Mar Gewargis (Baghdad)

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The Church of Saint George the Martyr , also Georgskirche , Gewargis-Kirche , Mar Gewargis or Mar Gewergis ( Arabic كنيسة مار كوركيس الشهيد or كنيسة مار كوركيس), is a church in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad that was consecrated in 1961. Since the Old Church of the East occupied and took over the Mar Zaya Cathedral in Karradat Maryam in 1968 , it has been the largest and most important church of the Assyrian Church of the East in Baghdad. It is located in the traditionally Christian Assyrian district of Dora .

Location

The church is in the Assyrian quarter of Dora on the north side of "Lehrerstraße" (شارع المعلمين), about 1 km south of the west bank of the Tigris , where the university campus is opposite, 250 m south-southeast of the Chaldean St. John's Church and about 700 m south-southeast of the Mart Hmona Alathurran church .

history

The Dora district on the west bank of the Tigris was created in the 1950s when Assyrians moved in large numbers from al-Habbaniyya to Baghdad, with most of the houses built in the 1960s and 1970s. So there was soon a need for a new church at the Assyrian settlement in Baghdad. The Assyrian Mar Gewergis was completed in 1961. The construction was made possible by donations from the community and the diaspora. With 800 seats, the spacious church could offer enough space for the numerous believers.

Around the year 2000 the congregation of the Assyrian Church of the East with its Gewargis Church in the Assyrian Quarter of Dora had around 20,000 members. This changed after the 2003 invasion of US troops and al-Qaeda came to power in the Dora, particularly after their temporary victory over US forces in late 2006. In 2004, the Islamists began a terrorist campaign to rid the neighborhood of its original inhabitants . Several dozen Assyrians were killed in bombings and 500 Assyrian shops were burned down in a single night. The jihadists conceded jizya and demanded the extradition of Assyrian virgins for forced marriage or enslavement. The Gewargis Church suffered two attacks that were successful for the jihadists: on April 14, 2007, Islamists tore the cross from the roof of the church, and on May 18, 2007, an arson attack made the church unusable. After the mass exodus of Christians - mostly abroad, partly also in northern Iraq, for example in the Christian city of Ankawa - only a few hundred Assyrians were living in Dora in 2015. The Gewargis Church was nevertheless restored and reopened on November 2nd, 2015. The opening service was held by the Assyrian Catholicos patriarch Gewargis III. Sliwa headed. The Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III was also present. Younan , Armenian, Yazidi and Muslim representatives as well as government officials.

architecture

The Assyrian Church of St. George is a single-nave, east-facing church with a rectangular floor plan. The church is reminiscent of a basilica , because in the middle there is a barrel roof with upper cladding with windows and sloping roofs on the sides, but inside there is only one large hall without supporting pillars, because the "clerical cladding" is part of the roof structure. Only the altar area is separated by an arch construction. Above the entrance at the western end is a gallery on the inside. At the eastern end above the altar is a tower with a square cross-section and on it a tambour with a round cross-section and windows on which a round dome, crowned by a three-dimensional, three-beam cross sits. At the western end there are two towers with a square cross-section, and colonnades at the north and south sides . The edges of the towers and the roof rims are designed in the form of battlements in the church and its outbuildings in the Babylonian style .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ghassan Hanna Shathaya: List of Christian Churches in Baghdad - Iraq ( Memento of 4 December 2017 Internet Archive ). Chaldeans On Line, 1999. List of Christian churches in Baghdad, compiled from an article by Salam Marcus in issue 2 of the Beth Nahrain magazine , Paris, a review of the book: Buṭrus Ḥaddād (بطرس حداد): The churches and monasteries of Baghdad (كنائس بغداد ودياراتها), ad-Diwān (الديوان للطباعة), Baghdad (بغداد) 1994.
  2. ↑ Nineveh. Assyrian Foundation, March 1990.
  3. ↑ a b Twice Attacked Church Reopens in Baghdad, But is it Too Late for Assyrians? AINA News, November 3, 2015.
  4. ↑ War stories of the Tankers, American Armored Combat 1918 to Today , Michael Green, 2008, Zenith Press, p. 319.
  5. ↑ Amped: A Soldier's Race for Gold in the Shadow of War , Kortney Clemons, Wiley Publishing, 2008.

Coordinates: 33 ° 15 ′ 1.4 ″  N , 44 ° 23 ′ 8 ″  E