1° ABGAR V UKHAMA (the Black, according to Tacitus), who reigned from 4 B.C. to 7 A.D. and again from 13 to 15 A.D. A legend is associated with him, the earliest version of which is contained in two letters that Eusebius found in the archives of Edessa and translated from Syriac into Greek: it concerns the correspondence between A. and Jesus (Hist. eccl. I, 13).
In the first letter, which was allegedly brought by the courier Ananias, A. begs Jesus to visit him to heal him. In the second, Jesus replies, excusing himself from coming in person and promising to send him, after His Ascension, the disciple Thaddeus (Addai). Traces of the Diatessaron of Tatian, found in A.’s letter, are among the best arguments for proving the spurious nature of the letters and fixing their chronology to the early 3rd century. A more developed form of the legend is found in the Syriac Teaching of Addai (ed. Phillips, London 1876), of the 4th century, in which Jesus no longer replies in writing but in person. A., healed by Addai, becomes a Christian. The courier of A. is here a skilled painter who makes a portrait of Jesus’ face.
2° ABGAR IX, king from 179 to 216 A.D., who became a tributary of the Romans in 195. His court, visited by Julius Africanus (cf. Kestoi, I. VII, ed. J. R. Vieillefond, Paris 1932, p. 49), was frequented by the Gnostic leader Bardaisan. Recent research demonstrates that A.’s conversion to Christianity, along with that of his people, is highly questionable, contrary to the nearly universal opinion hitherto held by scholars.