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Zakay Joseph, Urfa – Urhoy – Edessa, and the Aramaean Intellectuals

[ Posted On: 2007-05-17 ]

The new website www.urhoy.info is a genuine hub of Aramaean History, Culture and Initiation; it is all due to the remarkable labour of the young Aramaean intellectual Zakay Joseph, who deployed a great part of effort to prepare a website specialized on the great Aramaean city Urhoy that in the Late Antiquity was known as Edessa of Osrhoene to Greeks and Romans.

Zakoyo Josef belongs to the Turkey's oldest population, the illustrious Aramaeans who still live in the Southeastern provinces of the EU candidate state, namely the Northern Mesopotamian plain. Zakay Joseph lives in Germany, and dedicates part of his intellectual commitment to the diffusion of the Aramaic language and to the preservation of the Aramaean Culture allover the world. Part of his endavours has come to surface with the establishment of the www.urhoy.info website that promises insightful understanding and valuable documentation, textual or photographical, to every interested and inquisitive visitor.

Thanks to this new website, any Europeans and Americans, as well as Christians from allover the world, will have a firsthand initiation into the area and the monuments of the first Christian kingdom in the world, that of Osrhoene. Zakay Joseph and all the Aramaeans of the Middle East, who still speak Aramaic, converse in the language that was native to Jesus. This language was used in the famous recent movie of Mel Gibson, the Passion of the Christ.

If political choices of the colonial times have been the reason of Aramaeans' decimation and of Europeans' ignorance about Aramaic and the Arameans, religious differences that go back to Early Christianity are the reason Western Christians have been totally disconnected from their Eastern coreligionists.

With the overwhelming diffusion of the Internet, France will face a real deadlock in its vicious and disastrous plan of arabizing the Middle East – an idiotic plan conceived for political and economic supremacy that backfired and gave birth to Arabo-Islamic Terror.

With the overwhelming diffusion of the Internet, Vatican will face great difficulty in its effort to divide the Aramaeans into small groups of national, theological and political confusion. Sooner or later, Aramaeans who, misled by Catholic missionaries, think today that they are not Aramaeans, but 'Assyrians', 'Chaldaeans' or 'Babylonians' will soon realize that they have nothing in common with Tiglathpileser or Merodach Baladan.

The Vision of modern Aramaean intelligentsia

1. Re-Aramaization of the Middle East: the only way to Peace

In this regard, the role of the modern Aramaean intelligentsia is seminal. They have to convince the Christians of the rest of the world that it helps in nothing, invading Iraq and not supporting the local Aramaeans, who have long been duped by the French colonial missionaries and, neglecting their Aramaean identity, have become victims of the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds. Any Western concern about the Middle East can be successfully spearheaded only through a Western – Aramaean cooperation in view of a Greater – Aramaean – Middle East.

2. Aramaean Language in Europe: monodrome to Christian Authenticity

The modern Aramaean intellectuals have to convince the Europeans that they cannot have a true European Christian culture without acquaintance with, and respect for, the Aramaic language and the Aramaean culture and history. Aramaic must be taught throughout European Secondary Education on an equal footing with Latin and Ancient Greek. Western Christianity cannot longer be devoid of the language spoken and the Culture shared by Jesus.

3. Aramaic-State Language in Turkey: testimony to Turkey's European nature

The modern Aramaean intellectuals can help Turkey rediscover part of its cultural and historical heritage; the modern conscious Aramaeans are the best interlocutors for the Turkish diplomats and statesmen examining Turkey's potential role in the forthcoming reshaping of the Middle East. By supporting Aramaic and promoting it as National Language of Turkey, the EU candidate state will prove to the European administrators that, as proper and adequate secular state, Turkey protects religious and ethnic minorities, closing therefore the door to suggestions for future debate on the Armenian issue.

4. Aramaeans named 'Assyrians' or 'Chaldaeans': exposed to decimation

The modern Aramaean intellectuals have to convince the demented Aramaean ultranationalists, who want to be called and identified as 'Assyrians' and/or 'Chaldaeans', that these two false national names can only contribute to further decimation of the Aramaeans, speeding therefore the Middle Eastern escalation up to an apocalyptic inferno. Either in Iraq or in Iran, Aramaeans rejecting their proper national name will find themselves as a minority among the Kurds, who can also pretend descent from the Ancient Assyrians. As soon as a national home to Iraqi and Iranian Kurds will be arranged, the long oppressed Sunni Kurds – whose ancestors are the Zikurtu of the Ancient Assyrian texts (a Zagros mountains population), also known as Asagartiya in Old Persian inscriptions, Kardouhoi in Ancient Greek historiography, and Cyrtii in Latin literature – will express a ferocious tendency of domination strangling minorities, notably the Aramaeans, the Yezidis, and the Shia Kurds. All this will be worded in terms of a fake common ('Assyrian') origin, and a severe attempt of Kurdification will be undertaken at all levels: religious, linguistic, cultural. In the forthcoming events, greater is the distance Arameans take from the Kurds, safer their existence will be, and more easily their long awaited independence will be achieved.

Why www.urhoy.info?

The city of Urhoy was for more than a millennium the Cultural Capital of the Aramaean nations, the main point of reference. As capital of Osrhoene, it was the first Christian megalopolis in the world. Edessa of Osrhoene was for more than 14 centuries a matter of great concern and attraction for pre-Christian and Christian Europeans, Romans, and Greeks. Urfa relates to Abraham's passage from Mesopotamia to Canaan, reunifying therefore the 'three monotheistic religions'.

A Great Vision: the first Aramaic University in the World

Urfa – Edessa – Urhoy is the correct place fro the establishment of the first Aramaic University in the World, an academic institution for all the Aramaeans of the Middle East to study all subjects in Aramaic. Academic and political authorities in Turkey should initiate first this project, testifying to their multicultural identity and ideological credentials. An act like this would stimulate Turkey's EU candidacy, depriving all opponents from any substantial argument. This would be the strongest proof that Chirac's ridiculous admonitions for a 'cultural revolution' (supposedly needed in Turkey prior to that country's adhesion to the EU) are baseless and not credible.

Panorama of www.urhoy.info

Let Zakay Joseph now guide us in his Urhoy – The Blessed City, as the subtitle suggests on the front page. A majestic Syriac Aramaic inscription figures on the main part of the front page, whereas the various sections are listed on the left side of the page.

Click on Aramaeans! You have a rich page with a historical map of the Aram Nahrain – the real name of the Aramaean homeland that coincides with the legendary Mesopotamia, the plain of the Twin Rivers. Beyond the definition and the biblical excerpts, Zakay Joseph deployed a great part of effort to collect numerous, Aramaic, Greek and Latin references to the Aramaeans of the Late Antiquity and the Middle / Islamic Ages. To the benefit of the Western reader, Zakay Joseph publishes excerpts from various Syriac texts of colossi of Aramaic Literature, Philosophy and Theology, namely James of Sarug, Bar Salibi, and Dionysius of Tell Mahre, and the like, who are all at the level of St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Mikhail Psellos and Gregory Palamas. At the bottom of the page, the 'Aramaic Heritage of the Assyrian Church' helps any unspecialized reader understand the purely Aramaean character of the so-called 'Assyrians'.

Here, we should state that it is certainly an oversight that Zakay Joseph disregards the Ancient Assyrian and Babylonian, and the Old Persian sources where the Aramaeans have extensively been mentioned; these sources offer the ultimate corroboration of

a) the difference between the Assyrians/Babylonians and the Aramaeans during the Antiquity,

b) the distinction between the Ancient Assyrians and the bogus-Assyrians of our times (who are all Aramaeans disoriented due to the perverted teachings of missionaries and the colonial interference of the French), and

c) the Aramaean identity of the Ancient Chaldaeans, among whom the Babylonians have been assimilated (which is the most convincing argument about the uselessness of the term 'Chaldaean' as national name by modern Aramaeans; it is as if modern Greeks preferred to call themselves Ionians or Dorians)

Move on, and click on Urhoy, now! Here you have another map that is focused on the historical center of Osrhoene, a part of the Upper Mesopotamia (today SE Turkey and E Syria) stretched between Gaziantep and Diyarbakir. This page features a concise text about the history of Urhoy, and ends with the wonderful picture of the two columns with Corinthian capitals that still delineate the horizon over Urfa's acropolis. Popular tradition attributes them to the ominous Biblical Nimrud, who has been identified with the mythical Assyrian – Babylonian hero Gilgamesh. The same page offers you the chance to be at one click distance from "The Chronicle of Urhoy", a valuable medieval source of Aramaean and Middle Eastern History that would make the average Europeans revise their erroneous and misleading understanding of the Middle East, if properly presented in the European Secondary Education manuals, published in modern translations, and offered in explanatory articles throughout the mass media.

The richest part of the website is to be found in 'Articles'. This section contains original contributions and already published material. As far as the latter is concerned, many authors' articles on Aramaean related issues have been collected from various Internet sources. Actually, some of them were first published in www.buzzle.com.

The articles cover the entire spectrum of the Aramaean World centered around Urhoy. Among the rich material offered, we would like to select for reference Prof. Sidney Griffith's excellent analysis of 'Christianity in Edessa and the Syriac Speaking World', Alexander Mirkovic's focus on 'Edessa – Parthian Period', Prof. Dr. Hoelger Preissler's insightful on 'Altsyrische heidnische Namen in der frueher Syrischer Literatur', Prof. Amir Harrak's essay on 'Pagan Traces in Syriac Christian Onomastica', and my article on 'Crassus defeated at Carrhae' (later republished in www.buzzle.com: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-18-2005-81740.asp). All articles are in Pdf files, and they are expected to increase without limit.

The most beautiful section of the website is to be discovered after a click on 'Pictures'. The Urhoy Album waits you to introduce you to monuments, manuscripts, and pictures. If you have not seen the Blessed Lake and the pool (Balikli Gol in Turkish, Callirhoe in Ancient Greek) surrounded by the Halilurrahman Medresesi (Islamic religious school) and Rizvaniye Camii (mosque), which are Urfa's deposit mark, you cannot imagine what peace of mind means! Therefore, I suggest you to immediately follow the link: http://www.urhoy.info/UrhoyAlbum/index3.html.

A last section of the website is dedicated to related links for further research and deeper investigation.

Thanks to this much promising website, Zakay Joseph (zjoseph@urhoy.info) proves that the modern Aramaean intellectuals are fully committed to the diffusion of Aramaean Heritage worldwide, and ready to face the great challenges of our times.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 49, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

| View Profile & All Articles By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis |

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