Wikipedia

Kurdish Christians

(Redirected from Kurdish Church of Christ)

Kurdish Christians[a] refers to Kurds who follow Christianity.[4][5][6] Some Kurds had historically followed Christianity and remained Christian when most Kurds were converted to Islam, however, the majority of modern Kurdish Christians are converts.[7] Historically, Kurdish converts to Christianity came from diverse backgrounds, including Ancient Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Yazidism.

Kurdish Christians
کوردێن خرستیان, Kurdên Xirîstiyan
Regions with significant populations
Kurdistan and Kurdish diaspora
Religions
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism[1]
Historically: Church of the East,[2] Syriac Orthodox Church[3]
Scriptures
Bible
Languages

History

The westernmost Kurds in Anatolia converted to Christianity before the 7th century, which contributed to their gradual Hellenization by the 12th century. In contrast, the Kurds of eastern Anatolia largely resisted conversion and faced punitive measures from the Byzantines. At the advent of Islam in the 7th century, most of southern Kurdistan was predominantly Christian.[8]

Nasr, later known as Theophobos and suggested to be of Kurdish origin, converted to Christianity after entering Byzantine service under Emperor Theophilus (829–842) and became a close friend and trusted military commander.[9]

In the 10th century AD, the Kurdish prince Ibn ad-Dahhak, who possessed the fortress of al-Jafary, converted from Islam to Orthodox Christianity and in return the Byzantines gave him land and a fortress.[10] In 927 AD, he and his family were executed during a raid by Thamal al-Dulafi, the governor of Tarsus.[11]

In the late 11th and the early 12th century AD, Kurdish Christians made up a minority of the army of the fortress city of Shayzar, near Hama, Syria.[12]

The Zakarids–Mkhargrdzeli, an Armenian[13]–Georgian dynasty of Kurdish[14][15][16][17][18] origin, ruled parts of northern Armenia in the 13th century AD and tried to reinvigorate intellectual activities by founding new monasteries.[19]

Marco Polo, in his book, stated that a minority of the Kurds who inhabited the mountainous part of Mosul were Christians, while the rest were Muslims.[20]

Kurdish Christian converts usually were a part of the Church of the East.[21] In 1884, researchers of the Royal Geographical Society reported in Sivas about a local Kurdish tribe, likely of Armenian origin, which retained some Christian observances and sometimes identified as Christian.[22]

Contemporary Kurdish Christians

History and background

The first translation of a part of the New Testament into the Kurdish language was made available in 1856.[23] The region has also historically been home to communities of "Kurdish Christians" who were not ethnic Kurds, but Armenians and Assyrians who lived in Kurdistan and spoke Kurdish.[24][25] Additionally, some Hidden Armenians, ethnic Armenians who had been Kurdified and Islamized, later converted to Christianity as part of reconnecting with their Armenian heritage.[26]

Post-Soviet conversions

There was a wave of Kurdish conversion to Christianity after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the Post-Soviet states, most Kurdish converts to Christianity were from a Yazidi background.[27] In Armenia, around 3,600 Yazidis converted to Christianity by 2019.[28] Madai Maamdi, a Georgian Yazidi convert to the Georgian Orthodox Church, was ordained a priest in February 2023 by the North American Diocese of the Georgian Orthodox Church, becoming the first ethnic Kurd to be ordained as an Orthodox Christian priest.[29]

Modern Iraq

The Kurdzman Church of Christ (Kurdophone Church of Christ) was established in Hewlêr (Erbil) by the end of 2000, and has branches in the Silêmanî, Duhok governorates. This is the first evangelical Kurdish church in Iraq.[30] Its logo is formed of a yellow sun and a cross rising up behind a mountain range. In a 2007 interview with The New Humanitarian, Sabeer Ahmed, a Kurdish convert to Christianity and worker at Christ Church in Pishdar, claimed that about 500 Kurdish Muslim youths had converted to Christianity since 2006 throughout Kurdistan. In the same article, a Muslim community elder attributed the conversions to economic hardship and the desire to go abroad, a claim a local priest denied.[31]

Conversions in Syria

In 2019, some 80–100 Kurds converted to Christianity in the city of Kobanî.[32][33][34] An Evangelical pastor from Aleppo attributed the conversions to disgruntlement with Islam because of the Anti-Kurdish policies of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who promoted Islamism and Turkish nationalism, as well as the atrocities committed against Kurds in Syria by Turkish-backed Islamists during the Syrian civil war.[35]

Yazidi genocide and missionary controversy

Following the 2014 Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, some Western evangelical groups identified the influx of displaced Yazidis as a "golden opportunity" for conversion, as Yazidis had previously been isolated in remote areas and difficult for missionaries to access.[36] According to Christian Aid Mission's own reporting, by mid-2015 about 70 percent of displaced people reached through one ministry's outreach in Irbil and Dohuk were Yazidis, and the group claimed to have converted around 80 families, suggesting as many as 800 individuals.[36]

The conversion efforts drew criticism from Yazidi officials. Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, alleged that Christian missionaries were exploiting the trauma of refugees by distributing Bibles and pamphlets alongside humanitarian aid. She urged the Kurdistan Regional Government to ban missionary activities in the camps.[36] The KRG's office of Christian affairs responded that most established Christian aid groups and churches in the region behaved ethically and were not pushing conversion, attributing problems to newer, unestablished missions.[36] Another Yazidi official, Khairy Bozani, described the conversion effort as a "threatening phenomenon" and alleged that some missionaries had offered cash to young Yazidis to convert.[36]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Kurmanji: کوردێن خرستیان, Kurdên Xirîstiyan; Sorani: کوردە مەسیحییەکان, Kurde Mesîḧîyekan

References

  1. ↑ Muhammad, Hoshavi. "Monk Madai. The Kurdish People and Christianity". OrthoChristian.Com.
  2. ↑ Joseph, John (2000). The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, & Colonial Powers, Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11641-9, p. 61
  3. ↑ Driver, G. R. (1922). "The Religion of the Kurds", Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2. University of London. pp. 197–213.
  4. ↑ Seker, Can (2006). "Zerdeştî û Ezdayetî".
  5. ↑ Mîdî, Sozdar (2014). "Ta Kengê Bêdengî Li Ser Tewrên Tabûra Pêncan ya Islama Tundrew" (PDF). Pênûsa Nû. 28: 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 September 2021. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  6. ↑ "Çîroka 2 keçên Şingalê: Du ol di malekê de!". Rûdaw.net. 3 August 2015. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
  7. ↑ Kennedy, Hugh N. (2004). The Prophet and the age of the Caliphates : the Islamic Near East from the sixth to the eleventh century (2nd ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson-Longman. ISBN 0-582-40525-4. OCLC 55792252.
  8. ↑ Izady, Mehrdad (2015). Kurds: A concise handbook. Taylor & Francis.
  9. ↑ Ševčenko, Ihor (1966). "New Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire". The Cambridge Medieval History (PDF). Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. p. 111.
  10. ↑ A. Vasilyev, Vizantija i araby. Vol. II. (Saint-Petersburg, 1902), p. 220.
  11. ↑ Paul F. Robinson, Just War in Comparative Perspective, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 233pp., 2003, (see p.162)
  12. ↑ David Nicolle, Christa Hook, Saracen Faris, 1050-1250 AD, 64 pp., Osprey Publishing, 1994, ISBN 1-85532-453-9, see p.7, Table A.
  13. ↑ Toumanoff, Cyril (1966). "Armenia and Georgia". The Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. IV: The Byzantine Empire, part I chapter XIV. Cambridge. pp. 593—637: "Later, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Armenian house of the Zachariads (Mkhargrdzeli) ruled in northern Armenia at Ani, Lor'i, Kars, and Dvin under the Georgian aegis."
  14. ↑ Lidov, Alexei (1991). The mural paintings of Akhtala. p. 14: "It is clear from the account of these Armenian historians that Ivane's great grandfather broke away from the Kurdish tribe of Babir" Nauka Publishers, Central Dept. of Oriental Literature, University of Michigan, ISBN 5-02-017569-2 ISBN 978-5-02-017569-3.
  15. ↑ Minorsky, Vladimir (1953). Studies in Caucasian History. p. 102: "According to a tradition which has every reason to be true, their ancestors were Mesopotamian Kurds of the tribe (xel) Babirakan." CUP Archive. ISBN 0-521-05735-3, ISBN 978-0-521-05735-6.
  16. ↑ Richard Barrie Dobson. (2000). Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages: A-J, p. 107: "... under the Christianized Kurdish dynasty of Zak'arids they tried to re-establish nazarar system ..." Editions du Cerf, University of Michigan, ISBN 0-227-67931-8, ISBN 978-0-227-67931-9.
  17. ↑ William Edward David Allen (1932). A History of the Georgian People: From the Beginning Down to the Russian Conquest in the Nineteenth Century. p. 104: "She retained and leant upon the numerous relatives of Sargis Mkhargrdzeli, an aznauri of Kurdish origin." Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0-7100-6959-6, ISBN 978-0-7100-6959-7.
  18. ↑ Vardan Arewelts'i's, Compilation of History: "In these time there lived the glorious princes Zak'are' and Iwane', sons of Sargis, son of Vahram, son of Zak'are', son of Sargis of Kurdish nationality (i K'urd azge')" p. 82
  19. ↑ A. Vauchez, R. B. Dobson, M. Lapidge, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages: A-J, 1624 pp., Editions du Cerf, 2000, ISBN 0227679318, 9780227679319, see p.107
  20. ↑ Polo, Marco (1920). "Chapter 5" . In Cordier, Henri (ed.). The Travels of Marco Polo . Translated by Yule, Henry – via Wikisource.
  21. ↑ John Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, & Colonial Powers, Brill Academic Publishers, 292 pp., 2000, ISBN 90-04-11641-9, p.61
  22. ↑ Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society And Monthly Record Of Geography, Volume 6, 1884, pp. 313, Stanford
  23. ↑ Dehqan, Mustafa (2009). "A Kirmaşanî Translation of the Gospel of John" (PDF). Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. 61 (1–2): 207–211. doi:10.2143/JECS.61.1.2045832. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
  24. ↑ Rediscovering Kurdistan’s Cultures and Identities: The Call of the Cricket, 2018, pp. 206, ISBN 9783319930886
  25. ↑ Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan, Martin van Bruinessen, pp. 8, 1991, ISBN 9781856490184
  26. ↑ The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 2020, pp. 45-46, ISBN 9781912997510
  27. ↑ "ABD'de bir ilk: Ortodoks kilisesine Kürt papaz". Gazete Duvar (in Turkish). 18 February 2023. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  28. ↑ "Population (urban, rural) by Ethnicity, Sex and Religious Belief" (PDF). Statistics of Armenia. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  29. ↑ "Hierodeacon Madai Becomes The First Ethnic Kurd Ordained Into The Orthodox Christian Priesthood". Greek City Times. 18 February 2023. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
  30. ↑ Revival Times Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
  31. ↑ Sunni extremists (21 May 2007). "Threaten to kill Christian converts in north". IRIN.
  32. ↑ Christianity Grows in Syrian Town in Wake of IS
  33. ↑ "Christianity grows in Syrian town once besieged by Islamic State". Reuters. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  34. ↑ "Kurds Embrace Christianity and Kobani Celebrates Inauguration of Church". The Syrian Observer. 26 June 2019. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  35. ↑ The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 2020, pp. 45-46, ISBN 9781912997510
  36. 1 2 3 4 5 "Yazidis Say They Are Being Targeted for Christian Conversion". Voice of America. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
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