Water Colors of “Nestorians”

Beginning in 1834, the first Westerner to reside in Urmia on a permanent basis, had arrived on a ship with sails across the Atlantic Ocean and then travelled to Urmia across northern Turkey. There are no photographs of Assyrians from the mid-nineteenth century, just line drawings in books published by missionaries like Perkins.

These six water colors, labeled and signed by Perkins, are among the first representations of 19th century Assyrians to be found.

American missionaries at first called all Assyrians from Hakkari and the Urmia/Salamas plain “Nestorian.” Later in the century they switched to “Persian” for the Urmia/Salamas Assyrians (thus much confusion in the titling of early photographs from the late 19th century in the rich Shedd collection). They continued to call Hakkari Assyrians “Nestorians.” The term East Syrian, adopted in the early 20th century was more in keeping with the self-designation of these Christian Aramaic speakers as “Soryaye.”

By the time Perkins retired from the missionary field, the ship on which he sailed back to Massachusetts ran on steam, not wind. He brought with him dozens of such water colors of Urmia officials, of Muslim clergy, businessmen, and Kurdish tribesmen.