{"id":35016,"date":"2020-03-11T08:32:49","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T08:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=35016"},"modified":"2020-03-11T08:32:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T08:32:49","slug":"iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/","title":{"rendered":"IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A Kindergarten which will care for 125 children of Batnaya, Iraq is underway as part of a massive programme devised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to help revive the most devastated of the 13 Christian towns\/villages in the Nineveh Plains. After two years of Islamist occupation, just one percent of its 997 Christian homes is still standing as the village was almost completely razed to the ground after being seized by ISIS.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The plan for Batnaya also involves restoring the Chaldean Catholic village\u2019s parish church of St Kyriakos, repairing the nearby Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, the parish hall, library and parish house (presbytery), as well as rebuilding the Dominican Convent of St Oraha.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Director of ACN\u2019s Projects in the Middle East, Father Andrzej Halemba described the programme as \u201ca new and courageous step forward to secure the future of Batnaya.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cEven if the situation is not very clear, we see the importance of a sign of hope. ACN is determined to help the Christians to stay. Our task is to stand by the people who would like to come back\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">More recently work got underway to repair houses, electricity, water and schools and last summer families finally started to return.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Within eight months, 300 people have come back and church leaders now think hundreds more will return after years of displacement in neighbouring towns and villages.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The extremists had smashed altars, decapitated statues and daubed blasphemous anti-Christian messages on the walls. Work on the church and chapel will involve replacement of windows, doors and roof tiles, redecoration throughout and removal of ISIS graffiti such as \u201cSlaves of the Cross, we will kill you all. This is Islamic territory. You do not belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For many Christians, returning has meant overcoming memories of Daesh daubing homes with \u2018n\u2019 for \u2018Nazarene\u2019 (Christian) and demands to pay <em>jizya <\/em>Islamic tax, convert to Islam or face execution by the sword.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The resettlement of Batnaya is key for the recovery of the Christian presence in the Nineveh Plains.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Kindergarten which will care for 125 children of Batnaya, Iraq is underway as part of a massive programme devised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to help revive the most devastated of the 13 Christian towns\/villages in the Nineveh Plains. After two years of Islamist occupation, just one percent of its 997&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Kindergarten which will care for 125 children of Batnaya, Iraq is underway as part of a massive programme devised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to help revive the most devastated of the 13 Christian towns\/villages in the Nineveh Plains. After two years of Islamist occupation, just one percent of its 997...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ACN Malta Media\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ACN Malta Media\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/\",\"name\":\"IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#\/schema\/person\/3c01ab68e03f1b76347f9f6ac439a9d2\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1700,\"caption\":\"Trip to Iraq 2016 December 19 destroyed houses in Batnaya (view fron the roof of the Mar Quryaqus (Qeryaqos) church in Batnaya Batnaya is an Assyrian town in northern Iraq located 14 miles north of Mosul and around 3 miles north of Tel Keppe. All of its citizens fled to Iraqi Kurdistan after the ISIS invasion on August 6, 2014. On October 20, 2016, Peshmerga and Assyrian forces drove ISIS out and occupied the town. [2] Etymology The name Batnaya is of Syriac origin derived from either \\\"Beth Tnyay\\\" meaning \\\"The House of Mud\\\" or \\\"Beth Tnaya\\\" meaning \\\"The House of Assiduity.\\\" History Batnaya used to be called \\\"Beth Madaye\\\" meaning the \\\"House of the Medes\\\" where it's believed that a group of the Medes who followed the Assyrian monk Oraham (Abraham) settled there around the seventh century. It's also believed that Christianity reached Batnaya around that time. Batnaya was attacked by the army of Nader Shah in 1743 who destroyed the village extensively and is believed to have killed half of its inhabitants. In the past Batnaya used to be famous for making matting from the reeds its people used to cultivate in the valley of al-Khoser river. Currently, some of its inhabitants are cultivating different kinds of crops while others are involved in non-agricultural trades. In 1944 the Mar Qeryaqos Church was built on the ruins of a monastery by the same name believed to have been built early 15th century. A second but smaller church Mart Maryam was built in 1966, while the church of Mar Gewargis was mentioned in an inscription dating 1745. In Batnaya are several inscriptions, one dating to 1545 by Darweesh bin Yohanan from the village of Aqreen is entitled \\\"Prayers for the Dead\\\", another one is a complete bible inscribed in Syriac by the priest Ataya bin Faraj bin Marqos of Alqosh dating 1586. As with all the other currently chaldean villages that belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church, Batnaya's chaldean used to follow the Church of the East until the sixteenth century, when the efforts of the Catholic Church came to fruition and the Church of the East was divided. However, as is the case with all the other villages of the Nineveh Plains, Catholicism did not gain ground till around mid 18th century. Population During the 17th and 19th centuries, the town had about 900 people; in 1995, the town grew to about 3,000 people. Prior to the emergence of ISIS, it exceeded over 6,000 people. All the people in the town are chaldean and belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Modern day Batnaya In 2007, because of the growth of the town, Sargis Aghajan built 25 new model houses near the Mar Oraha Monastery, which is beside the town. The Provision of municipal services to the village and monastery through the supply of two tractors for harvest &amp; agriculture, and a dumper to collect garbage as well as employment of labourers to clean the access roads in the village. 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After two years of Islamist occupation, just one percent of its 997...","og_url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/","og_site_name":"Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)","article_published_time":"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":1700,"url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"ACN Malta Media","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"ACN Malta Media","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/","url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/","name":"IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00","dateModified":"2020-03-11T08:32:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#\/schema\/person\/3c01ab68e03f1b76347f9f6ac439a9d2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Batnaya-scaled.jpg","width":2560,"height":1700,"caption":"Trip to Iraq 2016 December 19 destroyed houses in Batnaya (view fron the roof of the Mar Quryaqus (Qeryaqos) church in Batnaya Batnaya is an Assyrian town in northern Iraq located 14 miles north of Mosul and around 3 miles north of Tel Keppe. All of its citizens fled to Iraqi Kurdistan after the ISIS invasion on August 6, 2014. On October 20, 2016, Peshmerga and Assyrian forces drove ISIS out and occupied the town. [2] Etymology The name Batnaya is of Syriac origin derived from either \"Beth Tnyay\" meaning \"The House of Mud\" or \"Beth Tnaya\" meaning \"The House of Assiduity.\" History Batnaya used to be called \"Beth Madaye\" meaning the \"House of the Medes\" where it's believed that a group of the Medes who followed the Assyrian monk Oraham (Abraham) settled there around the seventh century. It's also believed that Christianity reached Batnaya around that time. Batnaya was attacked by the army of Nader Shah in 1743 who destroyed the village extensively and is believed to have killed half of its inhabitants. In the past Batnaya used to be famous for making matting from the reeds its people used to cultivate in the valley of al-Khoser river. Currently, some of its inhabitants are cultivating different kinds of crops while others are involved in non-agricultural trades. In 1944 the Mar Qeryaqos Church was built on the ruins of a monastery by the same name believed to have been built early 15th century. A second but smaller church Mart Maryam was built in 1966, while the church of Mar Gewargis was mentioned in an inscription dating 1745. In Batnaya are several inscriptions, one dating to 1545 by Darweesh bin Yohanan from the village of Aqreen is entitled \"Prayers for the Dead\", another one is a complete bible inscribed in Syriac by the priest Ataya bin Faraj bin Marqos of Alqosh dating 1586. As with all the other currently chaldean villages that belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church, Batnaya's chaldean used to follow the Church of the East until the sixteenth century, when the efforts of the Catholic Church came to fruition and the Church of the East was divided. However, as is the case with all the other villages of the Nineveh Plains, Catholicism did not gain ground till around mid 18th century. Population During the 17th and 19th centuries, the town had about 900 people; in 1995, the town grew to about 3,000 people. Prior to the emergence of ISIS, it exceeded over 6,000 people. All the people in the town are chaldean and belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Modern day Batnaya In 2007, because of the growth of the town, Sargis Aghajan built 25 new model houses near the Mar Oraha Monastery, which is beside the town. The Provision of municipal services to the village and monastery through the supply of two tractors for harvest &amp; agriculture, and a dumper to collect garbage as well as employment of labourers to clean the access roads in the village. The village is under full control of \"Peshmerga\"."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2020\/03\/11\/iraq-acn-begins-reviving-most-devastated-christian-village\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"IRAQ: ACN Begins reviving most devastated Christian Village"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#website","url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/","name":"Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)","description":"Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#\/schema\/person\/3c01ab68e03f1b76347f9f6ac439a9d2","name":"ACN Malta Media","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/93fb625be2ad6b7f825159f4ef11b098?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/93fb625be2ad6b7f825159f4ef11b098?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"ACN Malta Media"},"url":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/author\/admin2\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35018,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35016\/revisions\/35018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}