Like other Christians in present-day Iraq and Syria, many Assyrians, sometimes called Syriac Christians, have fled their homelands to escape waves of violence. But their roots in the area are deep: They are an ancient ethnic group descended from one of the great empires of Middle Eastern history.

About 40,000 Assyrians remain in Syria, according to an estimate from the BBC, and other Assyrians remain in Iraq, Iran and Turkey or have emigrated to other countries around the world. They belong to a variety of Christian sects and speak an endangered language related to Aramaic, a language that Jesus spoke.