Thabit Mikhail (b.1963)

Thabit Mikhael is an Assyrian sculptor and painter from Qaraqosh, also known as Bakhdida, in northern Iraq. He graduated as an artist from Baghdad University, and was producing sculptures for local churches that had been attacked by terrorists even before ISIS targeted his community in 2014. The Assyrians have some of the most ancient cultural roots in the region, and Thabit explains that he fell in love with art because of his historic surroundings: “The main reasons I wanted to be an artist were the circumstances around us. There are Assyrian artefacts everywhere in Nineveh, there are statues and sculptures all around us.”

At the end of June 2014, after ISIS had captured nearby Mosul, there was a mortar attack on the town, serving as an early warning to the Assyrian community that they might be forced to flee their homes. Thabit describes a time of great fear and anguish in the time between that initial attack and the arrival of ISIS in his hometown. Eventually around 50 of the ca. 40,000 population of Bakhdida and a neighbouring town stayed behind, their fates unknown. Thabit says that many families and old people to escape: “Fortunately we could flee and the disaster was not as bad as what happened to the Yazidis in Sinjar.”

Thabit was able to flee to Ankawa, the predominantly Christian suburb of Erbil. Months after Bakhdida was liberated in October 2016, he returned to the town and participated in a project to clean ISIS graffiti from the walls and replace it with Assyrian language and hopeful, beautiful artworks. Thabit’s own artworks are closely linked with Assyrian identity. His painting A Girl from Nineveh depicts a young woman in the traditional clothes of the Bakhdida community with the face of Lamassu, the protective deity of the Assyrians, in the background. The work now bears the scars of ISIS desecration, as images of women’s faces in particular were targeted, and indeed all the statues in Thabit’s house were destroyed. Islamic State adhered to the Islamic tradition of aniconism - the avoidance of images of sentient beings. Though there is no explicit reference in the Qur’an that forbids the representation of living forms, the practice stems from the group’s strict prohibition of idolatry.

Syriac Letters celebrates Assyrian identity and the Syriac alphabet, as Thabit proudly explains: “This language is taken from the first alphabet in the world, the same root created the first language in the world. My ancestors created cuneiform, then the Akkadian language, until we reached the alphabet that is created in this language.” After fleeing his home, Thabit produced The Destruction of ISIS, a powerful and emblematic image of an ISIS banner torn from its fastenings.

Thabit says that the most important step for local authorities to take now is to counter the radicalism of the various factions surrounding his community, and to stop designating the Nineveh plains as disputed areas. He also pleads for support for the Assyrian diaspora, “for our people all around the world to return to our homeland.” He calls on governments around the world to help the Assyrian people to strengthen their community and to safeguard their very existence.