Cathedral of Our Lady (al-Hasakah)

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Assyrian Cathedral of Our Lady in al-Hasakah, 2009

The Cathedral of Our Lady ( Arabic كنيسة السيدة العذراء للآشوريي or كنيسة السيدة العذراء للآشوريين, Church of the Virgin Mary, for the Assyrians) is the cathedral of the Bishopric of Syria of the Assyrian Church of the East in al-Hasakah and thus the center of the Assyrian Church in Syria .

Location

The cathedral is located around 500 m northeast of Hasaka train station, around 200 m west of Hasaka bus station, around 1300 m northwest of the Syrian Orthodox St. George's Cathedral , 300 m north of the Suq al-Hal vegetable market (سوق الهال للخضار), 1500 m north of the Chabur River and 500 m west of the Jaghjagh River .

history

Al-Hasakah was insignificant before the First World War , and the Chabur River was mostly inhabited by Arab Bedouins . After the genocide of the Syrian Christians and the Armenians , numerous Christian refugees came to the city. The Assyrians of northeast Syria in the Assyrian Church of the East originally came mainly from the province of Hakkâri in what is now Turkey. Because of the massacre, they first fled to north-west Iran and from there to Iraq, where after persecution in the 1930s some came to Syria and settled on the Chabur River - in addition to the 36 newly founded villages of the Chabur Assyrians also in the city of Al- Hasakah - settled. This is how a diocese of the Assyrian Church of the East came into being in today's Syria . Al-Hasakah was temporarily a predominantly Christian city in the 20th century, although there were Assyrians, Chaldeans and members of other churches. A new split in the 20th century made things more difficult for the Assyrian Church, as a result of which an opposing bishop who adhered to the old calendar resided in Tell Hermez (Tell Hormiz, Tall Hirmiz, Txuma-Gawaya) on the Chabur from 1965 onwards, who resided at an opposing patriarch Oriented in Baghdad, Mar Addai II, elected in 1972, Givargis , while the reformers, who adopted the Gregorian calendar as a majority, were based in al-Hasakah. The bishopric in al-Hasakah was vacant for a long time. Tell Arbush again became a Chaldean , that is, a unified village with Rome. Droughts already led to emigration and a temporary decline in population in the villages on the Chabur in the 1940s. The Assyrian community in the city of al-Hasakah, on the other hand, grew rapidly at the end of the 20th century through immigration from the Chabur villages and from al-Qamishli, where the Assyrian community decreased from 200 to 50 families, during al-Hasakah in the 1990s had about 500 Assyrian families. So the Assyrian community of al-Hasakah needed a new church.

In the 1990s, the new Assyrian cathedral near the train station and away from the other, older churches was completed and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Aprim Athniel (Afram Athneil, in Arabic ), who was born in al-Hasakah in 1963, was born here on October 3, 1999 أفرام أثنيل) introduced by Mar Dinkha IV. to the office of Assyrian Bishop of Syria. When Daesh (IS) overran all the villages of the Chabur Assyrians at the end of February 2015, the Assyrian cathedral of al-Hasakah became the point of contact for the Assyrian refugees. It was also the resident Bishop Aprim Athniel who ransomed Assyrians who were kidnapped by Daesh by collecting donations for ransom and thus saved their lives. The Assyrian community is even more affected by the mass exodus than the other Christian communities in al-Hasakah. While they lost roughly 60% of their members from 2010 to 2019, the number of Assyrian Christians in both the diocese and in the city of al-Hasakah fell by over 90% as a result of the war.

architecture

The east-facing church, built of concrete in a west-east direction, is a modern hall church with tall, narrow windows that are rounded off in a semicircle at the top and bottom on the long sides. At the eastern end of the roundabout is the altar behind a large arch, on both sides of which there is a small arch. There is a gallery on the west side. The main entrance is located in the middle of the southern long side, to which a wide staircase leads up. The cathedral has a large dome in the middle of the rounded roof, which is supported by the roof structure, and two bell towers with smaller domes on the west side.

Diocese and bishop

The Cathedral of Our Lady of al-Hasakah is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Syria of the Assyrian Church of the East . The members of this church in Syria are concentrated in the al-Hasakah governorate . Before the civil war in Syria (2011) there were around 19,500 Assyrian Christians in the governorate, 5,000 of them in al-Hasakah, 700 in al-Qamishli, 600 in Tabqqa and 13,200 Khabur Assyrians belonging to this church . In 2019 their number had fallen to just under 1,000, 300 of them in al-Hasakah and 40 in al-Qamishli, the rest in the villages on the Chabur. Apart from very small communities in Damascus and Aleppo, there were almost no Assyrians from the Church of the East anywhere else in Syria.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shabo Talay (2008): The New Aramaic Dialects of the Khabur Assyrians in Northeast Syria: Introduction, Phonology and Morphology , pp. 10-17.
  2. ↑ The Syrian Christians in Northeast Syria. Mar Gabriel Association, 2006, accessed April 21, 2020.
  3. ^ Alberto M. Fernandez: Dawn at Tell Tamir: The Assyrian Christian Survival on the Khabur River. Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies XII, No. 1 (April 1998), pp. 34-47, here pp. 37-39.
  4. ↑ a b كنيسة القديسة مريم العذراء للأشوريين - الحسكة [Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, the Assyrians - al-Hasakah] (with picture), al-Bishara, accessed on June 23, 2020.
  5. ↑ Aprim Athniel. Orthodoxia.ch, accessed on June 23, 2020.
  6. ^ Pope Francis prays for new Assyrian Christian leader amid Middle East tragedy. Catholic news Agency (CNA), Sept. 21, 2015.
  7. ↑ Lori Hinnant: The Syrian bishop who saved 226 Christian hostages from Isis. Assyrian Christian Mar Afram Athneil raises millions of dollars to pay ransom. The Independent, December 6, 2016.
  8. ^ Gaja Pellegrini-Bettoli: Assyrian Christian woman shares story of captivity by Islamic State. In this interview with Al-Monitor, a Christian Assyrian woman recounts her experience of being kidnapped by Islamic State militants. Al-Monitor, July 30, 2015.
  9. ^ A b Otmar Oehring: On the situation and perspectives of Christians in north and north-east Syria. Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Berlin 2019. p. 84.
  10. ↑ Image on Assyrianchurch.org, accessed June 23, 2020.
  11. ↑ a b image on Assyrianchurch.org, accessed June 23, 2020.
  12. ↑ Image on al-Bishara.org from A-Olaf.com, accessed on June 23, 2020.
  13. ↑ Image on Assyrianchurch.org, accessed June 23, 2020.
  14. ^ Image on Catholic News Agency, accessed June 23, 2020.
  15. ^ Christoph Baumer: The Church of the East. An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2016, p. 333.

Coordinates: 36 ° 30 ′ 40.2 "  N , 40 ° 44 ′ 16.1"  E