Religious Nationalism: Malakha d'Mara d'Gulpane

19.75" x 27.5"
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

(small copy)
The village of Golpashan, in Urmiyah, Iran, was exclusively Assyrian prior to WWI. It came under attack by Kurdish and Turkish Muslims from 1914–1918. Girls and women were carried off. Men were killed.

Rebuilt in the 1920s, the village was pillaged again in WWII. Hardier families remained in the area holding fast to the millennia-long belief that Urmiyah was their home. Only a fraction of the early 20thC population stayed through the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the present.

The church of Mar Gevargiz, built in 1869, was restored in 2001 with the help of the existing community and the Diaspora.
Since then, strict enforcement of Shari’a law and severe religious nationalism has led to discrimination against Assyrians and other minorities, including Armenians, Zoroastrians and Bahais.

Excepts from “Immigration and Adjustment: Assyrian Family Records”