Ba'utha d-Ninwaye — the three days of Nineveh.
Three days of strict fasting in the weeks before Lent, kept in memory of the city that repented at Jonah's preaching — the city whose ruins are across the river from Mosul. The Book of Jonah is read through, and in many families nothing is eaten before evening. Every East Syriac church keeps it: Chaldean, Assyrian, Ancient, Syro-Malabar.
The Rogation of the Ninevites falls three weeks before Lent and is the most widely kept fast in the East Syriac world, observed even by people who keep little else. Nineveh is not an abstraction here — the mound of Kuyunjik and the walls of the ancient city sit inside modern Mosul, and the tomb traditionally identified as Jonah's stood there until Islamic State destroyed it in July 2014. The fast is strict: many families take nothing until sunset for three days. It ends with a feast, and in Iraqi Christian households the dishes are fixed by custom.
The same ground, other faiths
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