The Maphrian, originally known as the Grand Metropolitan of the East and also known as the Catholicos, was the head of the Maphrianate of the East and was the second highest-ranking prelate within the Syriac Orthodox Church, after the Patriarch of Antioch. The maphrianate originated in the formation of a distinct miaphysite ecclesiastical organisation in the Sasanian Empire after the ordination of Ahudemmeh as Grand Metropolitan of the East by Jacob Baradaeus in 559. However, it claimed to be the legitimate continuation of the Church of the East and counted patriarchs prior to the church's adoption of dyophysitism as its own. Sources disagree on the first to use the title of maphrian as Michael the Syrian's Chronicle gives John IV Saliba, who is believed to have adopted it in c. 1100, wher