Assyrians (also known as Aramaeans, Chaldeans and Syriacs) are an ethnic group inhabited in what is today parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, (a region known in Syriac as Beth Nahrain.) In the past century, due to events such as the Assyrian genocide, about half of its population have migrated to the Caucasus, North America, and Western Europe (see Assyrian diaspora).
| File:Assyrians.jpg | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Iraq 800,000 (CIA est) Syria 1,200 (2001 census) | |
| Languages | |
| Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Turoyo | |
| Religion | |
| Christianity (various Eastern denominations) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Semites, Armenians |
Estimated about 1.5 million, they are speakers of various Neo-Aramaic languages and adhere to Christianty.
Identity
During the first century AD, Aramaic was spoken throughout much of the Middle East by Christians, Jews and followers of various pagan religions. However, communities separated by religion and geographical distance spoke quite different varieties of Aramaic, and intelligibility between them was in places low. The other main language of the region was Koine Greek, which was spoken in the upper echelons of society and in the major urban centres of the Levant. The establishment of churches in urban centres in the Levant, Asia Minor and Greece led to Greek becoming the dominant language of the early church. However, the Christian faith also spread rapidly among the Aramaic-speaking peoples in the smaller towns and farther east. Early writings employ the name Armāyē (ܐܖ̈ܡܝܐ). However, Greek texts (including the Jewish Books of the Maccabees) referred to the language as Syriakos (Συριακός), and its speakers as Syriakoi (Συριακοί, probably based on Assyria). Relatively early on in the development of the Aramaic-speaking church, the name Armāyē was abandoned in favour of the Aramaicised Greek name, Suryāyē (ܣܘܖ̈ܝܝܐ). Therefore, originally, the Suryāyē are Christian Armāyē. Because of this distinction, the word Armāyā came to designate a pagan, even being applied to a person who did not speak Aramaic. From the Greek name, the English designation Syriacs is often used to refer to the entire community of Aramaic-speaking Christian people.
Another account of the history according to Greek and Roman historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, Justinus and others state that the term Syrian means nothing more than Assyrian. During the first century B.C. 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 no other people than those who built the royal palaces in Babylon and Ninus; and of these Syrians, Ninus was the man who founded Ninus [Nineveh], in Aturia..[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 later was applied by the Greeks to the the Assryians of Mesopotamia and the people west of Euphrates, because that region did not have a specific national identity but was part of the Assyrians empire. There is no reason to believe that it meant Aramean, because the inhabitants of the what became Syria during the first century AD were Greeks, Romans, Arameans, Hitites, Assyrians and people of other nationalities, Therefore the term Suraya and Syrian did not mean Christian or Aramean because it had been in used since sixth century B.C to mean Assyrian whom the Old Testament writers considered pagan. In facts the Arameans are praised in the Old Testament because Abraham the father of the Jewish religion and later Christianity was said to have been Aramean. The Aramaic language promoted by the Ancient Assyrians as an international language of communication was spoken by many nations who were not Aramean. Because the Aramaic speakers took pride in the fact that Christ spoke their language indicates that Aramean and Aramaic was not considered as Pagan by the early Christians. Christians who lived in Mesopotamia considered themselves Assyrians after Christianity as they had done before. For referrences to the Assyrians before and afer Christianity see Facts about Assyrians
Occasionally, the designation Syrians is used in the same manner, but this can lead to confusion with the modern nation-state of Syria and its inhabitants, some of whom are Syriacs, but the majority of whom are not. In the Middle Ages, Syriac scholars, particularly West Syriacs, revived the use of the designation Armāyē with a new vocalisation based on the Hebrew Ărāmîṯ, producing Ārāmāyē (ܐܖ̈ܡܝܐ, pronounced Oromoye by West Syriacs). This designation is, and was, used often to refer to a far larger group of people, and often including the Maronite Catholics, Melkite Greek Catholics and the Antiochian Orthodox. It often pertained to the Aramaic language which they had in common, just as the nations of Europe, who speak Latin related languages, at times have been called Latin.
The community has traditionally been divided into western and eastern parts. The exact division is somewhat uncertain, and is variously based on geography, linguistics and church affiliation. In ancient times, the main division was defined by the border between the Roman and Persian empires. Linguistically, although all groups employ for a liturgical language the Middle-Aramaic variety spoken in Edessa — Classical Syriac — many also use different varieties of Modern Aramaic. As far as church affiliation stands, the Syriac Orthodox Church and Syrian Catholic Church generally represent the western group, while the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church the eastern.
As the Greek name Syriakoi is considered by many to be derived from the word Assyria (Ασσυρια), so many Aramaic-speaking Christians prefer to use the designation Assyrians or Āṯurāyē (ܐܬܘܖ̈ܝܐ, variously pronounced Othuroye, Atoraye and so forth). It appears that the few instances of the word in early Syriac texts refers simply to the inhabitants of the Mosul region, once dominated by the Assyrian cities of Assur and Nineveh. This designation for the region has continued ever since the days of the Assyrian Empire. However other Syriac references show that Assyria also meant the area of the greater Assyria north of Babylon. This is evident in a letter by the Church of the East patriarch Timothy I (770-823), to the monks of Mar Marun where he declares; Babylonia, Persia and Assyria, all the countries of ... were under his jurisdiction. (William G. Young, "Patriarch, Shah and Caliph", Christian Study Center, Rawalpindi, Pakistan 1974, p.152) The thirteenth century Gewargis Warda has used the term in the same context.
Self-identifications
- Assyrian (ܐܬܘܖ̈ܝܐ Āṯurāyē)
- Assyrian is what is used today by members of the Nestorian church, whose church has been officially called the Assyrian Church of the East since 1886. Assyrian is also used by some Chaldean Catholics as well in Iran and Iraq. The Assyrian name is still today what is primarily used by ethnic Assyrians in the Middle East.
- Assyro-Chaldean or Chaldo-Assyrian (ܟܠܕܘܐܫܘܖ̈ܝܐ Kaldu-Āšurāyē)
- Assyro-Chaldean term coined by the Assyrian national leader Agha Petrus was used after World War one to unite members of the Chaldean Church with their brethern of the Church of the East when both groups were weak because they had been subjected to massacres by the Ottomans during the war. As the present-day Iraqi Assyro-Chaldeans belong mostly to the Chaldean Church of Babylon, the term Chaldo-Assyrians is also used there, whereas in Iran where the non-Catholic are more numerous than their Catholic cousins, the term Assyrians is generally favoured. The policy of the Roman Catholic Church and its missionaries to separate and alienate members of the Chaldean Church from their brethren in the Church of the East has been continued by the clergies of the Chaldean Church to this day. 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
- Aramaean (ܐܖ̈ܡܝܐ Ārāmāyē)
- Throughout the history of the Syriac Christians, there have been references to their Aramaean heritage in Syriac literature, both in the West Syrian and in the East Syrian traditions.[1]. 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. In Germany, for instance, the name Aramäer has come into use quite extensively to refer to Syriacs primarily from the West Syrian tradition.
- 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 Eugenius 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 [Assyria] 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.)
In Turkey, none of these churches is recognized as a religious minority (see Treaty of Lausanne and Demographics of Turkey) and both use of minority languages or non-Turkish ethnic identities have always been repressed by the governments. Süryani, Keldani, and Nasturi are used in Turkish for Syriacs, Chaldeans, and "Nestorians", respectively.
In all the countries of emigration where ethnic censuses have been held, i.e. Armenia, Australia, Canada, Georgia, New Zealand, Russia (and the former Soviet Union) and the United States, the census ethnic category used is Assyrians. Iran and Syria do not conduct ethnic census. Iraq announced in 2005 that they will use the term Chaldo-Assyrian during their future census.
In Sweden, there is a dividing line between:
- the religiously defined group, Syrians, who are Syrian Orthodox Christians, and
- the politically or ethnically determined category: Assyrians, whose members belong to several different Christian beliefs (the majority being Syrian Orthodox Christians, plus Christian Iraqi refugees of other denominations) but whose religious affiliation is toned down.[2]
Languages
The various groups and religious communities included under the Assyrians umbrella-ethnonym usually speak 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 whose vocabulary includes 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
With the dire prospect of survival for Aramaic-speaking, Christian communities in Iraq 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 the same in origin which 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
- Antiochian Orthodox Church
- Assyrian Church of the East
- Assyrian Church of the East's Holy Synod
- Chaldean Church of Babylon
- Syriac Catholic Church
- Syriac Orthodox Church
- Assyrian Evangelical Church
- Assyrian Pentecostal Church
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.[3] [4] 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).[5] [6]
See also
- Assyria
- Assyrian flag
- Assyrian Independence
- Assyriska
- KBSV (Assyrian TV station)
- Assyriology
- List of Assyrians
- Mesopotamian religion (ancient)
- Akkadian language (ancient)
- Akitu (ancient Assyrian New Year)
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ Dan Lundberg, Christians from the Middle East, A virtual Assyria
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
External links
Publication links
- Assyrians: The Continuous Saga by Frederick A. Aprim
- Dr. Eden Naby's publications
- Rosie Malek-Yonan's The Crimson Field