George's Cathedral (al-Hasakah)

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George's Cathedral in al-Hasakah, 2009

The Cathedral of St. George or George's Cathedral ( Arabic كنيسة مار جرجس or كاتدرائية مار جرجس) is the cathedral of the Diocese of Jazira and Euphrates of the Syrian Orthodox Church in al-Hasakah in Syria .

Location

The cathedral is located about 200 m southeast of the Armenian Catholic and 400 m south of the Chaldean Catholic Church (the location of which is incorrectly indicated by Gcatholic as the location of the Syrian Catholic Cathedral), 200 m east of the Syrian Catholic Assumption Cathedral , 300 m north of the vegetable market Suq al-Hal (سوق الهال للخضار) and 500 m north of the Chabur river .

history

Al-Hasakah was insignificant before the First World War , and the Chabur River was mostly inhabited by Arab Bedouins . This changed at the beginning of the 20th century with the arrival of Armenian and Assyrian refugees after the genocide of the Syrian Christians and the Armenians , so that al-Hasakah temporarily became a predominantly Christian city. Due to the large number of Syrian Orthodox Christians, the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch established the new diocese of Jazira and Euphrates here in 1933 . The Syrian Orthodox Cathedral of St. George was completed in 1943. In 1988, Bishop Mar Eustathios Matta Roham became the metropolitan of the diocese. He was also a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches from 2006 to 2013 . Like many of the Syrian Orthodox Christians, he fled the hard-fought al-Hasakah to Vienna during the civil war in Syria . Thus, the cathedral did not have a bishop until Mar Maurice Yacoub Amsih became the new Metropolitan in August 2017 . The number of Syrian Orthodox Christians in both the diocese and the city of al-Hasakah has fallen by a good half as a result of the war.

architecture

The church has a cruciform floor plan with a dome over the crossing . The tambour has twelve arched windows. The nave stands in a west-east direction with the altar in the east, the significantly shorter transept in its eastern section (Latin cross). There are also two narrower and shorter transepts at the western and eastern ends and two bell towers at the eastern transept. The nave and transept have pointed barrel roofs .

Diocese and bishop

The George Cathedral of al-Hasakah is the cathedral church of the Syrian Orthodox diocese of Jazira and Euphrates ( al-Ǧazīra w al-Furāt ,مطرانية الجزيرة والفرات للسريان الأرثوذكس or short الجزيرة والفرات, " Jazīra and Euphrates "), which was founded in 1933. Before the civil war it comprised around 50,000 to 60,000 believers - over half of the Christians in the region, of whom around half lived in al-Qamishli and around 15,000 in al-Hasakah , while the majority of those living in the area were Assyrian Church of the East belonging to the Chabur Assyrians had no members. According to calculations by Otmar Oehring ( Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung ), the number of Syrian Orthodox Christians in the diocese decreased from 46,415 to 21,715 between 2011 and 2019, in al-Hasakah from 17,500 to 8,000, in al-Qamishli from 19,500 to 10,500, in al-Malikiyah from 4500 to 2100 and in Qbur-Albid from 1250 to 550. Metropolitan has been Bishop Mar Maurice Yacoub Amsih since August 2017 , who previously worked at the Patriarchal Curia in Damascus.

Other facilities

In the George Cathedral of al-Hasakah there is a center for religious education, to which a church choir, the Sankt-Ephräm-der-Syrer-Chor (جوقة مار أفرام السرياني), connected. The choir director is Laidi Askar (ليدي عسكر).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The Syrian Christians in Northeast Syria. Mar Gabriel Association, 2006, accessed April 21, 2020.
  2. ↑ عيد قيامة بلا مصلين .. كورونا يفرض نفسه على أجواء عيد الفصح في الحسكة [Resurrection without a worshiper - Corona imposes itself on the Easter atmosphere in Hasaka.] Captionالكنيسة تغلق أمام المصلين لأول مرة منذ تأسيسها في العام 1943[The church is closed to believers for the first time since its formation in 1943]. Al-Mayadeen, April 19, 2020.
  3. ^ A b New Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan for the Syrian Djazira. Pro Oriente, August 21, 2017.
  4. ^ A b Otmar Oehring: On the situation and perspectives of Christians in north and north-east Syria. Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Berlin 2019. p. 85.
  5. ↑ ريستال ميلادي في كاتدرائية مار جرجس للسريان الأرثوذكس في الحسكة [Gregorian chant in the Syrian Orthodox Cathedral of St. George in Hasaka.] Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA December 23, 2019).

Coordinates: 36 ° 30 ′ 8.4 "  N , 40 ° 44 ′ 56.1"  E