This famous monastery was founded in 595/6 by Yaʿqub, a monk of the ‘Great
Monastery’ of [
Abraham of
Kashkar
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Abraham-of-Kashkar) (on the mountain of Izla), who originated from Lashom in
[
Beth
Garmai
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Beth-Garmai). Along with others Yaʿqub had been banished from the Great
Monastery by [
Babai
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Babai-the-Great) for countenancing what Babai
regarded as monastic laxity. The monastery that Yaʿqub founded was evidently
near the village of Kherpa, to the northwest of ʿAqra (thus Fiey, against
Budge); it must have been in or near an earlier inhabited site named Beth
ʿAbe since Bethaba is mentioned in Ptolemy’s
‘Geography’ (VI.1.4). The history of the monastery up to 832 is
exceptionally well documented thanks to the account of its first 20 abbots
by [
Toma of Marga
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Toma-of-Marga), himself originally a monk of Beth ʿAbe. The
monastery was especially flourishing in the mid 7th cent. when the future
Patr.
[
Ishoʿyahb III
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Ishoyahb-III-of-Adiabene) endowed it with land and built it a larger church,
the monastic community having grown from 80 to 300. Toma relates that the
patr. also left to the monastery ‘a golden Gospel’ (perhaps a Gospel
lectionary with some rubrics in gold, surviving examples of which are known
from the 13th cent.). One of the most famous monks of the monastery was the
compiler of the ‘Paradise of the Fathers’, [
ʿEnanishoʿ
](https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Enanisho), who
also assisted Ishoʿyahb III in his liturgical reforms. Many interesting
details of the history and life of the monastery are provided by Toma
(summarized by Budge, xli–xcvii). After 832 the history of the monastery is
very little known, though a number of 13th-cent. mss. which were written
there survive (Fiey, 247; a high quality one is a Gospel Lectionary of 1218,
now Chester Beatty [Dublin], ms.4; Hatch, Album of Dated
Syriac Mss., plate CLXXI). The monastery may possibly have lasted
until the 16th cent.