Talk:History of the Assyrians

Proposed merge

Cquan, I noticed you proposed to merge this page. Here are a couple things you might want to note:

1. I created this page yesterday, and we will be expanding it within the next two weeks.
2. The Assyrian people page is starting to become flooded, biased, and unorganized.
3. This page, History of the Assyrian people, will deal strictly with the different periods in their history, with a focus on the people - that includes more of an emphasis on their origins, language, as well as the development of their culture, political issues, and more.

I hope that explains what we wish to do with this page. --Šarukinu 14:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I see that the main article is getting a tad long...not overly so, but it could easily get there soon. I would recommend that you actually copy the entire history section over into this article then and leave the "stub" on the Assyrian people article with a main article link to this article. Otherwise this looks redundant. -Cquan (talk, AMA Desk) 17:57, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What are the issues with the neutrality of this article? It's still Start-class, and all it contains is objective information. I agree with the lack of sources, but we are in the process of gathering the appropriate sources and information for this article. Regardless, the article doesn't contain anything that suggests POV - unless for some reason you think hardship and persecution is entirely subjective.
Oh, by the way, your suggestion is a good idea, Cquan. I'm going to see what we can take from the history section in Assyrian people and perhaps we can do a "switch" as you suggested.--Šarukinu 02:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Expansion of this Article

To anybody who wishes to contribute to this page:

I would like to expand this article to include numerous sections and topics, including religious history, political history, ancient history (which would incorporate the Akkadian period), and modern history (AD era). This article is still in a rough state, and is in need of much revision and, like I said before, expansion.

Furthermore, there absolutely cannot be any bias in this article, because too often do we see people spread their political opinions in material about the Assyrian people. So we will have none of that here - I'm going to pay close attention to the choice of words used. This will be an objective article to offer the world unbiased, untainted, and valid information about the history of the Assyrian people, covering both the ancient and modern periods.

Due to the huge disagreement over the Assyrian identity, I feel it maybe a good idea to include a section about the debate with arguments from both sides of the issue, and then let people decide for themselves whether or not to discount the Assyrian identity. What I'm aiming for with this is something similar to the page about the BC/AD vs BCE/CE notation.

Feel free to provide your input, but please steer away from bias - for once let's offer information free of flowery words and biased views.

Šarukinu 22:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

This page and the other Assyrian pages are full of historical inaccuracies. Assyria proper did not fall to the Persians but a confederacy of Babylonians and Medes under Cyaxares. It became part of Persia when she conquered the other two empires. It was not a Roman province except for a brief period. Asuristan was a province of the Parthian Empire as well as the Sassanid Empire.

I agree with your proposals and if I have time (which I may not) will be happy to lend some assistance with the religious history. If it gets detailed enough we could start an article on religious, political and other aspects on their histories.Tourskin 23:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

If possible, I would like to include all aspects of the history of the Assyrians in this one article, which is the main reason behind its creation. --Šarukinu 13:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

First empire...

Just as a note, the article on Empire calls the Egyptian state the first empire when they invaded and incorporated another state. It also calls Sargon's Akkadian state an early example of an empire. This should probably be discussed on both articles for consistency and factual accuracy. Cquan ^{(after the beep...)} 01:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Cquan. However that depends on the definition of empire. That article uses the term very loosely, even referring to nations such as Phoenicia as an empire, which of course was not the case. Furthermore, Ancient Egypt was a kingdom which exerted hegemony over Nubia and several states in the Levant, and nothing more. But the article never said Egypt was the "first empire" (even before my recent edits); it went on to mention that the Akkadian kingdom was one of the earliest examples of an empire. With Egypt, there was no real political integration or central organization, only the acquisition of tribute and resources. Again, that goes back to the definition you wish to follow. Perhaps it should be mentioned in all respective articles that the definition is disputed. --Šarukinu 18:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Article scope

This article is about the history of the Assyrian people (the Syriac Christians), it is not about the Assyrian Empire of Antiquity. I will consistently oppose any attempt to make this a content fork of the article about ancient Assyria, or to hijack it by Assyrianist antiquity frenzy. You are genuinely interested in ancient Assyria? Fine! Go work on the Assyria and Neo-Assyrian Empire articles. dab (𒁳) 18:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The title doesn't reflect the content. The title suggests this is the history of the Syriacs (that of the Arameans), this article only brings up the history of the Assyrians. The TriZ (talk) 23:04, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Dab, no one here, either myself or Triz is agreeing with your trigger crazy happy edits. Explain yourself; why are you moving these pages like this? Listen here, we asked you to come and get involved as a neutral thrid party to settle disputes between the Assyrianists and the Aramaenists, not come here and create your own hybrid mesh that is controversial and unsupported. The Assyrians are traceable back to the Ancient Assyrians, we have sources such as Simo Parpolo etc for his and you don't have any to counter. Gabr-el 01:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Dab you continue to dictate your way around in Wikipedia. You move before you discuss. When I told you that is wrong, you told me to f-off and get the Wiki communitiy's view. Well I did that and they agreed what you did was wrong and they moved it back to its original name. But being so hard headed dab, you quickly moved the page to yet another name and continue your rants of things that do not make sense. This page is about the history of the Assyrian people. You might not like it or agree to it, but they trace their history back all the way to the Akkadian times. This article isn't just about ancient Assyrian time, but about the entire Assyrian history, that is similar to History of Greece and History of Armenia. Both pages go as far as how the people themselves trace their history to. I don't see a problem in those pages of talking about ancient times. Iraqi (talk) 06:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

try WP:3O. I am not prepared to try and talk sense into people who have a WP:COI in this. The upshot is that this article addresses the history of the Syriac Christians. If you really like to discuss the history of ancient Assyria, go to Assyria. If you really like to discuss the history of the ancient Aramaeans, go to Aramaeans. I am not "ranting". I am merely pointing you to Wikipedia core policy of WP:NPOV, and especially WP:DUE. You will note that this article still has a "pre-Christian" section, which should concisely summarize early history in WP:SS, just like the "history" article on any other ethnic group. This won't go away: you can keep doing this for another year, or another five years, Wikipedia policy will always come out on top. Your only option is to start respecting the rules, anything else is a waste of time. dab (𒁳) 11:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, on Wikipedia there is a "History of the ... people" the the ... is filled with every ethnicity in the world. Since we can all agree that Assyrians are an ethnic group, how come there isn't a "History of the Assyrian people" page? Malik Danno (talk) 19:56, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

(Dab) try WP:3O - Are you serious? 'I did that and the community did not see it your way. Did you ignore what was written above?

" Since there is not a clear consensus one way or the other, it seems to me that the right thing to do is to move the article back to the original name of History of the Assyrian people"

They moved the page back, but you acting as if you own the page, decided to move the article to yet another name. Iraqi (talk) 07:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

And you still haven't explained why you even moved the article. The de facto name of the group is Assyrian people. You haven't successfuly moved the Assyrian people page to any name, so what makes you think its ok to start moving all these pages to another name? Iraqi (talk) 08:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

(dab) You are genuinely interested in ancient Assyria? Fine! Go work on the Assyria and Neo-Assyrian Empire articles - then explain why do we have breif summary of ancient Greeks in History of Greece. Explain why we have a breif sumamry of Urartu in History of Armenia? The point of having such article is to write breifly every part of the groups history. Hence, then we have "for more, see ancient Assyria" Iraqi (talk) 09:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Here we don't have a history of History of a country but a History of a ethnic gruop: for comparison you shall look at Article like Italians. An Article about History of a country can have a brief summary of the history: see for example History of Italy. The Roman Empire cant be a subsection of Italians.

This Article is very poor of contents: it should explain how and when the idea of an Assyrian identity arose, when the Assyrian people stated to have a national feeling, the main events that having as subject the Assyrian ethnic group, but only when different from the events of the whole Assyrian country. I suggest to the expert editors to add the above information to this Article, because the common reader as I am cant understand which is the framework of the Assyrian claim. Otherwise I strongly suggest to delete this Article merging it in Assyrian people A ntv (talk) 12:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

no, it should not. This is the topic of the Assyrianism article. This article discusses the actual history of Syriac Christians, not about any "Assyrian claims" or similar immature antiquity frenzy. Italians is a good comparison. There is an "origins" section, but you don't see a full account of Iron Age Italy or the Roman Republic, nor is a portrait of Julius Ceasar shown as an illustration of a typical Italian male. Compare Assyrian people where some joker decided to include a portrait of ... Ashurnasirpal II. Why not Noah, one wonders, surely the Assyrians are descended from him too. dab (𒁳) 11:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This article was about the history of the Assyrian people from before Christianity to today. If you want to write about Syriac Christianity, seperate the articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.201.99.34 (talk) 02:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

--24.248.39.186 (talk) 02:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)== Requested move ==

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no move. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 06:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Can we have arguments for and against the latest requested move (to move back to History of the Assyrian people)? Without personal attacks and ad hominems, preferably. Personally I'd support the move based on the terminology used in the article and the names of other articles (such as Assyrian people), but I don't pretend to have any in-depth knowledge of this issue.--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• As far as I'm concerned, my comments in #Requested move (previous) can stand. Until relatively recently, this people was identified as a religious group, not an ethnicity, and use of the word Assyrian is an anachronism until at least the late nineteenth century; so is the association with Nineveh. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• With all do sincerity this page should go back to the way it was before. User:Dbach for whatever negligent reason changed this title to Syriac’s without discussion, consensus or reasoning. This article from its inception has been strictly dedicated to preserving and teaching users on the History of the Assyrians and not any other groups. This article deals specifically about the Assyrian history dating back to the Akkadian Empire to the Neo-Assyrian Empire to Christianity to Islamic persecution and finally to present days. The term Syriac is neither an ethnic group nor a self-designation of a people other than the fact that it promotes those who use it to only to refer to the language they speak which is Syriac a branch off of Aramaic. This article like any other ethnic history belongs to the original intent of the person who made this page which was to teach about a specific people’s history dating from ancient times to present days. I strongly support reverting the title to what it was before it got tampered with and from there on continually vandalized. The person responsible for most of this mayhem would have to be Dbachman; he has recently abused his powers in continually disrupting Wiki Project Assyria articles. Many users on both sides of the issue have tried reaching him and asking him why he has made all of these un-officiated edits. He has either brushed it aside or changed the subject to make him seem innocent on this predicament. Something needs to be done with this type of disruptive behavior. This is an encyclopedia for learning not for propagandizing information to meet these persons ultra-nationalistic agenda or goals. I will be the first one to say that I am not an expert in handling disruptive behavior like this. I can see that this type of behavior conducted by user Dbachmann is nothing new he has engaged in similar incompetent, un-sourced, unverified behavior before and he has been rebuke by the Wiki community. I humbly call upon all administrators to warn or block this user from disrupting these projects assignments. These articles have been created through extensive work and continuing research and for someone like and abusive administrator such as Dbachmann to come and remove or add information without any justifications is outrageous. I am trying to be neutral in this issue but it is simply getting out of hand. Those who have continually disrupted these pages need to be held accountable for through Wikipedia protocol. 130.17.92.23 (talk) 00:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

an edit-warring IP talking of "disruption"? I am glad you found the talkpage, but your rant notwithstanding, I have fully justified my edits. They are a matter of {{offtopic}} and WP:DUE. This isn't the Assyria article, nor is it the Syria (name) article. No content was lost, it is discussed in the pertinent articles. This article has the purpose of dealing with the history of the Syriac Christian population in the Middle East. Yes, it should feature an "Origins" section dealing with a summary of pre-Christian history, this was never under dispute. My involvement here is the attempt to get the hostile Syriac editors to collaborate and respect policy. Yes, this means I am attacked as biased from both sides. Which actually shows I am doing a good job in preventing the constant attempts to introduce propagandizing information to meet an ultra-nationalistic agenda or goals. The continual attempts to discuss ancient Assyria in articles about the Syriacs is precisely that, a nationalist agenda. Look at the Gaul section in the French people article. This is a reasonable section on an ethnic group's pre-history. We can have a similar section on the Syro-Hittite states and the Neo-Assyrian Empire here. Please just stop trying to conflate modern ethnic identity with an actual coverage of ancient history. Assyrianism is a topic of modern identity, notably embraced by just one faction bent on de-emphasizing their Christian heritage. We can summarize ancient history, but we cannot unduly dwell on remote antiquity in order to push the ideology of this faction. They are notable, to be sure, but they belong discussed in a section on the 20th century (post-Christian, not pre-Christian). --dab (𒁳) 10:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The move is intened to resolve controversy, not to create it. Fact: we have both Assyrianist and Aramaeanist editors here. Fact: policy requires them to leave their bias at the door and collaborate, respecting WP:NPOV. Both Assyrianists and Aramaeanists need to recognize that this is the article discussing the history of their ethnic group. If we allow the Assyrianists to WP:OWN this article, the Aramaeanists have shown the tendency to bugger off and create counter-articles about "ancient Arameans" elsewhere. This needs to stop. This article is neither about the Aramaeans nor about Ancient Assyria, it is about the history of the Syriac Christians. You are perfectly free and edit articles on ancient history,. at the {{main}} articles linked. --dab (𒁳) 10:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

History of the Syriac people (rather than Syriac Christians) would be more in line with WP's neutrality guidelines. Sur(y)âye have not always been Christians, and nowadays there are also those who do not identify as Christians.

Furthermore, the article Assyrian people should be moved accordingly to Syriac people, after which Aramean-Syriac people can be merged into that article. --Benne ['bɛnə] _(talk) 10:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

that's an artefact of diaspora. They essentially identify as Christians because they were a religious minority. In diaspora, they are in the process of assimilating into their host societies, losing both their language and their religion. This leads to some nationalistic reflexes on the part of the foreign born descendants, but ultimately the Assyrian people (the Syriac Christians) are defined as Aramaic-speaking adherents of Syriac Christianity. If you don't speak Aramaic and aren't a Christian, it would be difficult to claim membership, here. You would at best be able to claim Syriac heritage. --dab (𒁳) 14:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:CITE. The TriZ (talk) 15:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:TALK. Not sure why we are even having this discussion. I agree with Benne that it may make sense to move Assyrian people to Syriac people, but it appears to transpire that the "Assyrian/Syriac" combined name is best. If would save everyone a lot of future futility if we could agree to move Assyrian people to Assyrian/Syriac people now, on a par with Assyrians/Syriacs in the Netherlands, Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia, etc. This article would then also become History of the Assyrian/Syriac people. --dab (𒁳) 16:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You can't just start throwing / at every single article that is relating to this group. The most common term used for this group in English is Assyrian, at a ratio of 4 to 1. And all major news organizations use Assyrian by a ratio of 10 to 1. On top, all major world bodies such as the UN, Red Cross, etc all predominatly use Assyrian. The name of the article is Assyrian people, thus all other pages should be at par with the Assyrian name. The diaspora pages such as Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia are exceptions, because the communities over their are having naming disputes. Iraqi (talk) 05:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The move is intened to resolve controversy, not to create it. - take a look around, you have created controversy by moving the page. There was no problems, no edit wars, nothing, regarding this page until you decided to move it without any discussion. Wikipedia's rules says use the most common term in English, we have proven that it is predominatly Assyrian, THUS everything should follow. Iraqi (talk) 06:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This article would then also become History of the Assyrian/Syriac people. - under what basis have you made this decision? Assyrian is the most common term used in English. Iraqi (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Look at the Gaul section in the French people article. This is a reasonable section on an ethnic group's pre-history - look at History of Armenia, History of Greece - these are resasonable introduction on an ethnic group's pre-history. Iraqi (talk) 06:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This whole article is about Assyrian people and all of the sources are about Assyrians. Listing it under "Syriac History" just does not make any sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.248.39.186 (talk) 06:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Dbachmann has made a mockery and a complete mess with this whole issue. He continues to move pages here and their. Before it was Template:Assyrian people just like how all other ethnic templates were, now he has moved it to Template:Assyrian/Syriac infobox. Its funny how he gives the examples of

"of future futility if we could agree to move Assyrian people to Assyrian/Syriac people now, on a par with Assyrians/Syriacs in the Netherlands, Assyrians/Syriacs in Australia,"

when he was the one actually that moved all these pages without any discussion. We've had this problem with him before in Achaemenid Assyria - just look at the talk page. He moved the page with no discussion, doesn't make no argument, and the Wiki community voted against him. Its the same story again. Assyrian is the de facto title used for this group in Wikipedia, based on what Wikipedia says the title should be: The most common used term in English. This page is not following par with Assyrian people. Speaking of which dab has made into a further mess by having 10 different names in the first sentence. We have created an article about this issue; Assyrian naming dispute (of which user dab has moved as well). All this naming mess can go their. The naming issue should not screw up every other Assyrian-related article, like this one for example. The naming issue should not spill everywhere else. People, Syriac is a title of all Syriac-speaking churches; that includes 6 million Indians and 3 million Maronites. This article is not about them. You can find Syriac history in Syriac Christianity. Syriac and Assyrian are TWO different things. One is mostly affiliated in English with the Syriac Churches, while the other is an ethnic name. This article is about the ethnic group of Assyrians. Dab of course tried to manipulate this by deleting the entier intro paragraph and only have it cover Christian history. Iraqi (talk) 06:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move Page

Seperate history of Syriac Christians and History of Assyrian people. They have nothing to do with eachother.--24.248.39.186 (talk) 02:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I Semi-agree with the above comment. This article should be either called History of Assyrian People or History of the Assyrian/Syriac people. If the decision is made to return back this webpage to its original title I believe that there should be an expansion in the article of Syriac Christianity to make up for any missing ground. This page prior to being massively changed was clearly created to preserve and teach users about the History of Assyrian People from Ancient times, to Islamic Era, and to the present. My personal opinion is that we return this page back to the way it was before and expand an entire section in Syriac Christianity to make up any ground that has not been covered for those who regard themselves as Syriacs. This seems like the best solution. This is my Humble opinion. Nineveh (talk) 02:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with "Nineveh" change it back to History of the Assyrian people or History of the Assyrian/Syriac people --WestAssyrian (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)