Iraq’s Christians fight to save threatened ancient language

 Iraq’s conflict-scarred Christian community is launching a new television channel as part of efforts to save their dying, 2,000-year-old language.

Syriac, an ancient dialect of Aramaic, was traditionally the language spoken by Christians in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, mostly in homes but also in some schools, during church services and now, on al-Syriania TV.

But Syriac-speaking communities in the two countries have declined over the years, owing to decades of conflict driving many to seek safety in other countries.

“We speak Syriac at home, but unfortunately I feel that our language is disappearing slowly but surely,” said Mariam Albert, a 35-year-old news presenter on al-Syriania.

“It is important to have a television station that represents us,” she said of the station launched in April by the Iraqi government.

Programmes, from cinema to art and history, are presented in colloquial Syriac, Albert said, while news bulletins are in classical Syriac, a form not understood by everyone.

“Once upon a time, Syriac was a language widespread across the Middle East,” station director Jack Anwia said, adding that Baghdad has a duty “to keep it from extinction”.

“The beauty about Iraq is its cultural and religious diversity,” he said.

Iraq is known as the Cradle of Civilisation, including the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, who produced the earliest known written legal code. The country was also home to the city of Ur, which the Bible cites as Abraham’s birthplace.

Before the 2003 United States-led invasion of the oil-rich country, Iraq was home to about 1.5 million Christians. Since then, their population has declined to roughly 400,000, mostly in the north.

The earliest written record of Syriac dates to the first or second century BC and the language reached its peak between the fifth and seventh centuries AD.

With the seventh-century Islamic conquests, more people in the region began speaking Arabic – by the 11th century, Syriac was in decline.

In 2014, days before ISIL (ISIS) fighters seized swaths of northern Iraq, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul left the city, salvaging a trove of centuries-old Syriac manuscripts.

About 1,700 manuscripts and 1,400 books – some dating to the 11th century – are now conserved in Erbil’s Digital Centre for Eastern Manuscripts, which is supported by UNESCO, USAID and the Dominican Order.

A boy looks at a sign written in Syriac at the Ashurbanipal Syriac School in Iraq's predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, in Nineveh province. [Waleed Al-Khalid/AFP]

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Syriac language teacher Salah Sarkis writes on a whiteboard as he gives a class at the Ashurbanipal Syriac School in the town of Qaraqosh. [Waleed Al-Khalid/AFP]

Syriac is taught at about 265 schools across Iraq, according to Imad Salem Jajjo, who is responsible for Syriac education within the education ministry. [Waleed Al-Khalid/AFP]

Mariam Ashur, right, and Mariam Albert, left, presenters of a programme on al-Syriania, stand with channel director Jack Anwia in a studio in Baghdad. [Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP]

Iraq's government launched the al-Syriania television channel in April 2023 to help keep the language alive. It has about 40 staff and offers a variety of programming, from cinema to art and history. [Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP]

Artist and museum curator Saliwa Shamoun Abba cleans a Syriac-inscribed plaque about the history of the Syriac Museum, in Qaraqosh. [Waleed Al-Khalid/AFP]

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A Syriac language Bible on display at the Syriac Museum in Qaraqosh. [Waleed Al-Khalid/AFP]

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Michaeel Najeeb retrieves an old Christian book at the Eastern Manuscript Digitisation Centre (CNMO) in Erbil. [Safin Hamid/AFP]