Activities and Specific Purposes of the Nineveh Chair
The purpose of the Nineveh Chair is to support people, companies and institutions related to the Assyrian cause, through the transfer of knowledge generated in recognized universities and educational centers.
For the fulfillment of the purposes described, the following activities will be carried out:
- Promote the study of the Assyrian language and culture worldwide.
- Promote all kinds of activities conducive to promoting the development of the artistic, historical, linguistic and sociocultural heritage of Assyrian society.
- Promote research in comparative studies in Assyrian language, literature, and history.
- Support and develop academic activities to publicize the historical and cultural richness of the Assyrians.
- Support the dissemination of the modern Aramaic-Assyrian language through research work in different modern languages where there is an Assyrian community.
- Strengthen the bond between the different Christian communities of the Assyrian people through forums, congresses, and international seminars.
- Seek financial means to offer scholarships to offer the new Assyrian generation the opportunity to learn about their historical, linguistic and socio-cultural heritage.
- Finding the means to create the Nineveh Cathedra at the University of Salamanca, which should offer all kinds of academic activities, face-to-face and virtual courses on the language, literature and history of Assyria.
- Encourage the creation of the Assyrian Academy of Sciences to develop and create the different working groups that must ensure the preservation and development of the Assyrian language, history and culture.
- Promote the creation of a scientific research journal on the Assyrian language and culture.
- Support the development of projects that Assyrian intellectuals or those related to the Assyrian cause intend to carry out for the reconstruction of Assyrian society abroad and within their ancestral territory.
- And, in a generic way, carry out as many actions as are conducive to the best achievement of its purposes.
To carry out these activities seriously and professionally, the Nineveh Cathedra must have an annual budget, half of which will be devoted to scholarships for young Assyrians who wish to receive training in their linguistic, historical and socio-cultural heritage. The other part will be dedicated to the other activities mentioned above.
For the promotion of the Assyrian legacy, the Nineveh Chair will organize, at least, an annual international congress to address issues directly related to the Assyrian cause, with the aim of shedding light on linguistic, historical and ethno-social issues. The raison d’être of this initiative lies in clarifying the concepts that have divided the Assyrian people by giving more weight to their religious affiliation than to their national and ethnic identity.
Thanks to the donations, we will organize seminars, symposiums and international congresses, to which we will invite experts in the fields already mentioned: Assyrian language, history and culture. The realization of these activities entails unavoidable expenses that the President of Nineveh Chair will cover if he has the necessary external contributions.
As the year 2022, the Nineveh Chair will convene Assyrian intellectuals, especially scholars specialized in history, language and culture, for its second international congress dealing with Assyrian identity, language and history. This year’s congress will take place on September 11-13, 2023.
To make possible or participate in these events, do not hesitate to contact us or help the project with your donations.
Research projects on Assyrian history, language and literature are among the objectives of the Nineveh Chair. These projects will be led by Assyrian specialists. The reason for this decision lies in the fact that Assyrian history, like its language, literature and legacy in general, have been transmitted from an academic-religious perspective, which does not reflect the historical-socio-linguistic-literary reality of the Assyrian people.
Much of this legacy has been studied without reflecting the historical, linguistic and social realities of the Assyrian people. Having focused most of the research work on the religious phenomenon, the fields of work have had a considerable bias to the detriment of the Assyrian historical reality. The vast majority of academics use these historical-linguistic-social misunderstandings because they do not have better researched and elaborated works on the Assyrian legacy throughout its long history from a more global perspective.
Historical circumstances and disasters have prevented the Assyrian people from forming their own research teams in all the fields that a nation needs to cultivate its legacy and adapt its existential reality to current times. The vast majority of nations understand and define the Assyrian people in the exclusively religious context and not as a national entity that encompasses, like any other nation, all ethnic, historical, linguistic, religious, socio-political and economic elements. In our opinion, the lack of these aspects that constitute a people in their national context have not been applied to the Assyrian people.
Some research papers have been prepared individually, but they have not had an international impact, nor have they even provoked the curiosity of the scientific world, responsible for changing the topics, the outdated vision or reorienting the distorted perception of reality. It is imperative to rewrite Assyrian history and the one who can and should do it best is those who know it and feel it as their own.
It seems that the case of the Assyrians constitutes a unique exception in history, since they define a whole that does not conform to global reality, a people with their own idiosyncrasies, a different nation, with its own language, has a territory national for millennia and a nation that has contributed so much to humanity. However, today, very few recognize it as such. It is of historical justice that the Assyrian people are recognized as a nation from which the land was taken, annihilating their people on several occasions and now they want to deprive them of the right of existence, due to the changes and socio-political interests of the Middle East.
Mesopotamia is the land of the Assyrians, it is their natural habitat, but economic and religious interests have deprived them of their rights as a people, for not having defended themselves with arms, as the rest of the peoples in the area have done. No one recognizes Assyria as a nation, with its natural and historical territory, for having given in to the territorial claims of the Kurds, Arabs, Turks and Iranians. Thus, there has been a progressive loss of power of the Assyrian people that has led them to abandonment and loss of legitimate rights. Ignorance about their etiological and historical-religious reality has identified them in various terms: “Nestorians, Jacobites, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Syrians, Arab Christians, Turkish Christians, Persian Christians”, and recently also “Kurdish Christians”.
By denying them their true Assyrian identity, their ethnic-national and historical-linguistic character has been harmed hardly reversible. No one will change the history of a people if he himself does not try to defend his right to exist and his legacy. We Assyrians have always looked at what others give us, we suffer from a tremendous inferiority complex compared to other peoples. We have left the destiny and future of the Assyrian people in the hands of others who, although they have helped not to bury the memory, have not helped or contributed to the reconstruction as a people and as a nation.
Assyrian intellectuals trained in different fields (linguistic, historical, literary, socio-political science) have a moral obligation to work together for this almost lost cause. It would be a tremendous injustice, and something unforgivable for the experts, not to save the Assyrian legacy in all its aspects to help it rebuild as a people and as a nation, as well as to make possible the progressive recovery of its territory, respecting the rights of neighboring peoples. To achieve these goals, Assyrian intellectuals must put to work to make known the truth and the historical reality of this great nation. This requires serious and rigorous research. The time has come for the whole world to see and understand the historical, ethnic and socio-linguistic realities transmitted by Assyrian specialists.
In short, we must understand Assyrian history from the Assyrian perspective. This is the reason for the research project that the Nineveh Chair intends to launch and develop.
Contribute to research
This requires funds and financial support. In the first place, by the Assyrian community worldwide, since it is a research work that requires full dedication to undertake research work, at first, in history, language and literature. If we have funds, three research projects on Assyrian history will be launched immediately, ranging from the fall of Nineveh and the first centuries of the Christian era to modern times; and on the modern Assyrian language. As a result of these investigations, the results will be published in two volumes on ancient history, a volume on modern history and two complementary volumes on the grammar of the modern Assyrian language. Said Works will be directed by Prof. Dr. Nicholas Al-Jilo, Prof. Dr. Sargon Donabed and Prof. Dr. Efrem Yildiz. Each of the directors of these projects will have a group of researchers who will prepare a descriptive report for each of the aforementioned projects.
Depending on the funds that the Nineveh Chair obtains, research projects will be launched, the results of which will be published both on paper and in digital format. In digital form they will appear on the virtual platform of the Nineveh Chair. Each of these projects must have an economic endowment so that the researchers have reasonable means for their research, the duration of which must not exceed three years, from the moment the project is awarded.
The Assyrian contribution will serve to set up the working groups and subsequently launch the research projects, which will have to seek other means through requests for research projects that many public and private organizations on the European or American continent offer. There are Erasmus + or Unesco funds that promote the study of minorities or languages in danger of disappearing. But research groups have to show that they have promoted initiatives that need continuity and therefore progressive funding.
The teaching activity of the Nineveh Academic Chair has two priorities as a starting point: face-to-face teaching at the University of Salamanca and online teaching that will allow the new Assyrian generation to hone their language skills through specific language courses that the Nineveh Cathedra will offer. There will be, as a starting point, courses planned for the initial and advanced levels. Depending on the demand, groups of students will be created according to the ages of those interested. These courses will be taught by teachers trained in the language and pedagogical methods that the 21st century requires from public and private educational centers. Regarding the training of Assyrian talent at the academic level in language, history and culture, it should be noted that this training requires financial means to ensure the balanced training of the future Assyrian generation.
All of this will serve to ensure the proper development of the projects and activities that the Nineveh Chair will carry out once we have secured a minimum income through Assyrian communities around the world.
As it appears in the objectives of the Nineveh Academic Chair, one of its main initiatives will be the formation and preparation of a group of Assyrians in the different fields already mentioned. A school must be created to ensure the continuity of the transmission of the Assyrian cultural heritage. For this, an endowment and grant of scholarships for talents of the new Assyrian generation is essential that will keep alive the project of the reconstruction of the Assyrian cause. The intention of the Nineveh Cathedra is to train an average of 20 specialists in the following fields over the next 10 years: language, history and literature.
Depending on the availability of funds, the financial means will be used to gradually and progressively form a group of young Assyrians who will reach the doctorate level, to then be sent to destinations where there is an Assyrian community and an academic training center, from where they will be cultivate the linguistic, historical and literary legacy of the Assyrians. For this, in the case of the University of Salamanca, about 20,000 Euros per year per person will be needed, which includes: registration, accommodation, meals and a small endowment for the purchase of books and basic necessities. This Year we have three Assyrian students studying at the University of Salamanca. Two of them have started their PhD in language and history and one has started her first academic year in our degree.
In order to carry out these activities seriously and professionally, the Nineveh Cathedra must have at least an annual budget, half of which will be dedicated to scholarships for young Assyrians who want to be trained in their linguistic, historical and sociocultural heritage training. Assyrian. Therefore, two Assyrian talents will start studying at the University of Salamanca, preferably for the degree or doctoral level in Assyrian language, history or literature. These scholarships will be awarded through a contract and conditions of commitment so that the candidate after his training has to contribute to the Assyrian cause for at least 10 years.
While we train them, we will also prepare the ground so that when they finish their training, they can develop their academic and research activities at the University, where there is an Assyrian community. Our academic contacts, in this case from the University of Salamanca, with those universities whose city has an Assyrian community, will provide candidates with access and the opportunity to develop what they have been researching at the doctoral level.
We must learn to invest our resources efficiently in those centers where there is an Assyrian community in the diaspora or in our homeland. To ensure that the financial resources of the Nineveh Cathedra are managed correctly and transparently, the University of Salamanca will use the same mechanisms that it has applied to the other Cathedras. There is a rigorous control over income and results that can be consulted on the virtual platform of the University of Salamanca.
Consequently, the best practices of the European institutions of higher education, everything that is invested in the Nineveh Cathedra, will be used solely and exclusively for the purposes it pursues. In the same way, taxpayers will be informed with the annual report to know in what and for what purposes the contributed capital has been used.