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Theater, Language and Inter-Ethnic Exchange: Assyrian Performance before World War I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eden Naby
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Abstract

The Assyrian “Camelot” in Iran, centered in northwest Iran around the towns of Urmia and Salamas, began with a surprise championship of their community by American missionaries and ended with ethnic cleansing between 1914 and 1918. During the eighty odd years of intellectual and material progress made in this community, Assyrians not only learned a multiplicity of European languages within a generation, but adopted western genre of entertainment on a broad scale. Among these were theater performances. Assyrian plays drew on many sources including French and Azerbaijani plots. But plays also became a means of retrieving their own historical past as it was being revived in Europe in the late nineteenth century under the influence of archeology and related classical sources on Mesopotamian and Iranian ancient history. In addition, Assyrians drew on another source of inspiration for theatrical performance, a source buried deep within their own medieval culture. To what extent does church theater performance soften attitudes toward theater in an environment where American-inspired religiosity frowned on frivolities like stage entertainment? To what extent does the Assyrian experience mirror the production of theater in Qajar culture in general? How, if at all, has the Assyrian cultural flowering, however brief, affected the encouragement of diverse entertainment in northwest Iran?

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 4: Entertainment in Qajar Persia , September 2007 , pp. 501 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2007

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References

1 The language Assyrians speak falls within the Aramaic subset of Semitic languages. Syriac falls within Aramaic but is now an extinct liturgical language. Syriac is similar in position to Latin within the Roman Catholic Church prior to Vatican II (1962) when that church switched to vernacular languages for church services. Assyrian neo-Aramaic is the widest Aramaic written and spoken vernacular in the world. Iran was its intellectual center until 1918. This language will be referred to as Aramaic in the rest of this article although the term Assyrian for the language has been used in a loose sense within the community without distinguishing Aramaic from ancient Akkadian, the other language of the Assyrian Empire.

2 For a detailed examination of how a leading Assyrian periodical during the early years of the Islamic Revolutionary period was forced to close, see Naby, , “Ishtar: Documenting the Crisis in the Assyrian Iranian Community,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 10 no. 4 (December 2006): 92–102Google Scholar.

3 Zahrira d-bahra (Rays of Light) appeared as a ten to twelve page monthly periodical beginning in 1849. Of its sixty-nine years of publication, only about half are available due to the utter destruction of all Assyrian cultural institutions including schools, churches, presses, and of private homes. Rudolf Macuch carries a summary of the years between 1897 and 1918. Some of the earlier years are available, 1850s, 1890s (in Harvard College Library) for example. See Geschichte der spat-und neusyrichen Literatur (Berlin, 1976), 138–201.

4 Yohannan, the first Assyrian, possibly the first Iranian, to hold a university post in the United States, taught at Columbia University from where he had earned his Ph.D. with A.V. Jackson, the specialist on ancient Iran. His archives are held at Low Library, Columbia University.

5 Tash'ita d-siprayuta atoreta (Assyrian Cultural History) (Tehran, Honeyn, 1963).

6 This is how one of the oldest photographs to be found of a nineteenth-century Assyrian, Qasha (Rev.) Benyamin of Golphashan, reentered the family collection when in 1927 his great niece (Sophiya) bought it from a street vendor selling plates and such, also looted. Notes from Alphonse Odishoo to the author, a relative now living in Modesto, CA who supplied the picture for the exhibit at the Boston Public Library, Immigration and Adjustment: Assyrian Family Records (2005).

7 Armenians and Assyrians in Iran, although both the same Christians for outsiders, from within the communities belonging to opposing and non-communion sects. Armenians and Assyrians could not intermarry unless both had left the traditional eastern churches for Catholicism or Protestantism. The same pattern may be discerned in pre-Islamic Revolution Iran when marriage between a Christian and a Muslim or Jew often led to both parties converting to Baha'ism.

8 The comparison of the themes and narrative of Assyrian church drama with the Church of the East versions of the story of Jesus preserved in China but no longer used in the Middle East has not been made to date. The dramas are preserved in fragments.

9 See article by Stephen, SJ, “Syriac Dialogue Plays Rediscovered,” Assyrian Star LVII: 4, (2005): 13–16Google Scholar.

10 Performances of this traditional drama dance by a Russian Assyrian troupe from St Petesburgh toured in the Assyrian diaspora communities in California. Assyrian Star LVII: 4 (2005): 18. Petersburgh toured the U.S. Assyrian communities in 1995. Assyrian Star, LVII: 4 (2005): 21.

11 Nicholas al-Jeloo paper at the Middle East Studies Association (Boston, 2006).

12 For a study of British mission work among Assyrians in Iran and in Ottoman, Turkey see Coakley, J.F., The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission, (Oxford, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Macuch points to the work of Mirza Benyamin Kaldani (1879–1954) who translated a Moliere play, L'Etourdi (The Blunderer) and published it in 1948 in Tehran.

14 Arian Ishaya, “From Contributions to Diaspora: Assyrians in the History of Urmia, Iran,” Journal of Assyrians Academic Studies XVI: 1 (2002) and online at www.Nineveh.com/ Assyrians.

15 The Tiflis theater troupe, Shotaputa Teatroneta d'Atoraye b'Tiflis, included women on stage and off. See Osipov, Sergey, “The Tiflis Theater Talent,” Assyrian Star LVII: 4, (2005) 27–28Google Scholar. Rabi Enviya Bet Givargiz (1900–1991), who was born in an Urmia satellite village (Sopurqan), wrote and directed several plays including Molla Nasriddin and Yokhannan that were performed in Krasnodar's Novaya Urmia. Assyrian Star LVII: 4, (2005): 17–18.

16 A play in Worcester, MA (U.S.A.), Queen Shamiram, was performed only in Armenian during the 1920s when most Assyrian refugees had come from areas of Turkey where they had lost their own language. Assyrian Star, LVII: 4 (2005): 31.

17 Osipov, Sergey, “The Tiflis Theater Talent,” Assyrian Star LVII: 4 (2005): 35Google Scholar.

18 Tehran, 1378/1999.

19 Floor, Willem, The History of Theater in Iran (Washington, DC, 2005)Google Scholar.

20 Ishaya, “From Contributions to Diaspora,” 34.

21 Ishaya, “From Contributions to Diaspora,” 24.

22 At least one performance in Chicago during the 1930s by included only women, some playing patriarchal Biblical roles. Assyrian Star, LVII: 4 (2005), 4.