DISCOVERY OF TWO NEW CHURCHES IN THE NORTH OF IRAQ: A CHURCH WITH A BEMA AND A MARTYRION

he present paper discusses two important Christian sites located in northern Iraq that attracted little attention, if any: Qala Shila and Marbena. In 2015-2016, new topographical surveys were conducted by Dr. Cinzia Pappi (Innsbruck University)1 in the region of Koisinjaq/Koya to the southwest of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, including two mounds bearing the same name: Qala Shila for Qla‘at Shīlā, “Fortress of Shīlā.” More than four decades earlier, the northern mound was visited by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities, probably for the purpose of writing the voluminous and very useful Atlas of archaeological Sites in Iraq, published in Baghdad in 1976.2 While the Atlas identified the site as Kassite and Assyrian, the 2015-2016 surveys “revealed a much wider range of materials from the Chalcolithic to the Sassanian and Early Islamic Period.” This late period is corroborated not only by the architectural remains of the site but also by the name Shīlā, which sounds very much like the Syriac homonym Sh’īlā “requested (from God),” usually spelled as Shīlā. As for Marbena, another spelling of Mār Behnām, it is a local martyrion located near the town of Topzāwā, some 32 km northwest of Koisinjaq. Its structure looks at first sight unusual, but the fact that the site is far away from any Roman and Byzantine architectural influence shows that this is a typical martyrion in Mesopotamia.