History

Church of Saint George in the Syriac district (al-Surian) of Aleppo, of the Syrian Orthodox Diocese of Antiochena, of Aleppo.

After the “Sayfo-Spada” genocide in 1924, the Syrian people of Edessa, Turkey moved to the city of Aleppo, Syria. In 1932 the people built the church dedicated to St. George in the image of the church of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Edessa.

The Syrian people left all their possessions in Turkey, taking with them 400 Syriac-language manuscripts, sacred vessels and a chandelier donated by Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Their audacity prompted the Edessian people to carry the bell of their mother church, as a blessing and remembrance.

The Syrian families that arrived in Aleppo numbered about 1,600 families, of which about 400 families still remain in Syria today, while the rest fled due to the recent war and for other socio-economic reasons.

In 1999, the archbishop of Aleppo, Mor Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim, (kidnapped in 2013), received a replica of the Mandill of Christ (Holy Face) found in Genoa from Pope John Paul II. According to tradition, it was kept in Edessa for more than ten centuries. And it would be the oldest portrait of Jesus, linked to the story of King Abgar in the first century A.D., who, having known the miraculous gifts of the Messiah, sent him a letter inviting him to come and cure him of leprosy. Jesus, unable to go in person, replied by sending a handkerchief on which he had wiped his face from the sweat, leaving his features imprinted on it. Following the healing of King Abgar, he converted to Christianity.

From the YouTube channel George Daliapo