Armota
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Armota (Assyrian: ܐܪܡܘܬܐ; Kurdish: Harmota) is an Assyrian village that is outside the town of Koy Sinjaq in the Iraqi governorate of Arbil. It is a two-hour drive from Sulaimaniyah. The name Armota comes from the Syriac language, "Ar" meaning "land" and "mota" meaning "death"; hence "the land of death". The name origin comes from two theories; one being that a plague took over the village and killed all of its inhabitants. The other theory is that it was named after a fierce battle between the Assyrian Christians and the Islamic empire, that left the village covered in blood (both of the events occurring in the 7th century.)
The village is a remote farming hamlet within a rural portion of northern Iraq that was declared a Kurdish-controlled zone after the Persian Gulf War.
A 4th century monastery sits on a hillside overlooking Armota. It has been built and destroyed many times. Most recently, Saddam Hussein's soldiers used dynamite to blow it up in 1988. The monastery's destruction was part of a broad scorched-earth campaign targeting non-Arabs, dubbed the Anfal campaign.
