A Preliminary Investigation into Assyrian Identity
2/28/2006
By Anand Paul Mangalam
Voice of the East
We are Assyrians, I used to hear this statement from my grandpa
and father a million times when I was a teenager. They never
tried to furnish a simple explanation for the word 'Assyrians'
and as a child I never showed any interest in understanding the
depth of this term. As a grown up individual, who is born and
brought up in an ethnic community having an explicit identity,
I started the quest to know my genesis. Are we considering ourselves
as members of the Assyrian nation? Identifying with the ideals
and ways of life of the Assyrian ruling class? Are we rather
classifying ourselves in terms of our diverse ethnic origins?
Most of us especially youngsters don't know the very meaning
of word Assyrian. As a matter of fact, we never bother to understand
our culture, history and origin. In order to know all these we
may probably need to tune our eyes and ears back to Mesopotamian
civilization, which is known as 'cradle of civilization' established
before Christ between two giant rivers Tigris and Euphrates (now
in Iraq). When you peer through literature you can see enormous
information on Assyrians.
The Assyrians are a group of Christians, also known as Nestorians,
with a long history in the Middle East. From the historical and
archeological evidence, it is thought that their ancestors were
part of the Mesopotamian civilization [Akbar 1986]. Actually,
Assyrians are an individual group of indigenous people who lived
(still living) in northern Iraq and are members of Assyrian church
of the east who read and write Aramaic, a Semitic language which
is used in their religious observances. They are descends of
Assyrian nation that conquered ancient Syria, Israel and Mesopotamia
in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Before digging deep into details
of Assyria we need to know few things about Mesopotamian civilization
in which Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians and Sumerians were
all a part of. Assyria and Babylonia were the most famous kingdoms
originated on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates which became
part of Mesopotamian civilization. Assyrians were famous for
their devastating Power of armed force, which often get unleashed
toward the Jews of Israel. Probably Assyrian Army was the only
force who attacked Israel more than three times and consequently
gained hatred from Jews which often echoed in the Holy Bible
as "Behold of Assyrians".
Assyrians Kingdom was found in 1700 BC by Bel-Kap-Kappu. In
1500 BC King of Hanilgalbat (another kingdom during that period)
sacked Assyrian king and made Assyria a vassal. Later, Assyrians
became independent evolved into a conquering power, and shook
the yoke off of its Babylonian masters. Tiglath-Pileser I, (1120
BC) the greatest of all Assyrian Kings was considered to be the
founder of first Assyrian empire. He made Assyrians, a power
subjugating the states of Northern Syria and finally conquered
them completely. Babylonia became part of Assyria in 731 BC,
when Tiglath-Pileser III invaded the country and ascended to
the kingship of Babylon.
Sister states of Babylonia and Assyria had contrasting characteristics.
Babylonia was a land of merchants, agriculturists and priest
whereas Assyria was an organized army camp. When Assyrian kingdoms
were found by powerful and able generals, Babylonian dynasties
came to power through priests by a revolution that raised them
to throne. The Babylonian king remained a priest to the last,
under the control of a powerful hierarchy; the Assyrian king
was the autocratic general of an army, at whose side stood in
early days feudal nobility, aided from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser
III onwards by an elaborate bureaucracy.
Aramaic was an exotic language brought into Assyrian heartland
by hundreds of thousands of foreign 'Aramaic speaking' people
who came and settled down in Assyrian kingdom. Before introduction
of Aramaic into the Assyrian mainland, what was the language
used by Assyrians for communication? I couldn't find any literature
on the original language used by Assyrians despite my best effort.
However, script they used for writing was recorded in couple
of literature as a particular type of script called 'cuneiform'.
Hardly very few people know this fact today. The mass immigration
of foreigners apparently converted the previously large monolingual
society of Assyria into a multilingual one. Within a relatively
short period of time, Aramaic became established as a common
language throughout the Empire. Concomitantly, Assyrians started
using Aramaic script along with cuneiform script. Later archeologists
excavated a couple of clay tablet (clay slabs) having cuneiform
script engraved on it from the city of Nineveh. Nineveh was the
capital city of Assyria (now Mosul in Iraq which is recently
in news) during their peak of glory (700-500BC).
Though Assyrians tired to preserve their culture and religion,
they were receptive to Christianity, whose central ideas were
in line with the central tenets of Assyrian religion and ideology,
because of the Aramaic affinity of Jesus and his disciples. From
the third century AD onwards Assyrians (we) embraced Christianity.
Intense Christian faith among us made Christianity an indelible
part of our identity which later made us subjected to endless
persecutions and massacres, first from the hands of the Romans,
then from Sasanian, Persians, and finally from Arabs, Kurds and
Turks. These persecutions and massacres have reduced the total
number of Assyrians from an estimated 20 million or more to well
under 2 million today.
During the World War-1 we had an uneasy relationship with
Turks and requested refuge from British (that time Turkey was
an ally of Germany). That might have provoked Germany and they
start forcing Turkey to exterminate Assyrians. On January 1914,
and as early as December 1914, the Assyrians were been banished
from their homes. By the middle of 1915 the deportations and
killings are in full swing. About 750,000 Assyrians, or about
three fourths of the entire Assyrian population, were killed
during ."The Year of the Sword" (1915) bitterly recalled
by us today. These atrocities made young blood in the community
to extend their overwhelming support to British and later ended
up settling down in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. Unlike the
Kurds, the Assyrians never expected a nation or state of their
own after World War I, but they wanted some temporal authority
in the north of Iraq for the Assyrian patriarch, the Mar Shimun,
and was blatantly refused by British and Iraqis alike. Hence,
the Assyrians refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Baghdad
government under the British mandate.
One thing is obvious from this, ever since the establishment
of rich tradition of Assyrian Christians, young blood (including
me and the whole youth living in Trichur) always showed radical
thinking and strong ideologies independent of social clutches.
Guys, be proud of being an Assyrian. We have rich tradition
and culture to talk about and we are the oldest Christians. We
ruled the world's oldest civilization once upon a time and will
rule the whole world in days to come.
By Anand Paul Mangalam is an Indian-Assyrian. He is
a PhD student at Dept of Wood Science and Engineering, Oregon
State University, Corvallis, USA 97331.
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