Assyrian–Chaldean–Syriac diaspora
The Assyrian diaspora refers to ethnic Assyrians living in communities outside their ancestral homeland. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians claim descent from the ancient Assyrians and are one of the few ancient Semitic ethnicities in the Near East who resisted Arabization, Turkification, Persianization and Islamization during and after the Muslim conquest of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
An Assyrian folk dance at an Assyrian party in Chicago
Assyrians in Russia protesting Iraqi church bombings in 2006
Demonstration against the genocide by the Islamic State in Stockholm, Sweden
The Assyrian homeland, Assyria, refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.
King Ashurnasirpal II of the Assyrian Empire meets a high official during a review of soldiers and war prisoners. He is accompanied by a parasol-bearer and is watched over by a winged deity (Ashur). He holds a bow and a pair of raised arrows, symbolising victory in battle. From the North-West Palace at Nimrud, Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), about 865-860 BC
Rabban Hormizd Monastery, Alqosh, Nineveh, Iraq.
Mor Hananyo Monastery, or The Saffron Monastery in the Tur Abdin region.
Saint Mary Church: an ancient Assyrian church located in the city of Urmia, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran.