A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  Awake, son of Assyria (ʾāthor), awake;

  see how enlightened the world is;

  opportunity is being led out of our hands;

  even time is quickly passing away;

  awake, son of Assyria, awake.

  In vigilance, let us take refuge;

  let us ascend to elevate flight;

  if we do not awake, without resource,

  distress will encounter us in our path;

  awake, son of Assyria, awake.

  With poems such as this, Fāʾiq encouraged all Syriac Christians, including the Syriac Orthodox, to unite as a single Assyrian nation.17

  Another American promoter of Assyrian nationalism from within the Syriac Orthodox Church was D.B. Perley (1901–79) (for whom see Macuch 1976: 337; Coakley, in GEDSH, 326). Perley was born in the village of Kharput in Eastern Turkey, and he immigrated to the USA in 1918 following what in the West‐Syriac tradition is called Sayfo “the Sword,” i.e., the massacre of Christians in the aftermath of World War I. In 1933, he helped found the Assyrian National Federation. Perley understood his religious identity to be Syriac Orthodox but his national identity to be Assyrian. He summarized his understanding of the relationship between religion and nation as follows: “The Assyrians, although representing but one single nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire … are now doctrinally divided … No one can coherently understand the Assyrians as a whole until he can distinguish that which is religion or church from that which is nation …” (Perley, apud Malek 1935: 103). In this spirit, Perley proposed uniting all Syriac Christians, whether East‐ or West‐Syriac in religious identity, under the Church of the East Patriarch, or in his words, “under the banner of our Ethnarch, Mar Eshai Shimun XXI, our hero, both spiritual and secular” (Perley, apud Malek 1935: 112–13; italics in original).

  In the last fifty years, West‐Syriac Christians have continued to promote Assyrian identity as a means of uniting all Syriac Christians, regardless of religious affiliation, within a single nation. This movement has been particularly strong in the Syriac diaspora communities in Western Europe, especially Germany and Sweden (Yonan 1978; Atto 2011). It has also extended beyond the Syriac Orthodox to include other communities belonging to the Syriac heritage.

  Many Syriac Orthodox individuals and groups have resisted the adoption of an Assyrian identity and ideology. As an alternative, some have developed an Aramean identity and ideology (Heinrichs 1993: 111; Brock and Coakley, in GEDSH, 31). In 1952, for instance, the Syriac Orthodox patriarch Ignatius Afram Barsoum (1887–1957) wrote a pamphlet entitled The Syrian Church of Antioch: Its Name and History in which he rejected the term “Assyrian,” preferring instead Aramean. More recently, the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Syriac Orthodox Church has generally preferred the designation suryāyā “Syriac.” Thus, in 1981, the late patriarch Ignatius Zakkā I ʿIwāṣ (1933–2014) issued an encyclical in which he voiced his support for the designation suryāyā over against both Assyrian and Aramean (al‐ʾathūrīya and al‐ʾārāmīya, respectively, in the Arabic original).18 Despite this effort, Assyrian identity and ideology continue to be present within some Syriac Orthodox communities. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the fact that the birth name of this same patriarch was Sanharīb, the Arabic version of Sennacherib.

  Conclusion

  In Syriac communities today, one encounters various cultural identity markers that are derived ultimately from ancient Assyria. Syriac children are named Sennacherib, Sargon, and Nebuchadnezzar. The winged lions of Nineveh fly proudly on the Assyrian Christian flag. Syriac Christians have dedicated a bronze statue of Assurbanipal to the city of San Francisco (see Figure 32.1). The Akītu festival, the ancient Assyrian New Year, is celebrated, with some celebrants even donning costumes to resemble ancient dress (see the photograph in Baumer 2006: 279). The present essay has explored the complex historical realities that led to the connection between Syriac Christians and ancient Assyria. Before the nineteenth century, ʾārāmāyā “Aramean” and suryāyā “Syrian” – not ʾāthorāyā “Assyrian” – served as the typical self‐designation for individuals belonging to the Syriac heritage. The middle of the nineteenth century, however, brought the excavations of Nineveh, the last capital of the ancient Assyrians, and other Assyrian archaeological sites. At roughly the same time, the concepts of nation and nationalism were introduced to Syriac Christians in the Middle East. Thus, the ancient Assyrians provided East‐Syriac Christians with a model for a viable national identity. The tragic events of World War I only served to strengthen this identity. In the wake of the war, most East‐Syriac Christians were exiled from their homelands, and Assyrian identity was further developed in the diaspora as a means to unite displaced communities. Having suffered their own tragedies in the war, some Syriac Orthodox Christians also adopted an Assyrian identity as a means to unite all Syriac Christians, regardless of religious affiliation, within a single nation. Thus, today, many individuals associated with the Church of the East, as well as others from the broader Syriac heritage, identify as Assyrian.

  Figure 32.1 Bronze statue of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, designed by Fred Parhad, an artist of Assyrian descent born in Iraq. The statue, dedicated “by the Assyrian people” to the city of San Francisco, stands near the city’s “Main Library.”

  Source: Reproduced with permission of Jacob Rosenberg‐Wohl.

  Appendix: The Churches of the Syriac Heritage

  In this essay, the term Syriac, as well as Syriac Christianity and Syriac heritage, are used for individuals and groups that identify with Syriac linguistic, religious, and/or cultural traditions. Following the Councils of Ephesus (431) and of Chalcedon (451), the Syriac tradition has been divided into several branches: 1. the churches that accept both councils, such as the Melkite Church and the Maronite Church; 2. the West‐Syriac branch, which accepts the Council of Ephesus, but not Chalcedon, and includes the Syriac Orthodox Church (for historical overview, see Brock [with Taylor] 2011) and its Uniate continuations, such as the Syriac Catholic Church; 3. the East‐Syriac branch, which rejects both councils and which includes the Church of the East (for historical overviews, see Baum and Winkler 2003; Baumer 2006; Teule 2008; Wilmshurst 2000) – itself divided into two branches since 1968 – and its Uniate continuations, such as the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church are at times called Nestorian and Jacobite, respectively; these two names, however, are best avoided for a variety of reasons (see Brock 1996), not the least of which is that the churches themselves do not typically self‐identify by them. In addition to the churches that have their roots in the Near East, the Syriac tradition is represented by seven distinct churches in Kerala, India, two of which belong to the East‐Syriac tradition (Malabar Catholic Church and Chaldean Syrian Church) and five of which belong to the West‐Syriac tradition (Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, Malankara Catholic Church, Malabar Independent Syrian Church, and Mar Thoma Syrian Church).

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Adam Becker (New York University), J.F. Coakley (University of Cambridge), Ulla Kasten (Yale University), George Kiraz (Beth Mardutho: Syriac Institute), Aryo Makko (Stockholm University), and especially Lucas Van Rompay (Duke University) for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I would also like to express my gratitude to Eckart Frahm (Yale University) for his decision to include an essay on “Assyrian Christians” within a volume on (ancient) Assyria.

  Abbreviation

  GEDSH

  = Brock et al. 2011.

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