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Harput, Turkey To Massachusetts: Immigration Of Jacobite Christians, Sargon Donabed, Shamiran Mako

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

This essay falls into the category of rendering visible a community, the Jacobite Assyrians of Massachusetts, who have remained virtually unknown in the larger context of Middle Eastern Diaspora studies and American ethnic and cultural history. This brief study of the immigration of the Jacobite Christians originally from Harput, Turkey who settled in New England, shows a variety of distinct method(s) of identity preservation and transmission to subsequent generations, expecially in regard to personal and group identity structures. These people, sometimes referred to as “Jacobite Syrians” by early Western travelers and missionaries, identified themselves as the “sons of Asshur” in …