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

The real cause of the schism between the Catholic Church and the Church of the East was the relatively minor issue (as appears later in the declaration of the pope and the patriarch of the Church of the East in their joint Christological declaration of 11 November 1994) of the Three Chapters passed by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. This difference could probably have been resolved far sooner if both churches had only managed to maintain the good and close relations with the Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire that they had enjoyed in the earlier decades of the sixth century. And so it seems fair to say that the real cause of the permanent schism was the political hostility between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanids, on the one side, and the estrangement between the Orthodox Church and the papacy, on the other, rather than any really serious theological differences. As it was, however, the bad effects of this three-way cleavage appeared in the age of the Crusades and later; for it is at least arguable that, if the papacy had understood how close the doctrine of the Church of the East really was to its own, the crusaders would have treated the Assyrian Christians at least as well as they did the Armenians in the lands they conquered—and better than they did the Jacobites—and might conceivably also have done more to defend them against the inroads of the invaders from the east, mainly the Turks and later the Kurds.

However, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, several new factors were introduced into the arena, both regional and external, which seriously affected the existence of the tribes. The regional rivalry between the Ottoman and Persian empires became a decisive factor in shaping the course of events. This became obvious with the emergence of the two powerful dynasties of the Sunni Ottomans and the Shi’a Persian Safavids. Those two dynasties and their successors have ever since written the history of the whole region. The drive for domination by each of these emerging powers led eventually to the Battle of Chaldiran, where religious and doctrinal factors influenced the outcome of the hostilities. The homeland of the Assyrians was also to be affected by this development; it lay right between the two rivals, while the surrounding regions, in particular to the south, continued to serve as a battleground between them.