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After my father Yaacoub Hajjar who was born in Urfa in 1923, passed away in Los Angeles in 2005, I was going through his papers, and I found my Dad's school notebooks and in them a collection of hand written Assyrian Nationalistic poems in Ottoman Turkish script.
The first set of poems is a collection of some of Naoum Fayeq's poems that were taught at the school that my father attended in Beirut Lebanon, which was "Al-Maytam Al-Suryani" (The Assyrian Orphanage) that was founded by "Taw Meem Simkat" (TMS) which was founded by early Jacobite Assyrian immigrants in the USA. This educational institute was run by Malfono Fawlos Gabriel, and Malfono Yuhanon Salman, and ironically was closed by Patriarch Mor Yakub III. What is interesting in those poems is that they are the full length poems as written by Malfono Naoum Fayeq, and before they were censored and truncated by either Murad Chiqqi or the Syrian Arab monitors (since the book "Naoum Fayeq, Zikra Wa Takhlid", was published in Damascus in 1936, After the massacre of Simele 1933, where Arab goverments of Iraq and Syria cracked on Assyrian nationalism). They tried to reshape Malfono Naoum Fayeq as an Aramean by removing the stanzas that mention the word Assyrian, or Assyria from his poems. What happened was that neither Murad Chiqqi nor the Syrian Arabs monitors spoke Turkish, so they were able to alter what was written in Arabic, but whatever was written in Turkish, the obvious Assyrian statements were removed, but many slipped by because they didn't comprehend Turkish. For example: Muraq Chiqqi claims that Naoum Fayiq was an Aramean, yet we see that Naoun Fayeq identifies himself in his poems as an Assyrian, where he used the terms Asori and Suryani as synonyms, and interchangeably. 1. Compare the page Fayiq 06 & 07 below with page 327 of the book "Naoum Fayeq, Zikra Wa Takhlid", you will find that stanza #5 was removed, because in it Malfono Naoum Fayeq says "Ban Ashuriyem" (I am Assyrian). 2. Compare the page Fayiq 01, 02 & 03 with page #330 of the book "Naoum Fayeq Zikra Wa Takhlid", you will find that stanza #8 was removed, because in it Malfono Naoum Fayeq says "Oyan Ashur Oyan" (Wake up Ashur [Assyria], wake up). To view the large image of any picture, please click on its thumbnail.
The second collection was written by Malfono Yusef Namek (who was born in Urfa), it is a collection of his nationalistic Assyria poems. What is interesting about this collection is that they were written prior to the Assyrian Massacre of Simele in 1933 in Iraq. After August 7th, 1933 the Arab governments in Iraq and Syria cracked down of Assyrian nationalists, and the Syrian Mukhabarat used to dictate that the name Assyrian be replaced with Aramean in all publication in order to allow it to be printed, and that is what happened to Malfono Yusef Namik's book "Al-Qafila Al-Akhira" where any reference to Assyrian was replaced with Aramean. Malfono Yusef Namek was the correspondent of "Al Jami3a Al-Suryaniyya" Magazine that was published by Malfono Farid Nuzha in Argentina. Malfono Yusef Namek used to write under the pen-name "Bar-Ashur". In the pages Namek 01 & 02 below, Malfono Yusef Namek wrote an Assyrian National Anthem in Turkish, it was titled "Ninwaya Doghri" (Straight To Ninveh [the capital of Assyria]), he wrote another one a year later page Namek 04.
Other interesting writings are:
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