- published: 05 Feb 2013
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The Christians of Iraq form one of the oldest Christian communities of the Middle East. The vast majority are Aramaic-speaking ethnic Assyrians with much smaller numbers of Armenians, Arabs, and Turcoman. In Iraq, Christians numbered about 1,500,000 in 2003, representing just over 5% of the population of the country. They numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of the population.
The majority of the Iraqi Christians belong to the Eastern Rite churches.
Christianity was brought to Iraq in the first century by the Apostles Thomas and Addai (Thaddaeus) and his pupils Aggagi and Mari. Thomas and Thaddeus belonged to the twelve Apostles. Iraq's Assyrian Christian communities are among the oldest in the world. The indigenous Assyrians adopted Christianity in the first century AD and Assyria became the centre of Eastern Rite Christianity from the 1st century AD until the Middle Ages. In the early centuries after the Islamic conquest, Christian scholars and doctors played an influential role in Iraq, however, from the late 13th century until the early 16th century, Christians suffered persecution and some massacres. In 1932, the Iraqi military carried out large-scale massacres against the Assyrians (Simele massacre).
Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ or i/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.
Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.
Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.
Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.