The name of the village is derived from "dayra" and "abuna", and thus Dayrabun translates to "monastery of our Father".
History
Dayrabun and its church are attested in a manuscript commissioned in 1671. After the Assyrian genocide in the First World War, Assyrians from the villages of Mansoriyya, Umra, and Barahanji in the vicinity of Cizre in Turkey found refuge and settled at Dayrabun. In late July 1933, approximately 1200 armed Assyrians crossed over the riverTigris into Syria near the village, and two battalions of Iraqi infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and one section of artillery were stationed at Dayrabun to intercept them on their return to Iraq. On 4 August, the Assyrians were attacked by the Iraqi army on their return, and retaliated with an attack on the army camp at Dayrabun before fleeing to Syria, resulting in 34 Iraqi deaths and at least 100 Assyrian dead. The skirmish at Dayrabun became the catalyst of the Simele massacre, whereby c. 40 Assyrian villages were destroyed or looted by the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army aimed to destroy Dayrabun, but was spared after the intervention of the Chaldean Catholic PatriarchYousef VI Emmanuel II Thomas. The village was largely destroyed by fire in 1936, and was rebuilt in its current location in the early 1940s, at which time Assyrian refugees from Russia settled at Dayrabun. The population grew from 536 in the 1947 census, to 657 in the census of 1957. The village was mostly inhabited by Assyrians until their forced expulsion by the Iraqi government and replacement by Arabs and Yazidis in 1976 as part of its policy of Arabisation. The Arabs fled amidst the 1991 uprisings in Iraq, and Kurds settled in the village in their place. Attacks on Assyrians in urban centres spurred their return to Dayrabun in the 2000s. In 2006, the Kurdistan Regional Government encouraged Kurdish families to leave Dayrabun with the incentive of financial compensation, according to then KRG Minister of Human Rights Mohammed Ihsan. In early 2009, 466 displaced Assyrians, with 133 families, resided in Dayrabun. By 2011, the Hezel Foundation had constructed 150 houses and a hall, renovated the church, and developed the village's infrastructure.
