Tesqopa ܬܠܐ ܙܩܝܦܐ تسقوبا | |
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  Tesqopa | |
| Coordinates:36°35′50.72″N43°6′13.40″E / 36.5974222°N 43.1037222°E /36.5974222; 43.1037222 | |
| Country |  Iraq |
| Governorate | Nineveh |
| District | Tel Kaif |
| Population (2020)[1] | |
• Total | 4,185 |
| Time zone | GMT +3 |
Tesqopa (Syriac:ܬܠܐ ܙܩܝܦܐ,Arabic:تسقوبا) orTel Skuf (Arabic:تللسقف), alsoTel Eskof orTall Asqaf[2] is a town in northernIraq located approximately 19miles (about 28kilometres) north ofMosul. The town is populated byAssyrians and they are members of theChaldean Catholic Church.[3]
The town was captured byISIS briefly in August 2014 but was recaptured by KurdishPeshmerga in August 2016.[4]
Many of the residents of the town returned with aid fromHungary,[5] while a large portion has migrated to Europe.[3]
The name of the town is originallyTilla Zqīpā (Classical Syriac:ܬܸܠܵܐ ܙܩܝܼܦܵܐ), meaning “The high hill,” which later developed intoTisqōpa (Syriac:ܬܸܣܩܘܿܦܵܐ), the name used today.
Tesqopa is not mentioned inThomas of Marga'sBook of Governors (c. 840) or any of the other early monastic histories of the Church of the East, and may well have been founded as late as the Seljuq period, perhaps in the eleventh century. It is first mentioned as a Christian village in a thirteenth-century poem by the Assyrian writerGiwargis Warda. This poem describes its sack by a raiding band of Mongols in November 1235 and the destruction of its church of MarYaʿqōḇ (Jacob/James) the Recluse.[6]
Tesqopa was subject to many attacks by the Mongols, the worst among them was the massacre of 1436 by theQara Qoyunlus underJahan Shah when they attacked the town, killing thousands of its Assyrian inhabitants and burning its crops and churches, ultimately forcing the rest of the inhabitants to flee to the mountains. In 1508 Tesqopa was attacked again this time by theSafavids underIsmail I, just as they attackedTel Keppe,Alqosh and the Monastery ofRabban Hormizd. Tesqopa was also attacked by the army ofNader Shah in 1743 during his march onMosul following hisdeclaration of war against theOttoman Empire.
The town received manyAssyrian Christian refugees fromBaghdad andMosul in the wake of thesectarian violence in the 2000s. On 23 April 2007 a car bomb that targeted the village resulted in more than 25 deaths, mostly civilianAssyrian Christians andYazidis. Later, the insurgent groupJamaat Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the bombing and uploaded a video of the operation.[7]
In early August 2014,Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants captured Tesqopa after heavy fighting. But on 17 August 2014 theKurdishPeshmerga retook Tesqopa.[4] After this, the localChristian Assyrians were then able to restore the crosses atop their vandalized churches.[8]
ISIL militants overran the town during dawn on 3 May 2016 however they were driven out of the town by Peshmerga fighters later in the day.[9] By 2017, several hundred families had returned to the town and the parish church was functioning again. The Hungarian government assisted in rebuilding the destroyed homes of 991 Christian families.[10]
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