The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

When the Romans closed the Nestorian university at Edessa, its leaders took up residence farther east at Nisibis, under Persian protection. As a chronicler boasted, “Edessa darkened and Nisibis brightened.”33 Even so, Edessa remained “the Blessed” for all denominations well into the Muslim period.