The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Modern Assyrians and the Proof.

Re: Modern Assyrians and the Proof.
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Thursday, January 31 2008, 21:22:27 (CET)
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>First thing I would like to say is that I'm very happy that there are Iraqis that are proud of their REAL culture and call themselves Assyrian, I wish most Iraqi people were like that, you guys think we (The Christian Assyrians) would like to highjack the term but it's not true at all, we would be more happy when we see more people from Iraq calling themselves Assyrians regarding of religion because the fact is Assyrian has nothing to do with religion, you can be Christian, Muslim, or whatever and STILL be Assyrian.

...sorry. there are no Assyrians left...not in the way you mean it. Iraqis are aware of their Assyrian, Babylonian, Amorite, Hurrian and Sumnerian past...but they are not Sumerians, or Babylonians or Hurrians or Amorites etc. They are Iraqis with a rich background and heritage.
>
>At the same time you guys puzzle me, you seem to think that we're not Assyrians because the British gave us that name in the 19th century, this is very false, we have been called Assyrians and have used this name way way way before the Brits ever set foot in the middle east, and I have various records to back it up, the general idea is the Assyrians died out after the fall of their empire and were not mentioned again until the arrival of the Brits, not true, let's look at some evidence:

...give us the evidence without benefit of your interpretation...we're big boys and girls here and can think for ourselves. Just the facts, please.
>
>1- Let's start from the older era, after the fall of the Assyrian empire the Assyrian people indeed stayed and were known to the new invaders such as Greeks or Romans, in fact some historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, and Justinus all mention the Assyrians pretty well, here's some quotes:

..."mentioning" them proves nothing...everyone knew of them, everyone knew of them later through the bible...people today are born in Arizona...every American knows that Arizona was and is (if you want to talk indigenous) the "Land of the Navajos"..that doesn't make a Chinese kid bron in Phoenix a Native American. Romans, Spaniards, Greeks, Persians, Arabs and lots of people were "born in Assyria"...long after the empire collapsed...that didian't make them ethnic Assyrians or Assyrians of any kind.

...A German family who vacations in Germany when the mother is pregnant and has her child born in Berlin does not have a "German" child because of WHER the child was born and the NAME of the country...likewise people born in what everyone knew was once Assyria did not become ethnic Assyrians.
>
>a) "The Assyrians went to war with helmets upon their heads made of brass, and plaited in a strange fashion which is not easy to describe. They carried shields, lances, and daggers very like the Egyptian; but in addition they had wooden clubs knotted with iron, and linen corselets. This people, whom the Hellenes call Syrians, are called Assyrians by the barbarians" Herodotus VII.63, he's from the 4th century BC.

...that says nothing at all about you or I being Assyrians...As a conquered part of the Parthian and then Sasanian empire, the people of the province known as Assyria would be expected to provide soldiers for the wars of the Persians...the Persian army was made of lots of such contingents from all parts of their empire and they all wore their native clothing...and carried their shields etc.

...Herodotus is notorious for writing about places he never visited and things he never saw...Xenophon, on the other hand, who travelled through Nineveh 200 yeats after the fall of empire reports seeing Medes...he doesn't mention Assyrians although of course they were peresent...but Nineveh was settled by conquering Persians and soon by Greeks and everyone else...in time the native Assyrian population decreased, intermattied and lost consciousness of itself...and had to wait for Europeans to dig them up and tell them about themselves...there are no writings for hundreds of years leading up to the 19th century which show any self-awareness as Assyrians...they were known for transmitting Greek lore to the Arabs...but never their own history...beyond what anyone could read in the bible.
>
>- We notice that the Greek invaders called the Assyrians by the term Syrians which makes a lot of sense when you look back to the name Syria and its origin.
>
>b) "When those who have written histories of the Syrian empire say that the Medes were overthrown by the Persians and the Syrians by the Medes, they mean by the Syrians no other people than those who built the royal palaces in Babylon and Ninus; and, of these Syrians, Ninus was the man who founded Ninus in Aturia, and his wife, Semiramis, was the woman who succeeded her husband and founded Babylon" Strabo writes in his Book XVI, Chapter 1, he's from the 1st century AD

,,that's myth and legend...Semiramis is the Greek name for Summuramat, who decidedly did NOT found Babylon. You're grasping at whatever might prove your point...read some more current and better educated historians, and not those of 1000 years ago and you'll understand better.
>
>- Another one mentions the Assyrians, and the Syrians in this verse are the Assyrians also because they were sacked by the Medes and there was no Syrian Empire unless you're reffering to Assyrian Empire.

..no one has EVER said Assyrians didn't exist...or that they were all wiped when the empire fell...that's absurd. But their existence after empire, for the few years there is any mention of them, has nothing to do with you believing you're amodern decsendant of the ancient Assyrians...there's no link, no connection whatsoever....beyond what we see happened when the pope's people came to Iraq and invented "Chaldeans"...and later when the Brits came, dug up antiquities, and insisted the people living on top of them must be the same people...a silly error but an error all the same.
>
>c) "The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire thirteen hundred years."Justinus Book 1/verse 2, from the 3rd century AD

...that is absurd....has your library card expired THAT long ago?
>
>- Another one reffering to the Assyrians by Syrians.
>
>I mention these because later on you will see how we still kept the name Syrian among us, let's keep going.

...we know all that.
>
>d) "So also orientals with the appearance of merchants passed into the country of the Romans to see the signs which Addai did, and those of them who became disciples, received from them the hand of the priesthood, and in their own country of the Assyrians they taught the sons of their people, and houses of prayer they built there secretly, because of the danger arising from the worshippers of fire and the adorers of water."

...Addai is a myth...so is Abgar. We KNOW these myths...we too were raised with them...they are nothing new or startling...but the bottom line is that they prove nothing relating to modern claims to be Assyrians...
>
>"But Nersai, the king of the Assyrians, when he had heard of these things which Addai the Apostle had done, he sent to Abgar, the king; either send me the man who hath done these signs with thee, that I may see him and hear his discourse, or send me an account of all these things which thou hast seen him do in thy city. And Abgar wrote to Nersai and made him acquainted with the whole history of the affair of Addai from the beginning to the end, and he left not any thing which he did not write to him."The Doctrine of Addai from the 4th century AD.

...oh please! I'm going to skip to the bottom and see what conclusion you draw from all this...but before I do let me remind you thjat it isn't because we are "ignorant" of all the usual things you've posted here..it's just the weight of evidence from real historians blows holes through all this stuff you hold so dear.
>
>- This one is very interesting, this talks about when Christianity spreads to Assyria proper (In modern North Iraq) and it's mentioned that it is the country of the Assyrians, it also says Narsai king of the Assyrians when in fact Narsai was a Persian King, not Assyrian, but he's called the King of the Assyrians because the people he ruled in that land were Assyrians.
>
>e) The list of Patriachs of the Church of the East has two Patriach names from the 10th century AD who had the title Aturaya on their name, Aturaya means Assyrian, these Patriachs are "Mar Mari Aturaya" and "Mar Odishu II (Bar Ars) Aturaya", why would these two Patriachs call themselves Assyrian if they did not believe it? the fact is we even had a Turkic Patriach at one point who called himself "Mar Yoalaha III Bar Turkaya" which means son of the Turk, this is the same concept, this is 9 centuries before the arrival of the Brits.
>
>f) Michael the Great of the 12th AD was one of the Syriac Orthodox Church patriarchs said "Even if their name is "Syrian", they are originally 'Assyrians' "and they have had many honorable kings ... Syria is in the west of Euphrates, and its inhabitants who are talking our Aramaic language, and who are so-called 'Syrians', are only a part of the 'all', while the other part which was in the east of Euphrates, going to Persia, had many kings from Assyria and Babylon and Urhay. ... Assyrians, who were called 'Syrians' by the Greeks, were also the same Assyrians, I mean 'Assyrians' from 'Assur' who built the city of Nineveh."
>
>- This is one of our Western Assyrian fathers (Not from Iraq), the Syriac Orthodox Church followers are mainly from the Mardin region in Turkey (Area called Tur Abdin) and Syria also, why would this man admit to our Assyrian heritage if he was't? and this is from the 12th century AD before the Brits once again.
>
>g) Our Armenian neighbours whom some of us lived around have always called us by the term "Asori", and this is also before the arrival of the Brits, in fact here's an interesting record from the 18th century:
>
>Horatio Southgate who was a missionary bishop from the 18th century AD writes "I began to make inquiries for the Syrians. The people informed me that there were about one hundred families of them in the town of Kharpout, and a village inhabited by them on the plain. I observed that the Armenians did not know them under the name which I used, Syriani; but called them Assouri, which struck me the more at the moment from its resemblance to our English name Assyrians, from whom they claim their origin, being sons, as they say, of Assour who 'out of the land of Shinar went forth, and build Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resin between Nineveh and Calah."
>
>- Kharput is a town in southeast Turkey where once an Assyrian population lived, and on top of that Horatio also mentioned that these people were calling themsevles Othuroyeh which in eastern Syriac becomes Athurayeh, in other words Assyrians.
>
>h) In the Syriac language we have silent letters that appear in words but are not pronounced, this is how I knew that AssyrianMuslim not Assyrian from a Christian background because if you were and you had any idea on anything in Syriac you would understand this.
>
>The idea of silent letters is that they are letters that at one point were pronounced from the original word, but as Syriac developed dielcts came out of it, and part of these dialects invloved swallowing some letters, for example:
>
>i) "Tarra" which means Door is actually "Tarr'a", but the letter Ayin is not pronounced for whatever reason therefore it becomes "Tarra".
>
>ii) The word "At" which means You is actually "Ant" just like Arabic word, but the letter Noon is not pronounced because it's silent due to the dialect.
>
>iii) This one is the kicker, we call each other Surayeh which some say means Syriani, but the interesting part is that the spelling of this word is Alaph, Simkat, Waw, Resh, Yod, Alaph, in other words the original word IS "Asuraya", but because the first Alaph is silent so the word turns into "Suraya" which is what we use and have used for the longest time before the Brits were even known as Brits.
>
>
>This is just some evidence of how we are linked to the Assyrians, we have a long history and tradition that link us, for example did you know that we celebrate the Assyrian new year (Kha b Nissan) and we even call it Akitu which is the ancient Babylonian/Assyrian name for it? the Kurds and Persians celebrate Newroz which is almost similar but the Iranian version.

...we also celebrate Christmas...does that make us Jews?
>
>Better yet did you know that we have a fast that we call "Ba'ootha d Ninwayeh"? this is a fast that we do and have been doing for the longest time ever and it deals with the time where the Prophet Yonan (you guys call Yonus) came and asked the Assyrians to repent and fast for three days, whether it really happened or not we do this fast and have been doing it for the longest time, at least ever since accepting Christianity which is in the 1st century AD, and out of ALL Christian Churches around the world ONLY our churches do this fast, very interesting indeed.
>
>You see these are just some of the evidence that I dug up now, there's actually more records that deal with us and call us Assyrians, yes we have many names such as Nestorian, Chaldean, or Jacobite but these are Church names, they are not national names, we are Assyrians by nationality, sure some of us might be from a mixed background, heck we most likely have not only a Semitic blood, but also Caucasian, Iranian, Turkic, and so on, but then again who is't mixed these days? it would be very stupid to assume that someone is pure because such thing does not exist, EVEN the ancient Assyrians of the old Assyrian period were mixed, did you know that? yes they were, because Assyria was a nation to them, not an ethnic group.
>
>Today we only mix with eachother mostly due to our religion which makes us more of an ethnic group, but we have nationalists that woke up during the arrival of the Brits, that is what the Brits did, they did not give us the name, but they taught us to be nationalists because at the time we were following our church leaders, today we try to follow our political leaders.

....here goes
>
>This is it for now, and remember that being Assyrian does not have anything with religion,

..odd you should say that after quoting religion extensively.

it's more of a culture and being proud of calling youself an Assyrian, if you guys are truely calling yourselves Assyrian then you should support such thing, not be against it, but your approach (I take AssyrianMuslim as an example) is a religious move, you remind me of some of our western Assyrian brothers who would rather call themsevles Arameans because their church leaders told them it's a sin to be an Assyrian because Assyrians are cursed in the Old Testament wich is one of the stupidest thing I've heard.
>
>Anyways this is it for now, sorry for the long post but this is a discussion afterall and a discussion can be long.

...should you survive your first post and not get insulted and have to leave in a huff...may I suggest you bring next time only that evidence that has NOTHING to do with religion...Addai and Abgar and the rest...and also start with historians from the modern era...since you are claiming to BE an Assyrian in the modern era....I have no argument with you if you are an Assyrian of 560 BC...or even 1000 AD...but if you're telling me you're an Assyrian of the 21st century...then at least bring me evidence from say the 19th century on...leave Starbo and Herodotus out of it...

...to make it easier yet...if a Greek told us today that he was a direct descendant of Socrates..would you believe him?
>
>Take care and God bless.

...same to you



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