2047
Modern Assyrians
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Teaching in Los Angeles, with a large immigrant community, I get students from all over the world, with especially large contingents from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. Among the Middle Eastern students from Iraq, Iran, and Turkey are those who call themselves "Assyrians." This is an interesting and important group of people. They are a remnant of the Aramaic (or Syriac) speaking Christian community of northern Iraq, eastern Turkey, and western Iran, which had meant nearly everyone there in Late Antiquity, but is now a group almost vanished in a sea of Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, and Persian speaking Moslems. Indeed, they have been persecuted in Turkey and in Iraq, both for cooperating during the years of the British Iraqi Mandate (1920-1932) and simply for not fitting in, religiously and linguistically, to modern nationalist identities. The Iraq of Saddam Hussein has regarded them officially as Christian Arabs, not as a national minority. The community in Iran has recently encountered similar difficulties from the Islâmic Revolution there.
Religious Communities
in Iraq, 1995
Muslims 19,293,300 97%
Chaldeans 390,300 2.0%
Assyrians 87,700 0.4%
Syriac Catholic 55,500 0.3%
Syriac Orthodox 37,200 0.2%
Another community of Christians in the area is a group that calls themselves "Chaldeans." These are Syriac speaking Christians who have entered into doctrinal communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The term "Chaldean" was recognized in 1445 by Pope Eugenius IV. It seems to have been used earlier with other, interchangeable terms for the Christians of Mesopotamia. The actual "Chaldeans" were Aramaeans (though some now question this) who settled in southern Iraq, forming the basis of the Neo-Babylonian revival of the X (or XI) Dynasty of Babylon. The expression "Ur of the Chaldees" is anachronistic when applied to the original Ur of the Sumerians, who had nothing to do with the Chaldeans and were long gone before the Chaldeans were anywhere near even existing. As descendants of real Aramaeans, the modern Chaldeans are more likely to be related to the real Chaldeans than anyone else, but there is no documentary or historical connection that can be traced after the age of Nebuchadnezzar, when the ethnic Chaldeans had blended into the older Babylonian population, and Aramaic began to be spoken by everyone. The Patriarchs Assyrian and Chaldean Churches (originally the "Patriarchs of the East") are give elsewhere at this site.
The Assyrians and Chaldeans are not the last people speaking descendants of Aramaic. There was an Aramaic speaking Jewish community in Kurdistan, but they now all, apparently, have moved to Israel [cf. Robert D. Hoberman, The Syntax and Semantics of Verb Morphology in Modern Aramaic, A Jewish Dialect of Iraqi Kurdistan, American Oriental Society, New Haven, 1989]. A confusing factor is that the cultural boundary does not follow the linguistic boundary. Speaking dialects closely related to those of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Jews (Eastern Aramaic) are other Orthdox Christians who religiously are affiliated with the Western Syriac tradition. Culturally, they were in Roman territory (upper Mesopotamia), and looked to the Patriarchate of Antioch, rather than to the Church of the East, originally on Sassanid territory, whence the Assyrian and Chaldean communities derive. These Christians tend to see themselves as Syrians or Aramaeans. What remains of actual Western dialects of Syriac/Aramaean is only to be found in three villages near Damascus, in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains on the border between Syria and Lebanon. Stories about them turn up occasionally right before Christmas, with the plausible hook that this is the surviving language that would be the closest to the language actually spoken by Jesus -- who used a dialect of Aramaic, not Hebrew, for daily life. There is little hope for the survival of this community of Syriac speakers, however. At the same time, the Western Syriac alphabet sometimes is used to write Arabic by Lebanese Maronite Christians. This used to be characteristic in the Middle Ages: Whatever language you speak, you write it in the alphabet of your religion. Thus, Moses Maimonides wrote Arabic, Ashkenazic Jews wrote German (Yiddish), and Sephardic Jews wrote Spanish (Ladino), in Hebrew letters. In India, Moslems wrote Hindustani in Arabic letters (becoming Urdu) and Hindus wrote it in the Sanskrit Devanagari letters (becoming Hindi).
Self-identified Chaldeans and Aramaeans are frequently called "Assyrians" by Assyrian nationalists. This is deeply resented by many or even most in those communities, who do not want to be identified, wholly or even partially, with the ancient Assyrians, or with modern Assyrian nationalism. This has led to intense dispute, for instance, over census categories in the United States and about statements in the press referring to the ethnic communities in Iraq. Thus, press reports sometimes even say that the Christian community in Iraq speaks "Assyrian," a language that disappeared in ancient times (though many Assyrians do believe they are speaking ancient Assyrian). Some Assyrians even reject their ancient Christianity and wish to revive the worship of Assyrian gods, like Ashur. This would not be tolerated most predominantly Islamic countries.