bishops. Two masses were then celebrated, one conducted by Ishoʿyahb according to the rite used by the Church of the East, in which both Heraclius and his bishops received the eucharist from his hands, and one according to the Chalcedonian rite. In his mass Ishoʿyahb omitted the customary references to the 'three doctors' Diodorus, Theodore and Nestorius, hoping that the Romans would avoid any mention of Cyril of Alexandria in theirs; but his conciliatory gesture was not reciprocated by the Romans. On his return to Persia Ishoʿyahb was accused by the bishop Bar Sawma of Susa of making damaging concessions to the Romans. Ishoʿyahb II was patriarch during the Arab conquest of Iraq, and according to later Nestorian tradition approached the Moslem leaders to win guarantees for the treatment of Christians in the Sassanian empire. The Chronicle of Seert, probably written in the ninth century, records two approaches to the Moslems, one by Ishoʿyahb's emissaries to Muhammad's successor Abu Bakr (632–4), and a second by Ishoʿyahb himself to the caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab (634–44). ʿUmar is said to have granted the Church of the East a charter of protection. The authenticity of these supposed approaches is very doubtful, and modern authorities are inclined to reject them. Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sasanian empire and the seat of the Nestorian patriarchs at this period, fell to Saʿd b. Abi Waqqas in the spring of 637. Saʿd carried off its gates, symbolising the rulership of central Iraq, to Kufa, and for the rest of his reign Ishoʿyahb resided at Karka d'Beth Slokh (modern Kirkuk) in Beth Garmai. In 645 Ishoʿyahb journeyed to Nisibis to settle a dispute between the city's Nestorian Christians and their metropolitan Quriaqos. He died at Karkh Guddan and was buried there. Literary achievement Ishoʿyahb II is included in the list of Syriac authors compiled by the fourteenth-century Nestorian writer ʿAbdishoʿ of Nisibis. According to ʿAbdishoʿ, his principal writings were a commentary on the Psalms and a number of letters, histories, and homilies. A hymn of his has survived in a Nestorian psalter (MS BM Add. 14675). Nestorian mission to China, 635 The first recorded Christian mission to China arrived in the Chinese capital Chang'an in 635, during Ishoʿyahb's reign. The mission, whose history was recorded on the famous Nestorian Stele, erected in Chang'an in 781, was led by a Nestorian monk with the Chinese name A-lo-pen. It is