A new epoch began in the 17th century when Emir Afrasiyab of Basra allowed the Portuguese to build a church
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Wikipedia
The
Christians of Iraq
are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the
world. The vast majority are Chaldeans however, there is a small community of
Nestorian's also known as Assyrians.
In
Iraq, Christians numbered about 1,500,000 in 2003, representing just over 5% of
the population of the country. They numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of
the population. After the Iraq War, it was estimated that the number of Christians in
Iraq had dropped to less than 450,000 by 2013 - with estimates as low as
200,000.[3]
Chaldean Catholics form the biggest group among
the Christians of Iraq. Christians live primarily in Baghdad,
Basra,
Mosul,
Arbil
and Kirkuk
and in Chaldean towns and regions such as the Nineveh
Plains in the north.
History
Christianity
was brought to Iraq in the 1st century AD by the Apostles Thomas and Addai
(Thaddaeus) and his pupils Aggagi and Mari. Thomas and Thaddeus
belonged to the twelve Apostles. Iraq's Eastern
Aramaic speaking Chaldean communities are believed to be among the
oldest in the world.
The Chaldean
people adopted Christianity in the 1st century AD and north Iraq
became the centre of Eastern Rite Christianity and Syriac
literature from the 1st century AD until the Middle Ages. In the early
centuries after the Arab Islamic conquest, native Assyrian (known as Ashuriyun
by the Arabs) scholars and doctors played an influential role in Iraq, however,
from the late 13th century AD through to the present time, Chaldean and
Nestorian Christians have suffered both religious and ethnic persecution,
including a number of massacres. Northern Iraq remained predominantly Assyrian,
Eastern
Aramaic speaking and Christian until the destructions of Tamerlane
at the end of the 14th century. The Assyrian Church of the East has its origin
in what is now South East Turkey and Assuristan (Sassanid Assyria).
By the end of the 13th century there were twelve Nestorian
dioceses in a strip from Peking to Samarkand. When the 14th-century Muslim warlord of
Turco-Mongol descent, Timur (Tamerlane), conquered Persia, Mesopotamia
and Syria,
the civilian population was decimated. Timur had 70,000 Assyrian Christians beheaded in Tikrit, and
90,000 more in Baghdad.
A new epoch began in the 17th century when Emir Afrasiyab of Basra allowed the
Portuguese to build a church outside of the city. In the year of Iraq´s formal
independence, 1933, the Iraqi military carried out large-scale massacres
against the Chaldeans (Simele massacre) which had supported the
British colonial administration before.
In
1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. They were tolerated
under the secular
regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz
his deputy. However persecution by Saddam
Hussein continued against the Christians on an ethnic, cultural and
racial level, as the vast majority are Mesopotamian Aramaic speaking Ethnic
Chaldeans. The Neo -Aramaic language and writing was repressed, the giving of
Syriac Christian names or Akkadian/Assyro-Babylonian
names forbidden (Tariq Aziz real name is Mikhail Yuhanna, for example), and
Saddam exploited religious differences between Iraq christians denominations
such as the Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East. Over 2,000
Iraqi christians were ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages under
the al Anfal Campaign of 1988.
Prior
to the Gulf War
in 1991, Christians numbered one million in Iraq. The Baathist rule
under Saddam Hussein kept anti-Christian violence
under control but subjected some to "relocation programmes". Under
this regime, the predominantly ethnically and linguistically distinct Chaldeans
were pressured to identify as Arabs. The Christian population fell to an
estimated 800,000 during the 2003 Iraq War.
Just under 1,500,000 Christians were alleged in the region prior to August 2014
Post-war
situation
As
of 21 June 2007, the UNHCR
estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries
with a large majority of them Christians, and 2 million were displaced
internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.
A 25 May 2007 article notes that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq were granted refugee
status in the United States.
After
the 2003 invasion of Iraq, violence against Christians
rose, with reports of abduction, torture, bombings, and killings. Some
Christians were pressured to convert to Islam under threat of death or
expulsion, and women were ordered to wear Islamic dress.
In
August 2004, International Christian Concern
protested an attack by Islamists
on Iraqi Christian churches that killed 11 people. In 2006, an Orthodox
Christian priest, Boulos Iskander, was
beheaded and mutilated despite payment of a ransom, and in 2008, the Assyrian
clergyman Archbishop
Paulos Faraj Rahho of the Chaldean
Catholic church in Mosul died after being abducted. In January 2008, bombs
exploded outside nine churches.
In
2007, Chaldean Catholic priest Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni and subdeacons Basman Yousef
Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed were killed in the ancient city
of Mosul.
Ganni was driving with his three deacons when they were stopped and demanded to
convert to Islam, when they refused they were shot. Ganni was the pastor of the
Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul and a graduate from
the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome in 2003 with a licentiate in ecumenical
theology. Six months later, the body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, archbishop of Mosul, was found buried
near Mosul.
He was kidnapped on 29 February 2008 when his bodyguards and driver were
killed.
In
2010, reports emerged in Mosul of people being stopped in the streets, asked
for their identity cards, and shot if they had a first or last name indicating Assyrian
or Christian
origin.[7]
On 31 October 2010, 58 people, including 41 hostages and priests, were killed
after an attack on an Assyrian Catholic church in Baghdad. See October 2010 Baghdad church attack.
A group affiliated to Al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq, stated that Iraq's
indigenous Christians were a "legitimate target." In November, a
series of bombings and mortar attacks targeted Assyrian Christian-majority
areas of Baghdad.
Half
the Christian population has allegedly fled en masse immolation in 243
cathedrals and additional churches and mass beheadings including of pregnant
women and children, with an estimated 330,000 to Syria and smaller numbers
to Jordan.
Some fled to Iraqi Kurdistan in northern Iraq and to
neighboring countries, such as Iran. Christians who are too poor or unwilling to leave their
ancient homeland have fled mainly to Arbil, particularly its
Christian suburb of Ainkawa. 10,000 mainly Assyrian Iraqi
Christians live in the UK led by Archbishop Athanasios Dawood, who has
called on the government to accept more refugees.
Apart
from emigration, the Iraqi Christians are also declining due to lower rates of
birth and higher death rates than their Muslim compatriots. Also since the
invasion of Iraq, Assyrians and Armenians have been targeted by Islamist
extremist organizations and Arab nationalists.
During
the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive,
the Islamic State of Iraq issued a decree in
July that all Christians in the area of its control must pay a special tax of
approximately $470 per family, convert to Islam, or die. Many of them took
refuge in nearby Kurdish-controlled regions of Iraq.
Christian homes have been painted with the Arabic letter
ن (nūn)
for Nassarah
(an Arabic word Christian) and a declaration that they are the property of the
Islamic State. On 18 July, the Jihadists seemed to have changed their minds and
announced that all Christians would need to leave or be killed. Most of those
who left had their valuable possessions stolen. According to Patriarch Louis Sako,
there are no Christians remaining in Mosul for the first time
in the nation's history.
Celebration of Corpus Christi in Iraq, 1920, attended by Assyrians and Armenians.
The ruins of Saint Elijah s Monastery founded in 595 AD south of Mosul by the Christian monk Mar Elia
A church in Baghdad.
A Chaldean Catholic Church in Basra 2014.
The ruins of a church at the Iraqi Al-Aqiser archaeological site, 70 kms southwest of the shrine city of Karbala, central Iraq,
St. Elijah Church in Ankawa
st.Thomas the apostle
St. Addai
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