The Syriac Orthodox Church, sometimes referred to as the Jacobite Church after the 6th century Monophysite Bishop Jacob Baradeus, traces its history to St. Peter’s establishment of his Holy See in Antioch, the capitol of the Roman province of Syria. The Church is presided over by the Patriarch of Antioch, located in Damascus. The majority of the community of Syriac Orthodox Christians exists today in Kerala, India, as an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church. The Syriac Orthodox Church maintains two major seminaries, one in Syria and one in India. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, is the liturgical language.
During the Armenian Genocide in 1915, members of the Syriac Orthodox Church inside Turkey were violently displaced. In recent years, Syriac Christians concentrated in northern Syria have found themselves caught between pro-Assad forces, rebel fighters, and Kurdish fighters; many have fled to neighboring Turkey and to the Syriac monasteries of Mardin and Midyat in Tur Abdin, a region in Turkey with historically high numbers of Syriac Orthodox Christians. Syriac authorities have discouraged emigration outside of the region, fearing that already dwindling numbers significantly weaken their connection to the Syriac homeland.
Sources
Betty J. Bailey and Martin J. Bailey, Who Are the Christians in the Middle East? (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2003).
Peter Day, "Syrian Orthodox Church," A Dictionary of Christian Denominations (London: Continuum, 2003), pp. 457-458.
Metropolitan A. Geevargis, "Universal Syriac Orthodox Church," The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, ed. David Patte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 914-915.
Suzanne Gusten. "Christians Squeezed Out by Violent Struggle in North Syria," The New York Times, February 13, 2013, accessed June 5, 2013.