Installed 30 March 1903 Name Shimun Benyamin | Term ended March 3, 1918 | |
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Church Assyrian Church of the East Diocese Patriarchal Diocese of Qodshanis See Apostolic See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon Predecessor Mar Shimun XVIII Rouel (1860/1861-1903) Successor Mar Shimun XXII Paulos (1918–1920) Assassinated March 16, 1918, Salmas, Iran | ||
Mar Shimun XXI Benyamin (1887– 3 March 1918) (Syriac: ܡܪܝ ܒܢܝܡܝܢ ܫܡܥܘܢ ܥܣܪܝܢ ܘܩܕܡܝܐ) was a Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East.
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Life
He was born in 1887 in the village of Qochanis in the Hakkari Province, Ottoman Empire (modern-day southeastern Turkey). His paternal uncle was Mar Shimun XVIII of Rubil patriarch from 1860 to 1903), and Asyat, daughter of Kambar from Iyl. He had six siblings: Isaiah, Zaya, Rolus (who succeeded him as Patriarch), David, Hormizd, Surma. His brother Hormizd was later killed while studying in Istanbul during the Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915.
He was consecrated a Metropolitan on March 1, 1903 by his uncle, the Catholicos Patriarch who died on March 16, 1903. He succeeded his predecessor at the age of eighteen and occupied the patriarchal See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon at Qudchanis for 15 years. In March, 1918, Mar Benyamin along with 150 of his bodyguards were assassinated by Simko Shikak (Ismail Agha Shikak), a Kurdish agha, in the town of Salmas (Persia) under a truce flag (see Assyrian Genocide).
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