Mar Qardagh the Assyrian (1)

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The revival of the Syrian martyr cult of Mar Qardagh at Alqoš after the First World War was probably connected with the continuing tendency in the Church of the East and among Syrian Christians generally to bolster the identity of a small ethnic group by reference to the past glories of the Assyrian Empire. Already in the fourteenth century Rabban Saliba of Hah, the Syrian Orthodox compiler of the calendar of Tur ˁAbdin, highlighted this ‘nationalistic’ association in his brief entry: ‘Mar Qardagh of the genso/gensā of Sennacherib, who was crowned on a Friday.’ The Syriac word gensā can mean family or nation; this recalls §3 of the martyr legend, where we read: ‘Now holy Mar Qardagh was from a great people (gensā) from the stock of the kingdom of the Assyrians (ˀtōrāyē). His father was descended from the renowned lineage of the house of Nimrod, and his mother from the renowned lineage of the house of Sennacherib.’

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
A. N. Palmer in Hugoye 2007/1

Amar Annus

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