reference Gismondi97), a work which is in fact part of the Asfār al-asrār, “Books of the Secrets” by Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā. Written in 1332, it was long thought to have plagiarized the Kitāb al-majdal, but is now viewed as a separate work in its own right (Swanson Reference Swanson, Thomas, Mallett, Sala, Pahlitzsch, Swanson, Teule and Tolan2010: 628; Holmberg Reference Holmberg1993). As will be seen, these two works, both of which Assemani attributed to ʿAmr, are the sources for much of what the Maronite scholar wrote about Kamul.

Let us deal first with the Kitāb al-majdal of ʿAmr ibn Mattā, in which we read the following, under the section on the patriarch Barbaʿshmin (r. 345–46):

This is the original source for Assemani’s information on the founding of the monastery of Kamul, which seems to have occurred twice. The initial founding took place during the mid-fourth century patriarchate of Barbaʿshmin, when Yoḥannan,Footnote ¹¹the former governor of Nisibis, after converting to Christianity and being baptized by the great ascetic Awgen, became an ascetic himself, dwelling in a cave near the village of Kamul. However, as Fiey suggests, “It is not correct, however, to attribute to him the title of ‘founder’, because it was only at the beginning of the seventh century that the monk Ūkāmā made the funerary cave the nucleus of a convent, the ruins of which can still be seen about twenty kilometres east of Cizré” (Author’s translation from the French in Fiey Reference Fiey2004: 121).

Several centuries later – perhaps in the early seventh century, as Fiey suggests, or more precisely between 608 and 628, as Mar-Emmanuel (Reference Mar-Emmanuel2015: 62) argues – Ukama, a disciple of Abraham of Kashkar, founded the monastery of Kamul, although whether this was a refounding of the monastery or in fact its original founding is unclear from the text. If indeed the monastery had been founded initially by Yoḥannan, what had happened to it in the meantime? Had it just fallen into disrepair and, if so, why? Or had it never really been there in the first place? And what of the village? Had it been there before Yoḥannan moved into his cave (as the text suggests), or had it rather developed after news spread of Yoḥannan’s miracle-working? Although one can see the appeal of a direct link via Yoḥannan to Mar Awgen, the traditional founder of Mesopotamian monasticism, the argument seems to be more in favour of that initial link being through Ukama back to Abraham of Kashkar, the great reformer of East Syriac (Church of the East) monasticism. Leaving aside the contradictions and questions in the text then, a likely progression would have Yoḥannan moving into the grotto first (in the absence of a village initially), followed by the gradual settlement of what would become the village of Kamul nearby, followed by Ukama moving to the vicinity in order to build a monastery (no doubt, as Fiey suggests, centred around the funerary grotto of Yoḥannan), after which it is likely that the village would have grown even more, with all the commercial implications of having a monastery nearby. This sequence of events (namely that Yoḥannan was more an ascetic than a builder) seems to be affirmed by the aforementioned unpublished Syriac text by Yoḥannan bar Penkaye, which provides additional information on Ukama and his precursor, Yoḥannan of Kamul, that is not found elsewhere (Mar-Emmanuel Reference Mar-Emmanuel2015: 62–63).

Moving on to the fourteenth century Asfār al-asrār by Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā,Footnote ¹²we have two relevant excerpts, the first of which also relates to the mid-fourth century patriarchate of Barbaʿshmin:

As the translator Gianmaria Gianazza notes, this excerpt refers to a “monastery built in the village of Kamūl in Mesopotamia, where the monk Yoḥannan, who had previously been in Shapur’s retinue, lived” (Author’s translation from the Italian in Gianazza Reference Gianazza2017: 415).

It is with our final two extracts that we finally come to the primary source (already encountered in Assemani above) that is the origin of the “bishop of Hami” narrative. The first extract occurs near the end of the section on the patriarch Makkika II (r. 1257–65):

The second extract follows shortly after, under the section on patriarch Denḥa I (r. 1265–81):

Surely these three references to Kamul in the Asfār al-asrār, along with the one reference in the Kitāb al-majdal (all of which use the same Arabic spelling کمول), are evidence that the authors of these two primary sources had only one place in mind when they referred to Kamul: the site of a village and monastery in northern Mesopotamia, not the Central Asian place name.Footnote ¹⁶Before concluding with a reconstruction of how the (by now) obviously erroneous idea of a bishop of Hami may have developed, it seems in order to provide further primary sources from the literature of the Church of the East that demonstrate the important role that Kamul played in that Church and its unquestioned location in northern Mesopotamia.

The place of Kamul in the Church of the East

Towards the end of the Syriac Life of Mar Awgen, we read a list of ܩܕܝ̈ܫܐ ܬܠܡܝܕܘ̈ܗܝ ܕܡܪܝ ܐܘܓܝܢ, “the holy disciples of Mar Awgen” that includes ܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ, “Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul”, one of the few names that is attached to a geographic place in this list of 73 disciples (Bedjan Reference Bedjan1892: 473). Kamul also figures prominently in the Book of Chastity, composed by Ishoʿdnaḥ of Baṣra in 849/50, which has (1) a short section on ܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܢܨܒ ܥܘܡܪܐ ܕܟܡܘܠ “Mar Yoḥannan who founded the Monastery of Kamul”; (2) a reference under those sent out by Abraham “the Great” of Kashkar to ܪܒܢ ܡܪܝ ܐܘܟܡܐ ܗܘ ܕܚܕܬ ܡܥܪܬܗ ܕܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ ܥܒܕܗ ܥܘܡܪܐ “Rabban Mar Ukama, who restored the cavern of Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul (and) made it a monastery”; (3) a reference to Mar Aba (not the patriarch of that name) which mentions that ܒܙܒܢܐ ܕܣܝܒܘܬܗ ܐܬܢܩܦܘ ܠܗ ܐܚ̈ܐ ܩܕܝ̈ܫܐ ܘܐܬܐ ܘܒܢܝܗܝ ܠܥܘܡܪܐ ܕܟܡܘܠ ܕܒܐܬܪܐ ܕܩܪܕܘ ܘܒܗ ܫܢܝ ܡܢ ܚܝ̈ܐ ܕܙܒܢܐ “in the time of his old age, his holy brothers came out [of their cells] to him and he came and built the Monastery of Kamul, which is in the land of Qardu. And there he departed from the temporal life”; (4) a long section on ܩܕܝܫܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܐܘܟܡܐ ܕܢܨܒ ܥܘܡܪܐ ܒܡܥܪܬܗ ܕܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ ܩܪܝܬܐ ܕܒܐܬܪܐ ܕܩܪܕܘ, “Holy Mar Ukama who founded the Monastery at the cavern of Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul, the village that is in the land of Qardu”; (5) a reference to ܛܘܒܢܐ ܩܘܪܝܩܘܣ… ܐܙܠ ܠܛܘܪ̈ܝ ܩܪܕܘ ܘܩܘܝ ܬܡܢ ܒܫܒܒܘܬܐ ܕܥܘܡܪܐ ܕܟܡܘܠ “the blessed Cyriacus [who] went to the mountains of Qardu and abode there in the neighbourhood of the Monastery of Kamul”; and (6) a note under Joseph HazzayaFootnote ¹⁷about how ܥܡܗ ܕܒܪ ܗܘܐ ܠܗ ܠܥܘܪܐ ܕܟܡܘܠ ܕܒܫܒܒܘܬ ܕܩܪܝܬܐ ܘܚܙܐ ܗܘܐ ܠܕܘܒܪܐ ܕܝܚܝܕܝ̈ܐ ܪܬܚ ܛܠܝܐ ܒܚܘܒܗ ܕܡܪܢ ܘܩܒܠ ܡܥܡܘܕܝܬܐ ܒܥܘܡܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ “he [Joseph’s Christian friend Cyriacus] led him to the Monastery of Kamul, which is in the neighbourhood of the village. And seeing the conduct of the solitary monks, the young man became fervent with the love of our Lord and received baptism in the Monastery of Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul” (Author’s translations from Bedjan Reference Bedjan1901: 442, 447, 455, 459, 497–98, 510, 510; cf. Chabot Reference Chabot1896: 230, 233, 238, 241, 269, 278).

Joseph Hazzaya is not the only famous Syriac writer with a connection to the Monastery of Kamul. As a notice found in two Syriac Orthodox manuscripts on ܛܘܒܢܐ ܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܝܚܝܕܝܐ ܒܪ ܦܢܟ̈ܝܐ “the blessed Mar Yoḥannan the Solitary bar Penkaye”Footnote ¹⁸notes, ܠܒ̣ܫ ܠܐܣܟܡܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܕܕܝܪܝܘܬܐ ܒܥܘܡܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ. ܠܘܬ ܪܫ ܥܘܡܪܐ ܡܪܝ ܣܒܪܝܫܘܥ. “he put on the holy habit of monasticism in the Monastery of Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul under the head of the monastery, Mar Sabrishoʿ” and, at the end of his life, ܟܕ ܐܝܬܘܗܝ ܒܪ ܫܒܥܝܢ ܘܬܠܬܐ ܫܢܝ̈ܢ ܫܢܝ ܡܢ ܥܠܡܐ ܗܢܐ܆ ܘܐܬܬܣܝܡ ܦܓܪܗ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܒܥܘܡܪܐ ܪܒܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܝܘܚܢܢ ܕܟܡܘܠ. “when he was seventy three years old, he left this world and his holy body was laid in the great Monastery of Mar Yoḥannan of Kamul” (Scher Reference Scher1907: 162–67).

We may also recall here the aforementioned Mar Behishoʿ Kamulaya, who was mentioned in ʿAbdishoʿ bar Berikha’s Catalogue of Syriac Writers. His life is recorded in Syriac hagiographical literature, where he is also referred to as ܡܪܝ ܒܝܫܘܝ ܝܚܝܕܝܐ “Mar Bishoy the Solitary” (Bedjan Reference Bedjan1892: 572–620). Although he “entered monastic life under the guidance of John of the Kemol [sic] monastery … 80 percent of his life [i.e. his written vita] is dedicated to his deeds and words in the Egyptian monasteries” (Sanders Reference Sanders1995–Reference Brock96: 277). As a native Syriac speaker who lived most of his life in Egypt, it is not surprising that the various sources that mention him spell his name in different ways; Bishoy (or Bishoi) seems to indicate Coptic or Arabic influence, whereas Behishoʿ suggests his native East Syriac origins.Footnote ¹⁹In addition to his vita, extracts from his discourses (i.e. the Book about the Monastic Life mentioned by ʿAbdishoʿ bar Berikha) have also been published (Blanchard Reference Blanchard and Young2012).Footnote ²⁰Sadly, “no rules of the Monastery of Mar Yoḥannan have survived … [but] John [bar Penkaye]’s work On Virginity and Holiness … and another surviving metrical hymn entitled ‘A Beneficial memra of Mar Yoḥannan bar Penkaye’ provide ample information regarding the ascetic life within his monastery” (Mar-Emmanuel Reference Mar-Emmanuel2015: 65).

It is not only in the area of hagiographical literature that Kamul has made its mark. It also merits mention in the liturgy of the Church of the East, specifically the “Motwa for Wednesday ‘Before’”, with this remembrance of Joseph Hazzaya: “Raban Joseph the Seer. Whose monastery is in the Kurdish mountain. Saw exalted revelations. Above the nature of man. And the great habitation near thereby. Called Kmul, the fountain of love. Hath the fame of the Paradise of Eden. Thus history relateth” (Maclean Reference Maclean1894: 140). Indeed, Kamul can be considered one of five places where East Syriac mysticism flourished, a flourishing that was rooted in the monastic reforms of Abraham of Kashkar:Footnote ²¹

Origins of the “bishop of Hami” idea

Having examined first Assemani’s references to Kamul and then the references in his primary source (or rather, sources, as it turns out) ʿAmr ibn Mattā al-Ṭīrhānī and Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā, it is clear that there is absolutely no basis for thinking there was a bishop in Qumul/Hami in the thirteenth century who visited Baghdad and was present for the death of one patriarch and the consecration of another. Which brings us to the question: How did this idea originate and develop to the point that by the late twentieth century it was taken for granted by the majority of scholars writing on the subject of Christianity in Central Asia? The brief survey below attempts to summarize the sources used by twentieth-century scholars who support this idea, with a reminder of what has been said above regarding each source mentioned; the few scholars who do not list any sources are overlooked.

The first place in modern scholarship where we encounter this idea is in the quote from Yule and Cordier (Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 211), discussed above and not itself based on any useful sources that say the same thing. The next statement of the notion comes from Mingana (Reference Mingana1925: 328–29), who (as noted at the beginning of this article) refers only to Yule and Cordier and Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā (whom he thinks is ʿAmr). Again, neither of these sources provides anything approaching conclusive proof that a bishop of Hami ever existed. Following Mingana, Dauvillier (Reference Dauvillier1948: 308; translation by the author) makes a statement that may provide a clue as to the origin of the idea. He mentions “Ha-mi … (the Camul of Marco Polo) ʿAmr reports a Chaldean bishop in 1265”, referring the reader to the same page (122/۲۲۱ in Arabic text) as Mingana (70 in Latin translation).

The most impressive bibliography thus far seems to be in van Lantschoot (Reference van Lantschoot1949: col. 671), but it becomes less so as one examines the references. Pauthier (Reference Pauthier1865: 156–59) has no information about a bishop in the Central Asian Camul. Neither do Yule (Reference Yule1866: 390, 578–79) or Sachau (Reference Sachau1919: 47–48). Both Yule and Cordier (Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 211)Footnote ²²and Mingana (Reference Mingana1925: 328–29) have been examined and found wanting. The references to Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā (Gismondi 1896–97) have already been discussed extensively above. The only reference worth following up is Le Quien (Reference Le Quien1740: col. 1311–12), on whom more below.

As noted above, one posthumous work by Pelliot (Reference Pelliot1959: 154) contains the author’s suggestion that the idea of a bishop in Camul “would require substantiating”. Nonetheless, Pelliot mentions three sources for the idea, all of which can be easily dispensed with. Yule and Cordier (Reference Yule and Cordier1921: 211) and Assemani (Reference Assemani1721: 455–56) have both been addressed above. The third source, “Saeki, Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 1937, chart facing p. 348” (equivalent to Saeki Reference Saeki1951: Map III) is merely a map indicating that there was a bishop at Hami, with no proof given for this claim. Again, as noted above, in another posthumous work, Pelliot (Reference Pelliot1973: 9, 134) seems more certain of the existence of a bishop of Hami, this time referring to Gismondi (Reference Gismondi1896–97: 122/۲۲۱, for the Arabic text), a passage which has been examined above. For his part, Fedalto (Reference Fedalto1988: 994) rests his case on Dauvillier (Reference Dauvillier1948: 308) and Pelliot (Reference Pelliot1973: 9), both of which have already been addressed above.

Again, based on what already has been said regarding Assemani, ʿAmr ibn Mattā al-Ṭīrhānī and Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā, it is clear that none of the secondary sources examined thus far that report a bishop of Hami can point to solid evidence to support that notion. We now turn to two final players in the course of events that resulted in the idea of a bishop of Hami being accepted without question by so many scholars. We begin with the most recent of the two: Jean-Maurice Fiey. Unlike (it seems) many of the other scholars discussed in this article, Fiey was well aware of the Monastery of Kamul; indeed, it is likely that he visited the site during the 34 years he lived in Iraq, as the following description of “John of B. Garmaī and Ūkāmā, the convent of Kamūl” suggests: “The ruins of this large convent, with about twenty rooms, can still be seen in Qardū, on the southwest slope of Mount Gūdi, near the village of Dādār, half an hour west of Kewulla. Today it is called Déra Kamōlé in Kurdish. It is therefore located about twenty kilometres east of Cizre” (Author’s translation from the French in Fiey Reference Fiey1977: 199).

There follows a helpful overview of the history of the monastery according to the available sources, including the lives of both “founders”, Yoḥannan of KamulFootnote ²³and Ūkāmā. Fiey clearly sets out the order of things concerning the latter: “He built cells and a convent, which became known as the nearest village, Kamūl in Qardū”. Fiey ends with an interesting discussion of the idea of a bishop of Kamul:

And here we see a hint of what may have caused Fiey to opt for a bishop of Hami later on; in a footnote, he observes that “Le Quien had already suggested that it was perhaps a locality in the province of Tangut, cited by Marco Polo, Description du monde, ch. LIX … However, no mention is made of Christians; on the contrary, Khan Mangu tried in vain to combat their ‘evil custom’ of ‘kindly’ offering their wives to travellers” (Author’s translation from the French in Fiey Reference Fiey1977: 201, n. 247).

The “later on” occurred in Fiey’s masterful Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus (1993), an updated and expanded version of the three-volume Oriens Christianus Footnote ²⁴(1740) which had been assembled by the French theologian and historian Michel Le Quien (1661–1733). Fiey wisely limited himself to the dioceses of the two main streams of Syriac Christianity: “East Syriac Dioceses” (the Church of the East) and “West Syriac Dioceses” (the Syriac Orthodox Church). His entry on Qamul deserves to be quoted in full:

In addition to Sliwa (Ṣalībā), already examined above, Fiey provides three other sources: Le Quien’s Oriens Christianus, vol. II, col. 1311–12, s.v. Camulae; van Lantschoot’s Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques entry on “Camul”; and Pelliot’s Recherches sur les chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’Extrême-Orient, pp. 9, 134. Curiously, van Lantschoot and Fiey are the only two (among the many authors we have surveyed in this article) to point the reader towards Le Quien (perhaps because, in a pre-digital world, it would have been very difficult for the average reader to physically access any of Le Quien’s three volumes).

And so, having already examined van Lantschoot and Pelliot, we come to the last source to be investigated: Le Quien (in fact, most of the page is formatted as one column). Halfway down the page is the title ECCLESIA CAMULÆ with the following text below it:

Underneath this text we read the subtitle EPISCOPI CAMULÆ, below which is the following text (in the original Latin): “I. Joannes. Anno Græcorum 1577. Christi 1266. Joannes episcopus Camulæ adfuit promotioni Denhæ I. Catholici, qui decessoris illius Machichæ perinde adfuerat exequiis”. The source is given as Tome II of Bibliotheca Orientalis (Assemani Reference Assemani1721, 455–56), which we have examined above and which (again) has its source in Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā (although Assemani thought it was ʿAmr ibn Mattā al-Ṭīrhānī).

Here we see all the hints coming together in a relatively clear manner. Le Quien reads in both Marco Polo and Assemani about Camul and assumes that both are referring to the same place, given the identical spelling in the two (Franco-Italian and Latin) sources. He quotes Polo, who (again) says nothing about Christians and, if anything, makes it clear how “unChristian” the residents of Camul are. Le Quien then says that he has found there is a bishop in Camul (switching sources here to Assemani) and therefore there must have been Christians in Camul (he is, of course, speaking here of Qamul in Central Asia, not Kamul in northern Mesopotamia), despite what Polo wrote about the place and its inhabitants. His final quote from Assemani seems to clinch his argument: “John, bishop of Camul, was present at the promotion [consecration] of Catholicos Denḥa I.; he had likewise been present at the funeral of his predecessor Makkika.”

We can see now how not only Le Quien and those who referenced him (namely van Lantschoot and Fiey), but also other authors who did not reference him (such as Mingana, Dauvillier and Fedalto) came to the conclusion that there had been a bishop of Hami in the thirteenth century. They read Marco Polo and then they read Assemani (or, later on, Gismondi’s late nineteenth-century translations of Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā) and made a connection between the two, based primarily on the fact that both sources use the name “Camul”, thus joining the account of the Venetian with the references to a bishop’s attendance at the funeral of one patriarch and the consecration of another into one “proof text” for the notion of a bishop of Hami. However, as the investigation of sources above has shown again and again, such a bishop never existed; he was being confused with a bishop of Kamul in northern Mesopotamia.

Arguments for and against

Quite apart from the evidence from our primary source, Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā, which seems to point overwhelmingly towards northern Mesopotamia as the location of the bishop who participated in the patriarchal funeral and consecration, we might ask what other evidence would suggest this option over a bishop from Central Asia. The matter of distance from Baghdad has already been addressed above. As a reminder, travelling from Hami to Baghdad (a distance of roughly 5,650 km) would have taken between 23 and 31 weeks, depending on how quickly the camel caravan moved. A resident of Hami would have had to embark on such a long journey roughly half a year before the death of the patriarch in order to arrive in time for the funeral. The logistics involved in making such a journey make it highly unlikely; by contrast someone could make the 550 km journey from Kamul to Baghdad (again, by camel) in roughly 14–19 days, more than adequate to arrive in time for a patriarchal funeral (especially considering that others from northern Mesopotamia were also there, including the metropolitan of Mosul, who celebrated the funeral liturgy).

Another question has to do with the motivation for going on such a trip from Central Asia. Although we cannot know it conclusively, it seems reasonable to assume that most bishops in Central Asia at the time were probably local inhabitants, whereas most (if not all) metropolitans would have been appointed by and sent from the church centre in Baghdad. In short, they were from the heartland of the Church, in what at this time was the Mongol-occupied former territory of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate (the Mongols, led by Hülegü, had famously captured Baghdad in 1258). Such a journey would have been inconvenient and disruptive for an ecclesiastical province in Central Asia, but it would have been perfectly feasible for a metropolitan from somewhere in the former ʿAbbasid domains to make the trip. However, what would be the motivation for a bishop, most likely born in Central Asia, to do so? The only reason that comes to mind would be in order to make pilgrimage to the holy sites in the Middle East, as was the case c. 1275, when Rabban Bar Ṣauma and Marqos, two Turkic monks from the vicinity of Khanbaliq (Beijing), said to each other, “If we left this land for the West, we would have a lot to gain in receiving the blessings of the shrines of the holy martyrs and the fathers of the Church” (Borbone Reference Borbone2020: 69). It also seems logical, if the local church in the Mongol province of Tangut – where, as Polo notes, Qamul/Hami was located at the time – wished to send someone to Baghdad, surely it would make more sense to send a metropolitan than a bishop.

In opposition to these arguments in favour of the bishop of Kamul over the bishop of Hami, we must address the point raised by Fiey above, namely, the presence of “Yoḥannan, bishop of Tamanon” alongside “Yoḥannan, bishop of Kamul” at the consecration of Makkika II, as mentioned by Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā. As Wilmshurst (Reference Wilmshurst2000: 40) notes, Qardu was “renamed Ṭamānōn in the tenth century” and excerpts from the Book of Chastity above make it very clear that “the Monastery of Kamul … is in the land of Qardu”; there seems no way of getting around Fiey’s objection that a bishop of Tamanon (which is Qardu) “excludes the existence of another diocese [i.e. Kamul] so close”. Put another way, there was no room for two bishops in such close proximity. Fiey further argues that if Yoḥannan’s episcopal seat was tied to the monastery (more on that shortly), then “he would have been called bishop ‘of the monastery’ of Kamul” (which he was not, according to Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā). Although Fiey concludes that it “seems preferable to look elsewhere for the location of the bishopric of Kamul” (an option which really leads us nowhere), he does seem open to the idea that Yoḥannan was “a bishop retired to the convent and to whom the title was given pro hac vice” (Fiey Reference Fiey1977: 201).

Whether there was a permanent episcopal position at the monastery of Kamul or Yoḥannan merely had the title “on this occasion only”, we should not discount the idea of a bishop being attached to a monastery in the East Syriac tradition. Admittedly, the practice was more common in the West Syriac (Syriac Orthodox) tradition than in the Church of the East: “An urban episcopate of the Church of the East would contrast with the tendency of Syriac Orthodox bishops to dwell in monasteries outside the walls” (Carlson Reference Carlson2018: 34).Footnote ²⁶

Thus, there are not many examples of East Syriac bishops associated with monasteries, but it is not without precedent in the literary record.Footnote ²⁷Arguably, our first occurrence is in the Arabic list of metropolitans and bishops in the Church of the East compiled by Eliya Jawharī (or Eliya of Damascus) around the year 900. Eliya includes under هوفرکیا مرو “the province of Merv” a certain اسقف دیرحنس “bishop of Dayr ḤNS” (Assemani Reference Assemani1721: 458, 460). Although we have no other information on this episcopal seat in the province of Merv, the word دیر (dayr) is, of course, the typical way of referring to a monastery in Arabic. Similarly, Dayr Harql, apparently connected to the Monastery of Ezekiel,Footnote ²⁸refers, according to Fiey, to the diocese of Zawabi, located between the “Royal Cities” of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Kashkar, to the south-east. As Fiey explains, during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, “the bishop’s residence was then the Convent of Ezekiel at al-Nuʿmaniya” (Author’s translation from the French in Fiey Reference Fiey1993: 74, 145).

There are also two early fourteenth-century references in the context of the Church of the East. One is contained in a note found in manuscript BSMS 446 in the Cambridge University Library Repository,Footnote ²⁹a note which mentions ʿAbdishoʿ the bishop of the monastery of the patriarchal cell, seemingly accompanied by the date 1627 in the Seleucid era (1315/16 ce) (Coakley Reference Coakley2018: 171). The second instance can be found in the Syriac History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma, the story of the aforementioned Turkic monks Rabban Bar Ṣauma and Marqos who, on their way to Baghdad, “arrived at the holy monastery of Saint Ṣehyon, near the city of Ṭus. They were blessed by the bishop and the monks of that place” (Borbone Reference Borbone2020: 75). The text seems to be saying that “that place” – the monastery (located near, but not in, the city of Ṭus, Persia) – had a bishop.

A plausible (although not definitive) explanation of how Yoḥannan came to be named as the bishop of Kamul is offered by an anonymous reviewer of this article:

And so we reach the end of our investigation. I think the most important lesson for academics to learn is the potentially dangerous habit of relying on the conclusions of others, no matter how well-respected they may be in academia, rather than tracing references back as far as we can, especially when it is possible to look at primary sources. I hope I have been successful in laying out the evidence for an argument that I am, in fact, not the first to make. As David Wilmshurst (Reference Wilmshurst2011: 261) has written:

Wilmshurst’s statement is spot on and I hope, with this article, that we may once and for all bid “farewell to the bishop of Hami”.