The various ethnic communities of
indigenous pre-Arab,
Semitic and often
Neo-Aramaic-speaking
Christian people of
Iraq,
Syria,
Iran,
Turkey,
Lebanon,
Jordan,
Palestine and
Israel, advocate different terms for ethnic self-designation. Syriac Christians from the
Middle East are theologically and culturally closely related to, but should not be confused with the
Saint Thomas Christians from
India, whose cultural and ethnic links were a result of trade links and migration by Assyrian Christians from
Mesopotamia and the Middle East mostly around the 9th century.