The office was established with the election of Ignatius Andrew Akijan in 1662 as patriarch of Antioch, thereby creating a separate line of patriarchs in full communion with the Catholic Church, in opposition to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Despite initial success, after the death of Ignatius Gregory Peter VI Shahbaddin in 1701 or 1702, most Syriac Catholics returned to the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the office lay vacant until the election of Ignatius Michael III Jarweh in 1782, from which a permanent line of Syriac Catholic patriarchs sprang.
