Assyrian people

Overview

The Assyrians are an indigenous people of ancient Mesopotamia whose communities continue into the present. Their historical heartland lies in the northern part of that region, particularly around Mosul and the nearby Nineveh Plains in Iraq. Assyrian communities also live in Syria, Turkey and Iran, as well as in a wider diaspora. Syriac Christian churches, Aramaic-language traditions and ties to northern Mesopotamia remain central to community life.

The modern Assyrian people must be distinguished from the ancient Assyrian Empire. The empire was a state that conquered and ruled many peoples; the people survived its fall and developed through later centuries under different governments. Modern Assyrians are predominantly Christian and belong to several churches. Church affiliation and ethnic identity do not always coincide: members of the Church of the East developed a particularly strong modern Assyrian national identity, while Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic and Chaldean Catholic Christians have expressed identity in differing ways. These distinctions coexist with shared experiences of persecution, displacement and efforts to preserve language and communal institutions.

Assyrian history connects two different kinds of displacement. Ancient Assyrian rulers deported conquered populations, including Hebrews from the northern kingdom of Israel. In modern history, Assyrians themselves endured massacres, forced migration and the destruction of communities. The Ottoman-era genocide known as Sayfo, repression under Saddam Hussein, and Islamic State’s 2014 seizure of Mosul and the Nineveh Plains each reshaped where Assyrians could live. The continued presence of their churches, schools and families in the region shows that the end of an empire was never the end of a people.

Origins

The ancient Assyrians were a Semitic people of northern Mesopotamia. For much of their early history, stronger kingdoms to the south subjugated them. The ruler Shamshi-Adad attempted to build an Assyrian empire, but Hammurabi of Babylon defeated that attempt. Hurrians later entered the Semitic communities of northern Mesopotamia and began building an empire of their own. Their expansion was overtaken by the rise of the Hittites. Because the Hittites left Assyrian cities outside their annexations, the Assyrians eventually gained an independent state.

Assyrian power rose and receded over many centuries before the final imperial collapse. Under Tukulti-Ninurta, who ruled from 1235 to 1198 BCE, Assyria began conquests that included Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser I, who ruled from 1116 to 1090 BCE, extended Assyrian dominance toward Syria and Armenia. An earlier period of imperial strength declined around 1200 BCE, but Assyria later recovered. Its reach expanded greatly under Ashurnazirpal II and Shalmaneser III between 883 and 824 BCE. Military organization, siege warfare and the movement of conquered populations helped rulers hold territory across a region of many languages and religions.

Nineveh became the empire’s capital and one of the best-known cities of the ancient Near East. Its place in Assyrian history does not make every later inhabitant of northern Mesopotamia an imperial subject or member of one ancient ethnic category. The region repeatedly changed rulers and populations. Modern Assyrian identity belongs to the later communities that maintained a distinct presence there, especially through Syriac Christian religious and linguistic traditions. The ancient empire forms an important part of their historical inheritance, while the churches and settlements of subsequent centuries explain the people’s continued life after imperial rule.

History

A major revival of Assyrian imperial power began in 745 BCE under Tiglath-Pileser III. He conquered Ararat in 735 BCE. That year, Syria and Israel allied against Judah, and Judah’s king Ahaz sent tribute to Nineveh to seek Assyrian help. Tiglath-Pileser entered Syria with his army in 734 BCE, destroyed the forces of Rezon and laid siege to Damascus. Leaving troops to continue the siege, he led the rest of his army against Israel. Assyrian forces plundered the kingdom, and its king Pekah took refuge in Samaria. Damascus fell to Assyria in 732 BCE.

Tiglath-Pileser’s campaign extended well beyond Israel and Syria. He conquered the Ammonites and Moabites and imposed tribute on them. As he marched toward Gaza, its king Hanun fled to Egypt; Tiglath-Pileser occupied Gaza, then allowed Hanun to return under tribute. In 734 BCE he also conquered many Arab tribes under Queen Samsi’s rule. After Damascus fell, he again invaded Babylon. By 730 BCE, Assyria was the dominant power in the Middle East. These campaigns placed the northern kingdom of Israel within an expanding system of Assyrian military rule, tribute and population transfer.

Assyrian rulers forcibly deported conquered populations across the empire to reduce the risk of revolt. The policy also mixed cultures, religions and languages across the Middle East and Mesopotamia. Deportations from Israel began under Tiglath-Pileser III. After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom, Sargon II forcibly relocated Hebrews, including inhabitants of Samaria, to Assyrian territories. His account gives a figure of about 27,000 deportees from Samaria. Many of the exiles settled in Upper Mesopotamia and other parts of the empire. The deportation marked a historical beginning of the Jewish diaspora; Hebrews taken from Israel blended into Assyrian society and disappeared as a distinct recorded community in northern Mesopotamia.

Assyria continued to threaten Judah after the northern kingdom’s fall. During Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah, the Assyrian official Rabshakeh addressed Jerusalem’s people in their own language in an effort to break the city’s will before battle. The episode illustrates how Assyrian warfare combined armed force with demands for submission. Under Ashurbanipal, the empire remained powerful and Nineveh became a center for the collection of Mesopotamian writings. After his reign, Assyrian imperial power began to crumble. Babylonians led by Nabopolassar, aided by the Medes, conquered and burned Nineveh in 612 BCE. Its destruction ended Assyrian imperial dominance, but Assyrian communities continued to live in the region.

In subsequent centuries, Christianity became central to the communities now identified as Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac. Their churches sustained forms of Syriac, an Aramaic language, in worship, writing and education. Mosul and the Nineveh Plains became a historic homeland of Assyrian Christians within a broader landscape also inhabited by Jews, Yazidis, Kurds and Muslims. That diversity remained a feature of northern Iraq into modern times, even as violence and migration sharply reduced several communities.

Persecution and survival

During the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks organized massacres and deportations that killed approximately 1.5 million Armenians and also targeted Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans and other Christian communities. The Assyrian genocide, known as Sayfo, or the Sword, began in 1915 and killed up to half of the Assyrian nation. Survivors scattered from their towns and villages. The killings belong to the wider destruction of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities between 1914 and 1923. They were a catastrophe for a people that had survived long after the fall of ancient Nineveh.

Violence followed Assyrians into the modern Iraqi state. The 1933 massacres of Assyrians unsettled Iraq’s minorities; the Farhud later had an effect beyond Iraq’s Jewish community as well. Under Saddam Hussein, northern Assyrians were suspected of collaborating with Iraqi Kurds. The regime’s Arabization campaign sought to harass and expel non-Arabs from government-controlled parts of northern Iraq, including Assyrians in Kirkuk. Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrians were driven from homes in Kirkuk and other northern cities. Saddam’s officials arrested more than 150,000 Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians and other non-Arabs who were never seen again.

The Anfal campaign of 1988 formed part of Saddam Hussein’s wider repression of Assyrian and Yazidi minority identities. Most Assyrians lived in Iraq’s northern governorates, where Iraqi forces executed many Assyrians and destroyed numerous churches. The destruction of places of worship struck at institutions that had preserved communal life across generations. Repression also damaged the villages and mixed communities on which a continued Assyrian presence in northern Iraq depended.

Christians remained vulnerable after Saddam’s rule ended. On January 17 and 18, 2010, two Christian men were shot dead in separate attacks in Mosul within 24 hours. On February 25, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul described a humanitarian emergency as hundreds of Christian families fled the city, leaving homes, property and businesses behind. Such departures weakened the everyday networks of worship, work and family that supported the community before Islamic State’s later offensive.

In June 2014, Islamic State attacked Mosul while several competing security forces operated across the Nineveh Plains. Kurdish forces had exercised effective control over Christian areas through intelligence personnel, Kurdish-paid Christian forces and a largely Kurdish Iraqi army garrison; federal Iraq supplied police. Islamic State extended full control over the Nineveh Plains in August 2014, displacing its Assyrian and other Christian residents. Churches and homes were damaged, and families fled to safer areas, including Erbil. Expelling Islamic State did not by itself restore those communities: fear of renewed attacks, distrust of Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, damaged housing and the risk of clashes among armed groups impeded return.

Religion and culture

Assyrian communal life is closely tied to Syriac Christianity. Syriac is a form of Aramaic used in Christian liturgy and literature, and its preservation gives churches and schools a role beyond worship alone. The Assyrian Church of the East is one prominent institution. The Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church and Chaldean Catholic Church are also part of the religious landscape of northern Mesopotamia. Denominational names should not be treated as interchangeable with a single ethnic label: after massacres of Iraqi Christians, members of the Church of the East developed a strong modern Assyrian national distinction, while Syriac Orthodox Christians did not generally adopt the same distinction and maintained their own denominational pride.

Language education helps transmit that inheritance. Aramaic-language public schools have operated in the Kurdistan Region since the late 1980s under a ministry division staffed by Christians. The region funded more than 30 Aramaic-language elementary schools and eight secondary schools in Duhok province. These institutions allow children to study in a language connected to their families’ churches and history. In northeastern Syria, educational initiatives have also included Syriac-language materials, although disputes over curricula and recognition have affected families’ choices. Such questions concern whether a dispersed community can maintain language across generations while its members live under different authorities.

Church institutions continue to connect displaced and resident communities. In September 2022, the Assyrian Church of the East inaugurated a new patriarchal headquarters in Erbil. Its presence in northern Iraq reflects both the movement of Christians away from Mosul and the continuing importance of the region to Assyrian religious life. Communities also remain in Iran, including Tabriz. There, Iranian authorities closed a century-old Presbyterian church belonging to the Assyrian community on May 9; agents changed its locks, removed its cross and barred congregants from services. The incident shows how access to a church can directly affect a small community’s ability to gather and worship.

Present day

The Nineveh Plains remain a center of modern Assyrian community life and a test of whether displaced families can rebuild it. A post-2014 assessment counted 90,000 people still displaced from the area’s pre-2014 population of 120,000. In the same assessment, 41 percent of displaced Christians wanted to return, but only 3,365 had returned home. Aid to the Church in Need estimated that 12,970 homes needed rebuilding at a cost exceeding $200 million. Those figures describe the position at the time of the assessment, not a current population count. They show why the defeat of Islamic State could not alone provide habitable homes or trusted protection.

Security in the plains remained divided among Iraqi forces, Kurdish forces and armed groups linked to local communities or larger political organizations. The 1,500-member Nineveh Plains Guards operated as a Kurdish proxy force connected to the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council. Dwekh Nawsha was connected to the Assyrian Patriotic Party, with both concentrated in the northern Nineveh Plains. These different allegiances complicated the creation of security arrangements that returning residents would trust. Fear of an Islamic State resurgence and distrust of both Kurdish and Iraqi security forces continued to impede return after the towns were retaken.

Assyrians also remain part of the political and social life of neighboring Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces brought together Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians, Turkmen and Yazidis in the campaign against Islamic State. The Kurdish National Council recognized rights of Syriac, Assyrian and Arab communities in Rojava. In 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government identified protection of Muslims, Christians, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmens and Arabs among its central responsibilities. Such statements concern a region in which communities share towns and institutions, while their security and representation remain matters of practical consequence.

Assyrian survival today rests on more than the memory of an ancient empire. Families and churches still live in the Mesopotamian homeland, teach Syriac, maintain schools and seek to rebuild towns after repeated displacement. Their history includes both the imperial power that conquered Israel and the later Christian communities that endured Sayfo, Arabization, Anfal and Islamic State’s assault. Preserving the Nineveh Plains as a place where Assyrians can live securely requires functioning homes and services, freedom of worship, and protection that residents trust.