|left Though many foreign states ruled over the Assyrian heartland in the millennia following the empire's fall, there is no evidence of any large scale influx of immigrants that replaced the original population, which instead continued to make up a significant portion of the region's people until
Mongol and
Timurid massacres in the late 14th century. In pre-modern ecclesiastical Syriac-language (the type of Aramaic used in Christian Mesopotamian writings) sources, the typical self-designations used is suryāyā (as well as the shortened surayā), and sometimes ʾāthorāyā ("Assyrian") and ʾārāmāyā ("Aramaic" or "Aramean"). A reluctance of the overall Christian population to adopt ʾĀthorāyā as a self-designation probably derives from Assyria's portrayal in the Bible. "Assyrian" (Āthorāyā) also continuously survived as the designation for a Christian from Mosul (ancient Nineveh) and Mesopotamia in general. It is clear from the surviving sources that
ʾārāmāyā and
suryāyā were not distinct and mutually exclusive identities, but rather interchangeable terms used to refer to the same people; the Syriac author
Bardaisan (154–222) is for instance referred to in 4th-century Syriac translations of
Eusebius's
Church History as both
ārāmāyā and
suryāyā.
Suryāyā, which also occurs in the forms
suryāyē and
sūrōyē, though sometimes translated to "Syrian", is believed to derive from the ancient Akkadian term
assūrāyu ("Assyrian"), which was sometimes even in ancient times rendered in the shorter form
sūrāyu.
Luwian and
Aramaic texts from the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, such as the
Çineköy inscription, sometimes use the shortened "Syria" for the Assyrian Empire. The consensus in modern academia is thus that "Syria" is simply a shortened form of "Assyria". The modern distinction between "Assyrian" and "Syrian" is the result of ancient Greek historians and cartographers, who designated the
Levant as "
Syria" and Mesopotamia as "Assyria". By the time the terms are first attested in Greek texts (in the 4th century BC), the local denizens in both the Levant and Mesopotamia had already long used both terms interchangeably for the entire region, and continued to do so well into the later Christian period. Whether the Greeks began referring to Mesopotamia as "Assyria" because they equated the region with the Assyrian Empire, long fallen by the time the term is first attested in Greek, or because they named the region after the people who lived there, the , is not known. It is known however, the Seleucid Greeks conceived that the Aramaic-speakers of the east were descended from the ancient Assyrians, an idea which the Seleucids borrowed from Classical Greeks, who deemed Assyrians and Syrians to be identical. Although the term "Syria" began to be confined to the region west of the Euphrates, the conflation of "Assyrian" and "Syrian" persisted, which is evident among certain communities well into the late medieval period. Even
Josephus the Hebrew, who had a more unique stance on Syrian identity, perpetuated the traditions of Strabo and Herodotus which held Assyrians and Syrians to consisted of the same ethnos, mentioning the "Syrians" in Babylonia. This region was once under Assyria, and therefore Josephus followed the reasoning of
Strabo, who argued that its inhabitants could be called "Assyrians" or "Syrians" interchangeably. Syrians in
Roman Syria could also posit themselves as constituting the same ethnic group and heirs of an ancient legacy that their counterparts, the Assyrians in the Parthian and Sasanian kingdoms, claimed. Thus, those inhabiting Roman Syria could still envision the ancient Assyrians as their direct ethnic ancestors or at least the founders of their ethnos. Hence, from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, authors from Roman Syro-Mesopotamia, such as
Tatian and
Lucian, writing in Greek and Aramaic, extensively used the Assyrian past to define their communities in relation to the Greeks and Romans and bore their self-ascriptions as "Syrian" and "Assyrian" with significance. The (As)Syrians too came to see the Seleucids as the successors of Assyria, counting them in continuity with
Semiramis and
Sardanapalus, thereby Assyrianizing them. The Roman historian
Titus Livius particularly captures this process of Greek assimilation into the native populations when he laments that the Macedonians who settled within Mesopotamia have "degenerated into Syrians". Semiramis herself also gained popularity in the East, with women in Mesopotamia bearing her name. Although the Greek provides the basis for the modern tale, the earliest forms of the Saga likely derived from perishable Aramaic sources in the Levant and Mesopotamia, as the tale displays Akkadian influences. Although
suryāyā is thus clearly connected to "Assyrian," the more prevalent term for ancient Assyrians,
ʾāthorāyā is not the typical self-designation in pre-modern sources. Syriac sources did however prominently use
ʾāthorāyā in other contexts, particularly in relation to ancient Assyria. Ancient Assyria was typically referred to as
ʾāthor, which also survived as a designation for the region surrounding its last great capital, Nineveh. The reluctance of Medieval Syriac Christians to use
ʾāthorāyā as a self-designation could perhaps be explained by the Assyrians described in the Bible being prominent enemies of Israel; the term
ʾāthorāyā was sometimes employed in Syriac writings as a term for enemies of Christians. In this context, the term was sometimes applied to the Persians of the
Sasanian Empire; the 4th-century Syriac writer
Ephrem the Syrian for instance referred to the Sasanian Empire as "filthy
ʾāthor, mother of corruption". In a similar fashion, the term in this context was also sometimes applied to the later Muslim rulers. Though not used by the overall Syriac-speaking community in the Middle Ages, the term
ʾāthorāyā did survive as a self-identity throughout the period as it was the typically used designation for a Syriac Christian from
Mosul (ancient Nineveh) and its vicinity. While terms like Assyrian, Babylonian, and Aramean became associated with paganism and their use declined, positive references to Assyrian heritage of Syriac Christians can still be found, for instance, in the writings of
Abdisho of Nisibis who took a contrary view. The older association of Assyria with the Aramaic-speaking homeland persisted however, and some Syriac intellectuals continued to use "Assyria" and "Assyrians" to refer to their land and people. Despite this, most Syriac Christians primarily identified themselves by village or religion, as was customary in the Middle East. Although terms like Nineveh, Assyria, and Babylon would have been known through biblical texts, Syriac authors likely instead drew on inherited traditions and an awareness of these regions as their ancestral lands for their usage, favoring such antique designations over more contemporary terms. The use of terms such as
ʾāthor and
ʾāthorāyā points to, at the very least, a recognition of the ancient Assyrians, and to an awareness among Syriac Christians of northern Mesopotamia of their impact on the region, which they had once made the center of their empire. ; their legend prominently incorporates the ancient Assyrian king
Sennacherib Pre-modern Syriac-language sources at times identified positively with the ancient Assyrians, with the regional population keeping the memory of Assyria alive in the local Syriac histories of the Sasanian period, drawing connections between the ancient empire and themselves. Most prominently, ancient Assyrian kings and figures long appeared in local folklore and literary tradition and claims of descent from ancient Assyrian royalty were forwarded both for figures in folklore and by actual living high-ranking members of society in northern Mesopotamia. Figures like Sargon II,
Sennacherib (705–681 BC),
Esarhaddon (681–669 BC), Ashurbanipal and
Shamash-shum-ukin long figured in local folklore and literary tradition. In large part, tales from the Sasanian period and later times were invented narratives, based on ancient Assyrian history but applied to local and current landscapes. Medieval tales written in Syriac, such as that of
Behnam, Sarah, and the Forty Martyrs, for instance by and large characterize Sennacherib as an archetypical pagan king assassinated as part of a family feud, whose children convert to Christianity. The appearance of Sennacherib in this story is not strange, as many Syriac sources from late antiquity and the early medieval period refer to both him and the Assyrians, usually with the goal of portraying Syriac Christians as the heirs of an Assyrian past. The story is, however, unique in portraying the Assyrian king as the father of the two martyrs. Sennacherib also appears in the Sasanian period stories of
Mar Awgin, Mar Qardagh,
Mar Mattai, and Mar Behnam. Although these stories often confused his figure, they likely relied upon inherited local traditions as well as the Bible for their memory of this king. The 7th-century Assyrian
History of Mar Qardagh made the titular saint,
Mar Qardagh, out to be a descendant of the legendary Biblical Mesopotamian king
Nimrod and the historical Sennacherib, with his illustrious descent manifesting in Mar Qardagh's mastery of archery, hunting and
polo. A sanctuary constructed for Mar Qardagh during this time was built directly on top of the ruins of a Neo-Assyrian temple. The legendary figure Nimrod, otherwise traditionally viewed as simply Mesopotamian, is explicitly referred to as Assyrian in many of the Sasanian-period texts and is inserted into the line of Assyrian kings. Nimrod, as well as other legendary Mesopotamian (though explicitly Assyrian in the texts) rulers, such as
Belus and
Ninus, sometimes play significant roles in the writings. Certain Christian texts considered the Biblical figure
Balaam to have prophesied the
Star of Bethlehem; a local Assyrian version of this narrative appears in some Syriac-language writings from the Sasanian period, which allege that Balaam's prophecy was remembered only through being transmitted through the ancient Assyrian kings. In some stories, explicit claims of descent are made. According to the 6th-century
History of Karka, twelve of the noble families of Karka (ancient
Arrapha) were descendants of ancient Assyrian nobility who lived in the city during the time of Sargon II. The goal of this specific Syriac text was to demonstrate that the past continued to the present without break, and hence, it begins with the pious king Sargon, who built the city and enacted the fast of Ninevites, and ends with the Assyrian martyrs who made it a blessed field for Christianity. Later on, the bishop of Karka d-Bet Selok, who was influenced by this story, Sabrisho, implemented the Fast of the Ninevites in efforts to act like the righteous king Sargon, who was the first to listen to Jonah's message. With this, the story of Jonah acted as a way to link Syriac Christians with a local Assyrian past. Generally, Syriac Christians of northern Mesopotamia were fascinated with the story of Jonah, and some Syriac works implied that the Ninevites, their alleged Assyrian ancestors, were the first Gentile converts to Christianity, as Jonah prefigured Christ. As the biblical story and fast held particular importance within both the East and West Syriac traditions, only later spreading to other churches through patriarchs of Assyrian origin, it implies that Syriac Christians believed it referred to their own ancestors. Accordingly,
Ephrem, although he portrays the Assyrians negatively in other works, praises the inhabitants of Nineveh and the Assyrian king at his repentance, presenting the Assyrians as a penitent people in contrast to the Israelites who are cast as arrogant. To account for the appearance of Assyrian figures like Sennacherib and Esarhaddon in these Syriac texts, scholars have argued that oral, folkloric memories of the ancient Assyrians continued in regions such as
Arbela,
Nineveh, and
Assur. Thus, although the Assyrian state collapsed, the memories of such ancient kings loomed large in the Assyrian heartland, and ruins in the region were attributed to ancient Assyrians. In places such as
Nisibis, Arbela, and
Karka d-Bet Selokh, these ruins of old encouraged links between the Syriac Christians and the ancient Assyrians, causing distant antiquity and Christian martyrdom to form the basis for the developed histories of these areas. Local communities in northern Mesopotamia commemorated the memory of a great past they called
ʾāthor (Assyria), with Syriac Christians recognizing such ruins as the works of their ancestors, even if the exact historical details of the empire had been forgotten. Pagan rituals and rites of Assyrian origin also continued to be practiced deep into late antiquity, likely connecting their practitioners to a distant past through stories and ideas that were passed down. Syriac authors acknowledged this tradition and reinforced these ideas with validity by creating new Christian literary narratives in a landscape already rich with meaning. The Christianized inhabitants of Assyria and Babylonia during the 3rd and 4th centuries were largely the same pagan population of the Assyro-Babylonian empires and were the successors of this cultural background. In keeping with this background, they developed a personal approach to their Christian faith, retaining some knowledge from their past, particularly Assyrian traditions. So when Christianity spread to Adiabene, church leaders purposely suppressed some customs continuing from Assyria's imperial period, but at the same time, they integrated memories of Assyria into their emerging stories with the goal of forging a Christian identity compatible with local traditions. Although most Syriac authors were uninterested in nations without relevance to biblical accounts, local Syriac histories and hagiographies preserved garbled accounts of Assyrian city foundations and the ancestry of social elites, likely being derived from oral tradition rather than written sources. According to East Syrian synodical documents, Assyria was transformed into an archdiocese, and its bishop of Adiabene centered in Arbel, bore the title "Metropolitan of the Assyrians." The archbishopric of Adiabene, in this context should be understood in its Hellenic and Parthian boundaries, which extended to the
Khabur River, and not the region only between the
Greater and
Lesser Zab. Hence, by late antiquity, Syriac-speaking authors in Adiabene were positing that they, as Assyrians, were descended from the ancient Assyrians. A reason as to why the term "Syrian" as a self-identity is not explicitly found within these texts is possibly due to the Syrians being seen as meek people in the Sasanian regions, and thus it is unsurprising that these hagiographers sometimes avoided the term. Syriac Christians who lived within metropolitan regions of
Beth Garmai,
Adiabene, and Mosul of northern Mesopotamia often turned to the Assyrian past to narrate themselves as its heirs in their efforts to include themselves in the political spheres of the Sasanian empire and to present themselves as the natives of the land, descending from a distinctly Assyrian population, in contrast with their fellow Zoroastrians. Survival of references to ancient Assyria in late antique and medieval Syriac sources are common, with
Fergus Millar noting that Syriac Christians who lived in what was once ancient Assyria did not suffer a 'historical amnesia,' retaining awareness of their Assyrian origins and the history of their native region. Comparative to southern Mesopotamia, which felt no connection with Babylonian continuity, the Christians of northern Mesopotamia employed the terms Assyria and Assyrians to identify themselves and developed notions that they were connected to the Assyrians of antiquity through various tales. and the story of Mor Behnam serves to assign Syriac Christians origins more deeply into antiquity, connecting them with the ancient Assyrians. Syriac writers institutionalized narratives of Christianized Assyrians like those of Behnam, Qardagh, and Karka d'Bet-Selok into their collective memory of the Assyrian past to self-fashion themselves as a Christianized Assyrian people, placing the ancient Assyrians at the center of their region's communal history above even the Seleucids and Persians. These tales and their accompanying festivals were also read and practiced annually by both elites and commoners to celebrate and honor such martyrs. As a result, Christianized Assyrians and Assyria remained prominent in Syriac Christian communities well into the Medieval Ages and beyond, serving as a living link to their ancestry. When retold they fostered a sense of belonging for Syriac Christians to an ancient past, intertwined with Assyria, and served to strengthen the identity of their community by emphasizing their distinctiveness and forming a link to antiquity. Notably, the hagiographers of legends as those of Behnam and Qardagh felt the need to include their Assyrian ancestry, when their Zoroastrian background alone would have sufficed. These Assyrian martyrs were considered by the Syriac authors of their tales to be the true children of the ancient Mesopotamians. Qardagh's hagiography and his recognition as an Assyrian plays a key role in defining the identity of the
Church of the East, which, by at least the seventh century, openly professed its Assyrian heritage. The memory of Assyria and of its rulership was not only alive, but used by the Church of the East as an identity marker in a Zoroastrian milieu. The biblical king
Nimrod is also of great importance for the identity formation among both East and West Syrians. Several Syriac writers hold a positive view of him, and despite Nimrod being overwhelmingly considered a depraved figure in other Christian literature, the Syriac tradition holds a confident view of him. Some of those who purported this image included, but were not limited to,
Ephrem the Syrian,
Jacob Serugh, and
Narsai. Although some have suggested this positive view derives from a defunct, unwritten, Jewish tradition in Mesopotamia, this is hardly a viable theory. The development of this position on Nimrod appears to be an internal development within the Syriac and a form of local patriotism by Syriac Christians, and it is because Nimrod had become a
cultural hero and a foundational figure among the Christians of upper Mesopotamia that they supplanted the negative view of him for a positive one. The biblical foundations that Nimrod created in Genesis 10:10-12 were associated with the important urban centers of northern Mesopotamia, such as Nisibis and
Edessa, by these authors. His unusual role as a positive foundational figure contributed to a sense of a "Syrian" ethnicity and played a significant role in their supposed claims of descent. The position Nimrod played in creating a distinctive identity for Syriac Christians in Mesopotamia also finds appeals to him as a direct ancestral figure. The fact that the inhabitants of this geographical area considered themselves to be Nimrod's descendants is perhaps expressed most vividly in the
Acts of Mar Mari, whose author declares the Syriac Christians within the region as "The sons of the powerful Nimrod" (
bnay Nemrud gabārā). Further, Catholicos
Timothy I brought up Nimrod in one of his letters to claim him as the ancestor of the Syriac Christians and, in doing so, positioned himself as Nimrod's heir. Syriac Christians also bore the name of Nimrod himself. Due being the first earthly ruler, Nimrod was frequently identified with the mythical Assyrian king
Ninus by
Jacob of Edessa and many other Syriac writers. Likewise, Ephrem also declares the ancient Assyrians to be "the race of Nimrod." Ephrem in particular seems to stress the importance of his region and its connection with Nimrod, identifying him with the northern Mesopotamian territories and ascribing his biblical foundations to known cities in the region. This is perhaps one of the signs of an ethnic community, being geography and a link to a territory, but at least, his positive view of Nimrod, who reigned in his own land, is conspicuous. In general, the foundation of cities by various civic developers such as Nimrod, Belus, Semiramis, and Belochus all appear within the Syriac literature. The northern Mesopotamian Christian centers being founded by various Assyrian and Babylonian figures was interwoven into the writing of multiple Syriac writers potentially in efforts to boost their national identity, ascertaining to a form of nationalism, as these were some of the most important sites for Syriac Christianity. Syriac authors endowed Nimrod with a positive image, and the cities he established were replaced by cities familiar to them in northern and southern Mesopotamia. He was recast from a biblical figure into a founding hero, coming to embody a memory of the local Mesopotamian past for Syriac Christians. Among West Syrians, the results of the Leiden project have argued that the Syriac Orthodox have been continuously reconstructing their past since their inception as a Christian community in hopes of legitimizing their existence as a distinct group. Before 451 AD, the
Syriac Orthodox did not have the 6 features of an ethnic community as defined by Hutchinson and Smith. Syriac-speaking
Miaphysites could not claim a myth of common ancestry or even features of a culture and had no proper name to express their community. But even after the Syriac Church became independent, from 451 to the middle of the seventh century, Syriac writers were primarily concerned with validating the status of Syriac Christianity. Only later on during contacts with Islam did the Syriac Christians start to question and define what their identity really was, based on cultural traditions and sources of their time. Language, which was one of the strongest features of communal identity, became very important, but only after some time. A reason why there is a great attachment to Aramaic is that it was considered by Syriac writers to be the divine language, used by Jesus on Earth. As soon as Syriac became a symbol of religious recognition that was becoming an ethnic community, it allowed Syriac Christians to turn to an ancient past in hopes of defining themselves. They reasoned that the Assyrians and Babylonians spoke Syriac, which was Aramaic, and hence they were a part of the Syrian people. This is a process of social identity construction, and one should not think of ancient fault lines here. Therefore, some Syrians, including those in the Syriac Orthodox tradition, eventually ethnicized their confessional identity and linked themselves to the ancient ethnonym "Assyrian" in their historiographical traditions, with certain scholars having demonstrated that the medieval Syriac Orthodox patriarchate portrayed the ancient Assyrians as the ancestors of the Christians of northern Mesopotamia. Severus invoked this continuity in efforts to disprove claims of Greek superiority.
Jacob of Edessa, Severus's disciple, also stressed that the Assyrian kings, or synonymously, Chaldean kings, were the ancestors of the Syrians and that they belonged to "our tongue." Jacob also aimed to prove, according to the Greek books, that "empires arose from our people more powerful than all the empires of their times." Dionysius also recognized that the Syrians east of the
Euphrates were termed such in a metaphorical way, and that they held the kings of Assyria, Babylon and Edessa, also believing these Syrians were Mesopotamians, distinct from those in Syria proper which was the west of the Euphrates and held the Aramean kingdoms. His passage was directed at those who claimed the Syrians had no kings. The sense of a Syrian identity dating back to antiquity based on language is notably expressed by
Michael, who counted 194 kings for the Syrians, including the Assyrians and Babylonians within this list. However, this does not mean that Michael's views of the Syriac Orthodox was not ethnic. In fact, language is used to prove common descent. Michael recognized that both the Arameans and Assyrians were called Syrians and that they were both the forebearers of the Syriac tradition, Previous writers of Syriac were already aware of the interchangeability of the terms "Aramean," "Syrian," and "Assyrian," and even of "Assyria" with "Aram." However, the equation of the three terms was precisely the point that Michael Rabo strenuously argued for in his appendix against the Greeks. He harmonized existing arguments about the Syrians and succeeded in identifying them with Aramean and Assyrian history. Michael also offers a passage where he assimilates the terms "Assyrian" and "Syrian" with each other while enumerating nations which developed a writing system. This passage is believed to derive from an earlier lost work of an anonymous Syriac writer during the reign of
Abd al-Malik, who copied
Hippolytus's list of literate peoples and equated the Syrians with the Assyrians in his list of the sons of Shem, an idea that later influenced eight other East and West Syriac authors in their versions. Within the Syriac tradition, the Assyrians of Hippolytus's list are replaced by their equivalent, the Syrians. The
Chronicle of 1234 further shares many similarities with Michael's list, the most significant being is that both Syriac witnesses equate the Assyrians to the Syrians while mentioning those people who are literate in the world. A sense of continuity between the Aramaic and Semitic-speakers of the ancient Near East and those of the Late Antique and Medieval Near East would also continue after Michael, such as in
Bar Hebraeus's Chronicle. His source, Michael, had identified both the Assyrians and Arameans as the ancestors of the Syrians, grouping them under the term "Chaldean." Bar Hebraeus removed the difficulties in the identification of the old Mesopotamians and uses the term "ancient Syrians," which included ancient speakers of Aramaic from Syria, Assyria, and Babylon. He explicitly identifies the Chaldean kings with these ancient Syrians, terming them such. Bar Hebraeus connected the Syriac Orthodox to the Ancient Near Eastern Empires using neutral terms like "ancient Syrians" and "our Syrians" to avoid the debate about the "true Syrians" discussed by Michael. Patriarch Philoxenus I Nemrud and his cousin, the priest Nebuchadnezzar, had names that harkened back to the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian kings. These choices were certainly inspired by Michael's historical vision, which held the ancient Mesopotamians to be Syrians. The name of king
Sargon is also attested in Syriac Christians from the 7th century onwards, appearing in the personal names of a priest named Sargon and another, Autel, son of Sargon. The father of
John of Damascus,
Sarjun Ibn Mansur, was also titled after the ancient king. Likewise with the names Nemrud and Nebuchadnezzar, these were likely attempts to link themselves with a pre-Christian Assyrian past. According to the Syriac interpretation of ancient history, centered on the belief that powerful "Syrian" kingdoms existed on both sides of the Euphrates and that the Syriac Orthodox had their own sovereign kings, which aimed to defend the Syriacs by emphasizing the importance of the kingdoms that arose from them, as presented by Jacob, Dionysius, and Michael, the Seleucids were likewise regarded as local Syrian kings in the ancient sense of the word. Since Alexander conquered Persia, which had previously conquered the Mesopotamian kingdoms that these authors referred to as "Syrian" kingdoms, the Seleucids were viewed as restorers of local Syrian royalty. Therefore, they were regarded as "Syrians" by Syriac authors who aimed to demonstrate their historical heritage. Alexander, although Greek, was considered native. This explains the development of a hybrid Syrian identity based on the usage of Aramaic but marked by Greek culture. Claims of an autonomous past for Syrians, like those made by Dionysius Telmahroyo, seem to have been accepted by Arab authors, particularly
Masudi, who mentions that the kings of Nineveh and Mosul were Syrians, a point which Michael would have agreed on. They had now constituted a nation, analogous to the Romans, Arabs, and Persians in his view. Both the Assyrian and Aramean pasts furnished Syriac Christians with ancestral narratives that could define them as linguistically, territorially, or theologically legible to more powerful audiences. The Aramean past offered a spatial orientation to the west in
Syria, while the Assyrian past offered a link to
Mesopotamia eastward. Thus, Syriac-speaking authors, both Syriac Orthodox and from the Church of the East, considered themselves not the stock of conquered peoples but of empire builders and great victors. This was a process that gradually crystallized based on available sources of their time, but by at least the 12th century, the Syriac Orthodox were aware of having a core composed of the cultural traditions of the Assyrians and Arameans. Michael was the first writer to acknowledge community on a larger scale, counting East Syrians as part of his people. Theologically, he distinguished his community from the East Syrians, but in times of hardship, he grouped West and East Syrians all under the ethnic term "Syrian." East Syrian pre-Christian history and early Christian history were treated as the history of his own community by Michael, and he reflects a conscious group identity with East Syrians based on common name, ancestry, memories, language, regional culture, and to an extent, also a common homeland and solidarity between the two groups. Michael's predecessors also acknowledged linguistic unity and at times shared cultural elements between both Syrian groups, but they were less pronounced ideas compared to Michael. This idea of unity with East Syrians was also expressed by Dionysius of Tel Mahre, although to a lesser extent, who became aware of a homeland and started to look for a common name. Dionysius represents the final phase of a gradual development to a common community. Various Syriac sources also indicate that East and West Syrians lived in the same regions and cities, in fact, there was also an increase in contact and shared use between the two groups literary traditions. Eliya of Nisibis for example, used West Syrian sources, and this exchange of knowledge can be seen in various genres of Syriac literature. Bar Ebroyo, too, considered East Syrians to be of the same people as his community. He clearly indicated that anyone who speaks or spoke Aramaic belonged to his community, with his homeland being Mesopotamia, including the region east of the
Tigris. In this way, Bar Ebroyo tactically included East Syrians in his general "Syrian" terminology and even dedicated a section in his works to mentioning the patriarchs of the Church of the East. == Modern identity and nationalism ==