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The salyba, cross of the Syro-Iradi Catholic ChurchChurch of St. JanylIyık Janyl Chirköösü · Cathedral of the Archeparchy of Iyık Janyl · Syro-Iradi Catholic Church

St. Janyl, Mother of Irad

Icon of St. Janyl beside the White Rider
St. Janyl and the White Rider.

Janyl (Irad Enesi Janyl, Janyl the Mother of Irad) is honoured by our Church as the mother of the Iradi people. Tradition places her in the 11th century, though some chronicles put her a century later, in the time of the Qara Khitai.

The story is told in the vita copied in the 18th century and in the Epic of Janyl that our bards still sing. In a time of war and scattering, Janyl took refuge in a cave in the mountains. There Christ came to her as the White Rider, robed in white on a white horse, as Saint John saw him: “Behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11). He led her down to a spring, where she built the First Church, and from there she gathered the scattered clans under the star of Irad.

No one knows where the First Church stood. Some look to the old basilica at Shar-i-Kuhna, some to the cave chapel in Kara-Suu Canyon, some to the springs of the Chatkal. The Church has never ruled on it, and our veneration does not depend on it. Historians debate whether Janyl lived as the stories tell. The Church honours what she means: a people gathered by faith, and a road shown to the lost.

How she is shown

In our icons St. Janyl is a horsewoman, not a queen or a nun. She wears the white felt elechek of a married woman, holds a cross in one hand and the reins of a golden Akyel horse in the other. Often the White Rider goes before her, or the star of Irad shines above. All women named Janyl keep their name day on her feast.

Her feast

The Feast of St. Janyl (Janyl Mairamy) is kept on 24 August, with its vigil on the evening of the 23rd. It is the greatest pilgrimage of the year. See Visit and pilgrimage.

The salyba

The salyba: a white cross with three-pointed arms and a small ring at the centre, rising from a lotus, on crimson
The salyba, emblem of our Church since 1994.

The emblem of the Syro-Iradi Church is the salyba, from the Syriac word for cross. It is the cross of the medieval gravestones of the Chu valley and of Old Iyık Janyl: narrow at the centre, flowering at each end into three points, with a small ring where the arms meet and no figure upon it. Its foot rises from a five-petalled lotus.

The three points of each arm speak of the Holy Trinity. The ring is the empty tomb. The lotus is the purity of Christ, and the cross growing out of the flower is the Resurrection rising out of the world. In the villages they say the flower is the cloud on which the Rider will return, and call it Janyl’s flower. On the arms of the archeparchy the ring is replaced by the eight-pointed star of Irad.