Najaf hosts one of Iraq's oldest Christian cemeteries

Shafaq News- Najaf

Umm Khashm, one of Iraq's largest historic Christian cemeteries, sits in the Al-Hira area south of Najaf, a city better known for Wadi al-Salam, where millions of Muslims, mostly Shiites from Iraq and abroad, are buried.

Dating back more than 1,800 years, the cemetery bears witness to the Christian communities that lived in the area before Islam. A Shafaq News camera crew captured images of its vast grounds.

Al-Hira was the capital of the Lakhmids, a pre-Islamic Arab dynasty associated with a flourishing Christian presence and numerous churches and monasteries in the region. In 2025, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, head of Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Church, urged the government to stop allocating historic Christian cemeteries around Najaf, including Umm Khashm, for private investment, calling them sacred sites that must be protected.