Tower and Town, May 2026

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Adamo: Chaldeans At The Fault Lines Of History

I grew up in a household in northern Iraq that was sympathetic to striving for a better future, and thanks to my Chaldean mother, Zakia Adamo, the "Tomorrow is Another Day" ethos was an integral part of my upbringing.

This ethos was an inheritance from the Adamo family and its Chaldean heritage. The Chaldeans are a significant group of Iraqi Christians. They were historically associated with Abraham's origins, "Ur of the Chaldeans", and they became Christians during the early centuries of the Christian faith.

The Chaldean Catholic Church emerged following the Schism of 1552 when a faction of the church of the East sought to restore communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

During the later era of the Ottoman Empire the Adamo family gained significant roles within the church. My grandfather, Mansour Adamo, was appointed Director of Finance for Northern Mesopotamia by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who presented him with a ceremonial sword and a medal. The accompanying photograph was taken around 1918 at the home of the Adamos in Mosul, Iraq, when the cousin of Mansour Adamo (seated next to Mansour) was visiting from the United States of America. My mother is shown standing at the centre of the back row.

The Ottoman Empire proved to be strikingly resilient, beating off major attacks at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia before finally being brought down in the general ruin of the Central Powers in 1918.

However, this didn't hamper the family of Mansour Adamo, whose children and then grandchildren moved on to take medicine, law, and education positions within the newly founded Kingdom of Iraq, and then the Republic of Iraq (1958).

Sadly, the recent convoluted conflicts in the region and rising existential threats have driven the descendants of Mansour Adamo and many other Iraqi Christians abroad. They are now part of significant diaspora communities in North America, Europe, and Australia.