Aphrahat (c. 280–c. 345) was a Syriac-Christian author of the third century from the Adiabene region of Assyria, which was within the Persian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. All his known works, the Demonstrations, come from later on in his life. He was an ascetic and celibate, and was almost definitely a son of the covenant (an early Syriac form of communal monasticism). Called the Persian Sage, Aphrahat witnesses to the concerns of the early church beyond the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire.