Asuristan

Asuristan was the province of Assyria under the Sassanid Empire (226–640 AD). It corresponds to the Babylonia province under the Parthian Empire.

The province for the most part stretched from Mosul to Adiabene.^[1] While the official religion of the Sassanid empire was Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Assyrians was, from the 1st and 2nd centuries onwards, Church of the East Christianity, although some also still worshipped the old Mesopotamian Religion, with Ashur still worshipped in his home city until at least the late 3rd century AD. Assyrians were the indigenous inhabitants, and outnumbered the Persians in the Asuristan province. The main language spoken was Mesopotamian Aramaic, or Assyrian Aramaic.^[2] Its inhabitants were mostly working in agriculture or as traders and merchants.^[3] The city of Ctesiphon served as the capital of both the Parthian and Sassanid empires.

Unique Cultural Contributions

The Sassanid province of Asuristan produced several unique cultural contributions to the world (all using varieties of Mesopotamian Eastern Middle Aramaic for their original scriptures):

• It was the center for the Assyrian Church of the East, which at times (partially due to the vast areas the Sassanid empire covered) was the most widespread Christian church in the world, reaching well into Central Asia, China and India. (The Church of the East has been sometimes erroneously referred to as Nestorian, although the followers of Nestorius, AD 386-451, actually relocated to the Persian Empire at a later date.)

• The religion of Manichaeism, another Assyrian phenomenon, originated in the 3rd century in Asuristan, shortly after the Church of the East, and also spread across vast geographical distances. In some instances, Manicheaism even surpassed the Church of the East in its reach, as it was for a time also widespread in the Roman Empire.

• Beginning with the Sassanid Empire and up to the 11th century, Sassanid Assyria was the center of Judaism in the world. The major book defining Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud, was written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic in Asuristan between the 3rd and 5th centuries. The first Talmudic academy was founded in Sura by Rav (175–247) in about 220.

• The Mandaean religion, who according to their traditions are the original followers of John the Baptist, and who are considered to be the only surviving Gnostic group in the world, also originated in Asuristan at this time (or slightly earlier, perhaps during Parthian Assyria). Their language and script was the Mandaic form of Aramaic.

The second king of the Sassanid Empire, Shapur I (215-272), personally knew both Mani (216–276), the founder of Manichaeism, and Shmuel (165-257), one of the most famous contributors to the Babylonian Talmud. Mani dedicated his only Middle Persian writing, the Shāpuragān, to Shapur I. Shapur I is mentioned many times in the Babylonian Talmud, as "King Shabur".

Aside from the original writings of these groups which exist today, archaeological examples of all three of these Aramaic dialects and scripts can be found in the collections of thousands of Aramaic incantation bowls, ceramic artifacts from the time period of Asuristan. While the Jewish Aramaic script retained the original "square" or "block" form of the Aramaic alphabet used in Imperial Aramaic (the "Ashuri alphabet"), the Syriac alphabet and the Mandaic alphabet developed when cursive styles of Aramaic began to appear. The Mandaic script itself developed from the Parthian chancellery script.

Later History

After 640 AD the area was taken over by the Arab Islamic conquest and a proportion of the indigenous Assyrian population (known as Ashuriyun by the Arabs) gradually became a minority in their homeland. The region saw a large influx of Arabs, Kurds and later also Turkic peoples. The area became the capital of the Islamic Caliphate and the centre of Islamic civilization for five hundred years; from the 8th to the 13th centuries. However, a Christian culture, Eastern Aramaic language and Assyrian/Mesopotamian identity persisted among a sizeable proportion of native Assyrians (possibly still forming a majority into the 11th century AD), and they remained a significant part of the population until suffering savage massacres at the hands of the Mongols in the 13th and 14th centuries.^[4][5][6] However, an Assyrian presence still remains in the region to this day, with a number of Assyrian towns, villages and settlements extant, and Assyrian populations remain in and around cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk, Erbil, Dohuk and Amadia.

See also

• Achaemenid Assyria
• Assyria
• History of Mesopotamian Religion
• Mesopotamia
• Mesopotamia (Roman province)
  • Assyria (Roman province)
• Sennacherib II
• Shimun XXIII Eshai
• Suristan

External links

• The Shahr (province) of Asuristan

References