The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Dr Joseph on Aryan Eshaya

Posted by pancho (Guest) - Friday, March 2 2007, 17:57:49 (CET)
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..this is apparently an older article...NOT of lineal descent, not that old. It should be mentioned that Dr Ishaya has a degree in anthropology and has her own specialty in things having to do with the modern Assyrian community somewhere or other...try to remember that, like the Gene Bust, this artcile ASSUMES she or anyone else knows for a "scientific" fact, that uncomfortable word again..that there are any modern and lineal..you know the drill by now...so let´s not go bonkers over whatever she assumes to be evidence...because she BELIEVES IT.

At the beginning of 1998, Zenda carried an article written by Dr. Aryan
> Ishaya, under the title "Are Contemporary Assyrians Really Assyrians?"
> That article was recently reproduced on one of the Assyrian websites under
> the title "Playing a political game in the guise of science." Dr. Ishaya
> tells us that "Assyrians call themselves Assyrian for a very simple and
> convincing reason: they are age old inhabitants of ancient Assyria. That
> is their homeland. They have churches there that date as far back as 3rd
> and 4th Centuries A.D. That is sufficient and says it all."
>
> I find that statement ill informed and highly irresponsible. Let us see
> if the facts are as simple or as convincing as Dr. Ishaya claims : The
> vast majority of our people, who started to call themselves 'Aturaye'
> (Assyrians)--instead of the traditional name they used--Suraye or
> Suryaye--were members of the Church of the East ("Nestorians"). Until the
> First World War these Aramaic-speaking Christians had for centuries lived
> in the Kurdish regions of Hakkari in Turkey, and in Urmiyah, in the
> Persian province of Azerbayjan. They were not, as Dr. Ishaya claims,
> "inhabitants of ancient Assyria." The vast majority of the Christians who
> did live in the province of Mosul, geographical Assyria, preferred to call
> themselves either Chaldeans or Suryoyo. To this day these two
> groups--Chaldeans and Syrian Orthodox ("Jacobites")--refuse to be called
> 'Aturaye.'
>
> As a result of World War I, the Hakkari and Urmiyah communities, had
> become refugees and were under the protection of the British, in the
> British mandate of Iraq. Like the Kossovars of our day, these refugees
> wanted to go back to their pre-war villages. Through the centuries, they
> had developed an intense devotion to their old homegrounds. A deputation
> of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions found the Christians of
> Persia with an intense longing to return to their ancestral homes.This
> longing for their native land in Persia was well expressed by the
> representatives of the community itself in a petition addressed to the
> deputation of the Presbyterian Board: "The greatest part of our men and
> women," wrote these representatives, "are real lovers of their tongue and
> nation, and are ready to put down their lives in its behalf...we believe
> that the existence of this ancient nation and tongue depends on the
> opening of our beloved native place, which we hope will be the nucleus to
> gather all our people around it in the future..." Realizing that their
> last hope to achieve their goal lay in the efforts of the Persian
> government to open Urmiyah for them, the representatives asked the Board
> to exert its influence "to secure the opening of our land, and the altars
> of our [nationality]."
>
> The "Nestorians" of Hakkari likewise wanted to return to their ancestral
> villages in Turkey proper, but on the condition that their security be
> guaranteed by the British. The wishes of this group were addressed early
> in 1919 by the Patriarch himself. In his letter to the Acting Civil
> Commissioner of Iraq, Mar Shamun requested that all his people be placed
> "permanently under the British protection in their own country. He asked
> that the districts of Urmiyah, Sulduz, and Salmas on the western side of
> Lake Urmiyah be placed in this protectorate, if possible.
>
> The Assyrian nationalism then just beginning, was not without its super
> patriots even in those days. Like a host of other minorities after World
> War I, Aturaye too had their self-appointed representatives, most of them
> from the United States, who were ready to put some very ambitious and
> politically provocative claims before the Peace Conference in Paris.
> Arnold J. Toynbee rightly referred to the nationalism of such small
> minorities as "a will-o'-the-wisp enticing them to destruction." A
> delegation made up of the president and other members of the "Assyrian
> National Associations of America" had an elaborate draft of "claims of the
> Assyrians" which was placed before the Conference in Paris.
>
>
> By "Assyrian" the delegation meant not only the Nestorians, Chaldeans,
> and Jacobites, but also the Maronites as well as some "Islamic Assyrians"
> such as certain Kurdish tribes and the Yazidis of Jabal Sinjar. The
> territorial claims of these nationalists included the northern part of
> Mesopotamia and altogether comprised "an area which stretches from below
> the lower-Zaba, up to and including, the province of Dearbeker (Diyarbakr)
> ... and also from Euphrates in the west to the mountains of Armenia in the
> east. Added to this, the Assyrians naturally desired an access to the
> sea." The delegation asked that the area claimed, "even though including
> some Kurds within its bounds," be created into "an Assyrian state, under
> the protectorate of some mandatory power..."
>
> The delegation in Paris was briefly joined by the future patriarch of the
> Syrian Orthodox Church ("Jacobite"), Ignatius Afram I Barsoum, then bishop
> of Syria. He was soon disillusioned by what he saw and heard. At one of
> the sessions of the peace conference he found himself defending Arab
> rights instead of championing the cause of Assyrianism. As we have seen,
> even the claims of the Nestorian patriarch were not too ambitious and
> certainly were not directed toward the resurrection of ancient "Nineveh."
> He spoke only of his flock but requested the British government to
> recognize the position of the patriarch as the head of the millet: "Owing
> to the primitive state of our people," he explained, "we beg that the
> whole patriarchal form of government over their various tribes be
> continued under the British superintendence and advice. This simple
> government is what the people are accustomed to, and it has been found to
> work best in the past." When the Iraqi state was established, the
> patriarch insisted on some of the above-mentioned prerogatives, and the
> rest is history.
>
> Instead of taking the position that the above complex and inter-related
> facts should be studied, Dr.Ishaya would ban any such research. She tells
> us that "the question of whether the contemporary Assyrians are Assyrians,
> should never be asked." Why? Because scholars and some of their readers "do
> not seem to realize that to question the legitimacy of the name of today's
> Assyrians is not a scientific act" but a political one. What Dr. Ishaya
> herself does not seem to realize is that it was the half-baked research of
> our pop historians that led to the exaggerated political claims noted
> above. She proclaims that scholars in this field have two choices: either
> put their profession "in the service of the people " or "use it to promote
> the interest of the ruling powers." No matter which one of these two
> choices scholars make, "they can be sure that they can no longer fool the
> people."
>
> It is not surprising that our nationalists reproduced Dr. Ishaya's
> article ; it supposedly is written "in the service of the people"? The
> ZENDA article was given a new title, using Dr. Ishaya's own words:
> "Playing a political game in the guise of science." This is a shameful way
> of blackmailing scholars. Ironically, Dr. Ishaya and her readers are
> fooling nobody but their own people..
>
> John Joseph
>
>
> IN THE SAME ZENDA ISSUE AS ABOVE, I wrote :
>
>
> "As a member of a community whose history I have recorded with great
> sympathy, I would have been delighted to be the first scholar to firmly
> established our link with the ancient Assyrians. Alas, a lifetime of work
> on the subject has only confirmed what I wrote as a young man of 32. I do
> not know of one serious scholar_ WHO HAS STUDIED OUR HISTORY AND LANGUAGE
> _ who would disagree with my premises. Indeed, most of my premises are
> based on the specialization and research of others. What is more, most of
> our own Aramaic-speaking brethren, both Chaldeans and the Suryaan, would
> side with me on the issue of linkage--or I with them. I have learned a
> great deal from from the Syriac scholars of our sister churches.
>
> I seriously believe that the single most important problem facing our
> Assyrian community and the reasons for our disunity stem from the fact
> that nobody takes us seriously on the question of our identity--not our
> friends, not our enemies. Actually, they all seem to know our history
> better than we do, be they Kurds or Arabs, the Syrian Orthodox or the
> Chaldeans , the Iraqi Opposition parties, or the scholars at Oxford,
> Harvard, Yale or Chicago, or the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington D.C.,
> let alone the Department of State there. I do not doubt for one moment
> that the reason for not allowing us to attend the Washington talks is our
> Assyrianism, our digital nationalism and its fantastic claims. I am always
> afraid that our super patriots will one day bring us even greater
> tragedies.
>
>
> We seem to have an identity crisis and for no reason. We have an
> illustrious history as Christians, as speakers of the Aramaic language for
> centuries, as descendants of a number of great nations of the distant past.
> United with our other Christian brethren, the Suroyo and the Chaldeans,
> we--who also called ourselves Suraye in my boyhood days,--can fight for
> our basic human rights and we will be respected for it. As I concluded the
> first chapter of my book , our lineal origin, "like that of most Middle
> Eastern nationalities, is hidden in the mists of history. [The Nestorians]
> are a mixture of races and it is possible they have Assyrian blood in their
> veins, especially certain sections of the community, just as other sections
> have Persian, Kurdish, [Jewish, Arab] and Aramean blood. Indeed, the
> majority of their forefathers' descendants are today Moslem Arabs, Kurds ,
> and Persian." [For a detailed histosry, and the meaning of, the name
> SURYAYA.see my book THE MODERN ASSYRIANS (2000), pp.9-15;19-21.]

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