Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis betrays his Anti Assyrian Bias
In a series of poorly written articles, replete with false assumptions, published on the www.americanchronicle.coms Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis has made outrageous Claims about the identity of the contemporary Assyrians which are contrary to historical evidences. He makes no secret of his desire to impose the name Aramean on the Christians of the Middle East who have historically not identified themselves as such. In one article titled, : "Do not Call the Illustrious Nation of Aramaeans by the Misnomer "Assyrians". He asks: "Are there Aramaeans calling themselves under other ethnic names; what are these names?"He answers it: "Yes, there are. Those calling themselves Chaldeans (since the 16th century), and those calling themselves Assyrians (since the 19th century); they both are the spiritual children of the Western Spiritual colonial practices!"
One has to wonder what drives a Turk, who lives in Greece to impose an untrue identity on Assyrians. Judging from his writings, he seems to know very little about them. Only an egotistic, elitist will pretend to know more about the identity of a people than they themselves. Though Mohammad Shamsaddin identifies himself as; Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, and Islamologist, Historian, Political Scientist his articles about who the Christian Assyrians are betrays his lack of knowledge about what he is writing. Early Christian documents attest to the Assyrian identity of the Syriac speaking people who accepted Christianity in Mesopotamia, i.e. today's Iraq and Turkey. The fourth century Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who wrote about the "Teaching of Addaeus the Apostle" asserts: "people of the East, in the guise of merchants, passed over into the territory of the Romans, that they might see the signs which Addaeus did. And such as became disciples, received from him ordination to the priesthood, and in their own country of the Assyrians they instructed the people of their nation, and erected houses of prayer there in secret, by reason of the danger from those who worshiped fire and paid reverence to water [i.e. Persian Zoroastrian]. [1] While the New Testament was yet in making the 2nd century Tatian the Assyrian compiled in Syriac [language of the Assyrians] the four or perhaps five Gospels which existed separately into a continuous form which is known as Diatessaron, it was in use by the Christian Assyrians until the New Testament became available.[2] The second century Prepon, the Assyrian, who was a student of Marcion is said to have introduced a new theological philosophy based on a work by Bardaisan.[3] His contemporary Lucian of Samostosa, in his "Goddess of Syria" wrote : "I that write [this] am "Assourious" [Assyrian]".[4] Although Greeks, Parthians, the Sassanian Persians and later Arabs who conquered the Assyrian homeland changed its name to suit their taste the descendants of the ancient Assyrians continued to preserve their identity and their forefathers' legacy. The Parthians who ruled Mesopotamia from 145 B.C. to 225 AD renamed the central Assyria; Adiabene, in their language which meant "Land of two waters" i.e. Little and Great Zabs. Arabs who conquered the region in the 7th century AD changed its name to Iraq, but for the Christian inhabitants who considered themselves Assyrians their homeland continued to be Assyria. Thimithy I; the 9th century patriarch of the Church of the East in a letter to the monks of Mar Marun wrote that Babylonia, Persia and Assyria, and all countries of the East, including India and China were under his ecclesiastic jurisdiction.[5] For him and his people Assyria was their homeland and existed side by side with other countries of that time even if it had lost its sovereignty many centuries earlier. According to the 19th century Badger "In many medieval Syriac [Assyrian] manuscripts, Mosul is styled as Athor [Assyria] and it is not uncommon practice with ecclesiastical writers of the present day [19th century] to use the same phraseology". [6] Gesenius writes, "In Syriac Church literature 'Athor' [Assyria] is the name of Mosul, on the bank of the Tigris opposite to Nineveh; but it also designates a metropolitan see, including Mosul, Nineveh and other towns."[7] According to the "Atals de la Bible"the area called Ator (Assyria) by the Christians of Mesopotamia was at times approximately equal to the Assyria of Ashur Ubalit in 1340 B.C . [8] The Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Michael the great (1126-99) centered in Edessa in Southeast Turkey wrote: Nineveh which was destroyed in 612 B.C. became an important center of the Assyrian Christianity. It was presided over by a long list of bishops from 554 to several centuries later when its bishopric was transferred to Mosul. Mar Emmeh, the Bishop of Nineveh was elected Patriarch of the Church of the East and served in that position between A.D. 644 to 647, Ishu-Yahav was the bishop of Nineveh (627-637) when the byzantine forces under the command of Herculius defeated the Persians near that city in 627.[11] A 14th century tablet found in Karmalis [ancient Assyrian "Kar-Mullissi"located 18 miles Southeast of Mosul lists the name of the 39 bishops of Nineveh. Assyrians of the church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Chaldean church still observe a fast called the "Rogation of the Ninevites", a tribute to their Assyrian forefathers who according to the Old Testament fasted for GodÕs forgiveness. The fourth century Mar Aphrim the Assyrian asserts that, this Fast was observed by his fellow Christians, he wrote 12 homilies about the subject, as did other Assyrian writers. The 13th century Gewargis Warda Arbillaya [from Arbil] asserts that the syriac speaking people of Mesopotamia are Assyrian and Babylonians. On the occasion of the Fast of the Ninevites he wrote: Sources before Christianity attest to the survival of the Assyrians in their homeland after the fall of Nineveh. The Persian Achaemenid inscriptions of Darius, Xerexes, and other kings of that dynasty mention Assyria and Assyrians as people of their empire, a fact verified by Geek historians such as Herodotus, Strabo and others. Thousands of references from the fall of Nineveh to before the 19th century corroborate the kinship between the ancient and contemporary Assyrians. [13] In recent decades for insidious reasons there has been a drive by some to redefine the Christian Assyrians as Arameans in contradiction to the fact that Assyrian writers before and after the 19th century have identified their people as Assyrian. For example Rev. Joseph Naayem a priest of the Chaldean Church, on page 66 of his book, "Shall this nation Die,"published in 1920, about the massacre of his people in Turkey, writes: "I thought of my parishioners at Urfa - now scattered; of my poor Assyro-Chaldean fellow countrymen, ruined and massacred; all by the same bloody hand ..."Authors of books such as the 1916 "Death of a Nation"by Abraham Yohannan, "The Flickering light of Asia"by Joel Warda, published in 1920, and many others refer to their people as Assyrian. In April of 1920, on behalf of the Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church Archbishop Mor Afrem Barsum wrote to the delegate of the Paris Peace Conference to bring to their attention "the suffering and the wishes of our ancient Assyrian nation who reside mostly in the upper valleys of Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia...."To ignore all the references to Assyrians as a living people from the fall of Nineveh to before the 19th century and claim that this name was given to them by the the 19th century Western Missionaries betrays a simple minded judgement, and lack of adequate knowledge of history. The Anti Assyrian propaganda exemplified by Mohammed Shamsaddin have been often part of the Middle Eastern state sponsored assimilation policies in Iraq, and Turkey. As part of his Pan-Arabism drive Saddam Hosain compelled Assyrians and non-Arab minorities to sign ethnic correction statements redefining themselves as Arabs. During the World War One massacres of the Christians, by the Ottoman Turks, Assyrians and Armenians who were willing to convert to Islam and declare themselves Turk or Kurd were allowed to live. As one Assyrian writer, Obelit Yadgar puts it : 1-"http://www.biblefacts.org/ecf/vol8/anf08-143.htm |
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