My books

Naum Faiq Palakh is unquestionably considered a mastermind of the Assyrian national movement. In his long career as a journalist, writer and activist, he has left a great legacy.

His works seemed to be completely lost since his death in 1930. But through painstaking work, a large part of his writings could be located again.

With this book, numerous articles from originally Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Syriac are translated into English for the first time. All texts are originally written in the Syriac alphabet in the periodicals Kawkab Madenho, Bethnahrin and Huyodo in the period from 1910 to 1930.

The writings of Naum Faiq provide an insight into a critical period that threatened the very existence of the Assyrians. The massacres of 1895 and later the genocide of the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 fall into the period of his work. These events are reflected in the articles of the aforementioned publications.  

The translation of these texts is important due to the worldwide dispersion of Assyrians as a result of genocide and persecution, so that these first-hand articles can be passed on to future generations.  

The periodical Kawkab Madënẖo was hardly accessible for two reasons: First, a century after its first appearance it has only been possible to discover film copies of the magazine in New York's Public Library. Apparently, the magazine's subscriber, Gabriel Boyaji, who lived in the United States, had donated the publication to the Library of New York and luckily it was archived on microfilm.

The second reason for its inaccessibility is that the contents are mainly written in handwritten Garšuni (Ottoman and Arabic) and as such can only be deciphered by experts. Garšuni has been a preferred method for writing both secular and religious texts since the spread of Arabic in the North Mesopotamian region among the Assyrians while utilizing Syriac alphabet. 

This volume containing the first 20 issues of Kawkab Madënẖo is the gratifying result of an extensive and time-consuming effort by a small team dedicated to take the challenge of presenting the hitherto almost inaccessible contents of the first magazine of the best-known Assyrian journalist, Naum Faiq.

This was my first attempt of documentation and archiving of recorded Assyrian music.

This was a common project with some young people of the Assyrian Federation in Germany (AJM). It's a song book including lyrics of 145 selected pieces.

This is my current book project about a fascinating man, founding father of Assyrian national movement. It will be an extensive biography with newly translated articles by me. I hope to publish it in 2020.