Koy Sanjaq Surat

The Koy Sanjaq Christians are a small community of Neo-Aramaic-speaking Chaldean Catholics in and around the Kurdish town of Koy Sanjaq (Koya, Koysinjaq) in Erbil governorate, chiefly in its Harmota quarter and the nearby village of Armota. Their dialect, Koy Sanjaq Surat, is a Northeastern Neo-Aramaic variety of the Trans-Zab area with heavy Kurdish influence, distinct both from the Jewish Neo-Aramaic once spoken by Koya's Jews and from the Sureth of the Nineveh Plains. A Chaldean Catholic congregation is recorded in the town from the 19th century (about 200 people in 1913). They call themselves Suraye (Christians) and Chaldeans or Assyrians, and outsiders know them simply as the Christians of Koya. Ethnologue counted about 800 speakers in 1995.

Koya's Christians live as a tight-knit minority among Sorani-speaking Kurds, speaking their own Aramaic dialect at home, Kurdish in public and Arabic with other Iraqi Christians. Armota was entirely Christian until the 1930s and still has only about 20 Muslim families, and community life centres on the Maryam Pakiza church of Harmota, built in 1868, and the new Virgin Mary church at Armota. Families keep Chaldean feasts, the Ninevite fast and village celebrations shared with Kurdish neighbours, and many young people have moved to Ankawa or abroad.

The community belongs to the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil and follows the East Syriac liturgy in Syriac, Sureth and Arabic. Its churches have been overcrowded since displaced Christians from elsewhere settled in Koya after 2014, so priests hold double services. Faith is closely bound to communal identity and the parish is the main community institution.

No Scripture, audio recordings or film exist in Koy Sanjaq Surat, but speakers are fluent in Kurdish and Arabic and many understand the Sureth of Erbil and the Nineveh Plains, so they use Syriac, Arabic and Sureth Bibles and liturgy. As Chaldean Catholics they are an existing Christian community rather than an unreached people.