Mar Eliya IV (or IV) was the

patriarch of the Church of the East The patriarch of the Church of the East (also known as patriarch of the East, patriarch of Babylon, the catholicose of the East or the grand metropolitan of the East) is the patriarch, or leader and head bishop (sometimes referred to as Cath ...

from 1405 until 1425. His reign falls in a period of obscurity owing to the limited contemporary evidence. He appears in a contemporary list of patriarchs in a 15th-century manuscript copy of the ''

Book of the Bee __NOTOC__ The ''Book of the Bee'' () is a historiographic and theological compilation, containing numerous Biblical stories. It was written around 1222, by Solomon of Akhlat, who was Bishop of Basra, within the Church of the East. It is written ...

'' between two patriarchs named Shemʿon. Traditionally these are Shemʿon III and

Shemʿon IV Mar Shemʿon IV Basidi (died 20 February 1497) was the patriarch of the Church of the East in the last quarter of the 15th century. Traditionally his reign is said to have begun in 1437, but this results in an improbably long tenure and has been r ...

, but David Wilmshurst has argued on the basis of the aforementioned manuscript that there was only one Shemʿon between

Denha II Mar Denha II (also written Dinkha II) was patriarch of the Church of the East from 1336/7 to 1381/2. Although no history of his reign has survived, references in a number of Nestorian, Jacobite and Muslim sources provide some details of his pat ...

and Eliya IV, and that this must be Shemʿon II. He suggests placing Shemʿon III after Eliya IV. In view of the upheavals in Iraq in his time, it is unlikely that he was consecrated in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. Probably he was consecrated and resided in a monastery in northern Iraq. Traditionally his death has been placed in 1437, since in that year a patriarch named Shemʿon is mentioned in a dating clause in a manuscript colophon. A colophon in a manuscript copied by the scribe Masʿud of Kfarburan, dating to 1429/30, also mentions a patriarch Shemʿon, which would push back Eliya's death date to the 1420s.

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* * * * {{Patriarchs of the Church of the East 14th-century births 1420s deaths 15th-century bishops of the Church of the East Patriarchs of the Church of the East