Hundreds of Historic Texts Hidden in ISIS-Occupied Monastery

This textual content, additionally copied in A.D. 1653, describes the family tree of Jesus Christ. This photograph was additionally taken earlier than the texts had been hidden away, simply weeks earlier than ISIS occupied the Mar Behnam monastery.

Credit score: Amir Harrak

Greater than 400 texts, courting between the center ages and trendy instances, have been saved on the Mar Behnam monastery, a spot that the Islamic State group (often known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) had occupied for greater than two years, till November.

The texts, which had been written between the 13th and 20th centuries, had been hidden behind a wall that was constructed only a few weeks earlier than ISIS occupied and partly destroyed the Christian monastery, in keeping with Amir Harrak, a professor on the College of Toronto who studied the texts earlier than they had been hidden away.

Among the texts are "fantastically illustrated" by the scribes who copied them, Harrak mentioned. "Every one accommodates prolonged colophons [notes] written by the scribes, telling historic and social, and non secular occasions of their instances — a proven fact that makes them valuable sources," Harrak instructed Reside Science.

The texts are written in a wide range of languages, together with Syriac (extensively utilized in Iraq in historic and medieval instances), Arabic, Turkish and Neo-Aramaic, mentioned Harrak, who's an professional in Syriac. [See Photos of the Monastery and Saved Historical Texts]

Hidden in an ISIS-occupied monastery

First constructed greater than 1,500 years in the past, the "Monastery of Martyr Mar Behnam and his sister Sarah" accommodates texts, carved inscriptions and paintings courting again centuries.

ISIS occupied the monastery from June 2014 to November 2016, when it was recaptured byan Iraqi Christian unit that's working with the federal government to battle in opposition to ISIL. Pictures and a information report printed by the Agence France-Presse shortly after the monastery was recaptured present that ISIS militants destroyed among the monastery's buildings (it has a number of buildings), burned what texts they might discover, defaced and destroyed the monastery's paintings and inscriptions, and wrote graffiti over the surviving constructions.

The texts had been taken to an undisclosed however comparatively safe location. Professor Amir Harrak instructed Reside Science that given the unrest in Iraq, it might be finest to deliver the texts to a library in Europe, a minimum of briefly, for conservation and safekeeping.

Credit score: Amjed Tareq Hano

The texts at Mar Behnam "had been hidden in a storage room, 40 days earlier than ISIS invaded the Plain of Nineveh [near Mosul], by a younger priest named Yousif Sakat," Harrak mentioned. Sakat "positioned them in massive metallic cans and constructed a wall in order that nobody [would] suspect there's something, and he succeeded," he added.

Sakat, who was pressured to flee the monastery, "saved his endeavor in secret even after the liberation of the Plain, out of worry the manuscripts can be uncovered, till he felt the Plain [was] safe — and he divulged the key," Harrak mentioned. [See Photos of ISIS Destruction of Iraq Historical Sites]

For greater than two years, the texts remained hidden behind the wall. Thankfully, Harrak mentioned, ISIS didn't destroy the actual constructing the place the texts had been hidden. Reuters reported that ISIS used the surviving buildings on the monastery as a base for its "morality police," who "enforced strict guidelines in opposition to things like smoking, males shaving their beards and ladies baring their faces in public."  

Way forward for the texts

The way forward for the texts is unsure, and Harrak wonders if the paperwork must be faraway from Iraq, a minimum of for now, for safekeeping.

"What's the future of those manuscripts? Iraq is a stressed nation," Harrak mentioned. "Ought to they take them to Europe, for instance, or the Vatican Library or someplace safer?"

The Iraqi authorities is unlikely to assist shield the texts, Harrak mentioned. TheIraqi authorities has even ignored Iraq Christian refugees, leaving it to church buildings to offer reduction for these folks, he added.

Harrak is a local of Mosul, an Iraqi metropolis close to the monastery, which, on the time this story was written, ISIS nonetheless partly occupied. (The battle for town is ongoing.) Harrak left Mosul in 1977 and now lives in Toronto, however he has returned to Iraq usually to check historic texts, inscriptions and paintings.

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