Armenians in Iraq

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Synod of the Diocese of Iraq of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Baghdad, May 12, 2012

The Armenians in Iraq are Iraqi citizens of Armenian origin who belong to a Christian church and, as bilinguals, mostly speak Western Armenian and Arabic , in northern Iraq, however, Kurdish is the only language in some places . The Armenian community in Iraq is old, some dating back to the 17th century, but grew significantly in the post- Great Genocide era when Armenian refugees found refuge in what is now Iraq. Most of the Armenians in Iraq belong to the Armenian Apostolic or the Armenian Catholic Church ; some are organized in the Armenian Evangelical Church . After the Assyrians , the Armenians form the second largest entirely Christian minority in Iraq . The most important Armenian communities in Iraq in the 20th century were or are in Baghdad , Mosul , Basra , Kirkuk , Dohuk and Zachu . As a result of fleeing abroad and numerous deaths due to armed conflicts and severe persecution by opposition Islamist groups - events that affect all Christians in Iraq - their number has fallen from an estimated 35,000 before the First Gulf War to around 10,000 in 2012.

Armenian churches in Iraq

Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in Baghdad (built 1956), 2014

In 2003 there were 13 Armenian churches in Iraq, four of them in Baghdad , two each in Basra and Mosul , one each in Kirkuk and Dohuk and three more in other places. After the Islamic State captured the city of Mosul in 2014, all the churches there were destroyed. The same thing happened with the Armenian St. Mary's Church in the predominantly Yezidi , also occupied by the Islamic State City Sinjar . Armenian refugees from Mosul started building a new church in Erbil in 2012 .

In Baghdad, the youngest Armenian church is the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Nareg, consecrated on October 18, 1999 (named after the submerged western Armenian village of Nareg on Lake Van ). There is also the Armenian Catholic Sacred Heart Church built in 1938 in the eastern part of Karrada . The Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator on Younis-al-Sabaawi Square in Sahat al-Tayran - the current main church - was built by the Armenian Apostolic Church in 1956 ; Another Armenian Apostolic Church is the Church of St. John the Baptist (Karapet) in Hay al-Reyadh, built in 1973.The Church of the Holy Mother of God ( Surp Asdvadzadzin ), also called Meskenta or Schirin ( Շիրին ), with the bones of forty, built in Baghdad in 1639 Martyrs of Sebaste was demolished in 1968 due to disrepair and replaced by a new church of the same name.

The prelate of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Iraq has been Archbishop Avak Asadourian since April 1980 .

history

The north of present-day Iraq is in the neighborhood of the areas of historical Armenia. The oldest purely Christian ethnic group in Iraq are the Assyrians , while there was as yet no significant Armenian presence in the Middle Ages. Born in the western Armenian town of Khlat on Lake Van , Salomon von Basra became an Armenian bishop of the diocese of Maishan (Maysan) of the Assyrian Church of the East in Basra (Prath d'Maishan, Syrian ܦܪܬ ܕܡܝܫܢ).

At the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, the area around the Persian-Armenian city ​​of Jolfa on the Araxes was devastated in the course of the wars between the Ottoman Empire and Persia under the Safavids . In 1604, Shah Abbas I had over 20,000 residents deported to the Persian metropolis Isfahan , where the Armenians built the New Dscholfa district . Persecution after the death of Shah Abbas I led to numerous Armenians from Isfahan and Persian Azerbaijan emigrating to Mesopotamia and India in the 17th century. The historic Armenian communities of Baghdad and Basra date back to this time. In 1639 the Armenian Apostolic Church of the Holy Mother of God ( Surp Asdvadzadzin ) was completed in Baghdad . According to tradition, it was an Armenian general of the Ottoman army, Kevork Nazaretian, who, against the promise to receive a plot of land for this church and a cemetery for the Armenian community, destroyed the city gate of Baghdad in 1638 in the fight against the Persians and so on Victory of the Ottomans made possible.

Armenian refugee children in Baghdad , 1918

Due to the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire , around 25,000 Armenian refugees settled in the area of ​​the British League of Nations mandate Mesopotamia (Iraq) after the First World War . They opened churches, schools, sports clubs and cultural associations in several major cities in Iraq.

The Armenian communities in Iraq benefited economically and culturally from the modernization measures of President Saddam Hussein , who suppressed Islamist forces and under whose government the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Nareg in Baghdad was consecrated in 1999 . Most of the Armenians were loyal to the government, which in return donated numerous flowers to the Baghdad cathedral every Christmas .

On September 22, 1980, Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on Iran , which began the First Gulf War , which lasted until August 20, 1988 . Many Iraqi Armenians served in the Iraqi armed forces during the war ; some fell in the fight against the Iranian armed forces , in which some Armenians also served. For example, of the 1,500 Armenian community in Zaxo, more than 130 died in the war.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by troops of the United States and the United Kingdom in the course of the Iraq war from March 20, 2003, which was considered to be illegal under international law , and the occupation and uprising of Islamist groups after the US withdrawal in 2011, turned out to be for the Armenians and other Christians of Iraq catastrophic. For the first time since the genocide at the beginning of the 20th century, Christians were once again among the mainly direct targets of attacks by armed opposition groups. According to the chairman of the Central National Administration of the Armenians of Iraq, Paruyr Hakopian, more than 3,000 of a total of more than 18,000 Armenians left the country between 2003 and 2007, of which around 1,500 went to Syria , 1,000 to Armenia and around 500 moved to Jordan while 28 Armenians were killed.

The country of Armenia took part in the occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011 with 30 truck drivers, 10 bomb defusers, three doctors and three officers. They served under Polish command in Kerbela and the neighboring al-Hilla . In October 2008, Armenia ended its participation.

With the capture of the city of Mosul , in which there was a strong Armenian presence with two churches, by the Islamic State in June 2014, parish life there ended and all Christian churches were destroyed. All Armenians left the city and mostly fled to the area of ​​the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan . Armenian refugees from Mosul started building a new church in Erbil in 2012 .

Current situation of the Armenians in Iraqi Kurdistan

Armenians have fled to the Kurdish region from both Mosul and other parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, because it is considered relatively safe. An Armenian employee of the Kurdish regional government reported a population of 3600 to 3800 Armenians for Iraqi Kurdistan in 2011, but this number has probably risen sharply since then. In 2014 there were two Armenian schools (in Erbil and Dohuk) and five Armenian churches (in Dohuk , Erbil , Avzrog , Havresk and Zachu ) in the Kurdish region . There is also an Armenian church with 500 believers in the controversial city of Kirkuk, which was under Kurdish control until 2017 .

The Armenians have a reserved seat in the parliament of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan.

Armenian villages in Iraqi Kurdistan

In the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan there are several villages that are still populated by Armenians today. One of them is the Christian village of Avzrog in the province of Dohuk , which has an Armenian (Avzrog Miri) and an Assyrian district (Avzrog Shno). The village name comes from Kurdish ( av "water" and zrog "yellow"). Avzrog was founded in 1932 by Armenians from Zachu and destroyed in 1975 under Saddam Hussein. In 1996 the village was repopulated with Armenians and in 2001 the Saint Vartans Church was re-consecrated. The 350 Armenian inhabitants of the village no longer speak Armenian, but Kurdish .

Hawresk (also Havresc), located about 8 km southeast of Avzrog , was founded in 1928 by Armenian refugees from Turkey . In the 1950s it was a lively village with an artesian well , library, church and school. During the Anfal operation in 1988, the village was depopulated. In 2005, Armenian refugees settled in the village again, so that in 2011 100 Armenian families lived in the village again. Havresk has 115 houses, a greenhouse, a school and a church built in 2012. The mayor ( muchtar ) is Murad Vardanian. At the end of 2016 the population was given as 200 to 500 people, in addition to Armenians and Assyrians . A village guard of 22 men defended the village against fighters of the Islamic state . New York's David Ritter made a documentary about the fighting (Havresc), which was presented at the Glendale International Film Festival in Glendale, California in 2016 .

Aghajanian is a small village with 20 houses on the Nineveh Plain between Karemlash in the south and Baghdida in the north. The place was founded by Armenian refugees from Baghdad and other regions of Iraq with funds from the Assyrian businessman Sarkis Aghajan Mamendo , after whom it is also named .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Իրաքում ընդհանուր առմամբ մնացել է շուրջ 10 հազար հայ (Around 10 thousand Armenians remain in Iraq). In: News.am. November 30, 2011, accessed January 27, 2013 (Armenian).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Florence Avakian: Iraq's Armenian Primate Visits US. The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, September 12, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b Rupen Janbazian: Armenian Church Torched, as Fighting over Mosul Intensifies. The Armenian Weekly, January 27, 2015.
  4. ^ Armenian Church in Sinjar, Iraq Completely Destroyed. Asbarez.com, March 2, 2016.
  5. ^ Cathedral of Our Lady of Nareg, Baghdad, Iraq. Gcatholic.org as of October 14, 2017.
  6. ↑ List of Christian Churches in Baghdad - Iraq ( Memento of December 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). List of churches of all Christian denominations in Baghdad, Chaldeans On Line, accessed December 3, 2017.
  7. ↑ Old Churches and Monasteries: The Armenian Orthodox Church (Meskenta Church). Tourism in Iraq, accessed December 4, 2017.
  8. ↑ Old Churches and Monasteries, Baghdad. AtlasTours.Net, 2013.
  9. ^ The Armenian Church - Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. In: www.armenianchurch.org. Retrieved September 4, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Solomon of Bosra: The Book of the Bee , edited and translated by Earnest A. Wallis Budge. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1886. Preface by EA Wallis Budge
  11. ^ Wilhelm Baum, Dietmar W. Winkler: The Church of the East. A Concise History. Routledge, London 2003. p. 73.
  12. ↑ H. Nahavandi, Y. Bomati: Shah Abbas, empereur de Perse (1587-1629). Perrin, Paris 1998.
  13. ↑ a b c R. Hrair Dekmejian: The Armenian Diaspora , in: Richard G. Hovannisian (Ed.): The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. St. Martin's Press, New York 1997. p. 427.
  14. ^ Crushing Iraq's human mosaic. In: BBC News. Retrieved July 13, 2007 .
  15. ^ Richard G. Hovannisian: The Ebb and Flow of the Armenian Minority in the Arab Middle East. Middle East Journal 28 (Winter 1974), p. 28.
  16. ^ Robert Fisk : The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2006. pp. 685-686.
  17. ↑ 28 Armenians died during 4 years in Iraq . PanArmenian.net . March 24, 2007.
  18. ^ Armenia Ends Iraq Mission. Asbarez, October 16, 2008 ( Memento from March 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ a b Hrant Gadarigian: Armenians of Iraqi Kurdistan - Taking Up Arms Against the Ongoing Threat ISIL. HETQ on October 18, 2014.
  20. ↑ a b Aram Bakoyan: Armenian rock in Kurdistan mountains. Ararat News & Publishing, April 11, 2011 ( Memento of October 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ^ Kurdistan and Hayastan - Hand in Hand: Avzrok - Armenian village in southern Kurdistan . October 29, 2008.
  22. ↑ Avzarook Miri (Armenian) . Ishtar Broadcasting Corporation, Nov. 2, 2012.
  23. ↑ Hawresk . Ishtar Broadcasting Corporation, December 16, 2012.
  24. ↑ Florence Avakian: Havresc: The Heroic, Endangered Iraqi Armenian Village Fighting ISIS . The Armenian Weekly, December 14, 2016.
  25. ↑ Havresc (Documentary Website, 2016), accessed December 3, 2017.
  26. ↑ Aghajanian . Ishtar Broadcasting Corporation, March 16, 2013.