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Iraq’s conflict-ravaged 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, has historically been the language spoken by Christians in Iraq and neighboring Syria, mostly at home but also in some schools, at church services and now on al-Syriania TV.
But the Syrian-speaking communities in the two countries have declined over the years, due to decades of conflict that has driven many to seek safety in other countries.
“We speak Syrian at home, but unfortunately I feel that our language is slowly but surely disappearing,” said Mariam Albert, a 35-year-old news presenter on al-Syriania.
“It’s important to have a television station that represents us,” she said of the station launched by the Iraqi government in April.
Programs, from film to art and history, are presented in colloquial Syriac, Albert said, while news bulletins are in classical Syriac, a form not everyone understands.
“Once upon a time, Syriac was a language widespread in the Middle East,” said station director Jack Anwia, adding that Baghdad has a duty “to save it from extinction.”
“The beauty of Iraq is its cultural and religious diversity,” he said.
Iraq is known as the cradle of civilization, 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 is mentioned in the Bible as the birthplace of Abraham.
Before the United States-led invasion of the oil-rich country in 2003, about 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq. Since then, their population has dwindled to about 400,000, mostly in the north.
The earliest written record of Syriac dates from the first or second century BC and the language reached its peak between the fifth and seventh centuries AD.
With the Muslim conquests in the seventh century, more people in the region began to speak Arabic – by the eleventh century, Syriac was in decline.
In 2014, days before ISIL (ISIS) fighters seized parts of northern Iraq, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul left the city to salvage a treasure trove of ancient Syrian manuscripts.
About 1,700 manuscripts and 1,400 books—some dating back to the 11th century—are now held at Erbil’s Digital Center for Eastern Manuscripts, which is supported by UNESCO, USAID, and the Dominican Order.
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