Labelled by the European Catholic Church as heretics in the 5th century, they founded Church of the East and Syriac Church in the 1st century AD (erroneously renamed Nestorian and Jacobite by Western Christians).
In 1915, together with the Armenians and Greeks, they were the victims of ethnically and religiously motivated genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire and many fled to Europe,the Russian Empire and the United States.