ABSTRACT
In the dramatic language of martyrology, this passage from the sixth-century History of Karka de Beth Selok describes the immediate prelude to the mass slaughter of Christians in Karka, modern Kirkuk, in Northern Iraq, the metropolitan seat of Beth Garme, in 446.2 Based on accounts like that in the History of Karka, modern historians generally speak of the reign of the Sasanian monarch Yazdgard II as a period of indiscriminate persecution of minorities, driven by religious fanaticism and royal paranoia.3 While there is some evidence to 1 P. Bedjan ed., Acta martyrum et sanctorum syriace (Leipzig, 1891) [=AMS] 2.522-3 [History of Karka de Beth Selok =AMS 2.507-35]; G. Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer (Leipzig, 1880) 43-60 and O. Braun, Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer Bibliothek der Kirchenväter 22 (Kempten and Munich, 1915) 179-87, provide German translations and commentaries of the History of Karka; P. Peeters, Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis (Brussels, 1910) 154 [=BHO 705]. 2 For geography: J.-B. Chabot ed., Synodicon Orientale ou recueil de synodes nestoriens (Paris, 1902) 617, 665-85; R. Gyselen, La Géographie administrative de l’Empire sasanide (Paris, 1989); J.M. Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus: Répertoire des diocèses syriaques orientaux et occidentaux (Beirut, 1993).
