User:Yohannan123/Zahrire d-bahra

The first periodical published in Iran (1849-1918) in any language, Zahrire d-bahra (rays of light) appeared in Assyrian neo-Aramaic (sometimes called Eastern Syriac) from the town of Urmiah.

No full runs of this important periodical have yet been located in any research library in the world although during its publication it went to many locations where there were Assyrian students and term laborers such as Tiflis, St. Petersburg, New York, Istanbul and elsewhere. The largest collection remaining may be found at Harvard University where some of the early issues - dating from 1855 - are kept in special collections.

It started as part of the effort of the American Board for Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to encourage literacy, culture, and religious debate among the Assyrians. The monthly publication appeared from the ABCFM press located in Urmiah, where the first American missionaries arrived in 1834. The printing press began in 1843 and six years later, the many schools established both in Urmiah and in smaller towns and in villages had raised the level of literacy such that Assyrian men became employed at the press and gradually participated in the editing, writing and printing of this periodical.

Until World War I, this was the longest running periodical in Iran. It ended when the Assyrians and other Christians were forced to flee Urmiah and all the villages from the Khoi area in the north down to Soujbulak in the wake of Kurdish attacks and an Ottoman Army. Two-thirds of this last substantial Aramaic using community in the world perished due to outright murder, famine and disease. The press was destroyed and never recovered. Assyrian neo-Aramaic was not printed again in all of Iran until the post World War II period when a mimeographed calendar appeared in 1946 from Tehran.

Rudolph Macuch, in his monumental 1976 Geschichte der spät- und neusyrische Literatur, summarizes issues of the periodical from 1897 to 1918 on pages 136-187. In 1895 appeared a volume called Luqade min Zahrire d-bahra 1850-1890 (Excerpts from Rays of Light), which contains various items of significance from the periodical during the years since 1850. It was collected by Khnanishu Auraham, and edited by Mirza Shmouel Badal (Khangeldi) of Goegtapa (1865-1908). This collection has been reprinted and is available.

From the few extant issues of this periodical and especially from the years summarized by Macuch, considerable information emerges about both the Assyrian community and about the surrounding west Azarbaijan conditions. Of particular importance is the reporting on schools, graduations and the titles of books appearing from the press. The necrologies in particular provide one of the few sources remaining about the Assyrian men and women who helped to shape the emerging high culture of this society.

Those Assyrians who survived World War I and managed to actually return to Urmiah despite the strictures placed on their return by Tehran, attempted to collect from various sources, the remnants of their printed cultural achievements. Pre-World War I books in Assyrian neo-Aramaic could not be read by the Kurds and Turks who had pillaged them and were often used as wrapping paper for street goods. But some photographs and books have been bought from such homes. However, the bulk of the millions of pages of materials printed are now gone. A partial list has been printed by David G. MalikThe American mission press : a preliminary bibliography [Chicago, Ill.] : Atour Publications, 2008