| Chapter 1: | The Homeland and Origin of the Independent Assyrian Tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari |
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The scholars who intimately studied the Assyrians became convinced that they had survived and remained in their homeland ever since the fall of Nineveh. J. Perkins stated that ‘Koordistan is the ancient Assyria, embracing also a part of Armenia and ancient Media’.58 According to Chesney, Joseph Bonomi stated that the German archaeologist Dr. Shultz had discovered the city of the Assyrian queen Semiramis along the south shore of Lake Van and had copied forty-two cuneiform inscriptions.59 During his residence at Mosul, Fletcher found that ‘[t]he Chaldeans and Nestorians are the only surviving human memorial of Assyria and Babylonia’.60 Archaeological evidence showed that Nineveh was thinly populated after it fell to the anti-Assyria alliance known as ‘umanmanda’ in 612 BC, and an Assyrian population survived there under the rule of successive dynasties:‘On the conquest of Nineveh by Nabopolassar, the city was by no means destroyed. It probably shared, with the rising Babylon, the favour of the sovereign, who was still sometimes styled the king of Assyria’.61 Ainsworth referred to Tavernier and his description to the city with reference to earlier writers who had written about it.62 Even their Turkish oppressor, Beirakdar Pasha of Mosul, acknowledged that the Assyrians had lived in their country since time immemorial.63
Records of succeeding periods show that the people did not move in droves from one region to another, but remained strong enough to influence their successive rulers in the fields of culture, religion, and language. Wigram’s statement might be considered typical. He wrote,