St George’s Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, Hasakah

St George’s Cathedral — Mar Jirjis in Arabic — is the seat of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of the Jazira and the Euphrates. It was finished in 1943 and stands in the middle of Hasakah’s old church quarter, 500 metres north of the Khabur river. Few buildings show more clearly how the town took shape in the 20th century. It is not a monument but a working church, and it fills on Sundays.

Why Hasakah has a cathedral

Before the First World War Hasakah was a place of little account. Then Armenian and Syriac refugees arrived, and for a time most of the town was Christian. The Syriac Orthodox community grew large enough for an archdiocese to be founded in 1933. The cathedral followed ten years later, in 1943.

Getting there

The cathedral sits in the quarter where the town’s churches cluster within walking distance of each other. It is 300 metres north of Souq al-Hal, the vegetable market. The Syriac Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption is 200 metres to the west, the Armenian Catholic church 200 metres to the north-west and the Chaldean Catholic church 400 metres to the north. From the market it is a few minutes on foot.

What to see

The plan is a Latin cross. A dome rises over the crossing, and its drum is pierced by 12 round-arched windows. Two narrower arms extend the west and east ends, and the east arm carries two bell towers. The roofs are pointed barrel vaults.

The cathedral is more than a place of worship: it houses a centre for religious education and the Mar Ephrem Syriac Choir.

The community today

Before the civil war the archdiocese counted between 50 and 60 thousand faithful. Half of them lived in Qamishli and about 15 thousand in Hasakah. Otmar Oehring of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation estimates that the number of Syriac Orthodox in Hasakah fell from 17500 to 8000 between 2011 and 2019.

Metropolitan Mar Eustathios Matta Roham, in office since 1988, left for Vienna during the war years. Since August 2017 the metropolitan has been Mar Maurice Yakub Amsih.

Don’t miss

The choir. Its namesake, Ephrem, was a 4th-century church father who wrote hymns in Syriac, and the liturgy here is still chanted in Syriac, a branch of Aramaic. Service and choir times are not published anywhere reliable, so ask at the church before a Sunday visit.