^B00:00:00:24 >> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ^M00:00:04:00 ^M00:00:22:24 >> Ladies and gentlemen, how I'd like to thank you for attending this event. We have two special guests here with us today. They truly don't need an introduction but I will do my best to make a quick introduction. With us is Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo from California. She has been a true advocate of the Assyrians. Anytime our community has needed something, anytime there's been a help, she's always been the first door we've knocked on. She has worked tirelessly for our community and we can't begin to thank her enough for everything that she's done. I'd like to invite Mr. Carlo Gunja [assumed spelling] here for a second with me please. ^M00:01:04:21 ^M00:01:12:18 Congresswoman Eshoo, if you would mind stepping up here with us for one second. We'd like to present you with a plaque to show our appreciation for all of the wonderful work that you've done to our community. Mr. Carlo Gunja [assumed spelling], Congresswoman Eshoo. >> Rep. Anna Eshoo: Oh, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? Do you want to say something? >> Mr. Carlo Gunja: No. ^M00:01:35:09 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:41:21 >> Rep. Anna Eshoo: Thank you. Isn't that beautiful? I'm going to put this here so you can get a close-up shot of it. ^M00:02:00:06 [ Foreign language ] ^M00:02:05:09 I never thought that I would be at the Library of Congress and speaking Assyrian, so this is really wonderful. Good afternoon everyone. It's always a special privilege to walk across the street from the House of Representatives and the capital of the United States to the Library of Congress. And every time I do, I marvel at the thinking of our framers and Thomas Jefferson. Imagine that he said, the Congress of the United States should have its own library. And today, this is the largest repository of knowledge in the entire world. And I think it's really fitting for this meeting to be taking place at the Library of Congress because Assyrians have not only a culture and a heritage that is rich, but it dates back to the origins of civilization and what they as a people brought forward. So we are the descendants of that heritage and that history. I want to thank Dr. Mary Jane Deeb who's the Chief of African and Middle Eastern, the division, here at the Library of Congress. I don't see her but I want to acknowledge her role in this, and of course, for this meeting to be open to the public and Assyrian legacy from ancient civilization to modern cultural revival. It's extra special, it's not only special for me to be here with you today but it's extra special that my colleague and brother friend Congressman Frank Wolf is here with us today. He has been a giant in the Congress for human rights. He has been a force to reckon with regardless of the administration, regardless of the politics of anything. He has a voice that is, that really, when he speaks his magnificent voice echoes around the world, and oppressed people know the name Frank Wolf. So Frank, thank you. I miss you in the Congress but I know that your magnificent work continues. Let me just say a few words about the work that Congressman Wolf and I did together relative to our people. Back in 2008, we came together and decided that there needed to be a vehicle recognized in the House. And so we created a caucus that's called the Religious Minorities in the Middle East Caucus. And we had at least two goals in mind. First of all, we knew that members of Congress needed to be educated. They knew very little or nothing, and this is not fault or blame, they just didn't know, they didn't understand. Some were even surprised, hold on to your seats, or your hats, that there were Christians in the Middle East. Imagine that. And one of my favorite responses was, where do you think Jesus was born, Trenton New Jersey? So that was one of our goals, but also to deepen and broaden their appreciation of the ancient cultures in the Middle East and why they deserve our support in the Congress and the nexus between the values of America that would drive us to do that, that would drive us to do that. Clearly, there's a nexus between them. Now, we only had a few members to begin with but we kept working. I think two of the most important accomplishments, and I want to acknowledge again, Congressman Wolf's just fearlessness and insistence that we would secure $10 million in 2010 to fund programs that would protect Iraq's religious minorities, and secondly, we passed legislation. And it really was at his insistence to create a special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East. I remember Frank saying to me, "Anna, if there is not a point person that is a high level, then we're just going to drift from one person to another within the State Department." How right he was about that. So I think that we've come a long way. The caucus is grown now to over fifty active members and we've advanced, I think, very recently an historic achievement. On March 14th of this year, the United States House of Representatives voted 393 to zero. So it was unanimous. Every member that was on the floor to vote voted for the resolution that Congressman Jeff Fortenberry and myself were the sponsors of. He is now, he has taken Frank's place as the Co-Chair of the caucus. Now, why is this historic? This is only the second time in the history of the United States of America that as a genocide is taking place, that we would place that definition on what is occurring. The other was Rwanda. And it defines the persecution of Christians, obviously Assyrians because we are Christian, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. Three days later, imagine this Frank, the State Department I think took a historic step as well by asserting that the persecution of Christians, Yazidis and by Isis is in fact a genocide. In a powerful, and I think really poignant speech, the Secretary of State stated "the fact that dioecious [assumed spelling] kills Christians because they are Christians, Yazidis because they are as Yazidis, Shia because they are Shia. In its entire worldview, it's based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology. There is no question in my mind that if dioecius succeeded in establishing its so-called caliphate, it would seek to destroy what remains of ethnic and the religious mosaic which once thrived in the region." And as I said, it's only the second time in the history of the United States of America that such a designation has been, the designation has been placed. ^M00:10:00:06 But we still have an enormous amount of work to do. Today, June 10th marks the second anniversary of the invasion of Mosul, when half a million people fled for their lives. Some didn't make it, and we know what happened to them. Overnight, we saw the systematic extermination of the world's oldest Christian communities by Isis, and of course, they haven't stopped. They continue to ravage Iraq and Syria's religious and ethnic minorities. Men and boys are being killed, women and girls are being abducted, sold, raped. So a genocide designation by the United States is an important step, but it's only one step. I work daily with my colleagues both in the caucus and from across the House of Representatives. This is a nonpartisan issue. This is not Republican, Democrat. We never treated it that way. It should not be treated that way because we need to attract as much support as we can. We're working on a daily basis to continue to secure humanitarian aid. We work to bring about security and an expedited pathway to refugee status for the besieged ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria who are just suffering so immensely that there are not adjectives I think that fit the word suffering. We also continue to assist USAID partners in reaching the displaced populations, and Assyrians are so much a part of that, that reside outside of the refugee camps. And we know very especially that, that is, that that describes the Assyrians and a majority obviously of those that are afraid to be in the camps mixed with others because of a long and troubled history. We're also working very hard to see that as the areas that are liberated, that the Kurdish regional government and the Iraqi government not only honor the return for those that were forced to flee, but also to have a safe haven, also to have a safe haven because, well, for all of the reasons that you already know. In so many ways, I'm preaching to the choir here because you are the scholars and the knowledge-base of all of these issues. So I want to thank you for inviting me to be here today. I'm very proud that our history is being placed front and center at an institution that is the greatest repository of information in the world. This is the appropriate place for not only my people, but for those that have come to learn about our culture to be. And I want to thank you for the recognition from the Assyrian Alliance, the Assyrian Universal Alliance, America. And I also want to end on this note of once again paying tribute to my magnificent colleague, a man of such great integrity, of faith, of a voice that has such clarity, and it comes from such a deep place in him. When members of Congress leave the Congress, most are interested in going off and making a lot of money because when you're in public service you don't go into public service for money. That's not what it's about. But he has a continuum of his work of what he did in the Congress and what he is doing now. So Frank, bless you, bless you. I know God has blessed you with your magnificent family and sixteen grandchildren that he was talking about. So with that, I'm going to, I wish I could stay longer but it's Friday, I have to get out to Dulles. The lines are excruciatingly long. It's not a good day to travel but I need to get back to my constituents in California and I don't want to miss the flight. So, thank you, God bless all of you and thank you to the organizations and everyone that's here today, including the Library of Congress. Thank you. Thank you. ^M00:15:24:27 [ Applause ] ^M00:15:30:15 ^M00:15:39:15 [ Applause ] ^M00:15:43:21 >> Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to take this opportunity now to introduce Congressman Wolf. Congressman Wolf, throughout his career in Congress was an advocate of human rights, and that did not stop once he retired from Congress. In fact Congressman Wolf went to Iraq, if I'm not mistaken, after he had retired from Congress to go see firsthand what was happening to the Assyrian community. So I'd like to again ask Mr. Carlo Gunja to join me on the stage, and I would like to ask Congressman Wolf on the stage. We have a appreciation plaque for you as well for all the service that you've done, not just for our community but for all communities that are facing persecution. Thank you again, Congressman. ^M00:16:29:18 [ Applause ] ^M00:16:38:21 >> Frank Wolf: Thank you very much, they want us to get together, there you go. ^M00:16:43:00 ^M00:16:48:18 Great. Well, thank you very much. And it was good to see Anna. You know, I don't see her as much as I used to, and she's one of my favorite people so it was a treasure just to be here to see her. I think Anna said a lot of things that I was going to say. So I'm going to try to take it from really what Anna said to some ideas and some thoughts. I want to begin my saying, you know, the Bible says much about this, and Jesus says much about this. In Ecclesiastes 4, it said "again I looked and I saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed and they have no comfort. The power was on the side of the oppressors." And Jesus in Luke 4 talks about the oppressed. The situations out in the region, Paul would have a very difficult time traveling to Damascus to Straight Street, now the only Street mentioned in the Bible. And in Iraq we all know, and many of you know as much as anything, so I'm not going to get into detail. I remember my first trip to Iraq. We were in Nasiriyah when the war broke out, and the administration wouldn't let me go. We kind of came in from Kuwait, and we were in this little town. I showed my ID to the soldier and I said I'm a member of Congress and he said, oh, come on in, do you know where we are? I said it's Nasiriyah on my map. He said, no, this is Ur. And he took me took me to a ziggurat, many of you may have been there, and I climbed the ziggurat, 2200 BC. And there's a history. Abraham, Ezekiel's buried there, Daniel's buried there. When we were there last year we were in Alqush, up almost in the front lines where the Isis is. And we're in this little village again, and they kept saying they want to went to see the tomb, the tomb. And I said, sure, and they took me to Nahum's tomb, Nahum's buried there. I touched Nahum's tomb. The history in this region, in your region is unbelievable. It's one that should wake up the church in the West, and I think one of the important things we need to do is wake up the church in the West. I'm going to skip a lot of what I was going to say but just tell you one story. When we were there we were in a little village and they took us in to see a refugee. It was old school, and it was a man who had been a construction worker. You could feel his hands, they were very, very rough. He had two children. And he told us a story. He said when Isis came in he lived a few miles outside of Mosul. Isil came in and took over his village. He had a wife four kids at that time. One daughter has since left to go to Turkey and is his son now living in San Diego. He said his wife had cancer, breast cancer. A lot of cancer runs in my family. So he said a few days after Isis took over, he and his wife went to the hospital for his wife to get treated. He said the Isis said they would not give her treatment unless you were to convert, unless she were to renounce her faith, unless she were to deny Jesus. ^M00:20:03:03 He said, they refused, his wife refused and he refused. They went back to the little village and she died several weeks later. I could not help thinking of that story, because last November I was in Israel and we went up to Capernaum. And in Capernaum we went into this little church which is above the house, Peter's house, and we went to the site where Peter walked on the water, were sites where Peter gave the Beatitudes. And I kind of thought, here's Peter, who ate with Jesus, who saw Jesus do miracles, who saw Jesus walk on the water, and Peter denied Jesus three times. An Iraqi-Assyrian Christian construction worker who never saw Jesus and his wife refused to deny Christ. And so the thought that these people are there and we in the West are forgetting about them. And so there are some things that I think that you could do and I'm going to kind of move, move to really because I don't want to leave you on a down note except to tell you though just so I can electrify and alert you on something. The Bill that Anna was so gracious to mention was special envoy which she played a major part in to set up a special envoy to advocate for the persecuted church in Iraq, but also in Syria, in the Middle East. Knox Stan said the following the other day. He was in Rome but says a US governmental official visiting Rome on Monday said that as a result of the Islamic terrorist groups such as Isis, the door for Christians in Iraq is closing and the window of time to prevent their eradication is narrowing. And Knox said, I feel a sense of urgency. These Christians are leaving. There were one and a half million Christians in Iraq when the war began, and I think if I don't get it. There were one and a half million Christians in Iraq before the war began. Now when we were there, we were told it's roughly 250,000. Bishop Welder [assumed spelling] said that roughly seventeen Christian families leave every day. And the thought that we would have the Middle East, the cradle of Christendom, many of your relatives and relatives of far, far distance in the past, people who speak Aramaic, the same language as Jesus, the thought that they would be eradicated and removed from that region is painful. So what can be done? What should be done? And these are again, my own personal opinions. So again, I think it's great that we pass this, Anna said to call it genocide. My thing is, next step is what. We were able to convince that the language, if you look at the CJS bill that Congressman Culberson has language in order to prosecute Isis people, they're going to look anyone who's joined Isis to begin the prosecution. So we're having a group at the Justice Department to deal with that issue. Secondly, I urge you to urge members of Congress to go to the region and visit. When I was in Congress we would go out, we would see, we would live in the camps, we would be with the people. You can't know about Iraq unless you see it and feel it and touch it and taste it, and not just get in there at 10 o'clock in the morning and leave before dark. But spend the night, listen to the people. So I urge you to urge members of Congress to go. Secondly, I urge you always keep this as a bipartisan issue. But I urge you to join the Coptic Christians who I was with yesterday and the other groups to meet with Secretary Clinton, the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and do it before the election. Do it even before Labor Day if you can, to sit in and ask them to make this, to make this a priority, to speak on it. The presidency and people running for the presidency have great credibility and when they speak, they have a round microphone. You should ask Donald Trump and Secretary Clinton to speak out on this issue, but they should be, you should meet with them. Thirdly, I urge and ask both political parties. I'm trying to get it done in my party, but both political parties, to carry language on this issue in their platforms so that the American people and other members of Congress can see that this is such an important issue. Next, get new members in January and February, new members of Congress to become advocates. Before I got elected to Congress I didn't know anything about this. I took a trip to Romania during the dark days of the Ceausescu administration and literally became electrified by seeing the persecution. Try to adopt some new members of Congress to come and join and come along. And lastly, you need to wake up the church. The Pope has spoken out on this issue. Cardinal Dolan has spoken out on this issue. Cardinal Whorl has spoken out on this issue. Russell Moore has spoken out on this issue. But few other members have, and here we have an issue that impacts on the faith community and go back to look at words in the Old Testament and the New Testament, look at passages in Proverbs, look at the very fact, this ought to be an issue that the church cares deeply about. And so the silence of the church, if you may remember, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out against anti-Nazi activity. We should electrify and wake up the church. Now in fairness to the church in the West, it may be because they do not know completely what is going on. But I urge you to wake up the church, and if we do these things I think we can, I believe honestly, we can turn this issue around. But time is short. And for the political process, the way to get the attention of people running for office is talk to them before the election and then after the election. So talk to your members, meet with Trump, meet with Clinton, get it in the platform, get new members of Congress to comment and lastly, wake up the church. And lastly, pray that God will move this nation to deal with this. I do not want to see on our watch, particularly those of us who are blessed to still be here in five years from now, where we see, that we will see literally the end of Christianity in the cradle of Christendom. Again, thank you very much for the opportunity. ^M00:27:22:27 [ Applause ] ^M00:27:29:06 >> Thank you for joining us for our last panel for the day. Assyrian Culture in the Middle East and Diaspora. Our first speaker Fadi Davood, is a research analyst, NATO Association of Canada. He is a historian of the modern Middle East with special focus on minority populations. He has taught in a number of universities in Canada and the United Kingdom. His PhD is from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, was on refugees, warriors and minorities in Iraq, the case of the Assyrians 1920 to 1933. He is the, he is co-editor of a forthcoming edited edition entitled State and Society in Iraq, Citizenship under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratization. So, Mr Fadi Davood. >> Fadi Davood: Thank you. One second. Here we go. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for an invitation, Dr. Naby and everyone for organizing. This is actually a paper that I'm beginning to think about now on nationalism, nationalisms I should say, not only nationalism in the Middle East, and about the various nationalist ideologies that emerged in the period of the late Ottoman empire into the formations of the modern state. So I am in essence contextualizing the Assyrians, their nationalists, the Kurdish nationalists and other nationalists sort of policies into the larger context of political movements that emerged in the period. And I'm essentially arguing that nationalisms in the Middle East were contrary to what literature says to us, were not movements for secularization, rather they were always rooted in ethno-religious nationalist ideologies and they were combating. The only reason that they emerged were urban nationals and urban elites were combating religious politicians and religious clergy for dominance in the region or dominance of the political sphere in the region. In ant case, and without going too much, I will say that the Syrian nationalism emerged in the same time and under similar circumstances as Arab, Kurdish, Turkish nationalism amongst many in the late Ottoman period following the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms. ^M00:30:07:21 Educated urban elites were the ones originally responsible for thinking about areas of ethnic and linguistic nationalism, and the same group of people were also responsible for other political and social movements that accompanied the rise of nationalistic thought in the Middle East. Originally founded in greater Syria, ideas of nationalism were theorized by intellectuals in Damascus and Beirut. Both Muslim and Christian intellectuals hoped that for example pan- Arab nationalism would unite members of the community against the central Ottoman state and created a united opposition to policies that they feared would infringe upon their place in urban life. Emerging Arab nationals for example, were not united in the root cause and adopting the adopting the idea for example in Beirut, Christian urban notables feared the pan- Islamist policies of the Ottoman state. Muslim-educated intellectuals in Beirut were concerned about the censorship policies of SP constitutionalism promoted by the Ottoman sultan at the time.. Meanwhile urban notables in Damascus feared for the increasing influence of European interests and as a form of controlling the populace. The political conditions that influence and gave way to the rise of Arab nationals and were also present in areas of the Ottoman Empire were large Assyrian populations lived. Urban Assyrians and in particular those living in greater Syria, Torabdeen, and Otomin in Iran were influenced by the political movements emerging in the region where early Assyrian nationalists saw the marginalization of the community both in the political and social spheres of the Ottoman Empire as a reason to protect an identity that they saw as an integral to their language, religion and unique cultural identity in the larger Ottoman milieu. As a result, members of the Assyrian community began to think of as a collective on how they could preserve their identity within the shifting unsettled, political conditions in the hinterland of the empire. They published books, magazines, newspapers and articles that discussed the history, identity and most importantly the national ethnic origin of the Assyrian people. For example in 1879, Assyrians of Diyarbakir in what is now southern Turkey established the ancient city Oyo brotherhood as well as establishing grammar schools, literary societies and other organizations that helped to promote and educate Assyrians and their shared identity, history and nationalist vision. Now from this context, I argue that three sort of groups of people emerged fighting for leadership in the case of Iraq. Just these early nationalist people like Naum Faiq and Freydun Atturaya were those individuals that actually started to theorize and for the most part they were urban intellectuals who actually had no background in tribal politics that actually plagued Assyrians of the time. Now in 1915, the sort of the period between the rise of this nationalist ideology and the genocide that befell the Syrian population which I don't really have much time to get into at the moment, but I talked about it elsewhere, minority Christian populations were targeted Armenians, Assyrians, Pontiac Greeks by Kurdish regulars and Ottomans alike where it is hypothesized that about 50 percent of the population was massacred which resulted in mass displacement of the population where they were actually brought to what is called the Buqaba refugee camp which I actually talk about again in the forthcoming collection. So I encourage everyone to buy a copy, where these people were brought and I argue that this piece that they created in the refugee camp gave rise to three types of leaders urban intellectuals, military generals and military warriors and the third group are religious figures. And so this is a picture of the refugee camp for those that haven't seen it. So speaking of the case in Iraq so fast forward a bit. After the genocide, they were brought to the Baquba refugee camp and here we have a new sort of call for the rise of Syrian nationalism. So the death of Barsha Mudi [phonetic spelling] in 1920 who was the figurehead of the church of the East and settlement of this community in Baquba brought various tribal groups into one space. The refugee camp provided a way for political ideas to be exchanged between members of the community without the obstacles of geographic separation. As a result, new ideas promoted by various political figures allowed members of the refugee population to become engaged in debates that continue to occupy the community and particularly the urban elites or the urban intellectuals of those communities for the remainder of the British mandates in Iraq. Just a side note, the British mandates in Iraq was the period of colonial occupation that began in 1920, turned into a mandate under the auspices of the League of Nations in 1922, ending in 1932. As a result of these new ideas promoted by the various political figures allowed members of the population to engage in debates about nationalism, identity and politics. After the death of Mar Shimun, Sumo Mar Shimun who is the sister of the performing Mar Shimun and the aunt of the new Mar Shimun was 10 years old or 11 years old when he became religious leader became politically responsible or she thought that she had become politically-responsible for the leadership of the Syrian community. She took it upon herself to promote the interests of the population to the British colonial government in Iraq with the aid of Anglican missionaries while individuals like Agha Petros who I have picture of I think, Sama Shimun and this is Agha Petros. Agha Petros, Yusif Malik and others were some of the political figures who challenged the political role of the Mar Shimun family and the religious leadership at the time. The Assyrians were not politically unified so we have to say that when we talk about nationalism, we're not talking a unified group of people that understood what this nationalism meant. Nationalism meant different things for different individuals depending on where they had emerged. The Assyrians were not politically unified during the years of the British mandate, some prominent figures within the community, most prominently Yusif Malik called for the settlement of the Assyrians outside of the borders of the Iraqi state, but Malik also argued that if the British were not going to fulfill their promise to the community by establishing independent nation state for the population, he called for the settlement of the community in Iraq, and for the recognition of the political and religious leadership as part of the political fabric of the Iraqi state. In essence, Malik argued that Assyrian religious officeholders must be recognized as part of the organic Law scheme of 1925 in Iraq and he called for the appointment of nonreligious hearings to the national government in Baghdad. Malik believed that this would encourage members of the refugee population to become more supportive to the ideas of settling in Iraq, and felt that these representatives would be able to protect the community from this hostile or what he saw as the hostile Arab officials in Baghdad. Malik was the only member of the Assyrian community to voice his support for inclusion of the refugees in the administrative structures of the state. As an Iraqi-born civil servant, he had worked with the British and Iraqi governments for the vast majority of the British mandate, and he argued that the inclusion of members of the community in administrative structures of state would compel the Iraqi government to accept the population within the political and social apparatuses of the state. Interestingly, he was born in Iraq, fluent in both Arabic and English. Malik was uniquely positioned to speak on behalf of the Assyrian community. He emerged as part of this urban leadership that I discussed earlier who had traditionally would have had no participation or no role in the internal politics of the community. Prior to the settlement of the refugees in Iraq, religious and tribal leaders were the only officeholders of political authority in the HI Kari Mountains, and Malik represented a new type of urban educated nontribal elite. He became part of the powerful network of urban Assyrians in Iraq, Syria, the United States and elsewhere in the Diaspora and worked to demonstrate that the community was not only able to manage its affairs without the help or the need of involvement of tribal leaders, but saw tribal authority as outdated, unable to manage the problems that had faced the population in Iraq which created a camp of these individuals separate from the rest of the leadership in the community. Now at the same time, you know, perhaps one of one of the biggest sort of achievements that we see in this period happen within this urban elite community is not only the publication of books and the probably promotion of these ideas, but I think this sort of the efforts that they made in order to bring together a hodgepodge of individuals from various churches, and they actually spoke about this national identity under the auspices of the church. Now they actually believed that the churches would be able to unite under the authority of one patriarch at some point in time. So to them, they saw these this nationalist movement as a unification under an Assyrian religious identity and not necessarily a secular one that literature would have us to believe. ^M00:40:09:27 Military leaders also played an important role in shaping the leadership struggles in the period of the British mandate in Iraq. Individuals like Alik Butros [phonetic spelling] who claimed that he had spent and I find this an important anecdote, he spent 38,000 rupees. Iraq had used rupees as its currency as it was managed under the office of India, India office at the time. 38,000 rupees during the 1921 on behalf of the Syrian refugees in Iraq. Butros claimed that he was acting in an official capacity, again, all these people claim that they were acting in an official capacity as Democratic representatives of the Assyrian people. On behalf of the Assyrian refugee population in Iraq, Butros claimed that he was acting in an official an elected democrat's capacity in order to save the population from the persistent threats posed by the Arab population in Baquba, and that the British and Iraqi governments had given him the authority to act on behalf of the refugees during the few first months of the British occupation in Iraq. Butros's campaign in this area continued until 1923 to 1924 period while actually, he died just about around that time but the organization that he had built continued to act as sort of as a group of these military leaders when he began a long correspondence with Winston Churchill for example and other British officials in London. The letters he sent sought the help of British individuals for the reimbursement of costs he had personally incurred in Iraq and France. Though the British refused to comply with these sort of challenges or this money, the return of the money, Butros and his allies used these claims and the correspondence with British government to demonstrate to the refugee population that he was not only leader responsible for his pursuing their interests in Iraq, they actually tried to show that the money he had spent personally, you know, and according to supporters was intended to help the refugee population reoccupy villages that they had lost few number of years earlier in the HI Kari Mountains during the genocide. Agha Butros continues to occupy a very special place amongst the what I call the pantheon of Assyrian military leaders during and after the first world war and thus in the collective memory of the Syrian community both in Iraq and in the diaspora in North America and Europe. For example, a famous Assyrian singer and musician recorded an entire album dedicated to the memory and heroic acts of Butros. The album recalls a time of political opportunity for the Assyrian people when Butros tried to bring the population together under one political banner, but inflated egos and squabbling within the community led to the destruction Butros' dream of salvaging what remained of the Assyrian community after the First World War. In the same album which is entitled "Lion Hunter" you know, in sort of reference to the ancient historical past that we heard about this morning, the singer links the memory of Butros to the heroic, ancient Assyrian kings and leaders. The songs on the album highlight what are believed to be actions of a hero who led the Assyrians through the First World War and beyond which actually cement this whole idea of the military leader within the Assyrian community. Now the third individuals or the third group of people are the religious establishment and the religious establishment led by Sidma Mar Shimun, the aunt of Mar Shimun who I think is a very fascinating individual as a female of the time was working with British missionaries and other individuals to demonstrate that the Assyrians were in fact not only the reliant on her sort of family and on her religious, sort of followers but rather they actually had always "traditionally" lived under these hospices. And so in the Baquba refugee camp, she managed to assemble an area called the Aristocratic area within the refugee camp which I discussed elsewhere that she actually managed to bring the bishops and tribal leaders under a tribal authority or tribal committee to manage the affairs of the community inside this refugee camp, which actually made it much more difficult for individuals like Agha Butros, unlike those who I discussed military and nonmilitary leads to actually conduct her role in managing the population. The role played by Sedma and Agha Butros during the mandates put the leaders of the community and the community as a whole into two political camps. Some believe that the refugee population would be best served if the religious establishment and in particular the Mar Shimun family was politically marginalized. As part of a new excuse me military leadership, they were motivated by what they saw as the necessity for new political structure headed by military or nonmilitary elites lobbying the British for a new state that would governed by these elites in a democratically-elected fashion. And the claims for leadership within the group were well-received by some community members between 1922 and 1929 as Assyrians began to develop plans to rescue the committee or the community from the threats posed by the Iraqi and British governments. Now I conclude that all these debates were debates within the sort of the educated elites and military elites of the community. The larger population which was living as a refugee population really did not care about the pro-nationalist sort of squabblings. What they were really caring about is where they would be settled, how they would live and essentially, you know, you live beyond subsistence living, regain some of their, you know, livelihoods which was mainly based in farming and agriculture prior to the First World War. Now I think that as a result of all these nationalist movements and this is what I'm theorizing, we have strong military leaders emerging to take role as the supreme leader, as the Savior of the nation and the Assyrians were no different from Arabs, Turks and others. And yet at the same time the populace became sort of absorbed these ideas through propaganda beating the case of Arab nationalism in Iraq or Syria or Turkish nationalism in Turkey. In the case of the Assyrians, it was different. It was the Semile massacre that cemented this nationalist idea. The Semille massacre is a massacre in 1933 that actually brought the Assyrians under attack from the Iraqi Army. The newly-independent Iraqi army and some Kurdish irregulars that massacred much of the population in the Semille region in Iraq and I think that moment really cemented for these nationalist sort of debates into populist ideas and into the mainstream. Identities were really affected by what had emerged as nationalist ideas and so I hope in the future to continue to debate this. As I said, this is a very early version of the paper. So I would love to hear some comments from everyone, thank you. ^M00:47:57:12 [ Applause ] ^M00:48:05:03 >> Thank you Dr. Davood. Our next presenter is Alda Benjamin, she completed her PhD at University of Maryland in 2015 on Assyrians in Modern Iraq using archival sources in Baghdad, Mosul, Elbee and Ahouck in languages raging...ranging from Arabic, classical Syriac and contemporary Assyrian Aramaic. She's currently working on cultural heritage preservation at the University Of Pennsylvania Museum and the Smithsonian Institute. Her most recent trip to Iraq was in May 2016. ^M00:48:48:21 [ Applause ] ^M00:48:57:24 >> Alda Benjamin: Thank you all for being here. I want to especially thank Mary Jane Deeb and Dr. Eden Naby for putting this wonderful conference together and for the organizations that funded it and for the Library of Congress, of course. My presentation will take you to the next 50 years after what Fadi just talked about so you have the basis covered of the first World War One period and the first few decades within it. So between negotiation and resistance, Baghdadi and Assyrian intellectuals in the 1970s and in the 1980s and they focused particularly on urban intellectuals mainly in Baghdad under the Ba'ath rule. So you have to put that in context that negotiations happening is at a time when the state is really gaining in strength and influence so it has to be relatively sort of to that period. And let me just say a thing about the picture, I was just there a few weeks ago. ^M00:50:01:27 This is the Rabban Hormizd Monastery dating back in the seventh century in Alqush. It's one of the last villages standing right now and in the plain region and still has 1600 families so it was really nice to be there to do some research. So today I'll analyze the ways in which Assyrian intellectuals negotiated for political rights, some are governments going in strength and influence in the early 1970s. This discussion is part of my monograph project "Negotiating the place of Assyrians in modern Iraq" which examines the relationship between a stronger Iraqi state under the Ba'athist regime beginning in 1968 and the Assyrians. I studied the role of the Assyrians in the Iraq's leftist and oppositional movements in the second half of the 20th century and argue, and I'm giving you the basic arguments of my research because I think it will help you contextualize what I'm talking about because I'm really just talking about one side of this multifaceted sort of negotiations and affairs that are going on. So now I argue that within newly-politicized urban spaces, minorities such as the Assyrians were attracted to intellectual and political movements that allowed them to emerge from the peripheries and advanced issues that were beneficial to their community while engaging with other Iraqis of their social economic background and relying on transnational community networks influential during the Cold War period. So from the 1960s to the 1980s and I stopped during the intifada campaign at the intifada campaign. So in the 1960s you have a lot of sort of leftist communist activity that the Assyrians are involved in, you have the Kurdish uprising that's starting off, and the Assyrians have a role in that as tribal leaders, as members of organizations, as villages who are joining against the centralized government in general. And then you have in the 70s, you have urban intellectuals, you have cultural rights that I'll talk about, and then you have the re-establishment of the Assyrian nationalist movement which I'm not sure Fadi agrees with me or not, but I call it the re-establishment because I think after the Semille period, it really, it halts. I mean, it's not what it used to be from the World War I period. And then again, the Iraqi opposition which they become a part of, on a political level. So as a result, Ba'athist policies towards the Assyrians reflected the regime's approaches to internal and external pressures exerted on it, and at times necessitated the state's attempt to attract Assyrian political and religious leaders with favorable policies such as cultural rights. So this is the region where the Assyrians lived, basically northern Iraq, the modern countries that we have, northern Iraq and surrounding the Ottomia Iran region, you have southeast Turkey and then you have the northwestern Syria as well. And there actually is intellectual discussion. There really is a transnational movement of music and of newspapers that are going back-and-forth. The communities, I mean, you have borders but the communities are still engaged in various regards. The churches that they belong to and the sources I just list them to show you this is actually a challenge on working on Assyrians and minorities in the Middle East because we don't really have a central place where sources are collected, and maybe this is something that we can talk about as panelists at the end of the discussion, Iraqi National archives that I was at. Okay. And just a few words, Tomar Tomas is a leader from Alqush. He was very active in the 1960s. This is a statue that is erected for him. In 2007 in his village in Alqush that I was able to take Margaret George, another active militant women who joined from the Badua region with her father and a few male figures from her village of Du're during the Iraqi opposition, the Kurdish opposition in the 60s. And Ba'athist archives, you know, State's archives that we have clearly talking about how to Ba'athify [assumed spelling] society, and the other hand we have state sources on the Assyrian nationalist movement from the 1980s, so they're talking about how they're getting together. This is document that they have retrieved from the Assyrian movement that, a pamphlet that was given up to villagers in the north that the government is talking about and Modenarthiraya [assumed spelling] is a magazine that I'll be discussing. So during the 1970s, Assyrian intellectuals promoted their culture and negotiated for political rights with the government, often framing their concerns using accepted Ba'athist narratives. Negotiation was a process in which Assyrians try to understand themselves as a community and reach internal consensus both within the ecclesiastical communities and between tribal, religious and secular leaders. The community also negotiated by trying to position itself within Iraqi society in relation to both the state and opposition and also transnationally with the Assyrian diaspora and human rights organization. Eric Davis argues about savvy, non-elite or subaltern groups like the Assyrians began to subscribe to historical narratives propagated by the state to avoid provoking state authorities by expressing unauthorized ones. But memories propagated by the state were also challenged. The Assyrians among other Iraqi communities used counter-memory in their textual or oral productions to challenge the state's interpretation of the past. Assyrians like other Iraqi intellectuals are often successful in subverting the state's narratives by incorporating multiple layers of meaning into their texts to challenge a particular position propagated by the state. I highlight the Assyrian intellectual production by analyzing press and popular culture to understand how Assyrian intellectuals negotiated their interest and related to a state growing in strength and influence, relying on influential publications such as Modenarthiraya that you see on a cover of one of its magazines. Modenarthiraya was published by the Assyrian cultural club from 1972 to 1985. And it's an excellent case study, because it was published once every three months. It really had high quality of articles in it. It was published mainly in Arabic and Aramaic, and you had intellectuals from various churches, Chaldean Church of the East mainly contributing to it, and not only from Baghdad. I mean, you had contributors from Baghdad, from Kirkuk, from Basra, from other provinces. You had people writing to the editors from Lebanon, from Chicago, various, I mean, various places. There was 2000 copies published every three months, and the number, the quality, the quantity depended on the financial situation of the club. And of course, the government restricted them from raising how much it cost to publish the cost of the magazine. So they were dealing with certain cases where they could not publish more. But 2000 copies was a significant number, and in 1984, when the magazine is really just a shadow of its former self, the editor tells us that we send 500 copies to the US or to North America rather and we don't charge. I mean, they are just sent sort of as a gift to them. So I'll be focusing on this magazine and the narratives of integration used in this particular magazine. In 1972, the promulgation of law 251 by the government extended cultural and linguistic rights to the Assyrians which officially referred, they were referred to by the government as the Syriac-speaking citizens. The preface to the law asserted, I can talk about this song later. So basically, just one quick moment. So I talked about how there's negotiation. When impressed, they're more careful in what they word and what terminology they used. But here's an example in the same club, the Assyrian cultural club where the magazine is published, where this is the first record we have of the Assyrian's talking about the Simele massacre which Fadi just talked about in 1933 of the community inside the country. And this is a song. Basically, a young high school graduate who becomes very famous after the song, sings it in Aramaic. So what you say, what you sing about is different from what you write about in popular culture and. Okay. So let's go back to law 251. I'm not going to read it, but what's important here is the terminology. So the government gives them these rights, culture rights to the Syriac-speaking citizens, and just notice the terminology that they use. So, we're national minorities, the lost state [foreign language]. So they refer to them as [foreign language]. By the end of the 70s this changes, right. They become [foreign language], a denomination, you know. ^M01:00:01:03 So the terminology is really important and it's interesting how the Ba'ath regime frames that we're giving you these rights because you're sort of part of the, it's part of the democratic process and you are a national minority deserving to be able to practice your cultural rights. So the Law permitted the teaching Syriac language in primary and secondary schools where Assyrians were in majority. And also at the University of Baghdad's College of Art and Literature and Literature. A special television and radio programme in Syriac was to be broadcast in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Nineveh. So these were large concentrations of Assyrians. Well, Assyrians writers and academics were to be supported in various ways and represented in Iraqi Cultural Association. Finally, the establishment of Civil Society Organizations in the pursuit of social, cultural, artistic and linguistic objectives was now explicitly permitted. So they're able to form organizations and publish more freely. A lot of these were actually did not materialize so, yes, you do have organizations forms and publishing. The schools, they did not really extend the teaching of Syriac to schools so this is just sort of symbolically passed but they were not allowed to do. So they do have radio programs in Bagdad and Kirkuk. And so certain things were passed on, others were just basically cast aside. Following the passage of Law 251, Assyrians were cautiously optimistic about the cultural rights granted by the government. In the first half of the 1970s they negotiated for rights within about the system, constructing a historical narrative that integrated themselves into the social fabric of Iraqi society since Abbasid times. Assyrian Communists used more modernist theoretical conceptions, drawing on socialism and Marxism to argue for Assyrians' right within the current system. A function of the temporary alignment between the Baath and the Iraqi Communist Party, the ICP at the time. During this period, Assyrian intellectuals celebrated these policies but probed the system by pushing its boundaries while maintaining their support for Baathism, at times superficially. And integrating Baathist principles to justify cultural and political rights for their community. The regime for its part temporarily engaged in reconciliatory practices pursuing policies that drew the community closer to it while and worked on implementing laws that projected favorably in the West, and meanwhile penetrative Assyrians' institutions. So again this is in the urban centers, in the non-urban centers, in the Northern provinces especially you do have an opposition. So this is why it's important for the Baath regime to actually negotiate and give cultural rights. It makes it look good internally and also externally. Some scholars argue that the Baathification of society did not begin until the Iraq Iran war in 1980. My research supports this position, but points to a change of State policy towards the Assyrians and perhaps all Iraqis living in the Northern provinces following the Algiers agreement of 1975 and particularly 1978 in Baghdad and other urban centers. The Algiers agreement mended the relations between Iraq and Iran, temporarily ending Iranian support for the Iraqi opposition of which Assyrians were active within. So once the opposition became less significant you see a shift in Baathist policies so the cultural rights become less important and the negotiation sort of changes. There is a change of tone that you see as I said in these cities, urban centers in 1978 but in the rural center really you see it much earlier right after the Algiers agreement is passed in '75. So this presentation therefore complicates the traditional scholarly view of the Baath regime which often presents Iraqi society sort of under the Baath as being closed and authoritarian with a system with limited space for interaction between State and society. And it shows the Baath regime basically played politics at the beginning, at least in the early 70s. Narratism integration. So the Iraqi government supplemented legislative policies with financial assistance to Assyrian Cultural Organization. Mordina [assumed spelling] Suraya [assumed spelling] became the beneficiary of a large donation from the Ministry of Information [foreign language] and the Union of Iraqi Scholars. Government agencies also engaged the community by facilitating international academic conferences that featured classical Syriac intellectuals and invited Western scholars to participate. In February 1973, a festival was organized to honor Saint Ephrem, a fourth century hymnographer and theologian of the School of Nisibis. And Hunayn Ibn Ishaq which we talked about from the, he died in 873, 877. He was a physician, translator and active within the house of wisdom during that Abbasid period. The man was described by the magazine as prominent intellectuals in the field of translation, composition, and service to humanity somewhere downplaying Ephrem Syrus as the saint of the Church. And this was helped by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Inquiry under the supervision and organization of [foreign language]. Shamshun Kassum [assumed spelling] author of the article characterizes this conference as an embodiment of the culture rights granted to the Community by the Revolutionary Counsel. The Revolutionary Counsel had dedicated over 10,000 dinars which roughly I think at that time in the 70s a dinar was equivalent to US3.00 or so. To cover the expenses of the festival which was a significant first step in demonstrating to the community the practical outcome of its policies. Shamshun Kassum [assumed spelling] briefly describes the significance of these two historical figures and paving the way for the emergence and advancement of an intellectual reconnaissance. This reconnaissance had contributed to the animation of Islamic civilization which in turn had influenced world civilization according to him. Here Shamshun Kassum [assumed spelling] departed from this general historical background of Saint Ephrem and Hunayn Ibn Ishaq contextualizing these historical figures in contemporary affairs. So he states the emergence of the Arab state and despite of its influence in Central Asia following the fall of the Persian Empire was an important factor in granting the Church of the East safety, peace and security during that period. In the area of the rightly guided caliphs the Church of the East gained recognition. So that its Christian citizens [foreign language] followers could enjoy their full national rights [foreign language] I mean he's talking about the medieval period and he's using this kind of terminology. Within the auspices of the State or Dawla and its official protection. Shamshun Kassum [assumed spelling] used modern political terminology that defines the relations between State and society, citizenship and national rights to construct a narrative of inclusion and plurality between the Assyrian community and the ruling authority from medieval to modern times. He indirectly equated the current Baathist administration to the rightly guided Caliphs of the Golden Age of Islam. During this time, the Baath regime was a self-propagating, a historical memory that fused Mesopotamians and with Iraq's Abbasid is on the heritage, and at the same time demonstrating support for Pan-Arabism. Shamshun Kassum [assumed spelling] [inaudible] the Assyrians within an historical narrative that catered to have nationalism with an emphasis on the Abbasid past. Within this discourse Kassum highlighted the intellectual contributions of Assyrians to Islam and humanity framing the Assyrians of integral native component of the country deserving a full rights and citizens, full national rights as citizens. The Abbasid discourse was addressed in succeeding issues as well where Assyrians appropriated Baathist language celebrating the Abbasid period of the Golden Age of Islam. For instance, the Assyrians in the Abbasid times [inaudible] highlighted the collaboration between the Assyrians and the incoming Arab armies during the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia. Again, he constructs this sort of narrative where the Assyrians escaped the cultures of the Byzantine forces and although they were welcomed into Persia and allowed to join the Church or function in the Church. Their situation does not improve until the Arab conquest two centuries later. And then he addressed the Abbasid Caliphates again and how it included the Assyrians as members of the community, court physicians, translators and so on. Again, illustrating efforts of the Assyrian intellectuals to highlight the history of their community during the Abbasid period for the purpose of integrating their narrative within the officially recognized narrative. The international conference focusing on Saint Ephrem and Hunayn Ibn Ishaw deployed accepted narratives and exemplified what was permissible according to Law 251. The amount of money spent on the conference was significant even by today's standards and reflected the scale of cultural projects the government was engaged in. This investment was potentially beneficial to the state in two ways. First, the conference attracted important Western scholars with whom interviews the [inaudible] and Mordina [assumed spelling] Suraya [assumed spelling]. This is important because the Kurdish opposition which included Assyrians was actively seeking international support in its campaign against the Iraqi state. ^M01:10:01 The pressing of Western scholars and publicity could assist the newly founded Baathist State and portraying itself in a positive light especially given the conferences emphasis on Christian minorities. Second, the government was actively seeking the support and indeed pursuing the co-optation of the Assyrian community. This conference sought to demonstrate to the community that the regime was willing to implement Law 251 and promote the Syriac language and culture. Come on [inaudible] next. Okay so I will finish here. So this is something that is happening in Baghdad, I mean there are other examples of Kirkuk where they have a conference where they are celebrating the Revolution of, the anniversary of the Revolution. Whereas the Revolution of the Baathist regime, of course the Baathist Revolution. Whereas if you look at the contents of the program I mean they have [inaudible], they have single singing group [foreign language] awaking or use which is a national song from the 1920s, right? They have performers who are out playing the song, and you have a lot of other speakers who sort of if you know their background and you've read their writing from previous periods from previous years, you know, that there are really just paying lip service to the Baathist regime. So it's really interesting how intellectuals sort of know what the parameters are but they still try to shift and negotiate and use terminology that's accepted and use language which is frames this loss. So it's a way of allowing themselves to insert themselves in this narrative, to push the boundaries while still sort of maintaining the boundaries and not being, you know, seriously effective. And we know that by the end of the 70s a lot of the shifts and changes Mordina [assumed spelling] Suraya [assumed spelling], the way the magazine cover which incorporated Assyrian art for example, from ancient to modern periods changes and it becomes, you now, you see pictures of Saddam Hussein, you see pictures of the war efforts. And this tone of negotiation and resistance that you found in the early 70s sort of disappears in the late 70s and especially in the 80s. In the Assyrians sections you read columns sometimes and you say to yourself, well, there must be a lot of multiple layers of meaning here. There's a lot of symbolism here but that engagement of intellectuals that you found in the 70s you do not find again in the 1980s. Thank you so much. ^M01:12:40 [ Applause ] ^M01:12:46 >> Thank you Doctor Benjamen. Our next speaker, Eden Naby, is a cultural historian of the Middle East and Central Asia who has moved from studying Middle East religious and ethnic minorities to focusing on the modern Assyrians, particularly, on issues of cultural preservation among the many articles on Assyrians are the key introduction to Assyrians in the former Soviet Union. The use of the pre-World War I Assyrian periodical press to analyze Assyrian cultural progress 1977 and 2006, and her work at the foundation for endangered languages and the encyclopedia Iranica. Her books include Afghanistan, Molar Marks and Mujahids [phonetic] and the forthcoming Assyrians of the Middle East. ^M01:13:40 [ Applause ] ^M01:13:48 >> Eden Naby: Thank you, and thank you all for coming. I know this is the last presentations so try to stay awake. The preservation of Aramaic through music and word needs a little bit of introduction with regard to the background of the cultural development of the Assyrians in the modern period. So up to the 1850s the life of the Assyrian community was largely built around their church communities, their villages, and the main mode of sustenance, economic sustenance for the agriculture, and in some areas this was sustenance, bare sustenance. And so there was an interest in going abroad for work because there were certain kinds of employment that were close to Assyrians as they were to the Jews. So the Assyrians began their first cross-border migrations toward Russia, the tsarist Russia and there was a lot of, there were a lot of people who went there for seasonal work as did Armenians. Other Assyrians, particularly, among the Chaldean community were involved in the age-old millennia old as we say pattern of trade across various borders, it's usually not long distance trade but short distance trade. And this continued to be the way that the pre-modern Assyrians led their lives, their economic lives and their social lives. However, as many of you know, the presence of American and British missionaries that we've referred to and American missionaries in particular made a profound difference in the question of language preservation and the commitment of the vernacular dialect to the written word and the printed word. With the coming of the American missionaries in Northwest Iran in particular, we have the beginning of schools that are secular schools conducted in the language that is spoken by the Assyrians. Some of this activity activity was also undertaken by French missionaries both in Northern Iraq, in Mosul and in those areas as well as in the Ormy area of Northwest Iran especially Thalamus [assumed spelling]. However, despite all the strength of the, represented by this resurgence of support from abroad and to some extent the remunerations that were sent from those who went to work first in Russia and then in the United States in particular. Despite all of this, the entire Assyrian progress in culture and education was totally destroyed by the genocide of the First World War to be followed by the smaller incident but significant politically hard just as much of Simele in 1933. With genocide displacement and immigration, two thirds of the population of the Assyrians was lost, to conversion, murder, starvation and flight. Most were forbidden to return to their homeland, this is especially true in Iran because in Iran the Assyrians had a strong claim to the Ormy area. And our two speakers referred in part some of the reasons why but they were prevented from returning to Iran in some cases I know you have experienced a family having to change their names from Assyrian to Armenian in order to be able to return to Iran. In diaspora then which now means includes over half of the world Assyrian population especially with the most recent devastation in Mesopotamia. Economically, the Assyrian community we can say is thriving now, there are many professionals, there are many people who are carving out lives that are economically stable, but culturally the community is starving. As one of the leading proponents of cultural advancement has said recently that our community, the Assyrians, because of their constant refugee status from the 1920s where they emerge, they educate, they establish themselves and then in the 40s comes another, another surge of immigrants and refugees and so on in the 1960s in particular in the 80s. So there is this constant feeding of the community and distraction of the community in order, from economic, for economic advancement away from cultural facilities. So the economic strength now is fairly well developed, not as much as some of their neighbours and certainly there are no resources, state resources to support this as in the case of many of the other minorities in the Middle East. But culturally the Assyrian community in diaspora and the biggest communities I think currently are probably Australia and North America as well as northern Europe, Sweden and the Scandinavians countries Finland are fairly strong now. Because there is a considerable amount of social and cultural support there from the state, in the US there isn't. So there is a cultural weakness, language loss, loss of creativity in arts and literature in particular, lack of familiarity with their own modern history due to Middle Eastern school education. ^M01:20:14 So some of them were educated in Aramaic, in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria and then these schools were closed. In Iran there are not closed but they are extremely restricted since the 1980s. So there is also the outsider distortion of history of the Assyrians, there is a far greater focus on church divisions in the Assyrian community, various patriarchates then there are the factors that unite Assyrians which is their language and their historical narrative. The rise of nationalism as Alda has said or was it you Fadi? Nationalisms in the Middle East and the post-World War II period meant that there is non-recognition of the Assyrian ethnicity and I think Alda and Fadi have both spoken to this very well, only recognition of the church institutions. Now, I say except Iran I don't mean that Iran is exceptionally good in this regard, but there is some difference between how Iran and the rest of the Middle East regard the Assyrians in terms of ethnicity. The churches are not active in promoting the living language but mainly Syriac. Syriac is an Aramaic language and sometimes it wasn't very clear in this conference, it is an Aramaic language developed in Ohai [assumed spelling] but it is now a liturgical language, it's not a spoken language. It is the language of the chants and all of the Assyrian Churches. Imagine a whole Czechoslovanak continue to be taught in this Slovak language areas rather than the living language. So the living language in fact is suffering at the expense of the teaching of Syriac in the Churches. The Baathist regime in Syria also forced closed Assyrians schools which had been doing relatively well in places like Qamishli. Iraq had functioning schools and [inaudible] playing and mainly supported by the diaspora using the books of Kurish Fanyaaman [assumed spelling] who is a relative of one of our panelists, yes, and reprinted from Iran. The Syrian Orthodox Church actively discouraged the literary production of [foreign language] because, which is the Western language that is used in the community. The spoken and written language today are largely based on the works of Iranian Assyrians. Now, I don't say that only because I come from the Ormy region, I say it because the education of Assyrians in Iran and their vernacular language was far stronger and less restricted in the last fifty years than anywhere else in the Middle East. So there is a great reliance on the works of Assyrians from Iran for the poetry that exists today, for the plays and for the histories, the anthologies and so forth. Even though Ormy was not the first place where the language must vernacular was committed to writing, it was in fact in Alqosh [assumed spelling] about which my colleagues have spoken. Schools, however, In Iran have had a rocky history. The Friday language schools, Friday being the Muslim holiday with when we studied primary level vernacular in Church schools and also in secular schools such as in Hamagan [assumed spelling] in the 1930s and Abadan [assumed spelling] in the 1950s and 60s in Olmin [assumed spelling] and most importantly in Tehran. And I think we have several people in this room who are actually graduates from the very important school in Tehran. In the 1960s, the work of the [foreign language] Tehran which is the youth organization of Assyrians of Tehran became extremely significant in the promotion of literature and history and poetry as well as performing arts. Catholic schools have continued to teach languages in some areas that I have spoken about but the Protestant schools which had been so strong in the late 19th and pre-Diaspora period have collapsed because in 1961 the Protestant Churches simply pulled out of that sort of thing. From words to music means that the tension of Assyrians, the ability to support a wide range of culture was extremely limited. So for a long period of time, the people who retained the language, the poetry, the music were popular singers. And here I'm calling them weddings singers just because it's a popular term that is used in Greek and Jewish culture, but in fact these are people who would perform at entertainments, they would New Year's celebrations and so forth. And they would sing songs that related to patriotism rather than simply I love you, you are my love, and so forth and so on. There was that too but interspersed in all of these was a great deal of patriotic poetry and patriotic music. Some of it written by the performance themselves. This particular gentleman born in Baghdad 1949 [inaudible] is probably the best known and the best loved of the persons in this category of Assyrian singers who are still revered I would say because of the role they had played in retaining patriotism. Art songs, compositions from the 19th century are mainly lost, mainly due to the Diaspora and the fact that preservation methods were simply not there as we have them in the post-World War I period. Some of the early 78 RPMs recorded are often from the Diaspora dealing with themes of nationalism in some instances in some [inaudible] history and some instances playing love songs but all in the Aramaic language. Poetry, theater and the performing arts preservation have been difficult as I have been saying but we do have some anthologies of poetry from the late 19th and 20th century, not much. But these have been preserved in a book by Samath [assumed spelling] to which the fundamental book on Assyrian literature and poetry, the book by Rudolph Matsu 1975 I think is based in large respect. Before World War I the Assyrians in Iran had four periodicals, the earliest being in 1849 which is the earliest periodical published anywhere in Iran. And in Ottoman Turkey there were two and Fadi referred to one of them, I think, Georgia there was one because of this migration from Ormy especially to Russia, Tsarist Russia. And then that's about it before World War I. After World War I in the Middle East in Diaspora there were many, many Assyrian publications in the United States - short-lived not institutionally supported. And I was hoping and I know that the Library of Congress has a lot of these periodicals, but they are very precious and so they're not in that room for display but really they are wonderful and a wonderful collection exists here. There are also church publications, so these tend to be in the native language but in Diaspora they have to adopt other languages as well. So they are often bilingual sometimes trilingual because of the immigration especially with Arabic, and in the Middle East itself too they are tending to be more and more trilingual and bilingual, in part because there are fewer and fewer people who'd actually can write in these languages in the Aramaic language. And also because of the fact that their readership requires it and there is State censorship that requires national languages. Now, the rights of the theatrical and performing arts is an interesting one and I have written at least one article that specifically about that in Iran. But we have the rise of theater performance in Tehran, in Baghdad and in Qamishli, Qamishli all of you know is in Eastern Syria. In the United States because of the large Diaspora following the genocide we have performances of plays by non-professionals, non-professional communities, social groups and so on. Especially along the East Coast we have some wonderful wonderful pictures from that period where they performed things like Arshin Mamalan [assumed spelling] which is an Azarish Turkish play that is very popular made into film four times at least in Chicago and in the Central Valley in the 1950s. ^M01:30:06 In the USSR, the former Soviet Union there was considerable state sponsorship of Assyrian cultural activity. This is because the language of the Assyrians was recognized as one of the nationality languages of the Soviet Union. It came with that territoriality, but where there were large clusters as in Armenia and in Georgia they had schools of their own which was sponsored by the state. With the end of the Soviet Union that kind of sponsorship has ended and the community in Russia and in the Trans Caucasus is active but not as active as before. So in our time now, in the last twenty years Europe and Australia and the United States have become refugee locations but state sponsorship of Assyrian activity, cultural activity is very very limited. So the community has to depend on itself, on its own resources in order to raise the funds to be able to perform, to create any kind of cultural performance. The content of the plays as I said from Arshin Mamalan [assumed spelling] is an example. We also have examples of adaptations of Russian material and we have originals skits, plays based on Assyrian historical events. A lot of this is not fully documented, but there's a good deal of material on it that we have published in some of the Assyrian organization magazines such as the Assyrian Star and these are available. Choral and solo singing of art songs, especially in Tehran, became very popular. The inspiration from music, my eyes over there, the inspiration for music is incorporation of Assyrian traditional melodies to Western instruments. So the three leading figures for this kind of activity are all from Iran and as you will see from this chart, two thirds have emigrated and died in, in the West. So what is happening then is that we know for example that Assyrian music in the ancient period had certain instruments that are depicted or known, and there are some discussions of it but there's also some music from the Ancient period that is performed. So what happens is when we have Assyrian affairs then we have say a harp substituting for what would have been an Ancient Assyrian instrument. My emphasis for a bit of this talk is going to be on the Mesopotamian night event which has been taken which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year out of San Jose. Mesopotamian night is an organization that tries to have through sheer voluntary activity, Assyrian events that include both popular and new music. Mesopotamian night draws on the works of people that I've named here, composers and poets and they also commissioned new music and new poetry. I guess we're not going to have a sample of the music but this is one example of the event that took place in San Jose and it's now taking place this event annual event is also in Chicago and in Los Angeles, hopefully, also in Phoenix if you guys work pretty hard. Then this is how some of the work is done, it's fairly professional expansion and then there is the updating of popular songs through orchestral accompaniment and sometimes dance. Sometimes this is a real flop but sometimes it works very well. But the future direction, my particular interest over the next few years is in the Assyrian Arts Institute. A new organization which is very, very different from the older organizations because it is committed to being an institutionalized endowed structure, endowed is the key word. And the commitment is to promoting language, promoting awareness of Assyrian arts and promoting performance. Other promising directions, there is a new poetry organization between Cambridge University and the Journal of Assyrian academic studies, a collaboration that is being engineered and fostered by a one of our current young poets [inaudible]. And there are new attempts to institute schools in Australia and the United States. But with every generation of refugees and the debate over whether Assyrians should actually remain in the Middle East or not. We have the resources, the financial resources of the Assyrian community being drawn away from might have been gone into cultural things into dealing with refugees, and that is the sad part of our history. Thank you. ^M01:35:36 [ Applause ] ^M01:35:42 >> Thank you Doctor Naby. We have a few minutes for questions and answers. Two people in this room here. ^M01:35:54 ^M01:35:58 >> Thank you, Doctor Davood. From the beginning of today we heard from the history of the dawn of civilization till today and it seems to me that recently we have, the world has become very messy, violent. Whereas before every 200 years or so there was genocide or something, now, we have every five, ten years. Has anybody done any study as far as what the future holds as this trend is going to continue or why is it? >> Fadi Davood: I don't think anyone has done any studies on the future and what it holds but maybe my co-panelist. >> Eden Naby: I don't understand the question. >> Fadi Davood: I mean, he's asking if there are any studies done on the future of the Syrian Community. >> Eden Naby: Well studies can't be done on the future but speculation can be made and there is a great deal of dissent in the community about just what should be done with the community. Because the future of the community in the Middle East is in peril and there are many important voices in the Diaspora community who are saying let's not put those $2 million a year into supporting those communities. Let us use that money to support communities and bring them out here, out to where they can actually live in some security. So that is the discussion but I don't know that you'd call that a study. >> Alda Benjamen: Can I also add? You know, there is different voices, you have what people in the Diaspora want, what people in Iraq or the homeland want, and sometimes they are not aligned. Through my travels I think a lot of them want to remain in Iraq if they can. So they do hold on like I said you know in Alqosh. When we went up to [foreign language] Monastery, from the Mountain it was evening. You could see ISIS, I mean; they told me you see those red lights over there? And I said what are you doing? How do you sleep at night? But they love their village, they love their town, they are proud of their history and they want to remain so I mean. So there's different aspect of, you know, there's so many narratives that are going on but there's some studies done on language for example the Aramaic language and the fear is that within two generations or so it ceases to exist in the Diaspora. So you know if you have a family that speaks Aramaic their children might speak it, their grandchildren might speak but then after that. So you have studies like that on certain aspects of the culture and there's a lot of fear, you know, if you did lose the people in the Dias, in the homeland and the language in the roots that they had, the connections they had to the land and the language then what happens to us? And it goes back to what Doctor Eben Naby saying, you know, do we start focusing more on the community here? Because every wave of refugees, basically, joins the efforts, and the finances of the community to helping refugees and you've been dealing with that often so you can't focus on building schools and on contributing to arts and so on and so forth so it's a dilemma. >> Wonderful lectures, thank you very much, very touched by all three of them. Professor Davood, I have a question for you. At the time and when you were talking about the religious factor, the third factor and the nationalism that was happening. Was there a distinction at that point during the Kaldani and Chaldeans or the Assyrians had it happen? Was there, was it a later phenomenon? I'm just curious when you said about bringing together everyone Christian, Aramaic speaking. Was it the entire Aramaic Christian speaking part of Iraq or was it just the Assyrians? ^M01:40:04 >> Fadi Davood: Thanks. Well, interestingly Boustros when his letters in this correspondence which I write about says I will represent all the population, the Chaldean Assyrians in sort of brackets while [inaudible] Shamuun [assumed spelling] is also interested in her community of the Nestorians. Now, it's a complicated issue because those who for example of the Muslim did not identify with this community, they identify as Arab but part of the Syriac Orthodox tradition or Syriac Catholic tradition or Chaldean tradition. Those who seem serious co-Orthodox members who were living in [inaudible] identified strongly with this Assyrian nationalist phenomenon. And actually were producing a lot of the narrative that was actually bringing this to the forefront of the intellectual debate. Now, are there divisions? Absolutely. And even the ideas of these communities and who they belong to, etcetera exists but it did not really become as entrenched I think as it did after the Simele massacre when most of the Urbanites said hold on a second, we have nothing to do with these people living in the villages. We have nothing to do with these troublemakers because they wanted to survive essentially; they wanted to politically survive in a state that was becoming increasingly more hegemonic. And so that's why it's sort of you see its periods of division and sort of these things change with violence, with acts the of genocide, with the acts of massacres and you have one that States have embraces them, everybody is embracing each other. I find it really interesting and then in the Diaspora these are actually a lot less pronounced to a certain year because there are no pressures like them. >> Alda Benjamen: Can I also add? I mean, in my case, I see changes already, right? So I mean I think in your period and Fadi I do have a document from I think 1919 from [inaudible] where the patriarch is writing to the British. >> Fadi Davood: Yeah. >> Alda Benjamen: And he's saying I represent the Ancient Assyrian Community and he's from the Syriac Orthodox Church. Fadi Davood: But don't forget the person that actually goes to represent the Syrians at the peace talks is the Syriac Orthodox bishop who becomes a patriarch. And suddenly when he becomes a patriarch with the influence of the Syrian and the Iraqi States he becomes an Arab so you see that [inaudible]. And actually if you look and read the book, I think the book in Arabic is called the [foreign language], the scattered pearl. >> Eben Naby: It has an English translation. >> Fadi Davood: Does it have an English translation? >> Eben Naby: Yes. >> Fadi Davood: So it has an English... You see, you know, he's an Assyrian nationalist in that book and suddenly that shifts and changes. So I think really the hegemony of the Iraqi state plays a big role on this. >> Alda Benjamen: So from my period, post [inaudible] I see there's integration, for my period, there's a lot of involvement in leftist politics, there's organization. The community is not urbanized until the 1950s or so that's when you if you look at census records. And so they're urbanizing, they're living together, they're politicizing together, they're inter-marrying. There you have the dialect that is sort of like fusing together more so and these distinctions are not important. You know, I mean Toma Thomas I showed him his picture. He's from Alqosh, he's a Chaldean but if you read his memoirs he calls his town in the Assyrian Ancient, Assyrian town and he does identifies as an Assyrian. You know, it's not it's in his memoirs and then Mordina Suraya [assumed spelling] there was a lot of writers, important writers who were from Alqosh who were Chaldean. So the religious identities in the second half of the 20th century is not as important but then after the Civil, after 2003 I think you have a lot of sectarianism in the country and it affects the community as well. >> Eben Naby: Well, let me just add a very short note to that that the root of all of this identity with Church as opposed to an ethnic group goes back to the Millett System of the Ottoman Empire. If the Ottoman Empire only recognized a group as a Church community rather than as an ethnic group then it was very difficult for that ethnic group to emerge as a viable institutional force in any level. And that Ottoman legacy continues throughout the Middle East, it affected Iran less, less but somewhat. But it is true in Turkey today, it's true in all of the Middle East and this recognition of the community through its Church, through its confession is what is crippling the Nationalist Movement in the Assyrians. >> Thank you. Thank all of you for your presentations, it was great and to the folks from AUA for having put together. This really is a triumph for our people and we're really proud of all of you. I have a question for Doctor Naby, particularly, about, you know, you brought up [inaudible] which was a really beautiful thing that our community did. >> Eben Naby: But brought up what, I didn't understand you. [Inaudible] Assyrian? What? >> You brought up [inaudible]. >> Eben Naby: Oh, yes yes. >> There are a lot of sort of institutional resources when it comes to the arts, you know, watched the National Opera just closed, the Ring Cycle, for example. And, you know, this is a largely taxpayer-funded endeavour. Has the Assyrian community or can the Assyrian community use these national endowments through, you know, organizations like the Kennedy Center, like the Washington National Opera to, you know, put on, to sort of bring our Opera, our literature, our poetry to that national stage? Because it seems like the Trans, it wouldn't work, on that sort of large-scale and there was a precedent for it in terms of, you know, the WNL, for example, bringing sort of smaller, you know, operettas to this audience. And I'm just curious, that's something that has been pursued or could potentially be pursued. >> Eben Naby: I think part of the problem in our approach to culture where we've had even minimal funds to do it, is that we feel that we must and can only work within our own community. I think this is the legacy of the past in the Middle East where we've been so confined that we haven't been allowed to enter into another, into a national culture. But, yes, in the United States it is possible, yes, and I have high hopes for the Assyrian Arts Institute which I think is not only going to be quite well-funded but it also is as part of its vision to enter into collaboration with other parts of state's institution, State's Organizations and festivals and as well as on the national level, yes. But so far we haven't received any funds let's say from the National endowment for the arts or humanities in such. Yes but only on a minor scale. >> So I have two questions for you. There's somewhat interrelated. One I want to thank all three of you for the wonderful presentations. One of the things that we've noticed in the Syrian community and the Diaspora is a rise of nationalism amongst the youth. But at that same time we've also noticed a loss of the actual Aramaic language. What do you think contributes to that? And what are the steps at helping grow the nationalism while at the same time encouraging the preservation of the language? >> Eben Naby: Well, since preservation was my theme let me address that very briefly and then see if my colleagues have anything to say about it. I think if we look at other Diaspora communities let's say Ormy which is very close to us for our community even in the future of the Persian community. What's happening? Did you cut me off? Yeah. That if we look at the other immigrant communities that are our neighbors from the Middle East, and suffer from some of the same psychological problems that we have, not reaching out. That we will see that language plays a very important role in identity, but language is not the only criteria. It's narrative, I mean how many people in the let's say even the most recent Persian community speak Persian well enough so that they can read the Chach Nama very few. But that doesn't mean they are excluded by the other Iranians or shouldn't mean from being part of that community. One of the problems in the Assyrian community with the waves and waves of immigrants and the differences in dialects is that we have said whoever isn't speaking my dialect isn't a Syrian. Alright, it's a very foolish way of looking at nationalism. And I would say that if we are going to exclude as they have in the past in the 1960s all the children of the old immigrants were virtually driven out of every Assyrian organization. Because there was a new surge of Assyrians coming from the Middle East who spoke the language, didn't speak English but they spoke the language and that's what happened. So we are throwing out people for no reason even though they are Assyrian. And this is what is happening to our community, it's a problem in the Armenian community too. ^M01:50:05 That is language the only basis for understanding who you are? I maintain it's not. So even though we should make efforts to keep the language, it's not the only criteria. ^M01:50:19 ^M01:50:26 >> I have a, I will direct my question to Doctor Eden but before that I just want to say something. When I entered this building and made my way through all of those, the hallways here I was mesmerized and fascinated by all of the mosaic art on the ceiling and the paintings on the wall. My thoughts went back all the way to the ancient time and I almost imagine myself walking in Osher [assumed spelling] [inaudible] Library, the library of our ancestors. So I can only imagine it was as magnificent as this building is. My question to you is you mentioned something about the establishment of the Assyrian schools in Tehran and Thalamus [assumed spelling]. Do those schools still exist there? >> Eben Naby: In Thalamus it was before World War I so, no. Thalamus was devastated by Kurdish and Turkish fighters completely. I mean there's hardly any people left any Assyrians left in the Thalamus [assumed spelling] area. The Tehran school functions but it was extremely limited through the constitutional changes that occurred with the establishment of the Islamic Republic. So yes, yes it exists, but it limps. Sorry. >> Okay. At this point I would like to ask all the panelists to come forward because we're going to take a picture together. Thank you all for coming. ^M01:52:19 ^M01:52:23 This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov ^E01:52:31