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96 ruled over a mighty Church with suffragans all over Asia, as we shall see in the next paragraph about Nestorian missions (pp. 103–110). So lived the virtuous Lord, Mâr Timothy the first, Katholikos of the East, and he died full of years on May 7 in the year 823.

The Patriarch changed his place of residence constantly. The idea that he was bishop of the twin cities, Seleucia and Ctesiphon, has almost disappeared. The Patriarchate had become an office of itself, independent of any see. Already before Timothy I, Ḥnânyeshu‘ II had moved to the new capital, Bagdad. Timothy resided there, as did most Patriarchs, till the Mongols came in 1258, and for some time after that.

In the early 11th century Albiruni, a Moslem writer from Khiva, mentions the Nestorians as the most civilized of the Christian communities under the Khalif. He says that there are three sects of Christians, Melkites, Nestorians and Jacobites. "The most numerous of them are the Melkites and Nestorians; because Greece and the adjacent countries are all inhabited by Melkites, whilst the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, ‘Irāk and Mesopotamia and Khurāsān are Nestorians. The Jacobites mostly live in Egypt and around it." The Nestorian Katholikos "is appointed by the Khalif on the presentation of the Nestorian community." But he will not allow that the Katholikos is a Patriarch. He says Christians have only four Patriarchs, of Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. He forgets Jerusalem. About a century later the Nestorians are mentioned by another Moslem philosopher, Shahrastāni. In his Book of Religions and Sects he