The Arameans (Syriac: ܐܳܪ̈ܳܡܳܝܶܐ, Ōromōye; or ܣܽܘܪ̈ܝܳܝܶܐ, Sūryōyē) also known as Syriacs, are an ethnic group indigenous to the Levant and Mesopotamia[25], a region in the Middle East previously known as Aram. Arameans claim descent from the ancient Arameans one of the oldest civilizations in the world, dating back to 2500 BC in ancient Mesopotamia.[26]
Arameans speak various dialects of Neo-Aramaic a modern variant of the ancient Aramaic language, with Turoyo and Western Neo-Aramaic being the two main spoken subdialects. The Arameans are a predominantely christian nation who belong to various denominations of Syriac Christianity and to a lesser degree a group of Mandaeans who are non-christian remnants of the ancient Arameans. Arameans have maintained a continuous and separate identity that predates the Arabization of the Middle East.
The Arameans originate from present-day southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria and northern Iraq.[27] The majority of the Arameans live in a diaspora and fled to other regions of the world, such as Europe, North America, and Australia. They fled due to islamic oppression in their ancestral homeland. Events such as the Hamidian Massacres and the Aramean Genocide and the present day takeover of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) caused the reduction of Arameans in these regions.[28][29]
The toponymA-ra-mu appears in an inscription at the East Semitic speaking kingdom of Ebla listing geographical names, and the term Armi, which is the Eblaite term for nearby Idlib (modern Aleppo), occurs frequently in the Ebla tablets (c. 2300 BC). One of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BC) mentions that he captured "Dubul, the ruler of the A-ra-me" (Arame is seemingly a genitive form), in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains.[30] Other early references to a place or people of "Aram" have appeared at the archives of Mari (c. 1900 BC) and at Ugarit (c. 1300 BC).
However, there is absolutely no historical, archaeological or linguistic evidence that the Aramu, Armi or Arame were actually Arameans or even related to them; and the earliest undisputed historical attestation of Arameans as a people appears much later, in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 BC).[31]
Nomadic pastoralists have long played a prominent role in the history and economy of the Middle East, but their numbers seem to vary according to climatic conditions and the force of neighbouring states inducing permanent settlement. The period of the Late Bronze Age seems to have coincided with increasing aridity, which weakened neighbouring states and induced transhumance pastoralists to spend longer and longer periods with their flocks. Urban settlements (hitherto largely Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, Ugarite inhabited) in The Levant diminished in size, until eventually fully nomadic pastoralist lifestyles came to dominate much of the region. These highly mobile, competitive tribesmen with their sudden raids continually threatened long-distance trade and interfered with the collection of taxes and tribute.
The people who had long been the prominent population within what is today Syria (called the Land of the Amurru during their tenure) were the Amorites, a Canaanite speaking group of Semites who had appeared during the 25th century BC, destroying the hitherto dominant East Semitic speaking state of Ebla, founding the powerful state of Mari in the Levant, and during the 19th century BC founding Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia. However, they seem to have been displaced or wholly absorbed by the appearance of a people called the Ahlamu by the 13th century BC, disappearing from history.
Ahlamû appears to be a generic term for a new wave of Semitic wanderers and nomads of varying origins who appeared during the 13th century BC across the Near East, Arabian Peninsula, Asia Minor, and Egypt. The presence of the Ahlamû is attested during the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), which already ruled many of the lands in which the Ahlamû arose, in the Babylonian city of Nippur and even at Dilmun (modern Bahrain). Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 BC) is recorded as having defeated Shattuara, King of the Mitanni and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries. In the following century, the Ahlamû cut the road from Babylon to Hattusas, and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 BC) conquered Mari, Hanigalbat and Rapiqum on the Euphrates and "the mountain of the Ahlamû", apparently the region of Jebel Bishri in northern Syria.
The first certain reference to the Arameans appears in an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BC), which refers to subjugating the "Ahlamû-Aramaeans" (Ahlame Armaia). Shortly after, the Ahlamû rapidly disappear from Assyrian annals, to be replaced by the Aramaeans (Aramu, Arimi). This indicates that the Arameans had risen to dominance amongst the nomads; however, it is possible that the two peoples had nothing in common, but operated in the same area.[32] By the late 12th century BC, the Arameans were firmly established in Syria; however, they were conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire, as had been the Amorites and Ahlamu before them.
The Arameans would appear to be one part of the larger generic Ahlamû group rather than synonymous with the Ahlamu.
Antiquity
Guardian Lion Sculpture from the Inner Gate of the Aramean Citadel of Sam'al near modern Zincirli Höyük, Turkey 10th-8th century BCE
The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC), which had dominated the Near East and Asia Minor since the first half of the 14th century BC, began to shrink rapidly after the death of Ashur-bel-kala, its last great ruler in 1056 BC, and the Assyrian withdrawal allowed the Arameans and others to gain independence and take firm control of what was then Eber-Nari (and is today Syria) during the late 11th century BC. It is from this point that the region was called Aramea.
Later Biblical sources tell us that Saul, David and Solomon (late 11th to 10th centuries) fought against the small Aramean kingdoms ranged across the northern frontier of Israel: Aram-Sôvah in the Beqaa, Aram-Bêt-Rehob (Rehov) and Aram-Ma'akah around Mount Hermon, Geshur in the Hauran, and Aram-Damascus. An Aramean king's account dating at least two centuries later, the Tel Dan Stele, was discovered in northern Israel, and is famous for being perhaps the earliest non-Israelite extra-biblical historical reference to the Israelite royal dynasty, the House of David. In the early 11th century BC, much of Israel came under Aramean rule for eight years according to the Biblical Book of Judges, until Othniel defeated the forces led by Chushan-Rishathaim, the King of Aram-Naharaim.[34]
Further north, the Arameans gained possession of Neo-Hittite Hamath on the Orontes and were soon to become strong enough to dissociate with the Indo-European speaking Neo-Hittite states.
During the 11th and the 10th centuries BC, the Arameans conquered Sam'al (modern Zincirli), also known as Yaudi, the region from Arpad to Aleppo, which they renamed Bît-Agushi, and Til Barsip, which became the chief town of Bît-Adini, also known as Beth Eden. North of Sam'al was the Aramean state of Bit-Gabbari, which was sandwiched between the Syro-Hittite states of Carchemish, Gurgum, Khattina, Unqi and the Georgian state of Tabal.
At the same time, Arameans moved to the east of the Euphrates, where they settled in such numbers that, for a time, the whole region became known as Aram-Naharaim or "Aram of the two rivers". Eastern Aramaean tribes spread into Babylonia and an Aramaean usurper was crowned king of Babylon under the name of Adad-apal-iddin.[35] One of their earliest semi-independent kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia was Bît-Bahiâni (Tell Halaf).
Assyrian annals from the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire c. 1050 BC and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 911 BC contain numerous descriptions of battles between Arameans and the Assyrian army.[36] The Assyrians would launch repeated raids into Aramea, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Elam, Asia Minor, and even as far as the Mediterranean, in order to keep its trade routes open. The Aramean kingdoms, like much of the Near East and Asia Minor, were subjugated by the Neo Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), beginning with the reign of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, who cleared Arameans and other tribal peoples from the borders of Assyria, and began to expand in all directions (See Assyrian conquest of Aram). This process was continued by Ashurnasirpal II, and his son Shalmaneser III, who between them destroyed many of the small Aramean tribes, and conquered the whole of Aramea (modern Syria) for the Assyrians. In 732 BC Aram-Damascus fell and was conquered by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III. The Assyrians named their Aramean colonies Eber Nari, whilst still using the term Aramean to describe many of its peoples. The Assyrians conducted forced deportations of hundreds of thousands Arameans into both Assyria and Babylonia (where a migrant population already existed).[37] Conversely, the eastern Aramaic language was adopted as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC, and the native Assyrians and Babylonians began to make a gradual language shift to distinctly Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic dialects (including the Syriac language, which evolved in 5th century BC Assyria) and still survives to this day amongst the indigenousAssyrianChristians and Mandeans of northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and northwest Iran.
The Neo Assyrian Empire descended into a bitter series of brutal internal civil wars from 626 BC, weakening it greatly. This allowed a coalition of many its former subject peoples; the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Scythians, Sargatians and Cimmerians to attack Assyria in 616 BC, sacking Nineveh in 612 BC, and finally defeating it between 605 and 599 BC. During the war against Assyria, hordes of horse borne Scythian and Cimmerian marauders ravaged through Aramea and all the way into Egypt.
Aramea/Eber-Nari was then ruled by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC), initially headed by a short lived Chaldean dynasty. The Aramean regions became a battleground between the Babylonians and the Egyptian 26th Dynasty, which had been installed by the Assyrians as vassals after they had conquered Egypt, ejected the previous Nubian dynasty and destroyed the Kushite Empire. The Egyptians, having entered the region in a belated attempt to aid their former Assyrian masters, fought the Babylonians (initially with the help of remnants of the Assyrian army) in the region for decades before being finally vanquished.
The Babylonians remained masters of the Aramean lands only until 539 BC, when the PersianAchaemenid Empire overthrew Nabonidus, the Assyrian born last king of Babylon, who had himself previously overthrown the Chaldean dynasty in 556 BC.
The Arameans were later conquered by the Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC). However, little changed from the Assyrian period, as the Persians, seeing themselves as successors to the Assyrians and having spent three centuries under Assyrian rule, maintained Imperial Aramaic as the state language, together with Assyrian administrative structures, and the name Eber Nari still applied to the region.
Early Christian period
The Parthian, Roman and Byzantine Empires followed, with the Aramean lands becoming the front line initially between the Parthian and Roman empires, and then between the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires. There was also a brief period of Armenian rule during the Roman Period. Between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, the Arameans began to adopt Christianity in place of the polytheist Aramean religion. The Levant and Mesopotamia became an important centre of Syriac Christianity from where the Syriac language and Syriac script emerged.
Aramean Genocide monument (Brussels, Belgium)
Syriac Christianity survives among the indigenous pre-Arab population to the present day. Arameans continued to be the majority population in their homeland (most of modern Syria and part of south-central Asia Minor) until well after the ArabIslamic Conquest of the mid-7th century AD. A number of Aramean kingdoms sprang up in the region, the most important being Palmyra, (which for a brief period became the Palmyrene Empire, rivaling Rome). There was probably some synthesis with pre-Islamic Arab migrants in the southern deserts (and possibly Greeks and Phoenicians also).
Middle Ages
Arameans remained dominant in what is now Southeastern Turkey. Till the end of the 13th century the majority were Arameans. In the beginning of the 14th century the Arameans became the victims of ethnic cleansing under the Mongolian rulerTimur-Lenk. The Arameans became eradicated in many cities and villages especially in what is present-day Southeastern-Turkey. As a result many monasteries and churches were replaced on heigh mountains to be unnoted for the enemies like happened with the Monastery of Mor Augin.[38]
Modern History
In the mid-1890's the Hamidian massacres took place, a mass murder targeting Arameans, Armenians and Assyrians in Diyarbakir. The Hamidian massacres are often being viewed as the pre-genocide massacres.
About 25 years later, in the early 19th century the Arameans also became victims of the genocide committed by the Ottomans and Kurdish tribes. This genocide became known under the Armenian Genocide. Arameans also speak of the Aramean Genocide or Sayfo meaning sword in Aramaic. Between 400,000 and 750,000 Arameans were estimated to have been slaughtered by the armies of the Ottoman Empire and their Kurdish allies, totalling up to two-thirds of the entire Aramean population.[39][40]
The Aramean Genocide led to a mass migration of Arameans to neighbouring countries such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel, causing the beginning of the first Aramean diaspora outside their ancestral homeland.
The number of Arameans in Turkey is estimated at ± 40,000. They are mainly located in Southeast Turkey, but also in major cities such as Istanbul and Ankara. Southeast Turkey, also called Tur Abdin by the Arameans, has an ancient cultural history that dates back to centuries BC. The Arameans are an important part of the history of this region. In the Byzantine period and the first centuries of Islam, Tur Abdin was entirely inhabited by Christian Arameans. Christianity is widespread within the boundaries of the area: Mardin in the west, old Hasankeyf in the north, Cizre in the east and Nusaybin in the south. The population in this region lives mainly in the countryside and is engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry.[41]
The British traveler Gertrude Bell visited the region in 1909. "The Thousand and One Churches" is the title of her travelogue, through the many hundreds of years old churches and monasteries that exist in the region Tur Abdin .
The Aramean population in Turkey declined sharply after the Aramean genocide, survivors fled to neighboring countries. About 70% of the Arameans living in present-day Turkey were systematically massacred. After the establishment of the Kurdish PKK in 1974, the Aramean population became the victim of the conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurdish population in the region. As a result, the Arameans sought rapprochement in the west as political refugees. [42][43][44]
In the early 21st century, Arameans in Turkey faced with the confiscation of estates and possessions. For example, in 2017 alone, more than 100 churches, monasteries, cemeteries, lands and other immovable property were confiscated by the Turkish state. [45]
File:S-ta Maria Syrisk Ortodoxa Kyrkan, Qamishli. .jpgChurch of the Virgin Mary in Qamishli's christian district of Al-Wusta 1967.
Syria
During the Aramean Genocide there was an influx of Aramean refugees to what was the French Mandate for Syria. Then the city Qamishli was founded, which has since grown into one of the largest Syrian cities. The seat of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch was moved from Mardin to Damascus which was once the capital of the Aramean city-state Aram-Damascus. In 1936, after local incidents, religious and political leaders asked the French authorities to give the province an autonomous status with its mixed population.
The plan was not realized due the Ba'athist ideology that prevailed in Damascus. They advocated one unified Syria, in which every resident was labeled an Arab regardless of faith.
Before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, 1.5 million Arameans lived in Syria. Mainly in the Al-Hasakeh region. The Syrian civil war, since 2013, has resulted in Aramean Christians being targeted by Salafist and Wahabist terror. As a result, Sootoro was founded; an Aramean militia that aims to protect the Aramean population in Syria. [46]
Iraq
Before the Iraq War, the population was 1,5 million Arameans, mainly in the north in cities with relatively many Armenians, Kurds, Alevis and Yezidis. When IS came to power in Mosul at the end of 2013, approximately 160,000 Arameans fled the city. [47]
There was some lobbying over an autonomous region in Iraq for the Christian Arameans without success.[48]
Diaspora
The Aramean Genocide caused the first mass migration of Arameans outside their ancestral homeland. Big populations fled to neighbouring countries in the Middle-East such as Syria, Iraq, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. After constant oppressions at the end of the 19th century many Arameans have fled from their homeland to a more safe and comfortable life in the west. Turkish and Arab nationalism played a major role in drastically decreasing Arameans from their home. In Turkey, Arameans were obliged to have a Turkish surname; the Aramean names of cities and villages were changed to Turkish names.[49]
Major Aramean diaspora communities can be found in Germany, Sweden, the United States, and Australia. The largest Aramean communities in Europe can be found in Södertälje (Sweden), Gütersloh (Germany), Gießen (Germany), and Enschede (The Netherlands).[50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
The late Old Aramaic language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire and AchaemenidPersian Empire developed into the Middle Aramaic Syriac language of PersianAssyria, which would become the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity. The descendant dialects of this branch of Eastern Aramaic, which still retains Akkadian loanwords, still survive as the spoken and written language of the Arameans. It is found mostly in northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and northeastern Syria and, to a lesser degree, in migrant communities in Armenia, Georgia, southern Russia, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Azerbaijan as well as in diaspora communities in the West, particularly the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Sweden, Australia and Germany. A small number of Israeli Jews, particularly those originating from Iraq and, to a lesser degree, Iran and eastern Turkey, still speak Eastern Aramaic, but it is largely being eroded by Hebrew, especially within the Israeli-born generations.
The Arameans who lived outside their homelands apparently followed the traditions of the country where they settled. The King of Damascus, for instance, employed Phoenician sculptors and ivory-carvers. In Tell Halaf-Guzana, the palace of Kapara, an Arameans ruler (9th century BC), was decorated with orthostats and with statues that display a mixture of Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Hurrian influences.
Between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, the Arameans began to adopt Christianity in place of the polytheist Aramean religion, and the regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia became an important centre of Syriac Christianity, along with the Aramean kingdom Osroene to the east from where the Syriac language and Syriac script emerged.
Historical divisions within Syriac Christian Churches in the Middle East.
Nowadays Arameans belong to various Christian denominations of Syriac Christianity with the majority being adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church which has between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 members around the world.[57]. As a result of Protestans missionaries visiting the Tur Abdin area in the early 19th century a minority converted and built their own Syriac Protestant church in the oldtown of Midyat.
The group is traditionally characterized as adhering to various churches of Syriac Christianity and speaking Neo-Aramaic languages. It is subdivided into:
adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church following the East Syrian Rite also known as Chaldeans
During the Aramean Genocide, there were Arameans who forcibly converted to islam. They became known as Mhalmoye deriving from Ahlamu/Mhallamu a synonymous word that was given to Arameans during the antiquity.[58] A small number of Aramaic-speaking Jews exist as well.[59][60]
Music and dance
Aramean music is a mix of indigenous folk music, as well as light pop, and extensive Christian music. Instruments like the the davul and the zurna are commonly found in Aramean folk music and regularly used on a wedding. Traditionally there are different types of performers, with storytellers (teshĉitho) being the most popular one amongst elderly generations. In the Aramean diaspora pop and soft rock, but also electronic dance music became very popular amongst the youth.[61]
Aramean folk dances are mainly made up of circle dances that are performed in a line. Most of the circle dances allow unlimited number of participants. Arameans dances would vary from weak to strong, depending on the mood and tempo of a song.[62]
The first international Aramaic Music Festival was held in Lebanon in August 2008 for Aramean people internationally.
Craftmanship
Filigree
Syriac women from Mardin
Arameans in Tur Abdin were known as the masters of filigree. Filigree is a form of intricate metalwork on jewellery usually of gold and silver, made with tiny beads or twisted threads, or both in combination, soldered together or to the surface of an object of the same metal and arranged in artistic motifs.[63][64]
Archaeological finds in ancient Mesopotamia indicate that filigree was incorporated into jewellery since 3,000 BC. Specific to the city of Midyat in Mardin Province in upper Mesopotamia, a form of filigree using silver and gold wires, known as "telkari", was developed in the 15th Century. To this day expert craftsmen in this region continue to produce fine pieces of telkari.
Block printing
Blockprinting is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout Mesopotamia in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. The technique was mainly used to print patterns on traditional folk clothes and on church curtains for the altar.
The last Aramean to master this form of art was Nasra Simmeshindi from Mardin who mainly applied it on church curtains and produced over 100 church curtains that are used by several churches and monasteries in Tur Abdin. In 2016 at the age of 100 years Simmeshindi passed away what also resulted to the end of block printing amongst Arameans who mastered this form of art over centuries.[65][66]
Sports
Soccer is a popular sport in the Aramean community both in their ancestral homeland and in the diaspora. Nowadays the Aramean diaspora in Germany and Sweden together have about 150 soccer clubs.[67][68]
The Arameans Suryoye football team is the representative football team for Arameans worlwide. The team participated in the 2014 ConIFA World Football Cup that was the first edition of an international football cup for states, minorities and stateless people unaffiliated with FIFA.[69]
Aramean architecture can mainly be found in the region of Tur Abdin where houses, mansions and religious buildings are build by detailled carved stones.
This craftmanship is maintained by Arameans for centuries and the region of Tur Abdin is still known for its architecture till this day.
Aramean architecture is preserved over thousands of years. The patterns and symbols used by the Arameans are also found on the palace of the Aramean king Kapara in Tell Halaf a city-state outside the Tur Abdin area. In the present-day Aramean diaspora they have kept their own Aramean architecture and applied it mainly to church and monastery buildings.[70][71]
^^ "The destruction of the Assyrian Empire did not wipe out its population. They were predominantly peasant farmers, and since Assyria contains some of the best wheat land in the Near East, descendants of the Assyrian peasants would, as opportunity permitted, build new villages over the old cities and carried on with agricultural life, remembering traditions of the former cities. After seven or eight centuries, and after various vicissitudes, these people became Christians. These Christians, and the Jewish communities scattered amongst them, not only kept alive the memory of their Assyrian predecessors but also combined them with traditions from the Bible." - H. W. F. Saggs. The Might That Was Assyria. pp. 290
Iraq
Syria
Turkey
United States
Sweden
Germany
Lebanon
Iran
Jordan
Canada
Netherlands
France
Belgium
Israel
Russia
Switzerland
Brazil
Greece
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