Talk:History of the Assyrians

biblical innacuracy
in the second paragraph of the article it says "historically speaking assyrians originated from abraham's grandson" i dont know if that is correct or not, but i do know that assyrians originated from Noah's son Shem long before abraham ever existed. maybe you guys know something that i dont, but i think that should be mentioned. thx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.192.37.22 (talk) 23:32, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * believe or not the article is right. just google it--  R a f y  talk 00:41, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge
Cquan, I noticed you proposed to merge this page. Here are a couple things you might want to note:

1. I created this page yesterday, and we will be expanding it within the next two weeks. 2. The Assyrian people page is starting to become flooded, biased, and unorganized. 3. This page, History of the Assyrian people, will deal strictly with the different periods in their history, with a focus on the people - that includes more of an emphasis on their origins, language, as well as the development of their culture, political issues, and more.

I hope that explains what we wish to do with this page. --Šarukinu 14:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I see that the main article is getting a tad long...not overly so, but it could easily get there soon. I would recommend that you actually copy the entire history section over into this article then and leave the "stub" on the Assyrian people article with a main article link to this article. Otherwise this looks redundant. -Cquan (talk, AMA Desk) 17:57, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * What are the issues with the neutrality of this article? It's still Start-class, and all it contains is objective information. I agree with the lack of sources, but we are in the process of gathering the appropriate sources and information for this article. Regardless, the article doesn't contain anything that suggests POV - unless for some reason you think hardship and persecution is entirely subjective. Oh, by the way, your suggestion is a good idea, Cquan. I'm going to see what we can take from the history section in Assyrian people and perhaps we can do a "switch" as you suggested.--Šarukinu 02:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Expansion of this Article
To anybody who wishes to contribute to this page:

I would like to expand this article to include numerous sections and topics, including religious history, political history, ancient history (which would incorporate the Akkadian period), and modern history (AD era). This article is still in a rough state, and is in need of much revision and, like I said before, expansion.

Furthermore, there absolutely cannot be any bias in this article, because too often do we see people spread their political opinions in material about the Assyrian people. So we will have none of that here - I'm going to pay close attention to the choice of words used. This will be an objective article to offer the world unbiased, untainted, and valid information about the history of the Assyrian people, covering both the ancient and modern periods.

Due to the huge disagreement over the Assyrian identity, I feel it maybe a good idea to include a section about the debate with arguments from both sides of the issue, and then let people decide for themselves whether or not to discount the Assyrian identity. What I'm aiming for with this is something similar to the page about the BC/AD vs BCE/CE notation.

Feel free to provide your input, but please steer away from bias - for once let's offer information free of flowery words and biased views.

Šarukinu 22:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

This page and the other Assyrian pages are full of historical inaccuracies. Assyria proper did not fall to the Persians but a confederacy of Babylonians and Medes under Cyaxares. It became part of Persia when she conquered the other two empires. It was not a Roman province except for a brief period. Asuristan was a province of the Parthian Empire as well as the Sassanid Empire.


 * I agree with your proposals and if I have time (which I may not) will be happy to lend some assistance with the religious history. If it gets detailed enough we could start an article on religious, political and other aspects on their histories.Tourskin 23:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * If possible, I would like to include all aspects of the history of the Assyrians in this one article, which is the main reason behind its creation. -- Šarukinu 13:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

First empire...
Just as a note, the article on Empire calls the Egyptian state the first empire when they invaded and incorporated another state. It also calls Sargon's Akkadian state an early example of an empire. This should probably be discussed on both articles for consistency and factual accuracy. Cquan (after the beep...) 01:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up, Cquan. However that depends on the definition of empire. That article uses the term very loosely, even referring to nations such as Phoenicia as an empire, which of course was not the case. Furthermore, Ancient Egypt was a kingdom which exerted hegemony over Nubia and several states in the Levant, and nothing more. But the article never said Egypt was the "first empire" (even before my recent edits); it went on to mention that the Akkadian kingdom was one of the earliest examples of an empire. With Egypt, there was no real political integration or central organization, only the acquisition of tribute and resources. Again, that goes back to the definition you wish to follow. Perhaps it should be mentioned in all respective articles that the definition is disputed. --Šarukinu 18:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Requested move (first)

 * The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User Dab moved this page from History of the Assyrian people to History of the Syriac Christians. No discussion what so ever was done before the move and he summarized his move as scope. First of all, "Assyrian people" is still what is mostly used in Wikipedia instead of any other names (such as Syriac Christians) since according to Wikipedia's rules, it says on multiple help pages that we should use what is mostly common in the English language. We have gone through this over in the Talk:Assyrian people page before and every time this comes up, we have concluded that Assyrians and Assyrian people is what is mostly used in the English language. As far as dab's reason of scope, all one has to do is look at the article and see that it is talking about Assyrian genocide, Assyrian independence, and Assyrian empire, and not "Syriac Christians genocide" or Syriac Christians independence", etc. I conclude that this page needs to be moved back to its original name. Chaldean (talk) 11:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a pretty acrimonious debate, and it is obvious that some of the editors involved have a negative past history. Since there is not a clear consensus one way or the other, it seems to me that the right thing to do is to move the article back to the original name of History of the Assyrian people.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I will suggest that we henceforth ignore renaming requests from partisan editors, especially those showing off their dedication to this feud in their very usernames, and let article naming issues be handled by experienced uninvolved editors familiar with naming policy. It's the only way forward towards sanity. --dab (𒁳) 14:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If anything, my name shows that I don't have partisan since it shows that I'm not of nestorian branch (of who usually are the ones promoting the Assyrian name), but that of Chaldean Catholic. With all due respect dab, I am and continue to be more experienced then you will ever be concerning this issue, since I actually live among these people here in Iraq. I have also been working on this project on wiki for 3 years now, so how did you get the picture of you being more experienced then me? So please you should get your facts straight and not ignore the core of what I said; Assyrian people is the term more commonly used in the English language and their hasn't been no referendum on changing that to Syriac Christians or anything else. According to Wikipedia's naming policy the most common English name is what should be used. You still didn't addres why you did not even discuss the move before actually went with it. Chaldean (talk) 05:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

you have been disrupting this project for three years, as a single-topic pov-pushing account, I'll grant you that. Which is exactly why I have no patience left with you. Talk:Chaldean is a showpiece where you are coming from. Please try to edit some other topic for a change, try cars, or TV series, or 19th century operas, anything that doesn't get your patriotism boiling, ok? --dab (𒁳) 11:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Ignoring the issue is what you always do. Why do you never discuss the issue with other users? Your seem to always to be interested in battling, and mocking other users. Get this; You don't WP:OWN anything and you are subjected to answering questions from other users - Why did you make such a contriversal move without discussing it? And where have you proven Syriac Chrisitans is the term more used then Assyrian people?
 * As for "you have been disrupting this project for three years, as a single-topic pov-pushing account" - if you like, when can have a vote by other users whom have been involved in the project, and I am more then confident it would be a land-slide against you. Iraqi (talk) 11:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * As for the issue, if you cared;
 * "Assyrian Christians" 25,100 []
 * "Syriac Christians" 10,500 []


 * "Assyrina people" 12,000 []
 * "Syriac people" 6,000 []

Iraqi (talk) 12:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

try WP:3O. Since I am working in the interest of the project, and you are working in the interest of your patriotic agenda, I have little doubt regarding the community's take on this. The problem is that too few Wikipedians can even be bothered to look into this pathetic "we Assyrianists/Arameanists hate those Aramaeanist/Assyrianist traitors" dispute. I have tried to work with you guys (on both sides of the fence) for a year now. Your general immaturity tops even our resident Armenian or Hindu nationalists, and this is saying a lot. At this point I will be glad to discuss the issue based on scholarly sources with anyone who does not self-identify as Syriac/Assyrian/Aramaean/Chaldean, since next to all editors who do have shown time and time again that they are unfit to grasp even the most basic Wikipedia goals. Fwiiw, "Syriac Christians" is an unambiguous and uncontroversial and an undisputedly correct designation of the group under discussion. Cutting to the chase, under this title, we can finally have a clear idea what this article is supposed to discuss, and begin writing it instead of these pathetic circular non-debates on naming issues. --dab (𒁳) 12:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * From my point of view, History of the Syriac Christians has certain advantages. For most of the scope of this article, Assyrian is an anachronism; and not including it in the title would permit us to cover exactly when this people began to define themselves as an ethnic minority, rather than a religious minority. Does this indeed go back as early as the late nineteenth century, is it entirely post-1918, or is there some middle date? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What about to do two different articles? Who studies history of the ancient Church is surely used to a History of the Syriac Christians where Syriac means Syriac language: it includes both the West and East Syriac rites areas as well as the Maronites: I've always known about Ephrem the Syrian, not about Ephrem the Assyrian. In other words, an article linked to the Syriac Christianity (Syriac = Syriac language). On the other side, it should be nice to have a History of the Assyrian Christians about the Christians in the area in North Iraq that is the subject of the Assyrian independence claim, and that is more limited in extension than the area of the historical Syriac language. A ntv (talk) 18:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * When would you have your second article begin? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This article obviously only talks about the Assyrian group and not the entire Syriac Christian group. So personally I don't see the point of the articles current name, since it has not much to do with the entire Syriac Christian group. Also, some people here may not realize that Syriac is not only a language and a religious denomination, but also a ethnical denomination. The TriZ (talk) 03:33, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (dab) "try WP:3O. Since I am working in the interest of the project, I have little doubt regarding the community's take on this" - You remember what happened when we did that last time with you? You proved to be wrong moving an article to some other name with no discussion and the Wiki community voted against you. This isn't the first time dab has done this before; earlier in the year, he did the same with Achaemenid Assyria and moved to some other silly name with no discussion. After the general Wiki community saw the two sides, it saw how rediculus dab's behavior was. You don't have no interest of the project, your lost in the mass amount of information of the issue and you have proven to make things more confusing then the issue is.


 * This article talks about the people before they were Christians and before they spoke Syriac. The title of the page is not cordinating with the article.


 * (dab) "Syriac Christians is an unambiguous and uncontroversial and an undisputedly correct designation of the group under discussion." - Who has made this decision? We here in Iraq have not and do not want to call ourselfs "Syriac." Stop trying to unite or start some kind of revolution. Wikipedia is not the place for that.


 * "and not including it in the title would permit us to cover exactly when this people began to define themselves as an ethnic minority, rather than a religious minority" - But its more complicated then that. The group was a single nation, even during their first days of Christiantiy. They only lost their ethnic identity as time passed, and specifically, when Islam arrived. With its arrival, it became those who speak Arabic are Muslim only, and the rest in the middle east who did not speak Arabic were seen as just Christians. Iraqi (talk) 05:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I too want to point out, that Syriac Christianity page is so small, surely we can write about its history their. This page should be limited to an ethnic history, and not just a religion period of time. Iraqi (talk) 05:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As usual, he doesn't reply because he really doesn't care about the topic and he can't explain why he moved the page to a contriversial name without any discussion. Iraqi (talk) 17:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Article scope
This article is about the history of the Assyrian people (the Syriac Christians), it is not about the Assyrian Empire of Antiquity. I will consistently oppose any attempt to make this a content fork of the article about ancient Assyria, or to hijack it by Assyrianist antiquity frenzy. You are genuinely interested in ancient Assyria? Fine! Go work on the Assyria and Neo-Assyrian Empire articles. dab (𒁳) 18:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The title doesn't reflect the content. The title suggests this is the history of the Syriacs (that of the Arameans), this article only brings up the history of the Assyrians. The TriZ (talk) 23:04, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Dab, no one here, either myself or Triz is agreeing with your trigger crazy happy edits. Explain yourself; why are you moving these pages like this? Listen here, we asked you to come and get involved as a neutral thrid party to settle disputes between the Assyrianists and the Aramaenists, not come here and create your own hybrid mesh that is controversial and unsupported. The Assyrians are traceable back to the Ancient Assyrians, we have sources such as Simo Parpolo etc for his and you don't have any to counter.  Gabr-  el  01:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Dab you continue to dictate your way around in Wikipedia. You move before you discuss. When I told you that is wrong, you told me to f-off and get the Wiki communitiy's view. Well I did that and they agreed what you did was wrong and they moved it back to its original name. But being so hard headed dab, you quickly moved the page to yet another name and continue your rants of things that do not make sense. This page is about the history of the Assyrian people. You might not like it or agree to it, but they trace their history back all the way to the Akkadian times. This article isn't just about ancient Assyrian time, but about the entire Assyrian history, that is similar to History of Greece and History of Armenia. Both pages go as far as how the people themselves trace their history to. I don't see a problem in those pages of talking about ancient times. Iraqi (talk) 06:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

try WP:3O. I am not prepared to try and talk sense into people who have a WP:COI in this. The upshot is that this article addresses the history of the Syriac Christians. If you really like to discuss the history of ancient Assyria, go to Assyria. If you really like to discuss the history of the ancient Aramaeans, go to Aramaeans. I am not "ranting". I am merely pointing you to Wikipedia core policy of WP:NPOV, and especially WP:DUE. You will note that this article still has a "pre-Christian" section, which should concisely summarize early history in WP:SS, just like the "history" article on any other ethnic group. This won't go away: you can keep doing this for another year, or another five years, Wikipedia policy will always come out on top. Your only option is to start respecting the rules, anything else is a waste of time. dab (𒁳) 11:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, on Wikipedia there is a "History of the ... people" the the ... is filled with every ethnicity in the world. Since we can all agree that Assyrians are an ethnic group, how come there isn't a "History of the Assyrian people" page? Malik Danno (talk) 19:56, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

(Dab) try WP:3O - Are you serious? 'I did that and the community did not see it your way. Did you ignore what was written above?
 * " Since there is not a clear consensus one way or the other, it seems to me that the right thing to do is to move the article back to the original name of History of the Assyrian people"

They moved the page back, but you acting as if you own the page, decided to move the article to yet another name. Iraqi (talk) 07:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And you still haven't explained why you even moved the article. The de facto name of the group is Assyrian people. You haven't successfuly moved the Assyrian people page to any name, so what makes you think its ok to start moving all these pages to another name? Iraqi (talk) 08:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (dab) You are genuinely interested in ancient Assyria? Fine! Go work on the Assyria and Neo-Assyrian Empire articles - then explain why do we have breif summary of ancient Greeks in History of Greece. Explain why we have a breif sumamry of Urartu in History of Armenia? The point of having such article is to write breifly every part of the groups history. Hence, then we have "for more, see ancient Assyria''" Iraqi (talk) 09:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Here we don't have a history of History of a country but a History of a ethnic gruop: for comparison you shall look at Article like Italians. An Article about History of a country can have a brief summary of the history: see for example History of Italy. The Roman Empire cant be a subsection of Italians.
 * This Article is very poor of contents: it should explain how and when the idea of an Assyrian identity arose, when the Assyrian people stated to have a national feeling, the main events that having as subject the Assyrian ethnic group, but only when different from the events of the whole Assyrian country. I suggest to the expert editors to add the above information to this Article, because the common reader as I am cant understand which is the framework of the Assyrian claim. Otherwise I strongly suggest to delete this Article merging it in Assyrian people A ntv (talk) 12:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * no, it should not. This is the topic of the Assyrianism article. This article discusses the actual history of Syriac Christians, not about any "Assyrian claims" or similar immature antiquity frenzy. Italians is a good comparison. There is an "origins" section, but you don't see a full account of Iron Age Italy or the Roman Republic, nor is a portrait of Julius Ceasar shown as an illustration of a typical Italian male. Compare Assyrian people where some joker decided to include a portrait of ... Ashurnasirpal II. Why not Noah, one wonders, surely the Assyrians are descended from him too. dab (𒁳) 11:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This article was about the history of the Assyrian people from before Christianity to today. If you want to write about Syriac Christianity, seperate the articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.201.99.34 (talk) 02:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

--24.248.39.186 (talk) 02:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Requested move (second)
no move. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 06:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Can we have arguments for and against the latest requested move (to move back to History of the Assyrian people)? Without personal attacks and ad hominems, preferably. Personally I'd support the move based on the terminology used in the article and the names of other articles (such as Assyrian people), but I don't pretend to have any in-depth knowledge of this issue.--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm concerned, my comments in can stand. Until relatively recently, this people was identified as a religious group, not an ethnicity, and use of the word Assyrian is an anachronism until at least the late nineteenth century; so is the association with Nineveh. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * With all do sincerity this page should go back to the way it was before. User:Dbach for whatever negligent reason changed this title to Syriac’s without discussion, consensus or reasoning. This article from its inception has been strictly dedicated to preserving and teaching users on the History of the Assyrians and not any other groups. This article deals specifically about the Assyrian history dating back to the Akkadian Empire to the Neo-Assyrian Empire to Christianity to Islamic persecution and finally to present days. The term Syriac is neither an ethnic group nor a self-designation of a people other than the fact that it promotes those who use it to only to refer to the language they speak which is Syriac a branch off of Aramaic. This article like any other ethnic history belongs to the original intent of the person who made this page which was to teach about a specific people’s history dating from ancient times to present days. I strongly support reverting the title to what it was before it got tampered with and from there on continually vandalized. The person responsible for most of this mayhem would have to be Dbachman; he has recently abused his powers in continually disrupting Wiki Project Assyria articles. Many users on both sides of the issue have tried reaching him and asking him why he has made all of these un-officiated edits. He has either brushed it aside or changed the subject to make him seem innocent on this predicament. Something needs to be done with this type of disruptive behavior. This is an encyclopedia for learning not for propagandizing information to meet these persons ultra-nationalistic agenda or goals. I will be the first one to say that I am not an expert in handling disruptive behavior like this. I can see that this type of behavior conducted by user Dbachmann is nothing new he has engaged in similar incompetent, un-sourced, unverified behavior before and he has been rebuke by the Wiki community. I humbly call upon all administrators to warn or block this user from disrupting these projects assignments. These articles have been created through extensive work and continuing research and for someone like and abusive administrator such as Dbachmann to come and remove or add information without any justifications is outrageous. I am trying to be neutral in this issue but it is simply getting out of hand. Those who have continually disrupted these pages need to be held accountable for through Wikipedia protocol. 130.17.92.23 (talk) 00:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

an edit-warring IP talking of "disruption"? I am glad you found the talkpage, but your rant notwithstanding, I have fully justified my edits. They are a matter of offtopic and WP:DUE. This isn't the Assyria article, nor is it the Syria (name) article. No content was lost, it is discussed in the pertinent articles. This article has the purpose of dealing with the history of the Syriac Christian population in the Middle East. Yes, it should feature an "Origins" section dealing with a summary of pre-Christian history, this was never under dispute. My involvement here is the attempt to get the hostile Syriac editors to collaborate and respect policy. Yes, this means I am attacked as biased from both sides. Which actually shows I am doing a good job in preventing the constant attempts to introduce propagandizing information to meet an ultra-nationalistic agenda or goals. The continual attempts to discuss ancient Assyria in articles about the Syriacs is precisely that, a nationalist agenda. Look at the Gaul section in the French people article. This is a reasonable section on an ethnic group's pre-history. We can have a similar section on the Syro-Hittite states and the Neo-Assyrian Empire here. Please just stop trying to conflate modern ethnic identity with an actual coverage of ancient history. Assyrianism is a topic of modern identity, notably embraced by just one faction bent on de-emphasizing their Christian heritage. We can summarize ancient history, but we cannot unduly dwell on remote antiquity in order to push the ideology of this faction. They are notable, to be sure, but they belong discussed in a section on the 20th century (post-Christian, not pre-Christian). --dab (𒁳) 10:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The move is intened to resolve controversy, not to create it. Fact: we have both Assyrianist and Aramaeanist editors here. Fact: policy requires them to leave their bias at the door and collaborate, respecting WP:NPOV. Both Assyrianists and Aramaeanists need to recognize that this is the article discussing the history of their ethnic group. If we allow the Assyrianists to WP:OWN this article, the Aramaeanists have shown the tendency to bugger off and create counter-articles about "ancient Arameans" elsewhere. This needs to stop. This article is neither about the Aramaeans nor about Ancient Assyria, it is about the history of the Syriac Christians. You are perfectly free and edit articles on ancient history,. at the main articles linked. --dab (𒁳) 10:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * History of the Syriac people (rather than Syriac Christians) would be more in line with WP's neutrality guidelines. Sur(y)âye have not always been Christians, and nowadays there are also those who do not identify as Christians.
 * Furthermore, the article Assyrian people should be moved accordingly to Syriac people, after which Aramean-Syriac people can be merged into that article. --Benne ['bɛnə] (talk) 10:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * that's an artefact of diaspora. They essentially identify as Christians because they were a religious minority. In diaspora, they are in the process of assimilating into their host societies, losing both their language and their religion. This leads to some nationalistic reflexes on the part of the foreign born descendants, but ultimately the Assyrian people (the Syriac Christians) are defined as Aramaic-speaking adherents of Syriac Christianity. If you don't speak Aramaic and aren't a Christian, it would be difficult to claim membership, here. You would at best be able to claim Syriac heritage. --dab (𒁳) 14:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:CITE. The TriZ (talk) 15:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * WP:TALK. Not sure why we are even having this discussion. I agree with Benne that it may make sense to move Assyrian people to Syriac people, but it appears to transpire that the "Assyrian/Syriac" combined name is best. If would save everyone a lot of future futility if we could agree to move Assyrian people to Assyrian/Syriac people now, on a par with Assyrians/Syriacs in the Netherlands, Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia, etc. This article would then also become History of the Assyrian/Syriac people. --dab (𒁳) 16:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You can't just start throwing / at every single article that is relating to this group. The most common term used for this group in English is Assyrian, at a ratio of 4 to 1. And all major news organizations use Assyrian by a ratio of 10 to 1. On top, all major world bodies such as the UN, Red Cross, etc all predominatly use Assyrian. The name of the article is Assyrian people, thus all other pages should be at par with the Assyrian name. The diaspora pages such as Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia are exceptions, because the communities over their are having naming disputes. Iraqi (talk) 05:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The move is intened to resolve controversy, not to create it. - take a look around, you have created controversy by moving the page. There was no problems, no edit wars, nothing, regarding this page until you decided to move it without any discussion. Wikipedia's rules says use the most common term in English, we have proven that it is predominatly Assyrian, THUS everything should follow. Iraqi (talk) 06:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This article would then also become History of the Assyrian/Syriac people.  - under what basis have you made this decision? Assyrian is the most common term used in English. Iraqi (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Look at the Gaul section in the French people article. This is a reasonable section on an ethnic group's pre-history - look at History of Armenia, History of Greece - these are resasonable introduction on an ethnic group's pre-history. Iraqi (talk) 06:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This whole article is about Assyrian people and all of the sources are about Assyrians. Listing it under "Syriac History" just does not make any sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.248.39.186 (talk) 06:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Dbachmann has made a mockery and a complete mess with this whole issue. He continues to move pages here and their. Before it was Template:Assyrian people just like how all other ethnic templates were, now he has moved it to Template:Assyrian/Syriac infobox. Its funny how he gives the examples of
 * "of future futility if we could agree to move Assyrian people to Assyrian/Syriac people now, on a par with Assyrians/Syriacs in the Netherlands, Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia,"

when he was the one actually that moved all these pages without any discussion. We've had this problem with him before in Achaemenid Assyria - just look at the talk page. He moved the page with no discussion, doesn't make no argument, and the Wiki community voted against him. Its the same story again. Assyrian is the de facto title used for this group in Wikipedia, based on what Wikipedia says the title should be: The most common used term in English. This page is not following par with Assyrian people. Speaking of which dab has made into a further mess by having 10 different names in the first sentence. We have created an article about this issue; Assyrian naming dispute (of which user dab has moved as well). All this naming mess can go their. The naming issue should not screw up every other Assyrian-related article, like this one for example. The naming issue should not spill everywhere else. People, Syriac is a title of all Syriac-speaking churches; that includes 6 million Indians and 3 million Maronites. This article is not about them. You can find Syriac history in Syriac Christianity. Syriac and Assyrian are TWO different things. One is mostly affiliated in English with the Syriac Churches, while the other is an ethnic name. This article is about the ethnic group of Assyrians. Dab of course tried to manipulate this by deleting the entier intro paragraph and only have it cover Christian history. Iraqi (talk) 06:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Move Page
Seperate history of Syriac Christians and History of Assyrian people. They have nothing to do with eachother.--24.248.39.186 (talk) 02:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I Semi-agree with the above comment. This article should be either called History of Assyrian People or History of the Assyrian/Syriac people. If the decision is made to return back this webpage to its original title I believe that there should be an expansion in the article of Syriac Christianity to make up for any missing ground. This page prior to being massively changed was clearly created to preserve and teach users about the History of Assyrian People from Ancient times, to Islamic Era, and to the present. My personal opinion is that we return this page back to the way it was before and expand an entire section in Syriac Christianity to make up any ground that has not been covered for those who regard themselves as Syriacs. This seems like the best solution. This is my Humble opinion. Nineveh (talk) 02:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with "Nineveh" change it back to History of the Assyrian people or History of the Assyrian/Syriac people --WestAssyrian (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I hope the new awkward but extremely neutral title resolves this. If you have any academic references establishing these "separate histories", do bring them up in the article. There can always be sub-articles iff their creation is clearly based on academic sources. --dab (𒁳) 10:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Lebanese Civil War
I was just wondering if anyone has any information about the Assyrian involvement in the Civil War. I have heard of accounts where the Assyrians went to Lebanon to fight with the Christian Militias. Does anyone have any sources backing this up? Malik Danno (talk) 20:55, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested move (third)

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was moved -- Aervanath (talk) 05:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

History of the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people → History of the Assyrian people — This is one of the pages affected by the related discussion about the move of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people to Assyrian people which was initially moved by me, but I then undid my move after my being harshly criticized (harshly or not it is up to you to judge it). In any case, this page is also closely related, and its possible move should be discussed in parallel with the previous case. — Yannismarou (talk) 08:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.


 * Support - The page was moved by user dab with no discussion. This was the equivence of moving the History of Armenia to History of Armenia/Haystan/Urartu. Title should be with the most common name in the English language. Please see my comments above this section after dab moved the pages with all these slashes. Iraqi (talk) 16:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - now that the parent article has been moved, we should get rid of the awful slashes here too, and also at Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac-Americans. - Biruitorul Talk 23:56, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - there's a survey going on right now in the main article, we should wait for the result from it before we make any drastic changes. Also, the slashes may look awful, but they aren't against WP:NPOV at least. The TriZ (talk) 09:59, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The slashes create a technical issue, in that WP uses a slash to create a sub-article - like a directory path. 199.125.109.124 (talk) 15:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

there is no consensus for this move. this is a fragile compromise which evolved over more than a year, and cannot be overturned by two (!) support votes. See Talk:Assyrian_people. As long as there isn't a solid consensus of bona fide editors in support of the "parent" move, kindly avoid such attempts of moving around other articles without anyone noticing. --dab (𒁳) 06:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * When the Assyrian people page was finally agreed apon to be moved back to its original name, all other pages that you dab moved without discussion need to be moved back as well. These pages need to follow the title of the main page of the subject (Assyrian people), an arguement you previously used when you moved the page. Iraqi (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Having 2 users agree apon the move back is more then when you moved the page with no discussion what so ever. Iraqi (talk) 22:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History of the Assyrian people
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History of the Assyrian people's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "EI": From Ctesiphon:  From Asōristān:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:51, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

You're right Anomiebot, I'll fix it. --Monochrome _ Monitor  01:45, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, reopening discussion
I agree with previous comments that this article presents an anachronistic and oversimplistic view of Assyrian history. Even the word Assyrian is anachronistic and misleading. Assyrian topics in general on WP can't seem to make up their minds about Assyrians. On the one hand, by the fact that they include Arameans (an ethnic identity which traces its history to Aram) implies that "assyrian" basically means "christian aramaic speaking people in the middle east". Well, to be specific it calls them: "The various ethnic communities of indigenous pre-Arab, Semitic and often Neo-Aramaic-speaking Christian people of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel"

Um, that's nonsense. Newsflash, most of the middle east spoke Aramaic and Aramaic influence dominated the region until the Arab conquest. Yet, Assyrian topics would have you believe that all of the Aramaic speaking peoples (which I agree are generally indigenous peoples who are not ethnically Arab) came out of Assyria proper and the neo-Assyrian Empire. Also, how could an ethnic group who is indigenous to Ninevah/Assyria also be indigenous in Israel? There are pre-Arab peoples who are traditionally Christian and Aramaic speaking living all over the Middle East, but most are not actually Assyrian by the standard of "native to Assyria". Therefore, the standard "assyria-akkad-neo-assyria" continuity applies to few (if any) of them. So basically, Assyrian is a bullshit term the way we use it, and it foists an identity onto millions of people who don't identify with Assyria at all in favor of the minority identity of self-identified Assyrians. Next point. Okay, if we were to define Assyrians as people with roots in Assyria (which is the only reasonable definition), we still need to distinguish between the land and the people(s). The Assyrian people did not begin with Assur, which was most likely a Sumerian city in its first centuries, rather, the Assyrian nation grew out of worship of Ashur, which the city of assur is named for. Greek history handles the distinction between the land of Greece, the Greek-speaking peoples, and the Greek ethnos quite well. And see the key difference between these two templates?

"History of Assyrian people" it is not.

Lastly there is no clear continuity between the ancient Assyrians and contemporary Assyrians, period. Are contemporary Assyrians indigenous to Assyria? Yes, genetic evidence indicates that, and I'm not one of those people who denies that or calls Assyrians Arabs. But being indigenous to Assyria doesn't mean they are related to the ancient Assyrians. They have barely anything Assyrian in their culture, and this can be attributed to neo-Assyrian influence rather than direct Ancient Assyrian descent. Assyrian identity is quite recent, and largely inspired by developments in Assyriology. Compare that to Jews who have maintained a tradition of continuity for their entire existence. I'm not saying the Assyrian people are a recent people, but they are not Akkadians. Now is where I ping people who raised this concern before and others who defended it. --Monochrome _ Monitor  03:14, 27 February 2016 (UTC) Or compare it to the Copts. The evidence is scant in comparison. The article on continuity itself basically uses "self-identified assyrians are a related and distinct ethnic group" as its main argument. Okay... so are the Druze. That doesn't mean the Druze are descended from Jethro. There needs to be more evidence than that.--Monochrome _ Monitor  03:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC) Or the Greeks... or the Han Chinese... --<small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monochrome _ <small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monitor  22:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)


 * <small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monochrome _ <small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monitor, I share your concern, and I agree there needs to be a better consistency on Assyrian related page. I don't know where there is any indication on wikipedia saying Aram or Aramean related people [or any other ancient people from Mesopotamia] are Assyrian. If there is such text, then it needs to be removed.  However, I strongly disagree with a few other points you make "they have barely anything Assyrian in their culture" [if language, clothes, food, a modern religion influenced by ancient Assyrian traditions, and celebrations are not enough, then I guess no one in this world has any continuity to their ancient past.] Chaldean (talk) 09:04, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Look at the "history of the assyrians" template, it includes "Arameans". The notion that assyrian language, clothing, religion are related to ancient assyria is bs. The only source for that is nutjobs like Parpola. Food I'm not so sure about. I see your username is "chaldean". Chaldean, while a name foisted on you by the catholic church, is a much older name than assyrian, foisted on you by the anglican church and antiquity frenzying 19th century archaeologists. You are much more likely to be chaldean than Assyrian historically speaking.--<small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monochrome _ <small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monitor  11:53, 21 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Then let's delete arameans in the template. What are we waiting for? Regarding your comments about our language, clothing and religion, Well I thought you were an academic who was interested in the topic, instead you seem to be more interested in insulting us as a nation. No point in continuing this conversation. Yes, my great grandparents converted to Chaldean Catholism after being forced by the French forces in Urmia. One's religion conversion doesn't change one's ethnicity of course. Have a good day. Chaldean (talk) 12:36, 21 November 2016 (UTC)


 * An academic? I'm a freshman in college interested in a myriad of subjects. I'm sorry for insulting you, I did not mean to. I don't deny you're a nation and I respect the culture of your nation, what bothers me is when mythical origins are attributed to it for nationalistic reasons. If you do have reliable sources indicating I'm wrong I will gladly read them.--<small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monochrome _ <small style="font: 13px Courier New">Monitor  20:47, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Actually, the term Assyrian is ONLY used to describe those people who 1. Speak Eastern Aramaic dialects (which have Akkadian influence), 2. Are from ''Historic Assyria (Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey and northwest Iran), and 3. Have been continually designated and described as Assyrians (and derivative names) from ancient times to the present. Therefore it is an accurate term, particularly as; The term is NOT used to describe Christians (Aramaic speaking or not) from the western and central Levant, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian territories, Lebanon, western or south-central Turkey or the Arabian peninsula. These people either speak Arabic, or a tiny minority speaking Western Aramaic The latter groups identify as 'Maronites, Arab Christians, Arameans, Phoenicians, Melkites'' etc etc. The term also does NOT apply to Aramaic speaking Jews, Mandeans or Mhallami.

The terms Syrian and Syriac are also pretty conclusively proven to etymologically, historically, geographically and ethnically derive from the terms Assyria and Assyrian in any case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.100.25.101 (talk) 11:26, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

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Requested move 29 January 2022
<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;">
 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. Sensible rationale and seeing no opposition (closed by non-admin page mover) Megan B....   It’s all coming to me till the end of time  19:57, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

History of the Assyrian people → History of the Assyrians I am proposing that this be moved to "History of the Assyrians" for 5 reasons:
 * Per WP:CONCISE: "History of the Assyrians" is shorter but carries the same meaning
 * This article serves as an historical overview over both ancient Assyria and the Assyrian people after the ancient empire's fall. Though I substantially expanded the article just two hours ago, the article has covered both ancient Assyria and the later Assyrian people since as far back as records go (2007). "Assyrians" inherently seems to me like it encompasses both better.
 * The corresponding category is already called History of the Assyrians and the term already redirects here
 * Numerous other similar articles use this format, i.e. History of the Kurds, History of the Basques, History of the Cossacks
 * Consistency (WP:CONSISTENT) with related articles - e.g. Assyrian cuisine (not "Cuisine of the Assyrian people"), Assyrian culture (not "Culture of the Assyrian people"), List of Assyrian settlements (not "Settlements with Assyrian people", List of Assyrian tribes (not "Tribes of the Assyrian people") etc. etc.

A quick comment: Both the scholarly community and Wikipedia itself appear to have taken a pretty firm stance for Assyrian continuity, which should be apparent by how this article is written, but if anyone hypothetically wants to argue that "Assyrians" is POV I'd remind you that the consensus (just look at how related articles are titled) seems pretty clear that we're sticking with that term. "Assyrians" is also no more POV than "Assyrian people". Ichthyovenator (talk) 01:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). McMatter (talk)/(contrib) 00:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

<div style="padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em">The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom. Facts707 (talk) 05:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)