Assyrian homelandThe Assyrian homeland, Assyria (Āṯōr or Bêth Nahrin) refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region.
Assyrians in IraqIraqi Assyrians (ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ, آشوريو العراق) are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. Assyrians in Iraq are those Assyrians still residing in the country of Iraq, and those in the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Assyrians in Turkey and Assyrians in Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora.
SyriaSyria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 governorates (subdivisions).
Assyrian continuityAssyrian continuity is the study of continuity between the modern Assyrian people, an indigenous ethnic minority in the Middle East, and the people of ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia in general. Assyrian continuity is a key part of the identity of the modern Assyrian people.
Christianity in SyriaChristians in Syria made up about 10% of the pre-war Syrian population. The country's largest Christian denomination is the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, closely followed by the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Churches that shares its roots with the Eastern Orthodox Church of Antioch, and then by Oriental Orthodox Churches such as Syriac Orthodox Church and Armenian Apostolic Church. There are also a minority of Protestants and members of the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church.
Assyrian–Chaldean–Syriac diasporaThe Assyrian diaspora (Syriac: ܓܠܘܬܐ, Galuta, "exile") refers to ethnic Assyrians living in communities outside their ancestral homeland. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians claim descent from the ancient Assyrians and are one of the few ancient Semitic ethnicities in the Near East who resisted Arabization, Turkification, Persianization and Islamization during and after the Muslim conquest of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
SyriansSyrians (سوريون) are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, who have Arabic, especially its Levantine dialect, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. By the seventh century, most of the inhabitants of the Levant spoke Aramaic.
Assyrians in IranAssyrians in Iran (ܐܬܘܪܝܐ ܕܐܝܼܪܵܢ), (آشوریان ایران), are an ethnic and linguistic minority in present-day Iran. The Assyrians of Iran speak Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, a neo-Aramaic language descended from Classical Syriac and elements of Akkadian, and are Eastern Rite Christians belonging mostly to the Assyrian Church of the East and also to the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Chaldean Catholic Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church.
Suret languageSuret (ܣܘܪܝܬ) ([ˈsu:rɪth] or [ˈsu:rɪθ]), also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, largely ethnic Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
Assyrian nationalismAssyrian nationalism is a movement of the Assyrian people that advocates for independence or autonomy within the regions they inhabit in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey. The Assyrian people claim descent from those who established the Mesopotamian Assyrian civilization and empire which was centered in Ashur, modern day Iraq, which at its height, covered the Levant and Egypt, as well as portions of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.