Anazarbus (West Syriac diocese)

The city of Anazarbus was an archdiocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church, attested between the sixth and twelfth centuries. Nearly thirty Syriac Orthodox bishops or metropolitans of Anazarbus are mentioned either by Michael the Syrian or in other Syriac Orthodox narrative sources. The archdiocese is last mentioned towards the end of the twelfth century, and seems to have lapsed in the early decades of the thirteenth century.

Location
Anazarbus was a large city of Cilicia, which lay on the river Pyramus or Gihon, 24 miles away from Sis. The city was the metropolis of the Chalcedonian ecclesiastical province of Cilicia Secunda. It was an obvious site for a Syriac Orthodox diocese, and was the seat of a Syriac Orthodox bishop or metropolitan as early as the sixth century. It is one of the oldest attested Jacobite dioceses.

Sixth- and seventh-century bishops
The Jacobite diocese of Anazarbus is attested between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The earliest known Jacobite bishop of Anazarbus, Yohannan (Iwanis), consecrated the patriarch Sargis of Tella (538–40).

Two seventh-century Jacobite bishops of Anazarbus are known: Stephen (680/1) and Isidore (692).

Eighth- to twelfth-century bishops
Twenty-five Syriac Orthodox metropolitans of Anazarbus from the end of the eighth century to the end of the twelfth century are mentioned in the lists of Michael the Syrian.

Further details of some of these bishops are supplied in the narrative sections of the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian and in the Chronicon Ecclesiasticum of Bar Hebraeus:


 * The metropolitan Habib (887/895) consecrated the patriarch Basil I at Rusafa in 923.
 * The metropolitan Laʿzar (958/961) consecrated the patriarch Athanasius IV (987–1003), in the village of Qatini in the Gihon region.
 * The metropolitan Athanasius (1129/1137), the uncle of the patriarch Michael I, must have been consecrated c.1133, as in 1166 he had been bishop of Anazarbus for 'more than 33 years'. In the same year Michael I consecrated three bishops at Antioch, one of whom was Athanasius (1166/1199), who replaced him.

The archdiocese of Anazarbus is not mentioned in any later source, and probably lapsed in the early decades of the thirteenth century, perhaps on the death of Athanasius (1166/1199).