Tell Nasri

History & community

Tell Nasri belongs to the modern Assyrian settlement network on the Syrian Khabur. That network developed through refugee resettlement in the 1930s, rather than the movement of an ancient village unchanged into the modern period. The regional history provides context; it does not establish an exact founding date for every house or church in Tell Nasri.

The Secretary-General's May 2015 report on the implementation of Security Council humanitarian resolutions records the destruction of the Virgin Mary church at Tell Nasri on 5 April. It attributes responsibility according to the information available to the report. The church's destruction is therefore documented as a dated wartime event, while the report should not be treated as a survey of the building's entire earlier architectural history.

A resident's account of leaving

Photographer and interviewer Marieke van der Velden records the experience of Wassim Mamo, who identifies Tell Nasri as his home. He recalls leaving during the February 2015 attacks and finding refuge through church networks in other towns. His testimony gives a personal sequence of movement that a short village entry in an institutional report cannot supply.

The two accounts should retain their different scales. A UN report records a damaged religious site and the wider emergency; an interview records one person's experience and memory. Neither establishes how many people live in Tell Nasri today. Preserving both kinds of evidence makes the village visible as a place of families and ordinary lives, alongside the story of destruction.

Language

Tell Nasri is part of the Khabur Assyrian community history. The cited historical and testimonial sources do not constitute a village-specific linguistic survey.

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