Yohannan VIII Hormizd
For the next eight years Yohannan Hormizd seemed to justify the hopes placed in him. He lived on amicable terms with the Catholic missionaries and devoted his energies to the conversion to Catholicism of the villages under his authority. In May 1790, on the advice of the missionaries, he consecrated his nephew Shemon metropolitan, and in August of the same year sent him to the Zibar district, where he converted the Nestorian villages of Arena and Barzane. The following year he sent Shemon to Mengesh in the Sapna district, where he was equally successful. The high point of this honeymoon period came in February 1791, when the Vatican appointed him patriarchal administrator of the Amid patriarchate, recalling Lazar Hindi to Rome to leave him a free hand. This appointment led to strenuous protests from Lazar Hindi, his vicar-general Joseph Attar and the clergy of Amid, and on 3 February 1793 Yohannan Hormizd's appointment was rescinded.
Mar Ukba
Mar Ukba, an exilarch at Baghdad in the first half of the tenth century; the second exilarch to die in banishment. When Kohen Ẓedeḳ II was appointed "gaon" of Pumbedita he became involved in a controversy with Mar 'Uḳba over the revenues from Khorasan; and the "calif" Al-Muḳtadir (908-932) was induced by Ẓedeḳ's friends to depose Mar 'Uḳba. Soon afterward (917) the latter left Baghdad for Karmisin (Kermanshah), but when the young "calif" went for the summer to his palace at Safran, Mar 'Uḳba devised a scheme to win the royal favor by meeting Al-Muḳtadir's secretary daily in his gardens and greeting him with the recitation of beautiful verses. These pleased the calif's secretary so much that he wrote them down and showed them to his master, who in his turn was so delighted that he sent for Mar 'Uḳba, entered into conversation with him, and asked him to express a wish, whereupon the "gaon" requested that he might be reinstated. The "calif" granted this wish, and Mar 'Uḳba soon returned to Baghdad as exilarch. Kohen Ẓedeḳ and his friends, however, again succeeded in securing his deposition and banishment from the country, whereupon he went to Africa, and was received with high honors at Kairwan as a descendant of the royal house. A sort of throne ("bimah") was built for him in the synagogue, near the Ark of the Law, and he was always the third to read the "parashah," the scroll of the Law being brought to him in his seat.