History of Mar Yawnan

The History of Mar Yawnan (or the History of Saint Jonah) is a Syriac hagiography set in the fourth century describing the life, miracles, and ascetic practices of Mar Yawnan, a monk associated with monastic communities in northern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. He is presented as the founder of a famous monastery of the Church of the East along the Euphrates, and as a disciple of the Egyptian famous monastic saint, Mar Awgin. The History is notable for being the only known hagiography interested in the Persian Gulf region, where many monasteries have been excavated and studies in recent decades.

The text presents its author as the abbot Zadoy, a contemporary of Mar Yawnan in the fourth century, based in a monastery on the "Black Island". The "Black Island" may be Sir Bani Yas island (off the coast of modern-day UAE) in the region of Beth Qatraye, and the monastery mentioned by the Life may be the same as a monastery discovered by archaeologists on the island in the 1990s, the Sir Bani Yas monastery.

Modern scholarship has rejected the stated authorship of the History as a literary fiction, dating the composition of the text to the late seventh or early eighth century. Nevertheless, the work is a significant source for the study of monasticism in the early Islamic Persian Gulf, particularly for understanding the coexistence of coenobitic and solitary asceticism and the economic foundations of monastic institutions in Eastern Arabia.