І бірінші ғасырдағы Осроена патшасы және христиан король Абгар V

1st century AD King of Osroene and 1st Christian King

Abgar V (c. 1st century BC – c. AD 50), called Ukkāmā (meaning "the Black" in Syriac and other dialects of Aramaic), was the King of Osroene with his capital at Edessa.

Abgar was described as "king of the Arabs" by Tacitus, a near contemporary source. Moses of Chorene depicted Abgar as an Armenian, but modern scholarly consensus agree that the Abgarids were in fact an Arab dynasty. Armenian historian Moses of Chorene (ca. 410–490s AD) notes that Abgar V's chief wife was Queen Helena of Adiabene, who according to Josephus was the wife of King Monobaz I of Adiabene.

A number of contemporary scholars have suggested origins of the tradition of Abgar's conversion apart from historical record. Walter Bauer argued the legend was written without sources to reinforce group cohesiveness, orthodoxy, and apostolic succession against heretical schismatics. However, several distinct sources, known to have not been in contact with one another, claimed to have seen the letters in the archives, so his claim is suspect. Significant advances in scholarship on the topic have been made including Desreumaux's translation with commentary, M. Illert's collection of textual witnesses to the legend, and detailed studies of the ideology of the sources by Brock, Griffith and Mirkovic. The majority of scholars now claim the goal of the authors and editors of texts regarding the conversion of Abgar were not so much concerned with historical reconstruction of the Christianisation of Edessa as the relationships between church and state power, based on the political and ecclesiological ideas of Ephraem the Syrian. However, the origins of the story are still far from certain, although the stories as recorded seem to have been shaped by the controversies of the third century CE, especially as a response to Bardaisan.