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Over the last few years, amongst the
Aramaic-speaking minorities of the Near East and the countries
of Diaspora, an impressive movement of intellectual rebirth
has been making its presence felt. In Eastern Neo-Aramaic or
Neo-Syriac (Sureth)-the mother tongue of both Christians and
Jews of the region extending from the basin of the Botan-Su, a
tributary of the Tigris in Turkish Mesopotamia, down to the
western bank of Lake Urmia in Iran- the literary activity of
the "Assyrians" and the "Chaldeans" of Iran and of American
Diaspora deserves note. However, it is above all in Iraq where
the Neo-Aramaic cultural reawakening has begun to assume
microscopic dimensions.
What is disheartening is the fact that
only an insignificant minority can still read and write the
so-called Nestorian alphabet. However, Neo-Aramaic, as a
spoken language, continues to maintain a noteworthy vitality,
especially among the Assyrians.
Still in this regard, it must be observed
that the intense immigration of the Aramaic-speaking
population of the Persian Azerbaijan, after the tragic events
of World War I extensively influenced the dialects spoken by
the Kurdistan Assyrians who in turn became the victims of
drastic displacement. Their descendants, in particular those
living in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, and Basrah, have generally
opted for a dialect similar to that of Urmia except for the
absence of its typical "Vocal Harmony" or "Synharmonism" .
Conversely, the Assyrians of Urmia have willingly adopted the
picturesque folklore of the Assyrians of Kurdistan in the form
of sane variegated festive costumes, and particular dance
steps, not unlike those used by the Kurds.
Unfortunately, the disappearance of the
dialects of Kurdistan Assyrians is tied up closely with the
disappearance of the more authentic contents of Nestorian
folklore, like the love songs, the wedding hymns, and the war
songs that since time immemorial have been handed down from
one generation to the next among the mountain Christians. It
is a well-known fact that only Kurdistan Nestorian population
groups and above all those who enjoyed equal status with the
Moslem Kurds- i.e., the ashiret or warlike tribes originally
of the Turkish vilayet of Hakkari- have known how to keep
their own fo1k1.ore intact from Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish or
Persian influences.
This heritage, on the way to extinction,
merits being gathered and studied, but presently it is rather
difficult to find reliable informants. The younger generation
treats it all with indifference, as if it were old-fashioned,
while among the old people, only a few know how to explain the
sense of an old song or how to give the location of this or
that place-name in an ancestral territory that no one has had
access or reason to revisit since World War I.
Over thirty years ago, the well-known
French [Kurdologist], Thomas Bois, voiced the impression that
no one among the Assyrians knew how to sing a love song in his
mother tongue any more. On looking further back into the past,
we can see that research conditions were even less favorable
than at the present time. The insecure nature of communication
routes, along with the suspicious nature of the Nestorians,
made the task of gathering their oral traditions quite a risky
undertaking. The few Westerners who ventured into their
inaccessible mountain fastnesses either visited them
hurriedly, or, as was the case with some American and English
missionaries, were moved to do so almost always because of
religious motives.
The fact remains that whatever meager
evidence of popular Assyrian poetry that we have, has never
been gathered on the spot in genuine Nestorians surroundings,
but rather in marginal areas or even in far distant
localities.
In 1869, in Damascus, the Semitist and
Kurdologist Albert Socin chanced to meet a poverty-stricken
Nestorian basket-weaver, a certain Isho by name, son of Dustu
from the village of Talana, one of the villages of the Ge1u
tribe. Like most of his fellow tribesmen who lived in the
poorest and highest territory of the inaccessible mountain
Massif that extends form the high basin of the Great lab down
to the borders of Iran, the basket-weaver had left his village
after 13th September, the Feast of the Cross, and would not
return there until the beginning of the following May, after
the springtime thaw, and after having wandered all over the
Near east. Iso, who other than the Neo-Aramaic dialect of Gelu
knew only Kurdish, very willingly dictated two stories to
Socin, as well as 16 extremely brief poetic pieces each,
composed of a verse made up of three septenary monorhymes.
This kind of verse form was already
known: it had already been noted in learned Neo-Aramaic poetry
about 1600. New, instead, seemed the "literary" form of these
tiny compositions with crystal-clear images of mountain life,
like rapid sketches, that relayed an amorous message, or
described an action born of melancholy, pride, passion,
peevishness or good-willed derision.
The following year, 1870, Albert Socin
visited the Chaldean villages of the plain land at the foot of
the mountains to the Northwest of Mosul: Telkef, Alqosh, Dehok
and Qasafirr. Here, his curiosity still earnest due to his
Damascus encounter, the German orient list expressly asked if
re could hear sane popular poetry recited. In the mar Yaqo
convent of the French Dominican fathers at Qasafirr, Socin's
crave was quenched to his great surprise by the blind
rhapsodist who had just finished dictating to him a
penitential sermon by the poet Toma Singari. The blind cantor,
believing him to be a priest, held as roost unbecoming Socin's
interest in the kind of poetry best regarded as somewhat
immoderate. Socin, incidentally, was never to know that the
old cantor was no other than Dawid Kora of Nuhadra (who died
at Mosul in 1889), of whom numerous religious hymns and
enchanting verse fables have been published. "Blind David" was
the most famous Neo-Aramaic poet of his day.
Socin's collection of popular poetry was
a rather full one, and was published under the title of
Fellihilieder, "Songs of the Fellihi", that is, of Christian
villagers of the plainland, as the Moslems of the nearby city
of Mosul call them. How could these songs be defined? Socin
liked to call them Schnadahupfl, as if they had something in
common with the songs Bavarian peasants sang to accompany the
rhythms of group dancers. However, the German scholar did not
lose sight of the fact that these verses had not originated on
the plainland. Disguised by the local dialect, in fact, too
many expressions and words of Kurdish derivation appeared, far
more familiar to Nestorian mountain folk than to Cl1aldean
villagers who, unlike the Assyrians, fell under the influence
of Arabic. Fran this re deduced that they really reflected the
folklore of the people of the highlands, in particular the
Assyrians of high Kurdistan, "die das Hochgebirge bewohnenden
Aramaer" , which were reminiscent of the recitations by the
basket-weaver of Gelu, whom he had net in Damascus the year
before. Furtherroore, this tradition must have been extremely
old, for at the time of his visit it had already lost much of
its original meaning, both among the Nestorians of Persia and
Jacobites of Tur ' Abdin, in Turkish high Mesopotamia.
A journey, which I made at Eastertime,
1972, through the province (qada') of 'Amadiya about fifty
kilometers northeast of Dehok, allowed me the opportunity of
establishing that oo1y a small part of the compositions
collected by Socin more than a century ago were, in fact,
destined for the dance. In the Nestorian village of Bebede, a
few kilometers west of 'Amadiya, I happened to be invited to a
wedding reception (xlula), at which I was able to listen to
the execution of love songs, called zmiryata-d rawe, which
corresponded exactly to those collected by Socin.
They belonged to a song form we can
describe as amoebaean. While on the threshing floor, the young
men and the girls, linked hand in large dance circles,
followed the obsessive rhythm of a drum "dahula" and a fife "zurna"
, the older guests, gathered together in the diwanxana around
the wedding couple, formed two groups and, in turns, started
to sing a verselet with a strangely archaic tune. The melodic
beat was repeated three times and embraced each line as well
as the first accented word of the following line, which means
that each word was pronounced twice. It had a modal tune,
achieved by means of using chromatics at small intervals,
executed with a surprising speed. You had the impression that
the width between the highest note and the lowest never
exceeded the interval our major sixth would make, even if the
most important part of this tune appeared to be limited within
the span of a major fourth.
Once the stornello was finished, those
present showed their appreciation as to the choice of the
theme and its execution by singing out a series of stressed (o)’s
that finished up on a series of high and extremely sharp (iii)’s.
At this point, the second group of singers started the
stornello that they considered as being more appropriate to go
with the preceding one, and in the end, waited for the
applause of the bystanders. This give-and-take continued for
hours, with short intervals here and there for something to
eat, and to drink a sort of local grappa (eau-de-vie).
In effect, in Socin's collection the
zmiryata-d rawe constitute the major type document. However,
besides these stornelli, one can find extracts of songs of a
different nature and of wider validity: fragments of a warlike
song about the brave 'Awdiso, and portions of qassityata,
verse tales, which are singable in co-ordination with dancing.
Upon my return to Baghdad, I looked about
for someone who could recite me some songs like the ones I had
heard at Bebede. After various fruitless attempts amongst
Assyrian city-dwellers -but, unfortunately, they had been
city-dwellers for too long - I turned to those of more recent
arrival from the district of Barwari Bala, a little more to
the North of 'Amadiya. It was in this way that I realized that
the district (nahiya) of Barwari Bala and part of the
neighboring districts represents the last strip of Kurdistan
territory still populated by autochthonous Nestorians. These
are the sons and grandsons of those who, abandoned the area at
the end of 1914, and returned by 1920.
I finally chose as my informant one of
the few survivors of the tragic exodus of 1914: Gewargis, son
of Bukko, son of Muse. Born about 1897 at 'Ehnune/Kani Masi
("the Spring of Fish"), the main village in the Barwari Bala
district, Gewargis had lived there with various interruptions
until a little after the outbreak of Kurdish-Arab hostilities
on 11 November 1961.
This austere and strong, venerable old
man, dictated to me only these zmiryata-d rawe that he held
becoming for a man of his age and reputation. Alas, the number
we know of such rawe is terribly limited.
Notes:
1. Those who would like to expand their
reading on this particular subject are invited to consult my
original article "Zmiryata-D rawe:
Stornelli degli Aramei Kurdistani",
published in Italian with full notes and comments in Scritti
in onore di Guiliano Bonfante, pp. 639-663, Brescia (Italy),
Paideia Editrice, 1976.
2. Concerning the word Rawe, which recurs
several times in my original text, I had written that,
unfortunately, its etymology eluded me. After further
investigation, however, I have been able to determine its
derivation once and for all. The word Rawe canes from Arabic
Rawiy ( ), indicating "the letter which remains the same
throughout the entire poem and binds the verses together, so
as to form one whole ( ) to bind fast", cf. W. Wright, "A
Grammar of the Arabic Language", vol. II, Cambridge, At the
University Press, 1967. Section 194, p. 352.
'Therefore, banda-d rawe means" a
monorhyme strophe and zmiryata-d rawe means "monorhyme songs".
3. As for the Italian word stornello,
also found, several times in the original article, there is
this to say: this kind of poem, " a short (usually
three-lined) popular Italian verse form" (See Chambers'
1Wentieth Century Dictionary), is known by this Italian name
even in English, and so I have chosen to retain it here.
Published in "JOURNAL OF
ASSYRIAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY 1985-1986
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