Assyrians are an ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East. Some self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans. They are speakers of the Neo-Aramaic branch of Semitic languages as well as the primary languages in their countries of residence. Modern Assyrians are Syriac Christians who claim descent from Assyria, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, dating back to 2500 BC in ancient Mesopotamia.
Christianity in Iran dates back to the early years of the faith, pre-dating Islam. It has always been a minority religion relative to the majority state religions, though it had a much larger representation in the past than it does today. Christians of Iran have played a significant part in the history of Christian mission. Currently there are at least 600 churches and 500,000–1,000,000 Christians in Iran.
Urmia or Orumiyeh is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an altitude of 1,330 metres (4,360 ft) above sea level, and is located along the Shahar River on the Urmia Plain. Lake Urmia, one of the world's largest salt lakes, lies to the east of the city, and the mountainous Turkish border area lies to the west.
Suret or Sureth, also known as Syriac, Assyrian, or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christian communities in the Middle East, primarily the Arameans, Assyrians and Chaldean Catholics. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
The Sayfo or Seyfo, also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Syriac Christians in eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire, and neighbouring regions of Persia, committed by Ottoman troops and some Kurdish tribes during World War I. One of the three late Ottoman genocides, the Sayfo mostly occurred between June and October 1915, concurrently with and closely related to the Armenian genocide.
Richard Nelson Frye was an American scholar of Iranian and Central Asian Studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University. His professional areas of interest were Iranian philology and the history of Iran and Central Asia before 1000 CE.
The Assyrian diaspora refers to ethnic Assyrians living in communities outside their ancestral homeland. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians claim descent from the ancient Assyrians and are one of the few ancient Semitic ethnicities in the Near East who resisted Arabisation, Turkification and Islamisation during and after the Arab conquest of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Assyrians in Iran, , are an ethnic and linguistic minority in present-day Iran. The Assyrians of Iran speak Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, a neo-Aramaic language descended from Classical Syriac and elements of Akkadian, and are Eastern Rite Christians belonging mostly to the Assyrian Church of the East and also to the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Chaldean Catholic Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church.
Freydon Bet-Abram Atoraya was an Assyrian physician born in the town of Charbash in the district of Urmia in Iran. He was sent by his father to live with an uncle in Tbilisi, then in the Russian Empire, and studied medicine there.
Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) is a grouping of related dialects of Neo-Aramaic spoken before World War I as a vernacular language by Jews and Christians between the Tigris and Lake Urmia, stretching north to Lake Van and southwards to Mosul and Kirkuk. As a result of the Sayfo Christian speakers were forced out of the area that is now Turkey and in the early 1950s most Jewish speakers moved to Israel. The Kurdish-Turkish conflict resulted in further dislocations of speaker populations. As of the 1990s, the NENA group had an estimated number of fluent speakers among the Assyrians just below 500,000, spread throughout the Middle East and the Assyrian diaspora. In 2007, linguist Geoffrey Khan wrote that many dialects were nearing extinction with fluent speakers difficult to find.
The Assyrian homeland or Assyria refers to areas inhabited by Assyrians. The areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and more recently Syria as well. Moreover, the area that had the greatest concentration of Assyrians in the world until recently is located in the Assyrian Triangle.
Assyrians in Armenia make up the country's third largest ethnic minority, after Yazidis and Russians. According to the 2011 census, there are 2,769 Assyrians living in Armenia, and Armenia is home to some of the last surviving Assyrian communities in the Caucasus. There were 6,000 Assyrians in Armenia before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but because of Armenia's struggling economy during the 1990s, the population has been cut by half, as many have emigrated.
Issa Benyamin was an Iranian-Assyrian calligrapher and educator.
The history of the Assyrian people begins with the emergence of East Semitic Akkadian-speaking peoples in Mesopotamia either at some point between 3500 and 3000 BC or as early as circa 5000 BC, followed by the formation of Assyria between the 26th and 25th centuries BC.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world. The vast majority of Iraqi Christians are indigenous Eastern Aramaic-speaking ethnic Assyrians who claim descent from ancient Assyria, and follow the Syriac Christian tradition. Some are also known by the name of their religious denomination as well as their ethnic identity, such as Chaldo-Assyrian, Chaldean Catholics or Syriac Orthodox Church, Non-Assyrian Iraqi Christians are largely Arab Christians and Armenians, and a very small minority of Kurdish, Shabaks and Iraqi Turkmen Christians. Most present-day Iraqi Christians are ethnically, linguistically, historically and genetically distinct from Kurds, Arabs, Iranians, Turks and Turcomen. Regardless of religious affiliation the Eastern Aramaic speaking Christians of Iraq and it's surrounds are one genetically homogeneous people. They identify themselves as being a separate people, of different origins and with a distinct history of their own harking back to ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia. Assyrian Christians also have communities in North Eastern Syria, South Eastern Turkey and North Western Iran as well as in the wider worldwide Assyrian diaspora.
Assyrian nationalism is a movement of the Assyrian people that advocates for independence or autonomy within the regions they inhabit in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey.
Christianity, which originated in the Middle East in the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion within the region. Christianity in the Middle East is characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World. Christians now make up approximately 5% of the total Middle Eastern population, down from 20% in the early 20th century. Cyprus is the only Christian majority country in the Middle East, with Christians forming between 76% and 78% of the country's total population, and most of them adhere to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, ranging between 39% and 41% and predominantly consisting of Maronite Christians. Egypt has the next largest proportion of Christians, at around 10% of its total population. Copts, numbering around 10 million, constitute the single largest Christian community in the Middle East.
Assyrian continuity is the theory—supported by a number of scholars and modern Assyrians—that today's modern Assyrians descend from the ancient Assyrians, a Semitic people native to ancient Assyria, that originally spoke ancient Assyrian language, a dialect of Akkadian language, and Aramaic later. Notions of Assyrian continuity are based on both ethnic, genetic, linguistic and historical claims, and the asserted continuity of Assyria's historical and cultural heritage after the fall of the ancient Assyrian Empire.
West Azerbaijan Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the northwest of the country, bordered by Turkey, Iraq and Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, as well as the provinces of East Azerbaijan, Zanjan and Kurdistan. The province is part of Region 3. It is separated from Armenia by Turkey's short border with the Azerbaijan Republic. The province of West Azerbaijan covers an area of 39,487 km², or 43,660 km² including Lake Urmia. As of the 2016 census, the province had a population of 3,265,219, in 935,956 households. The capital city and largest city of the province is Urmia.
Da'tid Bahrana was an Assyrian bilingual periodical published in Tehran, Iran in 1951. Extant copies are few. One issue is located at Harvard College Library. A full set is possibly stored at the Majles library in Tehran.
