Syro-Iradi Catholic Church

The Syro-Iradi Catholic Church (Iradi: Iradi Sir-Katolik Chirköösü; Latin: Ecclesia Catholica Syro-Iradiensis), often called simply the Iradi Church, is an Eastern Catholic particular church sui iuris in full communion with the Holy See. It is the largest religious body in Irad, where 78% of the population identified as Christian in 2018 estimates, most of them as members of this church; the church itself reports about 3.4 million faithful across the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) and the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR).^[1]

The church regards itself as the last surviving branch of the Church of the East's expansion among the Turkic peoples of the Qara Khitai realm, and tradition ascribes its foundation to the 11th-century figure Janyl. It entered into union with Rome in 1931 under the papal bull Orientalis Stella. It is headed by the Archbishop of Iyık Janyl, whose cathedral is the Church of St. Janyl. Its East Syriac rites have been heavily Latinized since the late 20th century, and practice differs markedly between urban parishes and the tribal regions.

Names

Iradi Christians call themselves Tarsa, in everyday speech Tarsoo (plural Tarsoolor). The word goes back to Middle Persian tarsāg, "one who fears God", which reached the Turkic peoples through Sogdian and appears as tarsa in Old Uyghur texts. Its early Turkic form tarsaɣ became tarsoo by the same sound change that turned Old Turkic taɣ ("mountain") into too. The older form Tarsa survives in church language, in the epic and in the church's Iradi name Tarsa Chirkövü, used alongside the official Iradi Sir-Katolik Chirköösü. Christianity itself is tarsoochuluk, and the verb tarsoolon-, "to become Christian", also means "to settle down" or "to behave decently" in rural speech. Hymns use the poetic name Janyldyktar, "Janyl's people".^[9]

Uzbek speakers in the Fergana Valley call Iradi Christians joniliklar ("Janyl's people"), and older Muslim clergy use the formal Jonil ahli. Tajik speakers use the literary Persian tarso, so Iradis hear their own name used by their neighbours as a learned word. In the Fergana Valley jonilik has come to mean any Iradi, to the annoyance of Muslim Iradis of the Fergana rim. The clipped form joni is an insult in the south but has become a friendly greeting among young Iradi Christians in the north.^[9] For harsher terms and the history of hostility toward the church, see Anti-Christian sentiment in Irad.

History

Origins and the Janyl tradition

In the 11th and 12th centuries, missionaries of the Church of the East converted Turkic pastoralists along the Silk Road, among them the Keraites and the Naimans, and East Syriac Christianity flourished under the religiously tolerant Qara Khitai.^[2] According to church tradition, the noblewoman Janyl, venerated as the "Mother of Irad", received a vision of Christ in the form of the White Rider, who led her to the site of the First Church of Janyl, and her covenant united the Christian clans. Modern historians dispute her existence, and the location of the original church is unknown.^[3]

Persecution and survival

Under the Chagatai khan Ali-Sultan (1339–1342) and during the campaigns of Timur later in the 14th century, the church's dioceses were destroyed. Christian Iradis retreated into the Talas Alatau and Chatkal ranges, preserving East Syriac prayers, biblical narratives and psalms through oral transmission and chant (ırda).^[2]

Kokand restoration

In 1727 Khan Abd al-Rahim Biy of Kokand, rewarding the service of Iradi Christian cavalry against the Dzungars, granted religious tolerance under the Treaty of Talas (1727) and paid for the Church of St. Janyl, built as a symbolic re-creation of the lost first church. The city of Iyık Janyl grew up around it. In the 19th century the missionary Joseph Wolff described the church to Western readers as evidence of the community's survival.^[4]

Union with Rome and Soviet repression

After the Russian Revolution, Bishop Mar Timotheos Alimbekov sought union with the Holy See. Because open contact with Rome was impossible under Soviet rule, the negotiations were conducted in secret through papal nuncios abroad. On September 14, 1931, Pope Pius XI issued the bull Orientalis Stella, receiving the Iradi church into full communion as a church sui iuris that kept its East Syriac liturgical tradition.^[5]

Soviet suspicion of the church's link with Rome, which officials tied to fears of fascist influence through the Catholic Church, fed the anti-religious campaigns of the 1930s. The churches of Iyık Janyl were closed, and senior clergy were arrested and executed in the 1937 purges.^[5] The church survived in secret for the rest of the Soviet period, with liturgies held in homes and in the mountain camps of the herding clans.

Revival since 1992

Churches reopened after 1992, when the territorial administration guaranteed freedom of religion. During the territorial period, contact with American Catholic chaplains and Roman institutions brought Western devotions into urban parishes, including statues of the Virgin Mary, the Rosary and Western clerical dress. Father Luka Ayyubov published a translation of the New Testament into Latin-script Iradi in 1994, and vernacular liturgical texts were approved in the following years. The Church of St. Janyl was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site during the territorial period on a US nomination.^[6]

Organization

The church has four eparchies. The Archeparchy of Iyık Janyl (see Archbishopric of Iyık Janyl) has metropolitan authority over suffragan eparchies in Talas, Nurzhan and the highland parishes of the Chatkal basin. The archbishop presides over the Syro-Iradi Council of Hierarchs, which proposes candidates for bishop for papal confirmation under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The current archbishop, Mar Ephrem, has served since 2012.^[1]

Diocesan clergy are trained at the St. Ephrem Major Seminary in Iyık Janyl, which teaches Classical Syriac, pastoral theology and Central Asian languages. Monastic life centers on the Order of St. Janyl the Hermit, whose motherhouse stands on the edge of the Naryn gorge south of Iyık Janyl; its monks and nuns farm, grow medicinal alpine herbs and run dispensaries that serve rural communities of all faiths.

Liturgy and practice

The church uses the East Syriac Liturgy of Addai and Mari, celebrated in Iradi with parts sung in Classical Syriac.^[7] Its liturgical vocabulary retains Sogdian and other Iranian roots, a legacy of the Sogdian-speaking communities among which the faith first spread. Distinctive features include:

Kümöch, an unleavened sacramental bread made from locally milled mountain wheat and stamped with a cross and the Star of Irad. Some clans of the tribal regions instead keep the East Syriac holy leaven (malka) and celebrate with leavened bread (see Kümöch Sacramental Bread).
Incense of arsha (mountain juniper, Juniperus semiglobosa), gathered by monastic novices in the ravines of the Talas Alatau and burned alongside or instead of frankincense.
Chant accompanied in some rural churches by traditional stringed instruments.

The main annual celebration is the Feast of St. Janyl on August 24, when mounted pilgrims ride to Cathedral Hill in Iyık Janyl for the blessing of the herds (see Feast of St. Janyl).

Urban and tribal practice

Practice differs sharply between town and country:

In Talas and Nurzhan, services are held in brick churches, with standardized Roman catechesis, Gregorian hymns and parish schools.
In the ATR, itinerant priests celebrate in felt yurts (ak-örgoe), bless horse herds and seasonal pastures, and lead open-air midnight liturgies. Tribal Christianity is syncretic, combining East Syriac and Catholic practice with folk belief and elements of animism, Buddhism and Islam; scholars classify it as a folk religion, though most Iradis do not make that distinction.

Church, state and other faiths

Since the Second Iradi Civil War, the church has taken part in civic mediation. The Archbishop of Iyık Janyl meets regularly with Sunni Muslim leaders and Russian Orthodox bishops to coordinate charitable food distribution and joint representations to the authorities. Relations with the Democratic Party of Irad administration are occasionally strained over school curricula and the taxation of church property, and the church cites guarantees of religious freedom dating from the territorial period in these disputes.^[6]

Manuscripts and heritage

The Cathedral Seminary Library of Iyık Janyl holds more than 600 manuscripts, including 11th-century Syriac Gospel lectionaries, Sogdian merchant correspondence and papal letters dating back to the 13th-century envoys of Pope Innocent IV. Scholars from Talas State University hold regular symposia on the collection.^[8]

References

^ Libreria Editrice Vaticana (2023). Annuario Pontificio. Vatican City.
^ Baumer, Christoph (2006). The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. I.B. Tauris, London.
^ Talas State University Press (2018). Janyl: History and Legend. Talas.
^ Talas State University Press (2009). The Treaty of Talas and the Church of St. Janyl, 1727. Talas.
^ Talas State University Press (2021). Orientalis Stella and the Soviet State: The Iradi Church, 1931–1941. Talas.
^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).
^ Vine, Aubrey R. (1937). The Nestorian Churches: A Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia. Independent Press, London.
^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana. Talas.
^ Talas State University Press (2014). Strata of the Iradi Lexicon: Kipchak, Sogdian and Uzbek Elements. Talas, pp. 211–229.