Edited sentence: At the beginning of the seventh century there were  several dioceses in the province of Fars and its dependencies in northern Arabia (Beth Qa†raye).Fars was marked out by its Arab conquerors for a thoroughgoing process of islamicisation, and Christianity declined more rapidly in this region than in any other part of the former Sassanian empire.Fars was spared by the Mongols for its timely submission in the 1220s, but by then there seem to have been few Christians left, although an East Syrian community (probably without bishops) survived at Hormuz.In 890 Eliya of Damascus listed the suffragan sees of Fars, in order of seniority, as Shiraz, Istakhr, Shapur (probably to be identified with Bih Shapur, i.Kazrun), Karman, Darabgard, Shiraf (Ardashir Khurrah), Marmadit, and the island of Soqotra.Marco Polo visited the island in the 1280s, and claimed that it had an East Syrian archbishop, with a suffragan bishop on the nearby 'Island of Males'.Of the north Arabian dioceses Mashmahig is last mentioned around 650, and Dairin, Mazun (Beth Mazunaye), Hajar, and ˘a††a in 676.Only two bishops are known from the mainland dioceses:  Melek of Darabgard, who was deposed in the 560s, and Gabriel of Bih Shapur, who was present at the enthronement of ‘Abdisho‘ I in 963.Soqotra remained an isolated outpost of Christianity in the Arabian sea, and its bishop attended the enthronement of the patriarch Yahballaha III in 1281.The last-known bishop of the metropolitan see of Rev Ardashir was ‘Abdisho‘, who was present at the enthronement of the patriarch ‘Abdisho‘ III in 1138.This community is last mentioned in the sixteenth century.This diocese is not mentioned again.Thomas of Marga mentions that Yemen and Sana‘a had a bishop named Peter during the reign of the patriarch Abraham II (837–50), who had earlier served in China