The Syrian Jazira comprises the eastern and northeastern region of Syria—that is, the provinces of Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah—covering an area equal to roughly a third of Syria. It stretches across the lands of the Syrian Jazira and part of the Syrian Badia in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, extending from the Turkish border in the north and the Iraqi border in the east to the boundary of Aleppo province in the west and the provinces of Hama and Homs in the southwest. It is among the least rainy provinces of Syria: roughly two thirds of the combined area of these provinces receives less than 250 mm of rain a year, and it has the most extreme temperatures. Its summer is hot, with the absolute maximum temperature reaching more than 45 degrees in some years, while its winter tends toward cold, the absolute minimum temperature dropping below freezing. The land is generally flat, with a few mountainous features rising above it (an extension of Jabal Sinjar, Jabal Abd al-Aziz, and Jabal Qarachok), and it is cut through by the Euphrates River and its tributaries the Khabur and the Balikh. The Euphrates and its tributaries have been the lifeblood of this region, in antiquity and in modern times alike: on the banks of the Euphrates and its tributaries, civilizations flourished and cities arose whose ruins and remains still bear witness to the deep-rooted, ancient history of this region.

The Syrian Jazira is renowned for its rivers (the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Khabur, the Jaghjagh, and the Balikh), and likewise for its ancient cities, which form important links between the Iraqi towns and cities and the Syrian districts spread across the length and breadth of the Jazira. The ancient city of Mari, for example (11 km northwest of Syrian Abu Kamal, opposite the Iraqi district of al-Qaim), played an important role in connecting Mesopotamia with interior Syria (Bilad al-Sham). The site of Tell Brak, lying about 50 km southwest of the city of Qamishli (Tell Brak means, in Syriac, "the hill of prostration," or of blessing and worship), became an important station for the Akkadian Empire on its route of expansion toward the west, where [?] the Iraqi Akkadian king Naram-Sin built a vast palace whose remains still survive at Tell Brak. The Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad likewise made one of his capitals at Tell Leilan, known as "Shubat-Enlil" (25 km from the Syrian city of Qamishli). The Aramean kingdoms also played a role—such as the kingdom of Aram-Naharaim, between the Euphrates and the Khabur, and the kingdom of Bit Bahiani at Tell Halaf—serving as a cultural bridge for communication between the regions east and west of the Euphrates. As for the city of Raqqa, it was an important center of the Syriac Church of the East, and in it the most significant church synods were held, as the Syrian scholar Mar Michael Rabo the Great (1126–1199) relates to us; across its heights are scattered the remains of Syriac monasteries and churches, and it also has a beautiful ancient mosque and a palace of Harun al-Rashid. The Syriacs continued to preserve their heritage and language in Raqqa until it was destroyed at the hands of the incoming Tatar peoples (1258–1401). In addition to its vast and venerable Mesopotamian legacy, the Euphrates Jazira contains a fair amount of oil wealth in the areas of Rmeilan and Deir ez-Zor, and it is also considered rich in the cultivation of cotton and wheat.

The Syrian Jazira and the Arab Tribes

The Arab tribes that came to the region before the Islamic conquests (such as the tribes of Tayy and Uqayl) continued to hold to their Christian faith until the beginning of the thirteenth century—and some say until the fourteenth. These tribes had a city in the Khabur basin, the city of Arban, which is thought perhaps to have originally been the city of (Baarbaya) mentioned in the Syriac sources. To this region the Syriac Iraqi Maphrian of the Tikrit district would send his metropolitans to serve the Christian Arab tribes, in order to encourage them to settle and take root in the region called (Baarbaya), which lay between Syrian Ras al-Ayn, passing through the city of Nisibis (the present site of Qamishli), as far as the Iraqi city of Mosul. To the south, the territory of Baarbaya (that is, the abode of the Banu Rabia) extended to include important parts of what is today the Iraqi province of Anbar, near the border of the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor. Historians say that the city of (Arban) was in the past an Assyrian district, as the antiquities discovered there attest. The Syriac monks in the city of Tell Tuneinir offered their prayers and chanted their hymns in the Syriac language until the Mongol tyrant Tamerlane (1336–1405) destroyed it in the wake of his passage through the region in the year (1401), when he sought to cleanse the land of its Syrian inhabitants. Those who survived the horror of the massacres and the killing campaigns took refuge either in the mountains of the Jazira (Hakkari, Tur Abdin, and Sinjar) or in the depths of the Syrian Badia. From that time until the beginning of the twentieth century, the towns and villages of the Jazira in general (Nisibis, Ras al-Ayn, Dara, Amuda, Tuneinir, Arban, Leilan, Ain Diwar, Barabita) turned into impoverished areas, stripped of the civilized character for which they had long been renowned throughout the ages—as the antiquities and the many archaeological mounds attest. After the barbaric campaigns of the Mongols and Tatars, many of the names of the Mesopotamian cities and regions in Syria vanished, and in their place, at the beginning of the twentieth century, names of new cities appeared.

It seems that the eighteenth century witnessed the return of large groups of inhabitants (Arabic- and Syriac-speaking) to the reaches of the Syrian Jazira within its present borders, as a new wave of Arab tribes also came to the region, such as the Shammar, the Yakara [?], and the Jubur. These rebuilt their villages that had been destroyed, such as: Bayaza [?], Leilan, Halwa, Khuwaytla [?], Tell Aryun [?], and Amuda, near the present city of Qamishli (that is, Nisibis), and the villages of Barabita, Tell Dara, Qasru, and others near the Syrian city of Derik. Most regrettably, most of the returning Syriacs were once again subjected to killing and displacement—but this time at the hands of some Kurdish tribes coming from Turkey, as happened to the inhabitants of the Syriac village of Halwa (1907–1915), where some Kurds exterminated its people and spared only the children, who were taken captive and given over to the harems of the Kurds to be Kurdicized! Under French colonial rule, which pursued a policy of divide and rule, the Kurds in Amuda in the year 1937 committed terrible massacres against the Syriacs, leading to their emigration from it and, consequently, its Kurdicization. The Arab tribes also fought one another, to the point that certain clans among them were wiped out to the last man in the 1940s and 1950s, just as violent clashes occurred between the Arab and Kurdish tribes in the areas of Amuda and Darbasiyah. The elders among the Syriacs and other groups still remember those painful events, which we recall here not with the aim of maligning one party or another, but for the purpose of learning from them as historical lessons, so that we may keep future generations from repeating them.

The Expulsion of the Syriacs from the Upper Jazira (Turkey)

[In the wake of] the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), the pace of the displacement of the Syriacs (and of significant numbers of Armenians) accelerated in vast numbers—from the areas of the Upper Syrian Jazira that were annexed to Turkey, in the wake of the massacres committed against them by the Turks and some Kurdish tribes—toward the Syrian Jazira within its present borders. The number of Kurds coming from Turkey also increased, after they fled from the Ottomans following the failure of their armed movements to seize the lands of the Upper Jazira from the hands of the Turks. Thus the Kurdish Haverkan tribe settled in the area of Qubur al-Bid, the Kurdish Daqoriya tribe was distributed across Amuda, while the Mirsiniyin tribe settled near the city of Qamishli, whereas the Arab tribes, to this day, form the majority in the southern Jazira.

Following the emergence of serious and important signs along the path of the peaceful process and brotherly coexistence among the various groups and components of the Syrian Jazira (Arabs, Syriacs, Kurds, Armenians), the Syriacs of the Jazira kindled the torch of civilization once again (as they had done in the golden age of Islam): they founded schools and cultural, athletic, and social clubs, took an interest in the environment and in tree-planting, and introduced to the Jazira modern agricultural and industrial tools through the Syriac Asfar Najjar family. Between the years 1948 and 1963, the region witnessed a genuine cultural renaissance on every plane and in every field, and the Syriacs (alongside the Armenians) were its true leaders. The Jazira at that time witnessed many athletic festivals and cultural celebrations throughout the region, and some remember how the bonds of love and brotherhood grew strong and firm between the inhabitants of the Jazira and the people of Iraqi Mosul, through intermarriage, visits, trade, and the athletic matches that used to take place—until the border between the two countries (Iraq and Syria) was closed. Suddenly the bonds turned into separation and rupture, and the brotherly relationship weakened little by little between the people of the Syrian Jazira and the Iraqi Jazira, until new generations arose who no longer remembered anything of the fraternal ties of the past!

The Closure of the Syriac Institutions

But this positive development was, regrettably, brought to a halt—this time by the tide of pan-Arab nationalism (Baathist and Nasserist) that seized the reins of power in Syria from the end of the 1950s. These men halted the wheel of development and prosperity after they launched sweeping campaigns to Arabize the region, with the aim of driving the Syriacs and Kurds out of the Jazira. They issued unjust laws that included the closure of all Syriac clubs and schools in Qamishli, Hasakah, Derik, and the Khabur—as happened to the famous al-Rafidin (Mesopotamia) Club, which was (afterward) transformed into the al-Jihad Sports Club after its name was Arabized. Since then, the sports teams in Syria have come to bear names suggestive of violence and force, such as: al-Futuwwa, Hittin, al-Yarmuk, al-Jihad, al-Jaysh (the Army), instead of bearing the names of Syrian cities and regions, as is the practice in other countries. The problem grew more complicated still when [?] the interests of the Arab nationalists and the Kurdish nationalists converged in combating the Syriac presence (perhaps for religious reasons)!? The Syriacs of the Jazira became an easy victim of the clashing ideologies, which led to their emigration toward every corner of the earth. Among the most prominent results of the Syriacs' emigration from the Jazira was a disruption in the balance of power, as clear changes occurred in the demographic and linguistic map, which tilted in favor of the Kurds in the cities of Qamishli, Qubur al-Bid, and Derik (and earlier in Amuda and Darbasiyah).

The Present Reality in the Jazira

Today the Syrian Jazira (the provinces of Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hasakah) is home to nearly three million people, the majority of them from the Arab tribes. The Kurds make up a third of the population in Hasakah province, and their presence is smaller in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The number of Syriacs (Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Mhallamis) in the Jazira comes to nearly 200,000 people (alongside 350,000 Jaziran Syriacs in the diaspora), distributed across Hasakah province—especially on the two banks of the Khabur River, where they have nearly 35 villages—and also present in the cities of Qamishli, Hasakah, al-Malikiyah, and Qubur al-Bid, with a very small number in Deir ez-Zor and al-Rusafa. They have all but disappeared from the countryside, after once having an important presence there. There are also small numbers of Armenians, Yazidis, and some Turkmen and Circassians.

The Syrian Jazira, amid the rapid changes taking place under pressure from Uncle Sam's children, and in the absence of democracy, is living in a state of great turmoil and rising ethnic rivalry among its inhabitants: Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, and Armenians. Racist parties have exploited this situation, stoking hostility among the people and putting forward separatist nationalist slogans, such as: (Neither Arabs nor Syriacs—this is Kurdistan)!? What aggravates the situation still further is the severe deterioration of the economic condition, resulting from population growth that is out of proportion with the current economic projects and plans of the Syrian government—this quite apart from the vast and enormous damage inflicted on the environment. The forests of trees that were once densely spread across Hasakah province have disappeared, most species of birds and wild animals for which the Jazira was famous are nearly extinct, and water resources have also diminished at a frightening rate, with some springs and rivers running dry. What is terrifying is that we are heading toward a huge environmental catastrophe that may uproot the Jaziran person from his very roots—and at that point, nationalist, religious, and politicized ideological notions will not avail anyone anything!?

It remains to be said that the ruling nationalist parties in Syria bear responsibility for the state to which the political, economic, social, and environmental conditions in our beloved country have declined and deteriorated. In the face of these dangers and challenges, we say that all are called today to renounce every method of violence and coercion in addressing Syria's thorny issues and causes, whatever they may be; we are likewise called to build a new workshop that all parties will join—Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, Yazidis, and Turkmen—to begin the process of building the new Syrian identity, which can surely gather all the groups of the Syrian homeland beneath its wings.