While this work is attributed to Ish'dnah, the archbishop of Basrah, it is likely to be an abridgement of a much older work. Our original author lived at the end of the 8th century, just subsequent to the Arab conquests. This work sough to bring together the lives of the holy founders of the monasteries that populated the Church of the East. They appear to be largely recent hagiographies of various Syriac figures spanning for the 5th to the 8th century AD, and are all brief in scope, granting limited biographic information. Originally composed in Classical Syriac, the author of this work appears to be exclusively interested in the dealings of the eastern Syriac church under the Sassanians.