John of Dalyatha

John of Dalyatha (c. 690 – c. 780), commonly known as John Saba ("the Elder") and in Syriac Yoḥannan, was a monk and mystic of the Church of the East. He spent his entire life in Upper Mesopotamia, alternating between coenobitic (community-based) and eremitic (solitary) monasticism, with a preference for the latter. At the time of his death, he was serving as the abbot of a community of monks.

John was a prolific writer in Syriac. A great number of his sermons, treatises, maxims and letters have survived. Translated into several languages in the centuries after his death, they were rarely read within the Church of the East (even being banned between the 780s and the 820s) but circulated widely in other Christian traditions throughout Asia, Africa and Europe.