On Sunday 1 September 2024, the Director General of Syriac Culture and Arts, Kaldo Ramzi Oghanna, announced that next Thursday, September 5, will witness the launch of the First Athra Syriac Symposium, which the General Directorate intends to hold with the Yonan Hozaya Centre for Research and Future Studies, in Ankawa District in the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Erbil.
Oghanna explained that, “the Symposium will discuss research dealing with Syriac folklore, Syriac visual arts and crafts, Syriac music and song, Syriac theater and theatrical arts and cinema, as well as the life of Syriac villages, Syriac media and how to develop its performance,” noting, “the participation of more than 200 researchers, academics and interested parties in the Symposium’s sessions and discussion panels, which will witness the discussion of 50 research papers chosen by the scientific committee from among more than 100 research papers submitted to participate in the Symposium.”
Oghanna explained that, “this Symposium, which is held under the patronage of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Prime Minister, His Excellency Masrour Barzani, is the first international conference of its kind, witnessing wide participation from more than 40 academics and researchers affiliated with more than 25 prestigious international universities in 15 countries around the world, most notably Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, in addition to a number of other participating researchers and academics from various Iraqi universities.”
Oghanna added that, “the aim of holding the Symposium is to emphasise that Syriac is not just a liturgical language for a marginalised religious minority in the Middle East, but rather as the cultural language of an indigenous people in the modern era,” indicating that, “the participants will discuss how the Syriac language and culture have been able to survive and communicate throughout these times despite the many challenges facing its continued existence.”
It is worth noting that the First Athra Syriac Symposium, which will be held from 5 to 8 September under the slogan: “Syriac as a Living Culture… Despite Challenges to its Existence,” will open at Saad Abdullah Conference Hall in Erbil. After that, the Symposium will hold its dialogue sessions in the Catholic University in Erbil (CUE) Conference Hall, as well as the Patriarch Mar Joseph VI Audo Conference Hall at the Martyr Gabriel Danbo Monastery in Ankawa, Erbil. Its activities will include visits to the Cultural Center for the Preservation of Syriac Manuscripts (“Scriptorium Syriacum”), the Syriac Heritage Museum, and the Digital Documentation Center for Eastern Manuscripts (CNMO).