Yohannan VIII Hormizd
According to his autobiography, Yohannan Hormizd was born in 1760 in Alqosh to an Assyrian family. His father, the deacon Hanna (Yohannan), was the brother of the Mosul patriarch Eliya XII Denha (1722–78).
Rabban Hormizd
When Hormizd was sixty-five or sixty-six, he left the monastery and passing out of the 
country of Marga went and settled down in the mountain of Beth 'Edhrai near the Chaldean town of Alqosh. When he had been there some little time the people in the neighbourhood offered to build him a monastery, the present "Rabban Hormizd Monastery". The following part of the life of Rabban Hormizd is marked by episodes in which the saint opposed the monks of the Mar Mattai Monastery.