Perley, David Barsum
author: James F. Coakley
source date: 2011
edition published: 2016-09-22-16:00
availability: Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

Perley, David Barsum

https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Perley-David-Barsum http://syriaca.org/bibl/433 424 David Barsum Perley http://syriaca.org/person/678 [person] [Assyrian nationalist writer and activist.]

(1901–1979)

Assyrian nationalist writer and activist. Perley was born to Syr. Orth. parents in Kharput. Fleeing the persecution of Christians in eastern Turkey during World War I, he came to the USA, lived with relatives in Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University in 1926. He practiced law in Paterson, New Jersey, specializing in immigration cases, from ca. 1935. He was one of the founders of the Assyrian National Federation in 1933. The theme of Perley’s writing, which was in English and mostly polemical, was the unity of Assyrians as one single nation transcending church membership and including people of E.- and W.-Syr. origin. In 1935 he advocated union ‘under the banner of our Ethnarch, Mar Eshai Shemʿon ’.

Select publications by Perley

Whither Christian missions? (1944).
Chapters 7 and 10, in Y. Malek, The British betrayal of the Assyrians (1935). (with Perley’s picture opposite p. 102)
Many articles and reviews in nationalist magazines, e.g., the New Beth Nahreen and the Assyrian Star.

James F. Coakley