Exiled Dominican friar fights to preserve Iraqi Christian past

A Dominican friar, exiled from his friary in Mosul by the Islamic State last year, is working to preserve Christian manuscripts through digitisation to ensure the memory of Iraq’s Christian past survives.

Iraqi native, Fr Najeeb Michaeel, OP, founded the Centre for the Digitisation of Oriental Manuscripts in 1990 to foster the collection and recording of ancient manuscripts which he had started in the eighties.

He has collected some 750 Christian manuscripts in order to preserve them and to make them available for study by making digital copies.

The archives of the Dominican order in Iraq are a testimony to the Christian presence in Iraq, which stretches nearly 2,000 years in cities such as Mosul and Bakhdida, which are now controlled by Islamic State.

Fr Laurent Lemoine, OP, a colleague of Fr Michaeel said they are “trying to save these cultural artifacts because in northern Iraq it seems that everything is on the road to destruction: People of course, but also our cultural heritage. The artifacts were almost destroyed several times.

“Across the region, Christianity is in the process of being swept away. Mass has been celebrated in Mosul for 1,600 years. This year was the first time that there hasn’t been a Mass in all that time,” he said.