SALMAS, diocesi di. - Chaldean diocese in Persia. It had a Catholic succession of bishops from 1560 to 1643; thereafter, from 1709, it was a suffragan diocese of Urmia and administered by the same bishop as Urmia. Faithful (1937): 3,500; priests: 4.
The diocese suffered greatly during the First World War. In 1913 it numbered 10,460 faithful.
BIBL.: Statistics with historical notes, in Ann. Pont. 1951. Città del Vaticano 1951, p. 244; Orientalia christiana per., 3 (1938), p. 273. Guglielmo de Vries