Assyrian continuity

The Assyrian continuity thesis is the idea that the modern Assyrians are to be culturally and historically identified with, and are the direct descendants of, the ancient Assyrians, who were one of several contemporary civilizations in Mesopotamia. This claimed heritage is a key aspect of the modern Assyrian identity. The modern Assyrian people are an ethno-linguistic and religious minority in their ancestral homeland, which spans parts of Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and northwestern Iran.

Assyrian culture and identity appear to have survived the violent collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609 BC. During the long post-imperial period (6th century BC – 3rd century AD), when Assyria was also known as Athura, Provincia Assyria, and Asoristan, the Akkadian language gradually went extinct, completely disappearing by the 1st century AD. However, other aspects of the Assyrian civilization, such as religion, traditions, naming patterns, and the Akkadian-influenced dialects of East Aramaic survived in a reduced but recognizable form, before giving way to specifically native forms of Eastern Rite Christianity.

The gradual extinction of Akkadian and its replacement with Akkadian-influenced East Aramaic does not reflect the disappearance of the original Assyrian population; Aramaic was used not only by settlers, but also by native Assyrians and Babylonians, in time even becoming used by the royal administrations of Assyria and Babylonia themselves, and indeed retained by the succeeding Indo-European–speaking Achaemenid Empire. In fact, the new language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Imperial Aramaic, was itself a creation of the Assyrian Empire and its people, and with its retention of an Akkadian grammatical structure and Akkadian words and names, is distinct from the Western Aramaic of the Levant which gradually replaced the Canaanite languages (with the partial exception of Hebrew). In addition, Aramaic also replaced other Semitic languages such as Hebrew, Phoenician, Arabic, Edomite, Moabite, Amorite, Ugarite, Dilmunite, and Chaldean among non-Aramean peoples without prejudicing their origins and identity. Since the Aramaic language was so deeply integrated into the empire and due to the fact it was spread chiefly by Assyria, in later Demotic Egyptian, Greek, and Mishanic Hebrew texts it was referred to as the "Assyrian writing." Due to assimilation efforts encouraged by Assyrian kings, fellow Semitic Arameans, Israelites, Judeans, Phoenicians, and other non-Semitic groups such as Hittites, Hurrians, Urartians, Phrygians, Persians, and Elamites deported into the Assyrian heartland are also likely to quickly have been absorbed into the native population, self-identified, and been regarded, as Assyrians. The Assyrian population of Upper Mesopotamia was largely Christianized between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, however Mesopotamian religion enduring among Assyrians in small pockets until the late Middle Ages, a further indication of continuity. Assyrian Aramaic-language sources from the Christian period predominantly use the self-designation Suryāyā ("Syrian") alongside "Athoraya", with early medieval Arab, Persian and Armenian sources using the derivative terms "Sūryānīyūn", "Asori" and "Assuri" respectively. The term Suryāyā, sometimes alternatively translated as "Syrian" or "Syriac", is generally accepted to derive from the ancient Akkadian Assūrāyu, meaning Assyrian. The academic consensus is that the modern name "Syria" originated as a shortened form of "Assyria" and applied originally only to Mesopotamian Assyria and not to the modern Levantine country of Syria. Christian Palestinian Aramaic texts, presumably with Greek influence, use the term "Suraya" and "Asuraya" interchangeably to refer to the ancient Assyrians.

Assyrian nationalism centered on a desire for self-determination developed near the end of the 19th century, coinciding with increasing contacts with Europeans, increasing levels of ethnic and religious persecution, along with increased expressions nationalism in other Middle Eastern groups, such as the Arabs, Armenians, Copts, Jews, Kurds, Persians, and Turks. Through the large-scale promotion of long extant terms and promotion of identities such as ʾĀthorāyā and ʾAsurāyā, Assyrian intellectuals and authors hoped to inspire the unification of the Assyrian nation, transcending long-standing religious denominational divisions between the Assyrian Church of the East, its 17th century offshoot, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and various smaller largely Protestant denominations. This effort has been met with both support and some opposition from various religious communities; some denominations have rejected unity and promoted alternate religious identities, such as "Aramean", "Syriac", and "Chaldean". Though some religious officials and activists (particularly in the west) have promoted such identities as separate ethnic groups rather than simply religious denominational groups, they are not generally treated as such by international organizations or historians, and historically, genetically, geographically and linguistically these are all the same Assyrian people.

Many scholars in various fields have expressed support for Assyrian continuity. There is also some opposition, especially in the field of Syriac studies. According to the leading Syriac scholar Sebastian Brock, "the alleged ethnic identity with the ancient Assyrians is in fact a recent creation which has taken place in the course of the last century and a half, and it lacks any sound historical basis." According to Adam H. Becker, a Syriac scholar who has investigated the origins of Assyrian nationalism, the use of the word Assyrian itself for the modern ethnic group "derives from Western sources, not from a continuity of identity between the ancient Assyrians and the modern ones." Proponents of the thesis regard such statements as inaccurate and partial.