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Christians of the Middle East
العربية

History

Two thousand years in the East

From the first community in Jerusalem to the churches of the diaspora today: the turning points that shaped Eastern Christianity, from the councils and divisions to the conquest, the Ottoman centuries and the wars of the last hundred years.

General further reading, not citations to specific pages.

1st – 3rd century

Beginnings

From a small community in Jerusalem to established churches in Antioch, Alexandria, Edessa and Mesopotamia, in three languages: Greek, Syriac and Coptic.

  1. c. 33 AD

    The first community in Jerusalem

    Pentecost and the beginning of the first church, headed by James the brother of the Lord as the city's first bishop.

  2. c. 40 AD

    Antioch and the Christian name

    Antioch becomes the centre of the mission to the gentiles, and there “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26).

  3. c. 42 AD

    Saint Mark in Alexandria

    The tradition of the founding of the church of Alexandria, which became one of the great theological centres of the ancient world.

  4. 1st–2nd century

    Addai and Mari in Mesopotamia

    The rise of Syriac Christianity at Edessa, Erbil and Ctesiphon, east of the Roman frontier.

  5. c. 235–256

    The house church at Dura-Europos

    Among the oldest churches ever excavated, containing the earliest known decorated baptistery.

  6. 284

    The Era of the Martyrs

    Persecution under Diocletian. The Coptic calendar — the calendar of the martyrs — counts from 284, and is still in use.

References for this era

Primary sources

  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica), c. 325
  • The Doctrine of Addai, 5th century

Further reading

  • Henry Chadwick. The Early Church. Penguin, 1967
  • W. H. C. Frend. The Rise of Christianity. Fortress Press, 1984
  • Robert Louis Wilken. The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. Yale University Press, 2012
  • Sebastian P. Brock. An Introduction to Syriac Studies. Gorgias Press, 2006

4th – 5th century

Councils and divisions

A century of freedom after persecution, then the great councils that framed doctrine — and in the same movement produced the divisions whose lines still run between the region's churches today.

  1. 313

    The Edict of Milan

    The end of official persecution and the start of wide-scale church building in the Holy Land, Egypt and the Levant.

  2. c. 270 onwards

    Monasticism is born in the Egyptian desert

    Saint Antony the Great, then Pachomius. From Egypt monasticism passed to Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, and from there to the whole of Europe.

  3. 325

    The Council of Nicaea

    The first ecumenical council and the framing of the creed, with Athanasius of Alexandria among its leading figures.

  4. 410

    The Synod of Kokhe

    The Church of the East organises itself at Ctesiphon, confirming an episcopal structure independent of the Roman sees.

  5. 431

    The Council of Ephesus

    The first great division: the Church of the East goes its own way, forming the first independent church family in the East.

  6. 451

    The Council of Chalcedon

    The division that produced the Oriental Orthodox churches — Coptic, Syriac and Armenian — over against the Chalcedonian churches. At the same council, the see of Jerusalem was raised to a patriarchate.

  7. 489

    From Edessa to Nisibis

    The School of Edessa is closed and its scholars move to Nisibis, which becomes the foremost centre of Syriac learning and theology.

References for this era

Primary sources

  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica), c. 325
  • Norman P. Tanner (ed.). Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Georgetown University Press, 1990
  • Richard Price and Michael Gaddis (trans.). The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. Liverpool University Press, 2005
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. Life of Antony, c. 360
  • Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers), 5th–6th century
  • Egeria. Itinerarium (The Travels of Egeria), c. 381–384

Further reading

  • J. N. D. Kelly. Early Christian Doctrines. A. & C. Black, 1958
  • Henry Chadwick. The Early Church. Penguin, 1967
  • Peter Brown. The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750. Thames & Hudson, 1971

7th – 13th century

Under Islamic rule

Christians become dhimmi: protected communities with their own churches and courts, subject to the jizya tax. Their language gradually becomes Arabic, and many of the caliphate's physicians, translators and secretaries are Christians.

  1. 636–641

    The Muslim conquest

    The Levant, then Egypt and Mesopotamia. The patriarchal sees remain in place, and Damascus, Jerusalem and Alexandria keep their churches.

  2. 638

    The Covenant of Umar

    Setting the terms for Jerusalem's Christians and their holy places, and a basis for what later became the denominations' rights there.

  3. 8th–10th century

    The Syriac translators of Baghdad

    Hunayn ibn Ishaq and others render Greek medicine and philosophy into Arabic, often by way of Syriac — decisive for the flowering of the sciences in the Islamic world.

  4. 781

    The Xi'an Stele

    A stele in China recording the presence of the Church of the East there — evidence of the furthest reach of any Eastern church.

  5. 1099–1187

    The Crusades

    A Latin kingdom in Jerusalem and the introduction of Western denominations to the East, with tensions between Latins and Eastern churches whose memory persists.

  6. 1258 onwards

    The Mongols and Timur

    The fall of Baghdad and then Timur's campaigns destroy the Church of the East's dioceses across Asia, reducing it from a continental church to a mountain church in northern Mesopotamia.

References for this era

Further reading

  • Sidney H. Griffith. The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton University Press, 2008
  • Philip Jenkins. The Lost History of Christianity. HarperOne, 2008
  • Christoph Baumer. The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. I.B. Tauris, 2006
  • Sebastian P. Brock. An Introduction to Syriac Studies. Gorgias Press, 2006
  • Averil Cameron. The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395–600. Routledge, 1993
  • Aziz S. Atiya. A History of Eastern Christianity. Methuen, 1968

1516 – 1918

The Ottoman period

The millet system gives each community charge of its own affairs, hardening church identities. These centuries see most of the Eastern Catholic churches formed and the Protestant missions arrive — and end in large-scale massacres.

  1. 1516–1517

    The Ottomans in the Levant and Egypt

    The whole region falls under a single authority for four centuries, each community administered through its religious leadership.

  2. 1553

    The beginning of the Chaldean Church

    Yohannan Sulaqa and the union of part of the Church of the East with Rome — the first of the unions that produced the Eastern Catholic churches.

  3. 1584

    The Maronite College in Rome

    Its graduates carried printing and Oriental studies back east, with a wide influence on the later Arab renaissance.

  4. 1724 and 1741

    Melkite and Coptic Catholics

    The see of Antioch divides between Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic in 1724, followed by the founding of the Coptic Catholic Church.

  5. 1852

    The Status Quo in the holy places

    A firman fixing each denomination's rights in the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity; it remains the reference today.

  6. 1865

    The Van Dyck Arabic Bible

    An Arabic translation produced by Arab translators with American missionaries in Beirut; it became the most widely used Bible in the Arab world.

  7. 1915–1918

    The great massacres

    The Armenians, the Syriacs (Sayfo) and the Greeks: a destruction that ended the Christian presence across wide areas of Anatolia and the northern Jazira, and drove survivors into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

References for this era

Further reading

  • Jean-Pierre Valognes. Vie et mort des chrétiens d'Orient. Fayard, 1994
  • Habib Badr, Suad Abou el-Rouss Slim, Joseph Abou Nohra (eds.). Christianity: A History in the Middle East. Middle East Council of Churches, 2005
  • Matti Moosa. The Maronites in History. Syracuse University Press, 1986
  • Anthony O'Mahony and Emma Loosley (eds.). Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2010
  • Aziz S. Atiya. A History of Eastern Christianity. Methuen, 1968

1918 – today

The twentieth century and the present

A century of new states, wars and emigration. Christian communities help build states, journalism and education, and at the same time shrink through displacement, until much of their number lives in the diaspora.

  1. 1920–1946

    Mandates and new states

    Today's borders are drawn and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq emerge, with Christians prominent in Arab cultural and political life and in the press.

  2. 1948

    The Nakba

    A mass displacement that struck Palestinian Christians as it struck others, emptying whole towns and parishes.

  3. 1967

    The occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank

    Access to the holy places is restricted and Christian emigration from Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Ramallah accelerates.

  4. 1975–1990

    The Lebanese civil war

    Fifteen years of war in the country with the region's largest Christian share, and emigration that changed the balance of communities.

  5. 2003

    The Iraq war

    The collapse of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world: from some 1.2–1.4 million to 200,000 or fewer in twenty years.

  6. 2011

    The Syrian war

    Displacement and emigration from Aleppo, Homs and the Jazira, and damage to sites such as Maaloula; the community is estimated to have fallen to a third of its size or less.

  7. 2014–2017

    ISIS and the Nineveh Plains

    The people of Mosul, Qaraqosh and the towns of the plain displaced in a single night, with churches and manuscripts destroyed; then a partial return and rebuilding after 2017.

  8. Today

    The churches of the diaspora

    Coptic, Syriac, Maronite and Chaldean dioceses across Europe, the Americas and Australia — for some of these churches, the diaspora now approaches or exceeds the community at home.

References for this era

Further reading

  • Jean-Pierre Valognes. Vie et mort des chrétiens d'Orient. Fayard, 1994
  • Andrea Pacini (ed.). Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future. Clarendon Press, 1998
  • Anthony O'Mahony and Emma Loosley (eds.). Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2010
  • Habib Badr, Suad Abou el-Rouss Slim, Joseph Abou Nohra (eds.). Christianity: A History in the Middle East. Middle East Council of Churches, 2005
  • Pew Research Center. Religious composition reports for the Middle East and North Africa. www.pewresearch.org