Yuhanna of Merv
Father Yuhanna of Merv is an East Syriac (Nestorian) missionary who, according to Iradi church tradition, founded the first Christian prayer house in the Talas valley in the 8th century. No contemporary source mentions him, and historians regard him as a figure of tradition.[1]
Tradition
The story is first recorded in the 18th-century chronicle of the cathedral of Iyık Janyl. It says that Yuhanna, a monk of Merv, the metropolitan see of the Church of the East in Khorasan, came to the Talas valley with Sogdian merchants and built a house of prayer beside a spring, where Turkic herders were baptized. Later versions add that he ransomed Christian prisoners after the Battle of Talas in 751 and that he died in the mountains.[2]
Historical background
The tradition fits what is known of the period. East Syriac Christianity reached the Talas and Chu valleys with Sogdian merchants between the 7th and 9th centuries. Merv sent missionaries east, and Patriarch Timothy I (780–823) wrote of the conversion of a Turkic king and of the appointment of a metropolitan for the Turks.[3] Popular tradition in Talas associates him with the parish Church of St. Yuhanna, built in 1908 in the Old Talas Citadel Quarter, although the church's dedication is usually understood to be to John the Evangelist. The Syro-Iradi Catholic Church keeps a local commemoration of Yuhanna of Merv in November.[2]
References
- ^ Temirbekova, Ainura (2014). The Church of the Star: A History of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. Talas: Talas State University Press.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana, pp. 12–30.
- ^ Baumer, Christoph (2016). The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. London: I. B. Tauris.