Mar Yaqob Abuna was one of the metropolitans of the Church of Malabar of the Saint Thomas Christians. In 1503, Mar Eliya V, the Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East consecrated three Bishops from the Monastery of Saint Eugene: Rabban David as Mar Yaballaha, Rabban George as Mar Denha, Rabban Masud as Mar Yaqob. The Patriarch sent these three new Bishops together with Mar Thomas to the lands of the Indians, and to the islands of the seas, which are within Dabag, and to Sin and Masin- Java, China and Maha china- Great China.
Yaqob Abuna
In a letter to kingJohn III of Portugal dated 26 January 1549 Francis Xavier describe Yaqob Abuna as a virtuous and saintly man
The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians of India, Marthoma Suriyani Nasrani, Malankara Nasrani, or Nasrani Mappila, are an ethno-religious community of Indian Christians in the state of Kerala, who, for the most part, employ the Eastern and Western liturgical rites of Syriac Christianity. They trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Saint Thomas Christians had been historically a part of the hierarchy of the Church of the East but are now divided into several different Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and independent bodies, each with their own liturgies and traditions. They are Malayalis and their mother tongue is Malayalam, which is a Dravidian language. Nasrani or Nazarene is a Syriac term for Christians, who were among the first converts to Christianity in the Near East.
Mar Thoma Cross
Icon of Mar Knai Thoma the Merchant
Tharisapalli Copper plate grant (9th century) – One of the reliable documentary evidences of the privileges and influence that Saint Thomas Christians enjoyed in early Malabar. The document contains signatures of the witnesses in Pahlavi, Kufic and Hebrew scripts. It is the oldest documentary evidence from India that attest the presence of a Persian Christian community in South India.
The first Syrian–Anglican Cattanars in 1836