Born into the patriarchal family in Qudshanis, in the village of Van, in Ottoman Turkey in 1908, at the age of 11 Mar Eshai was chosen as patriarch after the death of his uncle during the Assyrian Genocide. He was educated in England at Westcott House, University of Cambridge. He was the translator or author of several books on the theology and history of the Church of the East. The uncertainties caused in 1933 by the independence of Iraq from colonial rule forced the patriarch's relocation to Cyprus and then, in 1940, to Chicago. Mar Eshai became an American citizen in about 1949 and settled in the San Francisco area in 1954.