His Patriarchate
Immediately after his installation, Dionysius commenced a visitation of his vast diocese, going first northwards to Cyrrhus, thence to Antioch, Kirkesion (Qirqisiya), the district of the Khabur, Nisibis, Dara and Kfartutha, and so back to Callinicus, where he enjoyed the protection of ʿAbdallah ibn Tahir against his rival Abraham. He did not on this occasion visit Mosul and Tagrit, because the maphrian Basil thought the times unfavourable.
In 825 ʿAbdallah ibn Tahir was sent to Egypt to put down the rebellion of ʿObaidallah ibn al-Sari, and remained there as governor till 827. His brother Muhammad ibn Tahir was by no means so well disposed towards the Christians, and destroyed all that they had been allowed to build in Edessa. Dionysius went to Egypt to beg the emir ʿAbdallah to write to his brother and bid him moderate his zeal against the Church; which he accordingly did.
On his return from Egypt Dionysius had troubles with Philoxenus, bishop of Nisibis, who espoused the cause of the anti-patriarch Abraham; and he then went to Baghdad in 829 to confer with the caliph al-Ma'mun as to an edict that he had issued on the occasion of dissensions between the Palestinian and Babylonian Jews regarding the appointment of an exilarch. During his stay in the capital disputes took place among the Christians, which ended in a reference to the caliph and in the deposition of the bishop Laʿzar bar Sabtha of Baghdad. From Baghdad Dionysius proceeded to Tagrit and Mosul, and consecrated Daniel as maphrian in place of the deceased Basil.
In 830 al-Ma'mun made an attack on the Greek territory, and the patriarch tried to see him on his return at Kaishum, but the caliph had hurried on to Damascus, whither Dionysius followed him and accompanied him to Egypt on a mission to the Bashmuric Copts, who were then in rebellion. Any efforts of his and of the Egyptian patriarch were, however, of no avail, and the unfortunate rebels suffered the last horrors of war at the hands of al-Ma'mun and his general Afshin. On this journey Dionysius saw and examined the obelisks of Heliopolis, the pyramids and the Nilometer.
In 834 Dionysius revisited Tagrit, where he settled a dispute over ecclesiastical precedence between the Jacobites of Tagrit and the monks of the monastery of Mar Mattai near Mosul. The maphrian Daniel of Tagrit (830–34) had recently died, and during the vacancy that followed his death the monks of Mar Mattai pressed for equal status for their own metropolitan. Dionysius reaffirmed the maphrian's primacy in the eastern provinces of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and consecrated Thomas (834–47) as Daniel's successor. In the same year he revisited Baghdad to pay his respects to the caliph al-Muʿtasim (833–42), who had recently succeeded al-Ma'mun. In Baghdad he met the son of the king of Nubia, who had come on the same errand.
Dionysius's final years were embittered by Muslim oppression. According to Bar Hebraeus, many Christians had their property confiscated, and Dionysius was angered both at the injustice of Muslim policy and at his own inability to protect the Christians. In the final sentences of his lost Annals, he complained about his lot to John of Dara and prayed for an early death to release him from his troubles:
At the same time the Arabs heaped calamity after calamity upon the Christians everywhere with their intolerable confiscations of property. Dionysius wrote about this to John of Dara: 'I do not think it necessary to burden your understanding by enumerating all the calamities that afflict me, so that I spend every night without sleeping and every day without rest. I will pass over all those worries and cares that wear me down, which burn my heart and waste my body (for my bones decay in response to the grief in my heart). I therefore weep and lament my life, unlucky man that I am, since because of my sins I am forced to drink this cup, so that I suffer and my heart is choked with grief whenever my eyes see the disasters and sufferings inflicted upon the sons of the Church. From day to day our evils increase, and only one release is left to me from them, that of death, which I thirst for as a good and welcome thing.' In these words that blessed man finished his chronicle.
Dionysius died on 22 August 845, and was buried in the monastery of Qenneshrin, which had been restored since the fire of 815.
Read more about this topic: Dionysius Of Tel Mahre