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

Before Timur’s invasion, the Assyrian people were to be found in all three zones, as well as in Persian Azerbaijan. Adiabene, which included in its territory the homeland of the independent tribes, was mostly within zones B and C. Speaking about ancient Adiabene, Grant wrote,

The majority was concentrated in zone B, as far as the region of Urhai (Urfa—), northwest of Mosul and the region of Adiabene, with Arbil as its centre. Christianity was introduced there in the first century and became well established in the second,⁷¹ and the Assyrians people were among the earliest to embrace the new faith. Edessa (Urfa), Nisibis, Bald, Mosul, and Arbil (the old region of Adiabene), which flourished over centuries as Syriac/Assyrian centres of education and theological learning, could never have been established and maintained unless there had been a majority of Assyrian inhabitants in those parts. The European travellers who passed through the region of ancient Assyria many times during the thirteenth century explicitly noted that the original inhabitants then still formed the majority of the population.⁷² Church records attest to their large concentration from Lake Urmia to Lake Van and on into the upper-central and southern regions of Mesopotamia.⁷³ Those records belong to the period both before and after Timur Lang’s invasion, though giving different figures.

If, as Badger supposed, people from the south took refuge in the mountainous region (zone C), it follows that the people already settled there, besides being safe themselves, were able to offer protection to their brethren from central Mesopotamia (zone A). If the local inhabitants had not themselves been Assyrians, they would have rebuffed the refugees. Even if we accept Badger’s theory in this modified form, we shall have to conclude that the inhabitants of zone C were largely untouched by Timur. What, then, about the fate of the population of the other two zones, A and B?