| Chapter 1: | The Homeland and Origin of the Independent Assyrian Tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari |
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What Timur’s invasions did was to reduce the numbers of the Assyrian Syriac-speaking population in the rolling region (zone B) and to ravage their country. In the words of Sir Charles Wilson, ‘[L]arge districts were depopulated and abandoned to the nomad, and many flourishing towns were so completely destroyed that they have never recovered’.81
The Kurds, as we are told by their own historians, joined and participated in Timur Lang’s invasion, especially during his attack on Van and the district east of the country of the independent Assyrian tribes. Along with the Turkomans, they filled most of the depopulated districts that had been previously inhabited by millions of Syriac/Aramaic–speaking people and Armenians since time immemorial. It is well known that the Kurds did not suffer from the Mongol invasion as much as the Assyrian inhabitants of the land, especially those dwelling in the open plains of Assyria. This was because the vast majority of the Kurds were then nomads moving between Persian Azerbaijan and Assyria, and living more in the high valleys than in the towns and villages, which were chiefly populated by Armenians and Nestorians.82
Thus the homeland of the Assyrians was subject to constant changes in its demography due to the continual waves of invaders and settlers from Persia, a pattern that progressively thinned out the original inhabitants. The demographic changes struck those European scholars and travellers who happened to visit Mesopotamia for the first time. Thus Tavernier, during his Persian travels in the eighteenth century, wrote of ‘the Arabians and Curds [Kurds], which are the inhabitants of the ancient Assyria, now called Curdistan’ and noted that he ‘made choice of a Curd, or Assyrian, for our Caravan Bashi’.83
Historical Monuments in the Assyrians’ Homeland
As had been stated, it was during the early centuries of the Christian era that the Assyrians professed the Christian faith brought to them by the apostles St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas, and by Addai and Mari, who, according to tradition, were two of the seventy-two disciples mentioned in Luke 10:1. Rich followed Tavernier in his reference to the Assyrian Syriac-speaking followers of the Church of the East and their historic name. Speaking about the early spread of Christianity among the people, he stated, ‘The Chaldeans or Assyrians received Christianity in the time of the twelve apostles’.84