Assyrians[a] are an indigenous ethnic group native to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians descend directly from Ancient Mesopotamians such as ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.[46][47] Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.[48][49]
Assyrians speak Akkadian-influenced Aramaic (Suret, Turoyo), one of the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic has influenced Hebrew, Arabic, and some parts of Mongolian and Uighur. Aramaic was the lingua franca of West Asia and the language Jesus spoke.[50][51][52][53]
Assyrians are almost exclusively Christian,[54] with most adhering to the East and West Syriac liturgical rites of Christianity.[55][56] Both rites use Classical Syriac as their liturgical language. The Assyrian people, along with Arameans, Armenians, Greeks, and Nabataeans were the first to convert to Christianity, in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Only the Apostolic Fathers and the first Jews who became followers of "The Way" came before them.[57]
The ancestral indigenous lands that form the Assyrian homeland are those of ancient Mesopotamia and the Zab rivers, a region currently divided between modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria.[58] A majority of modern Assyrians have migrated to other regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia and the Caucasus. Emigration was triggered by genocidal events throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as religious persecution by Islamic extremists.
The emergence of the Islamic State and the occupation of a significant portion of the Assyrian homeland resulted in another major wave of Assyrian displacement due to events such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies, and the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. Of the one million or more Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the occupation, nearly 40% were indigenous Assyrians, even though Assyrians accounted for only around 3% of the pre-war Iraqi demography.[59][60]
The Islamic State was driven out from the Assyrian villages in the Khabour River Valley and the areas surrounding the city of Al-Hasakah in Syria by 2015, and from the Nineveh Plains in Iraq by 2017. In 2014, the Nineveh Plain Protection Units was formed and many Assyrians joined the force to defend themselves. The organization later became part of Iraqi Armed forces and played a key role in liberating areas previously held by the Islamic State during the War in Iraq.[61] In northern Syria, Assyrian groups have been taking part both politically and militarily in the Kurdish-dominated but multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (see Khabour Guards and Sutoro) and Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.