YOHANNAN, ABRAHAM

 

YOHANNAN, ABRAHAM (1853-1925; Figure 1), Assyrian scholar, philologist, historian, and humanitarian advocate. He was the first “Oriental” to teach Oriental languages at Columbia University.

Education and early career. Abraham Yohannan (b. 25 April 1853; d. 9 November 1925) was born in Ābājāluy near Urmia (Āḏarbāyjān-e Ḡarbi province, Iran; Razmārā, p. 1). His father, grandfather, and other ancestors as far back as can be traced were priests of the Nestorian Christian Church. He received his early education in the schools of the Presbyterian missionaries at Urmia, and learned Syriac under the instruction of his father, the Rev. Kasha Yohannan. In 1864 he enrolled in Urmia College, which had been founded by American missionaries as a school of higher education for boys. He took a six years’ course encompassing the study of Oriental languages, Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, Persian, and Armenian, in addition to science and theology. Some time before his graduation in 1870, he was appointed to teach Oriental languages in the College, and he held that position until 1886 (Chamberlain, 1899, p. 458).

According to his autobiographical sketch (Yohannan, 1900, at end), he came to the United States in 1886 at the invitation of the American Bible Society to help prepare a revision of the New Testament in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic; this had been translated and published first by the American missionaries in Urmia in 1846 (see Murre-van den Berg, 1996, p. 14). Yohannan was among the newly educated Assyrians who, over the years, tried to encourage the elimination of borrowed words from neighboring languages into the Neo-Aramaic literary language that was being developed with the help of missionaries working among the Assyrians. He and his family remained in the United States; he pursued studies at the General Theological Seminary (1888-1890) and graduated with a degree in theology. In April 1891 he was ordained by Bishop Henry C. Potter as a priest in the Episcopal Church (Clowes, 1935, p. 340).

Ministry. At Saint Bartholomew's Church in midtown Manhattan, under Rector David H. Greer (1888-1904), a Rescue Mission and a Chinese Mission had been established in 1889, shortly after his arrival, and an Oriental Mission for Middle Eastern immigrants soon followed (Clowes, 1935, pp. 176 ff., 220 ff.). The church would become noted for its range of social initiatives and outreach (see, e.g., Tolman and Hemstreet, 1904, pp. 179-82; Wilson, 1896, p. 29).  Yohannan was hired for the Oriental Mission, and he served as an assistant minister of St. Bartholomew’s Church from 1890 to 1918 (Clowes, pp. 226, 339). His congregation consisted of Armenians, Syrians, and other representatives of the Near East. On Sundays, he held separate services in Turkish, ‘Syriac’ (i.e., Neo-Aramaic), Armenian, and English; Bibles, hymnals, and prayer-books were supplied in the several languages of the Mission (ibid., p. 226). Yohannan himself prepared and printed in 1892 an Armenian translation of the “Order of the Evening Service” of the Episcopal Church, and in 1904 he published “The Order of the Evening Prayer, according to the custom of the Episcopal Church of America” for his Syriac community (Muss-Arnolt, p. 170). These translations may be the ones referred to in a brief mention of Yohannan’s Oriental Mission (Ruess, 1903, p. 4).

The Mission was felt by the Episcopal diocese to be of value in serving social needs, including preparation for United States citizenship, of the working class families who attended, even if few became communicants in the Episcopal Church  (Clowes, p. 226; Yohannan’s counts in ibid., p. 227). By the end of World War I, the Near Eastern immigrants had followed the movement of silk weaving and other textile employment to other cities, and the Mission ended (ibid., p. 228). Yohannan’s son Isaac would serve the growing Assyrian community in nearby Yonkers (see below).  

Academic career. In 1893, Yohannan entered the School of Philosophy of Columbia University to pursue his studies in Semitic languages under R. J. H. Gottheil, the orientalist and Zionist leader, and Indo-Iranian languages under A. V. W. Jackson, the well-known scholar of pre-Islamic Iran. He received his MA in 1894 and was appointed Honorary Lecturer in Oriental languages in 1895, and he became a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.  In 1900 he submitted The Modern Syriac-English Dictionary (the letter allap only, in 65 pages) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University.  The news of his achievement was announced in the Assyrian press in Urmia (Zahrire d-bahra 54, 1903; Macuch, Geschichte, 1976, p. 154). No further letters of the alphabet were published, and it remains unknown if he ever continued or completed the dictionary. 

Yohannan served at Columbia in the position of “instructor in Oriental languages” (1894-1925). In this post, he taught all levels of Persian and Turkish, plus Armenian, Syriac, and also Neo-Aramaic (‘modern Syriac’) “in case there should be a demand” (CU Announcement, 1917, p. 18; pp. 21-22).  He also maintained close communications with the Assyrian community in Iran. His letters from New York were published in Zahrire d-bahra “Rays of light” (ZB), one of the first magazines published by the American missionaries in Persia (Macuch, 1976, p. 136; Wilmshurst, 2011, p. 408). Through him historical lectures by Jackson were translated and published, along with descriptions of his work, in 1907 (ZB 46, no. 6, 1895, p. 41; Macuch, pp. 154, 158, 163, 177; [ZB 1903, 11]; Macuch, pp. 160-61, 166, 167, 168, 169, [ZB 1905-07]). His reputation in Iran was such that a personal biographical piece on him was written in KoḵḇāThe Star,” the Assyrian periodical of the national movement,in 1911 (Koḵḇā, 5, no. 23, 10 June 1911, pp. 268-69).

Whereas Yohannan served as a cultural intermediary at the height of the American academy, his position at Columbia was precarious. Despite Jackson’s continued support for Yohannan, the university president, Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-1947), was opposed to his receiving a full position, and Yohannan had to solicit his own salary from outside benefactors (Columbia University Archives, Central Files, folder for Abraham Yohannan, box 664, folder 29; Becker, 2015, p. 323). He sometimes is cited in print—by error or by courtesy—with the title of “professor” (e.g., see Yohannan, 1903, 1916c; Yohannan and Jackson, 1914a; NYT, 1914; Holm, 1923; Clowes, p. 226).

Yohannan published several scholarly works in collaboration with A. V. W. Jackson. Among them was “Some Persian References to Zoroaster and his Religions,” (JAOS 28, 1907), an article about Ṣowar-e aqālim-e sabʿa “Sketches of Seven Countries,” a text written ca. 1400, in which Zoroaster’s prophetic mission and teaching are described. Many of the statements contained in the Persian text have parallels or analogues either in the Pahlavi writings or in the Avestan texts (Yohannan and Jackson, 1907, p. 188). Together (1914b) they edited A Catalogue of the Collection of Persian Manuscripts: Including also some Turkish and Arabic presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by Alexander Smith Cochran Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was the first scholarly study of material owned by the Museum (Ettinghausen, 1972). The catalogue has become a highly valuable research tool since its publication and has been reprinted several times.

In 1914 the New York Times announced the discovery of 11 robāʿiyāt verses, found in a 19th-century manuscript of a poetic anthology by the noted collector and dealer Hagop Kevorkian (1872-1962), that he “believes to be absolutely new” (NYT, 1914, p. SM2) and authentic compositions of Omar Khayyam. This find was no doubt exciting to devotees of Edward Fitzgerald. The article, picked up by other newspapers, brought publicity to Yohannan as well. He translated the texts, and they were versified by the poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) for the press (Potter, p. 109, no. 340). Yohannan and Jackson (1914c) collaborated on a paper regarding the verses, and their considered judgment in the Cochran volume (1914b, p. 83) rejected any attribution to Khayyam.

Yohannan’s academic publications include his translation into Modern Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic) of the Book of the Pearl by Mar Audisho (d. 1318). It was printed and published by Samuel A. Jacobs in New York in 1916, and the volume is an excellent example of early Assyrian printing in the United States using Linotype. In 1916 he also published “A Manuscript of the Manāfiʿ al-Ḥaiawān in the Library of Mr. J. P. Morgan” (JAOS 36, 1916, pp. 381-89), one of the precious manuscripts from the thirteenth century, written in Arabic by Abū Saʿid ʿObayd-Allāh b. Bōḵtīšūʿ in the eleventh century and later translated into Persian by ʿAbd al-Hādī at the direction of the Il-khanid Ḡāzān Khān.

Yohannan donated to Columbia University “60 books in Arabic script, comprising manuscripts and printed books,” of which his list, November 1913, is in the university libraries; in the library record, he is described as “Iranian-American,” and his Assyrian heritage is omitted (Yohannan, 1913).

Yohannan, with his letters and articles regularly appearing in the Urmia Assyrian periodical Zahrire d-bahra, thus became the intellectual voice of Assyrians in the American diaspora.  As such, and because those traveling across the Atlantic Ocean were processed at Ellis Island, the immigration port of New York, many among the educated Assyrians traveling to the United States, especially as students, listed Yohannan as a personal reference and his address in Manhattan as their initial destination.

The Assyrian crisis. Yohannan became a key publicist in English for the devastation visited on the Urmia Assyrians and other Christians during World War I. His book The Death of A Nation: or, The Ever Persecuted Nestorians or Assyrian Christians (1916a) gives the history of the small sect of Nestorians, and the author describes centuries of suffering endured by the Christians of Persia and northern Mesopotamia up through the massacres of the hands of the Turks and Kurds in 1915. An abridged edition (1916b; CU, 1917, p. 43) contains the introductory survey (pp. 1-26) and the account of 1915 events (pp.  115-51 [exact pagination of 1916a]).

In August 1916, a conference was convened at Columbia by William Walker Rockwell (1874-1958), a professor of Union Theological Seminary; he was an active member of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, which had its headquarters in New York City (see Rockwell, 1916, Introduction).  The chief product of the conference was Rockwell’s book, containing documentation on the situation of the Assyrians from the American Committee, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission, the Foreign Board of the Presbyterian Church, and other sources. Yohannan took part in the conference, as did the Presbyterian missionary William Ambrose Shedd (1865-1918)—who, immediately afterward, returned to Iran and to Urmia—and Paul Shimmon, representative of the Assyrian patriarch (see Mar Shimun, p. 440) and himself a vigorous writer regarding 1915 and current events (Shimmon, 1915, 1916; see also Grabill, p. 329).

For some time during 1917-18, Yohannan and Columbia colleague Louis H. Gray participated, under Jackson’s direction, in studies for the monumental Commission of Inquiry (‘The Inquiry,’ for which, see Grabill, p. 102) that was ordered by President Wilson in preparation for future peace proceedings. In a document of 10 May 1918, it is stated that “the reports on Persia are provisional but satisfactory”; however, “Dr. Yohannan’s services have been terminated” (United States Department of State, p. 87). Perhaps his closeness to the Assyrian problem was judged to be prejudicial: whether before or after termination, “in 1918 he had filed with The Inquiry a request that Wilsonian principles be applied to the Nestorians” (Grabill, p. 153).

The tenor of whatever he wrote to the Department of State may have been influenced by shock at the assassination of the patriarch Mar Shimun (Shemʿon XIX Benjamin) on 3 March 1918 (account in Werda, 1924, repr., p. 124; Report, p. 273). On 27 May, trying to help further the cause of the Assyrians and Armenian affected by the war, Yohannan wrote a letter regarding the news of this murder to Randall Cantuar, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in response expressed his deep sympathy for the Assyrians and the Armenians. In commenting on the news, Yohannan describes in details the horrors inflicted upon Assyrian and Armenian populations in Urmia “from savage onslaught of the Turkish and Kurdish armies. … The Russians’ departure from those regions was the herald for the Kurds and Turks to pounce upon the prey from which they had so long been held at bay. …  A concourse to the number of about eighty thousand men, women and children, leaving their crops in the fields, their household goods and all the supply of food, hurried, pain-stricken, on the long and painful journey of several weeks to Hamadan, in hope of being nearer to the British army …” (Yohannan, 1918; cf. the account in Wilmshurst, pp. 422-23).

Yohannan was, moreover, a friend of W. A. Shedd and must have felt deeply the latter’s death, which occurred, from cholera, on 7 August 1918, in the course of the mass flight of 80,000 Assyrians and Armenians southward from Urmia toward Hamadan, escaping the advancing Turkish force (Report, pp. 272, 275).  His tribute to Shedd is quoted in the preface to the latter’s biography (M. L. Shedd, 1922, pp. xi-xii). 

Also at some time during the war years, according to C. E. Clowes (p. 226, dates not specified), Yohannan “was ordered to Washington to assist the Post Office department in handling Turkish mail.”

In 1919, Yohannan was able to reach Paris, although not as a delegate to the peace conference, through the influence of his friend Robert E. Speer (1867-1947), secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. There he labored to interest delegates in Assyrian affairs, although in vain (Grabill, pp. 153, 237). He prepared a Petition of the Persian Assyrians to the Peace Conference and a map (presumably in support of the document) called Sketch-map of the Regions by the Persian Assyrians  (CU, 1919, p. 38; Grabill, p. 329, n. 34). His attitude was a politic one; he would have been content with protection of the Assyrians by the major powers (see quotation in Grabill, p. 153). 

In contrast, the prominent New York Assyrian Joel E. Werda (1868-1941), journalist and publisher (see in SAMUEL A. JACOBS), minister, and president of the Assyrian National Associations of America, made more emphatic demands for Assyrian nationhood (see Robson, pp. 149 ff.). Werda was the primary author of a petition titled The Claims Of The Assyrians Before The Conference Of The Preliminaries Of Peace At Paris, 1919  (see Stanford University Libraries; text online, at Kliszus and Kliszus, 1999). Speer had held aloof from Werda (see Grabill, p. 329), and Yohannan may have done the same. But both Werda and Yohannan, like so many spokesmen in Paris—Assyrians from the Middle East, Armenians, and hopeful representatives of other ethnicities—were destined to meet with disappointment.

After the turmoil of Paris and the death of his wife soon after, Yohannan turned again in his academic work to pre-Islamic studies (1923, 1925). He also produced a small essay for a federal government publication (1921), a brief introduction to a travel book (Holm, 1923), and, in Neo-Aramaic, an educational “elementary arithmetic” (1922) which was published at the Polytype Press  (CU, 1923, p. 42) of S. A. Jacobs. Upon his death on 9 November 1925, Yohannan lay in state in St. Bartholomew's Church prior to the day of his funeral (NYT, 1925). He was among the deceased who were commemorated in the annual memorial service at Columbia’s St. Paul’s Chapel (NYT, 1926).

Yohannan married Sanam Tuti (b. 1859-60; d. 14 February 1920) of Urmia in 1872.  They had three sons and three daughters  (Chamberlain, 1899, p. 458; listed in their mother’s obituary, NYT, 1920, p. 22, with misspellings; correctly, in NYT, 1966). One son, Isaac Yohannan (1875-1971), prepared at Trinity School in New York City for St. Stephen's College (now Bard College) and became an Episcopal priest in April 1900 (Clowes, p. 340). He became vicar of the Assyrian Mission at Saint John’s Church in Yonkers, New York, where he served from 1917 onward, and where a sizeable Assyrian community lived.  He also was the author of an “Introduction to a Commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel” and “Essays on Eastern Churches and Liturgies” (NYT, 1971).
 
Bibliography:

Writings of Abraham Yohannan.

A Modern Syriac-English Dictionary. Part 1, New York, 1900; repr. In Two Books by Abraham Yohannan, Chicago, 2006.

Illustrated Catalogue of the Art and Literary Property Collected by the Late Henry G. Marquand, ed. Thomas E. Kirby, New York, 1903 (“Introductory,” note: “The translations are by Professor Richard J. H. Gottheil and Professor Abraham Yohannan, of Columbia University”).

“A Manuscript of Gul ū Naurūz, A Seventeenth Century Persian Romance, in the Library of Columbia University,” JAOS 23, 1902, pp. 102-8 (description of MS pers. X892.8 R86).

“Some Remarks Regarding The Pronunciation of Modern Syriac,” JAOS 25, 1904, pp. 76-78.

“Some Passages in Persian Literature relating to Zoroaster,” in J. J. Modi, ed., Spiegel Memorial Volume: Papers on Iranian Subjects Written by Various Scholars in Honour of the Late Dr. Frederic Spiegel, Bombay, 1908, pp. 150-55. (See NYT, 1914)

The Vigil, New York, 1910 (“notes … from addresses … in Columbia University and before the members of my Oriental congregation” [Preface]).

[Yohannan, 1913] typescript of the gift of books and manuscripts, Columbia Libraries, call no. RBML X892.01 Y95; see entry at  “Finding Aids for Manuscripts in Arabic Script in the Columbia Libraries,” https://researchblogs.cul.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/resources/culfindingaids/.

ed., The Book of the Pearl on the Truth of Christianity, by Abdisho Bar Brikha, New York, 1916a; repr., in Two Books by Abraham Yohannan, Chicago, 2006.

The Death of a Nation or the Ever Persecuted Nestorians or Assyrian Christians, New York, 1916b.

A Church of Martyrs. The Death of a Nation, New York, 1916c.

“Manafi al-Haiawan, or, Description of the Nature of Animals and Plants and their Medicinal Properties, translated from the original thirteenth century manuscript in the library of J. Pierpont Morgan,” typescript, 1917; listed in Barbara Schmitz, Islamic and Indian Manuscripts and Paintings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1997, p. 487.

Comment on the letter“Archbishop Sends Letter on Suffering Armenians,” The Churchman (New York) 118, 7 September 1918, p. 271.

Petition of the Persian Assyrians to the Peace Conference, Paris, 1919.

Sketch-map of the Regions by the Persian Assyrians, Paris: H. Barrère [1919?].

“Importance of Turkish and Armenian Languages for Foreign Service,” in Training For Foreign Service, Bureau of Education, Bulletin no. 27, Washington, D.C., 1921, pp. 138-40.

Ḳiryāna thāmāya bāritmāṭiḳī, New York, 1922.

“Another Old Syriac Reference to Zoroaster,” JAOS 43, 1923, pp. 239-42.

“A Notice of Manichaean Persecution by the Sasanian King Kawād in the Fifth Christian Century,” in Indo-Iranian Studies in Honour of Shams-ul-Ullema Dastur Darab Peshotan Sanjana, London and Leipzig, 1925, pp. 189-91.

Writings of Abraham Yohannan and A. V. Williams Jackson.

“Some Persian References to Zoroaster and his Religion,” JAOS 28, 1907, pp. 183-88.

preface, in [Hagop Kevorkian], Exhibition of The Kevorkian Collection, Including Objects Excavated under His Supervision ... (cover title: Exhibition of Muhammedan-Persian Art), New York, 1914a; Kevorkian acknowledgement page, for assistance to him (“the writer”) of “Professor Abraham Yohannan” and two other scholars in “deciphering some of the complicated and difficult inscriptions” and supplying additional information.

[eds.], A Catalogue of the Collection of Persian Manuscripts: Including also some Turkish and Arabic Presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by Alexander Smith Cochran Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1914b; repr.,  1965, etc.

paper , “Some Wandering Quatrains of Omar Khayyam” (“presented briefly by Professor Jackson”), AOS Proceedings, 17 April 1914, listed in JAOS 34, 1914c, p. 443.

“A Manuscript of the Manāfiʿ al-Ḥaiawān in the Library of Mr. J. P. Morgan,” JAOS 36, 1916, pp. 381-89.

Sources.

Adam H. Becker, Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Awakenings in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism, Chicago, 2015.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, “Yohannan, Abraham, 1853-,” in Universities and Theirs Sons: History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities, with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Alumni and Recipients of Honorary Degrees II, Boston, 1899, p. 458.

Chorley E. Clowes, The Centennial History of Saint Bartholomew’s Church in the City of New York 1835-1935, New York, 1935.

[CU] University Bibliography, Columbia University Bulletin of Information, ser. 17, January-December 1917, New York, 1917.

Ibid., ser. 19, November 1918-July 1919, New York, 1919.

Ibid., ser. 23, no. 46, 18 August 1923.

[CU Announcement] Division of Ancient and Oriental Languages, Announcement 1917-1918, Columbia University Bulletin of Information, ser. 17, no. 9, New York, 3 February 1917.

Richard Ettinghausen, “Almost One Hundred Years Ago,” in Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. R. Ettinghausen, New York, 1972, pp. 1-8.

Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927, Minneapolis, 1971.

Frits Holm, My Nestorian Adventure in China: a Popular Account of the Holm-Nestorian Expedition to Sian-Fu and its Results, Chicago, 1923; London, 1924; repr., Piscataway, N.J., 2001.

Edward A. and Irene Kliszus, “The Assyrian Diaspora. A Research Project,” Assyrian International News Agency, Books Online, 1999, http://www.aina.org/books/ad.htm.

Rudolf Macuch, Geschichte der spät- und neusyrischen Literatur, Berlin and New York, 1976.

Mar Shimun, letter to the editor, in “A Plea for the Syrian Christians,” The Churchman 113/14, 1 April 1916, pp. 439-40.

Heleen Murre-van den Berg, “The Missionaries’ Assistants: The Role of Assyrians in the Development of Written Urmia Aramaic,” Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society 10/2, 1996, pp. 3-17.

William Muss-Arnolt, The Book of Common Prayer Among the Nations of the World, London, 1914.

[NYT] entries in The New York Times:         

“New Rubaiyat of Omar Discovered in Ancient Volume,” 12 April 1914, p. SM2.
“Deaths,” 14 February 1920, p. 22 (Sanam Tuti Yohannan)
“Died,” 12 November 1925, p. 25 (Abraham Yohannan).
“Window Dedicated … List of the Dead,” 11 January 1926, p. 18.
Obituary, “Isaac Yohannan, 96, a priest since 1903,” 12 January 1927, p. 38.
“Deaths,” 4 October 1966, p. 46 (Cassandra Yohannan/Mrs. Irving Nettler), four memorial entries from colleagues at New York Medical College.

Ambrose George Potter, A Bibliography of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, London, 1929.

Ḥ.-ʿA. Razmārā, ed., Farhang-e joḡrāfiāʾi-e Irān: Ābādihā IV. Ostān-e 3 va 4 Āḏarbāyjān, Tehran, 1951.

[Report] The Eighty-second Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, New York, 1919,section “West Persia Mission,” pp. 271-80.

Laura Robson, States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East,Oakland, 2017.

William Walker Rockwell, The Pitiful Plight of the Assyrian Christians in Persia and Kurdistan, Described from the Reports of Eye-Witnesses, New York, 1916.

Christopher Ruess, “Institutional Church Workers V. St. Bartholomew’s Church,
New York,” The Kingdom (San Francisco) 8/12, December 1903, pp. 4-5.

Mary Lewis Shedd, Measure of a Man. The Life of William Ambrose Shedd Missionary to Persia, New York, 1922.

Paul Shimmon, Massacres of Syrian Christians in N.W. Persia and Kurdistan, London, 1915.

Idem,  “The Rescue of the Thirty-five Thousand,” The Churchman 113/10, 4 March 1916, pp. 298-99.

Stanford University Libraries, entry for Joel E. Werda, A. K. Yoosuf [“representing the Assyrians of America”], Simon Ganja, Lazar George, Lazar Yacoboff [“representing Assyrians in Persia, Causasea[!] and Kurdistan”], The Claims Of The Assyrians Before The Conference Of The Preliminaries Of Peace At Paris, 1919 (20 pp.), Paris: Imp. Ph. Rosen, 32-31 rue de Richelieu, n.d. [1919?], at https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4080841

William H. Tolman and Charles Hemstreet, The Better New York, New York, 1904.

United States Department of State, “Report on the Inquiry, May 10, 1918” (Inquiry document no. 882), Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919. The Paris Peace Conference, Washington, D.C., 1919, pp. 82-97.

Joel E. Werda, The Flickering Light of Asia, or, The Assyrian Nation and Church, n.p., 1924;repr., Chicago, 1990; online, at http://www.aina.org/books/fla/fla.htm#c19.
 
David Wilmshurt, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East, London, 2011.

Rufus Rockwell Wilson, “The Institutional Church and its Work,” The Outlook. A Family Paper (New York), 29 August 1896, pp. 384-87.

(Eden Naby & EIr)

Originally Published: August 28, 2017

Last Updated: August 28, 2017

Cite this entry:

Eden Naby & EIr, “YOHANNAN, ABRAHAM,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2017, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yohannan-abraham (accessed on 28 August 2017).