Janyl, Mother of Irad

Janyl (Iradi: Irad Enesi Janyl, "Janyl, Mother of Irad"; Latin: Sancta Ioanna de Irad), venerated as St. Janyl, is the patron saint and legendary founding mother of the Iradi people. According to the tradition of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, she received a vision of Jesus in the form of the White Rider. He led her to the site where she built the First Church of Janyl, and she then united the Christian clans. Her feast on August 24 is the most important festival of the Iradi church. Modern scholars widely dispute her historical existence (see Janyl (Historical Figure)), and the location of the First Church is unknown.^[1]

Hagiography

The fullest written account of Janyl's life is an eighteenth-century vita compiled at Iyık Janyl after the foundation of the Church of St. Janyl in 1727. Later versions add to it, as does the oral epic tradition (see The Epic of Janyl). Church tradition places her in the eleventh century; some chronicles associate her with the period of Qara Khitai rule in the twelfth.^[1]

In the standard account, Janyl was the daughter of a Christian chieftain of Kerait descent. When war between the clans and persecution threatened her people, she withdrew to a cave in the Talas Alatau to pray. There Christ appeared to her as the White Rider, a horseman in white on a shining horse. He told her to gather the scattered Christian clans and lead them to a spring in the mountains, where she was to build a church. In a widespread variant he leads her through the night by the light of Polaris, the star the Iradis call Irad. This version connects her story with the legend of the White Rider and with the star on the national flag.^[2]

Janyl gathered the clans and built the First Church of Janyl at the spring. She then bound the clans to a covenant. Church tradition credits this covenant with several later Iradi customs:

the reverence for horses and the refusal to eat horsemeat;
the blessing of the herds;
the keeping of the East Syriac liturgy.

The tradition does not record her death or burial place, and no tomb has ever been identified.^[1]

Interpretation

Many ethnographers read the legend as a memory of how the Iradi people came to be. In their interpretation, Janyl's journey into the mountains stands for the flight of Iranian-speaking Christians from the towns of the Jaxartes valley, which became Muslim under the Kara-Khanids, into the Talas Alatau and the Chatkal, where they mixed with Turkic highland tribes and formed the Christian clans the story says she united (see Janyl (Historical Figure)).^[4]

The First Church of Janyl

The location of the First Church is unknown. Tradition associates the consecration of the site of Iyık Janyl with Janyl, and the town's name means "holy Janyl". Several places have been proposed as the site of the original church:

the basilica excavated at the Ruins of Old Iyık Janyl (Shar-i-Kuhna);
a cave chapel at about 1,990 meters in the Kara-Suu Canyon;
several springs in the Chatkal range that are visited by pilgrims.

The church has made no official determination.^[3]

Veneration

Little is known of Janyl's cult before the eighteenth century. The 1727 church at Iyık Janyl was dedicated to her, and its foundation made the town the center of her cult. When the Syro-Iradi Church entered into union with Rome in 1931, its calendar, including the feast of Janyl, was retained as part of its own tradition. Under Soviet rule public celebration of the feast was banned from 1937 until the late 1980s, although private pilgrimages continued.^[1]

The Feast of St. Janyl on August 24 draws large numbers of pilgrims to Iyık Janyl, many of them on horseback. It includes:

the liturgy at the cathedral;
the blessing of the herds on the esplanade;
the distribution of blessed kümöch bread;
processions, followed by horse races and feasting.

Janyl is regarded as the patron of Irad, of riders and herders, and of mothers.^[3]

Iconography

Iradi icons show Janyl as a horsewoman rather than as a nun or queen. She wears a white felt headdress (elechek) and rides a golden Akyel horse, holding a cross in one hand and the reins in the other. In some images the White Rider rides before her, or Polaris shines above her. Her icon hangs in churches, public buildings and family homes in both the ISEZ and the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Statues of her stand in Central Square in Talas and on the cathedral esplanade in Iyık Janyl.^[3]

As a national symbol

Beyond the church, Janyl is a national symbol of Irad, invoked by politicians of all factions and used in civic ceremony, school textbooks and commercial branding. The monastic Order of St. Janyl the Hermit and the church's Order of St. Janyl, an honor for service to the church and culture, both take her name.^[2]

References

^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).
^ Central Asian Folklore Society (2021). Epic Cycles and Horseback Chants of the Northern Valleys. Talas State University Press, Talas, pp. 135–158.
^ Talas State University Press (2023). Sacred Toponymy and Ecclesiastical Monasteries of Iyık Janyl, pp. 78–95.
^ Talas State University Press (2019). From the Jaxartes to the Mountains: Ethnogenesis of the Iradis. Department of Ethnography, Talas.