Assyrian people
Nation | Active
909 BCE to 2057 CE
The Assyrian people (frequently known as Assyrians, Syriacs, Syriac Christians, Suroye/Suryoye, Chaldo-Assyrians, and other variants) are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent.
Today that ancient territory is part of several nations; the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people have been minorities under other ethnic groups' rule since the early Middle Ages.
They have traditionally lived all over Iraq, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, and the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey.
Many have migrated to the Caucasus, North America, Australia and Europe during the past century.
The major sub-ethnic division is between an Eastern group ("Assyrian Church of the East" and Assyrian "Chaldean Christians") and a Western one ("Syrian Jacobites"), it may be that the latter group are in fact of Aramean ancestry rather than Mesopotamian.Diaspora and refugee communities are based in Europe (particularly Sweden, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany and France), North America, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Armenia, Georgia, southern Russia and Jordan.
Emigration was triggered by such events as the Assyrian genocide in the wake of the First World War during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the Simele massacre in Iraq (1933), the Islamic revolution in Iran (1979), Arab Nationalist Baathist policies in Iraq and Syria, the Al-Anfal Campaign of Saddam Hussain.
and to some degree Kurdish nationalist policies in northern Iraq.Most recently the Iraq War has displaced the regional Assyrian community, as its people have faced ethnic and religious persecution at the hands of both Sunni and Shia Islamic extremists and Arab and Kurdish nationalists.
Of the one million or more Iraqis reported by the United Nations to have fled, nearly forty percent (40%) are Assyrian, although Assyrians comprise only three percent of the Iraqi population.
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Ashur, named after the sun-god of the Assyrians, is one of the cities that flourishes in the middle of the Tigris Valley during this period.
The Assyrians are Semitic speakers who occupy Babylon for a brief period in the thirteenth century BCE.
Invasions of iron-producing peoples into the Middle East and into the Aegean region in approximately 1200 BCE had disrupted the indigenous empires of Mesopotamia, but eventually the Assyrians are able to capitalize on the new alignments of power in the region.
The Assyrians began to expand to the west in the early part of the ninth century BCE; by 859 they reach the Mediterranean Sea, where they occupy Phoenician cities.
Damascus and Babylon fall to the next generations of Assyrian rulers.
Assyrian rule (875-608 BCE) deprives the Phoenician cities of their independence and prosperity and brings repeated, unsuccessful rebellions.
People called Mannaeans live in Iran’s present Azerbaijan province in the second millennium BCE.
Their kingdom is situated east and south of the Lake Urmia, roughly centered around the present-day city of Orumiyeh in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.
Excavations that began in 1956 succeeded in uncovering the fortified city of Hasanlu, once thought to be a potential Mannaean site.
More recently, the site of Qalaichi (possibly ancient Izirtu/Zirta) has been linked to the Mannaeans based on a stela with this toponym found at the site.
The Mannaeans' kingdom begins to flourish around 850 BCE.
They are mainly a settled people, practicing irrigation and breeding cattle and horses.
Their capital is another fortified city, Izirtu (Zirta).
They have expanded by the 820s BCE to become the first large state to occupy this region since the Gutians, later followed by the unrelated Iranic peoples, the Medes and the Persians.
They have developed a prominent aristocracy as a ruling class, who somewhat limit the power of the king.
The region becomes contested ground beginning around 800 BCE between the people of Urartu, who build several forts on the territory of Mannaea, and Assyria.
Babylonia and the whole of southern Mesopotamia had come under Assyrian domination during Dynasty VIII.
In addition to this, hostile Aramean and Sutu tribes had ravaged much of the land during this dynasty, and the Chaldean tribes under Elamite protection had appropriated south eastern Mesopotamia for themselves until they were repressed by the Assyrians.
Phrygia forms the western part of a loose confederation of peoples (identified as “Mushki” in Assyrian records) that dominates the entire Anatolian peninsula between the twelfth and ninth centuries BCE.
This early civilization borrows heavily from the Hittites, whom they had replaced around 1200, and establishes a system of roads that the Persians will later utilized.
The Phrygians excel in metalwork and woodcarving and are said to have originated the art of embroidery.
Phrygian carpets are famous.
Among the various Phrygian religious practices, the cult of the Great Mother (Cybele) predominates and is passed on to the Greeks.
Little else is known of Phrygian society.
The great shrines such as Pessinus own vast lands, the high priests being virtually autonomous rulers.
Society is probably feudal.
An intelligent and evidently cultivated elite (they are able to read and write) exists at Gordium and the important religious center at “Midas City” (modern Yazilikaya, Turkey), together with an important nucleus of craftsmen and merchants, some doubtless being foreigners—Greeks, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Urartaeans.
A staple industry is sheep rearing, which provides a fine wool much in demand in Miletus and other Greek centers of industry.
The neighborhood of Midas City harbors considerable forestland, and timber is clearly an important economic factor.
Another specialty is horse rearing, the Phrygians probably being, like many of the Indo-Europeans, an equestrian aristocracy ruling over other native peoples.
Assyria’s northern frontiers are pressed from the Caucasus by the Indo-European Scythians and from Western Iran by the Medes.
The Aramaean kingdoms are subjugated by Adad-nirari II, Ashurnasirpal II, and his son Shalmaneser III, who destroy many of the small tribes, and give control of Aramea and local trade and natural resources to the Assyrians.
The Aramaean populations in Assyria and Babylonia are gradually absorbed into the native populations.
The neo-Assyrian kings depict themselves as warlike heroes in their sculpted portraiture.
Man-headed winged bulls dominate Assyrian art and architecture, and elegant bas-reliefs in hard stone express the expanding Empire’s glories.
The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, but was offset by the difficulty of raising large forces and by the inability of horses (at this time mostly small) to carry heavy armor.
Cavalry techniques are an innovation of equestrian nomads of the Central Asian and Iranian steppe and pastoralist tribes such as the later Persian Parthians and Sarmatians.
The photograph at right shows Assyrian cavalry from reliefs of 865–860 BCE.
At this time, the men have no spurs, saddles, saddle cloths, or stirrups.
Fighting from the back of a horse is much more difficult than mere riding.
The cavalry acts in pairs; the reins of the mounted archer are controlled by his neighbor's hand.
Even at this early time, cavalry uses swords, shields, and bows.
The sculpture implies two types of cavalry, but this might be a simplification by the artist.
Later images of Assyrian cavalry show saddle cloths as primitive saddles, allowing each archer to control his own horse.
Assyrian records of the age refer to the people of Urartu, a kingdom centered in eastern Turkey.
The name Urartu comes from Assyrian sources: the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I (1263–1234 BCE) recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of "Uruatri".
The Shalmaneser text uses the name Urartu to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom, and names eight "lands" contained within Urartu (which at the time of the campaign were still disunited).
The kingdom's native name was Biainili, also spelt Biaineli, (from which is derived the Armenian toponym "Van"), but prior to the eighth century BCE, they also called their now united kingdom "Nairi".
Scholars believe that Urartu is an Akkadian variation of Ararat of the Old Testament: Mount Ararat, the famous Biblical mountain, is located in ancient Urartian territory, approximately 120 km north of its former capital.
Ararat also appears as the name of a kingdom in Jeremiah 51:27, mentioned together with Minni and Ashkenaz, three kingdoms called together against Babylon.
Assyria had been a minor kingdom of northern Mesopotamia in the Middle Assyrian period, competing for dominance with Babylonia to the south.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire, which succeeded the Middle Assyrian period (fourteenth to tenth century BCE), is usually considered to have begun in 911 BCE with the accession of Adad-nirari II, whose campaigns set Assyria on the path to becoming great regional power.
During this period, Aramaic is also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.
Mesopotamia has come fully into the Iron Age by 900 BCE.
Some scholars, such as Richard Nelson Frye, regard the Neo-Assyrian Empire to be the first real empire in human history.
Adad-nirari II's father was Ashur-dan II, whom he had succeeded.
Because of the existence of full eponym lists from the reign of Adad-nirari II down to the middle of the reign of Ashurbanipal in the seventh century BCE, year one of his reign in 911 BCE is perhaps the first event in ancient Near Eastern history which can be dated to an exact year, although the Assyrian King List is generally considered to be quite accurate for several centuries before Adad-nirari's reign, and scholars generally agree on a single set of dates back to Ashur-resh-ishi I in the late twelfth century BCE.
After two wars with Assyria’s southern rival, Babylonia, in which Adad-nirari had subjugated the Aramaean cities of Kadmuh and Nisibin, along with vast amounts of treasure collected, he also secures the Khabur river region.
He firmly subjugates the areas previously under only nominal Assyrian vassalage, deporting populations in the north to far-off places.
Apart from pushing the boundary with Babylonia slightly southward, he does not engage in actual expansion, and the borders of the empire he consolidates reach only as far west as the Khabur River.
The Assyrians succeed in reducing Babylonia to vassal status by 904.