SYRIAC IN TURKEY AND IRAQ figures in this Guardian article:

In the language of Jesus

Turkey's Christian revival has a message for Iraq's own communities

Martin Wainwright
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

This week's attacks on churches in Iraq are a reminder of a small community that has lived for years with the term "beleaguered", but has the potential to re-establish a more tolerant way of life in the Middle East.

It might easily be assumed that Iraqi Christians are a colonial implant that any self-respecting nationalist would view with suspicion.

But in fact they are among the oldest religious communities in the world.

Protected for most of their long history by Islam's tradition of tolerance, they are honoured for their own great gift to mutual understanding:

Syriac, a version of Jesus's native language, Aramaic. This was the vital bridge in the transmission of Greek, Roman and Jewish thought into Arabic, from which Aristotle, Plato and company eventually returned in the Renaissance to Europe.

Its greatest stronghold is just outside Iraq, in Turkey's Tur Abdin, the "Mountains of the Servants of God", where an intriguing shift is taking place.

Pilgrims, students, and tourists of all faiths and none, are returning to nearby monasteries, which were 700 years old when the first stones were laid at Fountains or Rievaulx. Four-and-a-half centuries after the English abbeys were dissolved by Henry VIII, the cloisters still ring with Syriac chants.

Yet it is only 20 years since the pocket-sized congregations lived in terror, with bombs going off outside their walls. Almost everyone with the money to do so had fled to the west.

[...]

There's too much in it to excerpt properly and the whole thing is worth a read.

Also, British readers should note the following, which I'm going to try to listen to later this morning:

� Martin Wainwright is the Guardian's Northern editor; he presents The Tongue That Wouldn't Die, a study of Syriac, at 11am today on Radio 4

UPDATE: It was an excellent program that ranged from ancient Edessa to a modern child coining new Syriac terms for her toys and involved actual trips to modern Edessa (Sanli Urfa) and other nearby areas important for Syriac. It was the first of a three-part series, called Voices from the Dark, to be aired over three weeks. You can hear the first program by downloading this file (you have to have RealAudio installed in your system to play it).

UPDATE: Reader Harold Clumeck e-mails:

Re: your reference to Martin Wainwright's article in The Guardian. Wainwright states: "It might easily be assumed that Iraqi Christians are a colonial implant that any self-respecting nationalist might view with suspicion."

I just want to comment that this is an odd assertion indeed. Assumed by whom? Someone ignorant of the history of religion in the Middle East? Wainwright seems to presuppose here that Islam would naturally be thought of as "THE" indigenous religion, and that all others have gotten there at some later date, and by a "colonial" means. It seems a variant of the "Zionist as colonialist" prejudice. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this. But I still think it's an odd statement and consistent with Guardian bias. It reminds me of a comment made by a Western journalist about the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt. He said something to the effect: "Why would Christians choose to live in a Muslim country?"

In addition, the reference to "self-respecting nationalist" contradicts the later reference to "traditional Islamic tolerance" mentioned in the very next paragraph

I thought the comment was strange too. Perhaps it's just a lame attempt at a "hook" to catch the reader's attention, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, and I would like to think better of those "nationalists" in Iraq, who would be well aware of the ancient history of Iraqi Christianity. But regarding the last point, I wouldn't identify Arab nationalism with Islam: there is some overlap, of course, but there need not be any connection. Baathism, for example, is an entirely secular extremist Arab nationalism. And Islam is a world religion that transcends national boundaries.