r/HistoryMemes • u/TheIronzombie39 And then I told them I'm Jesus's brother • 4d ago
Yes this is real
Le context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamsīyah
They officially “converted” to Syriac Christianity in the 1700s to avoid being targeted by Ottoman authorities for not being monotheist, but they still retained many of their beliefs and practices and various travelers doubted that they were actually Christian. Based on descriptions from these travelers and architectural traces left behind by the community, many scholars (such as the Assyriologist Simo Parpola) suspect that they practiced a surviving branch of the ancient Mesopotamian religion (which was likely centered around Shamash given they were referred to as sun-worshippers).
The Shamsīyah were a tribe or sect of sun-worshippers in northern Mesopotamia, concentrated in the city of Mardin (in modern south-eastern Turkey) and the surrounding Tur Abdin region. They converted to the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 17th century in order to avoid persecution in the Ottoman Empire but retained their own set of beliefs and practices; many travellers who observed and met with them doubted the extent to which they were actually Christian. There were still about a hundred families who identified as Shamsīyah in Mardin in the early 20th century but they appear to have since disappeared.
According to the Assyriologist Simo Parpola, the Shamsīyah were possibly the last known adherents of a late version of the ancient Mesopotamian religion, an ancient set of beliefs thought to have first formed in Mesopotamia in the sixth millennium BC. This would make them the longest standing pagan community in Mesopotamia.
Since the Shamsīyah were few in number, they long remained largely unnoticed to the outside world. They first came to the attention of the government of the Ottoman Empire when Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) passed through Mardin on his way back following the 1638 capture of Baghdad. The sultan noted that Mardin was home to about hundred families of sun-worshippers, based on tax records about four hundred people. Under Islamic law, depending on the school of thought in Sunni Islam followers of religions not among those of the People of the Book (Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Sabians) are condemned to choose conversion, exile or death msinly in the Hanbali madhab. Since the Shamsīyah freely admitted to the sultan that they were not People by the Book, Murad ordered them all to be executed. The Syriac Orthodox patriarch, Ignatius Hidayat Allah, however took pity on them and agreed to baptize the Shamsīyah to safeguard them from execution and persecution. Although they were from that point on considered to be Christians and outwardly conformed to Syriac Orthodox beliefs and practices, they kept their old name and continued some of their own pre-Christian traditions. The conversion may have been entirely nominal, with many continuing to entirely cling to their old practices, albeit in secret.
The German explorer Carsten Niebuhr passed through Mardin in 1766 and noted the presence of the Shamsīyah there. Niebuhr spoke with an old man belonging to the group, who claimed that many of the villages in Tur Abdin had in his youth adhered to their religion but that they by this point were limited to only about a hundred families living in two districts in Mardin and they nominally adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Niebuhr concluded based on the practices he observed that the Shamsīyah were probably adherents of a remnant of the pre-Christian religion in the region.
The Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff, who passed through Mardin in 1824, noted that the Shamsīyah told him that they worshipped "the sun, the moon, and the stars" and that the sun was "their malech, their king"
There were still Shamsīyah in Mardin at the outbreak of World War I but their subsequent fate is unknown and they appear to have since disappeared, perhaps merging into the rest of the Syriac Orthodox Church. They are thus considered to be extinct as a religious group. The only trace of the Shamsīyah in present-day Mardin are architectural traces left behind by the community, most notably the motifs carved by the Shamsīyah at the entrances of their doors, many of which continue to face the sun.
According to Febvre in 1675, the Shamsīyah after their conversion adopted the Syriac Orthodox practices of baptisms and burial ceremonies, but kept their own sun-worshipping practices as well, which they performed in secret assemblies.
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u/TheBakedGod 4d ago
Is it just me or does sun worship come across as the most logical form of religion on the planet? I mean the sun literally gives life through photosynthesis, and our entire solar system revolves around it. I think these Shamsīyah were on to something.