A line of barefoot girls in headscarves and long patterned skirts carry large clay water jars on their backs past a brick wall. Newton & Co lantern slide no. 50 from the series "The Persians, Kurds, and Nestorians, their manners and customs", attributed by the Nelson Collection to Ernest Hoeltzer, late 19th century; published in The Living Races of Mankind (1901) as "Armenians water-carrying (Nestorians)" and by D'Allemagne (1911) as "Jeunes filles Nestoriennes faisant le métier de porteuses d'eau" (young Nestorian women working as water carriers).

Nestorian (Assyrian) girls carrying water jars

Seated portrait of the Rt. Rev. Addai Sheir (Addai Scher), Archbishop of Sairt (Siirt), in a skullcap and cassock with a pectoral cross. Naayem's book includes depositions on the massacre at Sairt.

Archbishop Addai Sheir of Siirt

Portrait of the Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon in a round hat and robes, wearing a sash, decorations and a pectoral cross. The caption does not give his name.

The Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon

Men and women in the embroidered dress of the Assyrian mountain tribes standing against a wall, two of them working with long poles, possibly pounding grain.

Nestorians (Assyrians) from the mountains

Head-and-shoulders profile portrait of Mrs. Shahbaz, wife of the author Yonan H. Shahbaz.

Mrs. Shahbaz

A large crowd of men, women and children, captioned "Nestorians from the Plain", gathered in a field. Likely the Urmia plain of north-west Persia, the subject of the book.

Nestorians (Assyrians) from the plain

Studio portrait of the Rev. K. Odisho with his children, described as members of the persecuted Christian church in Urmia. Taken before 1916.

Rev. K. Odisho and his children, Urmia

A large crowd in festive dress moving through a village street in a wedding procession at Urmia, with musicians and onlookers on the roofs. Taken before 1916.

A wedding procession in Urmia

St. Mary's Church in Urmia, said by tradition to hold the grave of one of the Magi, with a large crowd of men standing in front of it. Taken before 1916.

St. Mary's Church, Urmia

View of the village of Qudshanis (Quchanis), seat of the Patriarch of the Church of the East, with trees and houses in a mountain valley. Taken before 1916.

Village of Qudshanis, the patriarchal seat

Assyrian women in headdresses seated around a heap of winnowed grain on a roof at Bibaydi, picking out grit and stones. Taken before 1914.

Syrian (Assyrian) women cleaning grain on the roofs at Bibaydi

A group of Assyrian men in mountain dress standing in a loose ring on the flat roofs of Bibaydi, possibly dancing, with onlookers along a shaded house front. Taken before 1914.

Mountain Syrians (Assyrians) on the roofs at Bibaydi

Terraced stone houses and poplars of the village of Zawitha in Lower Tkhuma, below high mountains. Taken before 1914.

Village of Zawitha, Lower Tkhuma

The stone house of Malik Ismail, the Assyrian tribal chief, among boulders and trees at Chumba in Tiyari. Taken before 1914.

Malik Ismail's house at Chumba, Tiyari

A group of armed men in mountain dress at Qudshanis, the patriarchal village in Hakkari, posing with the bear they have killed. From a photograph by the Rev. W. S. Bowdon of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission; taken before 1914.

Bear hunters at Qudshanis

A group of Assyrian men, described as "mountain Syrians", standing and sitting on a flat roof at Malikta in Berwar, in front of the open belai (roofed summer room). Taken before 1914.

Mountain Syrians (Assyrians) on a house-top at Malikta, Berwar

Pack animals and men outside the stone house of the village head man at Malikta in Berwar, on the Wigram brothers' travels through the Assyrian mountain villages. Taken before 1914.

A halt for the night at Malikta, Berwar

A woman and a man, captioned by the American Colony photographers as Jacobite pilgrims from Chaldea, stand with walking staffs against a chalky hillside. Both wear headcloths, jackets and wrapped leggings, and the woman carries a bundle on her back.

Jacobite (Syriac Orthodox) pilgrims from Chaldea

Two facing pages from the "Assyrian" section of a printed 15-page phrase book with words and phrases in Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish and Russian, kept among the papers of RAF flight engineer Harold Ernest Wakefield DFC. The left page gives hints on "Conduct when meeting Assyrians" and a short English–Assyrian word list (water "Miya", village "Mata"); the right page carries a message in Syriac script beneath the royal coat of arms. The booklet is undated, possibly from the Second World War; this image places the two pages side by side.

Faces, places & memories of the Assyrian people.