Chaldean

Chaldeans are Iraq's largest Christian community: Aramaic-speaking Christians of the Nineveh Plains and Kurdish mountains whose church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, has been united with Rome since the 16th century while keeping its ancient Syriac liturgy and its own patriarch in Baghdad. Their ancestral towns north of Mosul, such as Alqosh, the burial place of the prophet Nahum, and Tel Keppe, were emptied when the Islamic State overran the plain in 2014, and many families never returned. Today most live in Ankawa, the Christian quarter of Erbil, in Baghdad and in the villages of Duhok, while far more Chaldeans now live in Michigan than in any Iraqi city. In April 2026 the church chose a new patriarch, Paul III Nona, a son of Alqosh who was Archbishop of Mosul when the Islamic State took the city.

Lebanon's Chaldeans are Eastern Catholics of the East Syriac rite who belong to two layers: Lebanese Chaldean families whose grandparents fled south-eastern Turkey (Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt) and Iraq in 1915-1930s and who now speak mostly Arabic, and Iraqi Chaldean refugees who came after 2003 and in a large wave when the Islamic State took Mosul and the Nineveh Plain in 2014. The Chaldean eparchy of Beirut, founded in 1957 and one of Lebanon's 18 recognised religious communities, counted about 17,000 faithful in 2023. Iraqi families cluster in the cheaper rents of Sad el Bouchrieh and Dekwaneh, where the church runs refugee centres and a school, and the liturgy is still sung in Aramaic. Most refugees see Lebanon as a waiting room on the way to Australia, Canada or the United States.

Syria's Chaldeans are a small Catholic community of the East Syriac tradition, served by a single eparchy based at St Joseph's Cathedral in Aleppo. Some Aleppo families trace their presence in the city to the 16th century, others to Chaldeans who came from southeastern Turkey to the Jazira after the First World War, and Damascus received tens of thousands of Iraqi Chaldean refugees after 2003. Most speak Arabic in daily life and keep Syriac in the liturgy of Addai and Mari. War and emigration have cut the community from about 30,000 in 2012 to roughly 5,000, cared for by six priests across eleven communities.

Chaldeans in Jordan are Iraqi Catholics of the ancient East Syriac rite who fled Baghdad after 2003 and Mosul and the Nineveh Plains when the Islamic State drove out every Christian in 2014. They are the largest part of Jordan's Iraqi Christian community and worship at their own small church, Our Lady of Peace in central Amman, whose priest serves as the Chaldean patriarch's vicar for Jordan; in 2022 the patriarch laid the foundation stone of St Thomas, the first church built for Chaldeans in the country. Most speak Baghdadi Arabic and families from the northern villages still speak Neo-Aramaic at home; they keep the three-day Ninevite fast and bake kleicha date pastries for feasts. Barred from legal work, most families live on savings, remittances and church aid in Jabal al-Hussein, Marka and Fuheis while they wait, often for years, for resettlement in Australia, Canada or the United States, and their number has fallen from over 10,000 to roughly 2,500 to 3,000.

Chaldeans in Türkiye are Catholic Christians of the ancient East Syriac rite, made up of two communities: a few hundred descendants of the Chaldeans of Diyarbakır, Mardin and the mountain villages of Şırnak and Hakkari, and Iraqi Chaldeans who fled through Türkiye after 2003 and 2014 and wait in Istanbul for resettlement in the West. Diyarbakır was the first seat of the Chaldean patriarchs, and its seventeenth-century church of Mar Petyun, restored after fighting in the old city, received its first resident archbishop in more than a century in 2023. Most Turkish Chaldeans left the south-east between the 1970s and 1990s for Istanbul, Belgium and France, and nine in ten of those in Istanbul no longer speak their Neo-Aramaic language. Diaspora families still return to villages near Mount Cudi for pilgrimage masses in their old churches.