In the town, there are churches of Mar Khnana and Mar Gewargis.[5][4]
Etymology
The name of the town is derived from "deira" ("monastery/church" in Syriac) and "Luqa" ("Luke" in Syriac), and thus Deraluk translates to "monastery or church of Saint Luke".[4]
History
In 1920, Deraluk was settled by Assyrians of the Baz clan after their expulsion from the region of Hakkari in Turkey.[4] It was named after a ruined monastery of Saint Luke in the vicinity.[4] Prior to the Simele massacre in 1933, Deraluk was inhabited by 130 Assyrians, many of whom were forced to flee the violence and settled along the River Khabur in Syria.[4]
Deraluk was made a mujamma (collective town) by the Iraqi government in 1978 and settled by displaced Assyrians from Nerwa Rekan along the Iraq–Turkey border.[4] Fortry-five houses were constructed for the thirty households that came from Qārō, five households from Lower Nerwa, five households from Derigni, and five households from Wela.[4] In the following year, a church of Mar Khnana was constructed.[4]
On 5 December 2011, amidst the 2011 Duhok riots, alcohol shops were targeted by rioters and four were set alight and two others were ransacked.[8] In 2012, an estimated 525 Assyrians inhabited Deraluk.[9] Humanitarian aid was delivered to 72 displaced families from Mosul and the Nineveh Plains by the Assyrian Aid Society in January 2015.[10] As of 2021, 120 Assyrians with 45 families, all of whom are adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East, reside at Deraluk.[11]