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

Chapter 14

Conclusion

As their name implies, the Assyrians were the aboriginal inhabitants of northern Mesopotamia, where they survived for over two millennia after the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, despite continual waves of foreign pillage and conquest. Even after these misfortunes drastically reduced the Assyrian population in the plains and the adjacent hill country, the independent Christian Assyrian tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari, who were faithful followers of the Church of the East, continued to live isolated in their ancestral homeland in the rugged mountains of ancient Assyria, serving as a unified ethnic and religious group who were able to maintain their Christian faith and independent presence amid the various surrounding Muslim groups.

One factor that may have contributed to the ultimate downfall of the tribes and their church was the labours of the Roman Catholic missionaries, who pursued their hostility to the doctrine of the Church of the East because they considered it a ‘Nestorian heresy’. As has been shown, the isolation between the two churches was not the product of any truly serious doctrinal dispute, for contrary to what many writers have asserted, the Church of the East accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon regarding the nature and person of Christ—as, it appears, did Nestorius himself.