Assyrian homeland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Assyria (disambiguation).
Image:Assyrianareaasnewseek.png The Assyrian homeland or Assyria refers a name of a geographic and cultural region in the Middle East, inhabited traditionally by the Assyrian people. In ancient times, the Assyrian Empire peaked in 671 BC, expanding from the Nile river in Egypt to Anatolia.
Today, no more then a few counties in northern Iraq is where the self-claimed Assyrians make only a slight majority. Due to growing nationalism, there is a growing movement for Assyrian independence.
Contents |
[edit] Etymology
The name of Assyria is believed to be derived from the phrase mât Aššur, which is translated to "the country of the god Assur". The original capital the Assyrian Empire was named Assur, after the god as well.
[edit] History
[edit] Ancient period
Assyrians are Aramaic-speaking Christians who consider themselves to be indigenous inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and inheritors of the ancient culture of Assyria. They have a culture, language, and religion that is distinct from that of modern-day Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and Turks. [15]
They are believed to descend from the ancient Akkadians, who emerged as the ruling class of Assyria, starting with Sargon of Akkad (grandfather of Naram-sin). Babylonia, formerly Sumer & Akkad, was a colony of Assyria. The title of "King of Babylon" was "King of Sumer & Akkad" as translitterated from the Akkadian Šār Mat Šūmerī ū Akkadī. Eventually Aramaean tribes, among them Chaldeans, emigrated en-masse into the region and their language became dominant. These different cultures ultimately merged, to form classic Assyrian culture. [16] Today, in certain areas of the Assyrian homeland, identity within a community is aligned to village of origin or Christian denomination, as with Chaldean for example.
Modern and ancient Assyrians
With ancient peoples, there is not any realistic, definite method to prove direct lineage unless many ancient graves are unearthed, and the remains examined and carbon dated. The DNA samples must be compared to DNA samples of different grave sites, generating a report of the comparative analysis of the ancient people's DNA to that of the modern-day people. There have been DNA analyses conducted finding a common genealogy within the community. All northern Mesopotamian people it turns out, are very closely related genetically.[20]
The arrival of the latest conquerors may have had some influence. Many of the ancestors of the modern-day Arabs, Kurds, Mongols, Persians, and Turks were originally Christian or converts, 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, this is a slight possibility 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 the local inhabitants and relocating them to urban areas of the empire in order to assimilate them into Assyro-Babylonian culture. This caused a merger of cultures with some cultural loss. This altered their sense of national identity. This tactic was borrowed and applied by the Persians and many empires that followed. This has been the fate of the modern-day people also. The Ba'ath parties of Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent, Syria's influence and interference in Lebanese affairs, forcibly replaced all ethnic identities with an Arab national identity. [21] Assyrians formed about 5% of Iraq's population before the start of the Iraq War, but since then many have emigrated, mostly to Syria.
[edit] Early Christianity period
The first known Assyrian church was the Assyrian church of the east which was established in mesopotamia by St Thomas the apostle himself.
The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East under His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV is a Christian church that traces its origins to the See of Babylon, said to be founded by Saint Thomas the Apostle.
It sometimes calls itself the Assyrian Orthodox Church, and is sometimes mistakenly thought to be an Oriental Orthodox body. In India, it is known as the Chaldean Syrian Church. In the West it is often known, inaccurately, as the Nestorian Church. The Assyrian Church of the East is known by historians and scholars and its 4th century predecessor also proclaimed by the Pope John Paul II as “The martyrs’ church”, because no church has suffered as much martyrdom for Christianity as the Assyrian Church of the East has, notably in the 4th century.
The Assyrian Church is the original Christian church in what was once Parthia; western Iraq and Iran. Geographically it stretched in the medieval period to China and India: a monument found in Xi'an (Hsi-an), the Tang-period capital of China (originally Chang'an), in Chinese and Syriac described the activities of the church in the 7th and 8th century, while half a millennium later a Chinese monk went from Beijing to Paris and Rome to call for an alliance with the Mongols against the Mamelukes. Prior to the Portuguese arrival in India in 1498, it provided "East Syrian" bishops to the Saint Thomas Christians. Patriarch Timothy I (727–823) wrote of the large Christian community in Tibet.
The foundations of Assyrian theology are Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who taught at Antioch. The normative Christology of the Assyrian church was written by Babai the Great (551–628) and is clearly different from the accusations of dualism directed toward Nestorius: his main christological work is strikingly called the 'Book of the Union', and in it Babai teaches that the two qnome (essences) are unmingled but everlastingly united in the one parsopa (personality) of Christ.
[edit] Modern period
In the 15th century, the church decreed that the title of Patriarch could pass only to relatives of then-patriarch Mar Shimun IV. This upset many in the church's hierarchy, and in 1552 a rival Patriarch, Mar Yohanan Soulaqa VIII was elected. This rival Patriarch met with the Pope and entered into communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The Assyrian Church now had two rival leaders, a hereditary patriarch in Alqosh (in modern-day northern Iraq), and a Papal-appointed patriarch in Diyarbakir (in modern-day eastern Turkey). This situation lasted until 1662 when the Patriarch in Diyarbakir, Mar Shimun XIII Denha, broke communion with Rome, resumed relations with the line at Alqosh, and moved his seat to the village of Qochanis in the Turkish mountains. The Vatican responded by appointing a new patriarch to Diyarbakir to govern the Assyrians who stayed loyal to the Holy See. This latter group became known as the Chaldean Catholic Church. In 1804 the hereditary line of Patriarchs in Alqosh died out, and that church's hierarchy decided to accept the authority of the Chaldean patriarchs. The line of patriarchs at Qochanis remained independent.
Assyrians faced reprisals under the Hashemite monarchy for co-operating with the British during the years after World War I, and most fled to the West. The Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, though born into the line of Patriarchs at Qochanis, was educated in Britain. For a time he sought a homeland for the Assyrians in Iraq but was forced to take refuge in Cyprus in 1933, later moving to Chicago, Illinois, and finally settling near San Francisco, California. The present Patriarch of Babylon is based in Chicago, and less than 1 million of the world's 4.5 million Assyrians remain in Iraq.
The Chaldean community was less numerous at the time of the British Mandate of Palestine, and did not play a major role in the British rule of the country. However with the exodus of Church of the East members, the Chaldean Catholic Church became the largest non-Muslim group in Iraq, and some later rose to power in the Ba'ath Party government, the most prominent being Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.
In 1975, His Holiness Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII was murdered by David Ismail in San Francisco, California. The murder sparked outrage around the world and raised questions as to who was really responsible. Mar Dinkha IV was elected as a successor and sworn in by the Anglican Church.
On November 11, 1994, an historic meeting of Mar Dinkha IV and Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II took place in the Vatican and a Common Christological Declaration was signed. The efforts of His Grace Dr Mar Bawai Soro, elected to head closer relationships with Rome led to closer ties with the Chaldean Catholic Church. Communication has broken down between both Churches since the illegal removal of Dr Mar Bawai Soro in November 2005, contrary to the Sunhados of Mar Odisho Suwa.
In September 2006, Mar Dinkha IV paid a historic visit to Northern Iraq but failed to visit the majority of Assyrian Christians living in Baghdad because of fears over his safety. Mar Dinkha's visit has been linked and thought to have been co-ordinated by Sarkis Aghajan and his boss Mustafa Barzani. Assyrians around the world have been outraged with these ties considering the Kurd's role, particularly Simko, in the assasination of His Holiness Mar Benyamin Shimun.
Archdiocese of Lebanon, Syria & Europe
Metropolitan Mar Narsai D'Baz
Syria - Mar Aprem Natniel Europe - Mar Odisho Oraham
Archdiocese of India Metropolitan Mar Aprem Mooken
Archdiocese Iraq & Russia
Metropolitan Mar Gewargis Sliwa
Baghdad - Bishop Mar Sargis Yousip Nohadra and Russia - Bishop Mar Iskhaq Yousip
Individual Dioceses Australia & New Zealand - Bishop Mar Meelis Zaia Canada - Bishop Mar Emmanuel Eastern United States Europe - Bishop Mar Odisho Oraham Iran (presently overseen by the patriarch) Western California Western United States - Mar Aprem Khamis
[edit] Demographics
There are now an estimated 800,000 Assyrians living in the homeland (Assyria) in and around Nineveh and other part of Assyria. the current Assyrian population worldwide is estimated at 3.3 million.
Since World War I, the Assyrian diaspora has steadily increased so that there are now more Assyrians living in western countries (including Australia) than in the Middle East. At the turn of the century the Christian population in the Ottoman Empire had numbered about 5,000,000. When the massacres finally ended in 1923, about 20,000 Greeks, 10,000 Armenians and 30,000 Assyrians remained. The Civil War in Lebanon, the coming into power of the Islamic republic of Iran, the Ba'thist dictatorship in Iraq and the present-day unrest in Iraq pushed even more Assyrians on the roads of exile.
[edit] Geography
Assyria is part of North Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria, due the the numbers of Assyrians located in large numbers in those countries. Assyria is the north of "Iraq", including Nineveh provinces, Dokuk and Arbil.
Other numbers of people such as Kurds Turkman and Yazidiz live in Assyria.
[edit] Historical attractions
Assyrians make up the majority in two counties today in Iraq |
Roman province of Assyria, 120 AD |
[edit] See also
- List of Assyrian settlements
- Roomrama (Assyrian anthem)
