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

The historical evidences supporting the long residence of the independent tribes in Tiyari and Hakkari were also to be found in the surrounding Assyrian provinces. In the region of Urmia, many ancient monuments confirm the antiquity of the Assyrians in the land before the advance of Islam:

We can understand this if we realise that the country of the independent tribes was part of the bishopric of Salakh, which until AD 700 was part of the metropolitan district of Azerbaijan; it was then detached and annexed to the territory of the metropolitan see of Adiabene-Arbil.⁹⁴

Many ancient Arab historians confirmed the fact that the Nestorians/Assyrians inhabited most of the regions of Assyria and upper Mesopotamia, in particular those surrounding the country of the independent tribes. The Arabic writer Mahfouth al Abbasi () asserted that they inhabited the country of Tiyari and Hakkari for twenty-five centuries.⁹⁵ Beside classical Arab historians and geographers, many Kurdish historians and writers also admitted this fact, among them Mohmmed Ameen Zaki, and Ali Sidu al Qurani made a similar statement.⁹⁶ Ibn Hawkal, al Bayroni, Al Istarkhi () and others offered many pieces of historical evidence and referred to monuments that had existed since the early centuries of the Christian era.⁹⁷ Eshoo’dnah of Basrah (), a seventh-century historian, gave many details on this subject, among which he referred to Mar Habib—who was a member of Dair Krdu, a monastery located in Jezirah Ibn Omar, and a graduate of the school of Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital (south of Baghdad). He went to the mountain of Zinai with thirty Ninevite monks and built a monastery in the mountain of Zamik.