fbpx
Wikipedia

Assyrian people

January 10, 2023

Assyrians[a] are an indigenous ethnic group native to Assyria, a geographical region in Western Asia.[Note 1] Modern Assyrians claim descent from the ancient counterparts, originating from the ancient indigenous Mesopotamians of Akkad and Sumer, who first developed the civilisation in northern Mesopotamia that would become Assyria in 2600 BCE.[51][52][53] Assyrians have been speaking dialects of Suret, a Semitic language of the Neo-Aramaic branch, since approximately 1000 BCE.[54][55] Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs,[Note 2] Chaldeans,[Note 3] or Arameans[Note 4] for religious, geographic and tribal identification.[60][61]

Assyrians
Sūrāyē / Suryoye / ʾĀṯōrāyē
Total population
2–5 million[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Regions with significant populations
Assyrian homeland:Numbers can vary
 Syria200,000–877,000 (pre-Syrian civil war)[7][8][9][10]
 Iraq142,000–200,000[11][12]
 Turkey25,000[13]
 Iran7,000–17,000[14]
Diaspora:Numbers can vary
 United States110,807–600,000[15][16][17][18][19]
 Sweden150,000[20]
 Germany70,000–100,000[21][22]
 Jordan30,000–150,000[23][24]
 Australia61,000 (2020 est.)[25]
 Lebanon50,000[26]
 Netherlands25,000–35,000[27]
 Canada19,685[28]
 France16,000[29]
 Russia14,000[30]
 Greece6,000[31]
 Armenia2,769–6,000[32][33]
 Austria2,500–5,000[34][35]
 United Kingdom3,000–4,000[36]
 Georgia3,299[37][38]
 Palestine1,500–5,000[39][40]
 Ukraine3,143[41]
 New Zealand1,497[42]
 Israel1,000[43]
 Denmark700[44]
 Kazakhstan350[45]
 Finland300[46]
Languages
Neo-Aramaic languages
(Suret, Turoyo),
Classical Syriac (liturgical), Akkadian (in antiquity), Sumerian (in antiquity)
Religion
Predominantly Syriac Christianity
Minority Protestantism, Judaism and Islam

Assyrians are almost exclusively Christian,[62] with most adhering to the East and West Syriac liturgical rites of Christianity.[63][50] The churches that constitute the East Syriac rite include the Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, whereas the churches of the West Syriac rite are the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church. Both rites use Classical Syriac as their liturgical language.

The ancestral indigenous lands that form the Assyrian homeland are those of ancient Mesopotamia, a region currently divided between modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria.[48] A majority of modern Assyrians have migrated to other regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia and the Caucasus. Emigration was triggered by tragic events such as the massacres in Hakkari, the massacres of Diyarbekır, the Assyrian genocide (concurrent with the Armenian and Greek genocides) during World War I by the Ottoman Empire and allied Kurdish tribes, the Simele massacre, the Iranian Revolution, Arab Nationalist Ba'athist policies in Iraq (between the years 1968–2003) and in Syria the take over by Islamic State of many parts in Syria and Iraq, particularly the Nineveh Plains between 2014–2017.[64][65]

Most recently, events such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by United States and its allies, and the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, have displaced much of the remaining Assyrian community from their homeland as a result of ethnic and religious persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists. Of the one million or more Iraqis reported by the United Nations to have fled Iraq since the occupation, nearly 40% were the indigenous Assyrian people, even though Assyrians accounted for only around 3% of the pre-war Iraqi demography.[66][67]

After the emergence of the Islamic State and the taking over of much of the Assyrian homeland by the terror group, another major wave of Assyrian displacement took place. The Islamic State was driven out from the Assyrian villages in the Khabour River Valley and the areas surrounding the city of Al-Hasakah in Syria by 2015, and from the Nineveh Plains in Iraq by 2017. In 2014, the Nineveh Plain Protection Units was formed and many Assyrians joined the force to defend themselves. The organization later became part of Iraqi Armed forces and played a key role in liberating areas previously held by the Islamic State during the War in Iraq.[68] In northern Syria, Assyrian groups have been taking part both politically and militarily in the Kurdish-dominated but multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (see Khabour Guards and Sutoro) and Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

History

Main article: History of the Assyrian people

Pre-Christian history

Main articles: Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Neo-Assyrian Empire
 
Part of the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, c. 645–635 BC

Assyria is the homeland of the Assyrian people; it is located in the ancient Near East. In prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria (and Subartu) was home to Neanderthals such as the remains of those which have been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria belonged to the Jarmo culture c. 7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the centre of the Hassuna culture, c. 6000 BC.

The history of Assyria begins with the formation of the city of Assur, perhaps as early as the 25th century BC.[69] During the early Bronze Age period, Sargon of Akkad united all the native Semitic-speaking peoples (including the Assyrians) and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC). The cities of Assur and Nineveh (modern-day Mosul), which was the oldest and largest city of the ancient Assyrian Empire,[70] together with a number of other towns and cities, existed as early as the 25th century BC, although they appear to have been Sumerian-ruled administrative centres at this time, rather than independent states. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) population.[71] An Assyrian identity distinct from other neighboring groups appears to have formed during the Old Assyrian period, in the 21st or 20th century BC.[72]

 
Map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Shalmaneser III (dark green) and Esarhaddon (light green)

In the traditions of the Assyrian Church of the East, they are descended from Abraham's grandson (Dedan son of Jokshan), progenitor of the ancient Assyrians.[73] However, there is no other historical basis for this assertion; the Hebrew Bible does not directly mention it, and there is no mention in Assyrian records (which date as far back as the 25th century BC). What is known is that Ashur-uballit I overthrew the Mitanni c. 1365 BC, and the Assyrians benefited from this development by taking control of the eastern portion of Mitanni territory, and later also annexing Hittite, Babylonian, Amorite and Hurrian territories.[74] The rise and rule of the Middle Assyrian Empire (14th to 10th century BC) spread Assyrian culture, people and identity across northern Mesopotamia.[75]

The Assyrian people, after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609 BC, were under the control of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and later, the Persian Empire, which consumed the entire Neo-Babylonian or "Chaldean" Empire in 539 BC. Assyrians became front line soldiers for the Persian Empire under Xerxes I, playing a major role in the Battle of Marathon under Darius I in 490 BC.[76] However Herodotus, whose Histories are the main source of information about that battle, makes no mention of Assyrians in connection with it.[77]

Despite the influx of foreign elements, the presence of Assyrians is confirmed by the worship of the god Ashur; references to the name survive into the 3rd century AD.[78] The Greeks, Parthians, and Romans had a rather low level of integration with the local population in Mesopotamia, which allowed their cultures to survive.[79] Semi-independent kingdoms influenced by Assyrian culture (Hatra, Adiabene, Osroene) and perhaps semi-autonomous Assyrian vassal states (Assur) sprung up in the east under Parthian rule, lasting until conquests by the Sasanian Empire in the region in the 3rd century AD.[80]

Language

Emerging in Sumer c. 3500 BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. Around 3000 BC, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller. The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian) and Hittite languages.[81]

The Kültepe texts, which were written in Old Assyrian, preserve the earliest known traces of the Hittite language, and the earliest attestation of any Indo-European language, dated to the 20th century BC. Most of the archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use of both cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. To date, over 20,000 cuneiform tablets have been recovered from the site.[82][83]

From 1700 BC and onward, the Sumerian language was preserved by the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians only as a liturgical and classical language for religious, artistic and scholarly purposes.[84]

The Akkadian language, with its main dialects of Assyrian and Babylonian, once the lingua franca of the Ancient Near East, began to decline during the Neo-Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, being marginalized by Old Aramaic during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. By the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia.

Early Christian period

 
Map of Asōristān (226–637 AD)
Further information: Syriac Christianity, History of Eastern Christianity, and Asōristān

From the 1st century BC, Assyria was the theatre of the protracted Roman–Persian Wars. Much of the region would become the Roman province of Assyria from 116 AD to 118 AD following the conquests of Trajan, but after a Parthian-inspired Assyrian rebellion, the new emperor Hadrian withdrew from the short-lived province Assyria and its neighboring provinces in 118 AD.[85] Following a successful campaign in 197–198, Severus converted the kingdom of Osroene, centred on Edessa, into a frontier Roman province.[86] Roman influence in the area came to an end under Jovian in 363, who abandoned the region after concluding a hasty peace agreement with the Sassanians.[87]

The Assyrians were Christianized in the first to third centuries in Roman Syria and Roman Assyria. The population of the Sasanian province of Asoristan was a mixed one, composed of Assyrians, Arameans in the far south and the western deserts, and Persians.[88] The Greek element in the cities, still strong during the Parthian Empire, ceased to be ethnically distinct in Sasanian times. The majority of the population were Eastern Aramaic speakers.

Along with the Arameans, Armenians, Greeks, and Nabataeans, the Assyrians were among the first people to convert to Christianity and spread Eastern Christianity to the Far East in spite of becoming, from the 8th century, a minority religion in their homeland following the Muslim conquest of Persia.

In 410, the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sasanian Empire,[89] organized the Christians within that empire into what became known as the Church of the East. Its head was declared to be the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, who in the acts of the council was referred to as the Grand or Major Metropolitan, and who soon afterward was called the Catholicos of the East. Later, the title of Patriarch was also used. Dioceses were organised into provinces, each of which was under the authority of a metropolitan bishop. Six such provinces were instituted in 410.

 
Mor Mattai Monastery (Dayro d-Mor Mattai) in, Bartella, Nineveh, Iraq. It is recognized as one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence and is famous for its magnificent library and considerable collection of Syriac Christian manuscripts[90]

Another council held in 424 declared that the Catholicos of the East was independent of "western" ecclesiastical authorities (those of the Roman Empire).

Soon afterwards, Christians in the Roman Empire were divided by their attitude regarding the Council of Ephesus (431), which condemned Nestorianism, and the Council of Chalcedon (451), which condemned Monophysitism. Those who for any reason refused to accept one or other of these councils were called Nestorians or Monophysites, while those who accepted both councils, held under the auspices of the Roman emperors, were called Melkites (derived from Syriac malkā, king),[91] meaning royalists. All three groups existed among the Syriac Christians, the East Syriacs being called Nestorians and the West Syriacs being divided between the Monophysites (today the Syriac Orthodox Church, also known as Jacobites, after Jacob Baradaeus) and those who accepted both councils (primarily today's Eastern Orthodox Church, which has adopted the Byzantine Rite in Greek, but also the Maronite Church, which kept its West Syriac Rite and was not as closely aligned with Constantinople). Roman/Byzantine and Persian spheres of influence divided Syriac-speaking Christians into two groups: those who adhered to the Miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church (the so-called Jacobite Church), or West Syrians, and those who adhered to the Church of the East (the so-called Nestorian Church). They developed distinct dialects, mainly based on the pronunciation and written symbolization of vowels, following the split.[92] With the rise of Syriac Christianity, eastern Aramaic enjoyed a renaissance as a classical language in the 2nd to 8th centuries, and varieties of that form of Aramaic (Neo-Aramaic languages) are still spoken by a few small groups of Jacobite and Nestorian Christians in the Middle East.[93]

Arab conquest

Further information: Fall of Babylon and Muslim conquest of Persia
 
Assyrian Mar Toma Church in Urmia, Iran.

The Assyrians initially experienced some periods of religious and cultural freedom interspersed with periods of severe religious and ethnic persecution after the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia. Assyrians contributed to Islamic civilizations during the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic. They also excelled in philosophy, science (Masawaiyh,[94] Eutychius of Alexandria, and Jabril ibn Bukhtishu[95]) and theology (such as Tatian, Bardaisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, and Thomas of Marga) and the personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrians, such as the long-serving Bukhtishu dynasty.[96] Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Assyrian Christian background.[97]

Indigenous Assyrians became second-class citizens (dhimmi) in a greater Arab Islamic state, and those who resisted Arabization and conversion to Islam were subject to severe religious, ethnic and cultural discrimination, and had certain restrictions imposed upon them.[98] Assyrians were excluded from specific duties and occupations reserved for Muslims, they did not enjoy the same political rights as Muslims, their word was not equal to that of a Muslim in legal and civil matters, as Christians they were subject to payment of a special tax (jizya), they were banned from spreading their religion further or building new churches in Muslim-ruled lands, but were also expected to adhere to the same laws of property, contract and obligation as the Muslim Arabs.[99] They could not seek conversion of a Muslim, a non-Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman, and the child of such a marriage would be considered Muslim. They could not own a Muslim slave and had to wear different clothing from Muslims in order to be distinguishable. In addition to the jizya tax, they were also required to pay the kharaj tax on their land which was heavier than the jizya. However they were ensured protection, given religious freedom and to govern themselves in accordance to their own laws.[100]

 
Assyrian Church of Our Virgin Lady in Baghdad.

As non-Islamic proselytising was punishable by death under Sharia, the Assyrians were forced into preaching in Transoxiana, Central Asia, India, Mongolia and China where they established numerous churches. The Church of the East was considered to be one of the major Christian powerhouses in the world, alongside Latin Christianity in Europe and the Byzantine Empire.[101]

From the 7th century AD onwards Mesopotamia saw a steady influx of Arabs, Kurds and other Iranian peoples,[102] and later Turkic peoples. Assyrians were increasingly marginalized, persecuted, and gradually became a minority in their own homeland. Conversion to Islam as a result of heavy taxation which also resulted in decreased revenue from their rulers. As a result, the new converts migrated to Muslim garrison towns nearby.

Assyrians remained dominant in Upper Mesopotamia as late as the 14th century,[103] and the city of Assur was still occupied by Assyrians during the Islamic period until the mid-14th century when the Muslim Turco-Mongol ruler Timur conducted a religiously motivated massacre against Assyrians. After, there were no records of Assyrians remaining in Assur according to the archaeological and numismatic record. From this point, the Assyrian population was dramatically reduced in their homeland.[104]

From the 19th century, after the rise of nationalism in the Balkans, the Ottomans started viewing Assyrians and other Christians in their eastern front as a potential threat. The Kurdish Emirs sought to consolidate their power by attacking Assyrian communities which were already well-established there. Scholars estimate that tens of thousands of Assyrian in the Hakkari region were massacred in 1843 when Bedr Khan Beg, the emir of Bohtan, invaded their region.[105] After a later massacre in 1846, the Ottomans were forced by the western powers into intervening in the region, and the ensuing conflict destroyed the Kurdish emirates and reasserted the Ottoman power in the area. The Assyrians were subject to the massacres of Diyarbakır soon after.[106]

Being culturally, ethnically, and linguistically distinct from their Muslim neighbors in the Middle East—the Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Turks—the Assyrians have endured much hardship throughout their recent history as a result of religious and ethnic persecution by these groups.[107]

Mongolian and Turkic rule

Further information: Timurid Empire, Aq Qoyunlu, and Kara Koyunlu
 
Aramaic language and Syriac Christianity in the Middle East and Central Asia until being largely annihilated by Tamerlane in the 14th century

After initially coming under the control of the Seljuk Empire and the Buyid dynasty, the region eventually came under the control of the Mongol Empire after the fall of Baghdad in 1258. The Mongol khans were sympathetic with Christians and did not harm them. The most prominent among them was probably Isa Kelemechi, a diplomat, astrologer, and head of the Christian affairs in Yuan China. He spent some time in Persia under the Ilkhanate. The 14th century massacres of Timur devastated the Assyrian people. Timur's massacres and pillages of all that was Christian drastically reduced their existence. At the end of the reign of Timur, the Assyrian population had almost been eradicated in many places. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Bar Hebraeus, the noted Assyrian scholar and hierarch, found "much quietness" in his diocese in Mesopotamia. Syria's diocese, he wrote, was "wasted."[citation needed]

The region was later controlled by the in Iran-based Turkic confederations of the Aq Qoyunlu and Kara Koyunlu. Subsequently, all Assyrians, like with the rest of the ethnicities living in the former Aq Qoyunlu territories, fell into Safavid hands from 1501 and on.[citation needed]

From Iranian Safavid to confirmed Ottoman rule

See also: Massacres of Badr Khan and Massacres of Diyarbakir (1895)
 
Mar Elias (Eliya), the Nestorian bishop of the Urmia plain village of Geogtapa, c. 1831

The Ottomans secured their control over Mesopotamia and Syria in the first half of the 17th century following the Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39) and the resulting Treaty of Zuhab. Non-Muslims were organised into millets. Syriac Christians, however, were often considered one millet alongside Armenians until the 19th century, when Nestorian, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldeans gained that right as well.[108]

The Aramaic-speaking Mesopotamian Christians had long been divided between followers of the Church of the East, commonly referred to as "Nestorians", and followers of the Syriac Orthodox Church, commonly called Jacobites. The latter were organised by Marutha of Tikrit (565–649) as 17 dioceses under a "Metropolitan of the East" or "Maphrian", holding the highest rank in the Syriac Orthodox Church after that of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East. The Maphrian resided at Tikrit until 1089, when he moved to the city of Mosul for half a century, before settling in the nearby Monastery of Mar Mattai (still belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church) and thus not far from the residence of the Eliya line of Patriarchs of the Church of the East. From 1533, the holder of the office was known as the Maphrian of Mosul, to distinguish him from the Maphrian of the Patriarch of Tur Abdin.[109]

In 1552, a group of bishops of the Church of the East from the northern regions of Amid and Salmas, who were dissatisfied with reservation of patriarchal succession to members of a single family, even if the designated successor was little more than a child, elected as a rival patriarch the abbot of the Rabban Hormizd Monastery, Yohannan Sulaqa. This was by no means the first schism in the Church of the East. An example is the attempt to replace Timothy I (779–823) with Ephrem of Gandīsābur.[110]

By tradition, a patriarch could be ordained only by someone of archiepiscopal (metropolitan) rank, a rank to which only members of that one family were promoted. For that reason, Sulaqa travelled to Rome, where, presented as the new patriarch elect, he entered communion with the Catholic Church and was ordained by the Pope and recognized as patriarch. The title or description under which he was recognized as patriarch is given variously as "Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria";[111] "Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of Mosul";[112] "Patriarch of the Chaldeans";[113][114][115] "Patriarch of Mosul";[116][117][118] or "Patriarch of the Eastern Assyrians", this last being the version given by Pietro Strozzi on the second-last unnumbered page before page 1 of his De Dogmatibus Chaldaeorum,[119] of which an English translation is given in Adrian Fortescue's Lesser Eastern Churches.[120][121]

Mar Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa returned to northern Mesopotamia in the same year and fixed his seat in Amid. Before being imprisoned for four months and then in January 1555 put to death by the governor of Amadiya at the instigation of the rival patriarch of Alqosh, of the Eliya line,[122] he ordained two metropolitans and three other bishops,[123] thus beginning a new ecclesiastical hierarchy: the patriarchal line known as the Shimun line. The area of influence of this patriarchate soon moved from Amid east, fixing the see, after many changes, in the isolated village of Qochanis.

 
A massacre of Armenians and Assyrians in the city of Adana, Ottoman Empire, April 1909

The Shimun line eventually drifted away from Rome and in 1662 adopted a profession of faith incompatible with that of Rome. Leadership of those who wished communion with Rome passed to the Archbishop of Amid Joseph I, recognized first by the Turkish civil authorities (1677) and then by Rome itself (1681). A century and a half later, in 1830, headship of the Catholics (the Chaldean Catholic Church) was conferred on Yohannan Hormizd, a member of the family that for centuries had provided the patriarchs of the legitimist "Eliya line", who had won over most of the followers of that line. Thus the patriarchal line of those who in 1553 entered communion with Rome are now patriarchs of the "traditionalist" wing of the Church of the East, that which in 1976 officially adopted the name "Assyrian Church of the East".[124][125][126][127]

In the 1840s many of the Assyrians living in the mountains of Hakkari in the south eastern corner of the Ottoman Empire were massacred by the Kurdish emirs of Hakkari and Bohtan.[128]

Another major massacre of Assyrians (and Armenians) in the Ottoman Empire occurred between 1894 and 1897 by Turkish troops and their Kurdish allies during the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The motives for these massacres were an attempt to reassert Pan-Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, resentment at the comparative wealth of the ancient indigenous Christian communities, and a fear that they would attempt to secede from the tottering Ottoman Empire. Assyrians were massacred in Diyarbakir, Hasankeyef, Sivas and other parts of Anatolia, by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. These attacks caused the death of over thousands of Assyrians and the forced "Ottomanisation" of the inhabitants of 245 villages. The Turkish troops looted the remains of the Assyrian settlements and these were later stolen and occupied by Kurds. Unarmed Assyrian women and children were raped, tortured and murdered.[129][130]

World War I and aftermath

 
The burning of bodies of Assyrian women
Main articles: Assyrian genocide and Assyrian struggle for independence

The Assyrians suffered a number of religiously and ethnically motivated massacres throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,[128] culminating in the large-scale Hamidian massacres of unarmed men, women and children by Muslim Turks and Kurds in the late 19th century at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and its associated (largely Kurdish and Arab) militias, which further greatly reduced numbers, particularly in southeastern Turkey.

The most significant recent persecution against the Assyrian population was the Assyrian genocide which occurred during the First World War.[133] Between 275,000 and 300,000 Assyrians were estimated to have been slaughtered by the armies of the Ottoman Empire and their Kurdish allies, totalling up to two-thirds of the entire Assyrian population.

This led to a large-scale migration of Turkish-based Assyrian people into countries such as Syria, Iran, and Iraq (where they were to suffer further violent assaults at the hands of the Arabs and Kurds), as well as other neighbouring countries in and around the Middle East such as Armenia, Georgia and Russia.[134][135][136][137]

Assyrian volunteers

Main article: Assyrian volunteers
 
Assyrian troops led by Agha Petros (saluting) with a captured Turkish banner in the foreground, 1918

In reaction to the Assyrian Genocide and lured by British and Russian promises of an independent nation, the Assyrians led by Agha Petros and Malik Khoshaba of the Bit-Tyari tribe, fought alongside the Allies against Ottoman forces known as the Assyrian volunteers or Our Smallest Ally. Despite being heavily outnumbered and outgunned the Assyrians fought successfully, scoring a number of victories over the Turks and Kurds. This situation continued until their Russian allies left the war, and Armenian resistance broke, leaving the Assyrians surrounded, isolated and cut off from lines of supply. The sizable Assyrian presence in south eastern Anatolia which had endured for over four millennia was thus reduced significantly by the end of World War I.[138][139]

Assyrian rebellion

Main article: Assyrian rebellion

The Assyrian rebellion was an uprising by the Assyrians in Hakkari that began on the 3rd of September 1924 and ended on the 28th of September. The Assyrians of Tyari and Tkhuma returned to their ancestral land in Hakkari in 1922, shortly after World War I without permission from the Turkish government. This led to clashes between the Assyrians and the Turkish army with their Kurdish allies that grew into a rebellion in 1924, it ended with the Assyrians being forced to retreat to Iraq.

Modern history

 
Assyrian refugees on a wagon moving to a newly constructed village on the Khabur River in Syria

The majority of Assyrians living in what is today modern Turkey were forced to flee to either Syria or Iraq after the Turkish victory during the Turkish War of Independence. In 1932, Assyrians refused to become part of the newly formed state of Iraq and instead demanded their recognition as a nation within a nation. The Assyrian leader Shimun XXI Eshai asked the League of Nations to recognize the right of the Assyrians to govern the area known as the "Assyrian triangle" in northern Iraq. During the French mandate period, some Assyrians, fleeing ethnic cleansings in Iraq during the Simele massacre, established numerous villages along the Khabur River during the 1930s.

The Assyrian Levies were founded by the British in 1928, with ancient Assyrian military rankings such as Rab-shakeh, Rab-talia and Tartan, being revived for the first time in millennia for this force. The Assyrians were prized by the British rulers for their fighting qualities, loyalty, bravery and discipline,[140] and were used to help the British put down insurrections among the Arabs and Kurds. During World War II, eleven Assyrian companies saw action in Palestine and another four served in Cyprus. The Parachute Company was attached to the Royal Marine Commando and were involved in fighting in Albania, Italy and Greece. The Assyrian Levies played a major role in subduing the pro-Nazi Iraqi forces at the battle of Habbaniya in 1941.

 
Three Assyrian Iraqi Levies, who volunteered in 1946 for service as ground crew with the Royal Air Force, look over the side of the ORBITA as it pulls into the docks at Liverpool. Left to right, they are: Sergeant Macko Shmos, Lance Corporal Adoniyo Odisho and Corporal Yoseph Odisho.

However, this cooperation with the British was viewed with suspicion by some leaders of the newly formed Kingdom of Iraq. The tension reached its peak shortly after the formal declaration of independence when hundreds of Assyrian civilians were slaughtered during the Simele massacre by the Iraqi Army in August 1933. The events lead to the expulsion of Shimun XXI Eshai the Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East to the United States where resided until his death in 1975.[141][142]

The period from the 1940s through to 1963 saw a period of respite for the Assyrians. The regime of President Abd al-Karim Qasim in particular saw the Assyrians accepted into mainstream society. Many urban Assyrians became successful businessmen, others were well represented in politics and the military, their towns and villages flourished undisturbed, and Assyrians came to excel, and be over represented in sports.

The Ba'ath Party seized power in Iraq and Syria in 1963, introducing laws aimed at suppressing the Assyrian national identity via arabization policies. The giving of traditional Assyrian names was banned and Assyrian schools, political parties, churches and literature were repressed. Assyrians were heavily pressured into identifying as Iraqi/Syrian Christians. Assyrians were not recognized as an ethnic group by the governments and they fostered divisions among Assyrians along religious lines (e.g. Assyrian Church of the East vs. Chaldean Catholic Church vs Syriac Orthodox Church).[143]

 
Celebration at a Syriac Orthodox monastery in Mosul, early 20th century

In response to Baathist persecution, the Assyrians of the Zowaa movement within the Assyrian Democratic Movement took up armed struggle against the Iraqi government in 1982 under the leadership of Yonadam Kanna,[144] and then joined up with the Iraqi-Kurdistan Front in the early 1990s. Yonadam Kanna in particular was a target of the Saddam Hussein Ba'ath government for many years.

The Anfal campaign of 1986–1989 in Iraq, which was intended to target Kurdish opposition, resulted in 2,000 Assyrians being murdered through its gas campaigns. Over 31 towns and villages, 25 Assyrian monasteries and churches were razed to the ground. Some Assyrians were murdered, others were deported to large cities, and their lands and homes then being appropriated by Arabs and Kurds.[145][146]

21st century

Main articles: Assyrian exodus from Iraq and 2008 attacks on Christians in Mosul
 
Assyrian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia

After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by US and its allies, the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi military, security, and intelligence infrastructure of former President Saddam Hussein and began a process of "de-Baathification".[147] This process became an object of controversy, cited by some critics as the biggest American mistake made in the immediate aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq, and as one of the main causes in the deteriorating security situation throughout Iraq.[148][149] Social unrest and chaos resulted in the unprovoked persecution of Assyrians in Iraq mostly by Islamic extremists (both Shia and Sunni) and Kurdish nationalists (ex. Dohuk Riots of 2011 aimed at Assyrians & Yazidis). In places such as Dora, a neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad, the majority of its Assyrian population has either fled abroad or to northern Iraq, or has been murdered.[150] Islamic resentment over the United States' occupation of Iraq, and incidents such as the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons and the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy, have resulted in Muslims attacking Assyrian communities. Since the start of the Iraq war, at least 46 churches and monasteries have been bombed.[151]

In recent years, the Assyrians in northern Iraq and northeast Syria have become the target of extreme unprovoked Islamic terrorism. As a result, Assyrians have taken up arms alongside other groups (such as the Kurds, Turcomans and Armenians) in response to unprovoked attacks by Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIL), Nusra Front and other terrorist Islamic Fundamentalist groups. In 2014 Islamic terrorists of ISIL attacked Assyrian towns and villages in the Assyrian Homeland of northern Iraq, together with cities such as Mosul and Kirkuk which have large Assyrian populations. There have been reports of atrocities committed by ISIL terrorists since, including; beheadings, crucifixions, child murders, rape, forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, robbery, and extortion in the form of illegal taxes levied upon non-Muslims. Assyrians in Iraq have responded by forming armed militias to defend their territories.

In response to the Islamic State's invasion of the Assyrian homeland in 2014, many Assyrian organizations also formed their own independent fighting forces to combat ISIL and potentially retake their "ancestral lands."[152] These include the Nineveh Plain Protection Units,[153][152][154] Dwekh Nawsha,[155][156] and the Nineveh Plain Forces.[157][158] The latter two of these militias were eventually disbanded.[159]

In Syria, the Dawronoye modernization movement has influenced Assyrian identity in the region.[160] The largest proponent of the movement, the Syriac Union Party (SUP) has become a major political actor in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. In August 2016, the Ourhi Centre in the city of Zalin was started by the Assyrian community, to educate teachers in order to make Syriac an optional language of instruction in public schools,[161][162] which then started with the 2016/17 academic year.[163] With that academic year, states the Rojava Education Committee, "three curriculums have replaced the old one, to include teaching in three languages: Kurdish, Arabic and Assyrian."[164] Associated with the SUP is the Syriac Military Council, an Assyrian militia operating in Syria, established in January 2013 to protect and stand up for the national rights of Assyrians in Syria as well as working together with the other communities in Syria to change the current government of Bashar al-Assad.[165] However, many Assyrians and the organizations that represent them, particularly those outside of Syria, are critical of the Dawronoye movement.[166][167]

A 2018 report stated that Kurdish authorities in Syria, in conjunction with Dawronoye officials, had shut down several Assyrian schools in Northern Syria and fired their administration. This was said to be because these schooled failed to register for a license and for rejecting the new curriculum approved by the Education Authority. Closure methods ranged from officially shutting down schools to having armed men enter the schools and shut them down forcefully. An Assyrian educator named Isa Rashid was later badly beaten outside of his home for rejecting the Kurdish self-administration's curriculum.[167][166] The Assyrian Policy Institute claimed that an Assyrian reporter named Souleman Yusph was arrested by Kurdish forces for his reports on the Dawronoye-related school closures in Syria. Specifically, he had shared numerous photographs on Facebook detailing the closures.[167]

Demographics

 
Maunsell's map, a Pre-World War I British Ethnographical Map of the Middle East showing "Chaldeans", "Jacobites", and "Nestorians"
 
The Assyro-Chaldean Delegation's map of an independent Assyria, presented at the Paris Peace Conference 1919

Homeland

Main articles: Assyrian homeland, List of Assyrian tribes, and Proposals for Assyrian autonomy in Iraq

The Assyrian homeland includes the ancient cities of Nineveh (Mosul), Nuhadra (Dohuk), Arrapha/Beth Garmai (Kirkuk), Al Qosh, Tesqopa and Arbela (Erbil) in Iraq, Urmia in Iran, and Hakkari (a large region which comprises the modern towns of Yüksekova, Hakkâri, Çukurca, Şemdinli and Uludere), Edessa/Urhoy (Urfa), Harran, Amida (Diyarbakır) and Tur Abdin (Midyat and Kafro) in Turkey, among others.[168] Some of the cities are presently under Kurdish control and some still have an Assyrian presence, namely those in Iraq, as the Assyrian population in southeastern Turkey (such as those in Hakkari) was ethnically cleansed during the Assyrian genocide of the First World War.[48] Those who survived fled to unaffected areas of Assyrian settlement in northern Iraq, with others settling in Iraqi cities to the south. Though many also immigrated to neighbouring countries in and around the Caucasus and Middle East like Armenia, Syria, Georgia, southern Russia, Lebanon and Jordan.[169]

In ancient times, Akkadian-speaking Assyrians have existed in what is now Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon, among other modern countries, due to the sprawl of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the region.[170] Though recent settlement of Christian Assyrians in Nisabina, Qamishli, Al-Hasakah, Al-Qahtaniyah, Al Darbasiyah, Al-Malikiyah, Amuda, Tel Tamer and a few other small towns in Al-Hasakah Governorate in Syria, occurred in the early 1930s,[171] when they fled from northern Iraq after they were targeted and slaughtered during the Simele massacre.[172] The Assyrians in Syria did not have Syrian citizenship and title to their established land until late the 1940s.[173]

Sizable Assyrian populations only remain in Syria, where an estimated 400,000 Assyrians live,[174] and in Iraq, where an estimated 300,000 Assyrians live.[175] In Iran and Turkey, only small populations remain, with only 20,000 Assyrians in Iran,[176][177] and a small but growing Assyrian population in Turkey, where 25,000 Assyrians live, mostly in the cities and not the ancient settlements. In Tur Abdin, a traditional center of Assyrian culture, there are only 2,500 Assyrians left.[178] Down from 50,000 in the 1960 census, but up from 1,000 in 1992. This sharp decline is due to an intense conflict between Turkey and the PKK in the 1980s. However, there are an estimated 25,000 Assyrians in all of Turkey, with most living in Istanbul. Most Assyrians currently reside in the West due to the centuries of persecution by the neighboring Muslims.[179] Prior to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in a 2013 report by a Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council official, it was estimated that 300,000 Assyrians remained in Iraq.[175]

Assyrian subgroups

There are three main Assyrian subgroups: Eastern, Western, Chaldean. These subdivisions are only partially overlapping linguistically, historically, culturally, and religiously.

 
Map depicting Assyrian relocation after Seyfo in 1914

Persecution

Due to their Christian faith and ethnicity, the Assyrians have been persecuted since their adoption of Christianity. During the reign of Yazdegerd I, Christians in Persia were viewed with suspicion as potential Roman subversives, resulting in persecutions while at the same time promoting Nestorian Christianity as a buffer between the Churches of Rome and Persia. Persecutions and attempts to impose Zoroastrianism continued during the reign of Yazdegerd II.[191][192]

During the eras of Mongol rule under Genghis Khan and Timur, there was indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of Assyrians and destruction of the Assyrian population of northwestern Iran and central and northern Iran.[193]

More recent persecutions since the 19th century include the massacres of Badr Khan, the massacres of Diyarbakır (1895), the Adana massacre, the Assyrian genocide, the Simele massacre, and the al-Anfal campaign.

Diaspora

Main article: Assyrian Diaspora
See also: List of Assyrian settlements and Assyrian population by country
 
Assyrian world population
  more than 500,000
  100,000–500,000
  50,000–100,000
  10,000–50,000
  less than 10,000

Since the Assyrian genocide, many Assyrians have left the Middle East entirely for a more safe and comfortable life in the countries of the Western world. As a result of this, the Assyrian population in the Middle East has decreased dramatically. As of today there are more Assyrians in the diaspora than in their homeland. The largest Assyrian diaspora communities are found in Sweden (100,000),[194] Germany (100,000),[195] the United States (80,000),[196] and in Australia (46,000).[197]

By ethnic percentage, the largest Assyrian diaspora communities are located in Södertälje in Stockholm County,[198] Sweden, and in Fairfield City in Sydney, Australia, where they are the leading ethnic group in the suburbs of Fairfield, Fairfield Heights, Prairiewood and Greenfield Park.[199][200][201] There is also a sizable Assyrian community in Melbourne, Australia (Broadmeadows, Meadow Heights and Craigieburn)[202] In the United States, Assyrians are mostly found in Chicago (Niles and Skokie), Detroit (Sterling Heights, and West Bloomfield Township), Phoenix, Modesto (Stanislaus County) and Turlock.[203]

Furthermore, small Assyrian communities are found in San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno in the United States, Toronto in Canada and also in London, UK (London Borough of Ealing). In Germany, pocket-sized Assyrian communities are scattered throughout Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Berlin and Wiesbaden. In Paris, France, the commune of Sarcelles has a small number of Assyrians. Assyrians in the Netherlands mainly live in the east of the country, in the province of Overijssel. In Russia, small groups of Assyrians mostly reside in Krasnodar Kray and Moscow.[204]

To note, the Assyrians residing in California and Russia tend to be from Iran, whilst those in Chicago and Sydney are predominantly Iraqi Assyrians. More recently, Syrian Assyrians are growing in size in Sydney after a huge influx of new arrivals in 2016, who were granted asylum under the Federal Government's special humanitarian intake.[205][206] The Assyrians in Detroit are primarily Chaldean speakers, who also originate from Iraq.[207] Assyrians in such European countries as Sweden and Germany would usually be Turoyo-speakers or Western Assyrians,[208] and tend to be originally from Turkey.[198]

Identity and subdivisions

Further information: Assyrian nationalism, Arabization, Turkification, and Kurdification
 
Assyrian flag (adopted in 1968)[209]
 
Chaldean flag (published in 1999)[211]

Syriac Christians of the Middle East and diaspora employ different terms for self-identification based on conflicting beliefs in the origin and identity of their respective communities.[212] During the 19th century, English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard believed that the native Christian communities in the historical region of Assyria were descended from the ancient Assyrians,[213][214] a view that was also shared by William Ainger Wigram.[215][216] Although at the same time Horatio Southgate[217] and George Thomas Bettany[218] claimed during their travels through Mesopotamia that the Syriac Christians are the descendants of the Arameans.

Today, Assyrians and other minority ethnic groups in the Middle East, feel pressure to identify as "Arabs",[219][220] "Turks" and "Kurds".[221] In addition, Western media often makes no mention of any ethnic identity of the Christians in the region, and simply call refer to them as Christians,[174] Iraqi Christians, Iranian Christians, Christians in Syria, and Turkish Christians, a label rejected by Assyrians.

Self-designation

Main article: Names of Syriac Christians

Below are terms commonly used by Assyrians to self-identify:.

  • Assyrian, named after their ethnicity as the descendants of the ancient Assyrian people,[222] is advocated by followers from within all Middle Eastern based East and West Syriac Rite Churches. (see Syriac Christianity)[212][223]
  • Chaldean is a term that was used for centuries by western writers and scholars as designation for the Aramaic language. It was so used by Jerome,[224] and was still the normal terminology in the nineteenth century.[225][226][227] Only in 1445 did it begin to be used to designate Aramaic speakers who had entered communion with the Catholic Church. This happened at the Council of Florence,[228] which accepted the profession of faith that Timothy, metropolitan of the Aramaic speakers in Cyprus, made in Aramaic, and which decreed that "nobody shall in future dare to call [...] Chaldeans, Nestorians".[229][230][231] Previously, when there were as yet no Catholic Aramaic speakers of Mesopotamian origin, the term "Chaldean" was applied with explicit reference to their "Nestorian" religion. Thus Jacques de Vitry wrote of them in 1220/1 that "they denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons. They consecrated leavened bread and used the 'Chaldean' (Syriac) language".[232] Until the second half of the 19th century, the term "Chaldean" continued in general use for East Syriac Christians, whether "Nestorian" or Catholic.[233][234][235][236] In 1840, upon visiting Mesopotamia, Horatio Southgate reported that local Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from ancient Assyrians,[217] and in some later works also noted the same origin of local Jacobites.[237][238]
  • Aramean, also known as Syriac-Aramean,[239][240] named after the ancient Aramean people, is advocated by followers from within all Middle Eastern based East and West Syriac Rite Churches.[241][242] Furthermore, Assyrians identifying as Aramean have obtained recognition from the Israeli government.[243][244] To note, ancient Arameans were a separate ethnic group that lived concurrently with the Assyrian empire in what is now Syria and parts of Lebanon, Israel the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.[245][246][247][248]

Assyrian vs. Syrian naming controversy

 
Proximity between Roman Syria and Mesopotamia in the 1st century AD (Alain Manesson Mallet, 1683)

As early as the 8th century BC Luwian and Cilician subject rulers referred to their Assyrian overlords as Syrian, a western Indo-European corruption of the original term Assyrian. The Greeks used the terms "Syrian" and "Assyrian" interchangeably to indicate the indigenous Arameans, Assyrians and other inhabitants of the Near East, Herodotus considered "Syria" west of the Euphrates. Starting from the 2nd century BC onwards, ancient writers referred to the Seleucid ruler as the King of Syria or King of the Syrians.[249] The Seleucids designated the districts of Seleucis and Coele-Syria explicitly as Syria and ruled the Syrians as indigenous populations residing west of the Euphrates (Aramea) in contrast to Assyrians who had their native homeland in Mesopotamia east of the Euphrates.[250][251]

This version of the name took hold in the Hellenic lands to the west of the old Assyrian Empire, thus during Greek Seleucid rule from 323 BC the name Assyria was altered to Syria, and this term was also applied to Aramea to the west which had been an Assyrian colony, and from this point the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant.[252][253] When the Seleucids lost control of Assyria to the Parthians they retained the corrupted term (Syria), applying it to ancient Aramea, while the Parthians called Assyria "Assuristan," a Parthian form of the original name. It is from this period that the Syrian vs Assyrian controversy arises.

The question of ethnic identity and self-designation is sometimes connected to the scholarly debate on the etymology of "Syria". The question has a long history of academic controversy, but majority mainstream opinion currently strongly favours that Syria is indeed ultimately derived from the Assyrian term Aššūrāyu.[254][255][256][257] Meanwhile, some scholars has disclaimed the theory of Syrian being derived from Assyrian as "simply naive", and detracted its importance to the naming conflict.[258]

Rudolf Macuch points out that the Eastern Neo-Aramaic press initially used the term "Syrian" (suryêta) and only much later, with the rise of nationalism, switched to "Assyrian" (atorêta).[259] According to Tsereteli, however, a Georgian equivalent of "Assyrians" appears in ancient Georgian, Armenian and Russian documents.[260] This correlates with the theory of the nations to the East of Mesopotamia knew the group as Assyrians, while to the West, beginning with Greek influence, the group was known as Syrians. Syria being a Greek corruption of Assyria. The debate appears to have been settled by the discovery of the Çineköy inscription in favour of Syria being derived from Assyria.

The Çineköy inscription is a Hieroglyphic Luwian-Phoenician bilingual, uncovered from Çineköy, Adana Province, Turkey (ancient Cilicia), dating to the 8th century BC. Originally published by Tekoglu and Lemaire (2000),[261] it was more recently the subject of a 2006 paper published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, in which the author, Robert Rollinger, lends support to the age-old debate of the name "Syria" being derived from "Assyria" (see Etymology of Syria).

The object on which the inscription is found is a monument belonging to Urikki, vassal king of Hiyawa (i.e., Cilicia), dating to the eighth century BC. In this monumental inscription, Urikki made reference to the relationship between his kingdom and his Assyrian overlords. The Luwian inscription reads "Sura/i" whereas the Phoenician translation reads ’ŠR or "Ashur" which, according to Rollinger (2006), "settles the problem once and for all".[262]

The modern terminological problem goes back to colonial times, but it became more acute in 1946, when with the independence of Syria, the adjective Syrian referred to an independent state. The controversy isn't restricted to exonyms like English "Assyrian" vs. "Aramaean", but also applies to self-designation in Neo-Aramaic, the minority "Aramaean" faction endorses both Sūryāyē ܣܘܪܝܝܐ and Ārāmayē ܐܪܡܝܐ, while the majority "Assyrian" faction insists on Āṯūrāyē ܐܬܘܪܝܐ but also accepts Sūryāyē.[citation needed]

Culture

Main article: Assyrian culture
 
Assyrian child dressed in traditional clothes

Assyrian culture is largely influenced by Christianity.[263] There are many Assyrian customs that are common in other Middle Eastern cultures. Main festivals occur during religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas. There are also secular holidays such as Kha b-Nisan (vernal equinox).[264]

People often greet and bid relatives farewell with a kiss on each cheek and by saying "ܫܠܡܐ ܥܠܝܟ" Shlama/Shlomo lokh, which means: "Peace be upon you" in Neo-Aramaic. Others are greeted with a handshake with the right hand only; according to Middle Eastern customs, the left hand is associated with evil. Similarly, shoes may not be left facing up, one may not have their feet facing anyone directly, whistling at night is thought to waken evil spirits, etc.[265] A parent will often place an eye pendant on their baby to prevent "an evil eye being cast upon it".[266] Spitting on anyone or their belongings is seen as a grave insult.

Assyrians are endogamous, meaning they generally marry within their own ethnic group, although exogamous marriages are not perceived as a taboo, unless the foreigner is of a different religious background, especially a Muslim.[267] Throughout history, relations between the Assyrians and Armenians have tended to be very friendly, as both groups have practised Christianity since ancient times and have suffered through persecution under Muslim rulers. Therefore, mixed marriage between Assyrians and Armenians is quite common, most notably in Iraq, Iran, and as well as in the diaspora with adjacent Armenian and Assyrian communities.[268]

Language

Main article: Neo-Aramaic languages
 
The Assyrian dialects

The Neo-Aramaic languages, which are in the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, ultimately descend from Late Old Eastern Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which displaced the East Semitic Assyrian dialect of Akkadian and Sumerian. After being conquered by the Assyrians, many people, including the Arameans, were deported to the Assyrian heartland and elsewhere. Due to a large number of Aramaic-speaking Arameans, the Aramaization of Assyria began. The relationship between Arameans and Assyrians grew stronger, with Aramean scribes working with Assyrian ones. Around 700 B.C., the Aramaic alphabet took the place of cuneiform and became the official writing system of the Assyrian empire.[269] Aramaic was the language of commerce, trade and communication and became the vernacular language of Assyria in classical antiquity.[246][270][248] By the 1st century AD, Akkadian was extinct, although its influence on contemporary Eastern Neo-Aramaic languages spoken by Assyrians is significant and some loaned vocabulary still survives in these languages to this day.[271][272]

To the native speaker, "Syriac" is usually called Surayt, Soureth, Suret or a similar regional variant. A wide variety of languages and dialects exist, including Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, and Turoyo. Minority dialects include Senaya and Bohtan Neo-Aramaic, which are both near extinction. All are classified as Neo-Aramaic languages and are written using Syriac script, a derivative of the ancient Aramaic script. Jewish varieties such as Lishanid Noshan, Lishán Didán and Lishana Deni, written in the Hebrew script, are spoken by Assyrian Jews.[273][274][275]

There is a considerable amount of mutual intelligibility between Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Senaya, Lishana Deni and Bohtan Neo-Aramaic. Therefore, these "languages" would generally be considered to be dialects of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic rather than separate languages. The Jewish Aramaic languages of Lishan Didan and Lishanid Noshan share a partial intelligibility with these varieties. The mutual intelligibility between the aforementioned languages and Turoyo is, depending on the dialect, limited to partial, and may be asymmetrical.[273][276][277]

Being stateless, Assyrians are typically multilingual, speaking both their native language and learning those of the societies they reside in. While many Assyrians have fled from their traditional homeland recently,[278][279] a substantial number still reside in Arabic-speaking countries speaking Arabic alongside the Neo-Aramaic languages[280][2][281] and is also spoken by many Assyrians in the diaspora. The most commonly spoken languages by Assyrians in the diaspora are English, German and Swedish. Historically many Assyrians also spoke Turkish, Armenian, Azeri, Kurdish, and Persian and a smaller number of Assyrians that remain in Iran, Turkey (Istanbul and Tur Abdin) and Armenia still do today. Many loanwords from the aforementioned languages also exist in the Neo-Aramaic languages, with the Iranian languages and Turkish being the greatest influences overall. Only Turkey is reported to be experiencing a population increase of Assyrians in the four countries constituting their historical homeland, largely consisting of Assyrian refugees from Syria and a smaller number of Assyrians returning from the diaspora in Europe.[282]

Script

Main article: Syriac alphabet

Assyrians predominantly use the Syriac script, which is written from right to left. It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew and the Arabic alphabets.[283] It has 22 letters representing consonants, three of which can be also used to indicate vowels. The vowel sounds are supplied either by the reader's memory or by optional diacritic marks. Syriac is a cursive script where some, but not all, letters connect within a word. It was used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD.[284]

The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is the ʾEsṭrangēlā script.[285] Although ʾEsṭrangēlā is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac, it has received some revival since the 10th century, and it has been added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999. The East Syriac dialect is usually written in the Maḏnḥāyā form of the alphabet, which is often translated as "contemporary", reflecting its use in writing modern Neo-Aramaic. The West Syriac dialect is usually written in the Serṭā form of the alphabet. Most of the letters are clearly derived from ʾEsṭrangēlā, but are simplified, flowing lines.[286]

Furthermore, for practical reasons, Assyrian people would also use the Latin alphabet, especially in social media.

Religion

Main article: Syriac Christianity
 
Historical divisions within Syriac Christian Churches in the Middle East

Assyrians belong to various Christian denominations, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, which has over 1 million members around the world, the Chaldean Catholic Church, with about 600,000 members,[287] the Assyrian Church of the East, with an estimated 400,000 members,[288] and the Ancient Church of the East, with some 100,000 members. A small minority of Assyrians accepted the Protestant Reformation and became Reform Orthodox in the 20th century, possibly due to British influences, and are now organized in the Assyrian Evangelical Church, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and other Protestant/Reform Orthodox Assyrian groups. While there are some atheist Assyrians, they tend to still associate with some denomination.[289]

Many members of the following churches consider themselves Assyrian. Ethnic identities are often deeply intertwined with religion, a legacy of the Ottoman Millet system. The group is traditionally characterized as adhering to various churches of Syriac Christianity and speaking Neo-Aramaic languages. It is subdivided into:

Baptism and First Communion are celebrated extensively, similar to a Brit Milah or Bar Mitzvah in Jewish communities. After a death, a gathering is held three days after burial to celebrate the ascension to heaven of the dead person, as of Jesus; after seven days another gathering commemorates their death. A close family member wears only black clothes for forty days and nights, or sometimes a year, as a sign of mourning.

During the "Seyfo" genocide,[290] there were a number of Assyrians who were forced to convert to Islam.[291][292][293] They reside in Turkey, and practice Islam but still retain their identity.[294][295] A small number of Assyrian Jews exist as well.[296]

Music

Main articles: Assyrian/Syriac folk music and Syriac sacral music

Assyrian music is a combination of traditional folk music and western contemporary music genres, namely pop and soft rock, but also electronic dance music. Instruments traditionally used by Assyrians include the zurna and davula, but has expanded to include guitars, pianos, violins, synthesizers (keyboards and electronic drums), and other instruments.

Some well known Assyrian singers in modern times are Ashur Bet Sargis, Sargon Gabriel, Evin Agassi, Janan Sawa, Juliana Jendo, and Linda George. Assyrian artists that traditionally sing in other languages include Melechesh, Timz and Aril Brikha. Assyrian-Australian band Azadoota performs its songs in the Assyrian language whilst using a western style of instrumentation.

The first international Aramaic Music Festival was held in Lebanon in August 2008 for Assyrian people internationally.

Dance

Main article: Assyrian folk dance
 
Folk dance in an Assyrian party in Chicago

Assyrians have numerous traditional dances which are performed mostly for special occasions such as weddings. Assyrian dance is a blend of both ancient indigenous and general Near Eastern elements. Assyrian folk dances are mainly made up of circle dances that are performed in a line, which may be straight, curved, or both. The most common form of Assyrian folk dance is khigga, which is routinely danced as the bride and groom are welcomed into the wedding reception. Most of the circle dances allow unlimited number of participants, with the exception of the Sabre Dance, which require three at most. Assyrian dances would vary from weak to strong, depending on the mood and tempo of a song.

Festivals

Assyrian festivals tend to be closely associated with their Christian faith, of which Easter is the most prominent of the celebrations. Members of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church and Syriac Catholic Church follow the Gregorian calendar and as a result celebrate Easter on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25 inclusively.[299] However, members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Ancient Church of the East celebrate Easter on a Sunday between April 4 and May 8 inclusively on the Gregorian calendar (March 22 and April 25 on the Julian calendar). During Lent, Assyrians are encouraged to fast for 50 days from meat and any other foods which are animal based.

Assyrians celebrate a number of festivals unique to their culture and traditions as well as religious ones:

  • Kha b-Nisan ܚܕ ܒܢܝܣܢ‎, the Assyrian New Year, traditionally on April 1, though usually celebrated on January 1. Assyrians usually wear traditional costumes and hold social events including parades and parties, dancing, and listening to poets telling the story of creation.[300]
  • Sauma d-Ba'utha ܒܥܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܢܘܝܐ‎, the Nineveh fast, is a three-day period of fasting and prayer.[301]
  • Somikka, All Saints Day, is celebrated to motivate children to fast during Lent through use of frightening costumes
  • Kalu d'Sulaqa, feast of the Bride of the Ascension, celebrates Assyrian resistance to the invasion of Assyria by Tamerlane
  • Nusardyl, commemorating the baptism of the Assyrians of Urmia by St. Thomas.[302]
  • Sharra d'Mart Maryam, usually on August 15, a festival and feast celebrating St. Mary with games, food, and celebration.[302]
  •  
    Assyrians celebrating Mesopotamian New Year (Akitu) year 6769 (Nisan, April 1st 2019) in Nohadra (Duhok), Iraq
    Other Sharras (special festivals) include: Sharra d'Mart Shmuni, Sharra d'Mar Shimon Bar-Sabbaye, Sharra d'Mar Mari, and Shara d'Mar Zaia, Mar Bishu, Mar Sawa, Mar Sliwa, and Mar Odisho
  • Yoma d'Sah'deh (Day of Martyrs), commemorating the thousands massacred in the Simele massacre and the hundreds of thousands massacred in the Assyrian genocide. It is commemorated annually on August 7.

Assyrians also practice unique marriage ceremonies. The rituals performed during weddings are derived from many different elements from the past 3,000 years. An Assyrian wedding traditionally lasted a week. Today, weddings in the Assyrian homeland usually last 2–3 days; in the Assyrian diaspora they last 1–2 days.

Traditional clothing

Main article: Assyrian clothing

Assyrian clothing varies from village to village. Clothing is usually blue, red, green, yellow, and purple; these colors are also used as embroidery on a white piece of clothing. Decoration is lavish in Assyrian costumes, and sometimes involves jewellery. The conical hats of traditional Assyrian dress have changed little over millennia from those worn in ancient Mesopotamia, and until the 19th and early 20th centuries the ancient Mesopotamian tradition of braiding or platting of hair, beards and moustaches was still commonplace.

Cuisine

Main article: Assyrian cuisine
 
Typical Assyrian cuisine

Assyrian cuisine is similar to other Middle Eastern cuisines, in particula and is rich in grains, meat, potato, cheese, bread and tomatoes. Typically, rice is served with every meal, with a stew poured over it. Tea is a popular drink, and there are several dishes of desserts, snacks, and beverages. Alcoholic drinks such as wine and wheat beer are organically produced and drunk. Assyrian cuisine is primarily identical to Iraqi/Mesopotamian cuisine, as well as being very similar to other Middle Eastern and Caucasian cuisines, as well as Greek cuisine, Levantine cuisine, Turkish cuisine, Iranian cuisine, Israeli cuisine, and Armenian cuisine, with most dishes being similar to the cuisines of the area in which those Assyrians live/originate from.[303] It is rich in grains such as barley, meat, tomato, herbs, spices, cheese, and potato as well as herbs, fermented dairy products, and pickles.[304]

Genetics

Further information: Genetic history of the Middle East

Late-20th-century DNA analysis conducted by Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, "shows that Assyrians have a distinct genetic profile that distinguishes their population from any other population."[305] Genetic analyses of the Assyrians of Persia demonstrated that they were "closed" with little "intermixture" with the Muslim Persian population and that an individual Assyrian's genetic makeup is relatively close to that of the Assyrian population as a whole.[306][307] "The genetic data are compatible with historical data that religion played a major role in maintaining the Assyrian population's separate identity during the Christian era".[305]

In a 2006 study of the Y chromosome DNA of six regional Armenian populations, including, for comparison, Assyrians and Syrians, researchers found that, "the Semitic populations (Assyrians and Syrians) are very distinct from each other according to both [comparative] axes. This difference supported also by other methods of comparison points out the weak genetic affinity between the two populations with different historical destinies."[308] A 2008 study on the genetics of "old ethnic groups in Mesopotamia", including 340 subjects from seven ethnic communities ("Assyrian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Armenian, Turkmen, the Arab peoples in Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait") found that Assyrians were homogeneous with respect to all other ethnic groups sampled in the study, regardless of religious affiliation.[309]

In a 2011 study focusing on the genetics of Marsh Arabs of Iraq, researchers identified Y chromosome haplotypes shared by Marsh Arabs, Iraqis, and Assyrians, "supporting a common local background."[310] In a 2017 study focusing on the genetics of Northern Iraqi populations, it was found that Iraqi Assyrians and Iraqi Yazidis clustered together, but away from the other Northern Iraqi populations analyzed in the study, and largely in between the West Asian and Southeastern European populations. According to the study, "contemporary Assyrians and Yazidis from northern Iraq may in fact have a stronger continuity with the original genetic stock of the Mesopotamian people, which possibly provided the basis for the ethnogenesis of various subsequent Near Eastern populations".[311]

Haplogroups

Y-DNA haplogroup J-M304 has been measured at 55% among Assyrians of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and diaspora; while it has been found at 11% among Assyrians of Iran.[312] Haplogroup T-M184 [reported as K*] has been measured at 15.09% among Assyrians in Armenia.[313] The haplogroup is frequent in Middle Eastern Jews, Georgians, Druze and Somalians. According to a 2011 study by Lashgary et al., R1b [reported as R*(xR1a)] has been measured at 40% among Assyrians in Iran, making it major haplogroup among Iranian Assyrians.[312] Yet another DNA test comprising 48 Assyrian male subjects from Iran, the Y-DNA haplogroups J-M304, found in its greatest concentration in the Arabian peninsula, and the northern R-M269, were also frequent at 29.2% each.[314] Lashgary et al. explain the presence of haplogroup R in Iranian Assyrians as well as in other Assyrian communities (~23%) as a consequence of mixing with Armenians and assimilation/integration of different peoples carrying haplogroup R, while explain its frequency as a result of genetic drift due to small population size and endogamy due to religious barriers.[312]

Haplogroup J2 has been measured at 13.4%, which is commonly found in the Fertile Crescent, the Caucasus, Anatolia, Italy, coastal Mediterranean, and the Iranian plateau.[315][316]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ (ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ, Sūrāyē/Sūrōyē)
  1. ^ Assyrians, as indigenous people of the Middle East.[47][48][49][50]
  2. ^ Use of the term Syriacs, as a variant name for Assyrians.[56][57][50]
  3. ^ Use of the term Chaldeans, as a variant name for Assyrians.[56][47][57][50]
  4. ^ Use of the term Arameans, as a variant name for Assyrians.[56][58][59]

References

  1. ^ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "Refworld – World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples – Turkey : Syriacs". Refworld. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
  2. ^ a b Baumer 2006.
  3. ^ Murre van den Berg 2011, p. 2304.
  4. ^ Simmons, Mary Kate (1998). Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization: yearbook. ISBN 9789041102232.
  5. ^ SIL Ethnologue estimate for the "ethnic population" associated with Neo-Aramaic
  6. ^ "Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture".
  7. ^ "Syria's Assyrians threatened by extremists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East". Al-Monitor. 2014-04-28. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  8. ^ "Prior to the start of the war in Syria, it is estimated that the country was home to approximately 200,000 ethnic Assyrians" Syria: Assyrian Policy Institute
  9. ^ "The Assyrian population in Iraq, estimated at approximately 200,000, constitutes the largest remaining concentration of the ethnic group in the Middle East." Assyrian Policy Institute's Erasing the Legacy of the Khabour: Destruction of Assyrian Cultural Heritage in the Khabour Region of Syria
  10. ^ "An estimated 25,000 Syriacs live in Turkey, while Syria boasts some 877,000."
  11. ^ "Population Project". Shlama Foundation.
  12. ^ "Erasing the Legacy of Khabour: Destruction of Assyrian Cultural Heritage in the Khabour Region of Syria". Assyrian Policy Institute.
  13. ^ "2018 U.S. Department of State International Religious Freedom Report: Turkey".
  14. ^ "2018 U.S. Department of State International Religious Freedom Report: Iran".
  15. ^ Data Access and Dissemination Systems (DADS). "American FactFinder – Results". Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  16. ^ "Selected Population Profile in the United States : 2011 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". Factfinder2.census.gov. Archived from the original on 2020-02-12. Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  17. ^ "Assyrian Genocide Resolution Read in Arizona Assembly". www.aina.org.
  18. ^ "Arizona HCR2006 – TrackBill". trackbill.com.
  19. ^ "HCR2006 – 542R – I Ver". www.azleg.gov.
  20. ^ Nyheter, SVT (9 May 2018). "Statministerns folkmordsbesked kan avgöra kommunvalet: "Underskatta inte frågan"". SVT Nyheter (in Swedish).
  21. ^ Borkener Zeitung (in German) (archived link, 8 October 2011)
  22. ^ 70,000 Syriac Christians according to REMID (of which 55,000 Syriac Orthodox).
  23. ^ "Assyrian and Chaldean Christians Flee Iraq to Neighboring Jordan".
  24. ^ "Brief History of Assyrians, AINA".
  25. ^ . Archived from the original on 2017-07-09.
  26. ^ "Lebanon: Assyrian Policy Institute".
  27. ^ Miri, Adhid (January 27, 2021). "Chaldeans in Europe Part V". Chaldean News. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
  28. ^ "Canada Census Profile 2021". Census Profile, 2021 Census. Statistics Canada Statistique Canada. 7 May 2021. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  29. ^ Wieviorka & Bataille 2007, pp. 166
  30. ^ . Russian Federal State Statistics Service (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2013-07-24. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  31. ^ Tzilivakis, Kathy (10 May 2003). "Iraq's Forgotten Christians Face Exclusion in Greece". Athens News. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  32. ^ "2011 Armenian Census" (PDF). Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  33. ^ "Assyrians in Armenia wish to have own representative in Parliament".
  34. ^ "Assyrische Bevölkerung weltweit". bethnahrin. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  35. ^ Özkan, Duygu (31 March 2012). "Die christlichen Assyrer zu Wien". DiePresse. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  36. ^ "This figure is an estimate from the Assyrian Cultural and Advice Centre" [1] at Iraqi Assyrians in London: Beyond the 'Immigrant/Refugee' Divide; Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 1995
  37. ^ "According to the 1989 population census, there were 5,200 Assyrians in Georgia (0.1 percent); according to the 2002 census, their number dropped to 3,299, while their percentage remained the same" [2] [The Assyrians of Georgia: Ethnic Specifics Should Be Preserved in the Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasus]
  38. ^ . Archived from the original on 2014-11-05. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  39. ^ Syriacs still going strong - Syriacs in Palestine
  40. ^ Shams, Alex (2 November 2015). "Learning the language of Jesus Christ". Roads & Kingdoms. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  41. ^ State statistics committee of Ukraine – National composition of population, 2001 census (Ukrainian)
  42. ^ "2013 Census ethnic group profiles: Assyrian". Statistics New Zealand. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
  43. ^ "The ethnic origin of Christians in Israel". parshan.co.il (in Hebrew).
  44. ^ Fenger-Grøndahl, Af Malene (1 May 2017). "Assyrer: At vi har vores eget sted, styrker min følelse af at høre til i Danmark". Kristeligt Dagblad (in Danish). Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  45. ^ "Assyrian Community in Kazakhstan Survived Dark Times, Now Focuses on Education". The Astana Times. 2014-12-19. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  46. ^ "Assyrian Association Founded in Finland". aina.org. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  47. ^ a b Nisan 2002, p. 180.
  48. ^ a b c Laing-Marshall 2005, p. 149-150.
  49. ^ Wolk 2008, p. 107-109.
  50. ^ a b c d Hanish 2015, p. 517.
  51. ^ Kramer, Samuel Noah (1988). In the world of Sumer : an autobiography. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2121-6. OCLC 17726815.
  52. ^ A. Leo Oppenheim (1964). Ancient Mesopotamia (PDF). The University of Chicago Press.
  53. ^ Novák, Vilém; Perfilieva, Irina; Dvořák, Antonín (2016-03-28). Insight into Fuzzy Modeling. doi:10.1002/9781119193210. ISBN 9781119193210.
  54. ^ Beyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic language, its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 3-525-53573-2. OCLC 16832958.
  55. ^ Laing-Marshall 2005, p. 149.
  56. ^ a b c Al-Jeloo 1999.
  57. ^ a b Kalpakian 2011, p. 30.
  58. ^ Donabed & Mako 2009, p. 72.
  59. ^ Kalpakian 2011, p. 30-31.
  60. ^ Hays, Jeffrey. "ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS, CHALDEANS AND JACOBITES | Facts and Details". factsanddetails.com. Retrieved 2022-10-04.
  61. ^ Hanish, Shak (2008-03-22). "The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq: an ethnic identity problem". Digest of Middle East Studies. 17 (1): 32–48. doi:10.1111/j.1949-3606.2008.tb00145.x.
  62. ^ Minahan, James (2002). Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: A-C. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 206. ISBN 9780313321092. The Assyrians, although closely assiociated with their Christian religion, are divided among a number of Christian sects. The largest denominations are the Chaldean Catholic Church with about 45% of the Assyrian population, the Syriac Orthodox with 26%, the Assyrian Church of the East with 19%, the free Orthodox Church of Antioch or Syriac Catholic Church with 4%, and various Protestant sects with a combined 6%.
  63. ^ For Assyrians as a Christian people, see
    • Joel J. Elias, The Genetics of Modern Assyrians and their Relationship to Other People of the Middle East
  64. ^ "Falling for ISIS Propaganda About Christians". www.aina.org.
  65. ^ Eden Naby. "Documenting The Crisis In The Assyrian Iranian Community".
  66. ^ "Assyrian Christians 'Most Vulnerable Population' in Iraq". The Christian Post. Archived from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 2006-12-05.
  67. ^ . The Christian Post. Archived from the original on 2007-12-11. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
  68. ^ "Video: Iraqi troops liberate Christian town of Bartella from IS group". France 24. 2016-10-23. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  69. ^ Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 187
  70. ^ "Nineveh". Max Mallowan.
  71. ^ Deutscher, Guy (2007). Syntactic Change in Akkadian: The Evolution of Sentential Complementation. Oxford University Press US. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-19-953222-3.
  72. ^ Michel, Cécile (2017). "Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Old Assyrian Period". In E. Frahm (ed.). A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1118325247. p. 81
  73. ^ Genesis 25:3
  74. ^ "Ashur". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
  75. ^ Düring, Bleda S. (2020). The Imperialisation of Assyria: An Archaeological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108478748. p. 145
  76. ^ "Artifacts show rivals Athens and Sparta", Yahoo News, December 5, 2006.
  77. ^ "The Persian Wars by Herodotus: Book 6 – ERATO". parstimes.com.
  78. ^ Yana 2008, p. 30.
  79. ^ Olmatead, History of the Persian Empire, Chicago University Press, 1959, p.39
  80. ^ (PDF) . Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-11-19. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  81. ^ Visible Language. Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond, Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, p. 13, ISBN 978-1-885923-76-9
  82. ^ E. Bilgic and S Bayram, Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri II, Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1995, ISBN 975-16-0246-7
  83. ^ K. R. Veenhof, Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri V, Turk Tarih Kurumu, 2010, ISBN 978-975-16-2235-8
  84. ^ "Woods C. 2006 "Bilingualism, Scribal Learning, and the Death of Sumerian". In S. L. Sanders (ed) Margins of Writing, Origins of Culture: 91–120 Chicago" (PDF). Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  85. ^ "Hadrian". G. W. Bowersock.
  86. ^ Millar 1967, p. 211.
  87. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus The Later Roman Empire (354–378) A shameful peace concluded by Jovian 6.7 p. 303, Penguin Classics, Translated by Walter Hamilton 1986
  88. ^ Etheredge, Laura (2011). Iraq. Rosen Publishing. p. 72. ISBN 9781615303045.
  89. ^ Seleucia-Ctesiphon is not to be confused with Seleucia Isauria (now Silifke, Turkey) within the Roman Empire, where, at the request of the Roman emperor, the Council of Seleucia was held in 359.
  90. ^ Michael Goldfarb, Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005).
  91. ^ "Definition of melkite". Dictionary.com.
  92. ^ "Syriac language". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  93. ^ "Aramaic language". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  94. ^ Beeston, Alfred Felix Landon (1983). Arabic literature to the end of the Umayyad period. Cambridge University Press. p. 501. ISBN 978-0-521-24015-4. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
  95. ^ Contadini, Anna (2003). "A Bestiary Tale: Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kitāb naʿt al-hayawān (British Library, or. 2784)" (PDF). Muqarnas. 20: 17–33. doi:10.1163/22118993-90000037. JSTOR 1523325.
  96. ^ Brague, Rémi. . christiansofiraq.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013.
  97. ^ Hyman and Walsh Philosophy in the Middle Ages Indianapolis, 1973, p. 204' Meri, Josef W. and Jere L. Bacharach, Editors, Medieval Islamic Civilization Vol.1, A-K, Index, 2006, p. 304.
  98. ^ Bennett, Clinton (2005). Muslims and Modernity: An Introduction to the Issues and Debates. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 162, 163. ISBN 0-8264-5481-X. Retrieved 2012-07-07.
  99. ^ Glenn, H. Patrick (2007). Legal Traditions of the World. Oxford University Press. p. 219.
  100. ^ Joseph 2000, p. 48-49.
  101. ^ Winkler, Dietmar (2009). Hidden Treasures And Intercultural Encounters: Studies On East Syriac Christianity In China And Central Asia. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 9783643500458.
  102. ^ Aboona 2008, p. XI.
  103. ^ According to Georges Roux and Simo Parpola
  104. ^ "History of Ashur". Assur.de. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
  105. ^ Gaunt, Beṯ-Şawoce & Donef 2006, p. 32.
  106. ^ Aboona 2008, p. 105.
  107. ^ Khanbaghi, Aptin (2006). The fire, the star and the cross: minority religions in medieval and early modern Iran. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781845110567.
  108. ^ Parry, Kenneth (15 April 2008). The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity. p. 255. ISBN 9780470766392 – via Google Books.
  109. ^ "Maphrian Catholicos [Syr. Orth." in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage
  110. ^ Adrian Fortescue, The Lesser Eastern Churches, chapter 4
  111. ^ Baumstark, Anton, ed. (2004). "Patriarcha de Mozal in Syria orientali". Oriens Christianus. Vol. IV:1. Rome and Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz. p. 277.
  112. ^ Chaldaeorum ecclesiae Musal Patriarcha (Giuseppe Simone Assemani (editor), Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome 1725), vol. 3, part 1, p. 661)
  113. ^ Tisserant 1931, p. 228.
  114. ^ Baumer 2006, p. 248.
  115. ^ Healey 2010, p. 45.
  116. ^ Mooken 2003, p. 33.
  117. ^ Frazee 2006, p. 57.
  118. ^ Winkler 2019, p. 127.
  119. ^ Pietro Strozzi (1617). De dogmatibus chaldaeorum disputatio ad Patrem ... Adam Camerae Patriarchalis Babylonis ... ex typographia Bartholomaei Zannetti.
  120. ^ A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia (Eyre & Spottiswoode 1939), vol. I, pp. 382–383
  121. ^ In his contribution "Myth vs. Reality" to JAA Studies, Vol. XIV, No. 1, 2000 p. 80 2020-07-13 at the Wayback Machine, George V. Yana (Bebla) presented as a "correction" of Strozzi's statement a quotation from an unrelated source (cf. p. xxiv) that Sulaqa was called "Patriarch of the Chaldeans".
  122. ^ Frazee 2006, p. 56.
  123. ^ Winkler 2019, p. 126-127.
  124. ^ Joseph 2000, p. 1.
  125. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 4.
  126. ^ Butts 2017, p. 604.
  127. ^ "Fred Aprim, "Assyria and Assyrians Since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq"" (PDF). Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  128. ^ a b Aboona 2008, p. 218-219.
  129. ^ Courtois 2004, p. 105-107.
  130. ^ Atman 2018, p. 215-232.
  131. ^ . Chaldeans On Line. Archived from the original on 5 January 2006. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  132. ^ AANF. . AANF.org. Assyrian American National Federation. Archived from the original on 7 February 2005. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  133. ^ Yacoub 2016.
  134. ^ The Plight of Religious Minorities: Can Religious Pluralism Survive? – Page 51 by United States Congress
  135. ^ Hovannisian, Richard (ed.). The Armenian Genocide: Wartime Radicalization Or Premeditated Continuum. p. 272.
  136. ^ Halo, Thea. Not Even My Name: A True Story. p. 131.
  137. ^ Korbani, Agnes G. The Political Dictionary of Modern Middle East.
  138. ^ Wigram, William Ainger (1920). Our Smallest Ally; Wigram, W[illiam] A[inger]; A Brief Account of the Assyrian Nation in the Great War. Introd. by General H.H. Austin. Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
  139. ^ Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?, p. 281
  140. ^ Len Dieghton, Blood Sweat and Tears
  141. ^ Zubaida, S (July 2000). "Contested nations: Iraq and the Assyrians" (PDF). Nations and Nationalism. 6 (3): 363–82. doi:10.1111/j.1354-5078.2000.00363.x. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  142. ^ "Biography of His Holiness, The Assyrian Martyr, The Late Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII". peshitta.org. Committee of the 50th Anniversary of the Patriarchate of Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII. Retrieved 23 September 2011.
  143. ^ . Refworld. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Archived from the original on 19 October 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  144. ^ "زوعا". zowaa.org. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  145. ^ . indict.org.uk. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011.
  146. ^ Certrez, Donabed, and Makko (2012). The Assyrian Heritage: Threads of Continuity and Influence. Uppsala University. pp. 288–289. ISBN 978-91-554-8303-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  147. ^ (PDF) . Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 2022-02-10. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  148. ^ "Mullen's Plain Talk About U.S. Mistakes in Iraq". National Public Radio. 1 August 2007. Retrieved 24 September 2010.
  149. ^ Henderson & Tucker, p. 19.
  150. ^ "Exodus of Christians hits Baghdad district". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  151. ^ "Church Bombings in Iraq Since 2004". Aina.org. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
  152. ^ a b Burger, John (December 4, 2014). "Christians in Iraq Forming Militia to Defend, and Possibly Retake, Ancestral Lands". Aletia.org.
  153. ^ Jeffrey, Paul (April 29, 2016). "Militias of Iraqi Christians resist Islamic State amid sectarian strife". CatholicPhilly.com. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
  154. ^ Nelson, Steven (February 6, 2015). "Iraqi Assyrian Christians Form Anti-ISIS Militia, and You Can Legally Chip In". U.S. News & World Report.
  155. ^ Henderson, Peter (30 October 2014). "Iraq's Christian paramilitaries split in IS fight". Al-Monitor. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
  156. ^ "Westerners join Iraqi Christian militia to 'crusade'". World Bulletin. 18 February 2015. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  157. ^ . Warisboring.com. 7 March 2015. Archived from the original on 7 September 2016. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  158. ^ . Syriac International News Agency. 7 January 2015. Archived from the original on 16 August 2018. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  159. ^ Hanna, Reine (June 1, 2020), Contested Control: The Future of Security in Iraq's Nineveh Plain, Assyrian Policy Institute, p. 38 & 39
  160. ^ Drott, Carl (25 May 2015). "The Revolutionaries of Bethnahrin". Warscapes.com. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
  161. ^ "Syriac Christians revive ancient language despite war". ARA News. 2016-08-19. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
  162. ^ . Hawar News Agency. 2016-09-24. Archived from the original on 2016-09-24. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  163. ^ "Hassakeh: Syriac Language to Be Taught in PYD-controlled Schools". The Syrian Observer. 3 October 2016. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
  164. ^ "Rojava administration launches new curriculum in Kurdish, Arabic and Assyrian". ARA News. 7 October 2016. Retrieved 2016-10-07.
  165. ^ Syriacs establish military council in Syria, Hürriyet Daily News, 2 February 2013
  166. ^ a b Safi, Marlo (September 25, 2018). "Closure of Syrian Schools: Another Bleak Sign for Christians in Syria". National Review. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
  167. ^ a b c "Kurdish Self-Administration in Syria: Release Assyrian Journalist Souleman Yusph". Assyrian Policy Institute. September 30, 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
  168. ^ Wigram, W.A., "The Ashiret Highlands of Hakkari (Mesopotamia)," Royal Central Asian Society Journal, 1916, Vol. III, pg. 40. – The Assyrians and their Neighbors (London, 1929)
  169. ^ Sherman (2013-09-13). The West in the World. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. ISBN 9781259157059.
  170. ^ Bryce 2009, p. 439.
  171. ^ Betts, Robert Brenton, Christians in the Arab East (Atlanta, 1978)
  172. ^ Dodge, Bayard, "The Settlement of the Assyrians on the Khabur," Royal Central Asian Society Journal, July 1940, pp. 301–320.
  173. ^ Rowlands, J., "The Khabur Valley," Royal Central Asian Society Journal, 1947, pp. 144–149.
  174. ^ a b . 2014-10-10. Archived from the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2014-12-22.
  175. ^ a b "مسؤول مسيحي : عدد المسيحيين في العراق تراجع الى ثلاثمائة الف". Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  176. ^ "Ishtar: Documenting The Crisis In The Assyrian Iranian Community". aina.org.
  177. ^ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2010-10-13). "Iran: Last of the Assyrians". Refworld. Retrieved 2013-09-18.
  178. ^ Atto 2011, p. 83.
  179. ^ . sor.cua.edu. Archived from the original on 2008-11-20. Retrieved 2008-12-06.
  180. ^ a b Minahan 2002, p. 209
  181. ^ Vander Werff, Lyle L. (1977). Christian mission to Muslims: the record : Anglican and Reformed approaches in India and the Near East, 1800–1938. The William Carey Library series on Islamic studies. William Carey Library. pp. 366. ISBN 978-0-87808-320-6.
  182. ^ "Who are the Chaldean Christians?". BBC News. March 13, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2010.
  183. ^ Nisan 2002, p. x.
  184. ^ Travis 2010, p. 238.
  185. ^ FACTBOX: Christians in Turkey
  186. ^ The Middle East, abstracts and index, Part 1. Library Information and Research Service. Northumberland Press, 2002. Page 491.
  187. ^ Central Asia and the Caucasus: transnationalism and diaspora. Touraj Atabaki, Sanjyot Mehendale. Routledge, 2005. Page 228.
  188. ^ "Šlomo Surayt". textbook.surayt.com. Retrieved 2022-08-12.
  189. ^ Üngör 2011, p. 15.
  190. ^ Gaunt et al. 2017, p. 19.
  191. ^ This History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer, pg. 85–87
  192. ^ A Short World History of Christianity by Robert Bruce Mullin, pp. 82–85
  193. ^ "Nestorian (Christian sect)". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2013-09-18.
  194. ^ Demographics of Sweden, Swedish Language Council "Sweden has also one of the largest exile communities of Assyrian and Syriac Christians (also known as Chaldeans) with a population of around 100,000."
  195. ^ . Archived from the original on 5 March 2015. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  196. ^ Data Access and Dissemination Systems (DADS). "American FactFinder – Results". Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  197. ^ Assyrian Australian Association & Ettinger House 1997, Settlement Issues of the Assyrian Community, AAA, Sydney.
  198. ^ a b Lundgren, Svante (15 May 2019). The Assyrians: Fifty Years in Swedenq. Nineveh Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-91-984101-7-4.
  199. ^ "Fairfield's Assyrian Resource Centre has secured $40,000 to fund its renovations". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  200. ^ Fairfield City Council 2003, State of the Community Report, Fairfield City Council, Wakeley.
  201. ^ Kinarah: Twentieth Anniversary of Assyrian Australian Association 1989, Assyrian Australian Association, Edensor Park.
  202. ^ Deniz, F. 2000, ‘Maintenance and Transformation of Ethnic Identity: the Assyrian Case’, The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal
  203. ^ Thrown to the Lions 2013-08-08 at the Wayback Machine, Doug Bandow, The America Spectator
  204. ^ Peter BetBasoo. "Brief History of Assyrians". www.aina.org.
  205. ^ The facts about Syrian refugees and Fairfield by SSI News Blog, 23 February 2017
  206. ^ Fairfield struggles to cope after threefold increase in refugee arrivals by Penny Timms from ABC News, 3 January 2017
  207. ^ "Arab, Chaldean, and Middle Eastern Children and Families in the Tri-County Area." () From a Child's Perspective: Detroit Metropolitan Census 2000 Fact Sheets Series. Wayne State University. Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2004. p. 2/32. Retrieved on November 8, 2013.
  208. ^ B. Furze, P. Savy, R. Brym, J. Lie, Sociology in Today's World, 2008, p. 349
  209. ^ . Crwflags.com. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
  210. ^ "Syriac-Aramaic People (Syria)". Crwflags.com. from the original on 10 November 2001. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
  211. ^ "CHALDEAN FLAG ... from A to Z". Chaldean Flag. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  212. ^ a b Murre van den Berg 2015, p. 127.
  213. ^ Layard 1849a, p. IX-X, 38, 241.
  214. ^ Layard 1849b, p. 237.
  215. ^ Cross, Frank Leslie (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 119. ISBN 9780192802903. In the 19th cent. A. H. Layard, the excavator of Nineveh, first suggested that the local *Syriac Christian communities in the region were descended from the ancient Assyrians, and the idea was later popularized by W. A. Wigram, a member of the Abp. Of Canterbury’s Mission to the Church of the East (1895–1915).
  216. ^ Coakley 2011a, p. 45.
  217. ^ a b Southgate 1840, p. 179.
  218. ^ Bettany 1888, p. 491.
  219. ^ Jonathan Eric Lewis (June 2003). "Iraqi Assyrians: Barometer of Pluralism". Middle East Forum. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  220. ^ "Arab American Institute Still Deliberately Claiming Assyrians Are Arabs". Aina.org. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
  221. ^ "In Court, Saddam Criticizes Kurdish Treatment of Assyrians". Aina.org. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
  222. ^ A companion to Assyria. Eckart Frahm. Hoboken, NJ. 2017. ISBN 978-1-118-32524-7. OCLC 962025766.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  223. ^ "Eastern Churches", Catholic Encyclopedia, see "Eastern Syrians" and "Western Syrians" respectively. Modern terminology within the group is Western Assyrians and Eastern Assyrians respectively, while those who reject the Assyrian identity opt for Syriac or Aramean rather than Assyrian.
  224. ^ Gallagher 2012, p. 123-141.
  225. ^ Gesenius & Prideaux-Tregelles 1859.
  226. ^ Fürst 1867.
  227. ^ Davies 1872.
  228. ^ Coakley 2011b, p. 93.
  229. ^ "Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence, 1431–49 A.D.
  230. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 112.
  231. ^ O’Mahony 2006, p. 526-527.
  232. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 63.
  233. ^ Ainsworth 1841, p. 36.
  234. ^ Ainsworth 1842b, p. 272.
  235. ^ Layard 1849a, p. 260.
  236. ^ Simon (oratorien), Richard (July 3, 1684). "Histoire critique de la creance et des coûtumes des nations du Levant". Chez Frederic Arnaud – via Google Books.
  237. ^ Southgate 1842, p. 249.
  238. ^ Southgate 1844, p. 80.
  239. ^ Akopian, Arman (2017). "11. Other branches of Syriac Christianity: Melkites and Maronites". Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies. pp. 217–222. doi:10.31826/9781463238933-014. ISBN 9781463238933.
  240. ^ "Syriac Universal Alliance". 2003. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.694.4099. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  241. ^ Donabed & Mako 2009, p. 75.
  242. ^ Castellino, Joshua; Cavanaugh, Kathleen A. (April 25, 2013). Minority Rights in the Middle East. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780199679492. Retrieved October 12, 2019 – via Google Books.
  243. ^ אנחנו לא ערבים - אנחנו ארמים (in Hebrew). Israel HaYom. 9 August 2013.
  244. ^ Aderet, Ofer (September 9, 2018). "Neither Arab nor Jew: Israel's Unheard Minorities Speak Up After the Nation-state Law". Retrieved October 12, 2019 – via Haaretz.
  245. ^ Fiey 1965, p. 141–160.
  246. ^ a b Lipiński 2000.
  247. ^ Schniedewind 2002, p. 276-287.
  248. ^ a b Gzella 2015.
  249. ^ Nigel Wilson (2013-10-31). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. p. 652. ISBN 9781136788000.
  250. ^ Andrade 2013, p. 28.
  251. ^ Andrade 2014, p. 299–317.
  252. ^ Herodotus, The Histories, VII.63, s:History of Herodotus/Book 7.
  253. ^ Joseph 1997, p. 37-43.
  254. ^ Frye 1992, p. 281–285.
  255. ^ Frye 1997, p. 30–36.
  256. ^ Rollinger 2006a, p. 72-82.
  257. ^ Rollinger 2006b, p. 283-287.
  258. ^ Heinrichs 1993, p. 106–107.
  259. ^ Macuch 1976, p. 89, 206, 233.
  260. ^ Tsereteli, Sovremennyj assirijskij jazyk, Moscow: Nauka, 1964.
  261. ^ Tekoğlu et al. 2000, p. 961-1007.
  262. ^ Rollinger 2006b, p. 283–287.
  263. ^ ASSYRIANS OF CHICAGO. "The Assyrian Academic Society" (PDF). www.aina.org.
  264. ^ . Archived from the original on May 2, 2006.
  265. ^ Chamberlain, AF. "Notes on Some Aspects of the Folk-Psychology of Night". American Journal of Psychology, 1908 – JSTOR.
  266. ^ Gansell, AR. FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO MODERN SYRIA: ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FEMALE ADORNMENT DURING RITES. Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context. 2007 – Brill Academic Publishers.
  267. ^ Dr. Joseph Adebayo Awoyemi (14 September 2014). Pre-marital Counselling In a Multicultural Society. pp. 75–. ISBN 978-1-291-83577-9.
  268. ^ The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia, Garnik Asatryan, Victoria Arakelova.
  269. ^ Parpola 2004, p. 9.
  270. ^ Bae 2004, p. 1–20.
  271. ^ "Akkadian Words in Modern Assyrian" (PDF). Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  272. ^ Kaufman, Stephen A. (1974), The Akkadian influences on Aramaic. University of Chicago Press
  273. ^ a b Avenery, Iddo, The Aramaic Dialect of the Jews of Zakho. The Israel academy of Science and Humanities 1988.
  274. ^ Khan, Geoffrey (1999). A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic: the dialect of the Jews of Arbel. Leiden: EJ Brill.
  275. ^ Maclean, Arthur John (1895). Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac: as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and the Plain of Mosul: with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul. Cambridge University Press, London.
  276. ^ Heinrichs 1990.
  277. ^ Tezel 2003.
  278. ^ O'Brien, Abbie. "Australia's only Assyrian school is giving refugees a fresh start". SBS News. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  279. ^ . Catholic Herald. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  280. ^ "Understanding recent movements of Christians from Syria and Iraq to other countries across the Middle East and Europe" (PDF). www.aina.org.
  281. ^ Carl Drott (25 May 2015). "The Revolutionaries of Bethnahrin". Warscapes.
  282. ^ "Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture". Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture (in Turkish). Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  283. ^ Briquel-Chatonnet 2019, p. 243–265.
  284. ^ "Syriac alphabet". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
  285. ^ Hatch, William (1946). An album of dated Syriac manuscripts. Boston: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, reprinted in 2002 by Gorgias Press. p. 24. ISBN 1-931956-53-7.
  286. ^ Nestle, Eberhard (1888). Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar. Berlin: H. Reuther's Verlagsbuchhandlung. [translated to English as Syriac grammar with bibliography, chrestomathy and glossary, by R. S. Kennedy. London: Williams & Norgate 1889. p. 5].
  287. ^ J. Martin Bailey, Betty Jane Bailey, Who Are the Christians in the Middle East? p. 163: "more than two thirds" out of "nearly a million" Christians in Iraq.
  288. ^ . Adherents.com. Archived from the original on October 1, 2003. Retrieved 2013-09-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  289. ^ Boháč, Artur (2010). "Assyrian Ethnic Identity in a Globalizing World" (PDF). In Mácha, Přemysl; Kopeček, Vincenc (eds.). Beyond Globalisation: Exploring the Limits of Globalisation in the Regional Context. Ostrava: University of Ostrava. p. 71. ISBN 978-80-7368-717-5. Although there are some atheists among Assyrians, they are usually associated with specific communities based on the adherence to a concrete religious sect.
  290. ^ Abdalla 2017, p. 92-105.
  291. ^ N. Shirinian, George (2017). Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913–1923. Berghahn Books. p. 109. ISBN 9781785334337.
  292. ^ O. Barthoma, Soner (2017). Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Berghahn Books. p. 2. ISBN 9781785334993.
  293. ^ G. Hovannisian, Richard (2011). The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. Transaction Publishers. p. 268. ISBN 9781412835923.
  294. ^ "Muslim Assyrians? Who are they?". November 23, 2016.
  295. ^ "Crypto-Assyrians: Who are they?". The Armenian Weekly. November 28, 2016.
  296. ^ "שואת אחינו האשוריים | הדרך המהירה שבין תרבות ישראל לתרבות אשור | יעקב מעוז". JOKOPOST | עיתון המאמרים והבלוגים המוביל בישראל (in Hebrew). 2019-07-18. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
  297. ^ "Qenshrin.com: Guide to the Christian congregations in Aleppo (in Arabic)". from the original on 2011-03-01.
  298. ^ Leroy, Jules; Collin, Peter (2004). Monks and Monasteries of the Near East. pp. 166–167. ISBN 978-1-59333-276-1.
  299. ^ The Date of Easter 2011-08-14 at the Wayback Machine. Article from United States Naval Observatory (March 27, 2007).
  300. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 19, 2011.
  301. ^ . syrianorthodoxchurch.org. Archived from the original on 25 October 2012. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
  302. ^ a b Piroyan, William; Naby, Eden (1999). "FESTIVALS ix. Assyrian". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. IX, Fasc. 6. pp. 561–563.
  303. ^ Mandel, Pam (2017-12-05). "An Ancient Empire Gets New Life — on a Food Truck". Jewish in Seattle Magazine. Retrieved 2018-03-21.
  304. ^ Edelstein, Sari, ed. (2011). Food, Cuisine, and Cultural Competency for Culinary, Hospitality, and Nutrition Professionals. Boston, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning. pp. 545–552. ISBN 978-0763759650.
  305. ^ a b . Archived from the original on August 16, 2000.
  306. ^ Akbari M.T.; Papiha Sunder S.; Roberts D.F.; Farhud Daryoush D. (1986). "Genetic Differentiation among Iranian Christian Communities". American Journal of Human Genetics. 38 (1): 84–98. PMC 1684716. PMID 3456196.
  307. ^ Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca; Menozzi, Paolo; Piazza, Alberto (1994). The History and Geography of Human Genes. p. 243. ISBN 978-0691087504.
  308. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2021-05-10.
  309. ^ Banoei, M. M.; Chaleshtori, M. H.; Sanati, M. H.; Shariati, P; Houshmand, M; Majidizadeh, T; Soltani, N. J.; Golalipour, M (Feb 2008). "Variation of DAT1 VNTR alleles and genotypes among old ethnic groups in Mesopotamia to the Oxus region". Hum Biol. 80 (1): 73–81. doi:10.3378/1534-6617(2008)80[73:VODVAA]2.0.CO;2. PMID 18505046. S2CID 10417591. The relationship probability was lowest between Assyrians and other communities. Endogamy was found to be high for this population through determination of the heterogeneity coefficient (+0,6867), Our study supports earlier findings indicating the relatively closed nature of the Assyrian community as a whole, which as a result of their religious and cultural traditions, have had little intermixture with other populations.
  310. ^ Al-Zahery et al., BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:288, "In search of the genetic footprints of Sumerians: a survey of Y-chromosome and mtDNA variation in the Marsh Arabs of Iraq""In the less frequent J1-M267* clade, only marginally affected by events of expansion, Marsh Arabs shared haplotypes with other Iraqi and Assyrian samples, supporting a common local background."
  311. ^ Dogan, Serkan (3 November 2017). "A glimpse at the intricate mosaic of ethnicities from Mesopotamia: Paternal lineages of the northern Iraqi Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Turkmens and Yazidis". PLOS ONE. 12 (11): e0187408. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1287408D. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0187408. PMC 5669434. PMID 29099847.
  312. ^ a b c Lashgary Z, Khodadadi A, Singh Y, Houshmand SM, Mahjoubi F, Sharma P, Singh S, Seyedin M, Srivastava A, Ataee M, Mohammadi ZS, Rezaei N, Bamezai RN, Sanati MH (2011). "Y chromosome diversity among the Iranian religious groups: a reservoir of genetic variation". Ann. Hum. Biol. 38 (3): 364–71. doi:10.3109/03014460.2010.535562. PMID 21329477. S2CID 207460555.
  313. ^ Yepiskoposian L, Khudoyan A, Harutyunian A (2006). "Genetic Testing of Language Replacement Hypothesis in Southwest Asia". Iran and the Caucasus. 10 (2): 191–208. doi:10.1163/157338406780345899. JSTOR 4030922.
  314. ^ Grugni, Viola; Battaglia, Vincenza; Hooshiar Kashani, Baharak; Parolo, Silvia; Al-Zahery, Nadia; Achilli, Alessandro; Olivieri, Anna; Gandini, Francesca; Houshmand, Massoud; Sanati, Mohammad Hossein; Torroni, Antonio; Semino, Ornella (2012). "Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East: New Clues from the Y-Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians". PLOS ONE. 7 (7): e41252. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...741252G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041252. PMC 3399854. PMID 22815981.
  315. ^ Underhill PA, Shen P, Lin AA, Jin L, Passarino G, Yang WH, Kauffman E, Bonné-Tamir B, Bertranpetit J, Francalacci P, Ibrahim M, Jenkins T, Kidd JR, Mehdi SQ, Seielstad MT, Wells RS, Piazza A, Davis RW, Feldman MW, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Oefner PJ (2000). "Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations". Nature Genetics. 26 (3): 358–61. doi:10.1038/81685. PMID 11062480. S2CID 12893406.
  316. ^ Semino O, Magri C, Benuzzi G, Lin AA, Al-Zahery N, Battaglia V, Maccioni L, Triantaphyllidis C, Shen P, Oefner PJ, Zhivotovsky LA, King R, Torroni A, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Underhill PA, Santachiara-Benerecetti AS: Origin, diffusion, and differentiation of Y-chromosome haplogroups E and J: inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and later migratory events in the Mediterranean area. Am J Hum Genet 2004, 74:1023–1034.

Sources

  • Abdalla, Michael (2017). "The Term Seyfo in Historical Perspective". The Assyrian Genocide: Cultural and Political Legacies. Vol. 1. London: Routledge. pp. 92–105. ISBN 9781138284050.
  • Aboona, Hirmis (2008). Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire. Amherst: Cambria Press. ISBN 9781604975833.
  • Abramtsov, David (1960). "The Assyrians of Persia and the Russian Orthodox Church". One Church. 14: 155–169.
  • Ainsworth, William F. (1841). "An Account of a Visit to the Chaldeans, Inhabiting Central Kurdistán; And of an Ascent of the Peak of Rowándiz (Ṭúr Sheïkhíwá) in Summer in 1840". The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. 11: 21–76. doi:10.2307/1797632. JSTOR 1797632.
  • Ainsworth, William F. (1842a). Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia. Vol. 1. London: John W. Parker.
  • Ainsworth, William F. (1842b). Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia. Vol. 2. London: John W. Parker.
  • Al-Jeloo, Nicholas (1999). "Who are the Assyrians?". The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal. 4.
  • Andrade, Nathanael J. (2013). Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107244566.
  • Andrade, Nathanael J. (2014). "Assyrians, Syrians and the Greek Language in the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Periods". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 73 (2): 299–317. doi:10.1086/677249. JSTOR 10.1086/677249. S2CID 163755644.
  • Atman, Sabri (2018). "Assyrian Genocide from a Gender Perspective". Sayfo 1915: An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. pp. 215–232. ISBN 9781463207304.
  • Atto, Naures (2011). Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora: Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora. Leiden: Leiden University Press. ISBN 9789087281489.
  • Bae, Chul-hyun (2004). "Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire (538-333 B.C.E.)". Journal of Universal Language. 5: 1–20. doi:10.22425/jul.2004.5.1.1.
  • Bagg, Ariel M. (2017). "Assyria and the West: Syria and the Levant". A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 268–274.
  • Baum, Wilhelm; Winkler, Dietmar W. (2003). The Church of the East: A Concise History. London-New York: Routledge-Curzon. ISBN 9781134430192.
  • Baumer, Christoph (2006). The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. London-New York: Tauris. ISBN 9781845111151.
  • Benjamin, Yoab. "Assyrians in Middle America: A Historical and Demographic Study of the Chicago Assyrian Community" (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 10 (2).
  • BetGivargis-McDaniel, Maegan (2007). Assyrians of New Britain. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-5012-1. OCLC 156908771.
  • Becker, Adam H. (2008). "The Ancient Near East in the Late Antique Near East: Syriac Christian Appropriation of the Biblical East". Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 394–415. ISBN 9783161494116.
  • Becker, Adam H. (2015). Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226145310.
  • Beitrag, Onders (2012). "Minority Rights in Turkey: Quo Vadis, Assyrians?". The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery. Münster: LIT Verlag. pp. 99–120. ISBN 9783643902689.
  • Bettany, George T. (1888). The World's Inhabitants. London-New York: Ward, Lock & Co.
  • Briquel-Chatonnet, Françoise (2019). "Writing Syriac: Manuscripts and Inscriptions". The Syriac World. London: Routledge. pp. 243–265. ISBN 9781138899018.
  • Bryce, Trevor R. (2009). The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the fall of the Persian Empire. London-New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781134159079.
  • Butts, Aaron M. (2017). "Assyrian Christians". A Companion to Assyria. Malden: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 599–612.
  • Coakley, James F. (1992). The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198267447.
  • Coakley, James F. (1996). "The Church of the East since 1914". The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 78 (3): 179–198. doi:10.7227/BJRL.78.3.14.
  • Coakley, James F. (2011a). "Assyrians". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. p. 45.
  • Coakley, James F. (2011b). "Chaldeans". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. p. 93.
  • Courtois, Sebastien de (2004). The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the Last Aramaeans. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. ISBN 9781593330774.
  • Davies, Benjamin (1872). A Compendious and Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament. London: Asher.
  • Demir, Sara (2017). "The Atrocities against the Assyrians in 1915: A Legal Perspective". The Assyrian Genocide: Cultural and Political Legacies. Vol. 1. London: Routledge. pp. 106–136. ISBN 9781138284050.
  • Donabed, Sargon G.; Donabed, Ninos (2006). Assyrians of Eastern Massachusetts. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738544809.
  • Donabed, Sargon G.; Mako, Shamiran (2009). "Ethno-cultural and Religious Identity of Syrian Orthodox Christians" (PDF). Chronos: Revue d'Histoire de l'Université de Balamand. 19: 69–111.
  • Donabed, Sargon G. (2015). Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748686056.
  • Donabed, Sargon G. (2017). "Neither Syriac-speaking nor Syrian Orthodox Christians: Harput Assyrians in the United States as a Model for Ethnic Self-Categorization and Expression". Syriac in its Multi-Cultural Context. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. pp. 359–369. ISBN 9789042931640.
  • Fiey, Jean Maurice (1965). "Assyriens ou Araméens?". L'Orient Syrien. 10: 141–160.
  • Frye, Richard N. (1992). "Assyria and Syria: Synonyms". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 51 (4): 281–285. doi:10.1086/373570. S2CID 161323237.
  • Frye, Richard N. (1997). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 11 (2): 30–36. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-13.
  • Frye, Richard N. (1999). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 13 (1): 69–70. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-11.
  • Frye, Richard N. (2002). "Mapping Assyria". Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena. Milano: Università di Bologna. pp. 75–78. ISBN 9788884831071.
  • Frazee, Charles A. (2006) [1983]. Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453-1923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521027007.
  • Fürst, Julius (1867). A Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament: With an Introduction Giving a Short History of Hebrew Lexicography. London: Williams & Norgate.
  • Gallagher, Edmon L. (2012). Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004228023.
  • Gaunt, David; Beṯ-Şawoce, Jan; Donef, Racho (2006). Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. ISBN 9781593333010.
  • Gesenius, Wilhelm; Prideaux-Tregelles, Samuel (1859). Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. London: Bagster.
  • Gewargis, Odisho Malko (2002). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 16 (1): 77–95. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2003-04-21.
  • Gzella, Holger (2015). A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004285101.
  • Halo, Thea (2018). "The Targeting of Assyrians during the Christian Holocaust in Ottoman Turkey". Sayfo 1915: An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. pp. 41–60. ISBN 9781463207304.
  • Hanish, Shak (2015). "Assyrians". Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues. London-New York: Routledge. p. 517. ISBN 9781317464006.
  • Healey, John F. (2010). "The Church Across the Border: The Church of the East and its Chaldean Branch". Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East. London-New York: Routledge. pp. 41–55. ISBN 9781135193713.
  • Heinrichs, Wolfhart, ed. (1990). Studies in Neo-Aramaic. Atlanta: Scholars Press. ISBN 9781555404307.
  • Heinrichs, Wolfhart (1993). "The Modern Assyrians - Name and Nation". Semitica: Serta philologica Constantino Tsereteli dicata. Torino: Zamorani. pp. 99–114. ISBN 9788871580241.
  • Hunter, Erica C. D. (2014). "The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East". In Leustean, Lucian N. (ed.). Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. London-New York: Routledge. pp. 601–620. ISBN 9781317818663.
  • Jakob, Joachim (2014). Ostsyrische Christen und Kurden im Osmanischen Reich des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Münster: LIT Verlag. ISBN 9783643506160.
  • Joseph, John B. (1997). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 11 (2): 37–43. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-15.
  • Joseph, John B. (1998). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 12 (1): 70–76. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-15.
  • Joseph, John B. (2000). The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: A History of Their Encounter with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, and Colonial Powers. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004116419.
  • Kalpakian, Jack Vahram (2011). "Assyrians". Ethnic Groups of Africa and the Middle East: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. pp. 30–33. ISBN 9781598843620.
  • Kitchen, Robert A. (2012). "The Assyrian Church of the East". In Casiday, Augustine M. (ed.). The Orthodox Christian World. London-New York: Routledge. pp. 78–88. ISBN 9780415455169.
  • Laing-Marshall, Andrea (2005). "Assyrians". Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities. Vol. 1. New York-London: Routledge. pp. 149–150. ISBN 9781135193881.
  • Layard, Austen H. (1849a). Nineveh and its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan. Vol. 1. London: John Murray.
  • Layard, Austen H. (1849b). Nineveh and its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan. Vol. 2. London: John Murray.
  • Lipiński, Edward (2000). The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ISBN 9789042908598.
  • Lundgren, Svante (2016). The Assyrians: From Nineveh to Södertälje. Södertälje: Tigris Press. ISBN 9789198344127.
  • MacDonald, Kevin (2004-07-29). (Abstract). Archived from the original on 2007-06-10.
  • Macuch, Rudolf (1976). Geschichte der spät- und neusyrischen Literatur. Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110059595.
  • Makko, Aryo (2012). "Living Between the Fronts: The Turkish-Kurdish Conflict and the Assyrians". The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery. Münster: LIT Verlag. pp. 63–71. ISBN 9783643902689.
  • Millar, Fergus (1967). The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 9780440017691.
  • Millard, Alan R. (1983). "Assyrians and Arameans". Iraq: British Institute for the Study of Iraq. 45 (1): 101–108. doi:10.2307/4200184. JSTOR 4200184. S2CID 192959948.
  • Mooken, Aprem (2003). The History of the Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century. Kottayam: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute.
  • Murre van den Berg, Heleen (2009). "Chaldeans and Assyrians: The Church of the East in the Ottoman Period". The Christian Heritage of Iraq. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. pp. 146–164. ISBN 9781607241119.
  • Murre van den Berg, Heleen (2011) [2009]. "Syriac Orthodox Church". The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization. Vol. 4. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 2304–2309.
  • Murre van den Berg, Heleen (2015). "Classical Syriac and the Syriac Churches: A Twentieth-Century History". Syriac Encounters: Papers from the Sixth North American Syriac Symposium. Louvain: Peeters Publishers. pp. 119–148. ISBN 9789042930469.
  • Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia; Ossewaarde, Marinus (2019). "A Struggle for Genocide Recognition: How the Aramean, Assyrian, and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present" (PDF). Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 33 (3): 412–428. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcz045.
  • Nisan, Mordechai (2002). Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression (2nd ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 9780786451333.
  • O’Mahony, Anthony (2006). "Syriac Christianity in the modern Middle East". The Cambridge History of Christianity: Eastern Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 511–536. ISBN 9780521811132.
  • Parpola, Simo (2004). (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies. 18 (2): 5–22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-11-28.
  • Rollinger, Robert (2006a). "Assyrios, Syrios, Syros und Leukosyros". Die Welt des Orients. 36: 72–82. JSTOR 25684050.
  • Rollinger, Robert (2006b). "The Terms Assyria and Syria Again" (PDF). Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 65 (4): 283–287. doi:10.1086/511103. S2CID 162760021.
  • Садо, Стефан (1996). "Российская православная миссия в Урмии (1898-1918)" (PDF). Христианское чтение. 13: 73–112.
  • Sato, Noriko (2018). "The Memory of Sayfo and Its Relation to the Identity of Contemporary Assyrian/Aramean Christians in Syria". Sayfo 1915: An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. pp. 305–326. ISBN 9781463207304.
  • Schniedewind, William M. (2002).
January 10, 2023
assyrian, people, assyrians, indigenous, ethnic, group, native, assyria, geographical, region, western, asia, note, modern, assyrians, claim, descent, from, ancient, counterparts, originating, from, ancient, indigenous, mesopotamians, akkad, sumer, first, deve. Assyrians a are an indigenous ethnic group native to Assyria a geographical region in Western Asia Note 1 Modern Assyrians claim descent from the ancient counterparts originating from the ancient indigenous Mesopotamians of Akkad and Sumer who first developed the civilisation in northern Mesopotamia that would become Assyria in 2600 BCE 51 52 53 Assyrians have been speaking dialects of Suret a Semitic language of the Neo Aramaic branch since approximately 1000 BCE 54 55 Modern Assyrians may culturally self identify as Syriacs Note 2 Chaldeans Note 3 or Arameans Note 4 for religious geographic and tribal identification 60 61 AssyriansSuraye Suryoye ʾAṯōrayeEthnic flag used by most AssyriansTotal population2 5 million 1 2 3 4 5 6 Regions with significant populationsAssyrian homeland Numbers can vary Syria200 000 877 000 pre Syrian civil war 7 8 9 10 Iraq142 000 200 000 11 12 Turkey25 000 13 Iran7 000 17 000 14 Diaspora Numbers can vary United States110 807 600 000 15 16 17 18 19 Sweden150 000 20 Germany70 000 100 000 21 22 Jordan30 000 150 000 23 24 Australia61 000 2020 est 25 Lebanon50 000 26 Netherlands25 000 35 000 27 Canada19 685 28 France16 000 29 Russia14 000 30 Greece6 000 31 Armenia2 769 6 000 32 33 Austria2 500 5 000 34 35 United Kingdom3 000 4 000 36 Georgia3 299 37 38 Palestine1 500 5 000 39 40 Ukraine3 143 41 New Zealand1 497 42 Israel1 000 43 Denmark700 44 Kazakhstan350 45 Finland300 46 LanguagesNeo Aramaic languages Suret Turoyo Classical Syriac liturgical Akkadian in antiquity Sumerian in antiquity ReligionPredominantly Syriac Christianity Minority Protestantism Judaism and Islam Chaldean Catholics praying in a Holy Qurbana in Baghdad Iraq Assyrians are almost exclusively Christian 62 with most adhering to the East and West Syriac liturgical rites of Christianity 63 50 The churches that constitute the East Syriac rite include the Chaldean Catholic Church Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East whereas the churches of the West Syriac rite are the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church Both rites use Classical Syriac as their liturgical language The ancestral indigenous lands that form the Assyrian homeland are those of ancient Mesopotamia a region currently divided between modern day Iraq southeastern Turkey northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria 48 A majority of modern Assyrians have migrated to other regions of the world including North America the Levant Australia Europe Russia and the Caucasus Emigration was triggered by tragic events such as the massacres in Hakkari the massacres of Diyarbekir the Assyrian genocide concurrent with the Armenian and Greek genocides during World War I by the Ottoman Empire and allied Kurdish tribes the Simele massacre the Iranian Revolution Arab Nationalist Ba athist policies in Iraq between the years 1968 2003 and in Syria the take over by Islamic State of many parts in Syria and Iraq particularly the Nineveh Plains between 2014 2017 64 65 Most recently events such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by United States and its allies and the Syrian civil war which began in 2011 have displaced much of the remaining Assyrian community from their homeland as a result of ethnic and religious persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists Of the one million or more Iraqis reported by the United Nations to have fled Iraq since the occupation nearly 40 were the indigenous Assyrian people even though Assyrians accounted for only around 3 of the pre war Iraqi demography 66 67 After the emergence of the Islamic State and the taking over of much of the Assyrian homeland by the terror group another major wave of Assyrian displacement took place The Islamic State was driven out from the Assyrian villages in the Khabour River Valley and the areas surrounding the city of Al Hasakah in Syria by 2015 and from the Nineveh Plains in Iraq by 2017 In 2014 the Nineveh Plain Protection Units was formed and many Assyrians joined the force to defend themselves The organization later became part of Iraqi Armed forces and played a key role in liberating areas previously held by the Islamic State during the War in Iraq 68 In northern Syria Assyrian groups have been taking part both politically and militarily in the Kurdish dominated but multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces see Khabour Guards and Sutoro and Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria Contents 1 History 1 1 Pre Christian history 1 1 1 Language 1 2 Early Christian period 1 3 Arab conquest 1 4 Mongolian and Turkic rule 1 5 From Iranian Safavid to confirmed Ottoman rule 1 5 1 World War I and aftermath 1 5 2 Assyrian volunteers 1 5 3 Assyrian rebellion 1 6 Modern history 1 6 1 21st century 2 Demographics 2 1 Homeland 2 2 Assyrian subgroups 2 3 Persecution 2 4 Diaspora 3 Identity and subdivisions 3 1 Self designation 3 2 Assyrian vs Syrian naming controversy 4 Culture 4 1 Language 4 1 1 Script 4 2 Religion 4 3 Music 4 4 Dance 4 5 Festivals 4 6 Traditional clothing 4 7 Cuisine 5 Genetics 5 1 Haplogroups 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 Sources 10 External linksHistoryMain article History of the Assyrian people Pre Christian history Main articles Mesopotamia Assyria and Neo Assyrian Empire Part of the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal c 645 635 BC Assyria is the homeland of the Assyrian people it is located in the ancient Near East In prehistoric times the region that was to become known as Assyria and Subartu was home to Neanderthals such as the remains of those which have been found at the Shanidar Cave The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria belonged to the Jarmo culture c 7100 BC and Tell Hassuna the centre of the Hassuna culture c 6000 BC The history of Assyria begins with the formation of the city of Assur perhaps as early as the 25th century BC 69 During the early Bronze Age period Sargon of Akkad united all the native Semitic speaking peoples including the Assyrians and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire 2335 2154 BC The cities of Assur and Nineveh modern day Mosul which was the oldest and largest city of the ancient Assyrian Empire 70 together with a number of other towns and cities existed as early as the 25th century BC although they appear to have been Sumerian ruled administrative centres at this time rather than independent states The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian Assyro Babylonian population 71 An Assyrian identity distinct from other neighboring groups appears to have formed during the Old Assyrian period in the 21st or 20th century BC 72 Map of the Neo Assyrian Empire under Shalmaneser III dark green and Esarhaddon light green In the traditions of the Assyrian Church of the East they are descended from Abraham s grandson Dedan son of Jokshan progenitor of the ancient Assyrians 73 However there is no other historical basis for this assertion the Hebrew Bible does not directly mention it and there is no mention in Assyrian records which date as far back as the 25th century BC What is known is that Ashur uballit I overthrew the Mitanni c 1365 BC and the Assyrians benefited from this development by taking control of the eastern portion of Mitanni territory and later also annexing Hittite Babylonian Amorite and Hurrian territories 74 The rise and rule of the Middle Assyrian Empire 14th to 10th century BC spread Assyrian culture people and identity across northern Mesopotamia 75 The Assyrian people after the fall of the Neo Assyrian Empire in 609 BC were under the control of the Neo Babylonian Empire and later the Persian Empire which consumed the entire Neo Babylonian or Chaldean Empire in 539 BC Assyrians became front line soldiers for the Persian Empire under Xerxes I playing a major role in the Battle of Marathon under Darius I in 490 BC 76 However Herodotus whose Histories are the main source of information about that battle makes no mention of Assyrians in connection with it 77 Despite the influx of foreign elements the presence of Assyrians is confirmed by the worship of the god Ashur references to the name survive into the 3rd century AD 78 The Greeks Parthians and Romans had a rather low level of integration with the local population in Mesopotamia which allowed their cultures to survive 79 Semi independent kingdoms influenced by Assyrian culture Hatra Adiabene Osroene and perhaps semi autonomous Assyrian vassal states Assur sprung up in the east under Parthian rule lasting until conquests by the Sasanian Empire in the region in the 3rd century AD 80 Language Emerging in Sumer c 3500 BC cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms Around 3000 BC the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian Babylonian and Assyrian and Hittite languages 81 The Kultepe texts which were written in Old Assyrian preserve the earliest known traces of the Hittite language and the earliest attestation of any Indo European language dated to the 20th century BC Most of the archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria but the use of both cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence To date over 20 000 cuneiform tablets have been recovered from the site 82 83 From 1700 BC and onward the Sumerian language was preserved by the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians only as a liturgical and classical language for religious artistic and scholarly purposes 84 The Akkadian language with its main dialects of Assyrian and Babylonian once the lingua franca of the Ancient Near East began to decline during the Neo Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC being marginalized by Old Aramaic during the reign of Tiglath Pileser III By the Hellenistic period the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia Early Christian period Map of Asōristan 226 637 AD Further information Syriac Christianity History of Eastern Christianity and Asōristan From the 1st century BC Assyria was the theatre of the protracted Roman Persian Wars Much of the region would become the Roman province of Assyria from 116 AD to 118 AD following the conquests of Trajan but after a Parthian inspired Assyrian rebellion the new emperor Hadrian withdrew from the short lived province Assyria and its neighboring provinces in 118 AD 85 Following a successful campaign in 197 198 Severus converted the kingdom of Osroene centred on Edessa into a frontier Roman province 86 Roman influence in the area came to an end under Jovian in 363 who abandoned the region after concluding a hasty peace agreement with the Sassanians 87 The Assyrians were Christianized in the first to third centuries in Roman Syria and Roman Assyria The population of the Sasanian province of Asoristan was a mixed one composed of Assyrians Arameans in the far south and the western deserts and Persians 88 The Greek element in the cities still strong during the Parthian Empire ceased to be ethnically distinct in Sasanian times The majority of the population were Eastern Aramaic speakers Along with the Arameans Armenians Greeks and Nabataeans the Assyrians were among the first people to convert to Christianity and spread Eastern Christianity to the Far East in spite of becoming from the 8th century a minority religion in their homeland following the Muslim conquest of Persia In 410 the Council of Seleucia Ctesiphon the capital of the Sasanian Empire 89 organized the Christians within that empire into what became known as the Church of the East Its head was declared to be the bishop of Seleucia Ctesiphon who in the acts of the council was referred to as the Grand or Major Metropolitan and who soon afterward was called the Catholicos of the East Later the title of Patriarch was also used Dioceses were organised into provinces each of which was under the authority of a metropolitan bishop Six such provinces were instituted in 410 Mor Mattai Monastery Dayro d Mor Mattai in Bartella Nineveh Iraq It is recognized as one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence and is famous for its magnificent library and considerable collection of Syriac Christian manuscripts 90 Another council held in 424 declared that the Catholicos of the East was independent of western ecclesiastical authorities those of the Roman Empire Soon afterwards Christians in the Roman Empire were divided by their attitude regarding the Council of Ephesus 431 which condemned Nestorianism and the Council of Chalcedon 451 which condemned Monophysitism Those who for any reason refused to accept one or other of these councils were called Nestorians or Monophysites while those who accepted both councils held under the auspices of the Roman emperors were called Melkites derived from Syriac malka king 91 meaning royalists All three groups existed among the Syriac Christians the East Syriacs being called Nestorians and the West Syriacs being divided between the Monophysites today the Syriac Orthodox Church also known as Jacobites after Jacob Baradaeus and those who accepted both councils primarily today s Eastern Orthodox Church which has adopted the Byzantine Rite in Greek but also the Maronite Church which kept its West Syriac Rite and was not as closely aligned with Constantinople Roman Byzantine and Persian spheres of influence divided Syriac speaking Christians into two groups those who adhered to the Miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church the so called Jacobite Church or West Syrians and those who adhered to the Church of the East the so called Nestorian Church They developed distinct dialects mainly based on the pronunciation and written symbolization of vowels following the split 92 With the rise of Syriac Christianity eastern Aramaic enjoyed a renaissance as a classical language in the 2nd to 8th centuries and varieties of that form of Aramaic Neo Aramaic languages are still spoken by a few small groups of Jacobite and Nestorian Christians in the Middle East 93 Arab conquest Further information Fall of Babylon and Muslim conquest of Persia Assyrian Mar Toma Church in Urmia Iran The Assyrians initially experienced some periods of religious and cultural freedom interspersed with periods of severe religious and ethnic persecution after the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia Assyrians contributed to Islamic civilizations during the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic They also excelled in philosophy science Masawaiyh 94 Eutychius of Alexandria and Jabril ibn Bukhtishu 95 and theology such as Tatian Bardaisan Babai the Great Nestorius and Thomas of Marga and the personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty 96 Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Assyrian Christian background 97 Indigenous Assyrians became second class citizens dhimmi in a greater Arab Islamic state and those who resisted Arabization and conversion to Islam were subject to severe religious ethnic and cultural discrimination and had certain restrictions imposed upon them 98 Assyrians were excluded from specific duties and occupations reserved for Muslims they did not enjoy the same political rights as Muslims their word was not equal to that of a Muslim in legal and civil matters as Christians they were subject to payment of a special tax jizya they were banned from spreading their religion further or building new churches in Muslim ruled lands but were also expected to adhere to the same laws of property contract and obligation as the Muslim Arabs 99 They could not seek conversion of a Muslim a non Muslim man could not marry a Muslim woman and the child of such a marriage would be considered Muslim They could not own a Muslim slave and had to wear different clothing from Muslims in order to be distinguishable In addition to the jizya tax they were also required to pay the kharaj tax on their land which was heavier than the jizya However they were ensured protection given religious freedom and to govern themselves in accordance to their own laws 100 Assyrian Church of Our Virgin Lady in Baghdad As non Islamic proselytising was punishable by death under Sharia the Assyrians were forced into preaching in Transoxiana Central Asia India Mongolia and China where they established numerous churches The Church of the East was considered to be one of the major Christian powerhouses in the world alongside Latin Christianity in Europe and the Byzantine Empire 101 From the 7th century AD onwards Mesopotamia saw a steady influx of Arabs Kurds and other Iranian peoples 102 and later Turkic peoples Assyrians were increasingly marginalized persecuted and gradually became a minority in their own homeland Conversion to Islam as a result of heavy taxation which also resulted in decreased revenue from their rulers As a result the new converts migrated to Muslim garrison towns nearby Assyrians remained dominant in Upper Mesopotamia as late as the 14th century 103 and the city of Assur was still occupied by Assyrians during the Islamic period until the mid 14th century when the Muslim Turco Mongol ruler Timur conducted a religiously motivated massacre against Assyrians After there were no records of Assyrians remaining in Assur according to the archaeological and numismatic record From this point the Assyrian population was dramatically reduced in their homeland 104 From the 19th century after the rise of nationalism in the Balkans the Ottomans started viewing Assyrians and other Christians in their eastern front as a potential threat The Kurdish Emirs sought to consolidate their power by attacking Assyrian communities which were already well established there Scholars estimate that tens of thousands of Assyrian in the Hakkari region were massacred in 1843 when Bedr Khan Beg the emir of Bohtan invaded their region 105 After a later massacre in 1846 the Ottomans were forced by the western powers into intervening in the region and the ensuing conflict destroyed the Kurdish emirates and reasserted the Ottoman power in the area The Assyrians were subject to the massacres of Diyarbakir soon after 106 Being culturally ethnically and linguistically distinct from their Muslim neighbors in the Middle East the Arabs Persians Kurds Turks the Assyrians have endured much hardship throughout their recent history as a result of religious and ethnic persecution by these groups 107 Mongolian and Turkic rule Further information Timurid Empire Aq Qoyunlu and Kara Koyunlu Aramaic language and Syriac Christianity in the Middle East and Central Asia until being largely annihilated by Tamerlane in the 14th century After initially coming under the control of the Seljuk Empire and the Buyid dynasty the region eventually came under the control of the Mongol Empire after the fall of Baghdad in 1258 The Mongol khans were sympathetic with Christians and did not harm them The most prominent among them was probably Isa Kelemechi a diplomat astrologer and head of the Christian affairs in Yuan China He spent some time in Persia under the Ilkhanate The 14th century massacres of Timur devastated the Assyrian people Timur s massacres and pillages of all that was Christian drastically reduced their existence At the end of the reign of Timur the Assyrian population had almost been eradicated in many places Toward the end of the thirteenth century Bar Hebraeus the noted Assyrian scholar and hierarch found much quietness in his diocese in Mesopotamia Syria s diocese he wrote was wasted citation needed The region was later controlled by the in Iran based Turkic confederations of the Aq Qoyunlu and Kara Koyunlu Subsequently all Assyrians like with the rest of the ethnicities living in the former Aq Qoyunlu territories fell into Safavid hands from 1501 and on citation needed From Iranian Safavid to confirmed Ottoman rule See also Massacres of Badr Khan and Massacres of Diyarbakir 1895 Mar Elias Eliya the Nestorian bishop of the Urmia plain village of Geogtapa c 1831 The Ottomans secured their control over Mesopotamia and Syria in the first half of the 17th century following the Ottoman Safavid War 1623 39 and the resulting Treaty of Zuhab Non Muslims were organised into millets Syriac Christians however were often considered one millet alongside Armenians until the 19th century when Nestorian Syriac Orthodox and Chaldeans gained that right as well 108 The Aramaic speaking Mesopotamian Christians had long been divided between followers of the Church of the East commonly referred to as Nestorians and followers of the Syriac Orthodox Church commonly called Jacobites The latter were organised by Marutha of Tikrit 565 649 as 17 dioceses under a Metropolitan of the East or Maphrian holding the highest rank in the Syriac Orthodox Church after that of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East The Maphrian resided at Tikrit until 1089 when he moved to the city of Mosul for half a century before settling in the nearby Monastery of Mar Mattai still belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church and thus not far from the residence of the Eliya line of Patriarchs of the Church of the East From 1533 the holder of the office was known as the Maphrian of Mosul to distinguish him from the Maphrian of the Patriarch of Tur Abdin 109 In 1552 a group of bishops of the Church of the East from the northern regions of Amid and Salmas who were dissatisfied with reservation of patriarchal succession to members of a single family even if the designated successor was little more than a child elected as a rival patriarch the abbot of the Rabban Hormizd Monastery Yohannan Sulaqa This was by no means the first schism in the Church of the East An example is the attempt to replace Timothy I 779 823 with Ephrem of Gandisabur 110 By tradition a patriarch could be ordained only by someone of archiepiscopal metropolitan rank a rank to which only members of that one family were promoted For that reason Sulaqa travelled to Rome where presented as the new patriarch elect he entered communion with the Catholic Church and was ordained by the Pope and recognized as patriarch The title or description under which he was recognized as patriarch is given variously as Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria 111 Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of Mosul 112 Patriarch of the Chaldeans 113 114 115 Patriarch of Mosul 116 117 118 or Patriarch of the Eastern Assyrians this last being the version given by Pietro Strozzi on the second last unnumbered page before page 1 of his De Dogmatibus Chaldaeorum 119 of which an English translation is given in Adrian Fortescue s Lesser Eastern Churches 120 121 Mar Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa returned to northern Mesopotamia in the same year and fixed his seat in Amid Before being imprisoned for four months and then in January 1555 put to death by the governor of Amadiya at the instigation of the rival patriarch of Alqosh of the Eliya line 122 he ordained two metropolitans and three other bishops 123 thus beginning a new ecclesiastical hierarchy the patriarchal line known as the Shimun line The area of influence of this patriarchate soon moved from Amid east fixing the see after many changes in the isolated village of Qochanis A massacre of Armenians and Assyrians in the city of Adana Ottoman Empire April 1909 The Shimun line eventually drifted away from Rome and in 1662 adopted a profession of faith incompatible with that of Rome Leadership of those who wished communion with Rome passed to the Archbishop of Amid Joseph I recognized first by the Turkish civil authorities 1677 and then by Rome itself 1681 A century and a half later in 1830 headship of the Catholics the Chaldean Catholic Church was conferred on Yohannan Hormizd a member of the family that for centuries had provided the patriarchs of the legitimist Eliya line who had won over most of the followers of that line Thus the patriarchal line of those who in 1553 entered communion with Rome are now patriarchs of the traditionalist wing of the Church of the East that which in 1976 officially adopted the name Assyrian Church of the East 124 125 126 127 In the 1840s many of the Assyrians living in the mountains of Hakkari in the south eastern corner of the Ottoman Empire were massacred by the Kurdish emirs of Hakkari and Bohtan 128 Another major massacre of Assyrians and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire occurred between 1894 and 1897 by Turkish troops and their Kurdish allies during the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II The motives for these massacres were an attempt to reassert Pan Islamism in the Ottoman Empire resentment at the comparative wealth of the ancient indigenous Christian communities and a fear that they would attempt to secede from the tottering Ottoman Empire Assyrians were massacred in Diyarbakir Hasankeyef Sivas and other parts of Anatolia by Sultan Abdul Hamid II These attacks caused the death of over thousands of Assyrians and the forced Ottomanisation of the inhabitants of 245 villages The Turkish troops looted the remains of the Assyrian settlements and these were later stolen and occupied by Kurds Unarmed Assyrian women and children were raped tortured and murdered 129 130 World War I and aftermath Assyrian flag c 1920 131 132 The burning of bodies of Assyrian women Main articles Assyrian genocide and Assyrian struggle for independence The Assyrians suffered a number of religiously and ethnically motivated massacres throughout the 17th 18th and 19th centuries 128 culminating in the large scale Hamidian massacres of unarmed men women and children by Muslim Turks and Kurds in the late 19th century at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and its associated largely Kurdish and Arab militias which further greatly reduced numbers particularly in southeastern Turkey The most significant recent persecution against the Assyrian population was the Assyrian genocide which occurred during the First World War 133 Between 275 000 and 300 000 Assyrians were estimated to have been slaughtered by the armies of the Ottoman Empire and their Kurdish allies totalling up to two thirds of the entire Assyrian population This led to a large scale migration of Turkish based Assyrian people into countries such as Syria Iran and Iraq where they were to suffer further violent assaults at the hands of the Arabs and Kurds as well as other neighbouring countries in and around the Middle East such as Armenia Georgia and Russia 134 135 136 137 Assyrian volunteers Main article Assyrian volunteers Assyrian troops led by Agha Petros saluting with a captured Turkish banner in the foreground 1918 In reaction to the Assyrian Genocide and lured by British and Russian promises of an independent nation the Assyrians led by Agha Petros and Malik Khoshaba of the Bit Tyari tribe fought alongside the Allies against Ottoman forces known as the Assyrian volunteers or Our Smallest Ally Despite being heavily outnumbered and outgunned the Assyrians fought successfully scoring a number of victories over the Turks and Kurds This situation continued until their Russian allies left the war and Armenian resistance broke leaving the Assyrians surrounded isolated and cut off from lines of supply The sizable Assyrian presence in south eastern Anatolia which had endured for over four millennia was thus reduced significantly by the end of World War I 138 139 Assyrian rebellion Main article Assyrian rebellion The Assyrian rebellion was an uprising by the Assyrians in Hakkari that began on the 3rd of September 1924 and ended on the 28th of September The Assyrians of Tyari and Tkhuma returned to their ancestral land in Hakkari in 1922 shortly after World War I without permission from the Turkish government This led to clashes between the Assyrians and the Turkish army with their Kurdish allies that grew into a rebellion in 1924 it ended with the Assyrians being forced to retreat to Iraq Modern history Assyrian refugees on a wagon moving to a newly constructed village on the Khabur River in Syria The majority of Assyrians living in what is today modern Turkey were forced to flee to either Syria or Iraq after the Turkish victory during the Turkish War of Independence In 1932 Assyrians refused to become part of the newly formed state of Iraq and instead demanded their recognition as a nation within a nation The Assyrian leader Shimun XXI Eshai asked the League of Nations to recognize the right of the Assyrians to govern the area known as the Assyrian triangle in northern Iraq During the French mandate period some Assyrians fleeing ethnic cleansings in Iraq during the Simele massacre established numerous villages along the Khabur River during the 1930s The Assyrian Levies were founded by the British in 1928 with ancient Assyrian military rankings such as Rab shakeh Rab talia and Tartan being revived for the first time in millennia for this force The Assyrians were prized by the British rulers for their fighting qualities loyalty bravery and discipline 140 and were used to help the British put down insurrections among the Arabs and Kurds During World War II eleven Assyrian companies saw action in Palestine and another four served in Cyprus The Parachute Company was attached to the Royal Marine Commando and were involved in fighting in Albania Italy and Greece The Assyrian Levies played a major role in subduing the pro Nazi Iraqi forces at the battle of Habbaniya in 1941 Three Assyrian Iraqi Levies who volunteered in 1946 for service as ground crew with the Royal Air Force look over the side of the ORBITA as it pulls into the docks at Liverpool Left to right they are Sergeant Macko Shmos Lance Corporal Adoniyo Odisho and Corporal Yoseph Odisho However this cooperation with the British was viewed with suspicion by some leaders of the newly formed Kingdom of Iraq The tension reached its peak shortly after the formal declaration of independence when hundreds of Assyrian civilians were slaughtered during the Simele massacre by the Iraqi Army in August 1933 The events lead to the expulsion of Shimun XXI Eshai the Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East to the United States where resided until his death in 1975 141 142 The period from the 1940s through to 1963 saw a period of respite for the Assyrians The regime of President Abd al Karim Qasim in particular saw the Assyrians accepted into mainstream society Many urban Assyrians became successful businessmen others were well represented in politics and the military their towns and villages flourished undisturbed and Assyrians came to excel and be over represented in sports The Ba ath Party seized power in Iraq and Syria in 1963 introducing laws aimed at suppressing the Assyrian national identity via arabization policies The giving of traditional Assyrian names was banned and Assyrian schools political parties churches and literature were repressed Assyrians were heavily pressured into identifying as Iraqi Syrian Christians Assyrians were not recognized as an ethnic group by the governments and they fostered divisions among Assyrians along religious lines e g Assyrian Church of the East vs Chaldean Catholic Church vs Syriac Orthodox Church 143 Celebration at a Syriac Orthodox monastery in Mosul early 20th century In response to Baathist persecution the Assyrians of the Zowaa movement within the Assyrian Democratic Movement took up armed struggle against the Iraqi government in 1982 under the leadership of Yonadam Kanna 144 and then joined up with the Iraqi Kurdistan Front in the early 1990s Yonadam Kanna in particular was a target of the Saddam Hussein Ba ath government for many years The Anfal campaign of 1986 1989 in Iraq which was intended to target Kurdish opposition resulted in 2 000 Assyrians being murdered through its gas campaigns Over 31 towns and villages 25 Assyrian monasteries and churches were razed to the ground Some Assyrians were murdered others were deported to large cities and their lands and homes then being appropriated by Arabs and Kurds 145 146 21st century Main articles Assyrian exodus from Iraq and 2008 attacks on Christians in Mosul Assyrian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan Armenia After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by US and its allies the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi military security and intelligence infrastructure of former President Saddam Hussein and began a process of de Baathification 147 This process became an object of controversy cited by some critics as the biggest American mistake made in the immediate aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq and as one of the main causes in the deteriorating security situation throughout Iraq 148 149 Social unrest and chaos resulted in the unprovoked persecution of Assyrians in Iraq mostly by Islamic extremists both Shia and Sunni and Kurdish nationalists ex Dohuk Riots of 2011 aimed at Assyrians amp Yazidis In places such as Dora a neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad the majority of its Assyrian population has either fled abroad or to northern Iraq or has been murdered 150 Islamic resentment over the United States occupation of Iraq and incidents such as the Jyllands Posten Muhammad cartoons and the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy have resulted in Muslims attacking Assyrian communities Since the start of the Iraq war at least 46 churches and monasteries have been bombed 151 In recent years the Assyrians in northern Iraq and northeast Syria have become the target of extreme unprovoked Islamic terrorism As a result Assyrians have taken up arms alongside other groups such as the Kurds Turcomans and Armenians in response to unprovoked attacks by Al Qaeda the Islamic State ISIL Nusra Front and other terrorist Islamic Fundamentalist groups In 2014 Islamic terrorists of ISIL attacked Assyrian towns and villages in the Assyrian Homeland of northern Iraq together with cities such as Mosul and Kirkuk which have large Assyrian populations There have been reports of atrocities committed by ISIL terrorists since including beheadings crucifixions child murders rape forced conversions ethnic cleansing robbery and extortion in the form of illegal taxes levied upon non Muslims Assyrians in Iraq have responded by forming armed militias to defend their territories In response to the Islamic State s invasion of the Assyrian homeland in 2014 many Assyrian organizations also formed their own independent fighting forces to combat ISIL and potentially retake their ancestral lands 152 These include the Nineveh Plain Protection Units 153 152 154 Dwekh Nawsha 155 156 and the Nineveh Plain Forces 157 158 The latter two of these militias were eventually disbanded 159 In Syria the Dawronoye modernization movement has influenced Assyrian identity in the region 160 The largest proponent of the movement the Syriac Union Party SUP has become a major political actor in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria In August 2016 the Ourhi Centre in the city of Zalin was started by the Assyrian community to educate teachers in order to make Syriac an optional language of instruction in public schools 161 162 which then started with the 2016 17 academic year 163 With that academic year states the Rojava Education Committee three curriculums have replaced the old one to include teaching in three languages Kurdish Arabic and Assyrian 164 Associated with the SUP is the Syriac Military Council an Assyrian militia operating in Syria established in January 2013 to protect and stand up for the national rights of Assyrians in Syria as well as working together with the other communities in Syria to change the current government of Bashar al Assad 165 However many Assyrians and the organizations that represent them particularly those outside of Syria are critical of the Dawronoye movement 166 167 A 2018 report stated that Kurdish authorities in Syria in conjunction with Dawronoye officials had shut down several Assyrian schools in Northern Syria and fired their administration This was said to be because these schooled failed to register for a license and for rejecting the new curriculum approved by the Education Authority Closure methods ranged from officially shutting down schools to having armed men enter the schools and shut them down forcefully An Assyrian educator named Isa Rashid was later badly beaten outside of his home for rejecting the Kurdish self administration s curriculum 167 166 The Assyrian Policy Institute claimed that an Assyrian reporter named Souleman Yusph was arrested by Kurdish forces for his reports on the Dawronoye related school closures in Syria Specifically he had shared numerous photographs on Facebook detailing the closures 167 Demographics Maunsell s map a Pre World War I British Ethnographical Map of the Middle East showing Chaldeans Jacobites and Nestorians The Assyro Chaldean Delegation s map of an independent Assyria presented at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 Homeland Main articles Assyrian homeland List of Assyrian tribes and Proposals for Assyrian autonomy in Iraq The Assyrian homeland includes the ancient cities of Nineveh Mosul Nuhadra Dohuk Arrapha Beth Garmai Kirkuk Al Qosh Tesqopa and Arbela Erbil in Iraq Urmia in Iran and Hakkari a large region which comprises the modern towns of Yuksekova Hakkari Cukurca Semdinli and Uludere Edessa Urhoy Urfa Harran Amida Diyarbakir and Tur Abdin Midyat and Kafro in Turkey among others 168 Some of the cities are presently under Kurdish control and some still have an Assyrian presence namely those in Iraq as the Assyrian population in southeastern Turkey such as those in Hakkari was ethnically cleansed during the Assyrian genocide of the First World War 48 Those who survived fled to unaffected areas of Assyrian settlement in northern Iraq with others settling in Iraqi cities to the south Though many also immigrated to neighbouring countries in and around the Caucasus and Middle East like Armenia Syria Georgia southern Russia Lebanon and Jordan 169 In ancient times Akkadian speaking Assyrians have existed in what is now Syria Jordan Palestine Israel and Lebanon among other modern countries due to the sprawl of the Neo Assyrian empire in the region 170 Though recent settlement of Christian Assyrians in Nisabina Qamishli Al Hasakah Al Qahtaniyah Al Darbasiyah Al Malikiyah Amuda Tel Tamer and a few other small towns in Al Hasakah Governorate in Syria occurred in the early 1930s 171 when they fled from northern Iraq after they were targeted and slaughtered during the Simele massacre 172 The Assyrians in Syria did not have Syrian citizenship and title to their established land until late the 1940s 173 Sizable Assyrian populations only remain in Syria where an estimated 400 000 Assyrians live 174 and in Iraq where an estimated 300 000 Assyrians live 175 In Iran and Turkey only small populations remain with only 20 000 Assyrians in Iran 176 177 and a small but growing Assyrian population in Turkey where 25 000 Assyrians live mostly in the cities and not the ancient settlements In Tur Abdin a traditional center of Assyrian culture there are only 2 500 Assyrians left 178 Down from 50 000 in the 1960 census but up from 1 000 in 1992 This sharp decline is due to an intense conflict between Turkey and the PKK in the 1980s However there are an estimated 25 000 Assyrians in all of Turkey with most living in Istanbul Most Assyrians currently reside in the West due to the centuries of persecution by the neighboring Muslims 179 Prior to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in a 2013 report by a Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council official it was estimated that 300 000 Assyrians remained in Iraq 175 Assyrian subgroups There are three main Assyrian subgroups Eastern Western Chaldean These subdivisions are only partially overlapping linguistically historically culturally and religiously The Eastern subgroup historically inhabited Hakkari in the northern Zagros Mountains the Simele and Sapna valleys in Nuhadra and parts of the Nineveh and Urmia Plains They speak Northeastern Neo Aramaic dialects and are religiously diverse adhering to the East Syriac churches 180 and Protestantism 181 The Chaldean subgroup is a subgroup of the Eastern one The group is often equated with the adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church 182 however not all Chaldean Catholics identify as Chaldean 183 184 They are traditionally speakers of Northeastern Neo Aramaic dialects however there are some Turoyo speakers In Iraq Chaldean Catholics inhabit the western Nineveh Plains villages of Alqosh Batnaya Tel Keppe and Tesqopa as well as the Nahla valley and Aqra In Syria they live in Aleppo and the Al Hasakah Governorate In Turkey they live scattered in Istanbul Diyarbakir Sirnak Province and Mardin Province 185 The Western subgroup historically inhabited Tur Abdin 186 187 They mainly speak the Central Neo Aramaic language Surayt also known as Turoyo 188 Most adhere to the West Syriac churches 180 such as the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Syriac Catholic Church Today there are also evangelical groups that have founded their own churches in the diaspora Historically Syriac Orthodox culture was centered in two monasteries near Mardin west of Tur Abdin Mor Gabriel and Deyrulzafaran 189 Historic Assyrian villages some of which are still inhabited by Assyrians in Turabdin include the following Aynwardo Anhil Kafro Miden Arnas Beth Debe Beth Kustan Beth Sbirino Dayro da Slibo Hrabemishka Qartmin Arkah Arbo Mizizah Kfraze Hah Marbobo Salah Sare and Hapsis In addition the cities of Midyat and Beth Zabday Azech were historically Assyrian cities with an Assyrian majority this is no longer the case today Outside of the area of core Assyrian settlement in Tur Abdin there were also sizable populations in the towns of Diyarbakir Urfa Harput and Adiyaman 190 as well as some other villages Map depicting Assyrian relocation after Seyfo in 1914 Persecution Due to their Christian faith and ethnicity the Assyrians have been persecuted since their adoption of Christianity During the reign of Yazdegerd I Christians in Persia were viewed with suspicion as potential Roman subversives resulting in persecutions while at the same time promoting Nestorian Christianity as a buffer between the Churches of Rome and Persia Persecutions and attempts to impose Zoroastrianism continued during the reign of Yazdegerd II 191 192 During the eras of Mongol rule under Genghis Khan and Timur there was indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of Assyrians and destruction of the Assyrian population of northwestern Iran and central and northern Iran 193 More recent persecutions since the 19th century include the massacres of Badr Khan the massacres of Diyarbakir 1895 the Adana massacre the Assyrian genocide the Simele massacre and the al Anfal campaign Diaspora Main article Assyrian Diaspora See also List of Assyrian settlements and Assyrian population by country Assyrian world population more than 500 000 100 000 500 000 50 000 100 000 10 000 50 000 less than 10 000 Since the Assyrian genocide many Assyrians have left the Middle East entirely for a more safe and comfortable life in the countries of the Western world As a result of this the Assyrian population in the Middle East has decreased dramatically As of today there are more Assyrians in the diaspora than in their homeland The largest Assyrian diaspora communities are found in Sweden 100 000 194 Germany 100 000 195 the United States 80 000 196 and in Australia 46 000 197 By ethnic percentage the largest Assyrian diaspora communities are located in Sodertalje in Stockholm County 198 Sweden and in Fairfield City in Sydney Australia where they are the leading ethnic group in the suburbs of Fairfield Fairfield Heights Prairiewood and Greenfield Park 199 200 201 There is also a sizable Assyrian community in Melbourne Australia Broadmeadows Meadow Heights and Craigieburn 202 In the United States Assyrians are mostly found in Chicago Niles and Skokie Detroit Sterling Heights and West Bloomfield Township Phoenix Modesto Stanislaus County and Turlock 203 Furthermore small Assyrian communities are found in San Diego Sacramento and Fresno in the United States Toronto in Canada and also in London UK London Borough of Ealing In Germany pocket sized Assyrian communities are scattered throughout Munich Frankfurt Stuttgart Berlin and Wiesbaden In Paris France the commune of Sarcelles has a small number of Assyrians Assyrians in the Netherlands mainly live in the east of the country in the province of Overijssel In Russia small groups of Assyrians mostly reside in Krasnodar Kray and Moscow 204 To note the Assyrians residing in California and Russia tend to be from Iran whilst those in Chicago and Sydney are predominantly Iraqi Assyrians More recently Syrian Assyrians are growing in size in Sydney after a huge influx of new arrivals in 2016 who were granted asylum under the Federal Government s special humanitarian intake 205 206 The Assyrians in Detroit are primarily Chaldean speakers who also originate from Iraq 207 Assyrians in such European countries as Sweden and Germany would usually be Turoyo speakers or Western Assyrians 208 and tend to be originally from Turkey 198 Identity and subdivisionsFurther information Assyrian nationalism Arabization Turkification and Kurdification Assyrian flag adopted in 1968 209 Syriac Aramean flag 210 Chaldean flag published in 1999 211 Syriac Christians of the Middle East and diaspora employ different terms for self identification based on conflicting beliefs in the origin and identity of their respective communities 212 During the 19th century English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard believed that the native Christian communities in the historical region of Assyria were descended from the ancient Assyrians 213 214 a view that was also shared by William Ainger Wigram 215 216 Although at the same time Horatio Southgate 217 and George Thomas Bettany 218 claimed during their travels through Mesopotamia that the Syriac Christians are the descendants of the Arameans Today Assyrians and other minority ethnic groups in the Middle East feel pressure to identify as Arabs 219 220 Turks and Kurds 221 In addition Western media often makes no mention of any ethnic identity of the Christians in the region and simply call refer to them as Christians 174 Iraqi Christians Iranian Christians Christians in Syria and Turkish Christians a label rejected by Assyrians Self designation Main article Names of Syriac Christians Below are terms commonly used by Assyrians to self identify Assyrian named after their ethnicity as the descendants of the ancient Assyrian people 222 is advocated by followers from within all Middle Eastern based East and West Syriac Rite Churches see Syriac Christianity 212 223 Chaldean is a term that was used for centuries by western writers and scholars as designation for the Aramaic language It was so used by Jerome 224 and was still the normal terminology in the nineteenth century 225 226 227 Only in 1445 did it begin to be used to designate Aramaic speakers who had entered communion with the Catholic Church This happened at the Council of Florence 228 which accepted the profession of faith that Timothy metropolitan of the Aramaic speakers in Cyprus made in Aramaic and which decreed that nobody shall in future dare to call Chaldeans Nestorians 229 230 231 Previously when there were as yet no Catholic Aramaic speakers of Mesopotamian origin the term Chaldean was applied with explicit reference to their Nestorian religion Thus Jacques de Vitry wrote of them in 1220 1 that they denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons They consecrated leavened bread and used the Chaldean Syriac language 232 Until the second half of the 19th century the term Chaldean continued in general use for East Syriac Christians whether Nestorian or Catholic 233 234 235 236 In 1840 upon visiting Mesopotamia Horatio Southgate reported that local Chaldeans consider themselves to be descended from ancient Assyrians 217 and in some later works also noted the same origin of local Jacobites 237 238 Aramean also known as Syriac Aramean 239 240 named after the ancient Aramean people is advocated by followers from within all Middle Eastern based East and West Syriac Rite Churches 241 242 Furthermore Assyrians identifying as Aramean have obtained recognition from the Israeli government 243 244 To note ancient Arameans were a separate ethnic group that lived concurrently with the Assyrian empire in what is now Syria and parts of Lebanon Israel the West Bank and Gaza Jordan Iraq and Turkey 245 246 247 248 Assyrian vs Syrian naming controversy Proximity between Roman Syria and Mesopotamia in the 1st century AD Alain Manesson Mallet 1683 As early as the 8th century BC Luwian and Cilician subject rulers referred to their Assyrian overlords as Syrian a western Indo European corruption of the original term Assyrian The Greeks used the terms Syrian and Assyrian interchangeably to indicate the indigenous Arameans Assyrians and other inhabitants of the Near East Herodotus considered Syria west of the Euphrates Starting from the 2nd century BC onwards ancient writers referred to the Seleucid ruler as the King of Syria or King of the Syrians 249 The Seleucids designated the districts of Seleucis and Coele Syria explicitly as Syria and ruled the Syrians as indigenous populations residing west of the Euphrates Aramea in contrast to Assyrians who had their native homeland in Mesopotamia east of the Euphrates 250 251 This version of the name took hold in the Hellenic lands to the west of the old Assyrian Empire thus during Greek Seleucid rule from 323 BC the name Assyria was altered to Syria and this term was also applied to Aramea to the west which had been an Assyrian colony and from this point the Greeks applied the term without distinction between the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and Arameans of the Levant 252 253 When the Seleucids lost control of Assyria to the Parthians they retained the corrupted term Syria applying it to ancient Aramea while the Parthians called Assyria Assuristan a Parthian form of the original name It is from this period that the Syrian vs Assyrian controversy arises The question of ethnic identity and self designation is sometimes connected to the scholarly debate on the etymology of Syria The question has a long history of academic controversy but majority mainstream opinion currently strongly favours that Syria is indeed ultimately derived from the Assyrian term Assurayu 254 255 256 257 Meanwhile some scholars has disclaimed the theory of Syrian being derived from Assyrian as simply naive and detracted its importance to the naming conflict 258 Rudolf Macuch points out that the Eastern Neo Aramaic press initially used the term Syrian suryeta and only much later with the rise of nationalism switched to Assyrian atoreta 259 According to Tsereteli however a Georgian equivalent of Assyrians appears in ancient Georgian Armenian and Russian documents 260 This correlates with the theory of the nations to the East of Mesopotamia knew the group as Assyrians while to the West beginning with Greek influence the group was known as Syrians Syria being a Greek corruption of Assyria The debate appears to have been settled by the discovery of the Cinekoy inscription in favour of Syria being derived from Assyria The Cinekoy inscription is a Hieroglyphic Luwian Phoenician bilingual uncovered from Cinekoy Adana Province Turkey ancient Cilicia dating to the 8th century BC Originally published by Tekoglu and Lemaire 2000 261 it was more recently the subject of a 2006 paper published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies in which the author Robert Rollinger lends support to the age old debate of the name Syria being derived from Assyria see Etymology of Syria The object on which the inscription is found is a monument belonging to Urikki vassal king of Hiyawa i e Cilicia dating to the eighth century BC In this monumental inscription Urikki made reference to the relationship between his kingdom and his Assyrian overlords The Luwian inscription reads Sura i whereas the Phoenician translation reads SR or Ashur which according to Rollinger 2006 settles the problem once and for all 262 The modern terminological problem goes back to colonial times but it became more acute in 1946 when with the independence of Syria the adjective Syrian referred to an independent state The controversy isn t restricted to exonyms like English Assyrian vs Aramaean but also applies to self designation in Neo Aramaic the minority Aramaean faction endorses both Suryaye ܣܘܪܝܝܐ and Aramaye ܐܪܡܝܐ while the majority Assyrian faction insists on Aṯuraye ܐܬܘܪܝܐ but also accepts Suryaye citation needed CultureMain article Assyrian culture Assyrian child dressed in traditional clothes Assyrian culture is largely influenced by Christianity 263 There are many Assyrian customs that are common in other Middle Eastern cultures Main festivals occur during religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas There are also secular holidays such as Kha b Nisan vernal equinox 264 People often greet and bid relatives farewell with a kiss on each cheek and by saying ܫܠܡܐ ܥܠܝܟ Shlama Shlomo lokh which means Peace be upon you in Neo Aramaic Others are greeted with a handshake with the right hand only according to Middle Eastern customs the left hand is associated with evil Similarly shoes may not be left facing up one may not have their feet facing anyone directly whistling at night is thought to waken evil spirits etc 265 A parent will often place an eye pendant on their baby to prevent an evil eye being cast upon it 266 Spitting on anyone or their belongings is seen as a grave insult Assyrians are endogamous meaning they generally marry within their own ethnic group although exogamous marriages are not perceived as a taboo unless the foreigner is of a different religious background especially a Muslim 267 Throughout history relations between the Assyrians and Armenians have tended to be very friendly as both groups have practised Christianity since ancient times and have suffered through persecution under Muslim rulers Therefore mixed marriage between Assyrians and Armenians is quite common most notably in Iraq Iran and as well as in the diaspora with adjacent Armenian and Assyrian communities 268 Language Main article Neo Aramaic languages The Assyrian dialects The Neo Aramaic languages which are in the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family ultimately descend from Late Old Eastern Aramaic the lingua franca in the later phase of the Neo Assyrian Empire which displaced the East Semitic Assyrian dialect of Akkadian and Sumerian After being conquered by the Assyrians many people including the Arameans were deported to the Assyrian heartland and elsewhere Due to a large number of Aramaic speaking Arameans the Aramaization of Assyria began The relationship between Arameans and Assyrians grew stronger with Aramean scribes working with Assyrian ones Around 700 B C the Aramaic alphabet took the place of cuneiform and became the official writing system of the Assyrian empire 269 Aramaic was the language of commerce trade and communication and became the vernacular language of Assyria in classical antiquity 246 270 248 By the 1st century AD Akkadian was extinct although its influence on contemporary Eastern Neo Aramaic languages spoken by Assyrians is significant and some loaned vocabulary still survives in these languages to this day 271 272 To the native speaker Syriac is usually called Surayt Soureth Suret or a similar regional variant A wide variety of languages and dialects exist including Assyrian Neo Aramaic Chaldean Neo Aramaic and Turoyo Minority dialects include Senaya and Bohtan Neo Aramaic which are both near extinction All are classified as Neo Aramaic languages and are written using Syriac script a derivative of the ancient Aramaic script Jewish varieties such as Lishanid Noshan Lishan Didan and Lishana Deni written in the Hebrew script are spoken by Assyrian Jews 273 274 275 There is a considerable amount of mutual intelligibility between Assyrian Neo Aramaic Chaldean Neo Aramaic Senaya Lishana Deni and Bohtan Neo Aramaic Therefore these languages would generally be considered to be dialects of Assyrian Neo Aramaic rather than separate languages The Jewish Aramaic languages of Lishan Didan and Lishanid Noshan share a partial intelligibility with these varieties The mutual intelligibility between the aforementioned languages and Turoyo is depending on the dialect limited to partial and may be asymmetrical 273 276 277 Being stateless Assyrians are typically multilingual speaking both their native language and learning those of the societies they reside in While many Assyrians have fled from their traditional homeland recently 278 279 a substantial number still reside in Arabic speaking countries speaking Arabic alongside the Neo Aramaic languages 280 2 281 and is also spoken by many Assyrians in the diaspora The most commonly spoken languages by Assyrians in the diaspora are English German and Swedish Historically many Assyrians also spoke Turkish Armenian Azeri Kurdish and Persian and a smaller number of Assyrians that remain in Iran Turkey Istanbul and Tur Abdin and Armenia still do today Many loanwords from the aforementioned languages also exist in the Neo Aramaic languages with the Iranian languages and Turkish being the greatest influences overall Only Turkey is reported to be experiencing a population increase of Assyrians in the four countries constituting their historical homeland largely consisting of Assyrian refugees from Syria and a smaller number of Assyrians returning from the diaspora in Europe 282 Script Main article Syriac alphabet Assyrians predominantly use the Syriac script which is written from right to left It is one of the Semitic abjads directly descending from the Aramaic alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician Hebrew and the Arabic alphabets 283 It has 22 letters representing consonants three of which can be also used to indicate vowels The vowel sounds are supplied either by the reader s memory or by optional diacritic marks Syriac is a cursive script where some but not all letters connect within a word It was used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD 284 The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is the ʾEsṭrangela script 285 Although ʾEsṭrangela is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac it has received some revival since the 10th century and it has been added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 The East Syriac dialect is usually written in the Maḏnḥaya form of the alphabet which is often translated as contemporary reflecting its use in writing modern Neo Aramaic The West Syriac dialect is usually written in the Serṭa form of the alphabet Most of the letters are clearly derived from ʾEsṭrangela but are simplified flowing lines 286 Furthermore for practical reasons Assyrian people would also use the Latin alphabet especially in social media Religion Main article Syriac Christianity Historical divisions within Syriac Christian Churches in the Middle East Assyrians belong to various Christian denominations such as the Syriac Orthodox Church which has over 1 million members around the world the Chaldean Catholic Church with about 600 000 members 287 the Assyrian Church of the East with an estimated 400 000 members 288 and the Ancient Church of the East with some 100 000 members A small minority of Assyrians accepted the Protestant Reformation and became Reform Orthodox in the 20th century possibly due to British influences and are now organized in the Assyrian Evangelical Church the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and other Protestant Reform Orthodox Assyrian groups While there are some atheist Assyrians they tend to still associate with some denomination 289 Many members of the following churches consider themselves Assyrian Ethnic identities are often deeply intertwined with religion a legacy of the Ottoman Millet system The group is traditionally characterized as adhering to various churches of Syriac Christianity and speaking Neo Aramaic languages It is subdivided into adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East following the East Syriac Rite also known as Nestorians adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church following the East Syriac Rite also known as Chaldeans adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church following the West Syriac Rite also known as Jacobites adherents of the Syriac Catholic Church following the West Syriac RiteBaptism and First Communion are celebrated extensively similar to a Brit Milah or Bar Mitzvah in Jewish communities After a death a gathering is held three days after burial to celebrate the ascension to heaven of the dead person as of Jesus after seven days another gathering commemorates their death A close family member wears only black clothes for forty days and nights or sometimes a year as a sign of mourning During the Seyfo genocide 290 there were a number of Assyrians who were forced to convert to Islam 291 292 293 They reside in Turkey and practice Islam but still retain their identity 294 295 A small number of Assyrian Jews exist as well 296 Assyrian Christianity Mor Hananyo Monastery is an important Syriac Orthodox monastery in Tur Abdin Turkey Mar Assia al Hakim Church is a Syriac Catholic Church in Al Jdayde quarter of Aleppo Syria 297 Rabban Hormizd Monastery is an important monastery of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Church of the East in Alqosh Iraq 298 Cathedral of Our Lady of Sorrows is a Chaldean Catholic cathedral in Baghdad Iraq Saint Mary Church is an ancient Assyrian church located in the city of Urmia Iran Music Main articles Assyrian Syriac folk music and Syriac sacral music Traditional clothing may be worn for Assyrian folk dance Assyrian music is a combination of traditional folk music and western contemporary music genres namely pop and soft rock but also electronic dance music Instruments traditionally used by Assyrians include the zurna and davula but has expanded to include guitars pianos violins synthesizers keyboards and electronic drums and other instruments Some well known Assyrian singers in modern times are Ashur Bet Sargis Sargon Gabriel Evin Agassi Janan Sawa Juliana Jendo and Linda George Assyrian artists that traditionally sing in other languages include Melechesh Timz and Aril Brikha Assyrian Australian band Azadoota performs its songs in the Assyrian language whilst using a western style of instrumentation The first international Aramaic Music Festival was held in Lebanon in August 2008 for Assyrian people internationally Dance Main article Assyrian folk dance Folk dance in an Assyrian party in Chicago Assyrians have numerous traditional dances which are performed mostly for special occasions such as weddings Assyrian dance is a blend of both ancient indigenous and general Near Eastern elements Assyrian folk dances are mainly made up of circle dances that are performed in a line which may be straight curved or both The most common form of Assyrian folk dance is khigga which is routinely danced as the bride and groom are welcomed into the wedding reception Most of the circle dances allow unlimited number of participants with the exception of the Sabre Dance which require three at most Assyrian dances would vary from weak to strong depending on the mood and tempo of a song Festivals Assyrian festivals tend to be closely associated with their Christian faith of which Easter is the most prominent of the celebrations Members of the Assyrian Church of the East Chaldean Catholic Church and Syriac Catholic Church follow the Gregorian calendar and as a result celebrate Easter on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25 inclusively 299 However members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Ancient Church of the East celebrate Easter on a Sunday between April 4 and May 8 inclusively on the Gregorian calendar March 22 and April 25 on the Julian calendar During Lent Assyrians are encouraged to fast for 50 days from meat and any other foods which are animal based Assyrians celebrate a number of festivals unique to their culture and traditions as well as religious ones Kha b Nisan ܚܕ ܒܢܝܣܢ the Assyrian New Year traditionally on April 1 though usually celebrated on January 1 Assyrians usually wear traditional costumes and hold social events including parades and parties dancing and listening to poets telling the story of creation 300 Sauma d Ba utha ܒܥܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܢܘܝܐ the Nineveh fast is a three day period of fasting and prayer 301 Somikka All Saints Day is celebrated to motivate children to fast during Lent through use of frightening costumes Kalu d Sulaqa feast of the Bride of the Ascension celebrates Assyrian resistance to the invasion of Assyria by Tamerlane Nusardyl commemorating the baptism of the Assyrians of Urmia by St Thomas 302 Sharra d Mart Maryam usually on August 15 a festival and feast celebrating St Mary with games food and celebration 302 Assyrians celebrating Mesopotamian New Year Akitu year 6769 Nisan April 1st 2019 in Nohadra Duhok IraqOther Sharras special festivals include Sharra d Mart Shmuni Sharra d Mar Shimon Bar Sabbaye Sharra d Mar Mari and Shara d Mar Zaia Mar Bishu Mar Sawa Mar Sliwa and Mar Odisho Yoma d Sah deh Day of Martyrs commemorating the thousands massacred in the Simele massacre and the hundreds of thousands massacred in the Assyrian genocide It is commemorated annually on August 7 Assyrians also practice unique marriage ceremonies The rituals performed during weddings are derived from many different elements from the past 3 000 years An Assyrian wedding traditionally lasted a week Today weddings in the Assyrian homeland usually last 2 3 days in the Assyrian diaspora they last 1 2 days Traditional clothing Main article Assyrian clothing Assyrian clothing varies from village to village Clothing is usually blue red green yellow and purple these colors are also used as embroidery on a white piece of clothing Decoration is lavish in Assyrian costumes and sometimes involves jewellery The conical hats of traditional Assyrian dress have changed little over millennia from those worn in ancient Mesopotamia and until the 19th and early 20th centuries the ancient Mesopotamian tradition of braiding or platting of hair beards and moustaches was still commonplace Cuisine Main article Assyrian cuisine Typical Assyrian cuisine Assyrian cuisine is similar to other Middle Eastern cuisines in particula and is rich in grains meat potato cheese bread and tomatoes Typically rice is served with every meal with a stew poured over it Tea is a popular drink and there are several dishes of desserts snacks and beverages Alcoholic drinks such as wine and wheat beer are organically produced and drunk Assyrian cuisine is primarily identical to Iraqi Mesopotamian cuisine as well as being very similar to other Middle Eastern and Caucasian cuisines as well as Greek cuisine Levantine cuisine Turkish cuisine Iranian cuisine Israeli cuisine and Armenian cuisine with most dishes being similar to the cuisines of the area in which those Assyrians live originate from 303 It is rich in grains such as barley meat tomato herbs spices cheese and potato as well as herbs fermented dairy products and pickles 304 GeneticsFurther information Genetic history of the Middle East Late 20th century DNA analysis conducted by Cavalli Sforza Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza shows that Assyrians have a distinct genetic profile that distinguishes their population from any other population 305 Genetic analyses of the Assyrians of Persia demonstrated that they were closed with little intermixture with the Muslim Persian population and that an individual Assyrian s genetic makeup is relatively close to that of the Assyrian population as a whole 306 307 The genetic data are compatible with historical data that religion played a major role in maintaining the Assyrian population s separate identity during the Christian era 305 In a 2006 study of the Y chromosome DNA of six regional Armenian populations including for comparison Assyrians and Syrians researchers found that the Semitic populations Assyrians and Syrians are very distinct from each other according to both comparative axes This difference supported also by other methods of comparison points out the weak genetic affinity between the two populations with different historical destinies 308 A 2008 study on the genetics of old ethnic groups in Mesopotamia including 340 subjects from seven ethnic communities Assyrian Jewish Zoroastrian Armenian Turkmen the Arab peoples in Iran Iraq and Kuwait found that Assyrians were homogeneous with respect to all other ethnic groups sampled in the study regardless of religious affiliation 309 In a 2011 study focusing on the genetics of Marsh Arabs of Iraq researchers identified Y chromosome haplotypes shared by Marsh Arabs Iraqis and Assyrians supporting a common local background 310 In a 2017 study focusing on the genetics of Northern Iraqi populations it was found that Iraqi Assyrians and Iraqi Yazidis clustered together but away from the other Northern Iraqi populations analyzed in the study and largely in between the West Asian and Southeastern European populations According to the study contemporary Assyrians and Yazidis from northern Iraq may in fact have a stronger continuity with the original genetic stock of the Mesopotamian people which possibly provided the basis for the ethnogenesis of various subsequent Near Eastern populations 311 Haplogroups Y DNA haplogroup J M304 has been measured at 55 among Assyrians of Iraq Syria Lebanon and diaspora while it has been found at 11 among Assyrians of Iran 312 Haplogroup T M184 reported as K has been measured at 15 09 among Assyrians in Armenia 313 The haplogroup is frequent in Middle Eastern Jews Georgians Druze and Somalians According to a 2011 study by Lashgary et al R1b reported as R xR1a has been measured at 40 among Assyrians in Iran making it major haplogroup among Iranian Assyrians 312 Yet another DNA test comprising 48 Assyrian male subjects from Iran the Y DNA haplogroups J M304 found in its greatest concentration in the Arabian peninsula and the northern R M269 were also frequent at 29 2 each 314 Lashgary et al explain the presence of haplogroup R in Iranian Assyrians as well as in other Assyrian communities 23 as a consequence of mixing with Armenians and assimilation integration of different peoples carrying haplogroup R while explain its frequency as a result of genetic drift due to small population size and endogamy due to religious barriers 312 Haplogroup J2 has been measured at 13 4 which is commonly found in the Fertile Crescent the Caucasus Anatolia Italy coastal Mediterranean and the Iranian plateau 315 316 See also Christianity portalAssyria Assyrian diaspora Assyrian genocide Assyrian homeland Assyrian independence movement Assyrian Universal Alliance The Last Assyrians List of Assyrians Mandaeans Neo Aramaic languages Proposals for Assyrian autonomy in Iraq Syriac Christianity Syriac language World Council of ArameansNotes ܣܘܪ ܝܐ Suraye Surōye Assyrians as indigenous people of the Middle East 47 48 49 50 Use of the term Syriacs as a variant name for Assyrians 56 57 50 Use of the term Chaldeans as a variant name for Assyrians 56 47 57 50 Use of the term Arameans as a variant name for Assyrians 56 58 59 References United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Refworld World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples Turkey Syriacs Refworld Retrieved 6 June 2015 a b Baumer 2006 Murre van den Berg 2011 p 2304 Simmons Mary Kate 1998 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization yearbook ISBN 9789041102232 SIL Ethnologue estimate for the ethnic population associated with Neo Aramaic Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture Syria s Assyrians threatened by extremists Al Monitor the Pulse of the Middle East Al Monitor 2014 04 28 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Prior to the start of the war in Syria it is estimated that the country was home to approximately 200 000 ethnic Assyrians Syria Assyrian Policy Institute The Assyrian population in Iraq estimated at approximately 200 000 constitutes the largest remaining concentration of the ethnic group in the Middle East Assyrian Policy Institute s Erasing the Legacy of the Khabour Destruction of Assyrian Cultural Heritage in the Khabour Region of Syria Turkey Syria deal allows Syriacs to cross border for religious holidays An estimated 25 000 Syriacs live in Turkey while Syria boasts some 877 000 Population Project Shlama Foundation Erasing the Legacy of Khabour Destruction of Assyrian Cultural Heritage in the Khabour Region of Syria Assyrian Policy Institute 2018 U S Department of State International Religious Freedom Report Turkey 2018 U S Department of State International Religious Freedom Report Iran Data Access and Dissemination Systems DADS American FactFinder Results Archived from the original on 12 February 2020 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Selected Population Profile in the United States 2011 American Community Survey 1 Year Estimates Factfinder2 census gov Archived from the original on 2020 02 12 Retrieved 2013 10 20 Assyrian Genocide Resolution Read in Arizona Assembly www aina org Arizona HCR2006 TrackBill trackbill com HCR2006 542R I Ver www azleg gov Nyheter SVT 9 May 2018 Statministerns folkmordsbesked kan avgora kommunvalet Underskatta inte fragan SVT Nyheter in Swedish Diskussion zum Thema Aaramaische Christen im Kapitelshaus Borkener Zeitung in German archived link 8 October 2011 70 000 Syriac Christians according to REMID of which 55 000 Syriac Orthodox Assyrian and Chaldean Christians Flee Iraq to Neighboring Jordan Brief History of Assyrians AINA 2071 0 Census of Population and Housing Reflecting Australia Stories from the Census 2016 Archived from the original on 2017 07 09 Lebanon Assyrian Policy Institute Miri Adhid January 27 2021 Chaldeans in Europe Part V Chaldean News Retrieved 14 December 2022 Canada Census Profile 2021 Census Profile 2021 Census Statistics Canada Statistique Canada 7 May 2021 Retrieved 3 January 2023 Wieviorka amp Bataille 2007 pp 166 NASELENIE PO NACIONALNOSTI I VLADENIYu RUSSKIM YaZYKOM PO SUBEKTAM ROSSIJSKOJ FEDERACII Russian Federal State Statistics Service in Russian Archived from the original on 2013 07 24 Retrieved 2013 08 18 Tzilivakis Kathy 10 May 2003 Iraq s Forgotten Christians Face Exclusion in Greece Athens News Retrieved 7 April 2012 2011 Armenian Census PDF Retrieved October 12 2019 Assyrians in Armenia wish to have own representative in Parliament Assyrische Bevolkerung weltweit bethnahrin Retrieved 24 June 2019 Ozkan Duygu 31 March 2012 Die christlichen Assyrer zu Wien DiePresse Retrieved 24 June 2019 This figure is an estimate from the Assyrian Cultural and Advice Centre 1 at Iraqi Assyrians in London Beyond the Immigrant Refugee Divide Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 1995 According to the 1989 population census there were 5 200 Assyrians in Georgia 0 1 percent according to the 2002 census their number dropped to 3 299 while their percentage remained the same 2 The Assyrians of Georgia Ethnic Specifics Should Be Preserved in the Journal of Central Asia and the Caucasus Georgia ecoi net European Country of Origin Information Network Archived from the original on 2014 11 05 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Syriacs still going strong Syriacs in Palestine Shams Alex 2 November 2015 Learning the language of Jesus Christ Roads amp Kingdoms Retrieved 23 July 2019 State statistics committee of Ukraine National composition of population 2001 census Ukrainian 2013 Census ethnic group profiles Assyrian Statistics New Zealand Retrieved 13 March 2018 The ethnic origin of Christians in Israel parshan co il in Hebrew Fenger Grondahl Af Malene 1 May 2017 Assyrer At vi har vores eget sted styrker min folelse af at hore til i Danmark Kristeligt Dagblad in Danish Retrieved 31 March 2019 Assyrian Community in Kazakhstan Survived Dark Times Now Focuses on Education The Astana Times 2014 12 19 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Assyrian Association Founded in Finland aina org Retrieved 18 February 2015 a b Nisan 2002 p 180 a b c Laing Marshall 2005 p 149 150 Wolk 2008 p 107 109 a b c d Hanish 2015 p 517 Kramer Samuel Noah 1988 In the world of Sumer an autobiography Detroit Wayne State University Press ISBN 0 8143 2121 6 OCLC 17726815 A Leo Oppenheim 1964 Ancient Mesopotamia PDF The University of Chicago Press Novak Vilem Perfilieva Irina Dvorak Antonin 2016 03 28 Insight into Fuzzy Modeling doi 10 1002 9781119193210 ISBN 9781119193210 Beyer Klaus 1986 The Aramaic language its distribution and subdivisions Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht ISBN 3 525 53573 2 OCLC 16832958 Laing Marshall 2005 p 149 a b c Al Jeloo 1999 a b Kalpakian 2011 p 30 Donabed amp Mako 2009 p 72 Kalpakian 2011 p 30 31 Hays Jeffrey ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS CHALDEANS AND JACOBITES Facts and Details factsanddetails com Retrieved 2022 10 04 Hanish Shak 2008 03 22 The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq an ethnic identity problem Digest of Middle East Studies 17 1 32 48 doi 10 1111 j 1949 3606 2008 tb00145 x Minahan James 2002 Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations A C Greenwood Publishing Group p 206 ISBN 9780313321092 The Assyrians although closely assiociated with their Christian religion are divided among a number of Christian sects The largest denominations are the Chaldean Catholic Church with about 45 of the Assyrian population the Syriac Orthodox with 26 the Assyrian Church of the East with 19 the free Orthodox Church of Antioch or Syriac Catholic Church with 4 and various Protestant sects with a combined 6 For Assyrians as a Christian people see Joel J Elias The Genetics of Modern Assyrians and their Relationship to Other People of the Middle East Falling for ISIS Propaganda About Christians www aina org Eden Naby Documenting The Crisis In The Assyrian Iranian Community Assyrian Christians Most Vulnerable Population in Iraq The Christian Post Archived from the original on 8 December 2012 Retrieved 2006 12 05 U S Gov t Watchdog Urges Protection for Iraq s Assyrian Christians The Christian Post Archived from the original on 2007 12 11 Retrieved 2007 12 31 Video Iraqi troops liberate Christian town of Bartella from IS group France 24 2016 10 23 Retrieved 2022 02 16 Georges Roux Ancient Iraq p 187 Nineveh Max Mallowan Deutscher Guy 2007 Syntactic Change in Akkadian The Evolution of Sentential Complementation Oxford University Press US pp 20 21 ISBN 978 0 19 953222 3 Michel Cecile 2017 Economy Society and Daily Life in the Old Assyrian Period In E Frahm ed A Companion to Assyria Hoboken John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 1118325247 p 81 Genesis 25 3 Ashur World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 29 May 2016 During Bleda S 2020 The Imperialisation of Assyria An Archaeological Approach Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1108478748 p 145 Artifacts show rivals Athens and Sparta Yahoo News December 5 2006 The Persian Wars by Herodotus Book 6 ERATO parstimes com Yana 2008 p 30 Olmatead History of the Persian Empire Chicago University Press 1959 p 39 PDF https web archive org web 20201119042653 http media hujada nu 2019 03 Parpola identity Article Final1 pdf Archived from the original PDF on 2020 11 19 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a Missing or empty title help Visible Language Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond Oriental Institute Museum Publications 32 Chicago University of Chicago p 13 ISBN 978 1 885923 76 9 E Bilgic and S Bayram Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri II Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi 1995 ISBN 975 16 0246 7 K R Veenhof Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri V Turk Tarih Kurumu 2010 ISBN 978 975 16 2235 8 Woods C 2006 Bilingualism Scribal Learning and the Death of Sumerian In S L Sanders ed Margins of Writing Origins of Culture 91 120 Chicago PDF Retrieved October 12 2019 Hadrian G W Bowersock Millar 1967 p 211 Ammianus Marcellinus The Later Roman Empire 354 378 A shameful peace concluded by Jovian 6 7 p 303 Penguin Classics Translated by Walter Hamilton 1986 Etheredge Laura 2011 Iraq Rosen Publishing p 72 ISBN 9781615303045 Seleucia Ctesiphon is not to be confused with Seleucia Isauria now Silifke Turkey within the Roman Empire where at the request of the Roman emperor the Council of Seleucia was held in 359 Michael Goldfarb Ahmad s War Ahmad s Peace New York Carroll amp Graf 2005 Definition of melkite Dictionary com Syriac language Encyclopaedia Britannica Aramaic language Encyclopaedia Britannica Beeston Alfred Felix Landon 1983 Arabic literature to the end of the Umayyad period Cambridge University Press p 501 ISBN 978 0 521 24015 4 Retrieved 20 January 2011 Contadini Anna 2003 A Bestiary Tale Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kitab naʿt al hayawan British Library or 2784 PDF Muqarnas 20 17 33 doi 10 1163 22118993 90000037 JSTOR 1523325 Brague Remi Assyrians Contributions To The Islamic Civilization christiansofiraq com Archived from the original on 27 September 2013 Hyman and Walsh Philosophy in the Middle Ages Indianapolis 1973 p 204 Meri Josef W and Jere L Bacharach Editors Medieval Islamic Civilization Vol 1 A K Index 2006 p 304 Bennett Clinton 2005 Muslims and Modernity An Introduction to the Issues and Debates Continuum International Publishing Group pp 162 163 ISBN 0 8264 5481 X Retrieved 2012 07 07 Glenn H Patrick 2007 Legal Traditions of the World Oxford University Press p 219 Joseph 2000 p 48 49 Winkler Dietmar 2009 Hidden Treasures And Intercultural Encounters Studies On East Syriac Christianity In China And Central Asia LIT Verlag Munster ISBN 9783643500458 Aboona 2008 p XI According to Georges Roux and Simo Parpola History of Ashur Assur de Retrieved 12 June 2012 Gaunt Beṯ Sawoce amp Donef 2006 p 32 Aboona 2008 p 105 Khanbaghi Aptin 2006 The fire the star and the cross minority religions in medieval and early modern Iran I B Tauris ISBN 9781845110567 Parry Kenneth 15 April 2008 The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity p 255 ISBN 9780470766392 via Google Books Maphrian Catholicos Syr Orth in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Adrian Fortescue The Lesser Eastern Churches chapter 4 Baumstark Anton ed 2004 Patriarcha de Mozal in Syria orientali Oriens Christianus Vol IV 1 Rome and Leipzig O Harrassowitz p 277 Chaldaeorum ecclesiae Musal Patriarcha Giuseppe Simone Assemani editor Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino Vaticana Rome 1725 vol 3 part 1 p 661 Tisserant 1931 p 228 Baumer 2006 p 248 Healey 2010 p 45 Mooken 2003 p 33 Frazee 2006 p 57 Winkler 2019 p 127 Pietro Strozzi 1617 De dogmatibus chaldaeorum disputatio ad Patrem Adam Camerae Patriarchalis Babylonis ex typographia Bartholomaei Zannetti A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia Eyre amp Spottiswoode 1939 vol I pp 382 383 In his contribution Myth vs Reality to JAA Studies Vol XIV No 1 2000 p 80 Archived 2020 07 13 at the Wayback Machine George V Yana Bebla presented as a correction of Strozzi s statement a quotation from an unrelated source cf p xxiv that Sulaqa was called Patriarch of the Chaldeans Frazee 2006 p 56 Winkler 2019 p 126 127 Joseph 2000 p 1 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 4 Butts 2017 p 604 Fred Aprim Assyria and Assyrians Since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq PDF Retrieved October 12 2019 a b Aboona 2008 p 218 219 Courtois 2004 p 105 107 Atman 2018 p 215 232 The Old Assyrian Flag Chaldeans On Line Archived from the original on 5 January 2006 Retrieved 21 June 2019 AANF HISTORY AANF org Assyrian American National Federation Archived from the original on 7 February 2005 Retrieved 21 June 2019 Yacoub 2016 The Plight of Religious Minorities Can Religious Pluralism Survive Page 51 by United States Congress Hovannisian Richard ed The Armenian Genocide Wartime Radicalization Or Premeditated Continuum p 272 Halo Thea Not Even My Name A True Story p 131 Korbani Agnes G The Political Dictionary of Modern Middle East Wigram William Ainger 1920 Our Smallest Ally Wigram W illiam A inger A Brief Account of the Assyrian Nation in the Great War Introd by General H H Austin Soc for Promoting Christian Knowledge Naayem Shall This Nation Die p 281 Len Dieghton Blood Sweat and Tears Zubaida S July 2000 Contested nations Iraq and the Assyrians PDF Nations and Nationalism 6 3 363 82 doi 10 1111 j 1354 5078 2000 00363 x Retrieved 23 September 2011 Biography of His Holiness The Assyrian Martyr The Late Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII peshitta org Committee of the 50th Anniversary of the Patriarchate of Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII Retrieved 23 September 2011 Iraq Information on treatment of Assyrian and Chaldean Christians Refworld United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Archived from the original on 19 October 2012 Retrieved 18 February 2015 زوعا zowaa org Retrieved 18 February 2015 The Anfal Offensives indict org uk Archived from the original on September 28 2011 Certrez Donabed and Makko 2012 The Assyrian Heritage Threads of Continuity and Influence Uppsala University pp 288 289 ISBN 978 91 554 8303 6 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link PDF https web archive org web 20080509145453 http www cpa iraq org regulations 20030516 CPAORD 1 De Ba athification of Iraqi Society pdf Archived from the original PDF on 9 May 2008 Retrieved 2022 02 10 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a Missing or empty title help Mullen s Plain Talk About U S Mistakes in Iraq National Public Radio 1 August 2007 Retrieved 24 September 2010 Henderson amp Tucker p 19 Exodus of Christians hits Baghdad district The Boston Globe Retrieved 18 February 2015 Church Bombings in Iraq Since 2004 Aina org Retrieved 2008 11 16 a b Burger John December 4 2014 Christians in Iraq Forming Militia to Defend and Possibly Retake Ancestral Lands Aletia org Jeffrey Paul April 29 2016 Militias of Iraqi Christians resist Islamic State amid sectarian strife CatholicPhilly com Retrieved August 2 2020 Nelson Steven February 6 2015 Iraqi Assyrian Christians Form Anti ISIS Militia and You Can Legally Chip In U S News amp World Report Henderson Peter 30 October 2014 Iraq s Christian paramilitaries split in IS fight Al Monitor Retrieved 10 March 2015 Westerners join Iraqi Christian militia to crusade World Bulletin 18 February 2015 Retrieved 14 April 2019 Inside the Christian Militias Defending the Nineveh Plains Warisboring com 7 March 2015 Archived from the original on 7 September 2016 Retrieved 8 January 2017 The establishment of Nineveh Plain Forces NPF Syriac International News Agency 7 January 2015 Archived from the original on 16 August 2018 Retrieved 5 January 2017 Hanna Reine June 1 2020 Contested Control The Future of Security in Iraq s Nineveh Plain Assyrian Policy Institute p 38 amp 39 Drott Carl 25 May 2015 The Revolutionaries of Bethnahrin Warscapes com Retrieved 18 September 2016 Syriac Christians revive ancient language despite war ARA News 2016 08 19 Retrieved 2016 08 19 The Syriacs are taught their language for the first time Hawar News Agency 2016 09 24 Archived from the original on 2016 09 24 Retrieved 2016 09 24 Hassakeh Syriac Language to Be Taught in PYD controlled Schools The Syrian Observer 3 October 2016 Retrieved 2016 10 05 Rojava administration launches new curriculum in Kurdish Arabic and Assyrian ARA News 7 October 2016 Retrieved 2016 10 07 Syriacs establish military council in Syria Hurriyet Daily News 2 February 2013 a b Safi Marlo September 25 2018 Closure of Syrian Schools Another Bleak Sign for Christians in Syria National Review Retrieved August 2 2020 a b c Kurdish Self Administration in Syria Release Assyrian Journalist Souleman Yusph Assyrian Policy Institute September 30 2018 Retrieved August 2 2020 Wigram W A The Ashiret Highlands of Hakkari Mesopotamia Royal Central Asian Society Journal 1916 Vol III pg 40 The Assyrians and their Neighbors London 1929 Sherman 2013 09 13 The West in the World McGraw Hill Higher Education ISBN 9781259157059 Bryce 2009 p 439 Betts Robert Brenton Christians in the Arab East Atlanta 1978 Dodge Bayard The Settlement of the Assyrians on the Khabur Royal Central Asian Society Journal July 1940 pp 301 320 Rowlands J The Khabur Valley Royal Central Asian Society Journal 1947 pp 144 149 a b Al Monitor Ethnic dimension of Iraqi Assyrians often ignored 2014 10 10 Archived from the original on 2015 10 17 Retrieved 2014 12 22 a b مسؤول مسيحي عدد المسيحيين في العراق تراجع الى ثلاثمائة الف Retrieved 18 February 2015 Ishtar Documenting The Crisis In The Assyrian Iranian Community aina org United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2010 10 13 Iran Last of the Assyrians Refworld Retrieved 2013 09 18 Atto 2011 p 83 Statement on Assyrians Syriacs in Turkey Iraq sor cua edu Archived from the original on 2008 11 20 Retrieved 2008 12 06 a b Minahan 2002 p 209 Vander Werff Lyle L 1977 Christian mission to Muslims the record Anglican and Reformed approaches in India and the Near East 1800 1938 The William Carey Library series on Islamic studies William Carey Library pp 366 ISBN 978 0 87808 320 6 Who are the Chaldean Christians BBC News March 13 2008 Retrieved March 26 2010 Nisan 2002 p x Travis 2010 p 238 FACTBOX Christians in Turkey The Middle East abstracts and index Part 1 Library Information and Research Service Northumberland Press 2002 Page 491 Central Asia and the Caucasus transnationalism and diaspora Touraj Atabaki Sanjyot Mehendale Routledge 2005 Page 228 Slomo Surayt textbook surayt com Retrieved 2022 08 12 Ungor 2011 p 15 Gaunt et al 2017 p 19 This History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer pg 85 87 A Short World History of Christianity by Robert Bruce Mullin pp 82 85 Nestorian Christian sect Britannica com Retrieved 2013 09 18 Demographics of Sweden Swedish Language Council Sweden has also one of the largest exile communities of Assyrian and Syriac Christians also known as Chaldeans with a population of around 100 000 Erzdiozese Archived from the original on 5 March 2015 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Data Access and Dissemination Systems DADS American FactFinder Results Archived from the original on 12 February 2020 Retrieved 18 February 2015 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link Assyrian Australian Association amp Ettinger House 1997 Settlement Issues of the Assyrian Community AAA Sydney a b Lundgren Svante 15 May 2019 The Assyrians Fifty Years in Swedenq Nineveh Press p 14 ISBN 978 91 984101 7 4 Fairfield s Assyrian Resource Centre has secured 40 000 to fund its renovations The Daily Telegraph Retrieved January 31 2014 Fairfield City Council 2003 State of the Community Report Fairfield City Council Wakeley Kinarah Twentieth Anniversary of Assyrian Australian Association 1989 Assyrian Australian Association Edensor Park Deniz F 2000 Maintenance and Transformation of Ethnic Identity the Assyrian Case The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal Thrown to the Lions Archived 2013 08 08 at the Wayback Machine Doug Bandow The America Spectator Peter BetBasoo Brief History of Assyrians www aina org The facts about Syrian refugees and Fairfield by SSI News Blog 23 February 2017 Fairfield struggles to cope after threefold increase in refugee arrivals by Penny Timms from ABC News 3 January 2017 Arab Chaldean and Middle Eastern Children and Families in the Tri County Area Archive From a Child s Perspective Detroit Metropolitan Census 2000 Fact Sheets Series Wayne State University Volume 4 Issue 2 February 2004 p 2 32 Retrieved on November 8 2013 B Furze P Savy R Brym J Lie Sociology in Today s World 2008 p 349 Assyria Crwflags com Archived from the original on 12 October 2008 Retrieved 2008 11 16 Syriac Aramaic People Syria Crwflags com Archived from the original on 10 November 2001 Retrieved 2008 11 16 CHALDEAN FLAG from A to Z Chaldean Flag Retrieved 27 March 2020 a b Murre van den Berg 2015 p 127 Layard 1849a p IX X 38 241 Layard 1849b p 237 Cross Frank Leslie 2005 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Oxford University Press p 119 ISBN 9780192802903 In the 19th cent A H Layard the excavator of Nineveh first suggested that the local Syriac Christian communities in the region were descended from the ancient Assyrians and the idea was later popularized by W A Wigram a member of the Abp Of Canterbury s Mission to the Church of the East 1895 1915 Coakley 2011a p 45 a b Southgate 1840 p 179 Bettany 1888 p 491 Jonathan Eric Lewis June 2003 Iraqi Assyrians Barometer of Pluralism Middle East Forum Retrieved 18 February 2015 Arab American Institute Still Deliberately Claiming Assyrians Are Arabs Aina org Retrieved 2008 11 16 In Court Saddam Criticizes Kurdish Treatment of Assyrians Aina org Retrieved 2008 11 16 A companion to Assyria Eckart Frahm Hoboken NJ 2017 ISBN 978 1 118 32524 7 OCLC 962025766 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint others link Eastern Churches Catholic Encyclopedia see Eastern Syrians and Western Syrians respectively Modern terminology within the group is Western Assyrians and Eastern Assyrians respectively while those who reject the Assyrian identity opt for Syriac or Aramean rather than Assyrian Gallagher 2012 p 123 141 Gesenius amp Prideaux Tregelles 1859 Furst 1867 Davies 1872 Coakley 2011b p 93 Council of Basel Ferrara Florence 1431 49 A D Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 112 O Mahony 2006 p 526 527 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 63 Ainsworth 1841 p 36 Ainsworth 1842b p 272 Layard 1849a p 260 Simon oratorien Richard July 3 1684 Histoire critique de la creance et des coutumes des nations du Levant Chez Frederic Arnaud via Google Books Southgate 1842 p 249 Southgate 1844 p 80 Akopian Arman 2017 11 Other branches of Syriac Christianity Melkites and Maronites Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies pp 217 222 doi 10 31826 9781463238933 014 ISBN 9781463238933 Syriac Universal Alliance 2003 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 694 4099 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Donabed amp Mako 2009 p 75 Castellino Joshua Cavanaugh Kathleen A April 25 2013 Minority Rights in the Middle East OUP Oxford ISBN 9780199679492 Retrieved October 12 2019 via Google Books אנחנו לא ערבים אנחנו ארמים in Hebrew Israel HaYom 9 August 2013 Aderet Ofer September 9 2018 Neither Arab nor Jew Israel s Unheard Minorities Speak Up After the Nation state Law Retrieved October 12 2019 via Haaretz Fiey 1965 p 141 160 a b Lipinski 2000 Schniedewind 2002 p 276 287 a b Gzella 2015 Nigel Wilson 2013 10 31 Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece p 652 ISBN 9781136788000 Andrade 2013 p 28 Andrade 2014 p 299 317 Herodotus The Histories VII 63 s History of Herodotus Book 7 Joseph 1997 p 37 43 Frye 1992 p 281 285 Frye 1997 p 30 36 Rollinger 2006a p 72 82 Rollinger 2006b p 283 287 Heinrichs 1993 p 106 107 Macuch 1976 p 89 206 233 Tsereteli Sovremennyj assirijskij jazyk Moscow Nauka 1964 Tekoglu et al 2000 p 961 1007 Rollinger 2006b p 283 287 ASSYRIANS OF CHICAGO The Assyrian Academic Society PDF www aina org The Assyrian New Year Archived from the original on May 2 2006 Chamberlain AF Notes on Some Aspects of the Folk Psychology of Night American Journal of Psychology 1908 JSTOR Gansell AR FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO MODERN SYRIA ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FEMALE ADORNMENT DURING RITES Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context 2007 Brill Academic Publishers Dr Joseph Adebayo Awoyemi 14 September 2014 Pre marital Counselling In a Multicultural Society pp 75 ISBN 978 1 291 83577 9 The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia Garnik Asatryan Victoria Arakelova Parpola 2004 p 9 Bae 2004 p 1 20 Akkadian Words in Modern Assyrian PDF Retrieved October 12 2019 Kaufman Stephen A 1974 The Akkadian influences on Aramaic University of Chicago Press a b Avenery Iddo The Aramaic Dialect of the Jews of Zakho The Israel academy of Science and Humanities 1988 Khan Geoffrey 1999 A Grammar of Neo Aramaic the dialect of the Jews of Arbel Leiden EJ Brill Maclean Arthur John 1895 Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac as spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan north west Persia and the Plain of Mosul with notices of the vernacular of the Jews of Azerbaijan and of Zakhu near Mosul Cambridge University Press London Heinrichs 1990 Tezel 2003 O Brien Abbie Australia s only Assyrian school is giving refugees a fresh start SBS News Retrieved 14 March 2018 The inside story of how 226 Assyrian Christians were freed from ISIS Catholic Herald Archived from the original on 29 March 2019 Retrieved 14 March 2018 Understanding recent movements of Christians from Syria and Iraq to other countries across the Middle East and Europe PDF www aina org Carl Drott 25 May 2015 The Revolutionaries of Bethnahrin Warscapes Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture Assyrians return to Turkey from Europe to save their culture in Turkish Retrieved 2018 03 05 Briquel Chatonnet 2019 p 243 265 Syriac alphabet Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Retrieved June 16 2012 Hatch William 1946 An album of dated Syriac manuscripts Boston The American Academy of Arts and Sciences reprinted in 2002 by Gorgias Press p 24 ISBN 1 931956 53 7 Nestle Eberhard 1888 Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur Chrestomathie und Glossar Berlin H Reuther s Verlagsbuchhandlung translated to English as Syriac grammar with bibliography chrestomathy and glossary by R S Kennedy London Williams amp Norgate 1889 p 5 J Martin Bailey Betty Jane Bailey Who Are the Christians in the Middle East p 163 more than two thirds out of nearly a million Christians in Iraq Adherents com Adherents com Archived from the original on October 1 2003 Retrieved 2013 09 18 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint unfit URL link Bohac Artur 2010 Assyrian Ethnic Identity in a Globalizing World PDF In Macha Premysl Kopecek Vincenc eds Beyond Globalisation Exploring the Limits of Globalisation in the Regional Context Ostrava University of Ostrava p 71 ISBN 978 80 7368 717 5 Although there are some atheists among Assyrians they are usually associated with specific communities based on the adherence to a concrete religious sect Abdalla 2017 p 92 105 N Shirinian George 2017 Genocide in the Ottoman Empire Armenians Assyrians and Greeks 1913 1923 Berghahn Books p 109 ISBN 9781785334337 O Barthoma Soner 2017 Let Them Not Return Sayfo The Genocide Against the Assyrian Syriac and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire Berghahn Books p 2 ISBN 9781785334993 G Hovannisian Richard 2011 The Armenian Genocide Cultural and Ethical Legacies Transaction Publishers p 268 ISBN 9781412835923 Muslim Assyrians Who are they November 23 2016 Crypto Assyrians Who are they The Armenian Weekly November 28 2016 שואת אחינו האשוריים הדרך המהירה שבין תרבות ישראל לתרבות אשור יעקב מעוז JOKOPOST עיתון המאמרים והבלוגים המוביל בישראל in Hebrew 2019 07 18 Retrieved 2019 07 22 Qenshrin com Guide to the Christian congregations in Aleppo in Arabic Archived from the original on 2011 03 01 Leroy Jules Collin Peter 2004 Monks and Monasteries of the Near East pp 166 167 ISBN 978 1 59333 276 1 The Date of Easter Archived 2011 08 14 at the Wayback Machine Article from United States Naval Observatory March 27 2007 AUA Release March 26 2006 PDF Archived from the original PDF on November 19 2011 Three Day Fast of Nineveh syrianorthodoxchurch org Archived from the original on 25 October 2012 Retrieved 1 February 2012 a b Piroyan William Naby Eden 1999 FESTIVALS ix Assyrian Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol IX Fasc 6 pp 561 563 Mandel Pam 2017 12 05 An Ancient Empire Gets New Life on a Food Truck Jewish in Seattle Magazine Retrieved 2018 03 21 Edelstein Sari ed 2011 Food Cuisine and Cultural Competency for Culinary Hospitality and Nutrition Professionals Boston Massachusetts Jones amp Bartlett Learning pp 545 552 ISBN 978 0763759650 a b Dr Joel J Elias Emeritus University of California The Genetics of Modern Assyrians and their Relationship to Other People of the Middle East Archived from the original on August 16 2000 Akbari M T Papiha Sunder S Roberts D F Farhud Daryoush D 1986 Genetic Differentiation among Iranian Christian Communities American Journal of Human Genetics 38 1 84 98 PMC 1684716 PMID 3456196 Cavalli Sforza Luigi Luca Menozzi Paolo Piazza Alberto 1994 The History and Geography of Human Genes p 243 ISBN 978 0691087504 Yepiskoposian et al Iran and the Caucasus Volume 10 Number 2 2006 pp 191 208 18 Genetic Testing of Language Replacement Hypothesis in Southwest Asia PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2015 10 17 Retrieved 2021 05 10 Banoei M M Chaleshtori M H Sanati M H Shariati P Houshmand M Majidizadeh T Soltani N J Golalipour M Feb 2008 Variation of DAT1 VNTR alleles and genotypes among old ethnic groups in Mesopotamia to the Oxus region Hum Biol 80 1 73 81 doi 10 3378 1534 6617 2008 80 73 VODVAA 2 0 CO 2 PMID 18505046 S2CID 10417591 The relationship probability was lowest between Assyrians and other communities Endogamy was found to be high for this population through determination of the heterogeneity coefficient 0 6867 Our study supports earlier findings indicating the relatively closed nature of the Assyrian community as a whole which as a result of their religious and cultural traditions have had little intermixture with other populations Al Zahery et al BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011 11 288 In search of the genetic footprints of Sumerians a survey of Y chromosome and mtDNA variation in the Marsh Arabs of Iraq In the less frequent J1 M267 clade only marginally affected by events of expansion Marsh Arabs shared haplotypes with other Iraqi and Assyrian samples supporting a common local background Dogan Serkan 3 November 2017 A glimpse at the intricate mosaic of ethnicities from Mesopotamia Paternal lineages of the northern Iraqi Arabs Kurds Syriacs Turkmens and Yazidis PLOS ONE 12 11 e0187408 Bibcode 2017PLoSO 1287408D doi 10 1371 journal pone 0187408 PMC 5669434 PMID 29099847 a b c Lashgary Z Khodadadi A Singh Y Houshmand SM Mahjoubi F Sharma P Singh S Seyedin M Srivastava A Ataee M Mohammadi ZS Rezaei N Bamezai RN Sanati MH 2011 Y chromosome diversity among the Iranian religious groups a reservoir of genetic variation Ann Hum Biol 38 3 364 71 doi 10 3109 03014460 2010 535562 PMID 21329477 S2CID 207460555 Yepiskoposian L Khudoyan A Harutyunian A 2006 Genetic Testing of Language Replacement Hypothesis in Southwest Asia Iran and the Caucasus 10 2 191 208 doi 10 1163 157338406780345899 JSTOR 4030922 Grugni Viola Battaglia Vincenza Hooshiar Kashani Baharak Parolo Silvia Al Zahery Nadia Achilli Alessandro Olivieri Anna Gandini Francesca Houshmand Massoud Sanati Mohammad Hossein Torroni Antonio Semino Ornella 2012 Ancient Migratory Events in the Middle East New Clues from the Y Chromosome Variation of Modern Iranians PLOS ONE 7 7 e41252 Bibcode 2012PLoSO 741252G doi 10 1371 journal pone 0041252 PMC 3399854 PMID 22815981 Underhill PA Shen P Lin AA Jin L Passarino G Yang WH Kauffman E Bonne Tamir B Bertranpetit J Francalacci P Ibrahim M Jenkins T Kidd JR Mehdi SQ Seielstad MT Wells RS Piazza A Davis RW Feldman MW Cavalli Sforza LL Oefner PJ 2000 Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations Nature Genetics 26 3 358 61 doi 10 1038 81685 PMID 11062480 S2CID 12893406 Semino O Magri C Benuzzi G Lin AA Al Zahery N Battaglia V Maccioni L Triantaphyllidis C Shen P Oefner PJ Zhivotovsky LA King R Torroni A Cavalli Sforza LL Underhill PA Santachiara Benerecetti AS Origin diffusion and differentiation of Y chromosome haplogroups E and J inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and later migratory events in the Mediterranean area Am J Hum Genet 2004 74 1023 1034 SourcesAbdalla Michael 2017 The Term Seyfo in Historical Perspective The Assyrian Genocide Cultural and Political Legacies Vol 1 London Routledge pp 92 105 ISBN 9781138284050 Aboona Hirmis 2008 Assyrians Kurds and Ottomans Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire Amherst Cambria Press ISBN 9781604975833 Abramtsov David 1960 The Assyrians of Persia and the Russian Orthodox Church One Church 14 155 169 Ainsworth William F 1841 An Account of a Visit to the Chaldeans Inhabiting Central Kurdistan And of an Ascent of the Peak of Rowandiz Ṭur Sheikhiwa in Summer in 1840 The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 11 21 76 doi 10 2307 1797632 JSTOR 1797632 Ainsworth William F 1842a Travels and Researches in Asia Minor Mesopotamia Chaldea and Armenia Vol 1 London John W Parker Ainsworth William F 1842b Travels and Researches in Asia Minor Mesopotamia Chaldea and Armenia Vol 2 London John W Parker Al Jeloo Nicholas 1999 Who are the Assyrians The Assyrian Australian Academic Journal 4 Andrade Nathanael J 2013 Syrian Identity in the Greco Roman World Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781107244566 Andrade Nathanael J 2014 Assyrians Syrians and the Greek Language in the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Periods Journal of Near Eastern Studies 73 2 299 317 doi 10 1086 677249 JSTOR 10 1086 677249 S2CID 163755644 Atman Sabri 2018 Assyrian Genocide from a Gender Perspective Sayfo 1915 An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians Arameans during the First World War Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press pp 215 232 ISBN 9781463207304 Atto Naures 2011 Hostages in the Homeland Orphans in the Diaspora Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora Leiden Leiden University Press ISBN 9789087281489 Bae Chul hyun 2004 Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire 538 333 B C E Journal of Universal Language 5 1 20 doi 10 22425 jul 2004 5 1 1 Bagg Ariel M 2017 Assyria and the West Syria and the Levant A Companion to Assyria Hoboken John Wiley amp Sons pp 268 274 Baum Wilhelm Winkler Dietmar W 2003 The Church of the East A Concise History London New York Routledge Curzon ISBN 9781134430192 Baumer Christoph 2006 The Church of the East An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity London New York Tauris ISBN 9781845111151 Benjamin Yoab Assyrians in Middle America A Historical and Demographic Study of the Chicago Assyrian Community PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 10 2 BetGivargis McDaniel Maegan 2007 Assyrians of New Britain Arcadia Publishing ISBN 978 0 7385 5012 1 OCLC 156908771 Becker Adam H 2008 The Ancient Near East in the Late Antique Near East Syriac Christian Appropriation of the Biblical East Antiquity in Antiquity Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco Roman World Tubingen Mohr Siebeck pp 394 415 ISBN 9783161494116 Becker Adam H 2015 Revival and Awakening American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 9780226145310 Beitrag Onders 2012 Minority Rights in Turkey Quo Vadis Assyrians The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Munster LIT Verlag pp 99 120 ISBN 9783643902689 Bettany George T 1888 The World s Inhabitants London New York Ward Lock amp Co Briquel Chatonnet Francoise 2019 Writing Syriac Manuscripts and Inscriptions The Syriac World London Routledge pp 243 265 ISBN 9781138899018 Bryce Trevor R 2009 The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the fall of the Persian Empire London New York Routledge ISBN 9781134159079 Butts Aaron M 2017 Assyrian Christians A Companion to Assyria Malden John Wiley amp Sons pp 599 612 Coakley James F 1992 The Church of the East and the Church of England A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury s Assyrian Mission Oxford Clarendon Press ISBN 9780198267447 Coakley James F 1996 The Church of the East since 1914 The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 3 179 198 doi 10 7227 BJRL 78 3 14 Coakley James F 2011a Assyrians Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press p 45 Coakley James F 2011b Chaldeans Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press p 93 Courtois Sebastien de 2004 The Forgotten Genocide Eastern Christians the Last Aramaeans Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press ISBN 9781593330774 Davies Benjamin 1872 A Compendious and Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament London Asher Demir Sara 2017 The Atrocities against the Assyrians in 1915 A Legal Perspective The Assyrian Genocide Cultural and Political Legacies Vol 1 London Routledge pp 106 136 ISBN 9781138284050 Donabed Sargon G Donabed Ninos 2006 Assyrians of Eastern Massachusetts Charleston Arcadia Publishing ISBN 9780738544809 Donabed Sargon G Mako Shamiran 2009 Ethno cultural and Religious Identity of Syrian Orthodox Christians PDF Chronos Revue d Histoire de l Universite de Balamand 19 69 111 Donabed Sargon G 2015 Reforging a Forgotten History Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 9780748686056 Donabed Sargon G 2017 Neither Syriac speaking nor Syrian Orthodox Christians Harput Assyrians in the United States as a Model for Ethnic Self Categorization and Expression Syriac in its Multi Cultural Context Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 359 369 ISBN 9789042931640 Fiey Jean Maurice 1965 Assyriens ou Arameens L Orient Syrien 10 141 160 Frye Richard N 1992 Assyria and Syria Synonyms Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51 4 281 285 doi 10 1086 373570 S2CID 161323237 Frye Richard N 1997 Assyria and Syria Synonyms PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 11 2 30 36 Archived from the original PDF on 2020 07 13 Frye Richard N 1999 Reply to John Joseph PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 13 1 69 70 Archived from the original PDF on 2020 07 11 Frye Richard N 2002 Mapping Assyria Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena Milano Universita di Bologna pp 75 78 ISBN 9788884831071 Frazee Charles A 2006 1983 Catholics and Sultans The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453 1923 Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521027007 Furst Julius 1867 A Hebrew amp Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament With an Introduction Giving a Short History of Hebrew Lexicography London Williams amp Norgate Gallagher Edmon L 2012 Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory Canon Language Text Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 9789004228023 Gaunt David Beṯ Sawoce Jan Donef Racho 2006 Massacres Resistance Protectors Muslim Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press ISBN 9781593333010 Gesenius Wilhelm Prideaux Tregelles Samuel 1859 Gesenius s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures London Bagster Gewargis Odisho Malko 2002 We Are Assyrians PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 16 1 77 95 Archived from the original PDF on 2003 04 21 Gzella Holger 2015 A Cultural History of Aramaic From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 9789004285101 Halo Thea 2018 The Targeting of Assyrians during the Christian Holocaust in Ottoman Turkey Sayfo 1915 An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians Arameans during the First World War Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press pp 41 60 ISBN 9781463207304 Hanish Shak 2015 Assyrians Native Peoples of the World An Encyclopedia of Groups Cultures and Contemporary Issues London New York Routledge p 517 ISBN 9781317464006 Healey John F 2010 The Church Across the Border The Church of the East and its Chaldean Branch Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East London New York Routledge pp 41 55 ISBN 9781135193713 Heinrichs Wolfhart ed 1990 Studies in Neo Aramaic Atlanta Scholars Press ISBN 9781555404307 Heinrichs Wolfhart 1993 The Modern Assyrians Name and Nation Semitica Serta philologica Constantino Tsereteli dicata Torino Zamorani pp 99 114 ISBN 9788871580241 Hunter Erica C D 2014 The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East In Leustean Lucian N ed Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty First Century London New York Routledge pp 601 620 ISBN 9781317818663 Jakob Joachim 2014 Ostsyrische Christen und Kurden im Osmanischen Reich des 19 und fruhen 20 Jahrhunderts Munster LIT Verlag ISBN 9783643506160 Joseph John B 1997 Assyria and Syria Synonyms PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 11 2 37 43 Archived from the original PDF on 2020 07 15 Joseph John B 1998 The Bible and the Assyrians It Kept their Memory Alive PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 12 1 70 76 Archived from the original PDF on 2020 07 15 Joseph John B 2000 The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East A History of Their Encounter with Western Christian Missions Archaeologists and Colonial Powers Leiden Brill ISBN 9004116419 Kalpakian Jack Vahram 2011 Assyrians Ethnic Groups of Africa and the Middle East An Encyclopedia Santa Barbara ABC Clio pp 30 33 ISBN 9781598843620 Kitchen Robert A 2012 The Assyrian Church of the East In Casiday Augustine M ed The Orthodox Christian World London New York Routledge pp 78 88 ISBN 9780415455169 Laing Marshall Andrea 2005 Assyrians Encyclopedia of the World s Minorities Vol 1 New York London Routledge pp 149 150 ISBN 9781135193881 Layard Austen H 1849a Nineveh and its Remains With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan Vol 1 London John Murray Layard Austen H 1849b Nineveh and its Remains With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan Vol 2 London John Murray Lipinski Edward 2000 The Aramaeans Their Ancient History Culture Religion Leuven Peeters Publishers ISBN 9789042908598 Lundgren Svante 2016 The Assyrians From Nineveh to Sodertalje Sodertalje Tigris Press ISBN 9789198344127 MacDonald Kevin 2004 07 29 Socialization for Ingroup Identity among Assyrians in the United States Abstract Archived from the original on 2007 06 10 Macuch Rudolf 1976 Geschichte der spat und neusyrischen Literatur Berlin New York Walter de Gruyter ISBN 9783110059595 Makko Aryo 2012 Living Between the Fronts The Turkish Kurdish Conflict and the Assyrians The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Munster LIT Verlag pp 63 71 ISBN 9783643902689 Millar Fergus 1967 The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours New York Delacorte Press ISBN 9780440017691 Millard Alan R 1983 Assyrians and Arameans Iraq British Institute for the Study of Iraq 45 1 101 108 doi 10 2307 4200184 JSTOR 4200184 S2CID 192959948 Mooken Aprem 2003 The History of the Assyrian Church of the East in the Twentieth Century Kottayam St Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute Murre van den Berg Heleen 2009 Chaldeans and Assyrians The Church of the East in the Ottoman Period The Christian Heritage of Iraq Piscataway Gorgias Press pp 146 164 ISBN 9781607241119 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2011 2009 Syriac Orthodox Church The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization Vol 4 Malden Wiley Blackwell pp 2304 2309 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2015 Classical Syriac and the Syriac Churches A Twentieth Century History Syriac Encounters Papers from the Sixth North American Syriac Symposium Louvain Peeters Publishers pp 119 148 ISBN 9789042930469 Mutlu Numansen Sofia Ossewaarde Marinus 2019 A Struggle for Genocide Recognition How the Aramean Assyrian and Chaldean Diasporas Link Past and Present PDF Holocaust and Genocide Studies 33 3 412 428 doi 10 1093 hgs dcz045 Nisan Mordechai 2002 Minorities in the Middle East A History of Struggle and Self Expression 2nd ed Jefferson NC McFarland ISBN 9780786451333 O Mahony Anthony 2006 Syriac Christianity in the modern Middle East The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity Vol 5 Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 511 536 ISBN 9780521811132 Parpola Simo 2004 National and Ethnic Identity in the Neo Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Identity in Post Empire Times PDF Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 18 2 5 22 Archived from the original PDF on 2007 11 28 Rollinger Robert 2006a Assyrios Syrios Syros und Leukosyros Die Welt des Orients 36 72 82 JSTOR 25684050 Rollinger Robert 2006b The Terms Assyria and Syria Again PDF Journal of Near Eastern Studies 65 4 283 287 doi 10 1086 511103 S2CID 162760021 Sado Stefan 1996 Rossijskaya pravoslavnaya missiya v Urmii 1898 1918 PDF Hristianskoe chtenie 13 73 112 Sato Noriko 2018 The Memory of Sayfo and Its Relation to the Identity of Contemporary Assyrian Aramean Christians in Syria Sayfo 1915 An Anthology of Essays on the Genocide of Assyrians Arameans during the First World War Piscataway NJ Gorgias Press pp 305 326 ISBN 9781463207304 Schniedewind William M 2002 a r, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.