Ephrem Rahmani was born on 21 November 1848 (or on 9 November 1849 according to other sources) in
Mosul. He studied with the
Dominican friars in Mosul and later in the
College of the Propaganda in
Rome and was ordained priest in April 1873. Rahmani was appointed vicar to the bishop of Mosul with the
titular title of bishop of
Edessa and consecrated bishop on 2 October 1887 by Patriarch
Ignatius George V Shelhot. On 1 May 1894 Rahmani was appointed bishop of
Aleppo. After the death of
Ignatius Behnam II Benni (13 September 1897) he was elected patriarch on 9 October 1898 and confirmed by
Pope Leo XIII on 28 November 1898. As patriarch Rahmani was particularly interested in the instruction of the clergy. The early 20th-century was a period of expansion for the
Syriac Catholic Church who received many
Syriac Orthodox converts. In 1910 he moved the
patriarchal see from
Mardin to
Beirut. The arrival of
World War I was catastrophic: the
Armenian genocide brought destruction also to the Christian Syrians who lived in the same areas as the Armenians, with the result that the Syriac Catholic Church had the number of its members cut by half with five dioceses (of ten) and fifteen missions destroyed. Ephrem Rahmani died in
Cairo on 7 May 1929. ==Works==