ARMENIANS AND ASSYRIANS: SHARED EXPERIENCES THOUGH THE AGES
Nicholas Al-Jeloo
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Apr 21, 2010
Armenians and Assyrians have lived closely as neighbors for more than
3,000 years. At times their relationship with one another has been
cordial, at times quite close, and at other times not well at all.
Despite this, they have been through many experiences together, whether
pleasant or traumatic, and have witnessed each other’s triumphs and
sufferings. In modern times what brings them together especially is the
issue of the Genocide. Research in the past 20 years on the Assyrian
Genocide, known as Seyfo, which occurred concurrent with the Armenian
Genocide is increasing and the subject is gaining more visibility.
Armenians and Assyrians in Antiquity
In ancient times the Assyrian Empire and the kingdom of Urartu
(ancestors of today’s Armenians) were often at each other’s throats,
but at the same time they also borrowed ideas and cultural material
off one another – the Urartians wrote their language in the cuneiform
script used by the Assyrians, and their artworks also heavily resemble
Assyrian art forms. Legend has it that up to7,000 Assyrian prisoners of
war were used to build the ancient town of Erebuni (modern Yerevan),
and Moses of Khorene writes of the Assyrian queen Shamiram (Greek:
Semiramis) who wooed the Armenian king Ara the Fair, and built the
city of Van. Even today there is a village and canal near Van named
Shamiram Suyu ("Shamiram’s stream").
Jewish Talmudic tradition states that Adramelech and Shahrezer, sons of
Assyrian king Sennacherib, killed their father after he had promised to
sacrifice them to a piece of wood from Noah’s Ark, which he had begun
to worship on his return from campaigning in Palestine, and fled to
safety in the region of Ararat (Urartu).The village of Shushantz near
Van is said to be named after their sister Shushan, and the Armenian
kings of Vaspurakan (whose capital was at Van) claimed to be Assyrian,
and that they were descended from King Sennacheribb through them.
Brothers in Christianity
During the Christian era, Assyrians and Armenians maintained the
close bond they had in antiquity, and early on the Catholicossate
of Echmiadzin was dependant on the Assyrian Orthodox Patriarchate
in Antioch. Before St. Mesrop Mashdotz’s creation of the Armenian
alphabet, Armenian religious texts were written in Syriac/Aramaic
(Assyrian) or Greek, and there are still some surviving examples of
Armenian texts written with the Syriac script.
In Turkey’s Hakkari region, before World War I, there were a handful
of Armenian villages that belonged not to the Apostolic Church, but to
the Assyrian Church of the East, and even their churches were built
in the Assyrian style. Similarly, Assyrians from Til, near Kharpert,
built their churches in the Armenian style, even though they belonged
to the Assyrian Orthodox Church. Under the Ottoman regime,
Assyrians were represented at the court in Constantinople by the
Armenian Patriarch of that city, and in the Urmia region of Iran, even
today, there is an agreement by which an Assyrian priest may serve
Armenians when a priest of their own is unavailable, and vice versa.
Prior to the Genocide, thousands Assyrians lived alongside Armenians
in areas of modern Turkey and Iran such as Aghbak (Albaq), Gavar,
Urmia, Sanamast (Salmas), Baghesh (Bitlis), Van, Timar, Kharpert
(Harput), Urfa, Siverek, Malatya, Adiyaman, Palu, Diyarbakir (Amid),
Silvan, Mardin, Seghert (Siirt) and others. In some of these areas,
Assyrians, as a minority, blended in and assimilated in the Armenian
way of life and in Kharpert and Baghesh, the Assyrians spoke only
Armenian and Turkish and frequently intermarried with the Armenians.
It is also said that the Armenians of Sasun are of Assyrian descent,
and many Assyrian families in villages of southeast Turkey and northern
Iraq are also descended from Armenians, for example the large Assyrian
town of Alqosh which is home to the Arimnaya family. In Iraq, Iran and
Syria, there are still many cases of intermarriage between Assyrians
and Armenians.
Assyrians and Armenians today share many customs, among them the
dance of fire which the Assyrians call the dance of Shamiram, and the
annual summer water festival of Vartivar (also known as Navasard). The
Assyrians call this feast Nusardil, which descends from the ancient
Mesopotamian feast of Musardilu, celebrating the return of the god
Tammuz from the underworld. In general also, Assyrian foods, music
and traditional dance share much in common with Armenian forms of
the same, and many other traditions are also common to both.
Shared Suffering: The Genocide
Even in their most defining moment of suffering – Genocide under the
Ottoman Empire – the Armenians and Assyrians suffered together and
in many cases fell victim to the same massacres and deportations. Not
only were Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire represented by the Armenian
Patriarch of Constantinople, but they also suffered the stigma of
being known by Turks as Ermeni (i.e. Armenian), a slang term used
across the Ottoman and Persian Empires to mean any Christian in
general, whether or not they were ethnically Armenian. This also led
to the massacre and deportation of many Greeks from Pontos, Thrace,
Ionia and Cappadocia as a result of the Genocide, culminating in the
"population exchanges" of the 1920s.
Since they lived side by side in many areas, Assyrians fell prey to
the same Genocidal acts carried out by the Ottoman state – whether it
was during the massacres of1895/6, to which over 100,000 Assyrians
fell victim; the Adana massacres of1909, in which 3,000 Assyrians
perished; or the Genocide carried out between1914 and 1924, which
left between 500,000 and 750,000 Assyrians dead and more than 250,000
displaced. The pre-1914 population of Assyrians around the world did
not exceed 1 million; thus for them the loss of two thirds of their
number was a tragedy they still have not recovered from.
At the time, Assyrian and Assyrophiles in the US, France, England, and
Syria wrote extensively about their experiences under the Ottomans and
the aftermath of the Genocide and roughly a score of books are known
to have been published in this period. Books on the Armenian Genocide
also clearly mention the Assyrians, who feature largely in the Blue
Book (Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire) by Lord Bryce.
Another book by him, titled Treatment of Assyrians in the Ottoman
Empire, was prepared but never published. Even the chapter in the
Blue Book dealing exclusively with the massacres of Assyrians in
the Urmia region was removed from the French edition and many later
editions of the book.
The first academic study of the Assyrian Genocide since the 1920s was
written by Dr. Gabriele Yonan in Germany in the 1980s and since then
a wave of publishing, translation, scholarship and activism has been
unleashed. Conferences and seminars on the Assyrian Genocide have been
held in the Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia, and the Assyrians
in Europe are well known for holding hunger strikes and demonstrations,
as well as charity events, for Genocide recognition.
At present the Seyfo Centre in Europe () is the
intellectual centre for the study and documentation of the Assyrian
Genocide.
Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) were the first
to officially recognize the Assyrian Genocide, alongside that of
the Armenians in the 1990s, and since then many municipalities and
provincial governments in the USA, Australia and Europe have recognized
the Assyrian Genocide as well. In March 2010 Sweden was the first
country to recognize the Assyrian Genocide, and there are plans to
lobby more countries to do the same. Assyrian Genocide monuments exist
in the US, France, New Zealand and one is being planned in Sydney,
Australia. The Armenian Government has allotted a plot of land in
Yerevan for the erection of an Assyrian Genocide monument there
as well.
Conclusion
Assyrians today are a stateless and transnational ethnic group who have
not recovered from the Seyfo and are still suffering discrimination
by Arabs and Turks, as well as ethnic cleansing by Kurds in northern
Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. They are divided along
sectarian and political lines, and in general have lower levels of
education and wealth than others. They are the least fortunate out
of the three nations that suffered in the Genocide of Christians in
Anatolia and Asia Minor and are constantly searching for affirmation
and recognition of their plight and national question.
As neighbors with a long history of shared experiences with Armenians,
and in many cases shared ancestry and intermixing, and as sufferers and
witnesses to the Armenian Genocide it is only natural that Armenians
be the next nation to officially recognize the sufferings of the
Assyrians. Hopefully this will not be too far off in the future.