| File:Assyrians.jpg Ashurnasirpal II • Ephrem the Syrian • Agha Petros • Ammo Baba | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,600,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Iraq | 800,000+[1] |
 Syria | 500,000[1] |
 Iran | 10,000[2] |
 Turkey | 5,000[2] |
 United States | 83,000[3] |
 Jordan | 77,000[4][5] |
 Sweden | 80,000[6] |
 Australia | 24,000[7] |
 Germany | 23,000[8] |
 France | 15,000[9] |
 Russia | 14,000[10] |
 Canada | 7,000 |
| Languages | |
| Akkadian (ancient) Neo-Aramaic (modern) (various Neo-Aramaic dialects) | |
| Religion | |
| Ashurism (ancient) Christianity (modern) (various Eastern denominations) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Semitic peoples | |
Assyrians are an ethnic group whose origins lie in what is today Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, but many of whom have migrated to the Caucasus, North America and Western Europe during the past century. Hundreds of thousands more live in Assyrian diaspora and Iraqi refugee communities in Europe, the former Soviet Union, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The Assyrians are believed to have descended from the ancient Akkadians, who, starting with Sargon of Akkad, emerged as the ruling class of Assyria.[11][12] Eventually conquered Aramaean tribes were assimilated into Assyrian society,[13][14] and their language, Aramaic, supplanted the native Akkadian language,[15] due in part to the mass relocations enforced by Assyrian kings of the Neo-Assyrian period.[16][14] The modern Assyrian identity is therefore believed to be a miscegenation, or ethnogenesis, of the the major ethnic groups which inhabited Assyria-proper, which were, for the most part, Assyrian, and to some extent, Aramaean.[17] By the 5th century BC, "Imperial Aramaic" had become lingua franca in the Achaemenid Empire.
Most Assyrians speak a modern form of Syriac,[18] an Eastern Aramaic language whose dialects include Chaldean and Turoyo as well as Assyrian. All are classified as Neo-Aramaic languages and are written using Syriac script, a derivative of the ancient Aramaic script. Assyrians also may speak one or more languages of their country of residence.
As a result of persecution, mostly during the last century, there is now a significant Assyrian diaspora. Major events included the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Simele massacre, and the Assyrian genocide that occurred under Ottoman Turkish rule in the early 1900s. The latest event to hit the Assyrian community is the war in Iraq; of the one million or more Iraqis reported by the United Nations to have fled, forty percent are Assyrian, despite Assyrians comprising only three to five percent of the Iraqi population.[19]
References edit
- ^ a b CIA World Factbook
- ^ a b Encyclopedia of the Orient: Assyrians
- ^ 2000 United States census
- ^ Immigration of Iraqi Chaldeans Abroad Passes through Jordan
- ^ http://i-cias.com/e.o/jordan_4.htm
- ^ SvD
- ^ 2001 Australian census
- ^ Ethnologue Reports
- ^ US Citizenship and Immigration Services
- ^ 2002 Russian census
- ^ Early History of Assyria, By Sidney Smith, University of Michigan, 1928
- ^ http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=AE_Chart
- ^ see e.g. Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. Aram.
- ^ a b Frye, Richard Nelson (1992). "Assyria and Syria: Synonyms" (PDF). PhD., Harvard University. Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
The reasons for the spread of the Aramaic language were not only the expansion of the Aramaeans themselves into the Fertile Crescent, as early as the second millennium B.C., but also the policies of transfer of populations by the Assyrian state, especially in the 8th century B.C. under Sargon II and Tiglath-Pileser III. Large numbers of people were moved, and inhabitants of ancient Assyria (present-day northern Iraq) were also settled all over the Fertile Crescent. The spread of the use of Aramaic coincided with the political expansion of the Assyrian Empire, with the consequent mixture of the political term "Assyrian" and the linguistic term "Aramaic speaker". The use of the term "Assyrian" for the Aramaic language and alphabet is even found as late as the 6th century of our era when the rabbis of the Talmudic period speak of their Aramaic (modern Hebrew) alphabet as "Ashuri."
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Parpola, Simo (1999). "Assyrians after Assyria" (HTML). Assyriologist. Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. XIII No. 2,.
Distinctively Assyrians names are also found in later Aramaic and Greek texts from Assur, Hatra, Dura-Europus and Palmyra, and continue to be attested until the beginning of the Sasanian period. These names are recognizable from the Assyrian divine names invoked in them; but whereas earlier the other name elements were predominantly Akkadian, they now are exclusively Aramaic. This coupled with the Aramaic script and language of the texts shows that the Assyrians of these later times no longer spoke Akkadian as their mother tongue. In all other respects, however, they continued the traditions of the imperial period. The gods Ashur, Sherua, Istar, Nanaya, Bel, Nabu and Nergal continued to be worshiped in Assur at least until the early third century AD; the local cultic calendar was that of the imperial period; the temple of Ashur was restored in the second century AD; and the stelae of the local rulers resemble those of Assyrian kings in the imperial period. It is also worth pointing out that many of the Aramaic names occurring in the post-empire inscriptions and graffiti from Assur are already attested in imperial texts from the same site that are 800 years older.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) - ^ "Mesopotamia, the Assyrians, 1170-612, The Assyrian Period" (HTML). Washington State University.
The Assyrian conquerors invented a new policy towards the conquered: in order to prevent nationalist revolts by the conquered people, the Assyrians would force the people they conquered to migrate in large numbers to other areas of the empire. Besides guaranteeing the security of an empire built off of conquered people of different cultures and languages, these mass deportations of the populations in the Middle East, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, turned the region into a melting pot of diverse cultures, religions, and languages. Whereas there would be little cultural contact between the conquered and the conquerors in early Mesopotamian history, under the Assyrians the entire area became a vast experiment in cultural mixing.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Frye, Richard Nelson (1992). "Assyria and Syria: Synonyms" (HTML). PhD., Harvard University. Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
The ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote that the Greeks called the Assyrians, by the name Syrian, dropping the A. And that's the first instance we know of, of the distinction in the name, of the same people. Then the Romans, when they conquered the western part of the former Assyrian Empire, they gave the name Syria, to the province, they created, which is today Damascus and Aleppo. So, that is the distinction between Syria, and Assyria. They are the same people, of course. And the ancient Assyrian empire, was the first real, empire in history. What do I mean, it had many different peoples included in the empire, all speaking Aramaic, and becoming what may be called, "Assyrian citizens." That was the first time in history, that we have this. For example, Elamite musicians, were brought to Nineveh, and they were 'made Assyrians' which means, that Assyria, was more than a small country, it was the empire, the whole Fertile Crescent.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ The British Survey, By British Society for International Understanding, 1968, page 3
- ^ Qais al-Bashir, Associated Press (2006-12-25). "Iraqi Christians celebrate Christmas". Yahoo! News. Retrieved 2007-01-07. [unreliable source?]