Fars Episcopal See

The metropolitan see of Fars stood at Rev Ardashir, the port refounded by the Sasanian king Ardashir I in the third century. Tradition held that Persian merchants converted in Edessa first brought Christianity to the region.

By 424 Fars ranked as the sixth metropolitan province of the Church of the East; around 540 its metropolitan gained authority over Bahrain, Oman and Socotra. Maʿna of Pars, installed in 540, translated the Psalms and Syriac liturgy into Pahlavi for churches as far away as India.

Islamization after the Arab conquests eroded these communities, and the last known metropolitan, ʿAbdishoʿ, is recorded in 1138. By the Mongol era few Christians remained on the mainland, though a community at Hormuz is mentioned into the sixteenth century and Socotra sent a bishop to the enthronement of Yahballaha III in 1281.