The Assyrian Christians on Syria's Khabur River: A Century of Multiple Displacements

When the Islamic State recently abducted/kidnapped/"arrested" over 200 and perhaps as many as 373 Assyrian Christians from towns along the Khabur River in northeastern Syria, it gained worldwide attention, and though reportedly 19 or 20 were subsequently released, the remainder were not and face an uncertain fate.

While I'm sure many Westerners aren't even aware of the existence of Assyrian Christianity, I assume my readers are better informed. Even so, I suspect even many Middle East specialists associate the Assyrians with northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey, and may have been surprised to learn of the 35 towns and villages along the Khabur in northeastern Syria. This community largely settled there in the 1930s after the expulsions and massacres by the Ottomans in 1915 and the massacre of Assyrian in Iraq in 1933. And now they are under fire again. In that sense, their history is a microcosm of the history of the Assyrian people as a whole.

The varied minority faiths of the Jazira, the region of Upper Mesopotamia embracing both northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq (and thus the heartland of the "Islamic State"), need to be understood, and I plan to offer a number of posts dealing with these groups, Assyrians, Yazidis, Shabak, and others.

The Khabur is a major tributary of the Euphrates. The Old Testament Book of 1 Chronicles 5:26, says it was where Tiglath-Pileser III (Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III) of Assyria settled the captive tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh (among the "10 lost tribes" of the Northern Kingdom of Israel). Many also identify it with the "River Chebar" where the Prophet Ezekiel had his visions, but others place that closer to Babylon.

The Assyrian Christian communities along the Khabur include members from all four of the faith (doctrinal/liturgical) communities that are sometimes called "Assyrian" the Assyrian Church of the East, historically called "Nestorian" by rival Christian communities; the Chaldean Catholic Church, formed by those elements of the Church of the East who acknowledged the Pope from the 16th century onward in several waves; the Syriac Orthodox Church, an "Oriental Orthodox" Church often called "Jacobite" and formerly known in English as "Syrian Orthodox"; they now prefer Syriac, which is a better translation of their name in Arabic and Syriac; and the Syriac Catholic Church, the Roman "Uniate" analogue of the Syriac Orthodox.

I won't deal with the complicated doctrinal and liturgical disputes here (much as I thrive on such things), but merely note that all these people are historically, ethnically, and linguistically kin. All speak today, or until recently spoke, varieties of Eastern Neo-Aramaic. All are, at least arguably,descendants of the pre-Islamic Semitic-speaking Christian populations of Upper Mesopotamia and Eastern Anatolia. Let me note that Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics in other parts of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan may reject the label "Assyrian," but those in the Khabur valley have their origins in the Turkish region of ancient monasteries known as Tur Abdin ("Mountain of the Servants [of God]), which for the Syriac Orthodox was an analogue of Wadi Natrun for the Copts and Mount Athos for the Greek Orthodox. While they call themselves Suroyo (Syriac) or similar terms, they are part of the greater Assyrian Christian mosaic.

The First Displacement: 1915

Much of what follows here on the history of the Assyrians on the Khabur is from Alberto M. Fernandez' article "Dawn at Tell Tamir: The Assyrian Christian Survival on the Khabur River," 
Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Volume XII, Number 1), reproduced at the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) site.

Although the fate of the Armenians during World War I is by far the best known (and largest), other Christian minorities were also displaced  under Ottoman rule, including the Assyrians, and Pontic and Anatolian Greeks. As Fernandez notes:

The coming of World War One exacerbated difficult relations existing between the Muslim and Christian populations in Anatolia and resulted in the flight/massacre/expulsion of historic Assyrian communities in the highlands of the Hakkari during the 1915-1918 period and the relocation of most of the survivors to camps in Iraq and Iran. Indeed, between 1915 to 1920, many of the future Khabur Assyrians would be driven from the Hakkari Mountains, to Urmiyya in Iran, to the safety of the British lines at Hamadan, also in Iran, then to Baquba in Central Iraq, and then Mindan in Northern Iraq.

Second Displacement: 1933
 
 Other Assyrian groups may have migrated more directly rather than via Iran.The Assyrians in northern Iraq tended to support British rule during the Mandate period, and the British, who often used minority populations to enforce colonial rule, recruited many of them into the notorious "Assyrian Levies," which were much resented by Arab nationalists. When Iraq became independent in 1932, those Assyrians who had served in the Levies became targets.

Fernandez again:

Tensions between Assyrian and Iraqi nationalists eventually led to open fighting and horrific massacres of Assyrians in Northern Iraq in 1933 at the hands of Iraqi Army units and the flight of Assyrian refugees into French Mandate Syria. The  first 415, led by chieftains Malik Yaco (Upper Tiari) and Malik Loco (Tkhuma) crossed the Tigris on July 18, 1933. The young Patriarch of the Assyrian Church off the East, Mar Shimun Ishaya XXI, was stripped of his Iraqi citizenship and became a stateless person eventually moving to Cyprus and then America. After much discussion between the French, the British, and the League of Nations, the decision was taken to settle the Assyrians in the sparsely settled Jezira where they would join other recent Christian arrivals, Syrian Orthodox and Armenians mostly, who had also escaped the destruction of their communities in Anatolia. Although some thought was given to settling these Assyrians in the more fertile Ghab valley in Western Syria, British Guiana, Niger,or even on the banks of the Parana in Brazil, the Khabur River basin in the extreme Northeast corner of the country was eventually settled upon. Some of the Iraqi Assyrians were already near there, living in refugee camps. Lt. Colonel Stafford noted that “their settlement here, however, cannot be, and is not intended to be, other than temporary.”

But of course, as has so often happened to the "temporarily" displaced, the settlement became permanent. At least until now, when the Assyrians on the Khabur are under threat yet again, a full century after their first displacement.

Below, from the AINA site, the 35 villages along the Khabur:

Source: AINA

The Threat to Kobanê: Will Air Strikes Expand into Syria?

This piece at Al-Monitor about how Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities in northern Iraqi are asking to be armed and trained to fight ISIS may be particularly timely, since ISIS is currently threatening to take the city of Kobanê, a mixed town of Kurds, Turkmen, Armenians and Syriac Christians. Rather like Amerli, which was besieged by ISIS until US airstikes nd Iraqi ground roop lifted the siege, there are fears of a massacre of the minorities if  Kobanê, (which is also spelled Kobani and is known by the Arabic name of ‘Ayn al-‘Arab), falls to ISIS.

There is one big problem:  Kobanê is in Syria, not Iraq, and no one is yet bombing targets in Syria. The town has been under the control of the People's Protection Units (YPG), Kurdish Syrian Peshmerga. ISIS is reportedly using armored vehicles in attacking the town, forces the YPG cannot possibly match.

KRG President Barzani is calling on the world to prevent a massacre, and Turkey's PKK is also calling for support for the besieged town.

The danger to the town and threat of a massacre seems certain to increase pressure on the US to expand its air strikes into Syria.

Lameen Souag's New Book on Egyptian Siwi Berber

Egypt has only one language in the Berber language family spoken within its borders: Siwi, spoken in the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert. Algerian linguist Lameen Souag, whose linguistics blog Jabal al-Lughat is wonderful but far too rarely updated, has announced the publication of his new study: Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact.

He outlines the contents at the link, and the publisher's announcement is here. It's almost 300 pages (but also almost 50 Euros). He comments:

Based on part of my doctoral thesis [at SOAS] but significantly expanded, this book:

• proposes a classification of Siwi within Berber, and a corresponding probable account of where this Berber variety originated;
• describes the grammar of Siwi, in greater detail than any previous work;
• establishes how, and how much, long-term contact with Arabic has affected its grammar;
• examines the dialectal affiliations of Arabic loans in Siwi, providing further evidence that this contact involved very different varieties at different periods;
• provides a number of fully glossed Siwi texts of different genres, illustrating Siwi grammar and casting light on Siwi culture.

Some interesting-sounding stuff here for anyone interested in Berber, in contact borrowing among languages, or minority populations in the Arab world. I know Lameen only through commenting on each other's blogs, but bravo.

For Eastern Christmas Eve: From the Syrian Tradition

I have already noted some of the Christian traditions of two of the currently beleaguered Christian communities of the Middle East, the Copts and the churches of Iraq. The Syriac or Syrian Christian tradition is particularly threatened today, and deserve a note on Eastern Christmas Eve.

Syrian Christianity in its varying forms embraces most of the Christians of the present states of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and adjacent parts of Turkey and Iraq. The Syriac form of Aramaic is the usual liturgical language. The historical centers are Jerusalem and Antioch; both were among the Pentarchy of early Christian Patriarchates, with Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. (Only Rome was in the West. Antioch, modern Antakya in Turkey, was a major center fr the spread of Christianity; St. Peter was the first bishop (preceding his move to Rome), and, according to Acts 11:26, "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."

Today, here are five Patriarchs of Antioch (the Antiochian Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Melkite, Syriac Catholic, and Maronite Catholic. There used to be a Latin Catholic as well but three Catholic Patriarchs of Antioch may have been enough, and the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem remains.

Not one of the five Patriarchs of Antioch has his seat in Antioch/Antakya today:

1. The Antiochian Orthodox Patriarch (or Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch) is in the Eastern or "Greek" Orthodox tradition linked to Constantinople; Patriarch John X Yazigi took his throne in 2012 and has his seat in Damascus.
2. The Syrian Orthodox (the Church today prefers "Syriac Orthodox" in English) Patriarch of Antioch  represents the  Oriental Orthodox ["Jacobite," "Miaphysite,"  or to other denominations, "Monophysite"] tradition, along with the Copts, Armenians, Ethiopians and Eritreans. Ignatius Zakka Iwas has held the post since 1980; his seat is officially Damascus but he resides in Beirut.
3. The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, the analogue of the Antiochian Orthodox but in union with Rome, is Gregorios III Laham since 2000; he is based in Damascus.
4. The Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch is the Catholic Uniate analogue of the Syriac Orthodox; he is based in Beirut and since 2009 has been Ignatius Joseph III Younan.
5. The Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch is of course highly influential in Lebanon; his seat is at Bkerke near Beirut. Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Raï was chosen Patriarch in 2011 and made a cardinal by the Pope in 2012.

From several Syrian traditions: a Syriac Orthodox service in Aleppo  a few years ago (though with "Silent Night" in the processional):


An Antiochian hymn:



A Maronite Hymn Medley:

Middle East Circassians and the Sochi Olympics

This article, by a member of Jordan's Circassian community, discusses the international Circassian diaspora's attitude toward the Winter Olympics in Sochi, once the heart of the Adyghe or Circassian people's homeland.

Between 1860 and 1864, at the end of the Russian conquest of Circassia, there occurred one of the first great ethnic cleansings of the 19th century, one now largely forgotten except by the descendants of the victims. Hundreds of thousands died, and more were deported by Tsarist Russia to the Ottoman Empire, where they formed, and still form, distinct ethnic communities. Turkey, Syria, Lebanon,Jordan, Israel, Iraq and Egypt all have Circassian populations, perhaps most visible in Jordan where the overall population is small and they are a sizable minority. (Some of the "Circassian" communities of the Middle East include other peoples expelled from the Caucasus (particularly Chechens), but I'm speaking here of true Circassians, the Adyghe people.

The article linked to above (despite sometimes spelling Caucasus as "Caucuses," presumably due to a spell-checker) notes how the choice of Sochi for the Olympics has awakened a national solidarity among the Circassian diaspora, one not seen before.

Al Jazeera English on the Samaritans

The Samaritans are one of the Middle East's easily forgotten surviving minorities; numbered today in the hundreds, some at Holon in Israel and some on Mount Gerizim above Nablus in the West Bank, two out of three of my previous posts on them related to the death of the former High Priest and the installation of the new one back in 2010. 

(The Samaritans retain a High Priesthood claiming descent from Aaron, and which indeed preserves the so-called "Cohen gene.")

This Al Jazeera English report emphasizes another genetic issue: the problem of birth defects due to inbreeding in such a small breeding population, and the decision made by the Samaritans to encourage exogamy in order to preserve the fragile community:

 

Iraq Lays Foundation for Sabean Cultural Center

I'm really busy with Journal work today s please forgive a post that is little mre than a link: "Iraq Lays Foundation for Sabean Cultural Center." Like other non-Muslim minorities in Iraq, the Sabeans (or Mandaeans as they call themselves) are in sharp decline: the article estimates only about 5,000 remain in Iraq, down from 100,000 in the 1980s. They suffered under Saddam Hussein and have been targeted by Islamists more recently (as have Iraq's Christians, Yazidis, and others, while the Jewish population has left).  Many Mandaeans still speak a variety of Aramaic. They practice a gnostic, syncretistic religion in which Adam and John the Baptist play major roles.

Tamazret Celebrates its Amazigh Heritage

The Amazigh revival throughout North Africa continues apace, and Tunisia, though it has the fewest actual speakers of Tamazight languages in the Maghreb, is among them: the southwestern Tunisian town of Tamazret (or Tamezret) is holding its 20th Annual Festival of Tamazret, emphasizing the town's ethnic heritage.

The Festival's Facebook page is here;  the webpage of the sponsoring Association for the Protection of the Heritage of Tamezret is here (mostly in French, some Arabic); the Festival's program (in Arabic) is here.

Tamazret and other villages in the Matmata area speak a form of Zenata, a division of the Berber or Tamazight languages. A website in French on the Tamazret dialect can be found here.

More on Egypt's Minority Communities

Not long ago I noted that the Egypt Independent had a series on Egypt's minority communities; that post had links to articles on the Armenian and Jewish communities. Since then they have run articles on Egypt's Levantine and Italian communities, both worth a look.

Articles on Egypt's Armenian and Jewish Communities

The Egypt Independent has started a series on Egypt's minority communities. So far it has dealt with the well-established Armenian community and the tiny remnant still present of Egypt's once large and influential Jewish community. It's good and rather rare to see Egyptian media (albeit in English) paying attention to minority issues.

Cause for Concern: Blaming the Copts for Shafiq

I'm working on a number of longer posts on the implications of the Egyptian elections, but one particular theme that has emerged in recent days is cause for serious concern: a tendency on the part of some Islamists and also secular liberals and others to blame Egypt's Coptic Christians for the resurrection of Ahmad Shafiq's political career.

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has urged the Attorney General to investigate statements by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party that seemed to blame Copts for Shafiq's running second and thus making it into the runoff; FJP candidate Muhammad Morsi is one of those whose remarks it cited, but today Morsi sought to reassure Christians, saying "Our Christian brothers, let's be clear, are national partners and have full rights like Muslims,"and promising Copts would be included as advisers in his Presidency and that the Vice President, who would not be from the FJP, might also be a Copt.

The FJP's Facebook page had earlier quoted losing Presidential candidate Muhammad al-Ashal as linking the Copts to Shafiq's "mysterious" rise, and many Christian activists have suggested the blame campaign is aimed at intimidating Copts from voting for Shafiq in round two.

But it isn't just the Brotherhood and other Islamist movements who have been blaming the Copts. So have liberals and revolutionaries who feel the Copts should have supported liberal candidates rather than Shafiq. Liberal blogger/activist  "Sandmonkey" Mahmoud Salem has responded in a post called "Don't blame the Copts":

The Blame Game started immediately, and despite revolutionary infighting between the supporters of various revolutionary candidates that never quite made it, they all seem to agree on one point: The Copts ( also insert: The Church) have screwed the revolution over with their voting choice. It goes without saying that this rhetoric is very immature and dangerous for the Coptic population, and will lead to further polarization amidst the revolutionary ranks, and that they are better suited to finding out why that happened and try to court that vote, instead of entrenching that belief further. In reality, their choice of vote, while unfortunate, is very logical and should not be blamed for it, and to paint them as traitors after being the population that suffered the most after this revolution is nothing short of latent sectarianism and ignoring the facts.

He then reviews the history of Copts and the revolution. Whether the critics are liberals or Islamists, their analyses are based on a general impression that a large majority of Copts voted for Shafiq. While Salem quotes an estimate of 85% of Copts voting for the former Mubarak stalwart, not everyone agrees:

It is noteworthy that the largest portion of votes won by Shafiq came from the Nile Delta region, which does not contain a large Christian population.

As for other provinces where Coptic populations are concentrated, such as Cairo and Alexandria, the polls were led by Sabbahi, while Morsy finished first in Minya and Sohag.

Commentators say that it is a mistake to consider Copts as a politically unified electorate, and argue that Christians, like the rest of Egyptians, hold different political orientations varying according to social, economic and intellectual factors.

True, that comment appears in The Egypt Independent's report on the EOHR complaint, and the paper is affiliated with Al-Masry Al-Youm, which is ultimately part of the media empire of Naguib Sawiris, the media billionaire and outspoken Copt. But the point is that no one is sure what proportion of the Coptic vote went to Shafiq. Cairo, which has one of the country's biggest Coptic populations, went for Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi, (As for the Delta, which indeed has few Copts, it went so heavily for Shafiq because he carried Mubarak's old home base of Menufiyya overwhelmingly, with Sharqiyya and other Delta provinces close behind.)

The point should be, though, that even if Copts did indeed vote overwhelmingly for Shafiq, and even if that support was enough to catapult Shafiq to second place ahead of Sabahi (and this second premise s by no means proven either: there are many allegations of irregularities and questions about expanded voter rolls still in play), where else would the Coptic vote have gone. They were surely not going to vote for an Islamist; they may have to learn to live with one, but nothing in their recent experience suggests they will prosper under Islamist rule. As for the revolutionaries' complaint that they shou;d hjave voted for a "liberal" candidate, the simple answer is, which one was that? Of the 13 candidates, there were at most two or three real liberals, and they never had a chance: why throw away one's vote? Of the five candidates who, in the end, split the vote among them — Morsi, Shafiq, Moussa, Abu'l-Futuh, and Sabahi &emdash; only one, Abu'l-Futuh, claimed to be a liberal, and he was also pledged to implementing shari‘a and is a former Muslim Brother. Sabahi, the Nasserist, would have some appeal (and Copts generally remember the Nasser era favorably), and Sabahi does seem to have done well with Coptic voters. Of the two fallul (old regime) candidates, Moussa and Shafiq, Shafiq was the law-and-order man, and as Sandmonkey's analysis noted, the Copts have suffered multiple church-burnings and the Maspero killings since the revolution, and may be yearning for law and order. (Though insofar as Shafiq is really the candidate of Mubarak's old NDP elite, the Copts did not fare well in the last years of NDP rule.) He was hardly an ideal candidate,but he does have a logical appeal for a minority feeling increasingly besieged under the growing insecurity and Islamist activism since the revolution.

If Copts did vote overwhelmingly for Shafiq, they presumably did so as individual voters with individual political views and priorities, but also with concern for the security of their own religious community. Also, presumably, the motivations behind those who voted for Morsi. Any attempt during the runoff campaign to paint Copts as either a threat to Islam (which is ludicrous given their minority numbers) or to the revolution (which has hardly been pro-active in defending Coptic rights) would merely increase the dangers of greater sectarian violence. Shafiq could not have gotten to the runoff with Coptic votes alone. If he's the candidate of anyone, it's SCAF and the old NDP business elites, plus the security services. Blame them if one must blame someone.

In any event, the runoff election is already the most polarizing choice imaginable: the Brotherhood versus someone widely seen as a Mubarak clone. Overlaying an already polarized and dangerous situation with a sectarian component throws fuel on a fire. Egyptians of all political and religious orientations will be ill-served by that.

Lebanese Singer on Keeping Syriac Alive

Last summer in a series of posts on Syriac/Aramaic I talked about the survivals of the language today, both in the Western variety of "Neo-Aramaic" spoken in a few Syrian villages, and the eastern variety which survives in various communities in Iraq, Turkey and neighboring countries. Though linguists call these Neo-Aramaic they generally call themselves Syriac.

The current issue of World Policy Journal deals with issues relating to language, and has an essay by Lebanese singer Ghada Shbeir, who sings in Syriac, on efforts to keep the language alive.

So add this to my occasional posts on minority languages and on the rich legacies of Aramaic/Syriac. When  Pope Shenouda died, one of my commenters asked in a comment why spoken Coptic had disappeared except as a liturgical language, while other minority languages survived (like these islands of Syriac, or the larger blocs of Berber/Amazigh, Kurdish, Nubian, etc.). The short answer is that's a very good question and one that I've wrestled with occasionally. The long answer will show up one of these days in a blog post.

Yet Another Minority, the Shabak, are Targeted in Iraq

The latest car bombing in Iraq,in a displaced persons camp in a town near Mosul, has apparently targeted the minority Shabak community, killing at least 11.

While the violence in Iraq most often is sectarian between Sunni and Shi‘a, it is also frequently directed against non-Muslim minority populations. The frequent attacks on Iraqi Christians, mostly Assyrians and Chaldeans, are well known  and have led to a growing flight of Christians to Assyrian and Chaldean diasporas in the West. There have also been attacks against the Mandaean and Yazidi religious minorities.

The Shabak are another one of Iraq's minor religious/ethnic minorities, with some similarities to and affinities with the larger Yazidi community, who live in the same general region. (Note: the link is to the Wikipedia article and Wikipedia is dark today in a protest action. You can access the link by turning off Javascript in your browser, or can wait until tomorrow if you don't know how.)

They are, like the Yazidis, a syncretistic religion with elements of Islam, Christianity, and older faiths. They speak a form of Kurdish, but their scripture is written in Turkmen.

These tiny, relic communities may seem like anachronistic curiosities, but they are a reminder of the palimpsest of migrations, conquests, and faiths that swept over the Fertile Crescent over the millennia. And they have few defenders. At least international Christian groups regularly protest attacks on Iraqi Christians, though with little result since the attackers are radical Islamists. Even the Mandaeans and the Yazidis have some support from diaspora populations in Europe. Most people have never heard of the Shabak. Nor do I expect this to be on the evening news. That's why I brought it up.

Rebel Leaders, Amazigh Explore Contacts with Libyan Jews Abroad

One interesting historical/cultural sidelight of the ongoing and unfinished transition in Libya has been at least a cautious, tentative outreach to the Libyan Jewish diaspora by the rebel forces.  Although early in the fighting there were reports that Islamist elements in the rebel forces were using the rumor that Colonel Qadhafi was Jewish to rally support against him, (Some Libyan Jews in Israel have claimed one of his grandmothers was a Jewish convert to Islam.) Over the past few weeks there have been a number of news reports dealing with reported outreach to the Libyan Jewish diaspora, though Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi a few years ago himself made some gestures to Libyan Jews abroad. A leader of Libyan Jews in the UK has told the Jerusalem Post that he had been approached by members of the National Transitional Council, suggesting he return to Libya and run for political office. An AFP report noted the longtime relationships between Jewish and Amazigh ("Berber") communities in Yafran (Ifren, Ifrane), in the Jebel Nefusa, while The Jerusalem Post, again, has emphasized how David Gerbi, representative of the World Organization of Libyan Jews, based in Italy, has cultivated good relations with the Amazigh rebels. 

Although as I noted, in the years since his rapprochement with the West Qadhafi himself had opened links with Jewish Libyans in the diaspora, and Saif al-Islam had been more open in urging Libyan Jews to return, possibly due to the overinflated view many Arab leaders have of Jewish influence, combined with a recongition that both Morocco and Tunisia (especially Djerba) have benefited from significant Jewish tourism (even from Israel), Libya itself has no indigenous Jewish population. The last Libyan Jew, an elderly woman in a rest home in Tripoli, emigrated to Italy in 2003.

Her departure marked the end of a long history of Jewish presence in what is now Libya. The Hellenistic city of Cyrene in eastern Libya was a major Jewish center in the last years BC and the first years AD; in the gospels Simon of Cyrene is compelled to carry Jesus' cross, and the Acts of the Apostles mentions Cyrene frequently. Jewish communities spread to Tripoli and the Jebel Nefusa (hence the Amazigh links).

But the 20th century was not kind to Libya's Jews. Though Benito Mussolini came to Anti-Semitism late, mostly due to his Axis with the Nazis, Italy's Anti-Semitic laws also applied in Libya. Aftar there were two pogroms in Tripoli, and many Libyan Jews fled to Italy or, after the establishment of Israel, to the new Jewish state. Emigration continued throughout the monarchy period and became more extensive once Qadhafi came to power. As noted, the last Jewish Libyan is believed to have left in 2003.

Most of the Libyan Jewish diaspora are in Israel and Italy, though there are also significant numbers in the UK and the US. Whether the flirtations of the new rebel leadership will lead anywhere will doubtless depend on the makeup of the new government, whose formation has been delayed yet again. But it's an interesting sidelight of the Libyan revolution.

Readings on ‘Alawite Self-Identity

Over at Syria Comment Josh Landis has posted a number of items dealing with the sectarian issues involved in the Syrian conflict. One particularly interesting one is this post by "Khudr," dealing with ‘Alawite identity. Khudr also links to a 2005 post on another blog, on the same subject.

They're useful reading. Most non-Syrians tend to characterize the ‘Alawites as a typical religious minority that has dominated Syria for decades.  Beyond the standard textbook definition, its clear that a lot of cultural and class baggage is part of that identity, regardless of personal religious convictions. (Though that's true of most minorities in the region, Druze, Maronites, Copts, etc.) But useful background in understanding Syria's ordeal.

Have a good weekend

The New Samaritan High Priest; The "Cohen Gene"

Since I'm adrift on an Arctic ice floe again (or at least it feels like it), it seems like time for one of my extended posts on a really obscure subject. (Also, they say there'll be high winds today, which could increase power outages. So far the one thing I've been able to do is blog. That could change.)

I noted on Friday the death of the Samaritan High Priest, since I see the "Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context" subtitle up there as something of a mission statement, and also because I have a personal fascination with the smaller remnant historical communities that still dot the region.

You'll find more about the late High Priest and his successor here (the new High Priest is at left), in a Samaritan online English newsletter. (The biographies are readable enough, though one or two other stories in the newsletter seem to have been machine translated.)

The new High Priest is the same age as the one who died (both born 1927). The reason, explained in the link, is that until 1624 the Samaritan High Priesthood descended from father to son in the line of Aaron's son Pinchas (the line of High Priests in Orthodox Judaism as well, the kohanim), but with the shrinking of the Samaritan population, the last Pinchas descendant died out in 1624 and the line shifted to the descendants of Aaron's other son, Itamar (the Levites, in traditional Jewish terms, though the kohanim also originate from the Tribe of Levi). On the Levite line, unlike the earlier one, the oldest surviving member of the priestly class succeeds. Hence, he's the same age as his predecessor.

The Samaritans have always claimed that they preserve the genuine tradition of the Northern Kingdom of Israel; while mainstream Judaism claimed they represented a bastardized population planted in the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians and who gained in strength during the Babylonian exile of the Judaeans.

It is, of course, fairly natural to assume that a lot of this is legendary: Aaron was Moses' brother, after all. But lately some strange things have been happening in DNA studies.

Now, let me emphasize that I don't like discussions of race or even ethnicity: the 20th century was plagued by the "scientific racism" that classed people according to skull shape, skin tone, or imagined ancestry, and the horrible results were eugenics in the West and the Holocaust in Germany and its conquests. Race is a social construct. My daughter was born in Hunan, but the discussion I had with her last night on Alice in Wonderland was utterly free of any genetic predispositions. I don't believe in race.

But DNA can tell us something about historical traditions. I don't care if you're a Cohen or a Jones or Smith (my mother was a Jones), but the emerging genetic maps from the study of DNA are telling us some interesting things.

First, they're telling us we're all close kin. Old notions that the alleged "races" evolved separately have long since faded away. A few Western Europeans have some traces of native American DNA; go figure. DNA isn't race; race is a construct.

But DNA does have some curious tales to tell. Speaking of Samaritans and others tracing descent from Aaron, it gets really weird, at least for those of us who aren't fundamentalist/literalist in our approach to religion. There is a DNA haplogroup (a category of genetic descent widely shared) that has been dubbed popularly the "Cohen Gene" or more officially the "Cohen Modal Haplotype." The technical material is mostly dealt with at the Wikipedia entry "Y-Chromosome Aaron."

Now the so-called Cohen gene is not found exclusively among Jewish people named Cohen (or translated names like Kaplan, Kagan, etc.), but also among other Jewish and also broader Arab and other Middle Eastern populations, and even beyond. But it is highly intensively found among persons whose names are traditionally considered priestly in Jewish communities. And it is found in Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi communities in slightly differing proportions, but still heaviest among the Cohen families.

Now I'm no geneticist and no statistician, and I'd refer you to the link earlier for the statistical and scientific details, but clearly the Cohanim have higher correlations on many genetic points than do Jews generally (from the Wikipedia link above) (I hope this appears properly in all browsers as it does in mine):

	xDE[3]	xDE,PR[4]	Hg J[5]	CMH.1[4]	CMH[4]		CMH.1/HgJ	CMH/HgJ
Ashkenazi Cohanim (AC):	98.5%	96%	87%	69%	45%		79%	52%
Sephardi Cohanim (SC):	100%	88%	75%	61%	56%		81%	75%
Ashkenazi Jews (AI):	82%	62%	37%	15%	13%		40%	35%
Sephardi Jews (SI):	85%	63%	37%	14%	10%		38%	27%

Intriguingly, even a southern African tribe called the Lemba who have some vaguely Jewish traditions and claim to be of priestly descent, though as black as their neighbors and speaking the same languages,

The Wikipedia article on the Lemba contains this:

A recent genetic study in 1996 suggested that more than 50% of the Lemba Y chromosomes are Semitic in origin;^[10] a subsequent study in 2000 reported more specifically that a substantial number of Lemba men carry a particular polymorphism on the Y chromosome known as the Cohen modal haplotype (CMH), which is indicative of Y-DNA Haplogroup J found amongst some Jews, and in other populations across the Middle East.^[11]

One particular sub-clan within the Lemba, the Buba clan, is considered by the Lemba to be their priestly clan, while among Jews, the Kohanim are the priestly clan. The Buba clan carried most of the CMH found in the Lemba. Among Jews the marker is also most prevalent among Jewish Kohanim, or priests. As recounted in Lemba oral tradition, the Buba clan "had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel" and into Southern Africa.^[12]

Weird, huh?

Now, as for the Samaritans, which is how I got dragged down this back alley in the first place, they seem to have elements of the Cohen gene but not the same y chromosome descent as the mainline of Cohens. But note, above, that their High Priesthood shifted from the Pinchas line to the Itamar line in the 1620s, according to their own acknowledgment.

And of course the punchline: they say the "Cohen Modal Haplogroup" suggests a common male ancestor in the Y-chromosome line about 3000 years before the present. That's several hundred years after most Biblical historians would date Aaron, but it's still pretty impressive. Kohanim from all known Jewish populations do have a common male ancestor, and he may not be all that later than Aaron. Hence the geneticists' coinage of "Y-chromosome Aaron" for the unknown male ancestor.

Death of Samaritans' High Priest

The High Priest of the Samaritans, Elazar ben Tzedaka, has died at age 83. His official obituary at an English-language Samaritan site is here. That site identifies the new high priest (kohen gadol) as Aharon ben Ab-Hisda.

The Samaritans are one of the smallest of the Middle East's many small relic minorities, groups that once flourished but today hold on tenuously. Divided from Judaism since the Babylonian exile and still claiming to be the rightful heirs of ancient Israel, and familiar to most people from the New Testament (the Good Samaritan, Jesus and the Samaritan woman), they live mostly either on their historic Mount Gerizim, which rises above Nablus in the West Bank, or in Holon near Tel Aviv. The Wikipedia article says they numbered only 712 in 2007.

Unlike mainstream Judaism, they have retained the institution of the High Priest, who claims direct descent from Aaron, as well as animal sacrifices and an archaic version of the Hebrew alphabet.

Like many other Middle Eastern minorities — Mandaeans, Yazidis, to name a couple — they retain their own identity despite the small size of their community.

A Coptic Strike, Called by Copts Abroad, Flops

Egypt's Copts are a longtime interest of mine, and my thoughts can be found by clicking on the Copts category. As I noted Friday, September 11 was Nayrouz, Coptic New Year. Apparently a Coptic group in the US, failed dismally. The sponsoring group, the National American Coptic Assembly, has assembled on their website a selection of Egyptian press and blog accounts prior to the effort.

The Coptic church itself, wisely, stayed aloof from this. There has been for some years now — really from the Sadat era — a growing disconnect between the church in Egypt, which as a minority in a Muslim country with increasing Islamist influence must accommodate as best it can, and Copts abroad, who feel the freedoms of the West and seek to influence the conditio of their co-religionists back home. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s the Coptic Pope Shenouda III tried to use the Copts in the West as a lever against the Egyptian government. Anwar Sadat reacted as you might expect, and when he cracked down on all his enemies in September 1981, he deposed Shenouda, sent him to an internal exile in the Wadi Natroun, the Coptic version of Mount Athos in the Egyptian desert. Eventually rehabilitated by Husni Mubarak, Pope Shenouda has been suitably deferential to the government ever since.

I do not for a moment deny that the Coptic minority in Egypt suffers from many difficulties. Often they are attacked by Islamists or simply discriminated against. Despite the fact that very senior Copts have reached very senior positions — Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Yusuf Boutros-Ghali as Finance Minister — most Copts who aren't named Boutrous-Ghali or Makram-‘Ebeid or something similar don't generally prosper. But efforts by Copts abroad to provoke militant protest in Egypt backfire and hurt the Egyptian Copts, as some of the folks interviewed in the Egyptian media linked to by me or even by the Coptic sponsoring group make clear. The idea that if the difficulties of Middle Eastern Christians are constantly emphasized in the West their situation will improve is probably naive: in fact the Egyptian government sees the efforts of American Copts to publicize the problems of Copts in Egypt (which are very real, but mostly of local origin, not the result of government policy) as hurting Egypt's image in the US and its ability to extract continuing aid from Congress.

The whole question of what role Middle Eastern minorities in the West play in determining Western policy towards their countries of origin is a complex one. But it is also quite delicate. Diaspora groups that promote policies that will hurt their fellows back home — as I think this Coptic boycott might have done — seem ill-advised. This one failed, apparently. I too would like to see an improved situation for the Copts (and other minorities) of Egypt and every Middle Eastern country, but I doubt that agitation among US or European based expatriates is the proper way to go.

BBC Piece on Tamazight

An interesting BBC feature on Tamazight-learning in Morocco. The article refers to the language as "Amazigh" and I'm a mere ignorant Arabist, but I thought that was the name for an individual (Amazighen or Imazighen as the plural and Tamazight as the language). Anyway, a useful contribution to the minority languages theme. My Algerian and Moroccan readers often jump in to correct my ignorance, and I welcome them if they do so again.

[UPDATED: Thank The Moor Next Door for the link to this fierce critique of the BBC post by the ‘Aqoul blog. Even Later Update: Lameen Souag, mentioned below, responds to the same BBC post. Read these posts, and the comments thereto, since these people actually know what they're talking about. When it comes to Berber, I'm repeating things I've heard or read.]

On a related subject, the Algerian blogger who blogs at Jabal al-Lughat and studies linguistics at SOAS, Lameen Souag, has done a number of posts on the (now vanished) Nile Valley Berber of Upper Egypt: here and here; though I rather doubt that serious scholars of Berber linguistics don't already know about these links, and wonder whether anyone else cares. I find it interesting, and it's my blog. What else can I say? It's my party and I'll post if I want to.

Berber is still spoken in Egypt, by the way, in the Siwi dialect spoken in the Siwa oasis. Here's a Souag post on Siwi, and the stubbiest of stubs at Wikipedia. Ethnologue isn't much better.

My impression — underscore impression — is that outside of Algeria and Morocco (and perhaps Mauritania and the Sahelian states with big Touareg populations) Berber language speakers are just too minor: Djerba and a few minor enclaves in Tunisia, Jabal Nafusa and a few other spots in Libya, Siwa in Egypt: these are historical artifacts, not significant linguistic minorities, or are viewed that way by their central governments. Morocco and Algeria are entirely different cases. There the language has been thriving in reaction to the Arabization campaigns that followed independence (which, intended to reduce the influence of French, often ended up limiting Tamazight).

Enough. If I say much more The Moor Next Door or some other seriously knowledgeable Maghrebis are going to come correcting me again, as they often do when I venture into Maghrebi minority affairs, and I just wanted to point to an article. But, of course, people who actually know this subject are more than welcome to comment.

Latest Iraq Bomb Targeting Yazidis?

In the latest Iraqi suicide bombing, two suicide bombers have targeted a cafe in Sinjar. Sinjar is in the heart of Iraq's Yazidi country, and it is reasonable to assume that once again insurgents are targeting the Yazidi community. As the BBC account at the link notes, there were a number of attacks on Yazidis in 2007.

The Yazidis are an ancient and somewhat secretive religion with roots in antiquity; it is somewhat syncretistic with overlaps with Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. They are also a more or less secret faith, like the Druze and the ‘Alawites, which has led to some friction. The fact that the Peacock Angel (Malak Tawus or Tawus Malak) venerated by Yazidis is sometimes referred to by the Arabic term shaytan (although considered a beneficent figure by Yazidis) has led to Muslim accusations that they are "devil-worshippers," which Yazidis strongly deny. That historic charge is one of the reasons that Sunni insurgents have targeted Yazidis, though of course they have also targeted Shi‘a and Christians as well. Most live in Iraq, though there are communities in Syria, Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia), and a large diaspora community in Germany. Almost all Yazidis speak Kurdish, though there are said to be some Arabic-speaking Yazidi villages.