article

See also: Aramaic history and Syriac Christianity.

Assyrian people (also known as Aramaeans, Chaldeans and/or Syriacs) are an ethnic group inhabiting today, parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon (see Beth Nahrain). In the past century, due to countless persecutions including the Assyrian Genocide, about half of its population has emigrated into the Caucasus, North America, and Western Europe (see Assyrian diaspora).

Identity

The Assyrian people are believed to be the inheritors of the ancient Assyro-Babylonian cultures. They have a culture, religion, and language different from that of the modern-day Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and Turks, who happen to inhabit what they believe to be their indigenous land. It is also possible that they are not all, or may not be, wholly descended of the ancient Assyrian and may be descended of one or more of the following: the Assyrians and/or the people that they conquered (Aramaeans, Babylonians, etc.), and/or of the people that conquered them (Chaldeans, Medes, etc.). With the ancient people, there would not be any realistic, definite method to prove direct lineage unless one was to unearth many ancient graves, examine and carbon date the remains, compare DNA samples of different grave sites, and then report a comparative analysis of the ancient people's DNA to that of the modern-day people. There has been recent DNA analasys which has proven common herritage within the community. All northern Iraqi people it turns out, are very closely related genetically. With the latter day arrivals of conquerors it is possible that they may have had some if very little influence as well for at first: many of the anscestors of the modern-day Arabs, Kurds, Mongols, Persians, and Turks were originally Christian and/or converts to the religion, and the area they ruled remained predominantly Christian with Syriac as the lingua franca prior to the Islamic conquests. Some may have been assimilated into the Syriac Christian culture. However it is a very light chance for the majority of Assyrians lived and still live isolated from other groups and are close-knit from village to village. The ancient Assyrian empire had a policy of deporting inhabitants from their natural environments and relocating them to urban areas of the empire in order to assimilate them into Assyro-Babylonian culture, which in turn caused a loss, or to the least of that extent, a merger of cultures, in turn somewhat altering their own sense of national identity. That tactic was borrowed and applied by the Persians, and by many empires that followed, including the United States, with its former policy towards Native Americans, ultimately relocating them to Reservations. Ironically, this has been the fate of the modern-day people. The Ba'ath parties of Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent, Syria's influence and interference in Lebanese affairs, were adament in replacing all ethnic identities with an Arab Nationalistic identity.

Ethnonyms

Aramaean (ܐܖ̈ܡܝܐ Ārāmāyē)
Throughout the history of the Syriac Christianity, there have been references to Aramaean heritage in Syriac literature in both Western and Eastern Syriac traditions.*. Since Christianization, Oromoyo/Ārāmāyā began to bear the connotation "pagan", whereas Suryoyo/Suryāyā (literally "Syrian") was used to refer only to the Christianized Aramaeans. More recently, in reaction to Syriac Christians calling themselves "Assyrians", there has been an awakening of the self-appellation "Aramaean," especially among Syriacs in the diaspora, but to a growing extent also in Turkey, and among some Maronites in Lebanon and in the Lebanese diaspora. In Germany, for instance, the name Aramäer has come into use quite extensively to refer to Syriacs primarily from the West Syriac tradition.

Assyrian (ܐܬܘܖ̈ܝܐ Āṯurāyē)
Assyrian is what is used today by members of the Church of the East, which has been officially called the Assyrian Church of the East since 1886 (formerly the Church of Assyria, Babylon, Persia etc.). The ethnonym Assyrian, is also used by many Chaldean Catholics and Syriac Orthodox Christians as well.

According to Greek and Roman historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, Justinus, and others state: the term Syrian means nothing more than Assyrian. In the 1st century BC Strabo wrote: "When those who have written histories about the Syrian empire say that the Medes were overthrown by the Persians and the Syrians by the Medes, they mean by the Syrian people, none other than those whom built the royal palaces in Babylon and Ninus; and of these Syrians, Ninus was the man who founded Nineveh, in Assyria. (H.L. Jones Translation of "Geography of Strabo", New York 1916, Vol. VIII p.195)

Christian Assyrian writers have attested to this fact. The term Syrian was later applied by the Greeks to the Assryians of Mesopotamia and to those west of Euphrates, because that region did not have a specific national identity but was once a territory of the Assyrians empire. It did not specifically mean Arameaan, because the inhabitants of the what became Syria during the first century AD were Greeks, Romans, Arameans, Hitites, Assyrians, and people of other nationalities as well. Therefore the term Suryaya and Syrian not only mean Christian and/or Aramean, because it had also been in use since the 6th century BC to mean Assyrian, whom were considered pagan by writers of the Old Testament. In fact, the Arameans are praised in the Old Testament because Abraham the father of the Jewish religion, and later Christianity, was said to have been Aramaean. The Aramaic language was promoted by the Ancient Assyrians as an international language of communication, It was also spoken by many nations whom were not of Aramaean descent. Since the Aramaic speakers took pride in the fact that Christ spoke their language, is an indication that Aramaean and Aramaic was not always as considered pagan by the early Christians. Many Christian inhabitants of Mesopotamia considered themselves Assyrians prior to and after the foundation of Christianity as they had always done before. For referrences to the Assyrians before and afer Christianity see Facts about Assyrians

Assyro-Chaldean or Chaldo-Assyrian (ܟܠܕܘܐܫܘܖ̈ܝܐ Kaldu-Āšurāyē)
The term Assyro-Chaldean, coined by the late Assyrian general Agha Petros was used after The Great War to unite members of the Chaldean Church with their brethern of the Assyrian Church when both groups were weak because they had been subjected to massacres by the Ottomans during the war. As the present-day Iraqi Christians belong mostly to the Chaldean Church of Babylon, the term Chaldo-Assyrians is also used there, whereas in Iran where the Church of the East members are more numerous than their Catholic cousins, the term Assyrians is generally favoured. After Saddam’s downfall the Assyrian Democratic Party of Iraq has used the ChaldoAssyrians name to bring the two communities together.

Because Assyrians have not had a sovereign state after the fall of their empire to unite and give them international recognition they have been primarily recognized by the names of their religious denominations. Members of the Syrian Orthodox Church have considered themselves as Assyrians according to the Syriac and other sources. The Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Michael the Great (1126-99) wrote: In the first half of the 9th century "the Greeks were offending the Jacobites by saying: 'Your Syrian sect has no importance neither honor, and you did never have a kingdom, neither an honorable king'. the Jacobites answered them by Saying that even if their name is "Syrian", but they are originally "Assyrians" and they have had many honorable kings... from Assyria, Babylon and Urhay." History of Mikhael The Great" Chabot Edition (French) P: 750) as quoted by Addai Scher, Hestorie De La Chaldee Et De "Assyrie" However the Syrian Orthodox Church patriarch Aphrem Barsoum who in 1920 represented his people as Assyrians in the 'League of Nations’ peace conference', for religious and political reasons, in 1952, ordered his people to be known as Arameans. While a segment of his followers abided by such decree the rest continued to identify themselves as Assyrians. See; Aphrem barsoum

Chaldean (ܟܠܕ̈ܝܐ Kaldāyē)
Catholic missionaries succeeded during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries in converting Assyrians to Catholicism (from the Church of the East). In 1445, the then-Nestorian Church in Cyprus requested to unite with Rome. Pope Eugene IV accepted and Rome extended the term of the Chaldean Church of Cyprus to cover all those new Catholic converts in northern Mesopotamia proper.
Up until the 20th century, all Chaldeans referred to themselves as Assyrian. Today, the Archbishop of the Chaldeans goes by the official name of "The Patriarch of Babylon over the Chaldeans" and the name of the church is Chaldean Church of Babylon. The Chaldean name is what is primarily used by diaspora Catholic Assyrians (specifically the 50,000-strong community in the Detroit area) The original Aramaic for Chaldeans is Kasdāyē (ܟܣܕܝ̈ܐ), but this was replaced at an early period with the Aramaic derivative of the Akkadian term Kaldu.

The Chaldean church came into existence because of a conflict in the Church of the East centered in the Plain of Nineveh * over whether the Patriarch should be elected by the Bishops as it was the case before the 15th century or to be hereditary in the Abouna family a practice introduced by Patriarch Shimoun IV (1437-1497) in 1450, because many of the Church Bishoprics in Mesopotamia had ceased to exist after Tamurlane's massacres . The faction in favor of election chose Yohanan (John) Sulagga, the superior of the Rabban Hormoz convent, twenty miles north of Nineveh, as their leader and with the help of the Latin Missionaries he was sent to the Vatican to be consecrated as the Patriarch of a new religious denomination in Union with Rome. Eleven centuries after the separation of the Church of the East from the Roman Catholic Church a faction of it had returned to rejoin it.

Sulagga was proclaimed patriarch of "Mosul and Athur", (Assyria) on Feb. 20, 1553, by Pope Julius III. Roman documents also refer to Sulagga as the elected patriarch of "the Assyrian Nation". (The Chronicle of the Carmelites states that Sulagga was proclaimed "Patriarch of the Eastern Assyrians" but on April 19, 1553 he was redefined as the "Patriarch of the Chaldeans". Perhaps the change of mind was intended to distinguish between the clergies and members of the new church compared to those who still belonged to the old church. The name Chaldean was of course in reference to the Prophet Abraham whom the Old Testament claimed to have been a native of the Ur of Chaldee in southern Mesopotamia.

During most of the 16th century Vatican documents referred to the Patriarchs of the Chaldean Church and the Church of the East as Assyrians but this policy was changed by the end of the 16th century when it began a new campaign to ferment hatred of the church of the East accusing it of being Nestorian, Schismatic, and cursed. promoting the Chaldean Chaldean Church. It was not until mid 18th century that the Latin Missionaries were able to convert substantial number of Assyrians in the Plain of Nineveh to Catholicism who were redefined as Chaldean. John Hormoizd from the Abuna family succession, the last Patriarch of the Church of East in the Plain of Nineveh, formally declared his Church Catholic in 1830 and was installed as the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church by the Vatican. See; (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition, Vol. 3, Thomson/Gale 2003 p. 368)

Syriac (ܣܘܪ̈ܝܝܐ Suryoye/Suryāyē)
Syriac was primarily used for the name of the language spoken by the Christians of Mesopotamia. During the US census of 2000 it was chosen by the Clergies of the 'Syrian Orthodox Church' as the identity of their people so that they will not be counted as the citizens of Syria if they identified themselves as 'Syrian' which some did in reference to the name of their denomination. Since then the term is used by a faction of that church members. There is also the Syriac Orthodox Church. The term is not that often used in Lebanon, but is used by some diaspora Maronites, who do not wish to be called Arabs (see example.)

Languages

There are various Neo-Aramaic languages, including Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (Iraq), which belong to the Eastern Aramaic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. These dialects are the contemporary remnants of the classical Aramaic language, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and the Arabic; which have vocabularies that include many words borrowed from Syriac, an extinct Semitic language from the same Aramaic group used in the liturgies of the Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, and Maronite churches. The language which contemporary Assyrians speak also includes slightly modified Akkadian (ancient Assyrian) words. see: Akkadian words Many Assyrian schools in northern Iraq presently teach the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language to the primary and the scoundary students. Nowadays, most Assyrians are at least bilingual, many speak also Arabic, Turkish, Persian and/or Kurdish, or the language(s) used in the countries where they live.

Beside local Neo-Aramaic vernacular forms, there is a literary language, based primarily on the dialect used in the Urmia district of northwestern Iran. It uses the Syriac alphabet in its Eastern variety, revived by Europeean missionaries in the first half of the 19th century. It is in this alphabet and language, Eastern Neo-Aramaic, that the first newspaper in all of Iran was printed (1849–1918). When American missionaries first arrived in Urmia, among 125,000 Aramaic-speaking inhabitants, only 40 men and one woman (sister of the Patriarch) could read and write. By the 1890s, the Assyrians had made such progress in education that most of the dozens of villages in the Urmia area had primary schools, and some had secondary schools as well. Although attempts to create a literary form for Eastern Aramaic probably date back to the 17th century (with the priests of the school of Alqosh), the Americans and their local advisors in Urmia can fairly be credited for laying the foundations of what is now called Neo-Aramaic Koine or Dachsprache.

Neo-Assyrian revival

yomataya.jpg|thumb|230ppx|Many Assyrians currently have an apocalyptic belief in the future of their nation, based on the following passage from the Bible:

In that day there shall be a way from Egypt to the Assyrians, and the Assyrian shall enter into Egypt, and the Egyptian to the Assyrians, and the Egyptians shall serve the Assyrian. In that day shall Israel be the third to the Egyptian and the Assyrian: a blessing in the midst of the land, Which the Lord of hosts hath blessed, saying: "Blessed be my people of Egypt, and the work of my hands to the Assyrian: but Israel is my inheritance." (Isaiah 19:23-25).]]

With the dire prospect of survival for Aramaic-speaking, Christian communities in the Middle East being recognized, there is a slow process to bring together the various church groups. A political awakening is taking place, both in the large diaspora and in the Middle East. Enhanced communication, especially through the Internet and by e-mail is breaking down the barriers that 20th century nationalism in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey in particular, had fostered. While there still are many quarrels, the multilingualism of Assyrians and the rise in communications in English, is breaking down some of the antagonisms. To some extent, the quarrels are fed inadvertently by Western scholarship combined with a lack of cultural and historical knowledge among Assyrians themselves. Many continue to link language use with ethnic name: since all Assyrians speak one of two living forms of Aramaic (Eastern and Western), the assumption is often made that this must also become the ethnic name of the group. Others who want to revive classical Syriac, the revered liturgical language of the community, insist on some term having to do with the word "Syriac" and call themselves Syriacs. Because the indigenous word in both dialects for the people themselves and for the language is "Suryoyo" or "Suryaye", some take the facile route of equating these terms with Syriac or Syrian without realizing that the terms Assyrian and Syrian are believed to be the same in origin, it has been attested to by writers of various nationalities during centuries before and after Christianity.

Similar disagreements over language and unity exist among many minorities in the Middle East that have had no state structure. Assyrians have managed to preserve Aramaic for more than two thousand years without any state backing. The cultural heritage and the language may help to preserve the community.

Assyrian music

main article: Assyrian music
Assyrian music is divided into three main periods: the ancient period that is of (Ur, Babylon and Nineveh), the middle period (or tribal and folkloric period) and the modern period.

Religious denominations

People who consider themselves as Assyrians are usually followers of one of the aforementioned churches, but not all members of them consider themselves as Assyrians, ethnic and national identities being intertwined with religious ones, a heritage of the millet system.

There are no (known) Assyrian Muslims, but Arabic-speaking Muslims locally named Mhalmoye in Tur Abdin seem to be converts to Islam from the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 16th century (compare with Hamshenis, Greek-speaking Muslims, Pomaks, Torbesh, Gorani, etc.). They would have kept many customs from the period in which they were Christian, without being aware of their origins: the Cross frequently finds itself in their work, but is thought of as a decoration based on a flower.Voice of Tur Abdin No. 16, quoted in Stephen Griffith, A Fourth Visit to Tur Abdin and SE Turkey - A Short Report of a Visit between 24th and 28th October 1999, Syriac Orthodox Resources Stephen Griffith, Tur Abdin - A Report of a Visit to S.E. Turkey in May 2001, Syriac Orthodox Resources A Swedish Assyrian website names four other ethnic groups whom it considers as "Assyrian Muslims": Barzanoye (the Barzani Kurdish clan), Tagritoye, Taye (the Tay tribal confederation), and Shammor (the Shammar tribal confederation).http://ornina.org/assa/verk97/verk97.htm Assyriska sällskapet förstudenter och akademiker (ASSA), VERKSAMHETSBERÄTTELSE 1997 Denho Özmen, Shaikh fathullah. The Assyrian "modern" identity, Hujådå, autumn 1997

See also

References

Assyrians | Ethnic groups in the Middle East | Ethnic Lebanese | People by nationality

Asirianed | ܐܬܘܪܝܐ | Assyriens | Assiri | אשור (עם) | Asûrî | Asyryjczycy (współcześni) | Asirci | Assyrier | Süryaniler

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Assyrian people".

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