Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
A region in southwestern Iran, often identified as the heartland of the
Iranian people. Known as Anshan in Elamite texts, the region received the
name Fars in the mid 7th cent. BC, following the migration of
Persian-speaking tribes from the northern Zagros Mountains (de Planhol
Christianity arrived in Fars via at least two major channels between the 3rd
and 4th cent. Deportees from Roman Syria, forcibly resettled in the region
by Shapur I (r. 240–72) and his grandson Shapur II (r. 309–79), included
Christians who maintained their faith even after some of them intermarried
with the local ‘Persian’ population. E.-Syr. martyr literature, chronicles,
and archaeology preserve scattered echoes of these deportees’ background in
Roman Syria (Jullien and Jullien
During the 5th–6th cent., the Christian community of Fars emerged as one of
the most important eparchies of the Ch. of E. The region’s metropolitan bp.,
based in the coastal city of Rev Ardashir, signed as the sixth highest
ranking bp. at the synod of
dia Persidos)
on the island of Socotra near modern Somalia and at Kalliana on the
south-western coast of India (‘Christian Topography’ 3.65; Weerakkody
In the late Sasanian and early Islamic period, the metropolitan bishops of
Fars entered into a prolonged and bitter conflict with the E.-Syr.
patriarchs. The patriarchal correspondence of
In contrast to the range and depth of these textual references, the
archaeology of Fars has not yet yielded any clear physical evidence for the
region’s Christian communities. This lacuna probably reflects the biases of
modern research conditions more than a lack of archaeological potential,
since parallel fieldwork in the Persian Gulf has identified the remains of
churches at at least eight sites, including a large 9th-cent. monastery
(123 x 88 m) on the island of Kharg, only 50 km northwest of ancient Rev
Ardashir (Carter