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 establishing 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 published 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impact, nor have they even provoked the curiosity of the scientific world, responsible for changing the topics, the outdated vision or reorienting the distorted perception of reality.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 are 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 are defined in a way that does not conform to global reality, we mean, a people with their own idiosyncrasies, a different nation, with its own language, has a national territory 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 the 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 start working in order to reveal and spread the truth and the historical reality of this great nation. This requires serious and rigorous research policy. 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 read and understand the Assyrian history from the Assyrian perspective. This is the reason for the research project that the Nineveh Chair intends to launch and develop.
How you can Contribute to Research
All the mentioned activities require 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. The mentioned Works will be directed by Prof. Dr. Nicholas Al-Jilo, Prof. Dr. Sargon Donabed and Prof. Dr. Efrem Yildiz, among others. 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 formate 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 for other means through requests and application 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.