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His father, Jazedbouzid, seems to have been bishop of Ch'ang-an in 781, and paid for setting up the tablet. The main inscription, in Chinese, contains a section devoted to the praises of a certain I-ssu whose numerous benefactions to the Nestorian church in China are listed. Jazedbouzid has been identified, probably correctly, with this benefactor. Certainly, as he paid for the tablet's construction, we would expect his generosity to be recognised somewhere in the inscription, and the section praising I-ssu, ‘our great donor', is the only part of the inscription where such an acknowledgement is given.
If I-ssu and Jazedbouzid are one and the same person, the fulsome tribute to Jazedbouzid's virtues, in an inscription which he himself paid for, may seem rather immodest, but is understandable. I-ssu's career was impressive. He was high in the favour of the emperor Su-tsung (756-762) and was appointed second-in-command (chieh-tu-fu-shih) of the Shuo-fang army group in 756 on the outbreak of a major rebellion by a number of frontier armies under the command of the Sogdian general An Lu-shan. The Shuo-fang armies, adjacent to the three north-eastern army commands which supported An Lu-shan, remained loyal to the throne and, led by the respected general Kuo Tzu-i, put in some hard fighting against the rebels. According to the Sian tablet inscription, I-ssu had a good war:
"When duke Kuo Tzu-i, secretary of state and prince of the Fan-yang region, was first put in charge of military operations in Shuo-fang, Su-tsung ordered him to accompany the duke to his command. Though he enjoyed the privilege of access to the duke's sleeping-tent, he made no difference between himself and others on the march. He was teeth and nails to the duke, and ears and eyes to the army.
The rebellion was finally crushed in 762 and I-ssu emerged from the war with a considerable reputation, and a number of military and civil decorations, listed in detail on the Sian tablet. There is no reason why he should not later have become a bishop in the Nestorian church, and if Jazedbouzid was indeed I-ssu it is not surprising that he considered himself of some consequence.
It is just possible that Adam, metropolitan of China, and Adam, son of the war-hero Jazedbouzid, were the same person. The rarity of the name Adam among the Nestorians certainly encourages us to