| Chapter 1: | The Homeland and Origin of the Independent Assyrian Tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari |
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Christianity was deeply rooted in Assyria, and the structures of the Church of the East reveal the early establishment of the churches and administrative institutions. Southgate noted the existence of ancient traditions among the Assyrians that dated back centuries before the Christian era, such as the feast of Nineveh, and stated that the patriarch Mar Joshu Bar Nun had merged the sees of ‘Adiabene’ and ‘Ashur’(Assyria) under one metropolitan.85
Maclean and Browne observed that
Wigram noted that ‘[t]he central shrine and Cathedral of the district of Jelu…is the ancient church of Mar Zeia, a building remarkable enough to merit a word of description to itself’,87 and some scholars went further, even stating that there are monuments going back to the time of Mar Addai.88 Sir Charles Wilson, in his survey of the Ottoman Asiatic regions, stated that there existed in Kurdistan historical monuments going back to the period of the Assyrian Empire.89 Grant noted that ‘[t]he Nestorians have the history of churches now standing in Adiabene, or the central parts of Assyria, that were built more than two centuries before the Mohammedan era’.90
These remains were closely examined not only as physical structures but also as monuments with a rich history. According to Badger, these included ‘Mar Gheorghes (St. George) of Leezan,…tradition says that Mar (Saint) Audishu was erected 366 years before Mohammed’.91 He also wrote,