Shemsdin (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)

The Metropolitanate of Shemsdin, created after the 1552 schism in the Church of the East, the predecessor to the Assyrian Church of the East, was the second most important ecclesiastical province of the Qudshanis patriarchate after the province of the patriarch himself. The metropolitans or matrans of Shemsdin traditionally took the name Hnanishoʿ and lived in the Shemsdin village of Mar Ishoʿin the sub-district of Rustaqa. There were around twelve metropolitans of Shemsdin between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, most of whom were chosen by hereditary succession. The last metropolitan of Shemsdin, Mar Yosip Khnanisho (also known as Mar Joseph Hnanisho) died in Iraq in 1977, and the office of mutran lapsed on his death.^[1]