Nestorian Jerusalem Patriarchal See

Jerusalem stood at the heart of East Syriac piety, and monks of the Church of the East regarded a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre as the highest of callings. Around 1275 two Chinese monks, Rabban Bar Sauma and his pupil Markos, later the patriarch Yahballaha III, set out from Khanbaliq on such a pilgrimage, only to be turned back by warfare in Syria.

An East Syriac community endured through the Mamluk age: Franciscan records show a Nestorian presence at the Holy Sepulchre between 1348 and 1575, and in 1482 the Dominican pilgrim Felix Fabri listed Nestorians among the rites in Jerusalem.

The contraction of the Church of the East after Timur's campaigns and the schism of 1552 thinned these congregations. After the later sixteenth century the Nestorian altars vanish from pilgrim accounts, absorbed or abandoned as larger denominations divided the shrines.