Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Pe ...

Thus the tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari, who are the direct descendants of those who survived the fall of the Assyrian Empire, had remained in their ancestral homeland, as is evidenced by numerous towns and villages that have continued to exist to the present time. Their settlement stretched from Mosul to the shores of Lake Van.⁶⁵

Many scholars and historians have affirmed that the majority of the inhabitants of the rolling and mountainous regions of Mesopotamia and ancient Assyria before the Mongol invasion were Assyrian Christians.⁶⁶ Thomas Laurie believed that the Assyrians had been in their homeland before Timur Lang’s invasion.⁶⁷ The continuity of the Aramaic language, which was the language of Assyria and has continued to be spoken in the country of the independent tribes and the other regions of Assyria until the present time, is further evidence of the persistence of the population. Professor Jŕrgen Laessoe stated that ‘in small places in Iraq, Aramaic dialects are still spoken by small groups of the population, a belated survival of the last spoken language of Mesopotamia in ancient times of Babylonia and Assyria’.⁶⁸

Another indication of the weakness of Badger’s theory of refugees from the south is the large number of Assyrian monuments and historic architectural remains throughout the rolling and mountainous regions, which attest to its Assyrian culture well before Islamic times, some of them even going back to pre-Christian times. The evidence appears not only from the ruins and the Syriac/Assyrian geographical names of many towns and villages that are well attested from older sources, but also from the political and religious history of the people during and after the chaotic years, which is well preserved. Travellers and historians, as well as the remnant of the monks throughout the region, continuously recorded the existing conditions.