Ignace Ephrem II Rahmani

Mar Ignace Dionysius Ephrem II Rahmani (1848–1929) was Patriarch of the Syrian Catholic Church from 1898 to 1929 and a Syriac scholar.
==Life==
Ephrem Rahmani was born on 21 November 1848 (or on 9 November 1849 according other sources) in Mosul. He studied by the Dominican friars in Mosul and later in in the College of the Propaganda in Rome and was ordained priest in April 1773. 
Rahmani was appointed vicar of the bishop of Mosul with the titular title of bishop of Edessa and consecrated bishop on 2 October 1887 by Patriarch Ignace George V Chelhot. On 1 May 1894 Rahmani was appointed bishop of Aleppo. After the death of Ignace Behnam II Benni (13 September 1897) he was elected Patriarch on 9 October 1898 and confirmed by Pope Leo XIII on 28 November 1898.
As patriarch Rahmani was particularly interested in the instruction of the clergy. The early 20th-century was a period of expansion for the Syrian Catholic Church who received many Syrian Orthodox converts . In 1910 he moved the Patriarchal See from Mardin to Beirut.
With the World War I arrived the catastrophe: the Armenian Genocide brought destruction also to the Christian Syrians who lived in the same areas of the Armenians, and the Syrian Catholic Church had the number of its members cut by half with five dioceses (on ten) and fifteen missions destroyed.
Ephrem Rahmani died in Cairo on 7 May 1929.
==Works==
Ephrem Rahmani was a liturgical scholar of international repute. In 1899 he discovered and published the first edition of the 4th-century text Testamentum Domini. His main contribution on the history of the liturgy is his book Les Liturgies Orientales et Occidentales, Beyrouth, 1929
==Notes==
==External links==
* Painting and biography (in Arab) of Ignace Ephrem Rahmani
Category:Biblical scholars
Category:Assyrian people
Category:Syriac Catholic Patriarchs of Antioch
Category:1929 deaths
Category:1848 births