Pre-Islamic Arameans
"But in Mesopotamia the Greek and Greek speaking population lived primarily in the cities, almost all which were built by the Greeks. On the contrary, the people in the countryside of this far-flung land were definitely a compact Aramaean population. This explains the fact that in Mesopotamia, through Christianity, we see Aramaic literature which in turn quickly produced a culture for the Aramaean element, that in the end prevailed in the whole country. In this also contributed as we saw earlier, that by the end of the 4th century began in the eastern and southern parts of the country a political change. And it was in the interest of the Persians to support the Aramaean element against the Greek in their perpetual dispute over Mesopotamia with the Greco-Romans. The ecclesiastical unity of the Christians in Mesopotamia and in Persia who were primarily Aramaeans and Nestorians also played a strong role in the evolution of things.
After Seleucia, the great city of southeast Mesopotamia or Babylonia and Ctesiphon became permanently part of the Persian state and Ctesiphon became its capital, Seleucia, a city even bigger than Antioch, the creation of Seleucus and great center of Greek civilization, became instead an Aramaean Nestorian religious and educational center under the auspices of the Persian authorities. Same was the fate of the important city of Nisibis in northeast Mesopotamia. The Aramaean heretical element came to dominate in all of Mesopotamia while the Greek element that represented Orthodoxy became a minority."
