The Maphrian ( or maphryono), originally known as the Grand Metropolitan of the East and also known as the Catholicos, was the second-highest rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Syriac Orthodox Church, right below that of patriarch. The office of a maphrian is an maphrianate. There have been three maphrianates in the history of the Syriac Orthodox Church and one, briefly, in the Syriac Catholic Church. The first maphrianate, called the Maphrianate of the East or the Maphrianate of Tagrit, was established in 628 to give the Syriac Orthodox Church an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Sasanian Empire and lands outside the control of the Roman Empire. The seat of the bishop was initially at Tagrit and he ranked second in the hierarchy after the Patriarch of Antioch. Initially he used the title catholicos in direct opposition to the rival Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon of the Church of the East. The title "maphrian" first came into use around 1100. In 1156 the seat of the maphrian was moved to Mosul. The Maphrianate of the East was abolished in 1860 as a result of a decreasing number of Syriac Orthodox outside of the region of Ṭur ʿAbdin. By then it had been a merely titular see for a long time. The second maphrianate was the Maphrianate of Ṭur ʿAbdin established in 1495 under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Ṭur ʿAbdin. It is unclear what kind of jurisdiction this maphrian exercised. No new maphrian was appointed after the death of the last one in 1844. The sole Syriac Catholic maphrian was Baselios Isḥaq Jbeir who took the title in 1693. Although elected patriarch, he refused the title, keeping his position as a Maphrian, thus not establishing a patriarchal line. In the 20th century a new maphrianate nominally under the Syriac Orthodox Church was established in India in 1912, creating a new autocephalous church, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. This was not recognised by the then-reigning Patriarch of Antioch until 1958. The situation, however, deteriorated in 1975 and the Malankara Orthodox Church split again from the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church (an integral branch of the Syriac Orthodox Church). Since that time there have been two rival maphrianates in India, although the title in actual use is Catholicos of India. Etymology The word "maphrian" is an Anglicisation of the Arabic mafiryān, itself from Syriac maphryono (mprynʾ), which means "one who bears fruit, fructifier", metaphorically