When Isho’yahb IV was elected to the patriarchate under suspicious circumstances in the early eleventh-century, Elias bar Shenaya, the Metropolitan of Nisibis, wrote a letter to his peers and to the people of Baghdad condemning the election. Bernhard Vandenhoff presents here a German translation of that letter, making it available for the first time in a modern translation. In the introduction to the letter, Vandenhoff briefly describes the historical circumstances surrounding Elias’s opposition to the election of Isho’yahb IV and the sources available for the letter and the historical events. Originally published in two parts, the German translation of the whole letter is presented here as a complete text.