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The Assyrians of Iran: Reunification of a “Millat,” 1906–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Eden Naby
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Extract

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Assyrians—Syriac-speaking Middle Easterners belonging throughout the medieval period to either of the two branches of Eastern Christianity (Jacobite and Nestorian)—remained a little-known community scattered throughout Ottoman and Persian territory. The Assyrian community examined here was concentrated in Iranian Azerbaijan, mainly around the town of Urumiyah (Rizaiyah). Together with tribal Assyrians, who remained in their ancestral mountain villages on either side of the Perso-Ottoman border, Urumiyan Assyrians formed the nucleus of the Nestorian community until World War I. They were united by the same language, modern Eastern Syriac (henceforth referred to as Assyrian), and owed ecclesiastical allegiance to the Church of the East under the hereditary Patriarch, the Mar Shamūn.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 237 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

I would like to thank Professor Charles Issawi and Mary Ellen Page for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. My thanks also to my family and to Assyrian friends whose libraries, recollections, and patient answers to questions helped me to understand the atmosphere of the period.

1 There also exists a community loosely allied to the Assyrians of the Middle East in India, mainly in the state of Kerala; see Keay, F. E., A History of the Syrian Church of India (London, 1938).Google Scholar

2 For a thorough discussion of the term “Assyrian” applied to either the people or the language, readers should consult John Joseph's study of some years ago, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors: A Study of Western Influence on Their Relations (Princeton, 1961), pp. 3–21.Google Scholar

3 Dr. L. Yaure analyzed a poem originally published in the pre-World War I Assyrian press. See his “A Poem in the Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Urmia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 45, 2 (1957), 73–87.Google Scholar

4 Browne, Edward G., The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 39, 100, 124, 126.Google Scholar Browne did not see any of these periodicals himself and he gives only vague and unsubstantiated or incorrect information about them.

5 Ibid., p. 8. In the 1966 census the Assyrian population of Iran was 20,344 with nearly half of them in Tehran (Firoozi, Ferydoon, “Tehran: A Demographic and Economic Analysis,” Middle Eastern Studies, 10, 1 (1974), 64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Rockwell, William Walker, The Pitiful Flight of the Assyrian Christians in Persia and Kurdistan (New York, 1916), p. 66.Google Scholar

7 Packard, Francis B., The Story of Our Mission in Persia (New York, 1920), p. 22.Google Scholar

8 Browne, , Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, pp. 28, 30, 31, 100, 112, 144.Google Scholar The Armenian periodical press began in Madras (1794–1796) and much came in the nineteenth century from Europe and areas west of Iran. Specific information about the cultural movement among the Armenians of Iran appears to be limited to Armenian language sources unavailable to the writer.

9 After the return of the Russians to Urumiyah on May 24, 1915, a new periodical was begun by an organization called “The Society of Assyrian Young Men.” The periodical was called Naqusha (The Bell-Ringer) and was printed on the Russian Mission press. It continued to appear for a brief period on a monthly basis, under the editorship of Benyamin Arsanus (of Digala) (1882–1957).

10 See Joseph, , The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors, p. 23 for more details.Google Scholar

11 Some Urumiyan village clans were the Yadgar, Dooman, Shabas, Khinui, Amrikhas, Davajan. Assyrian tribes include the Baz, Jillu, Tkhuma, Tiyari. Descriptions of the tribes appear in many missionary writings as well as in Every's, Edward “The Assyrians,” Religion in the Middle East, ed. Arberry, A. J. (Cambridge, 1969), 1, 521.Google Scholar

12 The work is divided into book, chapter, and verse, and regulates marriage, inheritance, usury, construction, and so forth. See MacLean, A. J. and Browne, W. H., The Catholicos of the East and His People (London, 1892), pp. 50, 51, 139, 142 ff.Google Scholar A German translation exists.

13 Zārirā d Bārā, 49, 1 (1898) 1Google Scholar, and Kukhva, 4, 7 (1909), 73–74.Google Scholar

14 The early American missionaries had studied Old Syriac but the practice was dropped.

15 The fiftieth anniversary of the Lazarist Mission was celebrated in 1912 (Kukhva 6, 23 [06 24, 1912], 272).Google Scholar

16 Packard, , The Story of our Mission in Persia, p. 34.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 33.

18 Unpublished correspondence dealing with this question may be found at the Presbyterian Historical Society (Philadelphia, Pa.), catalogued as “Correspondence from the Urumia Station with Reference to the Proposed Union with the Old Syrian Church,” dated 1909.

19 See Browne, , The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, p. 10Google Scholar, for a discussion of the early press in Iran. Although the existence of an earlier Persian periodical has been ascertained, because that periodical appears to have been an internal court information sheet, Jan Rypka agrees with Browne that 1851 marks the beginning of the Persian periodical press (Rypka, Jan, History of Iranian Literature [Dordrecht-Holland, 1968], pp. 337–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The commencement of Zārirā d Bārā in 1850 is mentioned by Arsanus, G. V. in “Rol' assiriiskikh prosvetitelei i pisatelei v stanovlenii sovremennogo assiriiskogo iazyka,” Semitskie iazyki, Vyp. 2, c. 2 (Moscow, 1965), p. 700Google Scholar, and confirmed by copies for the year 1895 which bear the volume number 46.

20 The authors of Assiriiskii vopros vo vrcmiia i posle pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar, K. P. Matveev and I. I. Mar Iukhanna, mistakenly identify the first year as 1851 (p. 19) as does Iraj Afshār in “Nasturiyān-i Irān: Āsū ri-hā va kaldāni-hā,” Ittilā'āt-i māhānah, 4, 40 (1330/1951), 27.Google Scholar

21 Browne, , The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, p. 124.Google Scholar

22 Kukhva, 5, 16 (1911), 188.Google Scholar

23 A survey of two years of Zārirā d Bārā, 1895 and 1898, revealed a concentration on translation of sermons from English to Assyrian, on biographies of Western political and religious leaders, and on moral admonitions against alcohol. Little local news and virtually no national (Iranian) news received coverage. Direct and indirect attacks on Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy appeared also (Zārirā d Bārā, 46, 2 [1895], 12Google Scholar; 46, 1 [1898], 3; 46, 9 [1898], 65).

24 Ibid., 46, 3 (1895), 19.

25 This dual claim of the Mar Shumun contributed to the conflict between the Assyrians and the Iraqi government in 1932–1933. See Husry, Khaldun S., “The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (I),” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5, 2 (1974) 172.Google Scholar In 1973 the Mar Shamūn, who was elevated to the post in 1920, resigned, in an unprecedented move. It is highly doubtful that the office will be filled on a hereditary basis from now on, if it is filled at all by a single individual. In 1976 a new patriarch was elected under new rules.

26 Kukhva, 4, 11 (1909), 129Google Scholar; and others.

27 Ibid., 6, 2 (1911), 36; and others.

28 Ibid., 4, 15 (1910), 172–173.

29 One of the leaders much admired by Assyrians was Haz.rat-i Ashraf Ijlāl-i Mulk, the governor of Urumiyah until 1912 (Ibid., 6, 17 [1912], 200; and 5, 21 [1911], 246–247.

30 Ibid., 6, 22 (1912), 248–250. Compare with SirSykes's, Percy account in A History of Persia, Vol. 2 (New York, 1915) pp. 426–427.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., 6, 3 (1911), 29, 30.

32 Ibid., 6,7 (1911,76–78.

33 Ibid., 4, 11 (1909), 124–125.

34 Ibid., 5, 2 (1910), 23.

35 Ibid., 5, 3 (1910), 25.

36 Ibid., 4, 7 (1909), 78.

37 Ibid., 6, 21 (1912), 241–242.

38 Ibid., 5, 13 (1911), 146–147. Because the by-laws of this society limited membership to “Chaldeans” it was accused of being sectarian. The Society disclaimed such accusations, claiming that all Assyrians in Salamas were in fact known as “Chaldeans.”

39 Ibid., 5, 17 (1911), 200–202.

40 Ibid., 5, 3 (1910), 28.

41 Ibid., 6, 2 (1911), 17–18.

42 Ibid., 5, 2 (1910), 16; and 6, 14 (1912), 161–162.

43 Ibid., 6,15 (1912), 175.

44 By 1930, most Assyrian publications had adopted the American system, including the Soviet periodical Kukhva d Madinkha published in Tiflis, although this system had been described as “naked and bare” (Kukhva 6, 14 [1912], 162Google Scholar; and Kukhva d Madinkha, 1, 10 [1929], 3.)Google Scholar

45 “The Place of Islam in the Persian Constitution,” The Moslem World (1911), 341–342.Google Scholar

46 Kukhva, 5, 14 (1911), 163–164.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 5, 15 (1911), 167–170.

48 By 1911 many Assyrians had already settled permanently in American, Canadian, and European cities (ibid., 5, 15 [1911], 170–171).

49 Ibid., 5, 15 (1911), 174.

50 Ibid., 6, 3 (1911), 29–30.

51 Ibid., 4, 6 (1909), 66–67. It is not clear what channels were available to other denominations, for example, the Lutherans.

52 Ibid., 4, 10 (1909), 115. Muqdusi was a title conferred on a man who performed the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Its use conforms with the Muslim practice of using titles like Hājī, Mashhadī, or Maqdisī (or Muqaddisī) for men making pilgrimages to Mecca, Mashhad, or Jerusalem.

53 Ibid., 6, 20 (1912), 235–236. Whenever the Iranian government proved too weak to take effective action, Assyrians turned to the Russians. See Kukhva, 4, 16 (1910), 187–190.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., 6, 10 (1911), 115–116.

55 The Kukhva article implies that the Russian Orthodox action aimed at preventing Assyrian cooperation with the Persian government (Kukhva, 5, 3 [1910], 29–32).Google Scholar

56 Ibid., 4, 15 (1910), 170–171.

57 Many Assyrians traveled to Russia and the United States under various religious pretexts —collecting money for nonexistent orphanages, schools, and churches. Others would travel as “holy men,” selling bits of wood or soil which they claimed to have brought from Jerusalem, or even from Jesus' grave site. They were labeled with the Armenian term k'acha gogh (cross thieves). See pamphlet by Galen B. Royer, Urumia, Persia: The Nestorians, Great Deceivers “Cross Stealers” (1910?), a copy of which may be found at the Presbyterian Historical Society. Kukhva also discusses this problem but calls them ponchi (thief), Kukhva, 4, 18 (1910), 210.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 4, 6 (1909). 63; and 5, 2 (1910), 13.

59 Ibid., 4, 8 (1909), 90; and 6, 8 (1912), 85–86.

60 Assyrian educators had opened secular schools for Muslims in Urumiyah along new lines, tarbiyat khadta (Per. usūl-i jadīd, new style), where they taught English and Persian as well as the modern sciences. These schools were independent from the mission schools for Muslims (Kukhva, 5, 2 [1910], 20Google Scholar). Persian newspapers quoted in Zārirā d Bārā, 61, 1 (1910), 3Google Scholar, complain about Assyrian immigration from Iran.

61 Kukhva, 6, 23 (1913), 269–270.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 4,6 (1909), 72 ff.

63 Ibid., 6, 13 (1913), 145–146. The editor warns of the danger to Assyrians when the Russian troops depart. See Joseph, , The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors, pp. 128–129Google Scholar, for the treatment of Protestants during the Russian occupation.