The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Assyrian, Syrian, Asori

Re: Assyrian, Syrian, Asori
Posted by AssyrianMuslim (Guest) - Monday, February 4 2008, 23:36:27 (CET)
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Shlama19 wrote:
>AssyrianMuslim wrote:
>Although I had written regarding this topic a while back, I feel that it is important to bring it back since some of these nationalists continue to use it as "proof" for their Assyrian descent. Shlama19 cited exactly the same old soucres such as Herodotus. These nationalists like to insist that "Syrian" is derived from "Assyrian", therefore, the modern Suryoye are direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians. These nationalists like us to suddenly believe that "Syrian" was always understood to be "Assyrian" but that is not the case at all. The term "Syria" only came into existense after Assyria ceased to exist and it was used in the ancient Greek for the areas covering parts of western Mesopotamia all the way to the Mediterranean coast. So Syria gave birth to the term "Syros" which was used for the natives of Syria who were the Arameans. The Syriac fathers called themselves Arameans all along while "Assyrian" was only adopted recently. The Mesopotamian area during the early Christian era was called "Bet Aramaye" and it should have been called "Bet Ashuraye" or Bet Aturaye" instead if they were Assyrian all along.
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>- You're right, in fact Syria was a foreign name brought by the Indo-European Greeks, Assyria is also an Indo-European term for Assur in ancient Akkadian, Ashur in Hebrew, and Athur in Aramaic, while Aram was the home of modern day Syria on the other side of the Euphrates.
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>Now let's see some Greek terms since they brought us the name Syria:
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>Syrians - Syrioi
>Assyrians - Assyrioi
>Arameans - Arimoi
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>A little common sense here, Syria as a world is closer to what? Assyria or Aramea?

It really doesent matter what it is closer and even if Syria was derived out of Assyria, it still don't do you no good because a 100 years ago your ancastors were calling themselves "Suraye" not to mean relative of Ashur Banipal but "Christian".

>The other thing is when the Greeks used the term Syrian they meant it for the entire region, Syria was not just modern day Syria, if we talk about the Greek Syria we're talking about major parts of modern day Syria, Israel, Lebanon, most of north Iraq, and a major part of southeast Turkey, this is what the Greeks thought of as Syria, and they called it Syria because they named it after the Syrian Empire as Strabo mentioned, when was the last time you heard of an Aramean empire? I challange you to find me a source that speaks of an Aramean empire, you won't find any because Arameans as people were divided kingdoms and were never an empire, but Assyria on the other hand WAS an empire and included all these parts.

Arameans never had an empire but their language and culture influenced the region to much and it even put an end to the Assyrian language and culture. As for Assyria, yes it was an empire and a mighty one on top of that, but just as mighty as it was it fell hard to where it almost disappeared from history. Now we come to the Syria name again. It was brought by the Greeks and you say they referred to the entire area, but what does that have to do with you today some 2,500 years later?

>It was not until the Romans came that they divided between Assyria and Syria, then we had the province of Aturia in Assyria proper (North Iraq) and Syria was to the west (Where modern day Syria is), it's very simple, you can search up on this and you'll find your answer.

Already know that.

>Finally I will agree that the Greeks DID in fact call Arameans Syrians, yes that's true, but you cannot agree to this and dismiss the other, either you agree that both the Arameans and the Assyrians were called Syrians or you disagree with both, you cannot be biased just to pass off your agenda, you have to be fair and treat history as it is, as for me? I will be fair and admit that the Greeks not only called Assyrians by this term, they also called the Arameans, Cappacodians, and even Jews by the term Syrian, that's because they all lived within the region that was once known the Assyrian empire (Or Syrian Empire as Strabo says), fair? I think so.
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No I will noyt be biased at all. I can agree that they called both Assyrians and Arameans Syrians at one point by mistake or whatever. However, it leads us again to the same question. What does that have to do with you and the others who just recently began to use "Aturaye" "Ashuraye" and "Assyrian" in English?


>The other thing is we do have an Aramean blood, not just that but EVEN the ancient Assyrians themselves had it, did you know that? I doubt it. For example did you know that King Essarhadon who was one of the most mightest Assyrian kings was half Aramean? it's true, his mother was known as Queen Naqia and she was the wife of king Senharib, so that makes one of our great kings such as Ashur Banipal 1/4 Aramean.

Of course they did. Did you know they had other blood as well? Did you know Shamshi Adad was of Amorrite descent? If they were a melting pot and a mixture of many, how in the hell can someone today be a direct descendant of the ancient Assyrians when they weren't even pure themselves?

>Aramean was not the only blood that ancient Assyrians had, they also had Akkadian, Amorite, Hurrian, and heck probably even Iranian elements, afterall they did not care about blood, they just cared about their nation which was known as Assyria, and to set the record straight the ancient Assyrians looked at Sargon of Akkad (An Akkadian) as the backbone for their empire, but the very first founder of Assyria was also not an Assyrian, he was an Amorite by the name of Shamshi-Adad the first, go search it up and you'll get your answer.

Well I said it above and I agree this is a fact after all. They were mixed and cared less about blood but it was about nation and empire rather than blood. But what about the so called "Assyrian Nation" of today? you think that this is the same as that?

>One more thing, don't talk about Syriac fathers and do not mention them for your evidence, why? because when I mentioned Syriac fathers and early church fathers in my post who were hinting and mentioning the Assyrian name what did you say? you said it was some mytholgy fake stories, therefore either you believe in what ALL Syriac fathers said or don't believe at all, ok? that way you won't be a hypocrite in this subject. Again to be fair yes we have church fathers who claim our Aramean blood (Which we are proud of), and we also have church fathers who claim our Assyrian blood, I believe in both because the Aramean element in Assyrians is nothing new.

Well, just as you cited Syriac Fathers as your evidence, I thought I will show you that for the couple of Syriac Fathers who used the Assyrian name there were are others who used "Arameans".

>Finally Beth Aramaye (Which means the House of Arameans) was not given to all of Mesopotamia, it was only given to one region and that region is in modern day southeast Turkey (In the province of Madrin to be exact and also called Padan-Aram in the bible), it was called that because it is believed that the earliest Arameans originated from there, this means nothing, we also have a place in north Iraq called Beth Hindawaya (House of the Indian), it was called that because there was Indian Christians that lived there, does that mean the whole region is Indian? no, so this is the same, Beth Aramaye was in southeast Turkey and Athur was in north Iraq.

>AssyrianMuslim wrote:
>Another example are the ancient Hebrews who always used Aram for Syria. If anything, the Greeks and Romans often confused Syrians with Assyrians but the the more educated ones knew the difference and knew that those were Arameans whom they were calling Syrians and not the actual ancient Assyrians. Before the birth of Assyrian nationalims in the 19th century, The Neo Syriac speaking Christians of Mesopotamia did not call themselves Assyrians but simply "Suryoye" or "Suraye" which means nothing more than "Christians". This is interestring because the elders continue to refer to Christians whether from Europe or Syriacs as "Suraye" and do not imply it to mean "Assyrian". If one were to be unbiased and if these nationalist were willing to read the writings of travelers who spent time in the region and the Christian missionaries, we see clearly that the Syriac speaking Christians did not call themselves "Aturaye" "Ashuraye" or "Assyrian".
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>- This still does not explain the background of the term "Suraya" and why it is spelled as "Asuraya" in our language (Which you need to know in order to understand), you're right, a lot of our people confuse "Suraya" with Christian, but guess what, we never go around calling the Brits, Russians, Italians, or whatever other Christian nation in the world "Suraya", why is that? because this term is only applied to us and we only use it on each other, we do not call other non-Assyrian Christians by this term, also Suraya clearly means Syrian, and Syrian (As a term) is clearly from Assyrian, so there you go.

I already showed how "Suraya" has been used against non Syriacs. I know many Assyrians who use "Suraye" when speaking of foreigners and it used to throw me off because I thought they meant "Assyrians" but that was not the case. You can argue up and down all you want and even if "Suraya" is derived from "Asuraya" as you like to believe, it still don't indicate that they were using to mean "Assyrians". They were using it to mean "Christians" and that is all they were before the Anglicans decided they could use them and name them "Assyrians".

>There are modern so-called (So they say) Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and so on, when you ask them what Iraqi or Syrian mean they tell you it means Arab, well is that true? no it's not, but because Arabism has influenced these regions so much which in return they become known as Arab Muslim countries, same thing with us, we have been influenced by Chritianity so much as a nation that for us it's very common to say "Suraya" = Christian.

That may be so, but it still don't mean they were aware or using it to mean "Assyrians". They in fact proved they knew nothing of the ancients apart from what they were reading in the Old Testament. It took the discoveries made by westerners to teach these "Assyrians" of today to learn of the ancients and their history. What is the answer behind that?

>AssyrianMuslim wrote:
>As for "Asori" in the Armenian language, the word does not mean "Assyrian" but "Syrian". The correct word for "Assyrian" in the Armenian language is "Asorestanti". To make a long story short, the word "Syrian" was properly applied and it belonged to the "Arameans" and not "Assyrians". The Arameans were called ethnically Syrians. Even the church fathers always knew that Syriacs were and are Arameans. Those Syriacs who have started to call themselves "Assyrians" only started to do so with the birth of this "Assyrian Nationalism" which we can observe today despite not having any real knowledge of the ancient Assyrians.
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>So you are wrong, Assyrian in Armenian IS "Asori"
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That is what you think and that is what most people think. Dr. John Joseph spend a long time doing research and came to find out that it is not so but we can each choose to believe whatever we like.
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>- You are being very biased and hard headed about this, I urge you to use some logic, Asori means Assyrian, not many links out there that talk about this subject but here's two "Armenian" links to back up my argument:
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>http://dictionary.hayastan.com/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=878
>http://www.armeniangenocide.com/showthread.php?t=1611
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>Asori is 100% Assyrian and you can ask any Armenian about this, heck if you want me and you can both join any Armenian forum out there (Of your choice) and ask them ourselves, even if it also means Syrian we do not know whether this has any connection with the term Aramean or not, but I know 100% that when they say Asori they are reffering to Assyrian, and if they also reffer to Syrian then heck this proves even more than we want because this will mean that Assyrian = Syrian.
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>I also urge you to get ahold of another historian by the name of Sharaf Khan Al-Bedlissi, he's a Kurdish historian and has a book from the 16th century that mentions a group of Christians in Hakkari and calls them "Asuri", this is odd because Kurds call Syrians Suryani, not Asuri, the book is called "Sharafnameh" just in case you are interested.

Ok cool, but you just said it, a Kurd called them "Asuri". They were not calling themselves "Asuri" or "Ashuri".

>Therefore I am not wrong about Armenians calling Assyrians "Asori", and I challange you to pick ANY Armenian forum out there to debate this, and I mean ANY Armenian forum, that way we can both settle it properly with no biased opinions.
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>AssyrianMuslim wrote:
>These nationalist like to believe that the modern day Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arameans are all direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians. One has to wonder what happened to the Arameans who were in existense even after the fall of Assyria, with their rich language and culture which influenced the Middle East including the Assyrians and Babylonians? Where did they disappear to while ancient Assyrians are the only ones to have survived? The Syriacs were calling themselves Arameans all along the early Christian centuries and Assyrian only came into existense about a century ago. If these nationalist are honest enough to ackonledge that it was Rome which named the modern Catholic Syriacs as "Chaldeans" why do they turn a blind eye to the British who played the same game with the Nestorians?
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>- Aramean blood survived in us and part of our Assyrian element just like how it was part of the ancient Assyrians.
Aramean blood, Chaldean and many others as well. It again goes back to the same point. There is in reality no "Assyrian Nation" today, but it is rather a recent invention or else it would have been there all along.

>The other thing is you don't seem to know some things of our church history which is why I urge you to listen to the culture more before you start quoting everyone and their mother about us, and I also urge you to learn our language to have a better understanding about us, you're simply blowing off thousands of years of our history as if it was created 100 years ago, this is an ignorant thing to do.

You want us to listen to priests? Haven't we done that forever? It's time we use real sources and be unbiased. Do you read books apart from those which comply with your prejudices? gurantee you don't.

>The term Nestorian is not used and never was used by us, never have I ever seen any Assyrian call himself Nestorian when talking to another Assyrian, this is non-sense, if you read about the history of the term you will understand that the Church of the East was given this nickname by its enemies because they had followed Nestorius, in fact it's insulting when you or anyone for that matter calls us Nestorians, so before talking about such term learn where it came from before throwing labels that you're not much aware of.

I have and I know many that have used it. It's pronounced "Nosturnaye" and I have family members that use it the same way they use "Suraye" for "Christians". I have friends here in my city whom I visit almost daily, they use "Suraye" to mean "Christians" regardless of whom they are speaking of. Now, they may be confused, but they are using it as Christians and not to mean "Assyrians".



>AssyrianMuslim wrote:
>The bottom line is that the ancient Assyrians, Chaldeans, Arameans, Babylonians etc are all the ancastors of modern day people in Iraq, Syria and others. But what these nationalist are doing is absurd and they know that it was the British who created this modern "Assyrian nationalism". However, even if we would play along for the sake of arguement that "Syrian" is same as "Assyrian", these people knew nothing of the ancients, have no connection to them and all their knowledge comes from foreign discoveries. They did not have any proud "Ashuraye" 200 years ago, there were no Ashur's, Sargon's or Tighlad's. All this "Assyrian Pride" is recent and it was created for political reasons. Nevertheless, the ancients are the ancastors of the modern day Iraqis be it Christian, Muslim or whatever, but it is not the way these nationalist like us to believe and it will not be sufficient to demand "special treatment" or "independence". Last but not least, this was not an attack on anyone nor am I working with the CIA, Mosat or whoever else.
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>- Assyrian nationalism is indeed a British influenced thing, before that we were not national people, we were simply villagers, religious, and some of us were tribal, but this proves nothing, it just proves that the Brits gave us the sense of nationalism, the fact is the term Assyrian has been used in many sources and even by some of us long before the arrival of the Brits, you're also wrong about the names, I have people in my family tree who are 6+ generations away from me that are named Senharib and Akhiqar which are two clear Assyrian names, maybe we did not use Assyrian names as much as Biblical names but we did use them, go search up Ashur Yousif, he's one of the forefathers of our modern day Assyrian nationalsim born in 1858 (Clearly before the Brits), but his name is Ashur.

Of course there will be people who may have used ancient names, but what did they do as "Assyrians"? The answer is nothing, but it was all religious all along and nothing nationalistic.


>You want to talk about a British creation? IRAQ is a British creation, who made up the borders of Iraq? who gave the name to the country? clearly the British, so in reality you are what the Brits named you, this fact is way more true than anything else because at least Assyrians were using the term before the arrival of the Brits, but Iraqis who are so proud of Iraq are the true creation of the British, yup, you're proud of a name that the British gave to you, bravo :)

Does it matter what name people choose to use? Are you seriously not getting the point? You think using names is the real issue here? The issue is this "Assyrian Nation" which suddenyly exists and this is what we are talking about. Of course there are descendants of the ancient Assyrians and just as there are of the Babylonians, Arameans, Chaldeans, Amorrites and whoever else was there, but what does that have to do with you and others claiming this "Assyrian Nation". Where are the rest of the ancient people who lived and were around after the fall of the Assyrians? Where did they disappear to and only the Assyrians survived today as the few Christians of Iraq and other areas who just now began learning of the ancients and calling themselves "Assyrians".

So again, good work but it is nothing but the same old stuff which you people try to use as "proof" that you are "true and direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians" and this is a joke. We may use names, and be proud of the ancients but to expect special treatment and independence based on that is simply absurd. There are descendants of the ancients and they exist by he millions in all faiths, but it is not how you few Christians mean it. You think by taking a name some 100 years ago, learning a little about the ancients, and being Christians is enough to demand indepedence, special treatment and other silly things? It's time we stop letting the world make fun of us and our silly claims. I have no problem with people loving the ancient Assyrians and I do, but what these nationalists do is unreasonable.



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