Sayfo 1915

Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies

50
Series Editors
George Anton Kiraz
István Perczel
Lorenzo Perrone
Samuel Rubenson

Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies brings to the scholarly world the
underrepresented field of Eastern Christianity. This series consists
of monographs, edited collections, texts and translations of the
documents of Eastern Christianity, as well as studies of topics
relevant to the world of historic Orthodoxy and early Christianity.

Sayfo 1915

An Anthology of Essays
on the Genocide ofAssyrians/Arameans
during the First WorldWar

Edited by

Shabo Talay
Soner g. Barthoma

gp
2018

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
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‫ܕ‬

1

2018

ISBN 978-1-4632-0730-4

ISSN 1539-1507

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available
from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v
Preface ...................................................................................................... vii
Contributors ............................................................................................. ix
Sayfo 1915: The beginning of the end of Syriac Christianity
in the Middle East ........................................................................... 1
SHABO TALAY
I – The Sayfo and Archives .................................................... 19
1. The Ottoman Genocide of 1914–1918 against AramaicSpeaking Christians in Comparative Perspective ..................... 21
TESSA HOFMANN
2. The Targeting of Assyrians during the Christian Holocaust in
Ottoman Turkey ............................................................................ 41
THEA HALO
3. The Significance of the Assyrian Genocide after a Century ....... 61
ANAHIT KHOSROEVA
4. German Perceptions of the Sayfo: How Much Did Germany
Know? ............................................................................................. 71
ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM
5. Letters on the Sayfo from Assyrian Eyewitnesses ........................ 89
MARTIN TAMCKE
II – Local Studies.................................................................. 105
6. The Increasing Violence and the Resistance of Assyrians in
Urmia and Hakkari (1900–1915)...............................................107
FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER
7. ʲ,ZDUGR$6WUXJJOHIRU([LVWHQFH ................................................135
ABLAHAD LAHDO
8. “I will stay with Jesus and will never betray Him!”: Sayfo in
Mansuriye ......................................................................................147
EPHREM ISHAC
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SAYFO 1915

9. A Victim of the Sayfo: Addaï Scher and His Contribution to
Scholarship ...................................................................................163
ERICA C. D. HUNTER
10. The Methods of Killing Used in the Assyrian Genocide ........177
B. BETH YUHANON
11. Assyrian Genocide from a Gender Perspective ........................215
SABRI ATMAN
III – Post-Sayfo Period ........................................................ 233
12. Writing Assyrian History: the Military, the Patriarch and the
British in Yaqu bar Malek Ismael’s Assyrians in Two World
Wars (Tehran 1964) .....................................................................235
HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG
13. Assyrian Christians in Iraq, the League of Nations and
Transnational Christian advocacy (1920s–1940s) ..................253
HANNELORE MÜLLER
14. The Memory of Sayfo and Its Relation to the Identity of
Contemporary Assyrian/Aramean Christians in Syria ..........305
NORIKO SATO
15. Forgotten Witnesses: Remembering and Interpreting the
‘Sayfo’ in the Manuscripts of Tur ‘Abdin ................................327
SIMON BIROL
16. The Poems of Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas and the Remembrance
of Turabdin...................................................................................347
TIJMEN C. BAARDA
17. Before and After Linguicide: a Linguistic Aspect of the
Sayfo ..............................................................................................365
SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ
Appendix: Synopsis Report of the Conference ..............................385

PREFACE
This anthology offers a collection of essays written from a multidisciplinary perspective about the genocide of Assyrians/Arameans
during the First World War. The essays are selection from papers
presented at the ‘SAYFO 1915: An International Conference on
the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War’
(Freie Universität Berlin, 24–28 June 2015) which was organized by
the Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies at the Free University
of Berlin in cooperation with the Inanna Foundation in the
Netherlands. In Appendix I, the reader can find a detailed synopsis
report about this conference and all presentations.
The essays are categorized in three sections, followed by an
introductory article written by the editor. In section I, the essays
deal with general aspects of the Sayfo, using a diversity of archival
sources. Section II includes essays focused on local studies, and
violence methods specific to the Sayfo. The essays in Section III
study the post-Sayfo period with a specific focus on construction
of memories in the aftermath of this genocide, and look at the
impacts of the Sayfo for language and identity formation processes.
This anthology aims to promote the emerging scholarship on
the Sayfo, which is still very weak and underdeveloped. The
contributors of this anthology consist of a mix of junior and senior
scholars whose main expertise is not in genocide studies but whose
field has somehow been affected by the Sayfo in one way or
another. This explains also the mix of disciplinary perspectives
included in this anthology. We believe that this multi-disciplinary
richness will provide the reader with a historical understanding of
this genocide, its local implementation and impacts in the
aftermath.
I would like to thank all the contributors for their
collaboration. Many thanks to Soner Ö. Barthoma for helping me
in the editing of this work; Dr. Robert Phenix for the English
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editing, and Lea Rasche for the English translation. I am grateful to
Dr. Naures Atto, director of the Inanna Foundation, for her
cooperation in the organization of the conference, as well as the
team of Seminar for Semitic Studies at the FU Berlin. Finally, I
would like to thank Gorgias Press for making the publication of
this anthology possible, which, I think, will contribute significantly
to the study of the Sayfo.
Shabo Talay
Berlin, 26 July 2017

CONTRIBUTORS
Editors
SHABO TALAY, Professor of Semitic studies at the Freie
Universität Berlin, received his PhD in Semitic philology (“A
Grammar of the Arabic dialect of the Khawetna tribe in
Syria/Iraq/Turkey”) in 1997 at the University of Heidelberg. He
did his postdoctoral qualification at the University of ErlangenNuremberg, where he obtained the “Habilitation” (Dr. habil.) with
an award-winning thesis about the Neo-Aramaic dialects of the
Khabur-Assyrians in 2006. Currently, he serves as the executive
director of the Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies. Earlier, he
worked as full professor in Arabic language and culture at the
University of Bergen in Norway (2011–2014). He has published
extensively on linguistic and cultural aspects of endangered
Aramaic languages and Arabic dialects. Besides the linguistic
research activities in Neo-Aramaic languages and Arabic
dialectology, he is interested in the history and current situation of
Syriac Christian communities in the Middle East.
SONER Ö. BARTHOMA, is a Research Fellow with a background
in political science. He is the project co-coordinator of the
Erasmus+ Surayt-Aramaic Online Project (2017–2020) at the Freie
Universität Berlin and co-coordinator of EU-Horizon 2020
“RESPOND” project (2017–2020) at Uppsala University. Soner
has broad research interests in various inter-disciplinary topics,
amongst forced migration, governance and discourse theories,
European politics, Turkish foreign policy, late Ottoman period and
genocide studies, history of the modern Middle East and its
political regimes, identity politics, cultural heritage and the
revitalization of endangered languages. He is a board member of
the Stichting Inanna Foundation in the Netherlands and Mor
Ephrem Stiftung in Germany; he has initiated and coordinated
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various international projects such as the Erasmus+ AramaicOnline Project (2014-2017). Previously he co-edited Let Them Not
Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean
Christians in the Ottoman Empire (Berghahn, 2017).
Contributors
SABRI ATMAN is the founder and the director of the Assyrian
Genocide Research, SEYFO Center. He studied economics at the
University of Gothenburg and has a master’s degree in human
rights and genocide studies from Kingston University in London,
Siena University in Italy, and Warsaw University in Poland. Atman
continues to contribute immensely to worldwide awareness of the
Assyrian Genocide.
TIJMEN C. BAARDA received his bachelor’s degree in theology and
his master’s degree in religious studies from Leiden University,
focusing on Christianity in the Middle East. His PhD dissertation is
about the use of Arabic and Syriac by Syriac Christian authors in
the early-twentieth century in Northern Iraq. From October 2017
he will work as a subject librarian for the field of Middle Eastern
studies at the University Library in Leiden.
ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM has an MA in Engineering from the
University of Erlangen/Nuernberg and is an independent
researcher on Assyrian related topics, including genocide; he has
published various articles. He is the author of “Turkey’s Key
Arguments in Denying the Assyrian Genocide,” in D. Gaunt, N.
Atto, and S. Barthoma (eds.), Let Them Not Return (Berghahn,
2017); and (co-authored with J. Bet-Sawoce), “Repression,
Discrimination, Assimilation, and Displacement of East and West
Assyrians in the Turkish Republic,” LQ)%DÿND\DDQG6¤HWLQRJOX
(eds.), Minorities in Turkey (2009). He is also the Chairman of the
Board of Trustees of both the Yoken-bar-Yoken Foundation and
Mor Afrem Foundation, Germany.
SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ holds a Ph.D. in Syriac linguistics.
He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Arabic Language
and Culture in the Institute of Modern Languages and Applied
Linguistics at Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, Poland. His
academic interests include diachronic and comparative Semitic

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linguistics, language policy (language standardization, corpus
planning, graphization, religious terminology planning), languages
of minorities inhabiting the Middle East and North Africa as well
as Muslim-Christian cultural interactions. He is an active
interpreter.
B. BETH YUHANON is a PhD student at the Department of
Cultural and Geo-Sciences, University of Osnabrück. Her research
interests are Diaspora and Refugee Studies, Assyrian history,
Eastern Christianity and minorities in the Middle East.
SIMON BIROL is a PhD candidate at the Ruhr-Universität
Bochum. He is the author of several articles about Syriac Church
History, Christian-Islamic Coexistence and Migration/Diaspora:
‘Die Ambivalenz des 21. Jahrhundert: Syrisch-Orthodoxe Christen
in der Türkei zwischen bekannten Repressionen und neuen
Hoffnungen?’ in M. Tamcke, S. Grebenstein (eds), Geschichte,
Theologie und Kultur des syrischen Christentums, (Harrasowitz 2015),
‘Einige BemerkuQJHQ ]X GHU 6FKULIW q/DZLMr GHV %DVLOLXV kHPoŠQ
II.’ (Parole de l’Orient 2015), and ‘Syrisch-orthodoxe Christen in
Deutschland’ in T. Bremer, A. E. Kattan, R. Thöle (eds), Orthodoxie
in Deutschland (Aschendorff 2016). Since 2016, he has been involved
in the ERC Project ‘Transmission of Classical Scientific and
Philosophical Literature from Greek into Syriac and Arabic’.
THEA HALO is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Not
Even My Name, which was instrumental in garnering the first statelevel resolutions in the U.S. that recognized the genocide of the
Pontian and other Asia Minor Greeks and Assyrians. She was a cosponsor and driving force behind the resolution of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) which
passed in 2007, calling for joint recognition of the Ottoman
Genocides of Pontian and other Asia Minor Greeks and Assyrians
as comparable to the genocide of the Armenians. Ms Halo was a
former news correspondent and producer for public radio, and has
also published a collection of poetry. She is currently working on a
history book on the Ottoman Empire and the Greek, Assyrian, and
Armenian Genocides. In 2009, Thea, along with her mother, Sano
Halo, who passed away in 1914 at the age of 105, were awarded
honorary Greek citizenship by the Greek government. Among

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other awards and honours, in 2002, Thea was awarded the AHEPA
Homer Award and, in 2012, the Association of Greek American
Professional Women honoured Thea and Sano for their “Profound
contribution to Literature and to Hellenic Cultural Heritage and
History.”
FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER is a historian and associated
member of the Joint Team of Researches/Unité Mixte de
Recherches ‘Mondes iranien et indien’ (Paris, CNRS). She has
conducted research about the modern history of Iran, especially
about the Christian minorities and their relations with the Iranians
and with Western powers in Iran during the 19th century and in the
beginning of the 20th century. She has published several books:
France-Iran, quatre cents ans de dialogue, 1604–2004 (Peeters, 2007), Les
Assyriens du Hakkari au Khabour. Mémoire et Histoire” (co-authored
with G. Bohas, Geuthner, 2008) and La Géorgie entre Perse et Europe
(co-authored with I. Natchkebia, L’Harmattan, 2009); and won the
‘academic prize 2015’ of the Œuvre d’Orient society for her
book Chronique de massacres annoncés : Les Assyro-Chaldéens d’Iran et du
Hakkari face aux ambitions des empires (1896–1920) (Geuthner, 2014).
TESSA HOFMANN, Berlin, philologist (Slavonic and Armenian
studies) and sociologist (with focus on comparative genocide
studies); 1983–2015 employed as research associate at the Institute
for Eastern European Studies of Freie Universität Berlin; at present
independent scholar; since 1979 author and editor of numerous
publications on the Ottoman genocide against Christians, including
two collective monographs in German (with Turkish translation)
and English (https://independent.academia.edu/TessaHofmann).
ERICA C.D. HUNTER is a Senior Lecturer in Eastern Christianity
at the Department of History, Religions and Philosophies, SOAS.
She is Co-chair, Centre of World Christianity, SOAS, University of
London which focuses on the Christian communities of the Middle
East, with a particular interest in the heritage of Christianity in Iraq
and Syria. She is the principal editor of The Christian Heritage of Iraq:
collected papers from the Christianity in Iraq I–V Seminar Days (Gorgias
Press, 2009). Published articles include “Syrian Orthodox and
Syrian Catholics” and “The Holy Apostolic Assyrian Church of the
East” in L. Leustean (ed.) Eastern Christianity and Politics in the

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Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014); “Coping in Kurdistan: the
Christian Diaspora” in K. Omarkhali (ed.) Religious Minorities in
Kurdistan: Beyond the Mainstream (Harrasowitz, 2014).
EPHREM ABOUD ISHAC, BA in English literature, MA from St.
Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary – New York. Secretary
for Mor Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim and the Syriac Orthodox
Archdiocese of Aleppo until 2010. He defended his PhD
dissertation in 2013 at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik –
Lebanon. Since October 2013 he has been conducting Postdoctural
research in Austria on “Syriac Anaphoras: Editions According to
Manuscripts” at Graz University and teaching for the MA
Programme in Syriac Theology at Salzburg University.
ANAHIT KHOSROEVA, Ph.D, Leading Researcher in the
Department of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Institute of
History, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia. For
several years she has also been a scholar in residence at North Park
University in Chicago, where she taught courses on Genocide
Studies. Dr. Khosroeva is the author of half a dozen research
books and monographs, as well as the numerous articles on the
history of the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks during
the Ottoman period. Her research interests include comparative
genocide studies and human rights. She has presented at various
worldwide academic conferences bringing awareness to the plight
of the indigenous Assyrian people in the Middle East. Among her
many honors the most precious is for her “Dedication to
advancing the Assyrian national cause in promoting international
recognition of the Assyrian Genocide”, awarded by the Assyrian
Universal Alliance Australia & New Zealand, Sydney, Australia, in
2011.
ABLAHAD LAHDO, Associate Professor in Semitic Languages at
Uppsala University. Lahdo’s field of research is spoken Semitic
Languages such as Turoyo and Arabic. Since January 2006,
Lahdo has been head of the Arabic department at the Swedish
Armed Forces’ Language School. One of Lahdo’s major interests is
fieldwork; during the last 17 years, he has conducted a large
number of fieldwork trips to the Middle East, Turkey, Egypt, Syria,
Israel, Jordan, etc., which have expanded his knowledge of the

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different dialect regions, and culture. Lahdo’s latest publications are
a textbook in Tillo Arabic, 2016 and a textbook in Turoyo, 2017.
HANNAH MÜLLER-SOMMERFELD is a scholar of religious
studies at the Religionswissenschaftliche Institut of the University
of Leipzig. She is a specialist in the history and dynamics of
religious minorities in the Middle East and Europe. Beside her
dissertation on the Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade
(2004) she has published (as Hannelore Müller) further
monographs on the modern history of Karaites (2010) and two
volumes on religions in the Middle East (2009, 2014). Her postdoctoral research is dedicated to Assyrians, Jews and Bahà’í and
international politics during the monarchy in Iraq, which she
currently is preparing for publication.
HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG, Professor of Eastern
Christian Studies at Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands),
received her Ph.D. from Leiden University in 1995 and currently
serves as the director of the Institute of Eastern Christian at
Radboud University. Earlier, she taught at Leiden University in the
field of World and Middle Eastern Christianity. She has published
extensively on Christianity in the Middle East, especially on the
Syriac/Assyrian traditions and the interactions between Western
and Middle Eastern Christians in the period from 1500 onwards.
Recent publications include an edited volume with S.R. GoldsteinSabbah (eds), Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and
Christians in the Middle East (Leiden Studies in Islam and Society 4:
Brill, 2016) and the monograph Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of
the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1850) (ECS 21;
Peeters, 2015).
NORIKO SATO completed her M.Phil at SOAS and her Ph.D. at
Durham University in the UK. She took a position of RAI Fellow
in Urgent Anthropology and taught at Durham University. She is
Associate professor at Pukyong National University, South Korea.
She has been conducting anthropological research on Syriac
Christian communities in Syria and undertakes research on their
diasporic communities, as well as on Korean-Japanese relations.

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MARTIN TAMCKE is Professor at Georg-August-University in
Göttingen/Germany since 1999, Director of Studies in the
international Erasmus-Mundus-Masterprogram Euroculture and in
the international Masterprogram Intercultural Theology. He
studied Orientalistics, Philosophy and Theology and wrote his
dissertation on a Syriac Catholicos in Iran in the sixth century
(1985) and his habilitation on an eyewitness to the Armenian
Genocide (1993). He has written more then 50 books and 500
articles, is president of several scientific associations and has
received several awards.

SAYFO 1915:
THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF
SYRIAC CHRISTIANITY
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
SHABO TALAY
More than one hundred years have passed since the genocide of
the First World War, perpetrated by the Young Turk government,
its regular troops together with paramilitary forces against all
Christian denominations and ethnic groups living in the Anatolian
provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Still, the descendants of the
survivors have to justify themselves and are subject to hostility
when they openly speak about it and want to commemorate their
victims.
Denialism is a part of genocides. Perpetrators in all genocides
aim to establish a hegemonic regime with a distorted image of
history. In Turkey, and even among many Turks settled in western
countries, it is still taboo to talk openly about this genocide and
address the annihilation of the Christian communities of the
country during the First World War. The official Turkish position
is that the Christians have been victims of a war catastrophe, which
led to the death of Muslim Ottoman soldiers as well, and that there
were never organised massacres against the Christians. This
denialist approach is constantly articulated in the Turkish public
sphere by a wide range of political parties. So, when it comes to the
issue of ‘genocide’, Turkish political parties, and in fact the whole
political establishment, has one official standpoint which can be

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SHABO TALAY

summarized in the statement of Hasan Celal Güzel, 1 given to the
daily newspaper Sabah on 25 June 2014:
…the Turkish nation will never accept the false accusations
and defamations of the (Armenian) diaspora and Armenia. We
would like to underline (the message) saying, that there is no
Armenian genocide, but there are massacres committed against
the Turkish nation. 2

This approach is even defended with Islamic rhetoric. For example,
regarding the genocide in Darfur/Sudan which had more than
300,000 victims (in the years 2003–2008), the current Turkish
SUHVLGHQW (UGRüDQ stated (November 2009): ‘A Muslim cannot
perpetrate a genocide’ and ‘Islamic countries are not able to
commit such crimes’. 3
After a century of pure denialism, in 2014 on the day of
commemoration of the genocide of the First World War, the then
3ULPH0LQLVWHU57(UGRüDQRIIHUHGLQDVWDWHPHQWFRQGROHQFHV
to the grandchildren of Armenians killed in the First World War by
Hasan Celal Güzel is a former minister, journalist, editor of major
historic publications, and director of the Yeni Türkiye Center for Strategic
Studies.
2 The original text in Turkish: ‘Türk Milleti, GL\DVSRUDQïQ ve
Ermenistan’ïQ gerçeklere tamamen D\NïUï LGGLDODUïQï ve LIWLUDODUïQï aslâ
kabul etmeyecektir. $OWïQï çizerek belirtelim ki, Ermeni VR\NïUïPï yoktur,
Türk Milleti’ne \DSïODQ katliam YDUGïUp. (https://www.sabah.com.tr/
yazarlar/guzel/2014/04/25/ermeni-soykirimi-yoktur-turk-milletineyapilan-katliam-vardir) accessed on: 3.12.2017. The same H.C. Güzel said,
as a reaction to the protest note against the Turkish policy towards the
Kurds in the Eastern provinces, signed by more than 1100 academics:
‘Those who claim that Turkey committed “massacres” (Turk.: katliam) in
Southeast (of the country) stand on the side of terrorists …. and betray
Turkey and the Turkish nation. Their purpose is to stain Turkey’s
reputation
in
the
world’
in
SonDakika.com
14/1/2016
(https://www.sondakika.com/haber/haber-akademisyenlerin-bildirisinetepkiler-8062387) accessed on: 10/12/2017)
3 www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article5144277 of 9.11.2009,
accessed 7.11.2015
1

SAYFO 1915

3

Ottoman soldiers. Nothing was mentioned about other Christian
populations of the Empire who were the victims of the same
genocide. Although it did not use the term ‘genocide’, this
statement described the events of 1915 as ‘inhumane’, using more
conciliatory language than has often been the case for Turkish
OHDGHUV +RZHYHU (UGRüDQ LQ PDQ\ DVSHFWV UHSHDWHG D ORQJ-held
Turkish position that the deaths of millions of people during the
First World War should be remembered ‘without discriminating as
to religion or ethnicity’. 4 The main aim of this cunning statement
has been revealed with the attempt of the Turkish government to
organize an international event for the 100th anniversary of the
Battle of Gallipoli on April 24, even though the battle began on
March 18, 1915 and lasted until late January 1916, in order to
distract the world’s attention from the hundredth anniversary of
the genocide of the First World War.
Since the conventional Turkish standpoint has been outdated
in many aspects and is increasingly isolated internationally, the
ruling AKP government developed more conciliatory rhetoric.
However, this political turn was not a part of long-term political
change. Due to developments in the region in relation to the Syrian
Civil War, the Turkish political approach reverted to ‘factory
settings’ and Turkey in recent years has adopted an even more rigid
and aggressive denialist political approach both inside and outside
Turkey.
Denialism has different faces. After a discussion following a
OHFWXUH RI WKH 7XUNLVK KLVWRULDQ .HPDO ¤LÄHN, in Nuremberg,
Germany a Turkish acquaintance said to me ‘let us forget the past
and not burden our children and their future with it’. But, how can
the survivors forget what happened when this genocide is still not
acknowledged, when the victims and their descendants are not
granted the right to exist in their homeland, when they are still
being discriminated, especially by the state itself? Turkey as the
successor state of the Ottoman Empire has not acknowledged the
survivors of the genocide as equal citizens since its foundation.
Subject to discrimination, harassment and even persecution,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/uk-turkey-armeniaerdogan-idUKBREA3M0XP20140423
4

4

SHABO TALAY

Christian minorities have almost entirely been dispersed from the
country. 5 Of 80 million inhabitants in the whole of Turkey only
80,000 are Christians adhering to traditional churches and
predominantly live in Istanbul. This number illustrates well how
Christian minorities have disappeared from the country. No more
than 3,000 Christians live in the eastern part of Turkey, the former
strongholds of the Armenian and Syriac Christians, although the
population of the region was at least 35% Christian before the
genocide. It is important to historically contextualize the genocide
of the First World War by looking at the historical developments
and the series of massacres that took place over the course of the
nineteenth century.
The First World War can be considered as an important break
in Muslim-Christian relations in the Ottoman Empire. Until the
19th century, the Ottomans reigned over a multi-ethnic and multireligious empire. The millet concept, integrated into the Empire’s
political system, allowed the Christian communities to coexist with
the Muslim population who underpinned the state. During the socalled long nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire, pressured by
and following the example set by the European national states,
intended reforms. In addition to the reform of the armed forces,
the reinforcement of the rights of non-Muslim citizens played a
major role. Briefly and simply said, they were supposed to be
ensured equal rights to the Muslim citizens as ‘Ottoman citizens’.
The period of reforms, called Tanzimat Era, ‘reorganization’, took
almost 40 years from 1839 to 1876. However, the Tanzimat Edict
failed. Not only in the East of the Empire did the Muslimconservatives oppose to the Tanzimat Edict. Specifically, they did
not agree to the equalization of non-Muslims, and the abolition of
additional taxes, the Gizya, as a consequence thereof, with which
the Kurdish Emirs in the East filled their war chest.

R. T. Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkey explained the
expulsion of the minorities from the country in 2006 with the behaviour
of the state as ‘the result of a fascist way of thinking’ Mehmet Y. Yilmaz:
‘BDÿEDNDQpï oWXWDUOï ROPD\Dp ÄDüïUï\RUXP’ in Hürriyet of May 26, 2009, P.
7/17.
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SAYFO 1915

5

As even regions in the midst of Anatolia withdrew themselves
from the control of the central government, the great massacres of
the Kurdish emir Badrkhan Beg against the Nestorians of Tiyari
and Tkhuma 6 (who became known in Germany with their
appearance in Karl May’s Durchs wilde Kurdistan in 1892) took place.
The state was close to collapse, not only from the fringes, regions
like Egypt and the Balkan States, but also from inside out. Sultan
Abdulhamit II (August 31, 1876 to April 27, 1909), under pressure
by Europe, ended the period of reforms by asserting: ‘The
Ottoman Empire is Islamic and will remain Islamic!’ 7 Commencing
with Abdulhamit II, a period of policy islamization began which
was associated with despotism and directed against other religions
– the gayrimüslim ‘non-Muslims’ or, as they were also called, the
milleti-mahkuma ‘the dominated nation’. This campaign culminated
in the massacres of 1895 against the Armenian Millet (composed of
Armenians and Assyrians/Arameans). 8 The Islamic-nationalist
ideology adopted by the Young Turks before the Great War, had
led to catastrophe – the well-known genocide of the First World
War. This genocide is called Sayfo among Assyrians/Arameans.

SAYFO AND THE CULTURAL ASPECT OF THE GENOCIDE
Until the Sayfo of 1915, Assyrians/Arameans predominantly lived
alongside Armenians in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman
Empire (in 'L\DUEHNLU 9DQ 0RVVXO DQG 0DʲPXUDWX O-ʲ$]L]). In
the main, they adhered different Syriac churches, namely the
Syrian-Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, the Apostolic Church of the
East (Assyrian Church), the Chaldean-Catholic Church and,
Before his attacks against the Eastern Syrians of Tiyari and
Tkhuma (1843–1846) the same Badrkhan committed massacres against
the Christians of Turabdin in 1839–1841 which are less known in the
literature (Talay 2014, 353).
7 $EGÙOKDPLW    7XUNLVK qýPSDUDWRUOXüumuz din, iman
ülkesidir ve böyle kalacaktrr”)
8 Akyüz, Gabriel (2017) contains documents which discuss the
difficult situation of the inhabitants of 15 Syriac Orthodox villages in the
Batman region, who during the massacres of 1895–96 had been forced to
convert to Islam.
6

6

SHABO TALAY

somewhat less in number, the Evangelical Church. Aside from the
Evangelical Church, all churches in this region each had a patriarch
and several dioceses. Although belonging to different Christian
denominations, they all used Classical Syriac as their liturgical
language. Many still speak different dialects of Neo-Aramaic at
home as their native language. There are different statistics
regarding the number of the Assyrians/Arameans in this
geographical area, varying between 500 thousand to 1 million prior
to the Sayfo. Again, according to estimates, two thirds of their
number would not survive the genocide. With them, of course,
their cultural distinctiveness has perished.
In this introductory article, I will briefly focus on the impacts
of Sayfo on the cultural heritage of the victims. In course of the
first modern genocide of the twentieth century, unique cultural
artefacts and sites, such as religious institutions and sanctuaries,
libraries containing ancient manuscripts and gospel books of
inestimable value, were destroyed. Furthermore, the immaterial
culture, that is to say the language and oral tradition of the victims,
shares the fate of its carriers and was irretrievably lost to humanity.
The linguistic aspect
Until 1915, Assyrians/Arameans were – to a large extent – natives
of one of the many Neo-Aramaic dialects. Although we do not
have exact details about the geographic expansion of the Aramaic
language in Syriac Christian villages and towns, according to what
we know from the survivors of the genocide we can reconstruct
the state of art of Aramaic prior to Sayfo. According to these
reconstructions, Aramaic was spoken in many different regions,
such as the language of Turabdin (Surayt/Turoyo) and that of
'L\DUEDNLU 0ODʘVň  UHVSHFWLYHO\ RQ WKH ZHVWHUQ SDUW RI WKH
Aramaic speaking region, and the languages of the districts of Van,
Siirt, Bohtan, Hakkari, and Urmia on the eastern part of it. 9
The question whether even in Urfa/Urhoy/Edessa to a
certain extent an Aramaic colloquial existed, can no longer be
The language of the Christians of the Niniveh plain and Kurdistan
Mountains is not included in the following statements.
9

SAYFO 1915

7

answered. The survivors who were forced by the Turkish army to
leave the city in 1924 and later on settled in Aleppo’s As-6XU\ćQ
neighbourhood were Turkish and Armenian speaking.
Because of the displacement and massacre of its speakers,
Aramaic has vanished from many regions. Numerous dialects and
languages are therefore extinct. In Turkey, Surayt/Turoyo, which is
the last Aramaic language still spoken in the country, is critically
endangered and only known to approximately 2000 speakers. The
oral culture of the Assyrians/Arameans, all of their medical,
historical and literary knowledge which was until then only
transmitted orally, is lost.
On the other hand, after centuries of stagnation a national
movement among the Syriac Christians emerged in the second half
of the nineteenth century. This movement aimed to revive Classical
Syriac as a modern standard language, similar to the Arab literary
and linguistic renaissance, the oQDKʡDp in the nineteenth century. In
the cities of Kharput, Diyarbakir and Mardin the protagonists of
this movement formed groups and circles that called for a national
revival among Western Syriacs. They frequently denoted their
movement with the old Turkish word ‘intibah’ or in Syriac
‘quyomo’ (meaning ‘revival’). They benefited from the reforms of
the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century,
and established Syriac schools, published books and magazines, etc.
In addition to the linguistic revival, these efforts aimed to promote
the national identity of the Syriac Christians based on history,
culture and language.
After the war, all schools were closed, the teachers were killed
or forced to flee their homeland. The embryonic movement was
stopped before it could bear fruit.
On the other hand, a considerable part of the Syriac
Christians, in the above-mentioned geographic area, was Arabicspeaking, particularly, those in the western part of Turabdin and
Mardin, and in the provinces of Diyarbakir and Siirt. They spoke
dozens of very archaic Arabic dialects. These dialects are of utmost
importance for the history and development of the Arabic
language. With the Sayfo almost all these dialects disappeared and
shared the doom of their Aramaic counterparts. The Muslim
speakers of the same and similar dialects were not persecuted or
displaced like the Christians, because at that time a division into
linguistic identities did not exist. It was not the cultural or linguistic

8

SHABO TALAY

difference which distinguished the victims from their persecutors.
Distinctions were along religious lines.
In the summer of 2008, I discovered an Arabic speaking
village in the mountains about 180 km northeast of Diyarbakir.
From our available sources, 10 we know that several villages and
towns in the vicinity of this village were inhabited by members of
the Syriac Orthodox Church. They most likely were all Arabicspeaking. In allusion to the name of the village, Sine, one of my
informants told me: ‘They killed all Christians, only, we have been
left alive, because we are true Sunni Muslims’. Kurdish Sunni
Muslims now inhabit this region. In Sine they call them ‘bafilla’.
Bafilla is Kurdish and means ‘of Christian fathers’. This means they
are descendants of Christians who were forcibly converted to Islam
during the Sayfo.
The cultural aspect
In the course of Sayfo, Christian villages were pillaged and their
churches, cultural objects, and liturgical books were destroyed.
There are innumerable examples of this. There are ruins of
churches or churches converted into mosques in almost every
former Christian village (for example, in Turabdin or in the
Hakkari region). A lot of them are also misused as stables or
storage facilities for animals. Two remarkable examples are the
residence of the patriarchs of the Apostolic Church of the East in
4RGVKDQʢʛ LQ +DNNDUL ZKLFK LV GLsused and in ruins, and the
patriarchate of the Syriac Catholic Church in Mardin where the city
museum is now located.
Whilst the condition of churches is visible to the eye and can
still be seen today, the fate of libraries and their contents can no
longer be retrieved. Nothing is known about the great library of the
famous Chaldean metropolitan of Siirt, Addai Sher, 11 who was
ferociously murdered in 1915. Many of the manuscripts and books
extant in catalogues of the Syriac-Orthodox patriarch Afrem

10
11

Bcheiry (2009: 65–67).
See further E. Hunter’s article on Addai Sher in this anthology.

SAYFO 1915

9

Barsoum 12 and in the catalogues of the American mission in Urmia
are lost. Not only did monasteries have large libraries, but
churches, clerics and laity also possessed private libraries with
books and unique manuscripts in almost all villages with
Aramaic/Assyrian populations. Here, the fates of two large
manuscript and book collections are worth mention:
The orientalist Hellmut Ritter, who dedicated his work after
his pension to research on the Neo-Aramaic of the Turabdin, was a
translator to Collmar von der Goltz during the First World War,
the commander of one of the field armies of the Ottoman Empire
from 1915 onwards. On his way from Istanbul to Bagdad in fall of
1915, Ritter passed by Nisibin. In a letter from the 23th November
of 1915 to Franz Frederik Schmidt-Dumont from Mossul, he
reports on 40 to 50 manuscripts in an old church (Mar Yakob
Church of Nisibin/Nüsaybin), which he unavailingly tried to save. 13
As a second example, I offer the fate of the books and the
book collections in Bsorino (‘Haberli’ in Turkish), one of the most
important villages in the Eastern Turabdin. Bsorino was called the
‘head of faith’ (Bsorino riše du dino) in Turabdin first and foremost
because of its important scholars, calligraphers and copyists. 14
According to oral tradition, there were three or four private
libraries in the village. The libraries can be understood as a
common room with at least one wall furnished with bookshelves.
All of those books were destroyed and burned by intruders. The
books of the Mar-Dodo-Church, the main church of the village,
were piled up on a midden heap and set on fire. That which was
not burned was battered with bullets and eventually destroyed.
The village’s most valuable treasure consisted of 12 old
Gospel manuscripts. They contained illuminations and were
written in golden ink on parchment. The villagers had built a
cupboard for these manuscripts, inside the 1.5 m wide wall
between the altar and the baptismal font in the church, in order to
hide them from the aggressors. The valuable liturgical vessels were
hidden in the same cupboard. The wall was plastered in a way that
Barsawm (2008).
Van Ess (2013, 15).
14 Talay (2015).
12
13

10

SHABO TALAY

nobody would expect anything behind it. The archdeacon of the
church, however, converted to Islam during the Sayfo and revealed
the hiding spot to the Muslim perpetrators. They came, opened the
wall and took the manuscripts and liturgical utensils. It is not
known what has happened to this treasure.
This hatred and anger towards the tangible and intangible
heritage of the Assyrians/Aramenas immediately bring to mind the
practices of the terrorists of ISIS who have attracted the attention
of the international community and media in recent years. During
Sayfo, the local perpetrators against the Christians in Turabdin
were first and foremost Kurds, among them the Hamidiye
Battalions (+DPLGL\H $OD\ODUï), members of the special forces
(7HÿNLODWLPDKVXVD), bandits called Çete who had been released from
jail, and ordinary locals who were mobilized against their Christian
neighbours with different motives. However, the religious
discourse of Jihad was the main driving force behind this mass
mobilization, often mixed with a material interest in confiscating
and stealing the property of Christians.
As an excuse, Kurds often insist that they had been ‘used’ by
the Turks. The question, however, remains: to what extent can
someone let him/herself be used to expel his/her neighbour, to kill
and rob someone who adheres to a different religion? After all, is
there any excuse for it? Can anyone abdicate his/her responsibility
if someone else – demagogue, provocateur, or external power –
command the felony?

A LESS RESEARCHED AND LESS-KNOWN GENOCIDE
The issues concerning the history of the genocide of the First
World War, commonly known and referred to as the Armenian
genocide, have been widely discussed by scholars, activists and
politicians for many years. However, very few know of the
genocide of Arameans/Assyrians, which took place in the same
region and at the same time. When dealing with the genocide of
1915 the Arameans/Assyrians and their fate is only treated
marginally under ‘others’. In the aftermath of this genocide, Syriac
Christians did not speak publicly for a long time about these
traumatic events. They were both abandoned and left in the
darkness of forgetting. This was partly related to the absence of
intelligentsia in the aftermath of the genocide. Many of the

SAYFO 1915

11

representatives of the literary elite, the clerics and scholars, had
fallen victims to Sayfo.
Sayfo is less-known partly because the Turkish term ‘Ermeni’
was interpreted only as meaning ‘Armenians’. However, in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and sometimes still today), all
Christian from the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire were
called ‘Ermeni’ [Armenian in Turkish]. The Turkish and Kurdish
term ‘Ermeni’ therefore does not only mean ‘Armenian people’,
but rather includes all Christians living in that region, namely the
Arameans/Assyrians. The press in Europe, influenced by the
notion of national states, could only understand the term ‘Ermeni’
and the genocide of the ‘Ermeni’, i.e. also of the Christians, as ‘the
genocide of the Armenian nation’. This was also easier for readers
to understand. Still today, we abdicate our responsibility to support
persecuted Christians and prevent the blame of actions on religious
grounds. This ‘political correctness’ has made it simply easier to
speak of ‘Armenians’ than of ‘Christians’. In an appalling way, this
is not only applicable to the media but also to the official position
of the German Federal Government concerning the fate of the
Christians in the Middle East until today. Similarly, the journalists
from 1915 did not always comprehend the term ‘Ermeni’ to its full
extent. Therefore, their confusion about how ‘not only Armenians,
but also Assyrians/Arameans’ were victims of violence can be
inferred from their reports. In a memorandum of the Austrian
Capuchin-Superior Norbert Hofer, it is said:
Together with the Armenians, all other Christians of different
ordinances, including the Catholics, are exposed to
persecution.
The fact that the Syrio-Catholic bishop of Gedsireh, his clerics
and believers were massacred shows that the invectives of the
Turkish government were not only targeted at the
Armenians… 15

15

Hesemann 2015, 295.

12

SHABO TALAY

In order to fully understand the genocide of the First World War in
the Ottoman Empire, we must therefore take the sufferings of the
Assyrians/Arameans and Pontic Greeks into account.
Unfortunately, in context with all that has been achieved
regarding the genocide of 1915, the fate of the Syriac Christians is
far from having come to terms with the past. There is not enough
material in any of the relevant fields of genocide research. Neither
have the archives of, for example, the German Federal Foreign
Office, or the Turkish military, or any other directly or indirectly
involved state, been rendered systematically accessible for research,
nor has the oral literature about the genocide been collected and
edited. In Germany, no aspect of the Sayfo has ever been
addressed in a scientific paper, a doctoral dissertation or a
habilitation treatise of historians. 16 William Wigram’s statement in
his essay Assyrians during the Great War seems to remain valid:
The difference between the massacre of the Armenians and
the one of the Assyrians lies therein, that for the former
everything feasible has been done to make it known to the
world, whilst for the latter every caution possible has prevailed
to withhold this sad truth. 17

Afrem Barsawm, the representative of the Syriac Orthodox
Patriarch in the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) complains of
the designation of the massacres of 1915 as ‘Armenians Massacres’,
thus neglecting the fate of the Assyrians/Arameans in a
Memorandum published in February 1920:
We regret bitterly that this ancient and glorious race which has
rendered so many valuable services to civilization should be so
neglected and even ignored by the European press and
diplomatic correspondence, in which all Turkish massacres are
called ‘Armenians Massacres’ while the right name should have
been ‘The Christian Massacres’ since all Christians have
suffered in the same degree.
According to a speech by the German historian Dorothea
Weltecke (Frankfurt) in Berlin, May 2015.
17 Citation after Yonan 1989.
16

SAYFO 1915

13

Furthermore, the literary account reveals the difference between
the Armenian genocide and that of the Assyrians/Arameans. The
Assyrians/Arameans have not received a Franz Werfel, which
could have put their fate and their struggle for survival into the
spotlight of worldwide attention, as it has been the case for the
Armenians. An epic, for example, which could depict the struggle
for defence of the villagers of Ainwardo or Azex in great detail,
perhaps with titles such as ‘The Eighty Days of Ainwardo’ or ‘The
Forty Days of Azex’ would have made the Sayfo known both to
the international community and for generations to come. In these
villages, the inhabitants did in fact revolt against the barbarity of
the destruction in order to hold their ground against the
approximately tenfold superiority of the attackers – among them
the German military. Nowhere else could the Assyrians/Arameans
remain in their homeland by means of their weapons at the end of
the war.
At a political level, the Sayfo together with the Armenian
genocide has been recognized by the parliaments of several
countries, including Sweden (2010), Armenia (2015), Germany
(2016) and the Netherlands (2018). In 2015, the German
Bundestag has already discussed three times the genocide of the
Armenians. In the first joint motion of all factions in 2005, the
Assyrians/Arameans are only mentioned in the rationale of that
motion. The joint motion of the factions of CDU/CSU and SPD
in the Bundestag on the 21st of April 2015 did include them in the
text of the motion, however, only mentioned them once in a subclause. I will cite the beginning of that motion:
The German Bundestag bows to the victims of displacement
and massacre of the Armenians, which began a hundred years
ago. It bewails the deeds of the government at that time, which
almost led to complete annihilation of the Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire. Likewise, adherents of other Christian
ethnic groups, especially Aramaic/Assyrian and Chaldean
Christians were affected by deportations and massacres. 18
Deutscher Bundestag 18. Wahlperiode. Drucksache 18/4687 from
April 21, 2015.
18

14

SHABO TALAY

Most speakers in the Bundestag did mention the Arameans/
Assyrians explicitly in their speeches, and so did the German
president in his speech in the Berlin Cathedral on the 23rd of April
2015. In this speech, the president spoke of the suffering of the
Armenian people and referred to the Syriac Christians as their
comrades of suffering. All this shows that while German society
recognizes the suffering of the Armenians, it still disregards the
suffering of the Assyrians/Arameans and relegates it to subclauses.
Even though the fate of the Assyrians/Arameans awaits its
scientific and literary account, it has to a certain extent gained
political attention. This has occurred thanks to the many campaigns
on behalf of the same group to commemorate 100 years of the
Sayfo all over the world. Although in the last two decades the
Assyrians/Arameans worldwide have raised campaigns and taken
initiatives for the recognition of this genocide, it is still very much
unremembered. The worldwide activities for the recognition of the
Assyrian/Aramean genocide attracted the attention and the anger
of the Turkish government. Whenever the Turkish political elites
face the recognition demands of Assyrians/Arameans, they choose
to ignore even the discussion of the topic. Behind the doors,
Assyrians/Arameans have been told: ‘We understand Armenians,
what about you? There was nothing happened against you. During
the turmoil of the events, local Kurdish tribes killed your
grandfathers’. 19 The Turkish official standpoint is still based on

This was articulated openly by Turkey’s then EU minister Egemen
%Düïÿ in a meeting with Assyrian/Aramean individuals and organizations
in the Swedish FDSLWDO %Düïÿ VDLG YHUEDWLP oWhat are you Assyrians/
Arameans looking to gain by using the Sayfo question as masturbation
and trumpeted it in the media and the Swedish Parliament?’
(http://aina.org/news/20130226154757.htm). %DüïÿpVDSSURDFKLOOXVWUDWHV
how the superiority complex of Turkish political elites, who perceive
themselves as the offspring (inheritors) of a dominant nation (MilletiHakime) and others (in this context Christians, millet-mahkume) as ‘second
class’, a feeling which originates in Ottoman times. See the explanations
of the terms ‘milleti-hakime’ and ‘milleti-mahkume’ in Baskin Oran’s
19

SAYFO 1915

15

pure denialism of the Sayfo. Victims and their descendants are still
struggling for justice and recognition. Not only their physical
existence, but also their distinct culture and languages have become
endangered and traumatised following this genocide.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
While commemorating the 100-year anniversary of their genocide,
Assyrians/Arameans today are facing a new catastrophe in the
Middle East. Assyrians/Arameans commonly refer to their tragic
history as ‘history repeating itself’. Like their fate during the Great
War, today, they are caught in a terrible process of extirpation from
their historic homelands. Besides the community members, experts
worldwide are discussing whether the ethnic and religious
minorities have a future in the Middle East. We should not forget
that one hundred years of denialism is one of the main reasons for
the extinction of these indigenous peoples from Turkey and its
borderlands.
Paradoxically, in the twentieth century tolerance and coexistence between different religions in the Middle East has only
been possible as long as dictators forced religious tolerance by
means of their security apparatus. In Syria under both Assads, in
Iraq under Saddam Hussein until 2003 and in Iran under the Shah,
Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Druzes, Alawites and also Jews and
Muslims lived together in coexistence. In contrast, Christians,
Yazidis, Alevites and Nusayris in ‘democratic’ Turkey have been
victims of permanent discrimination.
Turkish governments have not recognized this genocide, and
there have been no steps taken towards reconciliation. The
restrictive Turkish policy against minorities after the foundation of
the Republic prevents any form of remembrance and
commemoration of the victims until today. In Turkey and among a
large number of Turkish citizens in Germany and other Western
countries the term gavur (infidel) is still colloquially used to
designate Christians and Jews. A denialist state policy has had an
paper (2012): (http://baskinoran.com/konferans/IdentityDiversityand
Cohesion-Bochum-2012-10.pdf)

16

SHABO TALAY

impact on both societal and cultural levels in Turkey and made the
society less tolerant, and less aware of the other cultures, faiths and
identities. Therefore, the recognition of the genocide of the First
World War is not only the acknowledgement of a historical event,
but more than that is part of present day Turkey’s democratization
problem.
If there had been a discussion about history, perhaps the
religious bigotry in the Middle East would not have prevailed as it
has now. This bigotry erupts in violence against dissidents, putting
the ancient cultures of the Middle East at stake. Today’s bigotry
deals a deathblow to the remaining Christian communities in Syria
and Iraq, most of them survivors of the genocide of 1915. Most
saddening is the fate of the remaining Christian communities in
Syria, Iraq and in the overall Middle East. With deliberate attacks
on the Assyrians/Arameans in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria
and around Homs, the descendants of the survivors of the
genocide of 1915 are expelled from the Middle East, their churches
utterly destroyed, and hundreds have been kidnapped by the
terrorists of the Islamic State and other Jihadist organizations.
The annihilation of Christians of the Middle East started in
the nineteenth century, peaked with the genocide of the First
World War, and continued throughout the twentieth century
through the exodus of these indigenous populations from their
homelands. The recent attacks of the ISIS and other Jihadist
organizations is yet another chapter; most likely the closing chapter
of Christianity in the Middle East.

REFERENCES
Abdülhamit, Sultan II. 6L\DVL +DWïUDWïm. 6th Edition, (Istanbul,
1999).
Akyüz, Gabriel. ‘The Status of the Süranis in and around Mardin’
in Herman Teule et al. (eds.): Syriac in its Multi-Cultural Context.
(Leuven: Peeters, 2017).
%DUʛDZP$IUHPo0HPRUDQGXPp (Archive of the Syrian Orthodox
Patriarchate, Damascus, 1920).
%DUʛDZP$IUHPCatalogue of Manuscripts [Syriac and Arabic], ed. by
,JQDWLRV=DNND,o,ZćʛYRO,ʝXUʰDEGLQ; vol. II Dayro d-Kurkmo
(Dayr az-=DʰIDUćQ ; vol. III ŇPLʨ w Merdo (Diyarbakir and

SAYFO 1915

17

Mardin). 0DQxŠUćW'D\U0ćU$IUćPDV-6XU\ćQĪ0ʰDUUDWʛD\GQć\ć
(Damascus, 2008).
Bcheiry, Iskandar. The Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal Register of Dues of
1870. An Unpublished Historical Document from the Late Ottoman
Period. (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2009)
Hesemann, Michael. Völkermord an den Armeniern. (München:
Herbig, 2015)
Talay, Shabo. ‘Politische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen im
Turabdin des 19. Jahrhunderts: Rolle und Bedeutung der
syrischen Christen’. In: Martin Tamcke/Sven Grebenstein
(Eds.): Geschichte, Theologie und Kultur des syrischen Christentums.
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), pp. 375–398.
Talay, Shabo. ‘Das Schicksal der Bücher von Bsorino im Turabdin
während des Sayfo, des Genozids an den syrischen Christen’
in: Sidney H. Griffith / Sven Grebenstein (Eds.): Christsein in
der islamischen Welt. Festschrift für Martin Tamcke zum 60.
Geburtstag. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015), pp. 479–494.
Van Ess, Josef. Im Halbschatten. Der Orientalist Hellmut Ritter (1892–
1971). (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013).
Yonan, Gabriele. Ein vergessener Holocaust. Die Vernichtung der
christlichen Assyrer in der Türkei. Göttingen. (Pogrom. Reihe
bedrohter Völker, 1999).

I – THE SAYFO AND ARCHIVES

19

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918
AGAINST ARAMAIC-SPEAKING
CHRISTIANS IN COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE
TESSA HOFMANN
This contribution attempts to answer the five Ws of genocide
scholarship with regard to the crimes, committed during the First
World War against Aramaic-speaking Christians:
Who – the perpetrators involved
Whom – the victims
Why – the motives of the perpetrators and circumstantial
causes
Where – the location of the crimes and the affected territories
When – the date of the crime and the number of times the
act(s) occurred.

A further question relates to the modus operandi, while the seventh
issue concerns the contextualization and comparability of the
crimes in question. In other words, was the Sayfo a singular,
exclusive occurrence, as the use of an Aramaic term instead of the
legal term genocide suggests? Or was it part and parcel of the
general destruction of indigenous Christian populaces of Asia
Minor and Mesopotamia during the last decade of Ottoman rule?
It seems that we have more questions than ready answers,
starting with the definition of the perpetrators. Here, the regimes

21

22

TESSA HOFMANN

of the Committee of Union and Progress 1 (CUP), as well as the
Kemalist nationalists of the 1919–1922 period, come to mind, as
far as the Ottoman Greeks and surviving Armenians are
concerned. While many members of the CUP, including its Central
Committee, did not conspire to prepare and perpetrate a genocide,
as a result of the patrimonial Ottoman system a large part of the
Muslim population seems to have been actively involved in massive
pillage, robbery, rape, enslavement, and killing of Christians. In the
collective memory of Aramaic speakers, the destructive role of
Kurds is especially highlighted, although the French-Armenian
scholar Raymond Kévorkian concludes in his magnum opus about
the Armenian genocide that the participation of the Kurds is
overestimated in general. 2 In addition, regular and irregular
Ottoman forces committed massacres of Christian civilians, both
inside the Ottoman provinces of Van and Bitlis, and also in
Northwest Iran during the temporary Ottoman occupations of
1914 and 1918.
Who then were the victims? If we regard the Sayfo as an
integral part of the overall destruction of Ottoman Christians, the
two large Christian millets or ‘church-nations’ come to mind first,
for they were the collectives strong enough in numbers and
economics to challenge the Ottoman Muslim elites. These were the
up to three millions romies or romiosyni, as the Orthodox heirs of the
Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire continued to define
themselves in the early 20th century, followed in numbers by 2.5
million ethnic Armenians, of whom most belonged to the Ermeni
millet, i.e. the Armenian Apostolic Church. As early as 1909, the
genocidal rhetoric of the Young Turks had been articulated against
the Greek Orthodox Christians as a whole. The romies were not
only perceived traditionally as hostile and a challenge to national
security, but increasingly as economic competitors to the rising
Muslim bourgeoisie. At least since the second Balkan War (1913),
verbal threats were transformed into discriminatory practice and
economically destructive restrictions, accompanied by early
massacres of Greeks, such as in Phokea in mid-June 1914, and by
1
2

Turkish: ýWWLKDWYH7HUDNNL&HPL\HWL.
Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, p. 810.

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

23

deportations first from Eastern Thrace and then from Ionia.
However, the conflicting interests among Turkey’s allies and
enemies prevented a general destruction of Ottoman Greeks
during the First World War, limiting death marches and massacres
to the Pontos region, until a temporary Russian occupation in 1917
saved the Pontic Greeks for the next two years. Starting with
Mustafa Kemal’s disembarkation in Samsun in May 1919, the socalled Kemalist liberation struggle brought the last and decisive
phase of the genoktonia en roi, ‘flowing, i.e., intermittent, genocide’,
as the destruction of Ottoman Greeks has been named by Greek
scholars. 3
Whereas the destruction of more than one million Greek
Orthodox Ottomans took a decade, the destruction of 1.5 million
Ottoman Armenians, out of a pre-war population of 2.5 million,
took just 19 months. Subsequently, the concentrated, systematic
annihilation of more than 60% of a designated victim group
became paradigmatic for the entire de-Christianization of Asia
Minor. The genocide against the Ottoman Armenians undoubtedly
represents the benchmark for comparative studies of the Ottoman
genocide.
How do the Aramaic speakers fit into this framework? First,
any conclusions on this matter will be hampered by the fact that
there is significantly less contemporary testimonial literature, media
reporting, and subsequent research on the Sayfo than on the
genocides against the two larger ethno-religious Christian groups.
Brief and usually scattered mention of the plight of members of
Syriac churches is attested in primary sources, autobiographical
recollections, or other testimonies of the genocide against the
Armenians. Second, information cannot be found if searching only
under the key-words ‘(Syro)Arameans’ or ‘Assyrians’. Here, we
must realize that most of the currently used collective terms were
entirely unknown to non-Aramaic contemporaries, be they
European or Ottoman. Not only were the Aramaic speakers the
See Tessa Hofmann et al. (eds.) The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks;
Hofmann, ‘The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman
Period, 1912–1922’, pp. 43–67.
3

24

TESSA HOFMANN

quantitatively smallest victim group, but religiously they were also
the most fragmented, though they would commonly self-identify as
suryoye or suraya in Western and Eastern Aramaic respectively. In
difference to this, European contemporaries, 4 as well as Ottoman
authorities, did not perceive Aramaic speakers as a linguistic,
cultural or ethnic unit, but as members of individual
denominations. Thus, in German archival documents we must
search for the terms Syriacs (‘Syrer’), Jacobites, Syriac Catholics,
Nestorians, and Chaldeans in their various ways of spelling.
Moreover, tribal names such as the Church of the East Tyari
(German spelling: ‘Tiari’) tribe sometimes occur. For example, in
early May 1915, German Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim
reported to his government the ‘revolt of 2,000 well-armed Tyari’,
who allegedly raided Muslim villages simultaneously to the
Armenian uprising of Van. 5 Similarly, Ottoman official terminology
related to the traditional denominational millets. However, in the
context of deportation orders, even these were avoided and instead
replaced by evasive paraphrases; in the case of the Ottoman
Armenians, written deportation orders spoke merely of ‘suspect
persons’; the ethnonym ‘Armenian’ occurs nowhere.
In contemporary foreign terminology, ethnonyms and
denominations are confused all too often, though they intersect
only in part. The same goes for linguistic identities. Not all Aramaic
speakers were ethnic Arameans. In his memoirs of 1924, the
Venezuelan mercenary Rafael de Nogales noted the ‘village of
Kisham, whose inhabitants proved not to be Kurds, as we had first
With the significant exception of English speakers, who use the
term ‘Assyrians’ either as a collective noun for all members of Syriac
churches, or as a synonym for members of Eastern Syriac churches,
wrongly called ‘Nestorians’. As early as 1961, the Assyrian-American
historian John Joseph had pointed out the influence of Western
missionaries in constructing Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Chaldean identities
for Nestorians, who adhere to the Assyrian Church of the East, and
Chaldean Catholics, respectively.
5 http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/armgende.nsf/$$AllDoc
s/1915–05–08–DE-003; http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/arm
gende.nsf/$$AllDocs/1915–05–10–DE-001 (accessed 5.5.2016)
4

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

25

thought, but semi-nomadic Israelites who spoke a language halfKurd, half-Aramaic and who practice polygamy’. 6 Mark Levene
summarized the heterogeneous ethnicity of the Hakkari suraya as
follows: ‘Modern ethnographic wisdom considers the Hakkari
people to be of mixed Persian, Kurdish, Aramean and possibly
more ancient origins’. 7 Another distinct feature at least of the
Hakkari Syriacs would be their tribalism and a much lesser degree
of urbanization, in comparison to Armenians and Greeks of Asia
Minor.
In exploring the reasons for the state-induced destruction of
the Ottoman Christians, we must keep in mind that genocide
usually serves several aims. This multi-functionality applies in
particular to genocide committed in periods of war and/or social
and political transformation, as it was the case in the Ottoman
Empire. Today, most historians and scholars of genocide agree that
national state-building in the late Ottoman Empire constituted the
driving force behind demographic homogenization, In this process,
the Christian elements of the Ottoman Empire were perceived as
not adaptable to the future ‘Turkey of the Turks’. Interestingly, this
aim of Turkification was already understood by foreign observers,
such as the German teacher Dr. Martin Niepage at Aleppo:
The Young Turk has the European ideal of a united national
state always floating before his eyes. He hopes to turkify the
non-Turkish Mohammedan races – Kurds, Persians, Arabs,
and so on – by administrative methods and through Turkish
education. The Christian nations – Armenians, Syrians and
Greeks – alarm him by their cultural and economic superiority,
and he sees in their religion an obstacle to turkifying them by
peaceful means. They have, therefore, to be exterminated or
converted to Mohammedanism by force. 8

Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 97; the German edition of
1925 gives the language as ‘half Aramaic’ (‘halb aramäisches Idiom’),
whereas the English edition translates falsely ‘half-Armenian’.
7 Mark Levene, ‘A Moving Target’, p. 11.
8 Niepage The Horrors of Aleppo, Seen by a German Eyewitness, p. 20.
6

26

TESSA HOFMANN

In a similar vein, the Venezuelan mercenary Raphael de Nogales,
who fought on the side of the Ottoman forces and gained insight
into the massacres of Armenians and Syriacs in the provinces of
Van and Bitlis, concluded in his event-close recollections:
There can be no doubt that the massacres and deportations
took place in accordance with a carefully laid-out plan for
which the responsibility lay with the retrograde party, headed
by the Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha and the civil authorities
under his orders. They aimed to make an end first of the
Armenians, then of the Greeks and other Christians, Ottoman
subjects, in the Empire. We glean ample verification of this
from the massacres of Sairt, Djesiret, and the surrounding
districts, during which perished no less than two hundred
thousand Nestorian Christians, Syrio-Catholics, Jacobites etc.,
who had no connection whatever with the Armenians, and
who had always been the Sultan‘s loyal subjects. 9

The decision of the ruling nationalist Committee for Union and
Progress for genocidal schemes stemmed apparently from its earlier
experience of the Second Balkan War in 1913, when two types of
deportations had been applied against the Greek Orthodox
population of Eastern Thrace. Mere expulsion beyond the state
border into neighbouring Greece had been reversed when the
refugees and those expelled had returned to their homes. In
contrast to this post-war repatriation, genuine death marches into
the interior of Anatolia resulted in fatality rates of about 50%.
Adding to such criminal calculations was the demographic
equilibrium of Muslims against non-Muslims, reached by the late
19th century. A demographic situation near equilibrium seemed to
have incited Muslim elites to push matters towards a final solution.

9

Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 118.

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

27

Table 1: Minorization of Majorities: Non-Muslims in the
Ottoman Empire and Turkey (1820s–1920s) 10
Decade
1820s
1840s
1870s
1890s
1927
(First census of
the Turkish
Republic)
1935 (census)
2012 (estimate)

Percentage of Non-Muslims
in overall Ottoman
population (%)
68
63.9
57
52.5

Percentage of Muslims
in overall Ottoman
population (%)
32
36.1
43
47.5

2
0.1
0.1

The equilibrium of populations was not the result of natural
growth, but of war, expulsion, and the subsequent immigration of
up to seven million Muslim refugees 11 in the course of Russia’s
genocidal conquest of the North Caucasus and related areas since
the late 18th century, of the Russian-Ottoman War of 1877–8 and
the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Territorial losses, the
experience of killings, rape, and pillage of the non-combatant
Muslim population during these events, and also forced baptisms
‘aroused [among Ottoman Muslim elites] the feeling that in order
to avoid being exterminated the Turks must exterminate others’. 12
In particular the descendants of North Caucasian immigrants and
refugees from the Balkans were inclined to perceive Ottoman
Christians, and especially Armenians, as allies of their Russian
enemies. Subsequently, an above-average number of North
Caucasian and Balkan Muslims joined the death squadrons of the
6SHFLDO2UJDQL]DWLRQ2WWRPDQ7XUNLVK7HÿNLO¿W-ï0DVXVD. 13
Karpat, Ottoman Population, p.72, quoted from: Ergun Özbudun,
‘Turkey – Plural Society and Monolithic State,’ 2012, pp. 61–94.
11 Astourian ‘The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity
and Power’, p. 58.
12 Adivar, Memoirs, p. 333.
13 Hofmann, *HQRWVLG6DPR]DxăLWDLOL9R]PH]GLH", pp. 62–79.
10

28

TESSA HOFMANN

Another relevant component in the set of Ottoman motives
for genocide was religiously motivated envy, even hatred against
Christians. Such sentiments seem to emerge from the Muslim
traditional law system that in its turn is based on the institutions of
the dhimmi and jihad, as Jewish scholars in particular have
emphasized. In his autobiography, the historian and jurist Raphael
Lemkin, author of the UN Convention on the Punishment and
Prevention of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, characterized the
Armenian genocide as a ‘religious genocide’. 14 This has been
recently repeated by the US genocide scholar Norman Naimark,
who in April 2015 answered a question about possible racist motifs
in a newspaper interview:
No, racist motives played little role in the regime’s [the CUP;
TH] decision. Religion was important. Furthermore, the
Christians in the Ottoman Empire, including the Syriac
Christians and the Greeks have been identified by the
government as enemies. 15

In more detail the British Jewish scholar Bat Ye’or in her doctoral
thesis characterized the Armenian genocide as a jihad:
Although many Muslim Turks and Arabs disapproved of this
crime, and refused to participate, it must be noted: These
massacres were perpetrated solely by Muslims and they alone
profited from the booty – the possession of the victims, their
homes, their fields, which were left to the Muhajiroun [i.e.,
Muslim refugees; settlers], and the allocation of enslaved
women and children. The selection of the boys from the age of
twelve was in line with the rules of jihad – from that age the
jizya must be paid. The four stages of the liquidation –
deportation, enslavement, forced conversion, and massacre –
reflect the historical circumstances in which the jihad since the

14
15

Frieze Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, p. 141.
Wehner, ‘Das Wort Völkermord vermeiden ist töricht’.

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

29

7th century was conducted in the Dar ul-Harb 16 [‘the House of
War,’ i.e. Non-Muslim countries]. 17

In fairness, it must be mentioned that the Ottoman proclamation
of jihad on November 14th, 1914 had been instigated by German
policy, whose mastermind was the Oriental scholar, wartime
diplomat and archaeologist Max von Oppenheim, dubbed by
contemporaries Abu Jihad, ‘father of Jihad’. However, Oppenheim’s
imperialist plan to incite to insurgency the Muslim colonies of
Britain and France failed. Ottoman War Minister Enver used the
proclamation of jihad to inflate the religious hatred of Muslim
people inside and outside the Ottoman Empire against its alleged
‘internal enemies’, i.e. the indigenous Christians. 18 About a year
later Johannes Lepsius explained the Young Turkish concept of
jihad in a non-public lecture for journalists in the German capital
city: ‘The war is not a war of the believers versus the infidels, but
simply a Turkish war, albeit against all non-Turks.’ 19
Two further relevant motives for the Ottoman genocide
against Christians must be added. Like any genocide, but for the
Ottoman genocide in particular, this was an amply-used
opportunity for unpunished predatory murder. The above
mentioned anti-Christian boycotts and restrictions that had been
introduced in 1909 were directed mainly against the Greeks and
secondly against the Armenians, who until the Young Turkish coup
d’etat were the two millets most engaged into entrepreneurship and
commerce. Finally, the Armenians’ seemingly successful fight for
the implementation of administrative reforms, as enshrined in the
Berlin Treaty of 1878, provided an additional motive for the Young
In Islamic legal theory, humanity is divided into the ‘House of
Islam’ and the non-Muslim ‘House of War’. The relationship of both
spheres is hostile until the defeated non-Muslims are forced to submission
and pay the jizya tax.
17 Bat Ye’or, Der Niedergang des orientalischen Christentums unter dem
Islam, p. 221.
18 Bloxham The Great Game of Genocide, p. 132.
19 http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/armgende.nsf/$$AllDo
cs/1915–10–12–DE-001 (accessed 5.5.2016)
16

30

TESSA HOFMANN

Turks to finish off the Armenians once the Great War provided an
opportunity. 20
Most of the motives in question, namely religious hate,
suspicion of high treason, and revenge, are at least partly applicable
to the three typical situations in which the Suryoye or Suraya found
themselves.
1) Inside the Empire, the first massacre of Syriacs occurred as early
as November 1914. On October 30th, 1914, 71 men from Gavar in
the Van province had been arrested and were taken to the
adPLQLVWUDWLYH FHQWUH RI %DÿNDOH %DVKNDOODK 3DVKTDOD .XUGLVK
Elblak), where they were killed. As a consequence, the Catholicos
of the Church of the East, Mar Shimoun XXI Benyamin, declared
‘war against Turkey’ according to the decision of a great tribal
assembly, prompted by the advance of Ottoman forces and
Kurdish auxiliaries.
2) In the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, Christians were targeted
twice by Ottoman invaders, in January 1915 and again in January
1918. When the Turks learned about the withdrawal of Russian
forces from Iran in December 1914–January 1915, the 36th and
37th divisions of the Ottoman army occupied the Iranian
Northwest. During the subsequent occupation, both regular
Ottoman forces and irregular Kurdish units, together with some of
the Muslim natives, slaughtered the Assyrian and Armenian
populations in the plain of Lake Urmia, destroying 70 villages in
the course of five months. The director of the U.S. mission to
Urmia, Rev. William Shedd, emphasised that Turkish regular troops
participated in massacres. Previously, in November 1914, the
Russian forces had expelled Kurds and other Sunni Muslims from
villages near Urmia and had, at the same time, armed parts of the
See the opinion of the Armenophile German Protestant
missionary and theologian Dr. Johannes Lepsius, who mentioned the
‘Armenian reforms’ in his expert statement at the Berlin court trial of June
2nd, 1921 as a key motive for the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians:
Der Völkermord an den Armeniern vor Gericht: Der Prozess Talaat Pascha. 2.
Aufl. d. Ausg. Berlin 1921, hrsg. u. eingel. von Tessa Hofmann, 1980
(1985), p. 60.
20

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

31

Christian population. Shedd reported, ‘The Turks in response
expelled several thousand Christians from adjoining regions in
Turkey. These refugees were settled in the villages vacated by the
Sunni Moslems who had been expelled.’ 21 Shedd summarized the
motives and responsibility for these crimes against Christians:
There were various causes; jealousy of the greater prosperity of
the Christian population was one, and political animosity, race
hatred and religious fanaticism all had a part. There was a
definite and determined purpose and malice in the
conduct of Turkish officials. It is certainly safe to say that
a part of this outrage and ruin was directly due to the
Turks, and that none of it would have taken place except
for them. 22

Overall, during the winter of 1915, 4,000 Eastern Syriacs
(Assyrians) died from disease, hunger, and exposure, and about
1,000 more were killed in the completely undefended villages of the
Urmia region. Like the other Non-Muslim citizens of the Ottoman
Empire, the Assyrians both in the Ottoman Empire and in
occupied Iran were compelled into forced labour and then killed.
In February 1915, Cevdet, brother in-law of the Ottoman
Minister of War Enver, replaced his father, ‘the cunning and
plausible ostensibly philo-Armenian Hasan Tahsin’ 23 as governor of
the Van province, where he had already served since 1914 as
military governor. After being expelled from the province by the
advancing Russian army at the end of May 1915, Cevdet, together
with his 8,000 irregulars, fled southward, followed by general Halil,
Enver’s uncle with his defeated 5th Expeditionary Corps of 18,000
men. 24 When entering the district town of Siirt (Sahirt, Sa’irt, Seerd,
Srerd) in the Ottoman province of Bitlis, Cevdet and Halil
conducted, together with local Kurdish tribes, massacres in Siirt
and its vicinity that lasted for a month. There were about 60,000
Bryce, The Treatment of the Armenians, p. 100.
Ibid., p. 104; emphasis by Tessa Hofmann.
23 Walker, The Armenians: Survival of a Nation, p. 206.
24 http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1915/bryce/a04.html (accessed
5.5.2016)
21
22

32

TESSA HOFMANN

Christians (25,000 Armenians, 20,000 Syriac Orthodox, and 15,000
Chaldeans) in that district, Turkish: sancak. Rafael de Nogales, who
was under Halil’s command, became a witness of the massacre of
June 18th, 1915 in Siirt and visited other places immediately after
massacres had been committed there. Of the Siirt massacre he
wrote, that:
Among the least edifying pictures which I was forced to
witness with a smile on my lips was that of a procession
headed by a picket of gendarmes which led along a venerable
old man. His black tunic and purple cap clearly indicated that
he was a Nestorian Bishop. Blood-drops trickled over his
brow, and flowed down his cheeks like scarlet tears of
martyrdom. As he passed us, he fixed his gaze upon me in a
long look as if divining that I was a Christian, too. But he kept
on toward that ghastly hill beyond. When he reached it, he
stood with folded arms among his flock who had preceded
him on along the road to death, until he too fell under the
irons of his assassins. Soon afterwards another mob appeared,
dragging along the corpses of several children and old men,
whose heads bumped along the cobblestones, while passers-by
spat upon them and sped them on their way with curses. 25

About 70,000 Ottoman Eastern Syriacs escaped from the border
regions of the Ottoman Empire into neighbouring Iran, from
where a part of the people was deported by their Russian allies into
the Caucasus. Those remaining fled towards Hamadan, under
tremendous losses of lives due to continuing Kurdish attacks, in
order to seek shelter under the rule of the British. By mid-1918,
commanders of the British Army had convinced the Ottomans to
let them have access to about 30,000 Assyrians from various parts
of Iran. The British decided to deport all remaining 30,000
Assyrians from Iran to Baquba (Iraq). Although the transfer took
just 25 days, at least 7,000 of the deportees died en route. Two
thousand more perished during the following two years in the
miserable camps at Baquba, which were closed by the British in
25

Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 109f.

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

33

1920. The majority of surviving Suraya decided to return to their
homeland in the Hakkari Mountains, while the rest were dispersed
throughout Iraq. Repatriation to Hakkari never materialized due to
the heavy resistance of the Kurds.
  7KH JHQRFLGDO VLWXDWLRQ RI 6\ULDFV LQ 'L\DUEDNïU SURYLQFH
differed largely from that of Eastern Syriacs in Ottoman occupied
Iran or in the Ottoman provinces of Van and Bitlis where they
became victims of military and civilian revenge killings. While
Syriacs were, at least in the Hakkari district, independent political
and military players to a certain degree, challenging the Ottoman
government with a declaration of war and their pro-Russian
alliance, in the Diyarbakir province they became collateral victims
of the genocide against the Armenians. In this province were
situated ancient centres of Western Syriac culture and spirituality.
Aramaic-speaking Christians suffered there alongside the Armenian
population, being ‘subsidiary victims’, as Mark Levene has coined
this spill-over effect of the genocide against the Armenians. It did
not escape the attention of German diplomats, that under vali Dr
5HÿLGþDKLQJLUD\WKHHOLPLQDWLRQRIWKH$UPHQLDQVH[SDQGHGLQWRD
general destruction of Christians. Vice Consul Walter Holstein
reported on 13 June 1915 from Mossul:
[…] In the districts of Mardin and Amadia the situation has
evolved into a real Christian persecution. For the government
must surely be held responsible: apparently the Christians here
are outlawed; one of many cases would be the one of the old
and revered Chaldean Patriarch – I have just come back from
visiting him – who was summoned without reason to the war
tribunal by an ordinary policeman. From the side of the
government 26 this is a tasteless provocation of Christendom
today.

The word ‘government’ (Regierung) in German diplomatic
correspondence from the Ottoman Empire relates not only to the central
government in Constantinople, but in this and many other cases also to
local or regional authorities.
26

34

TESSA HOFMANN
A government like the one today, whose civil servants frequent
the lowest females and who direct the execution of their office
after the wishes of whores, should not provoke like that at this
moment.
Soon we will see the most violent uproars everywhere, if the
central government does not change its program of Christen
persecution. The massacres on the Armenians should be ended
immediately. 27

9LFH &RQVXO +ROVWHLQ GHPDQGHG 5HÿLGpV LPPHGLDWH LPSHDFKPHQW
As a result of German diplomatic protest the Minister of the
,QWHULRU 7DODDW UHSULPDQGHG 5HÿLG LQ KLV WHOHJUDP RI -XO\ th,
1915 not to apply the ‘penalties’, Turkish: tedabir-i inzibatiye, on
Christians other than Armenians, because such an inclusion could
be ‘harmful to the country’. 28 Several scholars inferred from this
telegram that the inclusion of Aramaic-speaking Christians
UHPDLQHG OLPLWHG WR WKH 'L\DUEDNïU SURYLQFH +RZHYHU VXFK DQ
DVVXPSWLRQGRHVQRWVWDQGXSWRVFUXWLQ\5HÿLGQRWRQO\UHPDLQHG
in office, but allowed massacres and deportations of Christians to
continue far into September 1915. 29 Furthermore, the inclusion of
other Christian denominations into the Armenian genocide was not
limited to the province of Diyarbakir. US Consul Leslie Davis
reported on a general deportation order from the province of
Mamüret-ül-Aziz, or Harput: ‘On Saturday, June 28th [1915], it was
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PA/AA), File
Botschaft Konstantinopel, 169.
http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/armgende.nsf/$$AllDocs/1915
–06–13–DE-011 (accessed 5.5.2016)
28 Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Dr Mehmed Reshid (1873–1919): A Political
Doctor’, p. 267.
29 Cf. the report of special envoy Hohenlohe-Langenburg, based on
Holstein’s information, of September 11th, 1915 about the massacre of the
approximately 5,000 Christian residents of Cizre, in early September 1915.
Among the victims were 250 Chaldeans and 100 Syriac Orthodox
Christians:
http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/armgende.nsf/$$AllDocs
/1915–09–11–DE-011 (accessed 5.5.2016)
27

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

35

publicly announced that all Armenians and Syrians were to leave
after five days’. 30
In conclusion, the initial question on the singularity of the
Sayfo may be answered in the following way: Whereas the
destruction of the suraya in occupied Iranian Azerbaijan and then in
the Ottoman provinces of Van and Bitlis appears as a typical
wartime and retributive genocide, the destruction of the Suryoye in
tKHSURYLQFHVRI'L\DUEDNïUDQG0DPXUHW-ül-Aziz (Harput) was an
integral part of the genocide directed against the Ottoman
Armenians. Nevertheless, whether Aramaic-speaking Christians –
Syriacs, Assyrians, Chaldeans – became primary or subsidiary
victims of Ottoman massacres and deportations does not matter
for their descendants, who mourn up to 500,000 victims. 31
Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province, p. 144.
While the estimated total of Aramaic-speaking Christians in
Ottoman and Iranian territories differs by a factor of two, between
600,000 and 1,000,000, estimates of the death toll varies by a factor of
five, between 100,000 and 500,000; again, there exists ambiguity due to
diverging terminology. For example, it is not always evident whether
estimates refer to all Syriac denominations when mentioning ‘AssyroChaldeans’. Furthermore, the discrepancy in the estimates may be
explained by divergent concepts of victimhood. Whereas early estimates
usually refer only to victims of direct killings: ‘massacres’, ‘slaughters’, etc.,
later estimates include also victims of indirect physical extermination due
to starvation and disease, as given in Article IIc of the United Nations’
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(1948). For an overview of the diverging estimates see Martin Tamcke,
‘Der Genozid an den Assyrern/Nestorianern (Ostsyrische Christen)’, pp.
110–112. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Assyrian-Chaldean
Delegation gave a medium estimated death toll of 250,000 (Tamcke, p.
111). In his doctoral thesis of 1985, Joseph Yacoub assumed that 275,000
‘Assyro-Chaldeans’ perished between 1914–1918; cf. Hannibal Travis,
Genocide in the Middle East, pp. 237–77, 293–294; David Gaunt, Massacres,
Resistance, Protectors, pp. 21–28, 300–3, 406, 435. At present, various
Assyrian NGOs claim a death toll of half a million ‘Assyrians’; for
example, an estimate of 500,000 survivors out of a total population of one
million is given on the site ‘Der Völkermord an den Assyrern’ by
‘Bethnarin’:
30
31

36

TESSA HOFMANN

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adivar, Halide Edip. Memoirs. (New Jersey: Gorgias Press,
[London, 1926] 2005).
Astourian, Stephan H. ‘The Silence of the Land: Agrarian
Relations, Ethnicity and Power’. In: Ronald Grigor Suny,
Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman N Naimark, (eds.) A
Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the
Ottoman Empire. (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press,
2011), pp. 55–81.

http://bethnahrin.de/assyrer/voelkermord-an-den-assyrern/;
see also, the website ‘Christen im Nordirak und Tur-Abdin’:
http://nordirak-turabdin.de/2015/04/20/volkermord-an-den-armeniernartikel-16–04–2015/). Both online sources were accessed on 5.5.2016.
According to US demographer Rudolph Rummel, ‘from 1900 to
1923, various Turkish regimes killed from 3,500,000 to over 4,300,000
Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians’ (Rummel, 1997,
p.78). Rummel gives a medium estimate of 47,000 Nestorians, killed in
‘Turkey’s foreign genocide’ during the Ottoman occupation of Iran in
1915 and 1918 (p. 93, lines 234–241); in addition, perhaps one-fifth of the
Christian victims killed by Ottoman/Turkish forces in the South Caucasus
during 1918 and 1920 were Nestorians (p. 82). In his memorandum of
April 2nd, 1920, the Syriac-Orthodox archbishop of Syria Aphrem
Barsoum presented the losses of the ‘Syrian (church) nation (Jacobites)’ to
the Paris Peace Conference and gave in Annex 2 a figure of 90,212
‘massacred souls’; however, this death toll does not include Syriacs who
had died from starvation and diseases. See also Sébastian de Courtois, The
Forgotten Genocide, p. 336. In his doctoral thesis, S. de Courtois presents the
two main sources for assessment of Syriac Orthodox victims on
SURYLQFLDODQGGLVWULFWOHYHOVLHWKH2WWRPDQSURYLQFHRI'L\DUEDNïUDQG
the district of Mardin, in his chapter, ‘Contrasting the Assessments’, (pp.
194–200). This includes a table of vulnerability of the various
denominations, as suggested by the French Catholic Father Jacques
Rhétoré (p. 198).

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

37

Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman). Der Niedergang des orientalischen
Christentums unter dem Islam; 7.-20. Jahrhundert. (Grafeling:
Resch-Verlag, 2002).
Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism,
Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. (New
York: Oxford, 2005).
Bryce, James (ed.). The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire 1915–16. 2nd ed. (Beirut : G. Doniguian & Sons, 1972).
Courtois, Sébastian de. The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the
Last Arameans. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004).
Davis, Leslie A. The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s
Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917 (ed. by S.K. Blair).
(New Rochelle, New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989).
Frieze, Donna-Lee (ed.). Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of
Raphael Lemkin. (New Haven; London: Yale University Press,
2011).
Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian
relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. (Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2006).
Hofmann, Tessa, Matthias Bjørnlund, and Vasileios Meichanetsidis
(eds.). The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the StateSponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor,
1912–1922 and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory. (New York:
Melissa International Ltd., 2011).
Hofmann, Tessa (ed.). Der Völkermord an den Armeniern vor Gericht:
Der Prozess Talaat Pascha. 2. Aufl. d. Ausg. Berlin, 1921. 2nd
edition of Berlin 1921 (Göttingen, Wien: Gesellschaft für
bedrohte Völker, 1980).
––––––– ‘The Genocide against the Christians in the Late
Ottoman Period, 1912–1922.’ In: George N. Shirinian (ed.),
The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide.
(Bloomsdale, Ill.: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic
Research Center, 2012), pp. 43–67.
––––––– *HQRWVLG 6DPR]DxăLWD LOL YR]PH]GLH" 2S\W YRMQ\ L L]JQDQLMD
musul’man do Pervoj mirovoj vojny [Genocide: Self-Defence or
Revenge? The Experience of War and the Expulsion of
Muslims before the First World War]. Bibleysko-Bogoslovskiy

38

TESSA HOFMANN

Institut sv. Apostola Andreja. Tom 19, Vypusk 1. (Moskva:
Stranitsy, 2015), pp. 62–79.
Karpat, Kemal H. Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and
Social Characteristics. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1985).
Kévorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History.
(New York: Tauris, 2011).
Kieser, Hans-Lukas. ‘Dr Mehmed Reshid (1873–1919): A Political
Doctor.’ In: Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller
(eds.), Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah – The
Armenian Genocide and the Shoah. (Zürich: Chronos, 2002), pp.
245–280.
Levene, Mark. ‘A Moving Target, the Usual Suspects and (Maybe) a
Smoking Gun: the problem of Pinning Blame in Modern
Genocide.’ Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 33, No. 4 (1999), pp. 3–24.
Niepage, Martin. The Horrors of Aleppo, Seen by a German Eyewitness.
(London: Adelphi Terrace, 1917).
de Nogales, Rafael. Four Years Beneath the Crescent. Translated from
the Spanish by Muna Lee. (London: Charles Schribner’s Sons,
[1926] 2003).
Özbudun, Ergun. ‘Turkey – Plural Society and Monolithic State.’ In
Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan (eds.), Democracy, Islam, and
Secularism in Turkey. (New York: Columbia University Press,
2012), pp. 61–94.
Rummel, Rudolph. Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder
since 1900. (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1997).
Tamcke, Martin. ‘Der Genozid an den Assyrern/Nestorianern
(Ostsyrische Christen).’ In Tessa Hofmann (ed.), Verfolgung,
Vertreibung und Vernichtung der Christen im Osmanischen Reich
1912–1922; 2nd ed. (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), pp. 103–118.
Travis, Hannibal, Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire,
Iraq, and Sudan. (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press,
2010).
Walker, Christopher. The Armenians: Survival of a Nation. (London:
St. Martin’s Press, 1980).

1. THE OTTOMAN GENOCIDE OF 1914–1918

39

Wehner, Markus. ‘Das Wort Völkermord zu vermeiden ist töricht –
Norman Naimark im Gespräch’. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
April 23rd, 2015.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/aus
land/asien/norman-naimark-im-interview-ueber-voelker
mord-in-armenien-13546077.html
Yacoub, Joseph. La Question Assyro-Chaldéenne, les Puissances
Européennes et la SDN (1908–1938). 4 vols. (Thèse Lyon, 1985).

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS DURING
THE CHRISTIAN HOLOCAUST IN
OTTOMAN TURKEY
THEA HALO
Were the Assyrians simply caught up in the attack on the
Armenians due to their often close proximity to Armenian
communities in Asia Minor? Or were they specifically targeted?
Until recently, it was rare, if not impossible, to read or hear about
the Ottoman genocide of Assyrians 1 in Anatolia. 2 Decades after the
genocide, any historical mention of the Assyrians concentrated on
their extraordinary conquests in ancient times, their empire and its
subsequent fall, and their contributions to art, architecture, science,
and law. In the New York Supreme Court rotunda, the Assyrians
are depicted among the great civilizations of lawgivers. Yet during
most of my own lifetime, I have been corrected many times, even
by teachers, if I referred to myself, or my father, as Assyrian. And
it’s no wonder: decades after the Assyrian massacres,
‘Assyrian’ or ‘Assyro/Chaldean’ is often used as an umbrella term
to denote numerous peoples with closely related ethnic and Christian
identities. Here, the term Assyrian is used to include (Catholic) Chaldeans,
Syriacs, (Chalcedonian Orthodox) Syrians, Nestorians, Jacobites, and
Arameans, unless the document cited specifically names the
denomination.
2 ‘Anatolia’ meaning ‘eastern (land),’ where the sun rises, is a term
used by the ancient Greeks to define Asia Minor, present day Turkey. The
term is still used in Turkey today. [ŸÌÇÂţÝ wurde als Ortsname erst im
Mittelalter attestiert. Die Griechen der Antike nannte das Festland der
heutigen Tuerkei ÊţÝ, in der Spätantike ÷ ÄĘÁÉÛ ÊţÝ.]
1

41

42

THEA HALO

displacements, and death marches that took place during the final
years of the Ottoman Empire, the Assyrians ceased to be
mentioned – except in the context of ancient history – which
apparently gave the impression that the Assyrians had ceased to
exist.
The atrocities committed in the Ottoman Empire between
1914–1923 became known exclusively as the Armenian Genocide.
For the greater public, they are still known by that narrow
definition. Except perhaps in their own communities, Greeks and
Assyrians who had suffered the same fate as the Armenians under
Ottoman rule, during the same period, were rarely included in
scholarly papers, or were relegated to the ‘also mentioned’ category
of Ottoman citizens who suffered.
In what can be described as a virtual ‘final solution,’ one
account of the period by historian and past president of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Robert
Melson, writing in 1987 and again in 1992 on the Armenian
Genocide, went so far as to deny the very existence of Assyrians
and Greeks in Anatolia during the genocidal period when he wrote:
‘The Greeks and then the Balkan Christians had seceded, leaving
the Armenians as the last of the great Christian minorities still
under Ottoman rule’. 3 As if to drive the message home, versions of
this erroneous claim were repeated three times in Melson’s 16-page
paper, thereby effectively wiping away four millennia of Assyrian
and Greek presence in Asia Minor. With such misrepresentations
by a noted scholar who teaches the Armenian Genocide, it should
come as no surprise that young scholars might come away believing
that, as the only ‘Christian minorities still under Ottoman rule’, the
Armenians were the only victims of the genocide. At one IAGS
conference in 2003, two young scholars giving papers on the
Ottomans and the Armenian Genocide admitted during Q&A that
they had not realized Assyrians and Greeks existed in Asia Minor at
the time.

Melson, ‘Provocation and Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the
Armenian Genocide of 1915’, p. 72. Also see Melson’s, Revolution and
Genocide, p. 161.
3

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

43

In fact, the erasure of Assyrians from the record began almost
immediately by Lord Bryce when he changed the title of a report
compiled from eyewitness accounts from: Papers and Documents on
the Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by the Turks, 1915–
1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia, to The Treatment of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–16. 4 Although the Assyrian
accounts remained in the document, their removal from the title
leaves the impression that their treatment was incidental to the
genocide of the Armenians.
News articles at the time, eyewitness reports, and research in
the Ottoman archives have revealed that all Assyrian groups,
including Nestorians, Chaldeans, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac
Catholics, were affected. As one ciphered telegram from the
Ministry of the Interior to the province of Van shows, as early as
October 26, 1914, months before attacks on Armenians, the
Nestorians along the border with Persia were targeted. 5 Although
Persia, today’s Iran, was neutral during the war, neither the
Ottomans nor Russia honored her neutrality. Both governments
hoped to annex Persia’s Urmia region to their own territories. The
document, posted and translated by Racho Donef, states in part:
The position of the Nestorians have [sic] always remained
doubtful for the government [due to] their predisposition to be
influenced by foreigners and become a channel and an
instrument. Because of the operation and efforts in Iran, the
consideration of the Nestorians for the government have
increased. Especially those … found at our border area with
Iran, due to the government’s lack of trust of them resulting in
punishment … their deportation and expulsion…to

Compiled by Arnold Toynbee and originally titled: Papers and
Documents on the Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by the Turks,
1915–1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia; London 1916,
Foreign Office Archives, 3 Class 96, Miscellaneous, Series II, six files, FO
96*205–210. Also reported in the British government’s Blue Book.
5 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors. p. 447. From a ciphered
telegram of the Ministry of the Interior to the Province of Van. Private:
104
4

44

THEA HALO
appropriate provinces such as Ankara and Konya, to be
transferred in dispersed manner so that henceforth they will
not be together in a mass …with the proviso that the
government will not undertake to provide any type of
support… 6

The wording of this telegram, which does not mention massacres,
only ‘deportation and expulsion’, with a clear message that the
administration feared disloyalty, may be seen by some as relatively
benign, and the measures taken justified, in that fear required
extreme measures. However, it would be naïve to conclude that the
motives of the Young Turks were benign. A study of the entire
genocidal period, 1913–1923, reveals a pattern of abuse leading to
an escalation of violence against all the Christian communities in
Anatolia and Thrace, in a kind of a ‘learn as you go’ genocide.
Beginning in 1913, after the Balkan Wars, Thracian Greeks
were raped, robbed, and even murdered, forcing them to abandon
their homes and belongs. Beginning in the spring of 1914, again
claiming security concerns, Anatolian Greek families were driven
from their homes and villages and denied support for their
survival. Thousands of Anatolian Greek men were drafted into the
dreaded labour battalions, where tens of thousands were worked
and/or starved to death, or died from exposure. US Ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau, Sr. reported that the
Young Turks were so successful against the Greeks, they decided
to target the other Christian ‘races’, as Morganthau called them: the
Armenians and Assyrians. 7 Deportation and induction into labor
camps in the wartime period, was later extended to the Assyrians,
Armenians, and Pontic Greeks. ‘Some 250,000 serving in the Labor
Battalions, … perished from hunger and deprivation’ in the
wartime period alone. 8 Some were simply murdered. 9
BOA.DAHýLýYE þýFRE KALEMý Nu: 46/78, Babiali, Ministry
of the Interior Office of the Directorate of Public Security General …
Private: Number: 104, Ciphered Telegram to the Province of Van. 26
October 1914. Posted and translated by Dr Racho Donef.
7 Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, p. 323.
8 Akçam, A Shameful Act. p. 251.
6

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

45

Perhaps emboldened by a lack of consequences from abroad
when the Greeks of Phocea were massacred in June of 1914, by
1915 attacks on Assyrians and Armenians also turned violent. On
March 10th, 1915, Russian undersecretary of foreign affairs Pavel
Vvedenski found
the remains for the adult Christian male population of an
entire district. … hundreds of corpses [were] lying exposed
everywhere. All … were mutilated … most had been
decapitated. … The vice-commander of Russia’s First
Caucasus Army, K. Matikyan, counted the corpses and came
up with a total of 707 Armenians and Syriacs (or Aisori as he
called them) who had been murdered by Ottoman soldiers and
Kurdish volunteers on the orders of the Kaymakam [governor
of province]. 10

On April 29, 1915, the New York Times also reported massacres
of Nestorians:
More than 800 native Christians have been massacred by
Kurds, and not less than 2,000 have died of disease at Urmiah,
Persia, … Dr. W. S. Vanneman, head of the Presbyterian
Mission Hospital at Tabriz, who is the Chairman of the relief
committee appointed by the American Consul…wrote: ‘About
10 days ago the Kurds in Salmas, with the permission of the
Turkish troops, gathered all the Nestorians and Armenian men
remaining there. … They were held for a few days and then all
of them tortured and massacred. Many of the women and
children were taken away and maltreated. … 11

As with earlier Young Turk tactics in the Balkans against Greeks
and Bulgarians, leaders in the Christian communities were targeted
first. Priests and bishops were particularly targeted. The New York
Times goes on to report:
Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 67.
Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors. p. 81.
11 Aprim, Assyrians, p. 384. Quote is from The New York Times. April
29, 1915. Headline: Says Turks aided recent massacres. Troops allowed Kurds to
kill Hundreds, American Missionary Reports.
9

10

46

THEA HALO
Fifty-one of the most prominent men of this village were taken
out at night to the cemetery and shot. The women and girls
who could not escape were violated. This was done by the
Turkish soldiers. … It is practically the extermination of the
Syrians (Nestorians) and very bad for the Armenians also. The
only hope is occupation by Russia. 12

In July 1915, Assyrians of Mardin, my father’s town, were attacked.
In 1915, the Assyrians in the vilayet (province) of Diyarbekir
numbered more than 102,000. Between 1915 and 1916, almost
86,000 of that population had ‘disappeared’. Of the 72,500
Armenians of the Diyarbakir vilayet, 68,500 had ‘disappeared’. 13
Fearing to enter the prosperous walled city of Diyarbakir, the
vali, Rashid Bey and his men had devised a scheme to separate the
influential men and heads of big families by inviting them to meet
the vali. Around 700 of these notables were then arrested and
imprisoned. Witnesses saw groups of notables being taken out in
boats on the Tigris River, robbed of their gold and even their
clothing, then shot and thrown overboard. 14 This Ottoman tactic
of first inviting prominent leaders to talk had also previously been
used against notable Serbs and Bulgarians in the Balkans. 15
The accounts of clergy who were killed give an idea of the
immense and systematic devastation the Assyrian and Armenian
communities and their leaders suffered. Of the 96,000 Jacobites
who disappeared in these districts, which included the vilayet of
Diyarbekir, it was reported that hundreds of priests and bishops
were murdered and 111 churches or monasteries were occupied
and destroyed by the Kurds. 16 Reports of priests being crucified
and burned alive were numerous. In Siirt, where thousands of
Assyrians were massacred, tens of thousands of books from the
The New York Times. Says Turks aided recent massacres. Troops allowed
Kurds to kill Hundreds, American Missionary Reports, April 29, 1915.
13 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, pp. 433–434.
14 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 399.
15 Reid, ‘Batak 1876: A Massacre and its Significance’, p. 396. Also
see: Seton-Watson, The Rise of Nationality in The Balkans, p. 38.
16 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, pp. 435–436.
12

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

47

library and archives of the church, once an ancient Nestorian
monastery, were deliberately destroyed. Some of the books, written
in Classical Syriac and Chaldean were rescued, which allow us to
see the quality and content of this loss. 17 A survivor from Siirt,
who was ten years old at the time of the massacres, gave the
following account to Isho’ Qasjo-Malke in November 1993:
In Siirt, the government began by gathering men. … When
they failed to return to the village, we knew that the men of the
village had been killed. After a while, the killings occurred
openly, and we started to hear that we ought to leave the
village. Groups and groups of Christians were expelled. The
old woman said that she was expelled in a group led by some
Kurds. …Thirsty and hungry they stayed on top of a
mountain. The Kurds asked the women in the group if they
knew where the supplies were kept in the [Chaldean] Sayr-Salib
Church. … Two Kurds, two women, and I went to fetch
supplies. …A Kurd kicked the door open … They ate and
took food to the others. A Kurd saw a door leading to larger
rooms full of old books. It was the Church library [and
archive]. … They told the women to take the books and put
them in the churchyard. They set the pile of books on fire and
took children from their mothers and threw them into the fire
while the women wailed and screamed. Those who tried to flee
were shot down and devoured by the ferocious fire. When the
Kurds ran out of bullets, they started killing us with daggers
until they became very tired and couldn’t kill any more. So they
left us to die slowly. I was thrown into the fire, but I survived.
The books that we took out were more than twenty or thirty
thousand books. 18

The New York Times had been reporting on the massacres of
both Armenians and Assyrians in Eastern Anatolia at least since
1915. In November 1916, however, The New York Times
published the following report, in an apparent effort to combat the

17
18

Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 396.
Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 396.

48

THEA HALO

impression that the Armenians were the only victims of the
genocide that was taking place:
The Armenians are not the only unfortunates; the Syrians also
have been decimated. There are many varieties of Syrian
Christians. Some lived near the Persian border and in ancient
Assyria, and are known as Nestorians, or Assyrian Christians.
Some of these living north of Mosul have been massacred. The
Nestorian Highlanders, who, according to figures I
communicate from a pamphlet now in press, claimed before
the war to number 90,000, had to fight their way out to Persia
in the Autumn of 1915. Our committee fed during November
and December, 1915, no less than 30,000 of these refugees
from Turkey, in addition to an equal number of destitute
Christians whose homes were on the Persian side of the
boundary. … Before the war there were from 160,000 to
200,000 Syrian Christians (inclusive of Nestorians, Roman
Catholic Uniats, Protestants, and some scattered communities
of Jacobites) living in the Tigris region, exclusive of Diarbekir,
in the Highlands of Kurdistan, and in Northwestern Persia,
[note: the province of Adarbaijan.] Great numbers have
perished, but no one knows how many. During the Turkish
occupation of Urmia (January 2nd – May 20th, 1915) 4,000
died of want and of epidemics in that town, and 1,000 were
killed in outlying villages. That is the outstanding item in the
long roll of death in Persia. 19

Throughout eastern Anatolia and northwestern Persia, Assyrians
and Armenians were massacred or sent on death marches to
expulsion. Murdered victims were often thrown into the village
wells, which insured that the drinking water would be poisoned.
A ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the
governors of the provinces of Bitlis, dated October 30th, 1915,
gives permission for the settlement of immigrants – most likely
Muslim from the Balkans – in villages around Mardin, Midyat, and
The New York Times, Current History Magazine, New York,
November 1916. http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt191611b.html (accessed 1.6.2017)
19

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

49

Diyarbekir. The telegram uses the word ‘deserted’ to describe the
condition of the villages, which had undoubtedly been populated
by Assyrians and Armenians who were massacred or ‘deported’. 20
The London Times reported that, in Urmia, 150 Christian
Nestorian villages had been completely plundered and burned to
ashes by Turks and Kurds. Women and girls were carried off by
Persians. Their homes and property were almost all taken away by
neighbours. 21
The massacre of Assyrians and Armenians would continue in
1916, as would the massacres and death marches of Pontic Greeks
and other Anatolian Greeks. The final assault on Christians was by
Mustafa Kemal’s army in September 1922 in the ancient city of
Smyrna, much of which Kemal’s army burned to the ground.
While it is important to examine each case in depth, it
becomes evident that it is also important to look at the whole
picture if we are to understand the methods and reasoning used for
the genocide. Just as focusing solely on the Armenians has
distorted the public’s understanding of the period and the full
extent of the genocide, focusing solely on Assyrians may leave us
with the uneasy notion that the Assyrians must have done
something to warrant such wrath. In fact, accusations of treason
and of plotting revolt were used against Assyrians and Armenians
to encourage neighbours, some of whom had once protected the
Christians, to turn on them during ‘the year of the Sword’ (Sayfo).
However, even if we concede that there were those in the Assyrian
and Armenian communities who aroused the ire of the Young
Turks by fighting to protect their communities or, more drastically,
fighting for independence to end the centuries old Ottoman
subjugation, the question would remain: Could the Assyrians have
avoided their annihilation had they not entered into any kind of
activity deemed to be subversive? And were accusations of treason
the only motivations used by the Young Turks to pit formerly
friendly Muslims against their Christian neighbours? Again, a look
at the entire period gives an insight into the answers to those
questions, and the motives for genocide.
20
21

Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 449.
The London Times. October 9th, 1915.

50

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Soon after the inspirational speeches by Young Turks in
Salonica’s 22 Liberty Square in 1908, and the restoration of the
constitution, the Young Turks abandoned their professed ‘under
one blue sky’ policy of ‘Liberty, Fraternity, Equality’ for a more
onerous, nationalistic policy that would become ‘Turkey for the
Turks’. Terming it an ‘Ottomanization’ policy, the Young Turks
developed a plan to ‘Turkify’ the multi-ethnic elements, or as
British ambassador to the Porte Gerald Lowther expressed it,
‘pounding the non-Turkish elements in a Turkish mortar’. 23
As early as June 24, 1909, German Ambassador Hans Freiherr
von Wangenheim reported that the Young Turks had already
decided to ‘wage a war of extermination against the Christians of
the Empire’. 24 At a ‘secret conclave’ at Salonica in 1910, Talaat Bey
(later Talaat Pasha) and Finance Minister Cavit Bey gave speeches
concerning the ‘Ottomanization’ of the Christian populations,
during which a vote was taken to opt for either ‘deportation’ or
‘massacre’. Austrian, French, and British observers reached similar
conclusions, that recourse to violence was most likely if ‘peaceful
efforts to achieve the unity of Turkey (met) with failure’. 25
As to allegations of Assyrian treason, a number of honourable
Muslim officials in Mardin and elsewhere refused to endorse those
accusations. 26 Some others, though reluctant at first, succumbed to
entreaties, or perhaps succumbed to threats and anti-Christian
propaganda, to join in the massacres.
U.S. Consul General George Horton, who was stationed at
Smyrna from 1911 to 1917 and again from May 1919 to September
1922, reported that in the spring of 1914, the Aegean Coast Greeks
were demonized to induce the Turkish population to destroy them.
Horton wrote:
Today Salonica is known by its original name of Thessaloniki.
Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey, p. 33.
24 Kaiserlich Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bonn PAAA, Turkei Nr. 168,
Bd. 6, f. Bd. 7. 24/6/1909. No. 48, A. 10963. Wangenheim zu Seiner
Durchlaucht Dem Herrn Reichskanzler Fürsten von Bülow. p. 54.
25 Akçam, A Shameful Act. p. 76.
26 Gaunt, ‘The View from the Roofs of Mardin: What Everyone Saw
in the ‘Year of the Sword’.
22
23

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

51

[V]iolent and inflammatory articles in the Turkish newspapers
appeared unexpectedly and without any cause … so evidently
‘inspired’ by the authorities … Cheap lithographs … executed
in the clumsiest and most primitive manner … represented
Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant
Moslem women, and various purely imaginary scenes, founded
on no actual events or even accusations elsewhere made. These
were hung in the mosques and schools. … and set the Turk to
killing…. 27

If we compare an account of the actual killing of Assyrians with the
above-mentioned propaganda against the Anatolian Greeks, we see
a striking similarity.
… pregnant women had their bellies slit open and babies taken
out to be crushed like grapes under the feet of
soldiers…soldiers raped pretty girls and women in front of
their families. 28

As many in the general public were poor and illiterate, permission
to loot certainly played a role in inducing some to take part in the
massacres of Christians. The Young Turk regime’s confiscation of
Christian properties and wealth for their own aggrandizement also
played a role in Young Turk decisions. That doesn’t answer the
more fundamental question, however, of why the regime resorted
to genocide.
In today’s Islamophobic atmosphere, there are those who
blame religious extremism for the genocide of the Christian
populations. In fact, Moise Cohen (aka Tekin Alp) (1883–1961), an
ideologue from Salonica, who was one of the founders of Turkish
Nationalism, and a proponent of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Turanism,
candidly admitted that religion was used as a tool to draw in the
masses. He wrote:
They [the Young Turks] realised only too clearly that the still
abstract ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract
Horton, Blight of Asia, Chapter V, ‘Persecution of Christians in
Smyrna District (1911–1914)’.
28 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 398.
27

52

THEA HALO
the masses, the lower classes, composed of uneducated and
illiterate people. It was found more expedient to reach these
classes under the flag of religion. 29

However, it was clear to the Young Turks that Islam in its
practiced form could not serve their purposes. The Islam of the
Arabs, which had been adopted by the Turks, could not satisfy the
political agenda of the Young Turks, ‘because’, Tekin Alp
explained, ‘it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no
nationalities, but only Believers’. Tekin Alp, who later also became
known as a Kemalist ideologue, added, ‘Although the Nationalists
proclaim themselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed, …
They maintain that the Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the
same manner as the Arabs…. Their idea of God is also different.’ 30
In essence, the Young Turks had to reinterpret Islam, and
perhaps even fashion their own god to support their genocidal
agenda. Therefore, although religion was also used to induce the
uneducated masses to join in the Young Turk plan, that all too easy
answer misses the point. The failure of the Ottoman government
to educate its Muslim citizens also had other repercussions. Rather
than religious zeal, Horton and others believed there were deeper,
more political motives for the destruction of the Christian
communities. Horton observed that had the Young Turks kept
their campaign promise of a truly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic
federation, the worker bees [the Christians] would have taken over
the hive, and the Young Turks knew it. Horton wrote:
… Christians would speedily have outstripped the Ottomans,
who would soon have found themselves in a subordinate
position commercially, industrially and economically. It was

Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, Constantinople,
Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division (I.D. 1153). p. 22. Qatar Digital
Library.
30 Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, p. 16 & 17.
29

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

53

this knowledge which caused the Turks to resolve upon the
extermination of the Christians. 31

Dr Martin Niepage, a German teacher at the German Technical
School in Aleppo seemed to agree. He observed:
The Christian nations – Armenians, Syrians and Greeks –
alarm him [the Mohammedans] by their cultural and economic
superiority, and he sees in their religion an obstacle to
Turkifying them by peaceful means. They have, therefore, to
be exterminated or converted to Mohammedanism by force. 32

Tekin Alp, summed it up when he wrote, ‘…The real motive…
was the longing of the Turkish nation for independence in their
own country’. 33 This theme was echoed by Ittihadist National
Assembly member Feyzi who tried to provoke reluctant Muslims in
Mardin to join in the killing of Assyrians and Armenians. Feyzi
admonished: ‘Let us get rid of the Christians so we can be masters
in our own house’. 34
An important link that guaranteed the success of the genocidal
aims of the Young Turks should not be overlooked. Germany’s
commercial interests in Anatolia, which began in the 1880s, and the
commencement of the First World War, which gave the Young
Turks and Germany cover for their nefarious aims, played an
important roll in the destruction of the Christian communities.
Numerous articles in the German press defending attacks on
Armenians, even during Sultan Abdülhamid’s rule, revealed a
disturbing German willingness to support violent Ottoman policies
towards its Christian subjects. In fact, Kaiser Wilhelm II had
personally set the tone for German racist propaganda. Alfons
Mumm, a Foreign Official of Germany, had excused the Hamidian
Horton, Blight of Asia, Chapter XXIII, ‘The Responsibility of the
Western World’.
32 Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness, p. 20. Dr
Niepage resigned his appointment at the school as a protest against the
Armenian atrocities in 1915.
33 Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, p. 24.
34 Gaunt, The View from the Roofs of Mardin.
31

54

THEA HALO

massacres of 1894–1896 as an act of Turkish ‘self defence’,
asserting, ‘… one must not forget that the characteristics of this
race, [the Armenians] its cunningness, and its rebellious activities
had to provoke the rage of the Turks…’ 35
At the beginning of 1915, the Deutsche Palästina Bank
circulated pamphlets in Turkish in eastern Anatolia and elsewhere,
‘exciting the fanaticism of the Mussulmans, recommending hatred
of the Christians, and recommending cessation of all commercial
relations with them’. 36 German propagandist, Alfons Sussnitzki,
writing in 1917, spread propaganda against Armenians and Greeks,
claiming ‘that usury and the exploitation of foreign protection…
contributed to the economic ascendancy of these groups’. 37
Sussnitzki went so far as to advocate ‘the exclusion of Armenians
and Greeks,’ for being ‘under British and French influence,’ then
proposed using ‘Ottoman Jews, Arabs, and dönmes (Jewish converts
to Islam)’ in their place since, according to Sussnitzki, ‘Turks lacked
the racial aptitude for trade.’ Sussnitzki and others reminded
readers of ‘the Ottoman Turkish need for German aid’. 38
The Young Turks were well aware of the educational
deficiencies of the Turkish public. Horton wrote:
…they are jealous of the Christians whom they regard as
thriving at their expense. I have heard Turkish politicians make
Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories, p. 10.
D.J., ‘Turkey and Greeks. Record of Persecution. Complicity of
Germany,’ 1/26/17. News article found in and addressing documentation
from the archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
37 Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories. p. 32. From
Alphons J. Sussnitzki, ‘Zur Gliedderung Wirtschaftlicher Arbeit nach
Nationalitäten in der Türkei’, [On the Division of Labor According to
Nationalities in Turkey] Archiv für Wirttschafisforschung im Orient 2 (1917),
pp. 382–407. The author was a journalist who between 1911 and 1918
reported for several German newspapers on Ottoman Affairs.
Contributing to the Allegemeine Zeitung des Judentuns, he reported on affairs
of the Ottoman Jewish community and the Zionist movement. In 1918
his articles appeared in the Welwirtschaftszeitung, where he discussed
problems of the Ottoman economy.
38 Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories, p. 31.
35
36

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

55

speeches at Salonica in which they affirmed that if the
Christians were exterminated and driven out, the Turks would
of sheer necessity progress and develop schools, commerce
and industry. Then followed the great massacre. 39

Many others independently shared Horton’s view.
The Christian nations—Armenians, Syrians and Greeks—
alarm him [the Mohammedans] by their cultural and economic
superiority, and he sees in their religion an obstacle to
Turkifying them by peaceful means. They have, therefore, to
be exterminated or converted to Mohammedanism by force. 40

As noted in The Times headline, ‘Extermination of Greeks in
Turkey. A German Plot Disclosed’, German engineering of the
genocidal policies was widely recognized. 41 German historian
Hilmar Kaiser asserted that the ‘German World War I propaganda
[was] addressed to both Ottoman and German audiences … the
mass murder of Armenians had opened up new opportunities for
German trade and investment’. 42 This held true for the mass
murder and displacement of Assyrians and Anatolian Greeks as
well.
By March, 1912, the ‘Turk Ojaghi’ (Home of the Turks) was
founded in Constantinople. Only Turks were allowed to attend. It’s
stated aim was:
To work for the national education of the Turkish people
which forms the most important division of Islam; to work for

George Horton, Report to Secretary of State, The Near Eastern
Question, September 27, 1922. Published by The Journalists’ Union of
the Athens Daily Newspapers, 1985. p. 17.
40 Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German
Eyewitness. (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1917) p. 20. Dr. Niepage was
a teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who resigned his
appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities in 1915.
41 The Times, ‘Extermination of Greeks in Turkey. A German Plot
Disclosed,’ August 23rd, 1917.
42 Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories, p. 32.
39

56

THEA HALO
the raising of her intellectual, social, and economic standard,
and for the perfection of the Turkish language and race. 43

To accomplish this ideal, the Young Turks set their sites on
Germany as their chosen ‘educator’.
Turkey, as leader of the Mohammedan world, most urgently
requires European science and the modern developments of
European civilization and intellectual life in all branches of
human activity, in intellectual, social, administrative, and
especially in economic spheres. Germany is the only country to
whom she can apply for this without endangering her national
independence and territorial integrity. Germany’s national ideal
is economic expansion. Who could suggest a wider field for
this than the inexhaustible regions of Anatolia, Asia Minor,
and all Turkish territory both before and after the war? 44

When German Ambassador to Turkey Count Matternick
attempted to intervene on behalf of the Christians in 1917, an
outraged Enver Pasha and the German military authorities in
Constantinople demanded he be recalled by the Kaiser, claiming,
‘intervening in favour of the Christians wounded the amour propre of
the Turks and badly served German interests’. 45
Exact figures of deaths in each community are difficult to
ascertain. Scholars suggest that approximately 275,000 Assyrians,
(more than half their population), up to 1.2 million Greeks,
353,000 of whom were Pontic Greeks, and 600,000–800,000
Armenians were murdered by various methods during the
genocidal period from 1913–1923. Some scholars assert that
Armenian deaths reached as high as 1.5 million, which would bring
the total loss of life to almost three million Christians.
Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, p. 19.
Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, p. 31.
45 Mr. Zalocostas, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated March 28,
1917 (Ministerial Archives, No. 2338). Also see: D.J., ‘Turkey and Greeks.
Record of Persecution. Complicity of Germany,’ 1/26/17. News article found in,
and addressing documentation from the archives of the Hellenic Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.
43
44

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

57

Of the 1,221,849 Christians who were transported to Greece,
100,000 were Armenians, 9,000 Circassians, and 1000 Assyrians. 46
Scholars writing on behalf of the Armenians often claim that
denial is the final stage of genocide. However, denial of the
Assyrian Genocide would have at least kept the Assyrians in the
public consciousness. Silence during most of the last one hundred
years has rendered the Assyrian, Pontic Greek, and other Anatolian
and Thracian Greek victims invisible to the general public, as if
they had never existed, or existed only in Antiquity, so that, until
recently, silence of this heinous crime against the Assyrian and
Greek people of Anatolia became the final killer, rendering their
genocide complete.
The passing of the 2007 Resolution by the International
Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), which recognized the
genocide of the Assyrians, Pontian and other Anatolian Greeks as
comparable to the genocide of Armenians during the same period
has begun to end the silence and has encouraged a more detailed
look at the work of Racho Donef, David Gaunt, and others who
have made available their research and writing on the Assyrian
Genocide. Because of the IAGS Resolution, and the important
work of activists who petitioned their members of parliament, in
2010 Sweden became the first nation to recognize the genocide of
these three historic Christian peoples: Assyrians, Greeks, and
Armenians, in one historic resolution. In 2013, the Parliament of
New South Wales, Australia, followed suit, as did the Netherlands,
Austria, and Armenia in 1915. Germany initiated its own
recognition of these genocides in a June 2, 2016 resolution. Others
will surely follow.
The IAGS Resolution reads as follows:
WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the
final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the
perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for
future genocides;
Edward Hale Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: Economic Imperialism &
the Destruction of Christian Communities in Asia Minor. Reprinted by The
Pontian Greek Society of Chicago. First published in 1924. Pp. 248–249.
46

58

THEA HALO
WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority
populations during and following the First World War is
usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with
little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against
other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire;
BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars that the
Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire
between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against
Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls
upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides
against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to
take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akçam, Taner, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the
Question of Turkish Responsibility. (New York: Metropolitan
Books, 2006).
Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, Constantinople,
Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division (I.D. 1153). P. 22.
Qatar Digital Library.
Aprim, Frederick A., Assyrians: From Bedr Khan to Saddam Hussein.
Driving into Extinction the Last Aramaic Speakers. (Xlibris
Corporation, 2006).
Edward Hale Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: Economic Imperialism & the
Destruction of Christian Communities in Asia Minor. Reprinted by
The Pontian Greek Society of Chicago. First published in
1924.
D.J., Turkey and Greeks. Record of Persecution. Complicity of Germany.
Archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
1/26/17.
Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian
Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. (Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2006).

2. THE TARGETING OF ASSYRIANS

59

——— ‘The View from the Roofs of Mardin: What Everyone Saw
in the ‘Year of the Sword’.’ The Armenian Weekly, January 7,
2015.
Horton, George. The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic
Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the
Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning
of Smyrna. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926).
Kaiser, Hilmar, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories. The
Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians.
(London: Gomidas Institute, 1997).
Kaiserlich Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bonn PAAA, Türkei Nr. 168,
Bd. 6, f. Bd. 7. 24/6/1909. No. 48, A. 10963. ‘Wangenheim zu
Seiner Durchlaucht Dem Herrn Reichskanzler Fürsten von
Bülow’.
Melson, Robert. ‘Provocation and Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry
into the Armenian Genocide of 1915.’ In Richard G.
Hovannisian (ed.), The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, pp. 61–
84. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987).
——— Revolution and Genocide. (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
Morgenthau, Henry Sr. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918).
Niepage, Martin, The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness.
(London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1917).
Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. originally titled: Papers and Documents on the
Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by the Turks, 1915–
1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia; London
1916, Foreign Office Archives, 3 Class 96, Miscellaneous,
Series II, six files, FO 96*205–210. Also reported in the
British government’s Blue Book.
——— Turkey – A Past and a Future. (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1917).
Reid, James J., Batak. ‘1876: A Massacre and its Significance.’
Journal of Genocide Research (2000), 2(3), p. 396.
Rockwell, William Walker. ‘The Total of Armenian and Syrian
Dead.’ Current History Magazine, November 1916.
http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt191611b.html

60

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Seton-Watson, Robert William. The Rise of Nationality in The Balkans,
(University of Michigan Library, 1918).
Sussnitzki, Alphons J., ‘Zur Gliedderung Wirtschaftlicher Arbeit
nach Nationalitäten in der Türkei’ [On the Division of Labor
According to Nationalities in Turkey]. Archiv für
Wirttschafisforschung im Orient 2 (1917), pp. 382–407.
The London Times. October 9, 1915.
The New York Times. ‘Says Turks aided recent massacres. Troops
allowed Kurds to kill Hundreds.’ American Missionary
Reports, April 29, 1915.
The Times. ‘Extermination of Greeks in Turkey. A German Plot
Disclosed.’ August 23, 1917.
%2$'$+ý/ý<( þý)5( .$/(0ý Nu: 46/78, Babiali, Ministry
of the Interior Office of the Directorate of Public Security
General …[in original] Private: Number: 104, ‘Ciphered
Telegram to the Province of Van. 26 October 1914’.
Translated by Racho Donef.
Üngör, Ugur Ümit, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in
Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012).
Zalocostas, The Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated March 28, 1917
(Ministerial Archives, No. 2338)

3. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ASSYRIAN
GENOCIDE AFTER A CENTURY
ANAHIT KHOSROEVA
The Assyrian genocide, along with the Armenian and Greek
genocides, was the first intentional ethnic cleansing and mass
extermination of the 20th century. It occurred in the Ottoman
Empire during the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of
Assyrians perished as the result of execution, deportation,
starvation, diseases, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.
The systematic manner in which the massacres and slaughters of
Assyrians was conducted along with the documented intentions of
Turkish leaders and sheer number of individuals murdered,
demonstrate that the Turkish government planned and, to a great
extent, succeeded in fulfilling a policy of genocide toward the
Assyrian people. The First World War was an ideal context in
which Ottoman state could accomplish this goal: the war not only
absorbed the resources and focus of the world’s major powers but
it also created a morally ambiguous atmosphere where brutality and
death on a massive scale could be justified or trivialized. The
Assyrians, whose Christian identity and cultural durability were
perceived by Turkish nationalists to be undesirable obstacles to the
realization of a Pan-Turkic nation, found themselves bearers of a
misfortune with reverberations lasting to this very day. 1
Genocide is not an action but continual process. The
International Association of Genocide Scholars mentions ten
stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, discrimination,
Khosroeva, ‘The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and
Adjacent Territories’, p. 272.
1

61

62

ANAHIT KHOSROEVA

dehumanization,
organization,
polarization,
preparation,
persecution, extermination, and denial. 2 Thus, it is an unfortunate
historic truth that the Assyrian tragedy went though all these stages.
There is no doubt that in the Assyrian case all five criteria in both
Article 2 and Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 3 apply, and we may say
a real genocide against the Assyrian people was perpetrated
according to the criteria of international law.
However, genocide is not only a crime against a particular
people, in our case one against Assyrians. It is also a crime against
humankind. Its inherent potential is to distort and alter the very
meaning of ‘humankind,’ erasing for all time particular biological
and cultural possibilities. Furthermore, for a particular group to
claim for itself a right to determine what groups are, in effect,
human, to determine which groups possess the right to life, is a
threat to the existence of all other humans. In a period in which
genocide has claimed an enormous number of victims, with no end
to the carnage in sight, the prevention of future acts of genocide
becomes a task for all human beings and governments throughout
the world.
Thus, with the criminal connivance of the world’s major
powers, and taking the opportunity presented by the martial law,
Turkey committed the gravest crime against humanity, genocide.
This genocide and its consequences have become an irreversible
component of not only the national tragedy and loss of the
Assyrian identity and memory but also of the struggle, national
revival, and continuation of life.
Let us examine the cause of the Assyrian genocide in the
Ottoman Empire in order to determine whether it was avoidable.
What are the consequences of the century-long non-recognition
and denial of the Assyrian genocide, certainly the Armenian and
Greek genocides along with it?
Stanton, ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide’.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N. General
Assembly on 9 December 1948.
2

3

3. THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE AFTER A CENTURY

63

The professional investigation of the anatomy of the Ottoman
Empire by a large consensus of the worldwide scholars permits us
to deduce that the Ottoman state bears responsibility for crimes,
including genocide, and typologically could be categorized as a
‘genocidal state’. 4 The Ottoman state system, with its inclination to
slaughter and genocide, had provided itself with an adequate
concept, a theoretical foundation for the preparation and
perpetration of the Assyrian genocide.
The Armenian genocide counts as the ‘first modern genocide’,
whereby a modern state with its destructive power and out of
ideological radicalization identified part of its own civilians as
undesirable. This genocide presently understood by much of the
world to have been the climax of a long history of oppression and
violence for a group that had suffered for centuries as a Christian
minority at the hands of the Turks. Unfortunately, achieving the
global remembrance of the genocide against the Armenians seems
to have downplayed the fate of all other Christian minority groups
in the Ottoman Empire, such as Assyrians and Greeks that
suffered from ethnic cleansing and mass murder at the hands of
Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the Young Turks. These three
Christians minorities were part of the tissue of the Ottoman
society; suddenly their state decided to eliminate them. Thus,
historians who realize that the Young Turks’ population and
extermination policies have to be analysed together and understood
as a single entity are tempted often to speak of a ‘Christian
genocide’. 5 The destruction of the Assyrians, Armenians and
Greeks was one aspect of this ‘homogenizing’ process.
Nevertheless, the suffering of the Assyrians is largely
forgotten internationally and not recognized as genocide, which
embitters the descendants of the victims. This ancient civilized
nation faced the menace of total physical extermination, in the
name of bringing about the insane plans of the Young Turks to
Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations, p. 102; Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman
Empire; Safrastyan, Ottoman Empire.
5 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors; Travis, ‘Native Christians
Massacred’, pp. 327–371; Khosroeva, ‘The Assyrian Genocide as Part of
the Christian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire’, pp. 16–27.
4

64

ANAHIT KHOSROEVA

create a ‘pure’ Turkish state and ‘Greater Turania’. The genocidal
quality of the murderous campaigns against Assyrians is obvious.
Several of the circumstances from which international criminal
tribunals’ judges infer genocide were present: mass killings, largescale rapes, destruction of villages and religious sites, and
deportation of civilians. 6
The Assyrian genocide occurred in the same circumstances as
the Armenian genocide. It was part of the same process, taking
place in the same locations, at the same time, and by the same
perpetrators.
When on July 23rd, 1908, the Young Turks’ Party Union and
Progress organized a revolt and seized the power, all the people of
the Empire, Muslims and Christians, vigorously welcomed the
overthrow of the ‘Red Sultan’. They hoped it was the dawning of
new age in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, as became
apparent shortly thereafter, the Young Turks were ardent
nationalists who continued the policy of oppressions and slaughters
carried out prior to them by the sultans. They were advocates of
the idea of assimilation of all the peoples of the Empire to create a
‘pure’ Turkish nation, never stopping, even before mass killings, in
order to execute that idea. The Young Turks intended to transform
the pluralistic Ottoman Empire into a homogeneous national state.
No Christian could have part in such a new society. However, the
ambitions of the Young Turks exceeded even these primary goals.
According to Taner Akçam, professor of history at Clark
University, the Committee of Union and Progress had formulated
prior to the First World War ‘a policy that they began to execute in
the Aegean region against the Greeks and, during the war years,
expanded to include the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syrians, and
especially the Armenians, a policy that eventually became
genocidal… Detailed reports were prepared outlining the
elimination of the Christian population.’ 7
The first Assyrian victims were Nestorians and Chaldeans of
the Urmia region in Iran. Here, during the five months of January
Travis, ‘Native Christians Massacred’, pp. 327–328.
Akçam, ‘The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies of
the Committee for Union and Progress’, pp. 132–133.
6
7

3. THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE AFTER A CENTURY

65

through May, 1915, Ottoman soldiers aided by local inhabitants
committed slaughters. Victims of these killings were not only
regular Assyrian and Armenian civilians but also Assyrian and
Armenian military people such as officers and soldiers who were
serving in various capacities in the Ottoman military. 8 Many of the
events in Urmia became internationally known through
communications sent by foreign missionaries and Iranian officials. 9
Reshid Bey, the governor of the province of Diyarbekir,
directed some of the earliest exterminations in his region. The
Assyrians of the Mardin, Midyat, Urfa and Jezire regions were
especially victimized. The most brutal slaughters of tens of
thousands Assyrians were perpetrated here. The priest of the local
Chaldean Assyrians in the province of Diyarbekir, Rev. Joseph
Naayem, reported that, ‘massacres in this region have taken place
since April 8th, 1915. The culprits gathered men over sixteen years
of age, beat, tortured, and killed them, and afterwards put turbans
on their heads and photographed them in order to prove to the
world that Christians were oppressing Muslims.’ 10
The massacres of the Assyrians, genocidal by nature,
continued in every region of the Ottoman Empire, where mass
slaughters reached unprecedented levels. Assyrian villages and
towns were sacked by organized mobs or by Kurdish bands. Tens
of thousands were driven from their homes. Their property was
plundered. Thousands of Assyrian women and girls were forced
into Turkish and Kurdish households. The slaughters were
perpetrated as barbarously as possible regardless of gender or age.
The Assyrians defended themselves valiantly but were
outnumbered and outgunned.
The manner in which the Assyrian genocide was organized
and implemented serves as irrefutable evidence of the Turkish
authorities’ decision to eliminate a people whose nationalism and
Christian identity ran contrary to the Young Turks’ own ethnic and
religious chauvinism.

Gaunt, ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’, pp. 88.
Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of the Armenians, pp. 135–223.
10 Alichoran, Du Génocide à la Diaspora, p. 370.
8
9

66

ANAHIT KHOSROEVA

German consular officials believed that the anti-Christian
actions were centrally planned. For instance, on March 7th, 1915, in
his letter to the German Ambassador in Constantinople, the
German Vice Consul in Alexandretta wrote, ‘During the last few
days, house-to-house searches took place at all the homes of the
Christian subject of the Ottoman Empire residing here –
Armenians, Syrians, Greeks – on order from higher up (most likely
from Constantinople).’ 11 The Ottoman state, instead of protecting
its own citizens, killed or deported them to the desert, stole their
belongings and properties, kidnapped their children, and carried off
their women and girls into Turkish and Kurdish harems.
Djevdet Bey, the governor of Van, led a ‘butcher’ regiment of
8,000 Muslim soldiers which perpetrated mass slaughters of the
Assyrians. All possible methods of killing were used: shooting,
stabbing, stoning, crushing, throat cutting, throwing off of roofs,
drowning, and decapitation. Assyrians retreated into the high
mountains where there was no food. By August or September
1915, most had fled across the border into Iran, leaving an
unknown number behind. This is best described as ethnic cleansing
under war-like conditions. 12
It is absolutely impossible to read the multiple trustworthy
documents describing those atrocities and remain apathetic or
indifferent. One document reads, ‘The skulls of small children were
smashed with rocks; the bodies of girls and women who resisted
rape or conversion to Islam were chopped into pieces; men were
mostly beheaded or thrown into the nearby river; the clergy, monks
and nuns were skinned or burnt alive.’ 13
The genocide of the Assyrians was perpetrated with
unspeakable brutality. The German Protestand missionary Dr.
Johannes Lepsius was an eyewitness to ‘how Turks hang lots of
innocent Assyrians at the gates of Van, in one of the central streets
of the town. When some of them tried to protect themselves and

Gust, Der Volkermord an den Armeniern 1915/1916, p. 121.
Gaunt, ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’, p. 89.
13 Documentation on the Genocide Against the Assyrian-SuryoyeChaldean-Aramaic People (Seyfo), p. 7.
11
12

3. THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE AFTER A CENTURY

67

fight back, they all were arrested and killed. …I wish I could keep
silent about that horrible tragedy.’ 14
The Assyrian genocide was by no means accidental or
unexpected. It logically derived from the brutal, nationalistic and
carnivorous policy, pursued by the Turkish sultans and their
successors the Young Turks, against the non-Turkish minorities
during the preceding decades. It was not a policy of individuals but
an official state policy, the pendulum of which swung between
persecution and carnage.
The Young Turk government’s intention to remove the
Nestorians and Syriacs from their homelands is clear. The
government knew that it was ordering aggression against
populations that were not Armenian. In plenty of documents cited,
the Nestorians, Syriac Orthodox, and Chaldeans are each identified
separately and clearly. Their being targeted was not a case of
mistaken identity, except perhaps in those places where they had
been assimilated with Armenians. 15
Today the policy of Republic of Turkey toward this issue is
absolute denial. Certainly, the consequences of denial are deep and
lasting, not only for the descendants of the Assyrians but also for
Turkey itself, in ways great and small. Like it or not, today Turkey
plays an important role internationally and regionally, and the
recognition of the genocide would, in the long term, make the
country appear stronger and more trustworthy to all. In fact, at the
top of the Turkish state, the leadership knows perfectly well that
what happened was genocide, but they have invented stories to
avoid acknowledging it. According to Hannibal Travis, professor of
law at Florida International University,
As in other recognized genocides, the Ottomans and their local
allies, the Kurds and Persians, demonstrated a pattern of
deliberate and systematic targeting of Christians as such,
including Assyrians, for murder, maiming, enslavement, rape,
dispossession, impoverishment, and cultural and ethnic
destruction. Nevertheless, governments and historians have
14
15

Lepsius, Gaghtni Teghekagir, Hayastani Jarder, pp. 113, 117.
Gaunt, ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’, p. 95.

68

ANAHIT KHOSROEVA
not been as willing to recognize the Assyrian experience during
and after World War I as a form of genocide, or even to
acknowledge the existence and criminality of the Ottoman
atrocities against Assyrians. 16

For us Assyrians, the Assyrian genocide is an unfinished chapter in
world history, for the guilty party has yet to receive the punishment
it deserves. The lessons of history show that different peoples pay
dearly when crimes against humanity are forgotten. The size of the
people has no significance when the theory of race-worship is
raised to the level of an official state policy. Unfortunately, now,
after 100 years, our global political institutions still having
difficulties and cannot call this crime by its real name!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alichoran, Joseph. Du génocide à la Diaspora: Les Assyro-Chaldéens au
XX siècle, (Paris: Revue Istina, 1994).
Akçam, Taner. ‘The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal
Policies of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve
Terakki) Toward the Armenians in 1915’ Genocide Studies and
Prevention, Volume 1, no. 2. 2006.
Bryce, James and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of the Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916. London, 1916.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the U.N.
General Assembly on 9 December 1948: https://treaties.
un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78–
I-1021–English.pdf
‘Documentation on the Genocide Against the Assyrian-SuryoyeChaldean-Arameic People (Seyfo).’ Frankfurt, 1999.
Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian
Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2006.

16

Travis, ‘Native Christians Massacred’, pp. 327–328.

3. THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE AFTER A CENTURY

69

––––––– ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide.’ Genocide
Studies International 9, no. 1 (Spring 2015).
Gust, Wolfgang. Der Volkermord an den Armeniern 1915/1916:
Dokumente aus dem Politischen Archiv des deutchen Auswärtigen Amts
(Springe: zu Klampen! Verlag, 2005), 121, Document 1915–
03–07–DE-011.
Khosroeva, Anahit. ‘The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman
Empire and Adjacent Territories.’ In The Armenian Genocide:
Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2nd printing,
2008.
––––––– ‘The Assyrian Genocide as Part of the Christian
Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.’ Regional Affairs, Zangak97, Volume 2(5). Yerevan, 2014. www.RegionalAffairs.
wordpress.com, (accessed: 24.12.2016).
Lepsius, Johannes. Gaghtni Teghekagir, Hayastani Jarder [A Secret
Report: The Massacres of Armenia] (Constantinople, 1919).
Pfaff, William. The Wrath of Nations: Civilizations and the Furies of
Nationalism. (New York: Touchstone, 1994).
Safrastyan, Ruben. Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Program of
Genocide (1876–1920). (Yerevan: Zangak- 97, 2011).
Stanton, Gregory H. ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide.’ Available at:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/
genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html (accessed: 24.12.2016)
Travis, Hannibal. ‘Native Christians Massacred: The Ottoman
Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I.’ Genocide
Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 1, no. 3, December
2006.
Wittek, Paul. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire, (London: Royal Asiatic
Society, 1938).

4. GERMAN PERCEPTIONS OF THE SAYFO:
HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?
ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM
We have made a clean sweep of the Armenians and Assyrians
of Azerbaijan.
Djevdet Bey, Governor of Van, Ottoman Province, 1915 1

Germany was a close ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First
World War. Military cooperation expanded and reached a climax as
hundreds of German officers were employed as advisers and
commanders in significant positions in the Turkish army.
In addition, Germany relied on an extensive network of
diplomats and relief organizations spread across Anatolia
throughout the war. German diplomats reported regularly and in a
detailed manner to Berlin about the atrocities committed against
the Armenians and other Christians in Anatolia. As allies, the
German diplomats were allowed an unimpeded collection and
transmission of information, even under wartime conditions.
Documents of the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt)
reveal that Germany was very well informed with respect to what
Germany labelled “the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire.”
However, extreme press censorship prevented any critical
reporting; thus the German public was kept in the dark. The war
press office as the highest body of censorship sought to prevent
reporting on the massacres in German newspapers and magazines.

1

Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei, p. 81.

71

72

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

On October 7th, 1915, the following press policy was announced in
Berlin:
The following may be said about the Armenian atrocities. Our
friendly relations with Turkey may not only be put at risk by
this domestic Turkish administrative matter, but in the current
difficult moment may not even be questioned. Therefore, it is,
for the time being, a duty to keep silent. Later, when direct
attacks from abroad should be made for “German complicity”,
the issue needs to be treated with the utmost caution and
restraint while pretending that the Turks were seriously
irritated by the Armenians. 2

This was followed by further guidance on December 23rd, 1915:
‘Concerning the Armenian issue, it is best to keep quiet. The
behaviour of the Turkish authorities on this issue is not particularly
praiseworthy!’ 3
In fact, the German Chancellor of the time, Theobald von
Bethmann Hollweg, even dismissed critical information diplomats
and military personnel provided, urging actions against the
atrocities Armenians faced through diplomatic channels. As the
ambassador in Constantinople, Wolff-Metternich, advised the
Chancellor in 1915 to intervene vigorously at the Sublime Porte in
favour of the Armenians, the Chancellor commented on the
diplomatic report of December 7th, 1915 with the following
handwritten note: ‘Our only goal is to keep Turkey on our side
until the end of the war, regardless of whether the Armenians
perish or not’. 4
The extent of the complicity and the resulting responsibility of
Germany in the murder and expulsion of the Armenians has been
well researched by a number of Armenian 5 and non-Armenian
scholars in the past. A recent publication by Jürgen Gottschlich,
Mühsam, Wie wir belogen wurden. Die amtliche Irreführung des deutschen
Volkes, p. 76.
3 Mühsam, p. 79.
4 PA-AA, R14089, no. 711, handwritten notice attached to
Metternich’s December 17th, 1915 report.
5 Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide.
2

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

73

who works as a foreign correspondent for a German newspaper in
Istanbul, presents his investigation of the role of the top German
military advisers, particularly to the Young Turk Government and
to the Turkish Army. Gottschlich speaks of a ‘Complicity in
Genocide’. 6
Today, Germany is well aware of its responsibility regarding
the genocide, even though until recently it avoided calling the
events Völkermord. On June 15, 2005 – on the occasion of the 90th
anniversary – the German Bundestag passed a motion supported
by all political parties commemorating and honouring the
Armenian victims. 7 In its explanatory part the motion casually
mentioned Assyrians/Arameans as victims.
Most recently, on April 24, 2015, the Bundestag
commemorated the 100th anniversary of the massacres. German
lawmakers for the first time used the term “genocide.” At an
ecumenical service a day earlier in Berlin, German Federal
President Joachim Gauck went even further and spoke 8 not only of
Germany’s responsibility, but also of its “shared guilt.” Syriac
Christians (Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arameans) were explicitly
honored as co-victims.
Finally, the German Bundestag with an overwhelming
majority passed a long overdue resolution on June 2, 2016,
recognizing the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman
government as a genocide. In its main part, the resolution also
explicitly acknowledges that Assyrians (also referred to as Syriacs,
Chaldeans or Aramaic-speaking Christians) were affected by the
deportations and massacres as well. 9
Gottschlich, Beihilfe zum Völkermord.
Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 15/5689, 15.
8 See text of the speech of the German President from April 23,
2015: http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/DE/Joach
im-Gauck/Reden/2015/04/150423–Gedenken-Armenier.html
9 Abraham, Miryam. A., German Recognition of Armenian, Assyrian
Genocide: History and Politics.
http://aina.org/releases/20160606170745.htm
The article includes the English translation of the relevant Bundestag
resolution: Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 18/8613, May 31, 2016)
6
7

74

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

GERMAN SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF THE SAYFO
The cognizance of Germany in the annihilation of the Assyrians,
also known as Syriac Chaldean or Aramaic-speaking Christians,
which remained for decades in the shadow of the Armenian
genocide, was treated in the pioneering work of German scholar
Gabriele Yonan entitled, A Forgotten Holocaust, which appeared in
1989. 10 Among its sources are selected documents of the German
Foreign Office and citations from The Lepsius Report of 1916.
David Gaunt’s Massacres, Resistance, Protectors has made great use of
the German Foreign Office documents as well. 11
The aim of this short paper is to present some results of a
systematic investigation of Johannes Lepsius’ first publication from
1916 under the title, Report on the Situation of the Armenian People in
Turkey, 12 republished in 1919, hereafter referred as “the Report.”
The findings are supposed to reveal the knowledge Germany had
with regard to the annihilation of the Assyrians as a multidenominational Christian population of the Ottoman State along
with the Armenians. In addition, a collection of German Foreign
Office documents 13 which Lepsius published in 1919 will be
utilized in order to substantiate the investigation. The latter is a
collection of 444 documents which can be regarded as the German
White Book of the Armenian genocide. The collection, as the title
suggests, predominantly treats the Armenian question and fate of
the Armenians as the major Christian population, but includes
many relevant references to the Assyrians and their fate during
1915.
The investigation focuses on the various designations of the
religious denominations of the eastern and western Assyrians and
their various churches: Nestorians, Chaldeans, Syrian Orthodox,
Syrian Catholics, and Syrian Protestants. While some documents
Yonan, Ein vergessener Holocaust.
Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors.
12 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei.
13 Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien 1914–1918. In the following
these documents are referenced by AA (Auswärtiges Amt – Foreign
Office) or PA-AA (Political Archive of the Foreign Office).
10
11

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

75

explicitly mention ‘Syrians’ as a common cross-denominational
designation, many other speak generally of “other Christians” while
reporting on the Armenians. Throughout my paper, I prefer to use
the term Assyrians, from which the term Syrian is derived, to refer
to cross-denominational aspects of the people under focus.

LEPSIUS’ REPORT
Beginning in June 1915, Dr Johannes Lepsius received a telegram
from the Foreign Office in Berlin, sent by the German ambassador
to Turkey, Freiherr von Wagenheim, stating 14 ‘[…] Enver Pasha
intends to use the state of emergency during the war to close a
large number of Armenian schools, to prohibit Armenian postal
correspondence, suppress Armenian newspapers, and to evacuate
from the now-insurgent Armenian centers all objectionable families
and resettle them in Mesopotamia…’
As an expert on the Armenian question, as a theologian,
founder and head of the German Oriental Mission, Lepsius knew
immediately that mass deportations meant mass massacres. He was
a key witness to the previous massacres of the Armenians and
other Christians in Anatolia two decades earlier and published a
book in 1896 in response to the events under the title Armenia and
Europe. 15
Lepsius travelled to Constantinople in July 1915 to verify the
truth and to use his influence and contacts to eventually change the
course of events, but this failed. However, he was able to obtain a
substantial amount of documents and reports on the tragedy that
was still unfolding. Right after his return to Berlin in October 1915,
he intensively lobbied and lectured about his findings and was able
to pursue the influential members of the Evangelical Church to
appeal to Chancellor von Bethman Hollweg. On October 15th,
1915, a petition of some fifty reputable representatives of the
Evangelical Church, theologians, and memberes of the German
Oriental Mission along with a corresponding appeal of Roman
Catholic representatives expressed to the Chancellor the concerns
14
15

Lepsius, Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes, p. v.
Lepsius, Armenien und Europa.

76

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

and wishes of German Christians. The lengthy appeal of the
Evangelical representatives states, ‘[…] It oppresses our
conscience, that while Germany’s press praises the magnanimity
and tolerance of our Muslim ally, Mohammedans spill blood of
innocent Christians in streams and tens of thousands of Christians
are forcibly converted to Islam.’ 16
The appeal was sent as an attachment to a note by the
Chancellor to Neurath, the Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy in
Constantinople, on November 10th, 1915, with the request to be
directed to the Porte with the message, that ‘[…] the measures of
the Porte are not to extend to include other Christian parts of the
population in Turkey.’ 17
Lepsius documented his findings and wrote the highly
confidential report, which was sent to all Evangelical Churches and
to members of the Reichstag, as he counted on their help as a last
resort to cause a change in German policy with regards to the
Armenian question. Overall, this well intended action failed as well,
because most of the 20,000 distributed copies were confiscated by
the censors.

ASSYRIANS IN LEPSIUS’ PUBLICATIONS
Already on the first page of his introduction, Lepsius mentions the
Assyrian Nestorians along with the Armenians:
The oldest people of Christendom… are in danger of being
destroyed. Six-sevenths of the Armenian people have been
deprived of their possessions, driven from their farms, and as
long as they have not converted to Islam, are either killed or
sent into the desert. Only one-seventh of the people have been
spared from the deportations. Like the Armenians, the
[As]syrian Nestorians and partly also the Greek Christians have
been afflicted. 18

The submission was done in October 1915; see PA-AA,
BoKon/171, no. 857.
17 PA-AA, BoKon/171, no. 857.
18 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, i.
16

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

77

In early 1915, prior to the official deportation decree of May 27th,
there were repressive measures visible to the German government
in areas allegedly close to the front.
Vice-Consul Hermann Hoffmann-Foelkersamb reported on
March 7th from the Mediterranean harbour town of Alexandretta,
modern Iskenderun, that, ‘During the last few days, house-to-house
searches took place at all the homes of the Christian subjects of the
Ottoman Empire residing here – Armenians, [As]syrians, Greeks –
on an order from above (most likely from Constantinople). In
some houses, papers were confiscated, apparently only because
they were in a foreign language.’ 19
But very soon the deportations started and expanded to those
regions which were not situated near the front. Lepsius treats the
seven eastern Ottoman vilayets (provinces) in detail in his report and
provides population statistics for them, namely: Trapezunt, 20
Erzurum, Sivas, Kharput (Mamuret-ul-Aziz), Diyarbekir, Van, and
Bitlis. According to Lepsius, 21 the deportations from the eastern
vilayets started at the end of May 1915. Below, the situation of a few
of these vilayets is depicted, in which Lepsius lists an Assyrian
presence, referring to them as ‘Syrians’ or applying denominational
terms explicitly.
It is worth mentioning that Assyrians in many regions were
called Armenians as many of them lived in Armenian villages and
spoke Armenian. In the region near Hazro and Lice for instance, all
Christians were even called ‘Ermen’, that is, ‘Armenians’ in
Kurdish.
Independently, there are no indications in Lepsius’ report or
the Foreign Office documents that non-Armenians were spared by
the described actions related to Armenians, or that Assyrians as
Christians were dealt with differently than Armenians.

PA-AA, BoKon/168, no. J.N. 226.
Trapezunt is today’s Turkish city of Trabzon.
21 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, 4.
19
20

78

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

Kharput (Mamuret-ul Aziz)
Around the end of June and beginning of July 1915, while the
general deportation was taking place in the provinces of Trapezunt,
Erzurum and Sivas, the deportation of the Armenian population of
the province of Kharput was conducted. With regard to the course
of the deportations from Kharput, Lepsius quotes a report of the
American consul of Kharput, Leslie A. Davis, and declares 22 that
the contents of the report were in line with the information from
German sources: ‘The first transport took place in the night of
June 23rd. Among them were several professors of the American
[Euphrates] College and other Armenians, and the Prelate of the
Armenian Gregorian Church.’ From other sources we know that
the Assyrian professor Ashur Youssef, who was teaching at
Euphrates College, was among the arrested professors. 23
Johannes Ehmann, a preacher with the German Christian
Charity Organization for the Orient and head of the orphanage,
reported that, ‘After all the suffering in the past, deportation has
now been ordered indiscriminately for the entire Christian
population in the towns and countryside.’ 24
Lepsius further reported, 25 that ‘[…] three quarters of
Kharput’s total [Christian] population, among them merchants,
teachers, preachers, priests, [and] government officials, have been
sent away. The rest have no guarantee that they can stay, since the
Vali insists that all be sent away.’ The German Consul in Mosul,
Walter Roessler, confirmed the fate of the men from Kharput who
were separated from the women in a village a few hours along the
road south of the town: ‘The men were slaughtered to death and
lay to the right and left of the road along which the women then
had to pass.’ 26
Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, p. 67.
Sefer, A Dream of a Long Journey, pp. 16–19. I am grateful to Dr
Sargon Donabed who pointed me to this source which was made available
to me by Tomas Isik of MARA (Modern Assyrian Research Archive:
http://www.assyrianarchive.org/).
24 PA-AA, BoKon, no. 169 dated June 26th, 1915.
25 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, p. 72.
26 PA-AA, R14087, no. 81 dated July 27th, 1915.
22
23

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

79

Diyarbekir
Lepsius outlined the approach of the authorities against the
Christian population in Diyarbekir and pointed explicitly to the
fact 27 that his descriptions were in accordance with the reports of
German officials with whom he talked during his stay in Turkey:
Between May 10th and 30th [1915] more than 1,200 of the most
distinguished among the Armenians and [As]syrians from the
Vilayet were arrested; 674 of them were loaded on Keleks
(rafts, which are supported by inflated tubes) under the pretext
that they will be brought to Mosul. The transport was led by
the adjutant of the Vali, along with about 50 gendarmes. Half
of the latter were distributed to the boats, while the other half
was riding along the shore. Soon after the departure, the
gendarmes took all the money from the people and their
clothes off. Then they threw them all into the river.

On June 10th the German Vice-Consul Holstein reported from
Mosul to his embassy that ‘all 614 Armenians [and Assyrians] who
were banned from Diyarbekir were slaughtered on their journey by
rafts. Parts of corpses had been floating on the Euphrates for days.
The Vali [of Mosul] expressed his regret and held the Vali of
Diyarbekir responsible.’ 28 Holstein reported further that the former
Mutessarif (the local governor) of Mardin had said to him, ‘The
Vali of Diyarbekir, Reschid Bey, rages like a mad bloodhound
among the Christians of his Vilayet.’ 29
Holstein wrote again from Mossul on July 16th: ‘Recently, by
the order of the Vali of Diyarbekir, the Qaimakam of Midiat (a
Moslem) was killed because he had refused to let Christians of his
district be massacred.’ 30 Holstein concluded in mid-August with
respect to Reshid Bey, ‘Everyone knows that the Vali of Diyarbekir
is the soul of the horrific crimes taking place against Christianity in
his Vilayet.’ 31
Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, p. 74.
PA-AA, BoKon/169 dated June 10th, 1915.
29 Ibid.
30 PA-AA, BoKon/169, no. 12, dated from July 16th, 1915.
31 PA-AA, BoKon/170 , no. 24 dated from August 14th, 1915.
27
28

80

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

Lepsius mentioned that on September 2nd, 1915, the Christian
population of Djezire in the province of Diyarbekir had been
massacred. 32 This is confirmed by a cable report the German
Ambassador Hohenlohe sent on September 11th to the Foreign
Ministry in Berlin. In 1891, the population of Djezire was estimated
at about 10,000 souls, half of whom were Moslems (including more
than 2,000 Kurds); the other half was made up of 4750 Armenians
(2500 Gregorians, 1250 Catholics, 1000 Protestants), 250 Catholic
Chaldeans and 100 Syrian Jacobites. 33
Vice-Konsul Hoffmann reported on November 8th, 1915
from Alexandretta, ‘According to verbal reports made to me by the
Imperial Vice-Consul Holstein (Mosul) during his short visit to
Aleppo in October, [Reshid Bey] has declared publicly that he will
tolerate no Christian in his Vilayet.’ 34
Mardin
Mardin was a Sandjak, a second-level administrative division,
within the Vilayet of Diyarbekir. Lepsius reported that the
Mutesarrif 35 of Mardin was removed from office because he did
not want to deal with the Christians according to the will of the
Vali, Reshid Bey. Lepsius mentioned that after the removal of the
Mutesarrif, ‘first 500, then 300 Armenian and Assyrian notables
were taken on the way to Diyarbekir. The first 500 arrived
apparently in Diyarbekir, though nobody has heard anything from
the other 300.’ 36
Walter Holstein sent a telegram from Mosul to the Embassy
in Constantinople complaining that the
Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien, xxxiv.
PA-AA, BoKon/170, no. 560 dated from September 11th, 1915.
34 PA-AA, R14090, no. BN 944 as attachment to a report by ViceConsul Rößler to his Embassy dated from January 3rd, 1916.
35 In fact it is not clear to which Mutessarif Lepsius is referring to, as
WKHVXFFHVVRURI+LOPL%H\6KHILN>þHILN@%H\ZDVDOVRUHPRYHGIRUQRW
following orders. Finally, Bedri Bey who was willing to carry out Reshid’s
RUGHUV ZDV DSSRLQWHG DV 0DUGLQpV 0XWHVDUUïI 6HH 'RQHI o5LJKWHRXV
Muslims during the Genocide of 1915’.
36 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, p. 76.
32
33

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

81

[c]onditions in the districts of Mardin and Amadia in the
Vilajet Diyarbekir have turned into a real persecution of the
Christians. This is undoubtedly the government’s fault.
Christians have been undoubtedly declared almost outlaws;
many people mentioned that today the local old and dignified
Chaldean Patriarch – I was just with him – was called before
the court-martial by an ordinary policeman verbally without
giving any reason. This is based on the government’s childish
provocation of the local Christendom. 37

Separating men and women was a measure constantly used to
weaken the deportees. Holstein reported from Mosul: ‘Until now,
about six hundred women and children (Armenian, [As]syrian,
Chaldean), whose male relatives in Seert, Mardin and Feihshahbur
were massacred, have arrived here; the same number is expected
during the next few days.’ 38
The German embassy informed the Ottoman government in a
memo handed over by the German Ambassador Hohenlohe on
August 9th that it regrets having to ascertain that ‘in certain places
such as Mardin, all Christians, irrespective of their race or
confession, have suffered the same fate [as the Armenians].’ 39
Van
Lepsius reported that irregular militias looted and slayed Armenian
and partly Assyrian Christians in large numbers in the ‘Armenian
villages of Abak, Khatschan, Tschibukli, Gahimak, Khan, Akhorik,
Hassan Tamra, Arsarik and Naschwa … and in the Abagha plain. It
is estimated that 2,060 Armenians and 300 [As]syrians were
killed.’ 40 The result of this systematic looting and these massacres in
Christian villages was a mass exodus of Christians across the
Russian border.
In the spring of 1915, the army of Khalil Bey, an uncle of
Enver Pasha and commander of the corps, invaded Persia and
PA-AA, BoKon/169, no. 3 dated June 13th, 1915.
PA-AA, BoKon/169, no. 14 dated July 21st, 1915.
39 As attachment to PA-AA, R1408, no. 501 dated August 12th, 1915.
40 Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, 76.
37
38

82

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

advanced into the region of Urmia and Dilman in northern Persia.
10,000 Kurds from the upper Zab region had joined the 20,000
regulars. Djevdet Bey, the Vali of Van and a brother-in-law to the
Turkish Minister of War, Enver Pasha, took part in these
operations. Lepsius reported that the ‘troops devastated Persian
territory and all the Christian villages. The [As]syrian population of
the Urmia region and the Armenian population of Salmas plain,
around Dilman, was, as far as they could not take refuge on
Russian territory or found in the American mission protection,
mercilessly massacred by the Kurds.’ 41
Lepsius quoted Djevdet Bey, the Vali of Van, who had
returned in mid-February from Salmas and Urmia, with a statement
that he had made in a meeting of Turkish notables: ‘We have made
a clean sweep with the Armenians and [As]syrians of Azerbaijan
(North West Persia) and we must do the same with the Armenians
of Van.’ 42
Urmia
Lepsius depicted an account of the German-American Pastor
Pfander from Urmia dated July 22nd, 1915:
As soon as the Russians were gone, the Mohammedans began
to rob and loot … Some [As]syrians abandoned all their
household belongings and their winter supplies and fled …
15,000 [As]syrians found shelter within the walls of the
Mission, where the missionaries provided them with bread …
diseases broke out, the death rate rose to 50 per day. The
Kurds killed nearly every man in the villages, which they could
get hold of… 43

Pfander’s report further stated that Turks ‘had built gallows on the
main road in front of the gate and hanged many innocent
[As]syrians and shot others…’ 44
Lepsius, Bericht zur Lage, pp. 80–81.
Ibid., p. 81.
43 Ibid., pp. 104–105.
44 Ibid., p. 105.
41
42

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

83

Lepsius quoted further from a report that he received from
Miss Anna Friedmann, the former head of the German orphanage
in Urmia. She was forced to vacate her orphanage at the beginning
of the war:
The latest news say that (in Urmia) 4,000 [As]syrians and 100
Armenians died because of the diseases at the (American)
missionaries alone. All villages around [Urmia] have been
looted and burned to ashes, especially Göktepe, Gülpartschin,
Tscheragusche. 2,000 Christians have been massacred in Urmia
and the surrounding area; many churches have been destroyed
and set on fire, as have been many houses of the city. 45

A letter Miss Friedmann received stated that
… in Heftewan and Salmas alone 850 corpses have been
pulled out of pumping wells and cisterns, with no head. Why?
The supreme commander of the Turkish troops had set a
bounty for every Christian head. The wells are saturated with
Christian blood. …Flocks of Christians were imprisoned and
forcibly compelled to accept Islam. The males were
circumcised … In the Catholic courtyard of the mission [of
Sautschbulak] in Fath-Ali-Khan-Göl 40 [As]syrians have been
hung on the gallows erected there… 46

It is important to point out that Lepsius underscored explicitly that
‘…according to the reports, no distinction was made during the
massacres between the Armenian and [As]syrian population in the
Van region and in the Persian districts of Salmas, Urmia and
Sautschbulak.’ 47

THE PAN-ISLAMIC PROGRAM OF THE YOUNG TURKS
Lepsius elaborated 48 on the “pan-Islamic program” of the
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) as the only plausible
Ibid., p. 105.
Ibid., p. 106.
47 Ibid., p. 108.
48 Ibid., p. 217.
45
46

84

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

internal political motivation for the implementation of the
deportations. He tried to find clues and sufficient evidence in the
propagated policies of the Committee of the Young Turks and
their leaders.
On April 27th, 1909, the Young Turks deposed Sultan Abdul
Hamid II and enforced a rigorous one-party rule. A shadow
government seized the official administrative apparatus. The
vocation of the highest officials of the kingdom and all main
administrative bodies were governed by decisions of the
Committee. Lepsius argued that their nationalist and centralist
tendency targeted not only the various non-Muslim nationalities of
the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews, but was also directed
against non-Turkish nations. 49 As a result, a Pan-Turkism was
erected as an idol and the harshest measures were taken against all
non-Turkish ethnic elements.
Lepsius pointed to a report of the CUP Congress held in
Thessaloniki in 1911, in which the Committee notes with
satisfaction that it was able to fill almost all the important positions
in the Empire with its followers. 50
Already in the autumn of 1911, the program of the CUP
formulated the mission of the Committee:
Sooner or later the complete Ottomanization of all Turkish
subjects would have to be carried out, but it is clear that this
could never be achieved by persuasion, but one must take
refuge to armed violence. The character of the empire has to
be Islamic and respect must be procured to Muslim
institutions and traditions. Other nationalities must be
deprived of their right of organization, because
decentralization and self-government are treason against the
Ottoman Empire. The nationalities are a negligible quantity.
They can keep their religion, but not their language. The
spread of the Turkish language is one of the main means to

49
50

Ibid., p. 219.
Ibid., p. 221.

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

85

secure Mohammedan/Islamic supremacy and assimilate the
other elements. 51

Lepsius concluded that it is clear that the actions against the
Armenians [and other Christians] are, in every respect, based on
the principles expressed in that program. 52

THE ANNIHILATION OF THE CHRISTIAN POPULATIONS
It is obvious that, for the Young Turks, the events of the First
Word War appeared as an opportunity to carry out a nationalistic
program they had fixed years before the war at a congress in
Thessaloniki: the ethnic and religious homogenization of Anatolia.
Even worse: Turkish nationalist fanaticism did not shy away from
the hardest measures to achieve its goal. Many Christians of all ages
and sexes were left alive only if they converted to Islam. Those not
circumcised or slaughtered or sold into slavery were ‘resettled’,
namely driven into the Arabian desert, where they died due to
thirst, starvation, and disease. The property and wealth of the
victims was liquidated and squandered like peanuts to the members
and minions of the Young Turk Committee.
Lepsius’ Report and the German Foreign Office Documents
prove without any doubt that the German Government was best
informed with respect to the horrific incidents taking place against
the Christian population on a large scale in the Ottoman Empire.
However, the German public was systematically kept in the dark.
In addition, the press was supplied with Turkish war propaganda
which denied the atrocities against the Christians. In a telegram of
July 27th, 1915, which the German Consul of Aleppo, Walter
Rößler, sent to his embassy, he raised concerns about the matter:
‘…I request respectfully to inform the Foreign Office that official
Turkish denials [about the extermination of the Armenians] should
not appear in the German press, which would arouse the
appearance of German approval.’ 53

Ibid., p. 222.
Ibid.
53 PA-AA, BoKon/170, no. dated July 27th, 1915.
51
52

86

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

This continued to be the case through August of 1915. ViceConsul Holstein from Mosul complained to his embassy about
what he is reading in various German newspapers:
I read … official Turkish denials of the atrocities committed
against the Christians and I am surprised at the naivety of the
Porte in believing they can obliterate facts about the crimes by
Turkish officials simply by telling downright lies. Up to now,
the world has not experienced such atrocities, which have been
proven to be and are still being committed by officials in the
Vilayet Diyarbekir! 54

Both the Lepsius Report and the reports of German diplomats
provide clear evidence that the measures against the Armenians,
such as deportation, terror, and killings, did not spare Assyrians in
any way. Both the German embassy in Constantinople and the
government of the German Reich were well in the picture since the
late summer of 1915. The Ambassador in Constantinople,
Hohenlohe-Langenburg, in his report dated August 12th to
Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, pointed to the fact that Christians
other than Armenians were not spared:
The systematic slaughter of the Armenian people, who had
been deported from their homes, has taken on such an extent
over the past few weeks that a renewed, forcible representation
on our part against this coarse action, which the government
not only tolerated but apparently supported, appeared to be
imperative, particularly as in various places the Christians of
other races and confessions were also no longer being
spared. 55

Rößler, the Consul in Aleppo, reported to Chancellor Bethmann
Hollweg on September 3rd, ‘Apart from the Armenians, not only
the Nestorians, but also Ancient Syrians (Jacobites), Catholic
Syrians and other Christians have also been deported in the eastern

54
55

PA-AA, BoKon/170, no. 24, dated August 14th, 1915.
PA-AA, R14087, no. 501 dated August 12th, 1915.

4. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY KNOW?

87

provinces. For a longer period of time it has been indicated here
that such Christians were also being killed.’ 56

FINAL REMARKS
Germany certainly was not keeping track of the fate of Assyrians in
the same detail as the massacre of Armenians. However,
descriptions in Lepsius’ report and in German Foreign Office
documentation are representative enough to support the claim that
the Armenians and the Assyrians suffered the same fate. As
outlined, the selected reports not only explicitly mention Assyrians
as victims, they clearly speak about general persecution and
massacres of the Christian population in all Ottoman provinces.
The German documents provide clear evidence that deportations
and killings were in most cases done indiscriminately. Hence,
Germany had a rough picture of what was occurring in the shadow
of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the destruction of the
Assyrians as a native Christian population of Turkey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abraham, Miryam A. German Recognition of Armenian, Assyrian
Genocide: History and Politics, Berlin, June 6, 2016
See: http://aina.org/releases/20160606170745.htm accessed
November 23, 2017
Dadrian, Vahakn N. German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide. A
Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. (Watertown:
Blue Crane Books, 1996.)
Donef, Racho. Righteous Muslims during the Genocide of 1915. Sydney,
November 5, 2010
See: http://www.atour.com/history/1900/20101105a.html
accessed November 23, 2017
Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian
Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. (Picsataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2006).
Gottschlich, Jürgen. Beihilfe zum Völkermord: Deutschlands Rolle der bei
56

PA-AA, R14087; R14095 no. 90 dated September 3rd, 1915.

88

ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM

der Vernichtung Armenier. (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag
GmbH, 2015).
Lepsius, Johannes. Armenien und Europa. Eine Anklageschrift wider die
christlichen Großmächte und ein Aufruf an das christliche Deutschland.
(Berlin-Westend:Verl. der Akad. Buchh. Faber, 1896).
–––––– Bericht zur Lage der armenischen Volkes in der Türkei.
(Potsdam: Der Tempelverlag, 1916).
–––––– Deutschland und Armenien 1914–1918. Sammlung diplomatischer
Aktenstücke. (Potsdam: Der Tempelverlag, 1919).
–––––– Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes. Bericht über das Schicksal
des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei während des Weltkrieges. 2.
Vermehrte Auflage. (Potsdam: Der Tempelverlag, 1919).
Mühsam, Kurt. Wie wir belogen wurden. Die amtliche Irreführung des
deutschen Volkes. (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1918).
Sefer, George D. A Dream of a Long Journey. Jersey City. (NJ: New
Assyria Publishing Co., 1918).
Yonan, Gabriele. Ein vergessener Holocaust: Die Vernichtung der
christlichen Assyrer in der Türkei. (Göttingen: Gesellschaft für
Bedrohte Völker, Reihe Pogrom, 1989).

5. LETTERS ON THE SAYFO FROM
ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES
MARTIN TAMCKE
In the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, young Assyrian
theologians came to Germany in order to study Lutheran theology.
Generally, after completing their studies, they returned to their
homes in northwest Iran to begin working as priests of the Church
of the East. In the past decades I have presented numerous
examinations of the most important representatives of these
Lutheran-influenced theologians.
Included among these theologians is Pera Johannes, the
founder of this movement and a priest in the village of Wasirabad,
which was destroyed during the Sayfo. Spiritually crushed by this
experience, he fled over Georgia and Turkey to France, where he
died a broken man, leaving behind his wife and disabled daughter. 1
Another theologian, Johannes Pascha, struggled in vain to find
sufficient financial support in Germany and moved to America
where he died from cancer without ever again seeing the family
that he had left behind in Digalah near Urmia. 2 The most
important Sayfo correspondent and reporter was Luther Pera, the
son of Pera Johannes. 3 He had been a priest in Urmia and fled with
his family first to Germany, then relocated to Alsace, which was
becoming increasingly French, and finally settled in America. Jaure
See also Tamcke ‘Pera Johannes’ (1994) and (2001).
See also Tamcke ‘Johannes Pascha (1862–1911)’.
3 See also Tamcke ‘Urmia und Hermannsburg’ (1996) and ‘Luther
Pera’s Contribution to the Restauration of the Church of the East in
Urmia’ (1995/96).
1
2

89

90

MARTIN TAMCKE

Abraham, who was most profoundly influenced by the Sayfo,
reported his horrible experiences whenever it was possible for him;
his reports can be found in the journal of the mission, Nachrichten
aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien. His son, Lazarus Jaure, along
with Luther Pera, brought these events to light in Germany,
Sweden, and the United States. 4 The others that had studied in
Germany also played vital roles in spreading knowledge regarding
these incidents: the sons of Pera Johannes: Augustin Pera and
Theodor Pera; the son of Johannes Pascha: Philippus Pascha, and
others. Of course, Karl Röbbelen, the chairman of the association
for the Lutheran mission in Persia, ceaselessly reported everything
that he knew about the events. 5 The priest, Kascha Ablachat, who
cooperated with the mission, was horrifically murdered in his home
village. 6
Most of the letters are reports of the Sayfo. However, some
letters go beyond a mere report and aim directly to move the
Europeans to help the survivors of the persecution. One such
letter, written by Lazarus Jaure, gives us insight into the content of
the Sayfo-related letters in general. 7 All of these priests belong to
the so-called “Lutheran Nestorians,” a designation that can be
traced back to Julius Richter. Some changed their church affiliation
and became pastors of the Lutheran Church of North America. 8 In
addition to the letters that I personally possess, I have viewed all of
the relevant archives in Germany. The remaining documents of the
small mission of Otto Wendt will be published by a colleague in
Marburg, Karl Pinggéra. 9
Tamcke ‘Eingeborene Helfer oder Missionar?’ (1995).
See also Tamcke ‘Karl Röbbelen’ (1994).
6 See also Tamcke ‘Wie Kascha Ablachat zu einem Pferd kam’
(1998).
7 Tamcke ‘Ein Brief des Lazarus Jaure aus dem Frühjahr 1916 zu
den Geschehnissen in Urmia’ (2005).
8 See also Tamcke ‘Die Konfessionsfrage bei den lutherischen
Nestorianern’ (1993: 521, note 3).
9 See Tamcke ‘Der schwere Weg zum Akademiker’ (2006) for the
most recent research; see also Macuch Geschichte der spät- und neusyrischen
Literatur, p. 338.
4
5

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

91

Lazarus Jaure’s letter, which will be introduced here, was
composed in Sweden. 10 It is written on paper from a Swedish hotel.
The pre-printed letterhead displays the address, ‘HOTELL
TREMONT, 42 VASAGATAN 42, RIKS 11668 11668 ALLM.
16830’. This hotel was located in the Swedish capital, Stockholm,
and Lazarus Jaure, with his own handwriting, added May 24th, 1916
as the date when the letter was composed.
With the words, “Dear Pastor,” Lazarus begins the letter to
his former superior. “At the urgent demand of my father and
through my own sense of duty I have been prompted to give up
my work in Russia and travel here.” This journey must have been
very dramatic and it must have preceded the Assyrian’s experiences
that would haunt him for the rest of his life. We know this because
later, while in America and then in Germany, he tried to have his
experiences during the war and his eyewitness accounts of the fate
of his people published in book form. 11 The accompanying letters
are still preserved, but unfortunately the book that the Americans
refused to print has been lost. German companies would certainly
have had a greater interest in publishing the book. It had the title,
My Experiences in Persia during the World War. 12 Lazarus Jaure had
submitted it to the Lutheran Publication House in Philadelphia,
where his work made quite an impression; even Pastor Moltzahn
thought so. It was he, then, who, thinking of its potential readers,
referred Lazarus Jaure to Germany. The letter in question, which
Lazarus drafted on May 8th, 1932, is still preserved. 13 The book and
its publisher cannot be located today, which is a painful loss, but
some of that which was lost with the book is still found, in part, in
the letters.
All quotations from this letter according to Tamcke ‘Ein Brief des
Lazarus Jaure aus dem Frühjahr 1916’ (2005), where the original German
text is published.
11 See Tamcke ‘Eingeborene Helfer’ oder Missionar?’ (1995: 380,
note 89).
12 Ibid. See also Yonan’s Ein unvergessener Holocaust (1989: 202).
Although the title suggests otherwise, the book deals with the incidents
both in Turkey and in Persia.
13 Ibid.
10

92

MARTIN TAMCKE

Unlike Lazarus Jaure, who even before the First World War
had a falling out with his German employer, the Hermannsburg
Mission, his father, who was the priest of the apostolic Church of
the East in Gogtapa, remained in constant contact with the
mission. He was a distinguished man, who, after his flight to
Bombay and Iraq and a few years in America as a priest, returned
home and formed a congregation one last time. 14 It was there
where Helmut Grimmsmann found his gravestone years ago,
which bore the year 1938 as the date of his death. 15
Bearing in mind the close contact that his father kept with
Röbbelen by way of mail, we proceed to the following remark in
the letter: ‘I would have gladly presented my father’s own letter, but
unfortunately I could not bring it with me across the border and
must content myself with imparting its content to you.’ It is here
that Lazarus Jaure brings us along in the experiences of the
Assyrian Christians of Gogtapa during the war.
My father allowed the church that was burned to the ground in
Gogtapa to be entirely rebuilt and promises the best for the
progress of the congregation, as it will be protected by our
esteemed young patriarchs, who hold resolutely to their beliefs.
He had the steadfast hope that that for which he had worked
his entire life and would set everything in motion could
develop all the more blessedly and effectively after the storm
had passed. And so he continues, confidently and undeterred,
to work on this through all sorts of difficulties. He requests
that you allow him, if possible, to at least receive his withheld
salary, or even only a part of it, be it through a Swiss or a
Swedish mission, so that he, in this present critical moment,
may also see to the upkeep of the church and congregation
materially.

Since the start of the war, transferring money from Germany to
Persia in the Urmia region was difficult, and since the incident in
1915 it became nearly impossible. This explains the outstanding
salary. In July 1915, Röbbelen had informed the readers of the
14
15

Tamcke ‘Die Arbeit im Vorderen Orient’, pp. 532–534.
Grimmsmann ‘Im Nordwesten Irans’ (1979).

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

93

mission newsletter that the German embassy’s preacher had written
to him in Constantinople on May 26th, 1915 to tell him that the
German envoy in Tehran, Prince Reuß, had left the American
ambassador 1,500 reichsmarks to pay the Assyrian colleagues of the
Hermannsburg Mission 16 – there was no other way.
The reference to the burned church points to an incident that
is extensively described in the other letters. On July 3rd, 1915,
Luther Pera reported to Germany. 17 In the middle of December
1914, the Russian Army had withdrawn from Urmia. Many
Assyrian Christians would have liked to leave the region with them.
By January 2nd, 1915, all of the Russians were gone. On January 3rd,
a Sunday, ‘all of the Christians, defenseless, [were] exposed to the
furious wrath of the Muslim people’. He reports that
All of the Christian villages and homes from Dilguscha to
Urmia and the surrounding area were ransacked, all men,
women, and children were robbed of their clothes and money.
All of the men and young people from the villages farther
removed from the city were gunned down by the Muslims. As
soon as the Kurds had received the news from the Muslim
inhabitants of the city that the Russians were gone, they
overran the region. Gogtapa, where people from twenty
different Christian villages had searched for protection, was
sparred entirely from the slaughter through the heroic acts of
the American mission-doctor, Dr. Packard, and two Assyrian
youths, Joesph Khan and Dr. David Khan. He rode with his
companions on Monday, December 23rd [January 5th New
Style] to the Kurdish leaders that attacked Gogtapa. After
many hours of negotiations, Dr. Packard was able to get the
Kurds to agree only to allow the residents of Gogtapa to
surrender and leave with their souls, i.e. merely their lives,
which were given to Dr. Packard as a gift, but all of their
possessions would have to belong to the Kurds … In this way
Röbbelen ‘Die Mitgliederversammlung’, p. 11.
Excerpts published in Röbbelen ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das
erste Kriegsjahr’, pp. 14–16; on Luther Pera cf. Tamcke ‘Urmia und
Hermannsburg’ (1996).
16
17

94

MARTIN TAMCKE
many thousands were saved and brought to the American
mission-house. 18

The city itself had thus fallen into the hands of the soldiers, but its
people did not. In other places it did not go as well. Luther Pera
writes about the approximately 46 people from the French mission
that were arrested,
bound arm to arm, and shot to death by the orders of the
Turks. In Gulfaschan more than 80 people were killed. The
women and girls were subjected to the impure lusts of this wild
pack … even though the Turkish consul and the Kurdish sheik
had promised complete safety to the village of Gulfaschan. In
many villages, like Ada and Supurgan, unspeakable atrocities
took place. Many died as martyrs for the sake of their beliefs,
and many women and girls were kidnapped by the Kurds and
the Muslims. 19

What is striking about Luther Pera’s description is that for him,
there was no doubt that these atrocities were committed by the
Turks and the Kurds together, and the order to shoot dead the
prisoners from the French mission in Urmia was issued, according
to him, unquestionably by the Turks. Luther Pera put the number
of dead at 8,000. Following this comes the fact that was illuminated
by the news in Lazarus Jaure’s letter: ‘All of the churches, even
ours in Wasirabad and Gogtapa, were burned down.’ 20 That being
said, the inhabitants of Gogtapa still fared relatively well, not only
because of the presence of the American mission-doctor; even the
material damage was limited. At least there was something upon
which one could build. ‘In Gogtapa, the houses, doors, and
windows were left alone because there was too much to rob from
this village. Even Brother Jaure’s house and the school remained
untouched.’ 21
18

Röbbelen ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’, p.

14.
Ibid., p. 15.
Ibid., p. 15.
21 Ibid., p. 16.
19
20

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

95

On January 1st, 1916, Röbbelen reported to the readers of his
newsletter that Jaure Abraham was once again in Gogtapa and
reunited with his family. But the people from the mission still
devoted themselves to illusions regarding the next developments.
To this Röbbelen wrote in the news, ‘There do not seem to be any
more attacks on the Urmia-wide level. There is also hope that
actions against the Assyrian Christians will stop in the future. The
royal ambassador in Constantinople made some suggestions to the
Turkish government and it promised that orders would be given to
protect our Assyrian brothers at the proper military areas.’ 22
However, such promises were left unfulfilled. Röbbelen called for
donations for those affected, and one generous family even gave
their six silver spoons to help the Assyrians. Lazarus Jaure’s report
that his father had rebuilt the church and was confident about the
future of the community was given on June 21st, 1916 during the
meeting of the association for Lutheran missions in Persia. On
October 1st, Röbbelen was able to report to his readers that the
Swedish missionary alliance had taken over money transfers for the
Hermannsburg Mission. 23
We now find an odd parenthetical note in Lazarus Jaure’s
letter: ‘As a precautionary measure, my father was not readily able
to report anything about the unfortunate members of the
congregation in Wasirabad.’ Behind this remark hides the tragedy
of an entire village and a priestly family. The tragedy began to
unfold already in the summer of 1914. 24 On June 18th, the foreign
office reported to the Hermannsburg Mission in Berlin that the
local Father Pera Johannes was removed from his church, which
had been maintained with funds raised in Germany. 25 The news
had reached the foreign office via telegraph from the German
envoy in Tehran. The envoy also reported that the priest was
removed from the church by the Russian bishop and thrown in
Röbbelen ‘Nachrichten aus Urmia’, p. 3.
Röbbelen ‘Die Mitgliederversammlungen 21. Juni 1916 in
Hermannsburg’, p. 3.
24 See Tamcke ‘Die Zerstörung der ostsyrischen Gemeinde in
Wasirabad’ (2006); Pera Johannes served as priest in Wasirabad.
25 Röbbelen ‘Eine Trauerkunde aus Wasirabad’ (1914).
22
23

96

MARTIN TAMCKE

prison along with the church elders. The bishop had been
accompanied by a contingent of horsemen that, at the urging of the
Russians, had been provided to him by the Persian governor in
Urmia. On June 13th, the bishop came to the village. He took
possession of the church and consecrated it on June 14th. To
suppress resentment among the villagers, not only were priests and
vestrymen arrested, but, in order to intimidate the inhabitants, the
riders were quartered with the members of the congregations,
thereby eliminating any resistance. 26 The governor had previously
tried to bring the priest and his supporters to leave the church
voluntarily. Subsequently, on the Thursday after the Pentecost, he
sent an official messenger with the order to hand the church over
to the Russians. The priest tried in vain to speak to the governor.
He was not let in. The Assyrians no longer controlled their destiny.
‘We live in the most hard-pressed circumstances. I have no other
support aside from the Lord above me. The most insignificant
slander can put one’s life in danger’, said the son of the priest, who
tried in vain to ensure the release of his father. 27 After the priest
was finally released, there was a deep sense of uncertainty. The
priest was depressed about the loss of his church and did not trust
himself to serve his congregation in a different building.
‘Everything was marked by fear’, said the director of the German
orphanage house in Urmia, Anna Friedemann. 28 At the end of
1915, Luther Pera reported that the village church had been burned
down. Because of the persecution, the region found itself in a
terrifying situation. ‘Wasirabad is completely devastated, the houses
torn up, doors and windows destroyed’ 29 – a blow from which the
village would never recover.

Röbbelen in ‘Die gewaltsame Wegnahme der Kirche in Wasirabad’
(1914) published excerpts of the reports from Luther Peras and Johannes
Peras with the specified date of Luther Peras’s letter: 19 June 1914; the
letter quoted from Pera Johannes is missing a date.
27 Ibid., p. 15.
28 Röbbelen ‘Wie steht’s auf der Urmiaebene’, p. 7.
29 Röbbelen ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’, pp.
15–16.
26

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

97

In January 1917, Röbbelen published all of the relevant news
that Lazarus Jaure had communicated to him. ‘The congregation in
Wasirabad was not able to gather again because the village is for
the most part destroyed. The church that had been burnt down was
not restored by the Russians.’ 30 Nevertheless, there remained a few
Christians there during the short pause before the renewed surge of
violence. These Christians lingered now around Gogtapa.
However, the village priest, Pera Johannes, had fled to Armavir in
southern Russia and then to Tbilisi. 31 He remained from this point
on a broken man and was never able to conduct a worship service
again. However, he narrowly escaped the atrocities. His son had
been hidden with his family in Urmia in the house of a young
Muslim after he was attacked in his own house by a marauding
group of Muslims. Concern for his parents and siblings plagued
him because after the withdrawal of the Russians in December the
Kurds ravaged and plundered the villages. ‘But after three days they
came to the American mission house completely robbed of
everything, even their clothes. I took them with us to the
Mohamadan house.’ 32 Pera Johannes never saw his longtime place
of pastorship again. His congregation had disappeared, and
everything that he had attained and achieved along with it. He died
in 1924, poverty-stricken, supported by the Hermannsburg Mission
in a home in Alsace where he ended up after finally being
permitted to leave Georgia, which had been beset with
revolutionary upheaval. He left behind his wife and disabled
daughter who were cared for by a member of the Hermannsburg
Mission for the rest of their lives.
Given the increasing misery of the Assyrians, Lazarus Jaure
could not remain in Russia any longer.
What prompted me to come here was my father’s heartrending allusion to the tremendous hardship and boundless
Röbbelen ‘Neue Nachrichten aus der Urmiaebene’, p. 1.
See Röbbelen (1916a: 3), resp. (1916c: 2–3), (1917a: 2), (1917b),
(1919: 2, 4); (1920: 4).
32 Letter of his son Luther Pera from 3 July 1915 in Röbbelen ‘Ein
Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’, pp. 14–15.
30
31

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MARTIN TAMCKE
misery that our poor Assyrian brothers now endure, brothers
whose lives are, apart from this, also threatened by terrible
diseases and epidemics. And, furthermore, he reminded me of
my unavoidable duty. And, honorable pastor, this had been a
terrible burden for me for a long time until it finally brought
me here. In light of this dreadful ordeal that we saw and
experienced and that still affects our people with its entire
severity, I was compelled to set aside all of my own thoughts
and wishes and to humbly follow my inner voice and the
demands of my father. Alas, I do not know if you have learned
of the true barbarity that our people endured in this time of
war!

This is Lazarus Jaure’s opening for his public appearances to help
his persecuted people. It became his mission, one to which he
remained true until his death. Unfortunately, the letter does not
have any further details after that about the events affecting the
Assyrians, but only this unrelated sentence, ‘But I do not want to
write about that’. This may not completely satisfy those who long
for more information, but in spite of this, we may now view
Lazarus Jaure as the organizer of the help his people desperately
needed.
I now ask only for your help. And perhaps you will
acknowledge my request by contributing to our efforts to help
those of my people who are poor, hungry, and dying, for this is
the sole reason that I came here. Now I understand what could
prompt Paul to wish himself to be doomed in place of his
Christian brothers. – Yet, I would rather shelve all of my own
thoughts and wait here for your instructions and advice
without which I am lost. I would like to note that only through
intervention of the Swedish mission that possibly, as I hope,
will readily lend a hand, can something be done against this.

And, in fact, this is how it did happen as the Germans sent their
help through the intervention of Lazarus Jaure to the Swedish
mission. 33
33

See Grimmsmann ‘Im Nordwesten Irans’ (1979).

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

99

In one of his closing remarks, Lazarus Jaure shows that he
was aware of the successful flight of one of his fellow priests in the
Church of the East, Luther Pera. ‘Pastor Luther Pera already left
Russia months ago and can only be in Germany now. Please give
him my regards.’ The previously-mentioned epidemics had even
reached the writers of the letters themselves. Luther Pera had
already become acquainted with cholera during his first flight to
Tabriz in the summer of 1915. 34 Then his son, Friedrich, died from
typhus during the course of the epidemics in Urmia. 35 Luther Pera’s
story and his adventurous flight to Germany via Sweden also
deserved a detailed description. He was spared death through the
help of Muslim acquaintances and with the new Russian evacuation
of Urmia, he left the region, never to return again. 36 He, too, had
thought of publishing his experiences and is said to have tried to
have them published in the newspaper of Dr. Johannes Lepsius in
Potsdam, but these recollections never appeared.
The reconstruction of the church in Gogtapa during the First
World War did not last long. The patriarch, whom Lazarus Jaure
praised, was murdered by the Kurds in an ambush along with 25
members of his escort. The English did not appear quickly enough
when relieving the Russians in the north, and the Turks and Kurds
together ravaged the region as they had done before. Now Jaure
Abraham also had to flee. He compares this strange exodus of his
people to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Here it also
becomes apparent how the hardship of hungering and sick people
completed the work that the tormentors and murders began.
On 18 July 1918 we left Urmia and fled south to Hamedan.
This flight took 22 days. The masses went with their carts,
horses, and possessions. En route we were surrounded by
enemies eight times; some thousands were killed or taken
away. On the fourth day of our flight we left behind our carts,
to which four oxen were attached, all of our best things, the
Röbbelen ‘Nachrichten aus Urmia’, p. 3.
Röbbelen ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’, p. 15
and Röbbelen ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’ (1916).
36 Tamcke ‘Urmia und Hermannsburg’ (1996).
34
35

100

MARTIN TAMCKE
books, etc. My wife rode a horse that we still had; the others
and I fled by foot. In the first day, in the summer heat, we
travelled approximately 70 km on foot without shoes and
socks along the sandy paths of Persia. Obviously, thousands of
people were in the same position as I. The fleeing group was
comprised of about 90,000 souls. Nursing women left their
small children on the path and fled. The entire time we
encountered children that had been abandoned by their
parents. They ran into the packs of fleeing people and called
out crying to the strangers: “daddy, mommy, take me with
you!” But nobody could help them. Even new-borns were
abandoned. Elderly parents that were weak were left behind.
Others died along the way and were allowed to lie along the
path, unburied. We were hungry because we had to abandon
all of our supplies on the way; for three days we had no bread
nor water, for the thousands of people with their cattle drank
up all of the water. Almost the entire group suffered from
dysentery; cholera also caused many deaths. As we approached
Hamedan my wife became ill, but we had respected relatives
there who took us in as guests in their house. My wife lay sick
in bed for one week. On 10 August the Lord took her. Her
burial, on the 11th, was well attended, both by many respected
men in Hamedan as well as the fleeing Assyrians. I fell into a
deep sadness. We remained in Hamedan for four months.
Then we decided to travel in the winter to Tabriz, a journey
that would take one month. I arrived sick and weak. I was sick
there for two weeks, my chest and knees in pain because of the
cold. As I became healthy, my son contracted typhus. Now he
has also recovered. But it became very difficult for us to live in
a foreign city without money under these conditions. 37 For a
while they cleared the city’s Armenian church for Jaure
Abraham’s public services. Eventually, however, he had to

Röbbelen in ‘Ein Brief aus Persien’ (1919: 3–4) published a large
portion of Jaure Abraham’s letters; the mission had not had direct contact
with him for five years.
37

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

101

immigrate to America via Bombay, again destitute, and could
only return to his home in 1930 as an old man of 76. 38

As a clergyman amongst his fellow countrymen in Philadelphia he
saw to the reconstruction of his home village and its church. It is a
miracle that this old man could be buried as the priest of his
congregation in his native ground in 1938. 39
In contrast, his son, Lazarus, whose letter is in the focus of
this discussion, could not return to his home. The Germans
responsible for the association in Hermannsburg considered a
renewed effort in this region completely pointless and also feared
the financial burdens which they would thereby incur. 40 However,
Lazarus Jaure stood by his mission to make the public aware of the
Sayfo. In 1962, when he published the story ‘Uncle Sälu and
Qämbär’ with the orientalist Johannes Friedrich, Friedrich did not
merely admire Lazarus Jaure’s excellent knowledge of German,
indeed, he ‘practically considered [him] to be a scholar of German’.
More important for our context is that Lazarus Jaure did not grow
tired of explaining to Friedrich that the background of such stories
had been overwhelmingly inspired by the suppression of the
Assyrian Christians before the First World War on the TurkishPersian border. As a writer, Lazarus Jaure supported the
conveyance of the details of this event for over half a century, thus
securing a place for himself in the line of eyewitnesses, along with
the other authors 41 who were mentioned in the beginning of this
paper.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Friedrich, Johannes, and Lazarus Yaure. ‘Onkel Sälu und Qämbär.
Eine neusyrische Verserzählung von D. Iljan’. Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 112, (1962: 6–49).
Röbbelen ‘Neue Schritte auf alten Bahnen’ (1930).
See also Grimmsmann ‘Im Nordwesten Irans’ (1979).
40 Tamcke ‘Hermannsburg, die Assyrerfrage und der Völkerbund’
(2005).
41 Friedrich & Yaure ‘Onkel Sälu und Qämbär’, p. 6 [explanatory
note].
38
39

102

MARTIN TAMCKE

Grimmsmann, Helmut (ed.). ‘Im Nordwesten Irans. In
Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk in Niedersachsen’.
Jahrbuch des Evangelisch-Lutherischen Missionswerkes in Niedersachsen
1980. (Hermannsburg: Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk in Niedersachsen, 1979, pp. 80–86).
Macuch, Rudolf. Geschichte der spät- und neusyrischen Literatur. (Berlin
and New York: de Gruyter, 1976).
Röbbelen, Karl. ‘Eine Trauerkunde aus Wasirabad’. Nachrichten aus
der lutherischen Mission in Persien 1(2), 1914, pp. 11–12.
–––––– ‘Die gewaltsame Wegnahme der Kirche in Wasirabad’.
Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien 1(4), 1914, pp.
13–16.
–––––– ‘Wie steht’s auf der Urmiaebene?’ Nachrichten aus der
lutherischen Mission in Persien, 2(2), 1915, pp. 6–7.
–––––– ‘Die Mitgliederversammlung’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen
Mission in Persien, 2(3), 1915, pp. 9–12.
–––––– ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’.
Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien, 2(4), 1915, pp.
13–16.
–––––– ‘Nachrichten aus Urmia’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen
Mission in Persien 3(1), 1916, pp. 2–4.
–––––– ‘Ein Bericht aus Persien über das erste Kriegsjahr’.
Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien 3(2), 1916, p. 4.
–––––– ‘Die Mitgliederversammlungen 21. Juni 1916 in
Hermannsburg’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien,
3(4), 1916, pp. 2–4.
–––––– ‘Neue Nachrichten aus der Urmiaebene’. Nachrichten aus der
lutherischen Mission in Persien, 4(1), 1917, pp. 1–3.
–––––– ‘Bericht des armenischen Missionars M.A. TerAsaturiantz’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien,
4(2), 1917, p. 3.
–––––– ‘Ein Brief aus Persien’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission
in Persien, 6(2), 1919, pp. 1–4.
–––––– ‘Bericht über die lutherische Mission in Persien für das
Jahr 1919’. Nachrichten aus der lutherischen Mission in Persien,
7(3/4), 1920, p. 4.

5. LETTERS FROM ASSYRIAN EYEWITNESSES

103

–––––– ‘Neue Schritte auf alten Bahnen’. Nachrichten aus der
lutherischen Mission in Persien, 17(2), 1930, pp. 2–4.
Tamcke, Martin. ‘Die Konfessionsfrage bei den lutherischen
Nestorianern’. Aram 5, 1993, pp. 521–536.
–––––– ‘Karl Röbbelen’. In T. Bautz, (ed.) BiographischBibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Vol. 8. (Herzberg: Bautz, col.
1994, 503–504).
–––––– ‘Pera Johannes’. In R. Lavenant, (ed.) VI Symposium
Syriacum 1992. (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1994, pp.
361–369).
–––––– ‘“Eingeborene Helfer’ oder Missionar?” Wege und Nöte
des Lazarus Jaure im Dienst der Mission’. In M. Tamcke, W.
Schwaigert, and E. Schlarb, (eds.) Syrisches Christentum weltweit.
Festschrift Wolfgang Hage. (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1995, pp. 355–
385).
–––––– ‘Luther Pera’s Contribution to the Restauration of the
Church of the East in Urmia’. The Harp 8/9, 1995/96, pp.
251–261.
–––––– ‘Urmia und Hermannsburg, Luther Pera im Dienst der
Hermannsburger Mission in Urmia 1910–1915’. Oriens
Christianus 80, 1996, pp. 43–65.
–––––– ‘Wie Kascha Ablachat zu einem Pferd kam. Eine Episode
aus dem Jahr 1911 zur Mentalität des ostsyrisch-deutschen
Kulturkontaktes’. In B. Beinhauer-Köhler, (ed.) Religion und
Wahrheit, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift Gernot Wießner.
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998, pp. 401–410).
–––––– ‘Johannes Pascha (1862–1911): Der Leidensweg eines
“kollektierenden Syrers’”. The Harp 11–12, 1998/99, pp. 203–
223.
–––––– ‘Die Arbeit im Vorderen Orient’. In E.A. Lüdemann, (ed.)
Vision: Gemeinde weltweit. 150 Jahre Hermannsburger Mission und
Ev.-luth. Missionswerk in Niedersachsen. (Hermannsburg: Verlag
der Missionshandlung, 2000, pp. 511–548).
–––––– ‘Pera Johannes’. In T. Bautz, (ed.) BiographischBibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Vol. 18. (Herzberg: Bautz, col.
2001, pp. 1136–1138).

104

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–––––– ‘Ein Brief des Lazarus Jaure aus dem Frühjahr 1916 zu den
Geschehnissen in Urmia’. In M. Tamcke and A. Heinz, (eds.)
Die Suryoye und ihre Umwelt. 4. Deutsches Syologen-Symposium in
Trier 2004. Festgabe Wolfgang Hage zum 70.Geburtstag. (Münster:
Lit Verlag, 200, pp. 59–72).
–––––– ‘Hermannsburg, die Assyrerfrage und der Völkerbund’. In
G. Gremels, (ed.) Die Hermannsburger Mission und das ‘Dritte
Reich’. Zwischen faschistischer Verführung und lutherischer
Beharrlichkeit. (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005, pp. 151–166).
–––––– ‘Der schwere Weg zum Akademiker: Die Nöte des Lazarus
Jaure während seines Universitätsstudiums in Deutschland’. In
S. Talay, (ed.) Suryoye l-Suryoye. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur
aramäischen Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur. (Piscataway, NJ:
Gorgias Press, 2006, pp. 191–212).
–––––– ‘Die Zerstörung der ostsyrischen Gemeinde in Wasirabad
im Kontext von religiöser Konkurrenz, Weltkrieg und
ökonomischer Not’. In W. Beltz, & J. Tubach, (eds.) Expansion
und Destruktion in lokalen und regionalen Systemen koexistierender
Religionsgemeinschaften. (Halle an der Saale: Orientalisches
Institut, 2006, pp. 191–202).
Yonan, Gabriella. Ein unvergessener Holocaust. Die Vernichtung der
christlichen Assyrer in der Türkei. (Göttingen / Vienna: Pogrom,
1989).

II – LOCAL STUDIES

105

6. THE INCREASING VIOLENCE AND THE
RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA
AND HAKKARI (1900–1915)
FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER
No one can deny that the massacres of the Christian populations –
Armenian, Assyrian-Chaldean, and Greek – in the Ottoman
Empire in 1915 were due to the intention of the leaders in Istanbul
to displace and exterminate Christians from the Ottoman Empire.
For this reason, these massacres fall within the definition of
genocide.
On the Iranian side of the Turkish-Iranian border, the
Armenian and Assyrian-Chaldean populations living to the West of
Lake Urmia were also the victims of massacres in 1915, some of
which were part of an extermination plan and others not. The
massacres perpetrated in January and February 1915, before the
extermination of Christians in Eastern Anatolia had ignited, were
repeated again in July 1918 and May 1919. During the 1919
massacre, the Ottomans were no longer located there. In addition,
the Christians in Sanandaj, in the Iranian Province of Kurdistan,
were left unharmed.
Thus, other causes are obviously responsible for these
massacres. The letters and reports from the period show that there
are a variety of factors which triggered the massacres on both sides
of this border: the position of the Christian villages at the
crossroads of three increasingly weak Empires, the turmoil in the
societies of these Empires which were challenging the absolute rule
of their leaders, the development of nationalist movements and
aspirations, and the First World War, during which violence
reached its peak. The rampant violence in the years leading up to
1914 resulted in an explosion which swept through the regions of
107

108

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Eastern Anatolia and Iranian Azerbaijan in the context of the
confrontations between the Russians and the Ottomans.
The letters and reports which make it possible to understand
the situation west of Lake Urmia and in the Ottoman Hakkari
Mountains in 1915 were mainly written by missionaries living in
Urmia, who had stayed there due to Iran’s neutrality during World
War I. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s missionaries had left the
region. Archimandrite Sergius and the Russian Orthodox priests
had followed the Russian army back to the Caucasus in January
1915. The Presbyterians, Lazarists, Sisters of Charity and directors
of the orphanages who remained behind sent letters and reports to
Europe and the United States as the events unfolded, letters which
can be read still today. The Russian Vice-Consul of Urmia, Pavel
Vedenski, left the city on January 2nd, 1915. His replacement,
Vassili/Basile Petrovich Nikitine, arrived in Urmia on June 21st,
1915. At the end of that summer, along with the Presbyterians and
the Russian Relief Committees, V. Nikitine provided refuge to the
Assyrian tribes from Hakkari who were being harassed by the
Ottoman army. Although his reports and those drawn up by the
Relief Committees demonstrate their opposition to the Ottomans,
they remain a good source of information on the situation of
Christians in the region and that of Assyrian tribes who found
refuge on Iranian territory. In Tabriz, a number of consuls,
including the British consul H. Smith Shipley, the American consul
Gordon Paddock, the French consul Alphonse Nicolas, and the
Russian consul Arkadi Alexandrovich Orlov echoed the words in
the letters sent by the missionaries. The same was true for the
consuls stationed in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Their reports can be found in
the archives at the foreign affairs office of the relevant countries.
Some of the missionaries’ and consuls’ letters were published in the
volume by Brice and Toynbee, but not always in full. Finally, the
governors and the Iranian civil servants in charge of dealing with
foreigners (karguzar) sent telegrams to Tehran which have been

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 109
published in part. 1 This wealth of documentation is completed by
the letters written later by the Christian themselves. 2
In order to grasp the forces of destruction at work not only in
1915, but also in 1918 and 1919, an analysis of all these documents
makes it possible to briefly review here the various factors which
led to a weakening of the social fabric, whereby inhabitants were
stuck between the Russian, Iranian and Ottoman Empires.

CHRISTIAN ASPIRATIONS IN EMPIRES IN TURMOIL
The massacres which took place in the Urmia Region led to the
deaths of between 40,000 and 50,000 Armenian and AssyrianChaldean Christians who were living in villages west of Lake Urmia
and along the rivers which flow from the Kurdistan Mountains.
Also caught up in the massacre were a little over 70,000 Assyrians
from the Hakkari tribes, who were living among Kurdish tribes
according to a tribal system dating from the 15th century. A step
above the maleks, at the head of the tribes, was the CatholicosPatriarch of the Church of the East, each of which bore as part of
his regnal title Mar Shimun. The Catholicos was the temporal ruler
of the Assyrian tribes and the spiritual ruler over all the Christians
of his church, the Church of the East. Too often this church and
its adherents are incorrectly called ‘Nestorian’. The mountains were
not a barrier to the movement of people and goods, and the
Christians from Hakkari and Azerbaijan often walked to the
Caucasus and in particular to Tiflis/Tbilisi.
Since the beginning of the 1900s, the challenges against the
Tsar’s absolute power in Russia, against the power of Sultan
Abdulhamid in the Ottoman Empire and against the Qajars in Iran
resonated and were even strengthened among the populations
living in these three Empires. So-called ‘Revolutionary’ parties
Kasravi, Tarikh-e Hejdah Saleh-ye Azerbaijan; Bayat (ed), Iran va Jang-e
Jahani Avval. Esnad-e Vezarat-e Dokhela; Motamed el-Vezara, Urumia Dar
Mohareba-ye Alamsuz; Moez od-Dowla, Namaha ye Urumia.
2 D’Bait Mar Shimun, Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of Mar
Shimun; Shimmon, ‘Urumia, Salmas and Hakkiari: Statement by Mr. Paul
Shimmon’.
1

110

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

claimed new aspirations – Armenian parties, the Young Turks and
the Union and Progress Committee, and the Iranian Democratic
Party. Their ideas were spread via new newspapers.
Among the Armenians in Urmia and Salmas, the Dashnak
Party was better represented than the Hunchak Party, though both
parties had participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution
from 1906 to 1909, interrupted by the Russian crackdown in
Tabriz. 3 The Armenians were allowed one representative in the
Iranian Parliament (Majlis) in July 1909, but they successfully
requested two representatives. The Assyrian-Chaldeans from
Urmia and Salmas were not united; they were allowed one
representative in the Majlis in 1909. One group of AssyrianChaldeans from Urmia joined the movement and published the
Star newspaper, written in Syriac and independent from the
Church, while claiming their ‘Assyrian’ identity at the same time: 4
Our Syrians are being affected by the new spirit of things in
Persia and are talking about a national assembly, etc. It is all
very well if they only have the sense not to go too fast and get
themselves into trouble. Residence in America does not
altogether fit the young men for understanding the state of
things in Persia or for judging the best course to follow here.

But all of them, the Armenians and the Assyrian-Chaldeans who
had participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and had
hoped for a better personal status, were very disappointed when
they did not obtain civil equality with Muslims.

Kasravi, Russian General Snarski entered Tabriz in April 1909.
Philadelphia Historic Society Archives, [PHSA], 202, January 1907,
W.A. Shedd to R. Speer.
3
4

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 111

THE UPSURGE OF VIOLENCE ALONG THE TURKISHIRANIAN BORDER
Many events attest to the upsurge of violence along the TurkishIranian border since the end of the 19th century. These include the
massacres of Armenians by the Kurds in 1894–1896; the
assassination of the Bishop of Ardishahi, Mar Gauriel/Gabriel, in
June 1896, probably ordered by the Shaykh of Neri with whom he
spent the night after visiting the metropolitan archbishop of

112

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Shemsdin, Yosip Khnanisho; the assassinations of Christians and
the theft of herds of animals by the Kurds in the Hakkari
Mountains; as well as the impunity the groups of Kurds benefited
from when they raided villages in the plains. These raids were often
carried out by lower-level Kurdish leaders from the Hamiddiye
Battalions against which the Iranians did not have the resources to
fight. The Ottomans themselves did not prevent the raids of the
Kurdish tribes when they occupied the region between the
mountains and Lake Urmia from 1907 to 1912.
It is interesting to study how the inhabitants organized the
defence of their own villages: the Armenians, along with the fedayan
(Arabic: ‘(armed) fighters’) whose weapons were provided in
Armenian arm factories in Tabriz and in Salmas Valley; and the
Assyrian-Chaldeans who chose four bigger villages where the
population could flee for safety and which were defended using
weapons provided by the Iranian governor. The AssyrianChaldeans from the Tergawer District, who were the most
vulnerable as they lived on the Turkish-Iranian border, were the
first to resist the Kurdish raids and to organize their defence.
Thus, if the violence continued to increase constantly on both
sides of the Turkish-Iranian border throughout the first decade of
the 20th century, the populations organized themselves to fight
back. In particular, the Christians were well defended on the eve of
the First World War.

COMBAT BREAKS OUT IN THE REGION OF URMIA,
OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1914
When the Ottomans entered the war alongside the Quadruple
Alliance on November 1st, 1914, the Iranians declared they would
remain neutral. It is likely that they would not have participated in
the war, had their territory, specifically the triangle between the
Caucasus, Lake Urmia and the Kurdish mountains, not constituted
such extremely high stakes from a strategic standpoint for those
countries at war.
The Russians exercised formal influence over and militarily
occupied the Iranian province of Azerbaijan since the AngloRussian Convention of 1907, and in 1912 positioned their troops
along the border, replacing the Ottoman troops. They were
therefore ready to attack the Ottomans and the emissaries they had
sent to Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Shimun XXI Benyamin in 1913

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 113
and 1914 supported the disturbing rumours that – wrongly – the
Catholicos was an ally of the Russians: 5
The affairs along the border have not been going very
smoothly. Shaykh Sayyid Tahir has been put in charge by the
Persians and the Russians. He has his feud with his relatives
across the border in Nochea (Turkey) where he has large
proprieties [sic] rights. […] Another fact that is being kept
quiet but that may have political significance is that there are
negotiations going on between the Nestorian Church through
the Mission here towards the ‘conversion’ of the Nestorian
Church to the Orthodox faith. Such ‘conversion’ is pretty sure
to follow the extension of Russian political authority, but there
is more doubt whether the ‘conversion’ is likely to precede the
other change. If it does, it would not be strange if is resulted in
trouble for the Christians across the border. The details are not
clear, but it is certain that the patriarch was ready to fall into
lice but some of his people were opposed strongly and for the
present at least it has passed over. It shows that we may expect
if there is Russian political advance.

These rumours further strengthened other rumours spread by the
Young Turks about the alleged relations between the Armenians
and the Russians.
Once World War I broke out in Europe, the Ottomans and
Russians moved their troops along the Turkish-Iranian border
between Van and Urmia, as described by Zacharia, a Christian
worker for the customs authorities in Salmas Valley: 6
22 August: the entire Russian army is at the border. Big
movement of the Russian army all the way down to Somaï
Baradost Valley. The Cossacks have advanced towards the
South of Somaï almost up to the Turkish garrisons in Gaver
(district of Diza in Turkey). Regiments made up of Armenians,
Georgians and Chaldeans have shown up in the country.
PHSA, RG 91–5, W.A. Shedd, Urumia January 1913.
French Foreign Office’s Archives, [FFOA], Nouvelle Série, [N.S.],
Perse, XI, Tabriz September 5th, 1914, Nicolas.
5
6

114

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER
Already almost 600 soldiers like this are stationed in tents in
Zevajik, and some of them were spread out to other areas
between Urumia [Urmia] and Salmas. Simko remains calm for
the moment, with the entire border area of Urumia in Qotur
invaded by the Russian army. Kohnehshehr signed a petition
asking for Russian protection. Apparently, General Voropanov
has 35,000 Russian troops stationed in Khoy.

Giorgi Vassilevich Chirkov, the Vice-Consul of Khoy, and the
Archimandrite of Urmia were dealing with both the Iranian
Governor of Dilmaqan and the Kurdish leader, Simko: 7
No one is sure what will happen right now because everyone
predicts that after the skirmishes with the Kurds, a real war
certainly [will] be declared. In this case, the Persian and the
Turkish Kurds will start up with their devastation and
massacres again not only in Urumia, but in Selmas as well. The
Vice Governor of Selmas, feeling reassured by the recent
arrival of the Russian Bishop in Urumia, sent messengers to
announce to Diliman that anyone ௅ holding any nationality at
all [sic] ௅ who tries to leave Selmas will be severely punished!
No one is supposed to move and this order was also posted in
Urumia. For the last week, not only the number of Cossacks
has increased in Selmas, but the number of Dragons as well.
All of this proves that war is imminent. Simko’s cavalrymen
have rounded up all the horses in the Kurdish villages by force
and are setting up a strong cavalry against the Kerdari Kurds.

In Urmia, the spokeman for the Christian members of the National
Assyrian Committee, Dr Yonan Melik, 8 asked Governor Itimad odDowleh to organize the defence of the city against the Ottomans.
However, as the governor was dependent on the Russians, he
advised they accept the weapons being distributed by the Russians
FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, letter from Kohnehshehr to Nicolas on
19 September, Tabriz 8 October 1914.
8 See further FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Tabriz, 14 September 1914;
Congregation de la Mission's Archives (CMA), Note; Nikitine, La Nation
Assyrienne et ses Relations avec les Alliés dans la Guerre Actuelle, pp. 149–150.
7

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 115
and to follow the instructions of Vice-Consul Pavel Vedenski. This
is what both Consul Nicolas wrote in 1914 and Dr. Packard had to
say in 1919: 9
The Lazarists are claiming loudly that Vedensky pushed many
Chaldeans to fight against the Turks, promising they would be
supported by Russian soldiers. Then when the soldiers started
to fight, they left without notice and abandoned the Chaldeans
on whom the Turks later took revenge.

At the end of September 1914, there were major clashes in Hakki
near Mawana between Ottoman Kurds from Piru Bey and Russian
Cossacks. 10 Groups of Kurds and inhabitants of the Iranian
Sunnite villages along the border attacked the other villages. They
were pushed back to the Turkish side, to the west of the MargawerSomaï line, by the Russians, and a battalion made up of Christians
from Erevan and Georgia. The Russians retaliated by burning
Muslim villages and dignitaries and leaders of the Sunnite villages
were hung in vengeance. 11
Villages were caught in the crossfire. The Lazarist Nathanaël
Dinkha shared his fear with Pavel Vedenski that a war between the
Russians and Ottomans would escalate into a massacre of
Christians. 12 On his side, Colonel Andreevski, chief-of-staff of the
Russian forces in Van-Azerbaijan asked the Assyrian-Chaldeans to
side with the Russians if war broke out. The National Assyrian
Council of Urmia, chaired by Dr. Ishaï Bet Yonan, did commit
itself if the Assyrians were acknowledged after the war: ‘Our people
fell blindly into the arms of the allies, without anything in
exchange.’ 13 On October 7th, 1914, Roman Catholic Archbishop
FFOA, N.S., Perse, LIV, Tabriz 25 April 1915, Nicolas; Asie,
Perse, 1918–1940, XXV, Tabriz April 1st, 1919, Dr. Packard.
10 FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Van October 21st, 1914.
11 PHSA, RG 91–5, W.A. Shedd, Report January-June 1915; Dr.
Packard, Medical Report 1915. Toynbee & Bryce, W.A. Shedd’s Report 1915.
12 CMA, Annales, LXXX, Urumia September 26th, 1914, Dinkha to
Villette. FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Urumia 4 October, Archbp Sontag,
Tabriz October 8th, 1914, Nicolas.
13 FFOA, Levant 1918–40, Irak, XIL, Memorandum.
9

116

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Sontag informed Consul Nicolas of potential attacks against
Christians by Kurds and the ‘populace’, while placing the
responsibility on the Russian Orthodox priests and Archimandrite
Sergius whose initiatives had exasperated the population of Urmia
in his opinion. 14
In addition, during the night of October 9th–10th, groups of
Kurds moved closer to the city of Urmia and attacked the villages
of Seir and Anhar. The Cossacks fought back with the Christians
before the Russian infantry arrived: 15
The trouble started with the arrival of word that the Russian
post of Cossacks in Tergawar had been attacked by Kurds
[…]. The Russians dealt out rifles to Syrians, hundreds of them
I suppose. A Company of Syrians went to Seir with the
Cossacks to fight the Kurds […]. An order had been issued
that the Syrians would not wear the Mountaineers headdress,
because it would make it difficult to distinguish them from
Kurds. Many Moslems of the city and the villages are
suspected of having intrigued with the Kurds.

From Van, Vice-Consul Henry de Standford interpreted the
Kurdish attacks on the Urmia region as revenge taken by Kurdish
tribes who were on the Ottomans’ side against those tribes who
sided with the Russians: 16
The groups of Turks sent to Persia to stir up trouble with
Russia were joined by the Kurdish Ashiret Tribes living at the
border who were only too happy to find an excuse to take
revenge on enemy Tribes who had sided with the Russians.

FFOA, N.S., Perse, XI, Urumia October, 7th, Archbishop Sontag,
Tabriz 12, October 22nd, 1914, Nicolas. Archbishop Sontag was the leader
of the Lazarist mission and Apostolic Delegate in Iran.
15 PHSA, RG, 91–5, Urumia October 15th, 1914, H. Müller; Urumia
October 23rd, 1914, McDowell; December 12th, 1914, McDowell, Report.
FFOA, N.S., Perse, XI, Tabriz 22, October 28th, 1914. Coakley, pp. 333–
334.
16 FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Van October 21st, 1914, Henry de
Standfort.
14

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 117
When attacked by the Ashiret Heriki ad Hedareh, the Russians
were forced to evacuate the villages of Herki and Mavana,
leaving behind 10 dead and 15 wounded on the battlefield. The
Kardanli Tribe was able to push out the Audvanlis from Somaï
where over 400 Cossacks were based. Border control posts
were captured and lost successively by the Russians and the
group of Kurds. Spurred on by these Ashiret stormed the city
of Urumia but were surrounded by the Audvanlis and by 600
Cossack troops. They were forced to hastily withdraw under
heavy artillery fire.

The Christians in the villages under attack sought refuge in the
Urmia missions. On November 1st, 1914, the Ottoman Empire
officially entered the war on the side of the Quadruple Alliance.
From a military standpoint, the Western Anatolia-Urmia RegionCaucasus triangle became one of the new fronts in the beginning of
1915, where enemy armies confronted each other, flouting Iranian
neutrality. The destiny of the civil population was totally dependent
on the results of battles and the momentum of the pendulum
swang from victory to defeat.
The Assyrian-Chaldeans from Urmia were armed by the
Russians and paraded in the streets behind Agha Petros, who was
originally from the Baz Tribe, asserting their attachment to the
Triple Entente: 17
When war was declared in 1914, we ௅ the Assyrian Christians ௅
joined the Allies and organized massive demonstrations in
Urumia. Groups of people carrying the flags of the Allies
marched down the street and applauded the Entente. These
demonstrations were followed by active participation in the
Russian armies’ operations against the Turks.

In this statement written after the war, Agha Petros also mentions
the promises of independence given by the Vive-Consul Vedenski
and Colonel Andreevski to the Assyrians in exchange for
participating in the combat on the side of the Russians. He recalls
FFOA, Levant 1918–40, Iraq, XIL, Baghdad March 10th, 1919,
Agha Petros; PA-AP Gout, VIII, May 22nd, 1919.
17

118

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

how he improvised a speech in Urmia to assure the Russians, the
French and the British that they had the support of the Assyrians. 18

IN THE SALMAS VALLEY NORTH OF URMIA NOVEMBER–
DECEMBER 1914
The battles which took place in the Salmas Valley in the direction
of Bashqaleh in November and December 1914 give an idea of the
conditions involved in these struggles throughout the region until
the end of the First World War: fugitive and opportunistic alliances
of Kurdish tribes ready to plunder villages, no consideration for
borders, the blatant inertia and inability of the Iranians to defend
their territory and their neutral position, forcible or willing
participation of Armenian and Chaldean groups in combat, Agha
Petros and Andranik Ozanian – the latter at the head of the 1st
Battalion of Armenian Volunteers – being recognized as leaders in
the war, the fighting spirit of the Christians in Mawana who had
not lowered their guard since 1907, and above all, the reckless
strategies of the Russians who gained short-lived victories over the
Ottomans and then pulled out of positions previously occupied
leaving the Christian populations on-site even weaker.
As a response to the Kurds being rejected by the Russians on
the Turkish side of the border, the Ottomans removed the
populations of Christian villages in Nochea to locate Kurds there,
while forcing metropolitan archbishop Khnanisho, to remain.
Almost 500 Christians from Nochea fled to Urmia. They were
temporarily housed by Vice-Consul Vedenski in the Kurdish
villages that had been abandoned. 19
The Russian General Chernozubov assembled troops near
Dilmaqan for the purpose of marching on Van. These troops were
composed of Russian and Armenian soldiers, fedayan from the
region and volunteers. This led to successive advances and retreats
FFOA, Levant 1918–40, Iraq, Agha Petros, Report on the
participation of the Assyrian-Chaldean Nation in the general War alongside the
Powers of the Entente.
19 FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Tabriz November 25th, 1914,
Archbishop Sontag to Nicolas.
18

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 119
by Russian, Armenian and Kurdish forces between Diliman in Iran
and Bashqaleh, Van and Sarikamish, in the Ottoman Empire,
territories which the Russians coveted.
On November 28th, the Russians, coming from the Salmas
Valley, were joined outside Bashqaleh by Andranik’s Armenian
battalion and Agha Petros along with the cavalry from Mavana. 20
However, even if the Russians had made advances into Ottoman
territory, they could not hold their positions. In December, the
Ottoman commander again rallied a combined force of Muslims
against the Russians in Sawjbulagh, south of Lake Urmia. 21
In December 1914, the Christians in Albak and Bashqaleh
were slaughtered by the Kurds. The survivors poured into the
Salmas Valley while the Ottoman troops led by Enver Pasha were
fighting the Russian troops in Sarikamish, near Kars. 22 Victory was
uncertain. General Alexander Mishlayevski then ordered the
withdrawal of the Russian troops from Azerbaijan towards the
Caucasus. A Russian retreat appears not to have been official
before December 31st 1914 or January 1st, 1915. Then, on January
2nd, the Russians suddenly evacuated Urmia. General Khalil Pasha
leading the Second Army of the Ottoman Empire, together with
the Kurds who spread in the villages, invaded the outlying
mountainous areas before directing his troops into the territory of
Urmia. The Ottoman army entered the city of Urmia on January
4th, 1915.

CHRISTIANS FLEE THE SALMAS VALLEY
Groups of Christians decided to flee before the arrival of the
Ottoman army. The first to flee to the Caucasus were the
Armenian and Assyro-Chaldean Christians from the Salmas
FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Salmas November 28th, December 5th
Tabriz December 9th and 14th, 1914., F. Hellot-Bellier, 2014, pp.
and
431–434.
21 FFOA, N.S., Perse, VVIII, Tabriz December 9th and 22nd, 1914,
Nicolas.
22 FFOA, N.S., Perse, XVIII, Urumia December 14th, 1914, Archbp
Sontag to Nicolas, Khosrowa December 15th, 1914, Decroo. GolnazarianNichanian M., 2009, p. 114. Hellot-Bellier F., 2014, pp. 429–437.
20

7th,

120

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Valley. 23 Guided by three priests: G. Decroo, F. Miraziz, and A.
Clarys, along with seven Chaldean seminarians, together with
Armenians who had found Bishop Melik Tanguian from Tabriz,
‘Ten thousand Khosraw Abadis, the old, young, women and
children fled on foot during the night in minus-eighteen-degree
temperatures, sleeping in the snow.’ 24 ‘Twenty thousand Assyrian
and Armenian Christians abandoned the Northwest side of the
Urumia plain, the Persian Valleys in Kurdistan and the Salmas plain
[…] the majority of Christians in Urmia were unable to flee.’ 25 The
Lazarist, Georges Decroo, subsequently solicited aid from the
Caucasian authorities to shelter the refugees and provide them with
work and pay. Neverthess, over 200 families, 709 people, had
already reached Tiflis/Tbilisi and did not want to leave again. Thus,
the offer of the lazarist Decroo did not meet with the success
expected.
These figures are very similar to the estimate given by
Magdalena Golnazarian based on statistics from the Erevan
Commission: ‘On January 30th, 1915, the number of Armenians
and Assyrians from Azerbaijan dispersed among the villages of
Nakhichevan and Sharur-Daralagiaz was estimated to be 7,965 and
7, 942,’ respectively’. 26

CAMPAIGN OF TERROR IN THE VILLAGES COMMITTED BY
OTTOMAN AND KURDISH SOLDIERS
The Christians who had not fled were taken by surprise in the
villages and ruthlessly slaughtered by the vanguard of the army
composed of irregular soldiers and Kurds. This can be seen as the
Golnazarian-Nichanian, 2009, pp. 115–122. Certain testimonies
use the dates of the Gregorian calendar. Thirteen additional days must be
added to correspond to the dates of the Julian calendar.
24 CMA, Annales, Urumia 25 January 1915, Archbp Sontag to
Superior Villette, Tiflis February 2nd, 1915, Abel Zayia to Villette. FFOA,
N.S., Perse, LIV, Tiflis January 13th, 1915, Nicolas.
25 FFOA, Perse, LIV, Tiflis February 4th, 1915, Decroo. CMA,
Annales, LXXX, Baku 27 February 1915, Decroo.
26 CMA, Annales, LXXX, Baku February 27th, 1915, Decroo to
Villette. GOLNAZARIAN-NICHANIAN 2009, pp. 117–119.
23

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 121
application of the extermination plans designed by Enver Pasha
and Talaat Pasha, entrusted to these irregular soldiers (chetta),
executioners who were forced onto each regiment as members. 27
Some of the neighbouring Iranians attempted in vain to protect the
Christians. Outside of Urmia, Christians’ lives depended on the
good will of the Kurdish chieftains. When passing through
Ardishahi, the Kurd Karini Agha’s troops killed 80 villagers. In
January, fifty villagers of Ada were taken to the mosque where the
men were forced to choose between apostasy and death. In the
village of Abdullahkandi, the priest Mushil was stabbed to death
and his body exposed outside in front of the mosque for three
days. 28
Was it the Kurdish and Iranian alliance working with the
Democratic Party of Iran, or only the Iranians supporting Bakhsh
Ali Sultan who were responsible for executing 50, or according to
Archbishop Sontag, 85 Christians from Gulpashan and Iriawa who
were brutally assassinated in the cemetery on February 24th? 29
On Wednesday night, a still more horrible deed was
committed at Gulpashan. This village and Iriawa had been
shielded, partly through the efforts of a German; but on
Wednesday night a band of Persian volunteers, arriving from
Salmas or beyond, went there, took fifty men and, according to
reports, shot them in the graveyard nearby. They then
plundered the village, took girls and young women, outraged
them, and acted in general as one might expect Satan to do
when turned loose. […] Friday 5th March: Mr. Allen went to
Gulpashan with permission from the Turkish Consul to bury
those who have been murdered. He found 50 bodies. When he
came back, a crowd of 64, mostly women and girls, came with
him.
Akcam, 2006 and 2012; H. Bozarslan, 2013.
FFOA, N.S., Perse, LXXX, Baku February 27th, 1915, Decroo to
Villette.
29 PHSA, RG 91–4, Miss Mary Lewis, The War Journal of a Missionary,
Saturday, February 27th; Shedd, Statement, Urumia, July 25th, 1915. Kasravi,
p. 608.
27
28

122

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

In April 1915, sixty-three Christians from Gavar in the Ottoman
Empire, who had been requisitioned by the Ottomans to transport
cables for the telegraph that was supposed to hook up Urmia to
Ottoman territory, were cynically executed during their return: 30
The most diabolically cold blooded of all the massacres was
the one committed above the village of Ismael Agha’s Kalla
when some sixty Syrians of Gavar were butchered by the
Kurds at the instigation of the Turks. These Christians had
been used by the Turks to pack telegraph wire from over the
border and while they were in the city of Urmia they were kept
in close confinement without food or drink. On their return, as
they reached the valleys between the Urmia and Baradost
plains, they were all stabbed to death as it was supposed, but
here again, as in the two former massacres, a few wounded
bloody victims succeeded in making their way to our hospital.

THE OTTOMANS ENTER THE CITY OF URMIA ON 4
JANUARY 1915
Almost 18,000 Christians, among them those who had no time to
flee, abandoned their villages and sought refuge in the Presbyterian
and Lazarist missions of Urmia in January 1915. Many of them
died from illness, though their presence was tolerated by the
Ottoman commanders and they were protected by Urmia
dignitaries. They remained there until the Russians returned on
May 24th, 1915. The Sisters of Charity and Miss Mary Lewis
described respectively in their Journal des troubles à Ourmia de janvier à
mai 1915 and Diary of Miss Mary E. Lewis. The War Journal of a
Missionary in Persia the amazing feats performed by many to survive
under particularly difficult conditions in a city where all decisions
depended on the whims of the Ottomans. Their stories help to
complete the picture painted in the letters of Archbishop Sontag
and W.A. Shedd.
As soon as the Russians left, W.A. Shedd went to the First
mojtahed of Urmia, Mir Masih Agha. Together with prominent

30

PHSA, RG 91–4, Dr. Packard, Medical Report 1914–1915.

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 123
Iranian local figures in the city, both religious and secular, in order
to ask about the measures that should be taken: 31
The next two days I was in constant communication with the
chief nobles and ecclesiastics of the city. […] Urmia has an
unusual number of high officials in title; but there is neither
unity nor efficiency in the lot and it was impossible to get
vigorous action even for the protection of the city itself. Only
one man in the crowd was ready to do anything himself,
Arshad-ul Humayun, who immediately went out with his men
and stopped looting so far as he could.

The Lazarists benefitted from the support of their Sayyid
neighbours and their friend Shahab od-Dowleh Ghassemlu Afshar,
as well as the empathy of the governors and even that of Arshad
Humayun who was at the head of armed men: ‘When the Turks
first arrived in Urmia and the Russians first left ௅ which happened
in 1915 ௅ Arshad Humayun came to console Archbishop Sontag
and gave him his word that he would protect him.’ 32 William A.
Shedd and Arshad Humayun came to Rashid Bey on Tuesday,
January 5th, and he prevented the pillaging from continuing in
Urmia.
William A. Shedd had the feeling that the Ottomans were
pursuing two objectives. They wanted to bring the Iranians into the
war and take advantage of the situation to collect their share to the
booty. It was only General Khalil Pasha and his officers who
seemed to obey military objectives. 33

31

PHSA, RG 91–4, Urumia July 27th, 1915, W.A. Shedd. Avedissian,

p. 131.
FFOA, Inquiry, 20th meeting, 15 Rebi el-Ewel 1338H/December
1919, Statement by Qasha Shlimun Badal.
33 PHSA, RG 91–4, W.A. Shedd, A Statement of Politiocal relations and
Conditions in Connection with the Work of Urumia Station, Presbyterian Mission
Urumia, January to June 1915, Urumia July 27th, 1915. The following
quotations are excerpted from this Report.
32

9th,

124

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

RESCUING THE CHRISTIANS IN THE VILLAGES OF
WAZIRAWA AND GOGTEPA
Despite the horrors of war and the massacres, there were some
demonstrations of solidarity. Dr. Packard was able to rescue 1,200
Christians who were refugees in the large village of Gogtepa that
was under siege by the Kurds because he had cared for members of
their families. However, he was powerless to save at least 100
Christians who were assassinated in Gulpashan by the Kurds and
the Iranian ‘revolutionaries’.
Dr. Packard left Urmia on horseback to search for the
Kurdish Chief Karini Agha whom he knew well. He was
accompanied by Dr. Yusep Khan and Dr. David, who had been
caring for the Kurds in Sawjbulagh and Yusep Badal for the
previous twenty years. Accomanying them was Haydar Ali. They
carried two flags, Turkish and American. When they approached
the village of Wazirawa, they were able to obtain authorization for
the 300–400 Christians placed in the village to seek refuge in
Urmia. In Gogtepa, Dr. Packard availed of his understanding with
the Kurdish chieftains and at the end of the day was successful in
obtaining authorization to take to Urmia the Christians who were
assembled in the church, on the condition they gave up their
weapons. Six hundred Christians, who had lost everything, were led
that very night to Urmia by Packard, who was thanked by the
Iranian governor. Packard’s report was similar to that of
Archbishop Sontag: 34
The New Year opened quietly with more than the usual
number of calls from our Muslim and Christian friends and
little did we dream that for months we would not have another
day so peaceful and free from alarms. The evacuation,
completed so quickly on Jan. 2nd and 3rd made it impossible for
the distant villages to learn of it until it was over and the
frightened Christians fled from their homes in all directions to
save their lives. Some hid themselves for days and made their
way to us after a week or more. Some took refuge in
PHSA, RG 91–4, H. Packard, Urumia 1915, Medical Report, The
Relief of Goegtapeh. Kasravi, p. 607.
34

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 125
neighboring Muslim villages. As many as could, perhaps 8,000
or 10,000 made their way out to Russia with the retiring army.
The great mass of the people however, some 20,000, found
their way to our yards and to those of the French Lazarist
Mission. Most of these came by themselves, alone or in
groups; some were brought by Muslim friends; but two crowds
were rescued by direct missionary intervention when some 400
were sent in from Wuzerawa and perhaps 600 were brought in
from the village of Goegtapa. Personal enmities flashed into
flame. Holy War had been proclaimed by the leaders of Islam
so that the looting of Christian property was the natural right
of Muslims and the taking of Christian life their heaven-sent
commission, and since the power was entirely in their hands it
would be difficult to exceed or even duplicate the stories of
heartless plundering and old blooded slaughter of innocents
that we have seen here.

THE LIVES OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MISSIONS DURING
THE OTTOMAN OCCUPATION OF URMIA
According to William A. Shedd, there remained in Urmia 5,600
families, together with another 800–1,000 families coming from the
Ottoman border region since the Autumn of 1914, amounting to a
total of roughly 25,000 Christians. 35 Twelve to thirteen thousand
refugees were crowded together in three sites owned by the
Presbyterian mission and 3,500 with the Lazarists and the Sisters of
Charity. 36 Although the Presbyterians were very efficient in
managing the situation, this did not prevent promiscuity, the rapid
spread of epidemics, the death of the weakest members, the
convoys which took around 40 dead bodies to the cemetery every
day and the burials in the courtyard. Dysentery and diarrhea
prevailed before typhoid fever broke out in January and spread
quickly throughout to overcrowded rooms. In the Presbyterian
hospital, rooms designed for eight patients held up to 120 people.
Shedd, Report dated June 23rd, 1915 to the Persian War Relief.
CMA, letter from Archbishop Sontag to Émile Villette, Urumia,
January 25th, 1915.
35
36

126

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Typhus carried by vermin was spread along with the outbreak of
typhoid fever.
On February 12th, the Ottomans arrived to arrest 151 men
who had found refuge in the Lazarist mission. They were led to the
Ottoman Consulate located in the buildings of the Russian
Orthodox mission. After an agonizing wait, there was a glimmer of
hope when 90 of them were released on February 13th, followed by
the release of five more. Yet, during the night of February 23rd–
24th, shots were heard near the Hill of the Jews behind the
Chaharbash Gate and eight survivors were able to confirm that 44
of them had been slaughtered, tied together two-by-two. Their
bodies were exposed for two days. At last, gallows were set up at
the Kurdish Gate. Four Christians were hung there, including two
who had converted from Islam and the Bishop of Tergawer, Mar
Dinkha. On February 27th, the Presbyterian E. W. McDowell was
authorized to bury their bodies. The Lazarist Chatelet noticed that
the victims of the tragic night of February 23rd–24th were villagers
from the Mavana region who had risen up between 1907 and 1914
to organize the defence of the villages against the brutality of the
Kurds, during the occupation of the region by the Ottomans from
1907 to 1912. 37

MASSACRES IN DILMAQAN, FEBRUARY 1915
No missionary was present in the Salmas Valley to protect the
Christians in January and February 1915. The eldest Christians in
Salmas did not leave for the Caucasus. In February 1915, they were
joined by the Armenians from Van who were trying to escape
deportation. Many of these Christians had found refuge with
Muslim families or with the karguzar in Dilmaqan who provided
shelter for 400 of them. The governor, appointed by the Ottomans,
was ordered to make them sign a request for protection. The
Iranians were forced to give up the men and they were assassinated
on the main square (meidan) in Dilmaqan. In Khosrowa and
Haftvan, the arrival of Jevdet Pasha, the vali of Van and brother-inThe Ottomans had made a census of the population and they
knew the names of the men.
37

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 127
law of Enver Pasha, led to the massacre of the men who had
remained there. Their bodies were thrown down wells and into
trenches. These two massacres perpetrated in the Salmas Valley in
February 1915 were clearly related to the extermination orders
from Constantinople.
In March 1915, when the Ottomans moved back in the
direction of Van, Pavel Vedenski, who had become the vice-consul
of Khoy and Dilmaqan and Agha Petros, who had returned from
the Caucasus, went to the villages and ordered the bodies to be
removed from the wells. A report signed by ‘Petris Ellyah, A.O.
Samuel, Yuel Daniel, Yohanan Pera Beg, Shmuel Sayad and Paulus
Badal regarding the situation in Urumia and Salmas’ and written by
Agha Petros describes the horror of the massacre of ‘712–720
Christian men in Salmas three days before the Russian army
arrived.’ 38
When the Lazarist Georges Decroo returned to Khosrowa in
mid-March 1915, he deplored the death of ‘over 700 Christians,
including the priests Israel, Absalon the father of the Lazarist
Miraziz, our poor Yonan, and old Guiegu,’ but he also insisted on
the solidarity of some Muslim Iranians. He reported that certain
Iranians in Dilmaqan had provided help by refusing to give up the
Christians to the Ottomans. 39 The Christians who had found refuge
in the Caucasus came back to their villages in May and June once
the Russians had returned. They found the villages plundered and
destroyed.

RESISTANCE AND THE EXODUS OF THE ASSYRIANS FROM
HAKKARI
As reported by Surma, the sister of Catholicos-patriarch Benyamin,
in her Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of Mar Shimun (1920),
during the summer of 1914 the vali of Van, who exercized authority
over Hakkari, asked the catholicos to commit himself not to side
with the Russians. Benyamin then consulted the maleks of the
FFOA, N.S., Perse, LIV, Tabriz March 26th, 1915, Nicolas.
FFOA, N.S., Perse, XI, Tabriz April 9th and 12th, 1915, Nicolas,
Khosrowa April 8th, 1915, Decroo.
38
39

128

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Assyrian tribes. The family of the catholicos was divided in their
opinion. Some wanted to remain loyal to the Ottomans, while
others had seen the massacres elsewhere and wanted Russian
protection, but held back their opinion at the time.
In January 1915, the Kurds cut off the roads between the
Assyrian tribes and Qodshanes where Mar Shimun lived. In
February, Surma and her youngest brother left Qodshanes,
escorted by 300 men from the Tiyari tribe. 40 The Assyrians from
Hakkari were attacked by Kurdish and Ottoman troops. Benyamin
gathered the maleks together in April. Facing an increase in the
number of attacks by Kurds and cognizant of the assassinations
and deportations of the Armenians and Assyro-Chaldeans, the
massacre of Christians from Gavar, and the establishment of the
plan devised in Istanbul against the Christians, they had no choice
but to call on the help of the Russians. According to Surma, the
catholicos-patriarch’s decision dated back to May 10th, 1915:
Thus an official letter was sent through the kaimakam to the
Vali of Van, to the effect that, because of the massacres and
oppression to which their rayat brethren had been subjected,
the six free districts (Tiyari, Tkhoma, Jilu, Baz, Ishtazin,
Dizazn) felt obliged to sever political relations with the
Ottoman government.

Moreover, Hormuz, Benyamin’s brother, who had been held
hostage by the Ottomans, was executed. The Kurdish tribes
attempted to block the Assyrian tribes. An attack by the vali of
Mosul, Hayder Bey, was stopped by the tribes. In June, Benyamin
came to ask for the help of the Russians in Moyanjik, in Salmas
valley. There he met with the Russian general Chernozubov who
promised his support, but which never came. Vice-consul Basile
Nikitine, on his way from Tabriz to take over the Russian viceconsulate in Urmia, saw the patriarch in Salmas, together with
Agha Petros, shortly before June 21st: 41
Bohas and Hellot-Bellier: Testimony of Malek Yako, pp. 89–116.
D’Bait Mar Shimun, p. 30–31. Nikitine V., 1941. V. Nikitine
entered Urmia in company with the new governor Yamin od-Dowla on
June 21st, 1915.
40
41

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 129
Mar Shimun [Benyamin] was still holding out in the
mountains, but his war materials were insufficient. It was
agreed that we would supply him with guns and ammunition
and that we should attempt to divert the Turks in the direction
of Guiaver to lower the pressure.

In the middle of the month of June, the church of Bishop Zaya
Sargis of Jilu was attacked by several Kurdish tribes shortly before
the combined attack of the Ottomans based in Mosul and Julamerg
against the Tiyari tribe on June 23rd. There was no choice but to
abandon not only Mar Zaya but also the church of Mar Sawa of
Tiyari in the Tiyari tribe. Ishay, the catholicos’ other brother, died
and was buried in haste. The women and children fled to the high
peaks of the mountains.
In July, the catholicos-patriarch wanted to warn General
Chernozubov. He sent malek Khoshaba from the Lizan tribe and
Bishop Mar Yalda Yahwallah of Barwari to Tabriz to meet the
consuls. On July 19th, the Lazarist Father Decroo reported an
influx of refugees to Khosrowa coming from Gavar, Qodshanes
and Jilu and the empty promises of the Russians. 42
During the summer, the tribes were surrounded by the Kurds
and the combined action being taken by Hayder and Jevdet. They
fled to the mountains peaks. The catholicos-patriarch again called
on the Russians for help. He knew then that there was no time to
lose. On August 10th, the family of the catholicos reunited with
Bishop Mar Audisho of Tal decided to attempt to join the
Russians. The Assyrians fought heroic battles to protect families
and their herds of animals during their exodus to Bashqala, where
the Russians were camped. From there, the Assyrians crossed the
border in October 1915. In Iran, they were welcomed by the
Russian Vice Consul Vassili Nikitine and Relief Committees
organized by the Russians and a few Americans. According to the
estimations of Basile Nikitine, about 45,000 Assyrians from the
Hakkari Tribes crossed the border. E.W. McDowell listened to the

FFOA, N.S. Perse, XI, LIV, Khosrowa July 26th, 1915, Decroo to
a fellow lazarist.
42

130

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

stories of battles led by the Assyrians, which he summed up as
follows: 43
They came down the Tal and Kurdistan valleys followed by the
Kurds. They found the Kurds in force at Julamerk bridge and
were forced to turn down the stream. They turned down the
Zab to upper Tiary, they crossed the Zab and went into hills
(Servan and Elay). They made their way around back Jumalerk,
but near Qodshanes the Kurds fought.

The tribes were dispersed in the Salmas, Khoy and Urmia Valleys: 44
According to Mr. McDowell’s estimate, not far from 20,000
refugees were scattered in Salmas, Khoï and Bashkally regions.
Those in Salmas were living in about 20 villages, some
Moslem, some Christian. It is estimated that over 1,000 Jilu
people with their bishop were living in Khosrova alone, while
nearly as many Tkhuma people were in Moyanjug, and the
Kod Chainis [sic] people were largely settled in Ula. It was a
pleasant surprise to find most of the people housed, and great
credit is due to the good governor in Salmas who took great
pains to see that they were not left in the open.

A group of inhabitants of Jelu went up to the Caucasus led by
Malek Kambar Warda, Nemrod’s son-in-law. The whole region
was under control of Russian army. The Russians prevented the
Ottomans from entering the region of Urmia from August 1915 to
February 1918. The Christian population from Urmia and from
Hakkari could feel safe. However, the Iranians tolerated the
Russian army of occupation with difficulty. The exodus of the
Assyrians from Hakkari became an exile, begun three years before
the exile of Christians from Urmia in 1918. The distress of the
deaths of their family members and of their exile has filled the
survivors’ memories.
FFOA, N.S., Perse, XI, Khosrowa July 19th, 1915, Decroo; Levant
1918–40, LI, p. 193. PHSA, RG 91–4, 91–24, E.W. McDowell Mountain
Fields 1916; August 18th, 1915, October 8, October 15th, 1915.
44 PHSA, RG 91–4, Personal Report of F.G. Coan, August 1915–August
1916.
43

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 131

CONCLUSION
At the start of the First World War, the Christians in the valleys of
Urmia and Salmas who had made a place for themselves in the
society of Iranian Azerbaijan throughout the course of the first
decade of the 20th century were caught up in a spiral of violence
that affected them more than the rest of the population. Victims of
the war between the Ottomans and the Russians, they also
experienced the plans for genocide designed by Enver Pacha and
Talaat Pacha in the villages and surrounding areas of Dilmaqan, the
ambiguous strategies of the Russians, the desire for revenge that
arose during the war, and the inability of the Iranians to defend
them, as well as the protection which some of their neighbours, the
Afshar dignitaries of Urmia and even certain Kurdish chieftains,
attempted to provide. During the summer of 1915, the
spontaneous refuge offered to the Assyrian tribes who had been
chased from Hakkari by the Ottomans and Kurds was more a
question of humanitarian aid. However, their presence contributed
to worsening the situation in the region. The populations who had
moved back to the villages when the Russians returned in May
1915 were even more vulnerable once the Russians retreated from
Iran in the beginning of 1918. The massacres of 1918 and 1919
demonstrate the degree of violence and resentment which had
accumulated throughout all of these years of war and the break-up
of the long-standing links between the inhabitants of the Urmia
region.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akcam Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question
of Turkish Responsibility. (New York: Metropolitan Books,
2006).
––––––– The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2012).
Avedissian Onnig, Du Gamin d’Istanbul au Fedaï d’Ourmia. Mémoires
d’un Révolutionnaire Arménien. (Paris: Thaddée, 2010).
Bayat Kava (ed), Iran va Jang-e Jahani Avval. Esnad-e Vezarat-e
Dokhela [Iran and the First World War. Documents from the Iranian
Home Office]. (Tehran: 1369h/1990).

132

FLORENCE HELLOT-BELLIER

Bohas, Georges and Florence Hellot-Bellier. Les Assyriens du
Hakkari au Khabour, Mémoire et Histoire. (Paris: Geuthner,
2008).
Bozarslan, Hamit. Histoire de la Turquie. De l’Empire à nos Jours,
(Paris: Taillandi, 2013).
Bryce, James and Arnold Joseph Toynbee. The Treatment of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented
to Viscount Grey of Falloden. (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1916).
Coakley J.F., 1992. The Church of the East and the Church of England. A
History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992).
Congregation of the Mission’s Archives, [CMA]
D’Bet Mar Shimun Surma. Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of
Mar Shimun. (London: Faith Press, 1920).
French Foreign Office’s Archives, [FFOA]
Golnazarian-Nichanian, Magdalena. Les Arméniens d’Azerbaïdjan.
Histoire Locale et Enjeux Régionaux, 1828–1918. (Paris: Centre
d’Histoire Arménienne Contemporain, 2009).
Hellot-Bellier, Florence. Chronique de Massacres Annoncés. Les AssyroChaldéens d’Iran et du Hakkari face aux Ambitions des Empires,
1896–1920. (Paris: Geuthner, 2014).
Kasravi Ahmad. Tarikh-e Hejdah Saleh-ye Azerbaijan [Eighteen Years of
History in Azerbaijan]. (Tehran: Sepehr, 1378H/1988).
Moez od-Dowla, Muhammad Sadeq. Namaha ye Urmia … 1333–
34H [Letters from Urmia Sent by the Governor Muhammad Sadeq
Moez od-Dowla, 1333–34H]. (Kava Bayat ed. Tehran: 1380h/
2001).
Nikitine, Vassili/Basile, Souvenirs, la Perse que J’ai Connue.
(Unpublished, 1941).
Philadelphia Historic Society’s Archives, [PHSA]
Shimmon, Paul. ‘Urumia, Salmas and Hakkiari: Statement by Mr.
Paul Shimmon’ in Arthur Toynbee and James Bryce (eds) The
Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16, (1916).

6. RESISTANCE OF ASSYRIANS IN URMIA AND HAKKARI 133
el-Vezara, Motamed. Urumia Dar Mohareba-ye Alamsuz, 1298–1300H
[Urmia Fighting against Annihilation, 1298–1300H]. (Kava Bayat
ed. Tehran: 1379H/2000).

7. ʰ,WARDO:
A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
ABLAHAD LAHDO
ʲ,ZDUGR ,QZDUGR $\QZDUGR $\LQYHUW DQG 7XUNLVK *ÙOJÓ]H  LV
built on a hill some two hours walk east of Midyat. When
DSSURDFKLQJʲ,ZDUGRIRUH[DPSOHIURP0LG\DWRQHFURVVHVDORQJ
broad valley at the end of which a fortress-like construction
appears. 1 The colossal buLOGLQJ RI WKH FKXUFK RI 0RU ʗušabo
stands on the peak of the hill and it is surrounded by strong walls
and defense towers.
At time of the massacres of 1915, 200 families lived in this
exclusively Syriac Orthodox village. By the summer of the same
year, between 6000 and 7000 Syriac Christians from nearby villages,
as well as from Midyat took their refuge in the village. Many of the
refugees from Midyat could escape through secret underground
tXQQHOVOHDGLQJRXWRIWKHFLW\DQGWRZDUGVʲ,ZDUGR2QFHVDIHO\LQ
ʲ,ZDUGR WKH UHIXJHHV UHSRUWHG DOO WKH KRUULI\LQJ GHHGV WKDW WKHLU
relatives had suffered and the destiny that their villages had met.

BACKGROUND
A state of permanent insecurity revolved around Christian villages.
Between the massacres of 1895 and the terrible years of 1915–
 WKH 6\ULDFV RI ʝXU ʲ$EGLQ SDUWLFXODUO\ ZHUH H[SRVHG WR
violence. 2 By giving the Kurdish chieftains carte blanche, the Sublime
Porte had, for the last few years, been pursuing its goal of gradually

1
2

Hollerweger Turabdin – Living Cultural Heritage, pp. 118–119.
De Courtois, The Forgotten Genocide, p. 141.

135

136

ABLAHAD LAHDO

annihilating the Christian inhabitants of the Empire. 3 While the
massacres of 1895 were stiOO IUHVK PHPRULHV IRU PDQ\ LQ ʝur
ʲ$EGLQ WKH GHYDVWDWLRQV RI WKH VR-FDOOHG +DPLGL\H $OD\ODUï
‘Hamidian Regiments,’ Abdulhamid II’s own border cavalry, spread
even more terror in the region. 4 One among the many perturbing
actions is mentioned by De Courtois, where he cites from
diplomatic dispatch 2 about an incident of Friday, December 20th,
1901, where colonel Mustapha Pasha himself at the command of a
detachment of Kurdish horsemen attacked the village of Babekka,
one hour from Azekh. Five men were killed and seven were
wounded and all the flocks of the village were stolen. When the
people of Azekh decided to come to Babekka’s rescue, they fell
into a trap and lost eleven men with seven wounded. The news of
this attack reached Jezireh and fear spread through the Christian
region that a new wave of massacres would break out again. 5 In
addition, rumours of preparations for a general massacre of
Christians had circulated for some time before Feyzi Bey, the
National Assembly deputy, arrived in Jezireh on April 15th, 1915.
Rashid Bey had sent him to coordinate the Kurdish tribes. Ten
days after he left Jezireh, Kurdish tribes and Turkish military could
be observed surrounding the Syriac villages of Garessa and
Kuvakh. 6
In the international arena, Bosnia was annexed to Austria and
the Ottomans lost much territory in Europe through the Balkan
Wars of 1912–1913. Large waves of Muslim refugees streamed into
Istanbul and western Anatolia. The refugees needed land and a
place to live. The Ottoman authorities developed a scheme of
demographic engineering that would enable also the Turkification
of those refugees who were not yet Turkish-speaking. The refugees
would be resettled in eastern Anatolia, on land confiscated from
people suspected of disloyalty. Thus, orders came to move these
populations. 7
Ibid., p. 141.
Bengtsson, Svärdets år, p. 21.
5 De Courtois, p. 143.
6 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 277.
7 Gaunt, ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’, p. 98.
3
4

7. ʲ,WARDO: A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

137

In the light of these details and listening to the refugees’
H\HZLWQHVVVWRULHVLQʲ,ZDUGRLW becomes clear that it was not only
Armenians who were the victims of the genocide, but Christians in
JHQHUDO 0DVʲXG 0]L]D[L D ORFDO OHDGHU LQ ʲ,ZDUGR VWDUWHG
preparations to defend the village. He assembled in a relatively
short time 700 fighters from all the men that were now sheltered in
the village. At night they would dress in black and carry out risky
operations to rescue people who had survived execution squads or
escaped from deportation convoys. 8
After conquering Midyat, the Kurds, Turks, and Muhallami
prepared WRDWWDFNERWKʲ,ZDUGRDQG$Qʘel, where there were also
many Christian refugees. Midyat’s Kurdish leader, Azizke
0DKPDGRVXJJHVWHGWKDWDOOMRLQIRUFHVWRVWULNHDJDLQVWʲ,ZDUGRDV
a first priority. One of the reasons for Mahmado’s
recommendation may have been based on the news about the
UHVFXH VTXDGV RI ʲ,ZDUGR +HQFH WKH PDMRULW\ RI WKH DJJUHVVRUV
FRQFHQWUDWHGRQʲ,ZDUGR 9
On an unspecified Friday in the middle of July 1915, a force
RIXSWRPHQEHVLHJHGʲ,ZDUGR7KLVIRUFHZDVFollected by
Turkish officials from Kurdish tribes from the Midyat and Mardin
areas, and some of the Muhallemi as well as the Rama tribe further
to the north. The force was equipped with weapons, ammunition,
and food supplies from the government’s warehouses, and bitter
battles began immediately with casualties on both sides.

THE PREPARATIONS
:KHQ LW EHFDPH FOHDU WR WKH 6\ULDFV RI ʲ,ZDUGR WKDW WKH\ ZRXOG
DOVR EH VODXJKWHUHG 0DVʲXG EHJDQ SUHSDUDWLRQV DQG VHW XS D
strategic plan for the defence. 10 The major elements in his
preparations were strengthening the village’s defence, storing food
VXSSOLHVDQGSURFXULQJZHDSRQVDQGDPPXQLWLRQ6DEUL0DVʲXGpV
grandson, related in an interview that:

Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 202.
Ibid., p. 203.
10 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 202.
8
9

138

ABLAHAD LAHDO
D]]̸QH O-ષ,ZDUGR, P߅DODььH ьHʻRUD Z ߅[LUDOOH Z VLPDOOH \DષQL
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7KH\ZHQWWRʲ,ZDUGRUHIXUELVKHGLWVVXUURXQGLQJVHQFORVHGLW
and prepared it. This means that they had prepared for this. If
they wouldn’t have prepared themselves, they wouldn’t have
been able to last that long. They went there and repaired all the
walls and reinforced them and so on.

0DVʲXGVHQWHYHQDQRWHWRWKHVKHSKHUGVRI0]L]Dʘ saying:
KXOH[DEURO-DU

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+H >0DVʲXG@ VHQW D QRWH WR WKH VKHSKHUGV RI 0]L]Dʘ saying:
when I tell you on a specific day to come to ʲIwardo, you will
bring with you the livestock of both Muslims and Christians,
all of it, all the livestock that is in the whole village. You will
EULQJLWDQGFRPHZLWKLWWRʲ,ZDUGR

Furthermore, the Syriacs had harvested and prepared their crops
before the arrival of the aggressors. Some of the people of Midyat
even brought their crops and stored it there.
'XULQJ WKH WLPH RI SUHSDUDWLRQ 0DVʲXG LV VDLG WR KDYH
contacted the Syriac leaders of Midyat in order to collect money to
buy weapons. It is unclear how much help he received there.
/HDYLQJWKHPHHWLQJ0DVʲXGZDVDSSURDFKHGE\DFKLOG$V6DEUL
recounted:
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11
12

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Sabri Be-0DVʲXGZDVLQWHUYLHZHGE\-DQ%HW-Sawoce in May 2007.
Ibid.

7. ʲ,WARDO: A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

139

There was a child that was living close to the [military]
barracks. He said to my late grandfather: I saw where they
stored the munitions. I know where they store the munitions.
Then, during the siege, my uncle Šabo took about 40 men
together with this child and went there, to the barracks, at
three o’clock in the morning. They took the munitions and
came back.

De Courtois writes that the inhabitants of Tur ‘Abdin were used to
living in difficult conditions and to fighting against the Kurds, and
thus developed a fierce character and a tenacity in their resistance. 13
Father Armale states further that on Monday June 21st, soldiers
started to circulate in the Christians’ houses, searching for
weapon. 14 These assertions indicate that the Syriacs already had
weapons, most probably flintlock rifles, as well as ammunition to
defend themselves. Furthermore, from oral testimony we learn that
they were able to manufacture JXQSRZGHUDQGEXOOHWV5ʢVTR%Dxxe
recounted:
PDOPLZRDQ

Q̸ьUHG-DN NDOEHZX EDU࠭Gь̸ZZRURG-NRZHJDZ̸GG-

D PષDUH « iQQDTD P߮DQR IDьPR-VWHQH, GD\TLZROH Z VD\PLZROH ષDP
̸ьGRGH, GD\TLZROH KRO G-̸ZHZR jQQDTD PЖDUELZROH, VD\PLZROH [GL Q̸TUR KDZ[D Z PDьWLZR JP̸UWR G-QXUR, HPD G-RP̸‫ ގ‬JXSS, TR\̸߭,
KDZL,G-OR,KHšGD\TLZROH. 15

They used to gather dog excrement and the white gunpowder
that grows in caves. So they also put charcoal and smashed it
together and manufactured it; they smashed it till it was done.
And they also tested it; they used to dig such a pocket and
added a live coal, if it “said” bang and caught fire, then it was
ready, if not, they smashed it further.

Bullets were manufactured from copper or lead. In this matter,
Armale states that there was no copper or lead left in the village
that they did not melt, form, and use against the enemy. 16 Even the
De Courtois, p. 189.
Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, p. 375.
15 5ʢVTR%DxxHZDVLQWHUYLHZHGE\-DQ%HW-Sawoce in July 1993.
16 Armale, p. 385.
13
14

140

ABLAHAD LAHDO

enemy bullets that hit the walls and fell down were collected,
melted down, formed, and reused.
DQ

QLšH Z DQ

QDષLPH NRPDOW̸PLZD DE

u=šXUR Z NRQ̸IOL ODOWDь NRZ̸QZD E-DN

EXКUH, « G-NRP̸Pь̸Q ENDZPDW, « NRPRO̸QZD

VHID\\H,«ZR̸߭QPR̸߮OOHPDI̸šULOHZVD\PLOHZG-̸PьDUELHEH 17

The women and children used to collect the bullets, … that
used to hit the walls and fall down; they used to become piles,
… They used to fill their petticoats, … and come back. They
brought them, melt them down and prepared them so that
they could be used in the war.

Now, if we assume that the YLOODJHUV RI ʲ,ZDUGR SUHSDUHG
themselves in any way they could, i.e. restored the walls, stored
food supplies, prepared their weapons and manufactured
gunpowder and bullets, it is still inconceivable that 700 men could
resist up to 13,000 fighters of both regular army and paramilitary
troops for nearly two months. In warfare there is a principle called
the “three-to-one-ratio” which means that in order to conquer a
city and move forward, the aggressors ought be three times
stronger than the defenders. However, in this particular case, the
defenders were just a tenth of the attacking force. What were the
elements that enabled them to resist for that long?

PRINCIPLES FOR DEFENCE: CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ AND
MASʰUD MZIZAXI
The military thinker Carl von Clausewitz is widely acknowledged to
be the most important of the classical strategic thinkers. Even
though he has been dead for nearly two centuries, he remains a
powerful living influence, and in many respects the most modern
of strategic theorists. In his 1812 book, Principles of War, which is
still one of the most applied theories in officers’ training,
Clausewitz writes about “General Principles For Defence.”
:KHWKHU0DVʲXG0]L]D[LZDVIDPLOLDUZLWK&ODXVHZLW]pWKHRULHVRU
not is hard to determine. What is clear, on the other hand, is that
WKH PDMRU SDUW RI 0DVʲXGpV SODQ IRU WKH GHIHQFH ILWV ZHOO LQWR
17

Sabri Be-0DVʲXG

7. ʲ,WARDO: A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

141

Clausewitz’ theories. Below, I will try to account for some of these
principles that may have been essential for this resistance.
Clausewitz writes: … we must at every instant be on the
defensive and thus should place our forces as much under cover as
possible. If we have troops to hold in reserve, … they can attack
the enemy which is seeking to envelop us. … this is done
advantageously in a terrain chosen in advance, where we have
arranged things to our advantage. 18
0DVʰXG 'XULQJ WKH SUHSDUDWLRQV 0DVʲXG UHVWRUHG WKH ZDOOV DQG
reinforced them to secure the cover needed during the siege. The
so-called kozʠkat ‘revetments’ were manned by well-covered men
determined to die rather than surrender. When opportunity was
JLYHQ 0DVʲXG VHQW PHQ ZKR ZHUH QRW GLUHFWO\ LQYROYHG LQ WKH
defence to stage counterattacks in order split the enemy and create
confusion among them. Some of these attacks were especially
successful because these men knew the terrain well, and most
probably also by using the secret, underground tunnels. 19 During
one of these counterattacks, the defenders managed even to seize
the battle flag of the enemy. 20 Success of this kind must have raised
combat moral immeasurably. It is probable that they also tried to
seize as many weapons and food supplies as possible during these
counterattacks. War trophies such as these were also essential for
battle moral. 21
Clausewitz was convinced that effective command performance in
war is the product of genius, where genius is defined as the
capability of the commander in chief, consisting of a combination
of rational intelligence and subrational intellectual and emotional
abilities that make up intuition.
0DVʰXG had obviously qualities of a dedicated leader. Armale
GHVFULEHVKLPDVWKHEUDYHOHDGHURIʲ,ZDUGRWKDWJDWKHUHGWKHPHQ
and the young men and infused in them the spirit of enthusiasm
Clausewitz, Principles of War, p. 15–20.
Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 330.
20 Ibid., p. 204.
21 Gaunt, ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’, pp. 91–92.
18
19

142

ABLAHAD LAHDO

and proudness. He made them rise to defend themselves against
the Turks till the last breath. 22 Rʢsqo Bašše informs us about how
this leader could use emotional appeals to encourage the villagers,
stating:
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a߭L X

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When the Kurds attacked … they reached the church of Mor
Hušabo. So Masʲud, may God have mercy on his soul, said,
‘Woe has come to you, people of Midyat! Woe has come you,
people RI 0]L]Dʘ :RH KDV FRPH \RX SHRSOH RI ʲ,ZDUGR
Heaven has come to [our] doorstep! Rise and attack! Let the
women shout out loud their joyfulness and let the men fight!

Furthermore, Sabri declared that 0DVʲXG XVHG WR VSUHDG
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NRVD\PLE̸UК̸OPH-ьa߭RKDQL 23

Go up and [pretend to] crush burgul! Sing the ʚʠPPDZKD\H so
that the people [enemy] think that we still have burgul … so
the women pretended to crush it with the crushers, like this:
bang, bang, bang on the roofs, and sang the ʚʠPPD Z KD\H …
The Turks asked the Kurds: what are these [people] doing?
They answered: they are preparing fresh burgul [meaning they
still have lots of food supplies].

Clausewitz: the element of surprise plays a great role in tactics. In
our present case, Midyat had been attacked and refugees were
22
23

Armale, pp. 383–384.
Sabri Be-0DVʲXG

7. ʲ,WARDO: A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

143

VWUHDPLQJ LQWR ʲ,ZDUGR VHHNLQJ VKHOWHU +HQFH WKH DWWDFN RQ
ʲ,ZDUGRZDVH[SHFWHGDQGWKHYLOODJHUVZHUHQRWWDNHQE\VXUSULVH
when the aggressors marched towards the village.
The aspects mentioned above are considered as general principles
for a defence. Other factors that may have played an essential role
are the following:
Tactical Background
In general, the defenders were villagers; nonetheless some of them
had served for years in the Turkish army and thus had gained
experience. During one assault against the village, they killed 50
Turks including one high-ranking officer, possibly concentrating
their fire on him in the knowledge that this would result in
confusion and shock among the aggressors. 24 Furthermore, these
men were able to interpret enemy signals, such as the bugle call,
which made it easy to understand the enemy’s intended moves. 25
Moreover, the aggressors seemed not to have gathered any kind of
intelligence for this siege, and hence were stunned by the
defenders’ ability to resist.
Motivation
For a long time, the Christians had been living under harsh
conditions. They were often terrorised by Kurds who wanted to
confiscate their villages and lands. With the massacres of 1895 in
fresh memory, and with the Kurdish horsemen, the Hamidiye
$OD\ODUï, who were terrorizing Christians in the region, and finally
with the fall of Midyat, there was no doubt what needed to be
done. These were now facts that motivated the villagers and made
them determined to fight and die in battle than surrender and be
slaughtered. Furthermore, the bishop, Mor Filiksinos Ablahad,
preached in the church of Mor Hušabo, telling his congregation
that it was their sacred duty to resist even though they were
outnumbered.

24
25

Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 204.
Ibid., p. 348.

144

ABLAHAD LAHDO

Strategic location
ʲ,ZDUGRpV ORFDWLRQ RQ D KLOO ZLWK WKH Iortress-like construction of
the church of Mor Hušabo on the top of the hill, must have played
an important role in the defence. From the top of the church, the
enemies’ moves were seen easily in the surrounding terrain and
measures against such possible moves were taken.

THE AFTERMATH
7KHHIIHFWRIWKLVGHIHQFHZDVWKDWʲ,ZDUGRZDVQHYHUFRQTXHUHG
Nevertheless, after 52 days of fighting the whole village was
exhausted. Many women and children had starved to death. Their
bodies were stretched on the ground and stank and infected the
combatants. Food supplies were running low and the villagers had
already been forced to slaughter the better part of their cattle. At
the same time, while the aggressors seemed unable to conquer the
village, they sent messages to the defenders that the Christians of
$Qʘel had converted to Islam and thus received amnesty. 26 Hence,
the defenders found themselves forced to negotiate for a ceasefire.
According to oral testimony the aggressors at first asked for 500
rifles in order to lift the siege, but at last the two parties agreed on
the number of 300 guns and thus the siege was lifted. 27
Despite the guarantee of amnesty, most of the Syriacs
remained in the village and did not dare return to their original
villages. 28 This may be due to all the stories the villagers had heard
from the Armenian and Syriac refugees, telling how the Kurdish
tribes and government forces played tricks on them. They could be
told that they would be safe if they handed over their weapons, but
after complying they were massacred. Thus, the Christians stayed in
the village, not daring to leave because of the ambushes from the
warriors of the neighbouring Kurdish villages. Indeed, those who
dared to go back to their villages were killed. Armale states that the
number of those who died after the siege was greater than those
Armale, p. 286.
Yusef talks about the Sayfo in a video interview. The interview
ZDVPDGHLQʲ,ZDUGRLQ
28 Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, p. 205.
26
27

7. ʲ,WARDO: A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

145

who died during the siege. 29 Hanna Savaro recounts what he heard
from his father:
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O̸

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\DZPR 30

After that the army had left … as you know … when a man is
kept as a prisoner, there won’t be any salt left, there won’t be
any flour left, there won’t be any firewood left, so our people
went out, each one went somewhere. One day … nineteen
men went to Xalbube to gather firewood … There, where they
put the pile [of the firewood] the Saliyye came and killed all of
them … They killed nineteen men in one single day.

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T̸߮OOHьamšRP-EH-ŠDષ\RE-ьD߅DIUR

They killed five people from the ŠDʲ\RIDPLO\LQRQHGDy.

FINAL THOUGHTS
0DVʲXG 0]L]D[LpV DFWLRQV LQ WKH GHIHQFH RI ʲ,ZDUGR ZHUH
undeniably heroic. As we have seen, he proved to be an
outstanding leader and an admirable strategist who engaged
women, children and men in the defence. Nevertheless, without
the courageousness, motivation and strength of mind of the Syriacs
RIʝXUʲ$EGLQʲ,ZDUGRZRXOGQRWKDYHKHOGRXWORQJ:LWKVPDOO
means and heavily outnumbered, these people resisted longer than
anyone could have imagined. Besides their fierce character and
tenacity, they must have felt that their neighbours were not to be
trusted, and that the assurances that were made were not wellintentioned. Obviously, they were right: after the siege was over,
PDQ\ ZHUH KXQWHG GRZQ DQG NLOOHG $V IRU 0DVʲXG KH WUDYHOOHG
29
30

Armale, p. 387.
Hanna Savaro was interviewed by Jan Bet-Sawoce in January 2010.

146

ABLAHAD LAHDO

between the Christian villages and advised them to resist and fight
their enemy. In January 1918, the Dalines and the Hajo tribes
tracked him down and killed him. 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armale, Ishak. De kristnas hemska katastrofer: Osmanernas och ungturkarnas folkmord i norra Mesopotamien 1895 / 1914–1918
(Stockholm: Bokförlaget Nsibin, 2005).
Bar-Dawud, Šarbel & Xalaf. Ciwardo: Me aʤmël l adyawma, mëQKDZL"
Damografi, Dabara, Sayfo w Goluʤo (Södertälje, 2013).
Bengtsson, Bertil. Svärdets år. Om folkmordet på de kristna i Turkiet
1894–1922 (Södertälje, 2004).
De Courtois, Sébastien. The Forgotten Genocide: Estern Christians, The
Last Arameans (trans. by Vincent Aurora. Piscataway, New
Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2004).
Clausewitz, Carl. Principles of War [1812] (trans. and edited with an
introduction by Gatzke. Mineola, New York: Hans W. Dover
Publications, 1942).
Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian
Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I. (Piscataway,
New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006).
Gaunt, David. ‘The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide’ in
Genocide Studies International (Maryland, 2015).
Hollerweger, Hans. Turabdin – Living Cultural Heritage (Linz, 1999).
Nacim, Jozef. Turkarnas folkmord på assyrier-kaldéer och armenier
(Stockholm: Bokförlaget Nsibin, 2003).

31

Armale, p. 383 (footnote 37).

8. “I WILL STAY WITH JESUS AND WILL
NEVER BETRAY HIM!”:
SAYFO IN MANSURIYE
EPHREM ABOUD ISHAC
This paper presents the Sayfo in the case of Mansuriye village 1 in
1915. Two reasons lie behind my choice of this topic. First, it is of
personal significance, since I grew up as a third-generation survival
of the Sayfo, and I suffer from recurring trauma due to the events
of the genocide. Second, I would like to follow a different
approach in dealing with the question of the Sayfo by focusing on
the small case studies rather than on general ones. This might lead
us towards a more detailed knowledge of the Sayfo on the ground
level. The methodology adopted in this paper is to gather some
inherited pieces of oral tradition and to compare them with the
written records, thus reaching an integral image of the Sayfo.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN MANSURIYE?
Since the days of my early childhood, I can remember many oral
traditions about the brutal catastrophes that happened in our
village, Mansuriye. When I grew up, it was hard for me to sort out
I discuss in this paper the village of Mansuriye; today it is called
<DOïP RI 0DUGLQ ZKLFK LV ORFDWHG  NP QRUWK RI 2OG 0DUGLQ FLW\ DQG
about 10 km northeast of Deyrulzafaran (=DʲIDUDQ0RQDVWHU\  which was
the shelter for the villagers many times when problems happened in
Mansuriye in 1895 and in 1915. It is worth mentioning, that there are a
few other villages having the same name – it is a common place-name in
Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.
1

147

148

EPHREM ISHAC

what were true stories from what may have been added later as oral
fables. The main question, to which I have been looking for an
answer, is whether these stories were authentic or parts of a
legendary genre. Our family tree tells us that the Kurds killed two
PHPEHUV RI RXU IDPLO\ o<DʲTXE DQG 0DONRp, in 1916. Moreover,
there is a clear statement at the bottom of our family tree saying
that, ‘the origin of the family is from Mansuriye, from 1650 until
1916, when they had to leave because of the massacres against the
Christians.’ This note establishes the fact that there took place a
forced move from the village, associated with massacres in 1915.
There was an intended killing of Christians in this village.
Therefore, we have at least some facts of organized criminality and
exile against Mansuriye Christians. When I grew up I was inspired
by the stories of my large family from both sides – my mother’s
family is also from Mansuriye –; they used to tell us similar sad
stories.
At times I felt perplexed about the simplicity of the Mansuriye
Christians when my large family used to meet and talk about what
they called the ‘Seferberlik’ 2 tragedies. I remember well from my
DXQW ʗXVQHK ZKR XVHG WR WHOO XV DERXW WKRVH GD\V LQ KHU YLOODJH
that when the Muslim tribes, most of them being from the same
village, 3 announced a ‘Jihad’, the Christians in the village gathered
inside the Church of Mar Asya. 4 Afterwards, the Muslims knocked
on the doors of the church, asking Christians to open the doors,
telling them that they should not be afraid; rather, they should trust
them. Then they opened the doors and then the great slaughter
VWDUWHGLQVLGHWKHFKXUFK0\DXQWʗXVQHKPHQWLRQHGVRPHVWRULHV
like this one; my aunt said it as if she was reporting to us: ‘There
was one young gentleman; they promised him they would save his
life if he would convert to Islam. He said, “Life is beautiful, but
The term ‘Seferberlik’ is Ottoman and first of all means ‘general
mobilization in times of war’. However, in this context the Arabicspeaking Christians from the region of Mardin use it in the meaning of
Sayfo.
3 Later in this paper, we will see that they belonged to the Dashiye
tribe.
4 Today it the a mosque, Muhammet Hakim Mansuri Camii.
2

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

149

there is more beauty to remain faithful to Jesus. I am staying with
Jesus and will never betray him!” Then they threw him off the roof
of the church, killing him. They left only the old women of
Mansuriye alive, who fled later to Mardin.’
The oral tradition of my family talks about a suspicious
feelings that something wrong might happen, just few weeks before
the murdering of the Jihad started. Thus, many of them like my
grandfather moved to Mardin, which was only a few kilometres far
away but a safe city. It is for this reason that the family survived the
tragedy in 1915. However, they lost their houses and properties in
Mansuriye.
Another narrative of the Mansuriye case in my family was the
story of my father’s maternal uncle, Mr. Mussa Badro, who was a
little child and was able to survive under the dead bodies in the
church of Mar Asya. On the night of the massacre, he ran away,
finding himself later at the Syrian border town Derbassieh, which
later became the town in which my family settled. 5 Some good
people found the little child, who could not speak a word, and took
care of him. Later, when my family moved from Mardin to
Derbassieh in the 1930s, they learned that he was alive.
To conclude, there was a great massacre of Christians in
Mansuriye, without any reason and without any kind of resistance.
They were very innocent and idealists; they preferred to die rather
to betray their faith, though it seems that they could have had the
option to convert. Later generations have even complained about
their meekness in not defending themselves. However, we cannot
judge them since they had found themselves in extreme difficulties.

Derbassieh is a town located at the Turkish-Syrian border,
southwest of Mardin. This new town was built by the Syriac immigrants
who came mostly from Mardin and its neighboring villages, such as
Mansuriye. Most Mansuriye Christians moved to Derbassieh and built the
new Syriac Orthodox Church of Mar Asya to revive the memory of their
old church in Mansuriye.
5

150

EPHREM ISHAC

ORAL SOURCES & RECORDINGS
In trying to collect as much as possible of oral narrative materials
from the elderly people of Mansuriye, I have successfully recorded
some stories of two old men born in 1914–1915. The first person,
0U ʲ$EGXO 0DVVLʘ 1HMPHK g ZDV ERUQ LQ 0DQVXUL\H $V D
child, he used to help my grandfather. The conversation with him
was recorded in 2005, when he was 90 years old. While I asked him
about his birthday, it was interesting to hear his answer since he
had associated the date of his birthday with the year of the Sayfo: ‘I
am not sure if I was born in 1914 or 1915. I always say that it was
[the year of the] Seferberlik, and who would register me in those
[difficult] days? Yes, the Seferberlik was announced in 1914; then it
really happened in 1915.’ Thus, the confusion about Mr. Nejmeh’s
birthday date was because of the Seferberlik, since everything was in
confusion. He was less than a year old when the tragedies
happened in Mansuriye. His family took him to Mardin, where he
lived until he decided to move to Derbassieh, Syria in the 1940s,
after finishing his military service in Turkey. He knew well the story
of the Mar Asya 6 church, and how it was converted into the
0XʘDPPDG $O-Hҕakim mosque of Mansuriye. 7 He was very close
to my grandfather, Muqsi Ishaq, born in 1872 in Mansuriye. In the
recording, he told me some stories about how my grandfather
suffered so much from the sorrow of losing his properties in
Mansuriye, then ending up in Derbassieh selling vegetables: ‘[We]
shout loudly to sell tomato[es], shout… this is what we have
reached at the end of our life.’ Mr. Nejmeh knew well many
eyewitnesses and the first generation of the Sayfo 1915 in
Mansuriye, so he was able to memorize their stories.
Mor Osio in Syriac ťƀƏĥIJƢƉ. I am using in this paper the spelling
as: ‘Mar Asya,’ to be close to the Arabic pronunciation of the Mansuriye
people, who add always the words al-ʚakim to this saint’s name: Ύϴγ΃έΎϣ
ϢϴϜΤϟ΍.
7 Some oral traditions mention that the church was changed to a
stable for horses. One day, a horse inside the church killed the Mansuriye
Agha’s son. They considered that it was divine punishment for not
respecting the house of God. Therefore, they converted it to a mosque.
6

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

151

7KH VHFRQG H\HZLWQHVV LV 'HDFRQ 6KDILT ʲ$EG $O-Nour
g  2ULJLQDOO\ IURP 0DUGLQ KH JUHZ XS LQ WKH VDPH
neighbourhood as the Mansuriye survivors, close to the Syriac
Orthodox Church of the Forty Martyrs. I was able to prepare many
recordings during our private conversations between 2005 and
2010. Sometimes I repeated my questions to make sure that the
answers were similar. My interest was also to record his hymns and
the way he was singing in St. Ephrem Cathedral of Aleppo in order
to preserve the musical tradition of Mardin. For me, these
recordings can be a good source for us to know about the Mardin
tradition of singing such hymns. I took the opportunity of his early
presence in the church before the beginning of prayers to ask him
about his memories of Mansuriye. He saw many survivors from
Mansuriye after the Seferberlik. Many of those survivors worked
with him in weaving. It seems that the people from Mansuriye were
famous for weaving a special fabric known by the name of their
village, khameh manusratieh. He mentioned frequently, that those
days when he was a child were difficult and he had to rotate his
shift of working with many boys from Mansuriye on one weaving
loom. One of his interesting stories is about a time when the
.XUGLVK 0XVOLPV VXUURXQGHG =DʲIDUDQ Monastery during the
Seferberlik. His father, Mr. Al-ʗDVKXZDVDUHDOKHUR ZKRHVFDSHG
the Kurdish militias who were surrounding the monastery. He
brought with him a jar of fat food from the Christian village of
4DOʲLW0DUDFORVHE\WKH=DʲIDUDQ0RQDVWHU\ZKLFK ZDVHPSWLHG
of its inhabitants when the Christians took shelter in the
monastery. The Muslims stole many of the houses in that village.
Mr Al-ʗDVKXLQILOWUDWHGWKHPLOLWLDZKRWKRXJKWWKDWKHZDVRQHRI
them. He took the jar of food and brought it successfully to the
monastery. The funny side of this story, told with Deacon Shafiq’s
typical sense of humour, was that RQH IDPLO\ LQ WKH =DʲIDUDQ
Monastery said that this jar was from their house. However, the
hero Mr Al-ʗDVKXVDLGoEXWQRZLWEHORQJVWRWKHPRQDVWHU\p0U
Al-ʗDVKXIRXQGKLVZLIH safe with the children; baby Shafiq being
among them!
Deacon Shafiq used to pray every day for the soul of his
father, uttering, ‘For the soul of my father, who was killed by
Muslim traitors’. In fact, his father was killed on horseback on his
way to Mardin. Shafiq mentions in one of his stories, that once his

152

EPHREM ISHAC

father’s servant wanted to kill him during the Seferberlik, but the
brave father caught him at the right time.

SOURCES FROM PROVERBS
Other references about the murder of the inhabitants of Mansuriye
were uncovered while collecting some of the inherited proverbs
that our families used to tell the second and third generations. In
fact, the phenomenon of spreading such sayings, idioms, and
proverbs was not particular to Mansuriye, since these were a
systematic tool used to create a stereotype of otherness and to
legitimize discrimination, ‘The Ottoman words, idioms, sayings and
proverbs about non-Muslims and Armenians constitute just such
an effect of power’. 8 I can offer here three proverbs as samples
from a common oral genre of offensive proverbs. They are
derogatory from one side and allude to a sectarian image in
Mansuriye. These proverbs might be also very popular in the
surrounding villages or regions, but these proverbs were at least
used in Mansuriye. The first proverb says, ‘Onions are onions
regardless whether they are red or white.’ This saying represents
Christians of the village as onions and killing them is like cutting
onions. Strikingly, the allusion here is that there is no difference
between the Armenians, who were represented as traitors to the
government, and the other Christians. This proverb suggests as
well that, although for a certain time during the persecution of
Armenians, there was a common understanding that the Armenian
conflict was only because of Armenian national demands, here we
notice that there is a conceptual shift, implying that Syriac
Christians were no less traitors than Armenians, since they share
the same religion. Moreover, we can interpret such a proverb to
conclude that the distinction was not clear enough in the eyes of
Ottoman Muslims between the Armenian and the Syriac Christian
communities. One may notice as well the ‘onion’ metaphor, which
suggests that those Christians were mere objects and killing them
was justified.

8

Astourian, Remembrance and Denial, p. 24.

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

153

The second example is like a short story, but it was used in the
later decades as an example of how the Muslims in Mansuriye
mistreated Christians. ‘A Muslim blacksmith threw a piece of hot
iron out of fire, then he asked his Christian neighbour to get it. The
Christian took it and his hand was burnt. Then the Muslim added
sarcastically, “You Nasrani, if you cannot endure this hot iron, how
can you then live in the fire of hell?”’ This proverb sheds some
light that in Mansuriye, the offer to convert to Islam was always
open. Although it might be possible that such a sarcastic story was
an indirect pressure to convert to Islam, it makes no difference
here whether this Christian will be saved ‘from hell’ by professing
Islam. It serves just to humiliate Christians and discriminate against
them in their society by portraying them as an external ethnoreligious cluster.
The last proverb reveals an example of Mansuriye social
communication. ‘A Muslim shouted loudly during the days of the
Seferberlik against his Christian neighbour, ‘Infidel! (ya kafer)’. The
Christian answered, ‘You had better go and wipe from your
moustache the food you have eaten with me yesterday, then come
and call me infidel (kafer)!’ It is astonishing how such a story
reflects an image of the daily life in Mansuriye, which suggests that
life was normal in that society before the genocide, even to the
degree of inviting Muslim villagers to share a meal. This means that
the destruction of friendly relationships among Mansuriye villagers
was striking and shocking. It might explain also the reason of
trusting the Muslims’ words to open the church doors in the
bloody days of the genocide, as mentioned earlier by some elders,
as we shall see later. 9 Overall, the images of destroyed coexistence
and hostility in Mansuriye can be captured by the previous
idiomatic proverbs. These sayings reveal a real feeling of prejudice
against Syriac Christians by insulting them with such propaganda.

We shall present it later in this paper while discussing the written
records of Fr. Armalet.
9

154

EPHREM ISHAC

BAPTISMAL RECORDS AS SOURCES FOR THE SAYFO OF 1915
It was very surprising for me to discover that the husband of Sano
in the famous novel concerning the Sayfo by Thea Halo, Not Even
My Name, was from Mansuriye! This discovery happened when I
was checking some of the baptismal records in the Syriac
Orthodox Church of Mardin. 10 One such document states, ‘ βϗ ΪϤϋ
16 ϲϓ ϲρ΍έϮμϨϣ ΏϮϘόϳ ΔϨΑ΍ ˴Ϫ ΘϠϣΎΣ ϲρ΍έϮμϨϣ ϮϠϫ αϮϤϋ ΔϨΑ΍ ΔϴϬΑ αΎϴϟ΍
1911 ϥΎδϴϧ’ ‘The priest Elias baptized BAHIYA, daughter of Amos
Halo Mansurati [from Mansuriye]; her godmother [is] the daughter
of Yaʲqub Mansurati, on April 16th, 1911.’ A digitized database for
these baptismal records would be a very useful scholarly tool to
trace the movement of many families from their villages, as in the
case of Mansuriye, during the Sayfo period. However, it is very
striking to notice that there are no surviving baptismal records of
Mansuriye before 1917. From this we may conclude that the old
records were destroyed in the burning of the church of Mar Asya
in 1915. We notice in the baptismal records of churches in Mardin
and in the =DʲIDUDQ Monastery that many children from Mansuriye
were baptized after 1915. As Mr. Nejmeh has proposed, during the
Seferberlik no one had the suitable time or opportunity to register
their children properly.

THE RECORDS OF FR. ARMALET & THE SYRIAC
CATHOLIC CHURCH
In a colophon of a Syriac manuscript kept at the Montserrat library
in Spain, the Syriac Catholic scribe Fr. Ishaq Armalet gives clearly
an eyewitness testimony on the Armenian genocide and the Sayfo
of Beth Nahren, because he wrote this manuscript in 1915. 11 He
Baptismal record at Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin. This
record covers the period March 1908–November 1915.
11 The full colophon is: ‘ĺŴƤſƎƟĭƢƘĭķųƆĥĭķƢƉĪųƌĿĪŴƕĭųƖſŴƐŨ
10

ò
ò
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8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

155

states, ‘IJƢƉĪŧƢƉŴƖŨƎſĪųŨƦƃťƀɖĿŴƏŦƦƇƉĿĥƢŨơŷƐſĥťƤƀƤƟ
ò Ʀƍƣ ƎſĪƢƊŨĪ ƋſƢƘĥ
ñ  ķƢƉĪ ųſĽĥ
ťƌĭǔŹ ťƀƃǓĭŁ ĭűũƕ ŦƦƍƤŨ ųŨĭ
ťƍƀźƏǔƃĪ ťƊƀƐŶ ťƊƕ ƈƕ ťƀƉŴƇŹĭ ťƀƘĭĪǓĭ ƨźƟ ťƊŶǓ ƧĪĭ
ƎſǓųƌƦƀũŨĭ ťƀƍƉĿŤŨĪ’ ‘The Syriac priest Isaac bar Armalta [i.e.,

Armalet], wrote it in the monasterty of St. Ephrem, which is in
Mardin, in the year of Our Lord 1915 … and in this year cruel
Turks committed mercilessly a massacre and persecutions and
defilement against the enviable nation of the Christians in Armenia
and in the Jazirah [Beth Nahren]…’ It seems that Armalet was very
shocked by the terrible attacks during the Sayfo. We are thankful
for his book, The Utmost of Christian Calamities, 12 which presents to
us an excellent record of the Sayfo in 1915 by an eyewitness author.
In fact, Armalet (1879–1954) was arrested during the First World
War by the Ottomans and later released. During the war, he stayed
in Mardin and watched the terrible period of the Sayfo, which he
described in his book.
Concerning the Mansuriye, Armalet makes a clear reference
about the exact dates and the names of the criminals in the
massacre of 1895 and in the Sayfo of 1915. In November of 1895
the Kurds and the Dashiye tribe prepared their conspiracy against
the Christians of Mansuriye. On Sunday, November 10th precisely,
about 4000 Kurds set fire to the village and waited for the right
time to invade Mansuriye. The Christians asked the help of their
Dashiye neighbours. They fired the Kurds with canons, so they had
to leave the village. However, the Dashiye could get 20000 gersh
(currency) from the Christians; this big amount of money was jizya
to be paid for protection. 13
295F

ƎſǓųƌƦƀũŨĭ ťƀƍƉĿŤŨĪ ťƍƀźƏǔƃĪ...’ Montserrat library (Ms. Or. 31,
p.368=f.186r).
12 Full English title: The Utmost of Christian Calamities: The Oppression,
Aggression, Abduction, Banishment, Slaughter, Captivity, and other Atrocities and
Contempts of Christians in Mesopotamia and Mardin in Particular, in 1895 and
1914–1919. Although neither the author’s name nor the place of
publication are clearly stated, it is well known that Fr. Armalet is the
author. Probably he wanted to hide his identity to protect himself for
security reasons.
13 Ibid., p. 58.

156

EPHREM ISHAC

Thirty years later, 14 on the evening of Wednesday June 16th,
1915, the Dashiye people invaded the Christians’ vineyards.
Afterwards, the Dashiyes moved to the house of their elder, Dalli
ben Khalilo, shouting loudly against the Christians. Many
Christians fled to the church, while others remained at home,
scared. One of the Dashiye neighbours climbed over the roof of
the church and made himself as if he were preventing his fellow
Dashiyes from entering the church. The Christians trusted ben
Khalilo, so they opened the church door to him. Then the Dashiyes
entered the church and killed over 40 people. Then two Christians
threw themselves from the roof of the church after they saw their
mother was killed. Armalet goes on to describe in detail, with
names, how the tragedy happened in Mansuriye. Remarkably, some
of his stories are very close to the oral tradition which I used to
hear from my family, as we mentioned above.
Thus, we obtain from this Armalet’s record many important
pieces of information about the sheikhs of Dashiye who
committed this crime. Although in the oral record we cannot find a
clear mention of the murderers, whether they were Turkish
soldiers, Kurds or the Muslims of Mansuriye, we can find
important details in Armalet’s written source.
It is worth mentioning that Armalet accuses frankly the
Germans and the Austrians, because ‘they saw everything but did
not interfere to protect the Christians.’ He is saddened especially by
the attitude of Austrian Catholics, 15 since he expected sympathy
and solidarity with members of the Syriac Catholic Church.
Another interesting point to notice in this book is the author’s
claim that the Syriac Orthodox people cooperated with the
Ottoman government to sue the Syriac Catholics and send them to
the military service so they would die. Of personal interest, he
wrote his book Al-quʜćrć about a priest from Mansuriye, Fr. Yousef
Rezqo, who is my father’s cousin. Armalet states that this priest
suffered a lot from the Syriac Orthodox who denounced him to the
Ottoman authorities, but he was able to flee and obtain refugee at

14
15

Ibid., pp. 429–432.
Ibid., pp. 73–76.

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

157

some Maronite monasteries until the end of the war. 16 However,
we already know that Armalet’s usual style of writing against the
Syriac Orthodox Church is full of prejudice, as we can read it very
often in his writings. 17
Before closing this discussion on Armalet, I would like to
draw attention to a record of the ‘Entrance Registrations’ at the
Charfet Seminary, where Fr. Armalet lived after his departure from
Mardin. It is clear in this record of the Charfet Seminarians that no
students entered the school during the years 1914–1919. This
might prove also and shed light on the chaotic period of the Syriac
Catholics and their Patriarchate in Mardin during the time of the
Sayfo.
Although Armalet accused the Syriac Orthodox community of
causing problems and suffering for Syriac Catholics during the
Sayfo, we find the opposite face of the truth in one of Syriac
Orthodox Archbishop Youhanna Dolabani’s sermons, 18 when he
talked about the difficult times which followed the Sayfo. 19
Dolabani tells us that Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Elias III 20
did his best efforts until 2:00 AM on the Easter night 1919 to
release his brother the Syriac Catholic bishop Gabriel Tappouni,
later the Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Gabriel I, who was
imprisoned by the Ottomans. Even though many diplomats
Ibid., pp. 429–430.
For example, we can notice his conclusion while writing about the
Syriac Maphrians, that: the Syriac Orthodox leaders have shameful
ecclesiastical history full of Simony, because they left the Roman Catholics
[sic.]. See: Armalet, anbć al-zamćn … p. 58.]
18 Mor Philexinos Youhanna Dolabani was born in 1885 and died in
g+HZDVRUGDLQHGDVWKH0HWURSROLWDQRI0DUGLQLQ7KHUHDUH
indications in his writings about Sayfo, as I have come across his sermons,
which are still unpublished but preserved at the Syriac manuscript libraries
of Mardin and =DʲIDUDQ Monastery.
19 7KLVVHUPRQZLWKRWKHU'RODEDQLpVVHUPRQVDUHNHSWLQ=DʲIDUDQ
manuscript, number 34 (ZFRN00034).
20 Patriarch Ignatius Elias III, was the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch
from 1917 and died in IndiDg7KH6\ULDF2UWKRGR[,QGLDQ&KXUFK
commemorates him as a new Saint for the Church.
16
17

158

EPHREM ISHAC

attempted to negotiate for Tappouni’s release, including Emperor
Franz Joseph of Austria, they all failed. 21 Thus, Armalet’s
accusations against the Syriac Orthodox community in the Sayfo
case are surely false.

BISHOP DOLABANI’S ARTICLE ON MANSURIYE &
COLOPHONS
The second written reference about the Sayfo in Mansuriye is an
important article written by Dolabani in 1964, under the title ϖ΋ΎϘΤϟ΍
Δ˷ϳέϮμϨϤϟ΍ Δϳήϗϭ Ύϴγ΃ έΎϣ βϳΪ˷ Ϙϟ΍ ΔδϴϨϛ ϲϓ Δ˷ϳέϮϨϟ΍, 22 ‘The Facts of the Church
Mar Asya and the Village of Mansuriya.’ As we have found in the
previous paragraph, Dolabani wrote about the terrible period of
the Sayfo, as we can read in some manuscripts. 23 Thus, we should
not be surprized to find that Dolabani, the Syriac scholar, devoted
a special article to discuss Mansuriye, since the woman who took
care of him during his early childhood was from this village. He
was thirty years old when the Sayfo happened in Mansuriye. His
charitable acheivements included helping the refugees who came to
Mardin asking for shelter.
305F

306F

See the manuscript of =DʲIDUDQ Monastery (ZFRN00034), p. 266.
The manuscript of this article is preserved at the private library of
Mor Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim, Aleppo. It is worth mentioning that
Dolabani’s published article in the Patriarchate Journal does not talk a lot
about 1915 Sayfo as he describes it in the manuscript version of his
article.
23 For example, we can read in ZFRN00034, p.162, one of
ò Ŭƭ ųƍƐƭƢŷŨťƍƇƉĥŁŧĪĥ
ò
Dolabani’s indications in a sermon: ‘űůƌ ĬƢŨŤ
õ
21
22

ò
ò
ò
ĬƢſĪĥ
ųɤƊŮťƍƆƦŨƢ
ƃĭƎſűũƕĿŴŹĵŤƊƕĥƎƉIJƢƟ
ųɤƊŮťƌƢƐ
ƃťƍƌĥ
õ
õ
ò
ťƌŁŴƃĥĭťƍſŤŨĥƎƉƋƐƟĭĶűƖƭ
ųɝŤŶƁƭIJƦŶĸĿĥűƊƭƦƆĽĭĭƑſŤƍƃĭ
õ
ò
ò
ƎſƢŮĥųƊƭ ťƍƌĥŴƃĥ
õ ųɝŤŶ ĬĪĬ Ɓƭ ĻñĽĭ ľƦƖƆĥĭ ƋƇŽƭ ųƀʖñĽ ŦŴŨĬĪ űƟ
ĪƨũƭƁƘƎƀƟƢƘƦƊƆĥĭ,’ ‘If we meditate over the last year, we find that we

KDYH ORVW PDQ\ RI RXU YLOODJHVf IURP WKH UHJLRQ RI 7XU ʲ$EGLQ LQ
addition to many monasteries and churches. The current reality of our
schools is almost nothing. A number of our fathers and brothers have
gone due to abuse and tyranny, in addition to the case of our immigrant
brothers who have been scattered throughout the world.’

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

159

Although in this article Dolabani did not mention the
massacres of 1895, he did discuss obviously the Sayfo in Mansuriye
in 1915. The main goal of Dolabani’s article was to focus only on
the 1915 Sayfo and to make it clear that the Dashiye tribe was
responsible for the murders in the Mansuriye Sayfo. His argument
is based on the fact that the Dashiye were not native to Mansuriye.
He describes in detail how they moved to this village. He presented
two theories. The first is that they were from the Arab tribes of
Jazireh ben Omar who immigrated to the Mardin region around early
18th century. They belonged to other large tribes: ‘ ΔϴϧϭέΎϫϭ ΔϴϜδϗ Ϟ΋ΎΒϗ
ΔϴϜϠϴϋϭ’ ‘the tribes of Qeskiyeh, Haruniyeh and ʰ$LODNL\H’, and they
came to Mardin because of their poverty. They worked for the walis
of Mardin as security militias and were employed as mercenaries.
The second theory is that they came from the village of Bana in the
region of Fendeq. They were called Dashiye, ‘millstone’ in Kurdish,
which was the symbol of that village. The motive for leaving their
original homeland was because of some crimes they had committed
with their people. Dolabani states that the Ottoman government
often used a technique of creating problems and envy among the
various tribes of the Dashiye in order to control them. At a certain
time, they caused trouble for the authorities, so they had to leave
the city of Mardin, moving to Mansuriye. In 1819, when ʲAbd
Allah Agha ruled Mardin, the Dashiyes rebelled openly against him.
The Dashiyes left Mansuriye in the night, but the Ottoman soldiers
invaded the village and stole the Christians. Thus, a village nearby
Mardin was used to expecting problems by Aghas or Dashiyes
from time to time.
In the fifth chapter of Dolabani’s article, he described
chronologically the various historical remarks about Mansuriye in
manuscripts. He found some indications starting from the year
1265, when a priest from Mansuriye visited Mor Gabriel
Monastery, and how in 1392 there was an ordination of two priests
to the churches of the Virgin Mary and Mar Asya in Mansuriye.
Dolabani described Mansuriye chronologically until the year 1915,
whereby he mentioned the Sayfo directly, ‘ ϰϠϋ ΔϳέϮμϨϤϟ΍ Δϴη΍Ω ΝΎϫ
ϢϬϟ΍Ϯϣ΃ ΖΒϬϧϭ ΓΪϠΒϟ΍ ϰϟ· ΍ϮΑήϫ ΔϴϘΒϟ΍ ϭ ˱ ΎμΨη ϦϴόΑέ΃ ϢϬϨϣ ΍ϮϠΘϗϭ Ύϫ΍έΎμϧ,’ ‘The
Dashiyes of Mansuriye raged against its Christians and killed forty
people from among them; the others fled to the town while their
properties were stolen.’ He then jumps thirty-three years later to
talk about Mansuriye in 1948, when the Turkish government

160

EPHREM ISHAC

established a new school for the children of the village. The Syriac
people donated considerable money with the hope of protecting
the space of the old Syriac school, however, it was destroyed.
Dolabani does not deny the fact that some Syriac church property
remained legally with their owners. However, in 1950, the church
of Mar Asya was officially taken from the Syrians. Then it was
converted finally to a mosque because the Muslims claimed that it
was a public shrine. Mar Asya Church was changed to the Mosque
RI 0XʘDPPDG $O-ʘDNLP E\ WUanslating the word Asya literally
from Syriac to Arabic as al-ʚDNLP ‘the doctor.’
Consequently, Dolabani in this article repeated frequently the
fact that the Dashiyes committed the Sayfo in Mansuriye. He
associates its cause with the original reason of their presence in the
village; in other words, because they had been always mercenaries.
However, Dolabani adds that the Muslims in Mansuriye during
Sayfo were not only Dashiyes but also other Arab groups from the
tribes of the Qeskiyeh and ʰ$LODNL\H, who came originally from AlHassakeh and Jezrieh, but they were all called ‘Dashiyes’ since that
group formed the majority.

THE DAMNATIO M EMORIAE OF MANSURIYE SAYFO?
This discussion has demonstrated the case of the Mansuriye Sayfo
by collecting some memories of those people from Mansuriye and
Mardin who witnessed to and lived among the eyewitnesses during
the genocide. These testimonies, in addition to orally transmitted
proverbs, are just samples to provide a comparison of the oral
tradition of the Mansuriye Sayfo with written records, presented in
baptismal records and other reliable church documents. The
writings of Fr. Armalet and Bishop Dolabani present important
information to confirm what the oral tradition tells us. Moreover,
this research reveals that there has been a tendency to erase the
historical presence of Syriac Christians, a Damnatio Memoriae of
sorts, by changing the name of the village itself, and well as
through the fear of talking publicly and loudly, among people and
in publications, about this genocide. The hope of this contribution
to the history of the Sayfo is to present a written published
document to remember those martyrs along with the rest of the
victims of the Sayfo, in order that their memory may be eternal
among the coming generations.

8. THE CASE OF MANSURIYE VILLAGE

161

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armalet, Isaac. Al-TXʜćUć IĪ QDNDEćW DQ-QDʜćUć [The Utmost of
Christian Calamities], (Beirut: Al Sharfe Monastery, 1919).
––––––– $QEć D]-]DPćQ IĪ MDWKćOLTDW DO-PDxULT Z PDIćULQDW DV-VXU\ćQ
[History of the Chatholicoi of the East and of the Syriac
Mafrians] (Beirut: The Jesuit Press, 1924).
Astourian, Stephan H. ‘Modern Turkish Identity And The
Armenian Genocide’ in R.G. Hovannisian (ed.) Remembrance
And Denial: The Case Of The Armenian Genocide. (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1999).
Dolabani, Yohannon. ‘Al-ʘDTćʱLTDO-nuࡃUĪ\DKIĪNDQĪVDWPćUćV\DZD
qaryat al-0DQʛXࡃUĪ\D >The Facts of the Church Mar Asya and
the Village of Mansuriya]. The Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate
Journal, 41. (1966), pp. 19–23.
Halo, Thea. Not Even My Name. (New York: Picador, 2000).

9. A VICTIM OF THE SAYFO:
ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS
CONTRIBUTION TO SCHOLARSHIP
ERICA C. D. HUNTER
Ibrahim Addaï-Scher (March 3rd, 1867 – June 21st, 1915) was the
Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Siirt, in southeast Turkey. Born in
Shaqlawa, a village 51km northeast of Erbil, in what is today the
territory of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, he came
from a priestly family and learned Syriac at an early age. A bright,
intelligent boy, in 1880 Addaï joined the famous Dominican
Seminary in Mosul, where he was able to receive the highest
standard of education available in Iraq at that time. French was the
language of instruction, but he also learned Latin and studied
theology and philosophy. He returned to his hometown in 1889 to
be a teacher in the local church school.
It was not long before Addaï-Scher’s talents came to the
notice of his superiors. He was appointed episcopal assistant in
Kirkuk, where he added German and English to his linguistic skills
in Turkish, Arabic and Persian. In 1902, he was consecrated by
Yousef VI Emmanuel II Thomas, the Chaldean Patriarch of
Babylon, as bishop of the diocese of Siirt. Six years later, in 1908
Addaï-Scher travelled to Istanbul to meet the Ottoman Sultan
Abdulhamid II, and then went to Rome for an audience with Pope
Pius X. He then travelled to Paris, perhaps following in the
footsteps of Rabban Sauma who had visited the capital in the midthirteenth century. During his sojourn there, Addaï-Scher made
several important contacts, the most notable being with the
publishing house Firmin-Didot with whom he published many of
his scholarly works. Tragically, his career, which produced six
major works, was to span less than a decade.
163

164

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

Prior to his departure to Europe, Addaï-Scher had shown
already his scholarly inclinations. He produced two catalogues of
manuscript collections, both of which were printed by the
Dominican Fathers’ press at Mosul. Notice sur les manuscripts syriaques
conservés dans la bibliothèque du Patriarcat chaldéen de Mossoul
encompassed Scripture and commentaries, theology, philosophy,
liturgical texts, canon law, poems, homilies, hymns, hagiography,
ascetic works, grammar and lexicography, letters, and history. The
catalogue of the holdings of the Chaldaean episcopate in Siirt,
entitled, Catalogue des manuscripts syriques et arabes conservés dans la
bibliothèque épiscopale de Séert (Kurdistan), published in 1905, revealed
equally valuable holdings of manuscripts comprising Scripture,
commentaries, liturgical texts, canons, hagiographies, ascetic works,
theological and philosophical treatises. The University Library,
Cambridge holds a Xerox copy of this work; it is poignant to read
the listing of 136 mainly Syriac manuscripts that were consigned to
the flames when the Chaldean episcopal library was burned in
1915.
In 1907, Addaï-Scher published his notes on the Syriac and
Arabic collections of the episcopal library of Diyarbekir in Journal
Asiatique, 1 and a year later his only work to be written in Arabic,
.LWćE ʯDO-ʯ$OIćʲ ʯDO-)ćULVĪ\DK ʯDO-Muұarrabah ‘Book of Arabized Persian
Words,’ was produced by the Catholic Press in Beirut. Thereafter
his works, which focused on translations of Syriac manuscripts in
the libraries to which he had access, would be published solely in
Europe, with many appearing in the Patrologia Orientalis series
produced by Firmin-Didier in Paris. His French translation of the
famous 10th century Arabic Chronicle of Siirt, subtitled Histoire
Nestorienne Inédite, was published in Patrologia Orientalis between
1907–1918 from an unpublished manuscript that was part of the
Chaldean episcopal library in Siirt. His French translation of the
Syriac text of the 6th century work, Cause de la fondation des écoles /
%DUʚDGExDEED ұArbaya, ¦YÇTXH GH ʙDOZDQ 9,H VLÅFOH  ‘The Cause of the
Foundations of the Schools’ appeared in Patrologia Orientalis IV in 1907.

Addaï Scher, Notice sur les manuscripts syriaques et arabes conserves à
l’archevêché chaldéen de Diarbékir, pp. 338–339.
1

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

165

Addaï-Scher showed his awareness of the great educational
heritage of the Church of the East that had been bequeathed to the
Chaldean Catholic Church. Continuing this interest in the
intellectual legacy of the Church of the East, he published in 1911,
again in the Patrologia Orientalis series, his French translation of
7UDLWÆV G ,xDÌ OH 'RFWHXU HW GH ʙQDQD G $GLDEÅQH VXU OHV 0DUW\UV, le
Vendredi d'Or et les Rogations: Suivis de la Confession de Foi à Reciter par
les Évêques avant l'Ordination ‘Treatises by Isaac the Doctor and by Hnana
of Adiabene on the Martyrs, Golden Thursday, and the Rogations: Followed
by the Confession of Faith to be Recited by the Bishops before Ordination’.
This was an important work on one of the most controversial
figures of the ‘Nestorian Church’ since Henana’s directorship at
Nisibis in the 570s broke with the exegetical tradition that had
centered on the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, showing some
preference for Chalcedonian teachings. 2 Henana had become
attracted to the writings of John Chrysostom whose hermeneutics
appealed to him over and above the literal and historical approach
of Theodore.

ADDAÏ-SCHER AND THE L IBER S CH OLIORUM OF
THEODOR BAR KONI
Addaï-Scher turned his attention to another seminal figure of the
Church of the East: Theodore bar Koni,bishop of Kashkar in the
dioceses of Bet Aramaye in southern Iraq near the Ummayid
garrison city of Al-Wasit. 3 Between 1910 and 1912, Addaï-Scher
published the text and critical edition of the Liber Scholiorum (.HWćEć
GH6NňOL\ňQ , which bar Koni had written in 792, a time of intellectual
fervor when works on technology, grammar, literature, history, law
and philosophy were being produced at the newly established city
of Baghdad under the patronage of the Abbasid Caliphs. The Liber
Scholiorum was a systematic, intellectual defense of Christian beliefs
with a primary concern to present a synthesis of Christian doctrine

A History of Christianity in Asia, pp. 234–236.
Griffith, ‘Theodore bar Koni’s Scholion’, pp. 4–5 for biographical

2 Moffett,
3

details.

166

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

from a Diophysite perspective. 4 Of its eleven chapters or memre,
nine were devoted to Old and New Testament, the tenth was an
‘apology for Christianity against the Muslims’, whilst the eleventh
was an account ‘of all heresies from before Christ and after
Christ’. 5
Bar Koni is generally acknowledged to have appended the
eleventh chapter to the preceding discussion, to be read alongside
orthodox ideas that were promulgated in the preceding chapters. 6
Rather than an overall or systematic discussion, the bishop of
Kashkar appears to have picked out excerpts, focusing on difficult
or perplexing passages that has led to many sections seeming to be
fragmented and disjointed. 7 Such is the case of the treatise on
Manichaeism, entitled, ‘Concerning his [scil. Mani’s] Abominable
Doctrine’. Yet, despite many thorny problems of interpretation, it
is still the most comprehensive account of Manichaean cosmogony
extant to date and scholars have consistently acknowledged the
value of this chapter for its authentic and accurate transmission of
Manichaean terminology. 8

THE MANUSCRIPTS USED IN THE TEXT AND CRITICAL
EDITION OF THE LIBER SCHOLIORUM 9
To produce the text and critical edition of the Liber Scholiorum,
Addaï-Scher drew on several libraries at his disposal and consulted
various manuscripts belonging to the two recensions, those of Siirt
and Urmia, by which Theodore bar Koni’s work had been
transmitted. The older and more important of the two was the Siirt
tradition, represented by six manuscripts, all of which appear to
have derived from an archetype manuscript written in 791/2 CE.
The base text which Addaï-Scher used was MS Siirt 24, the oldest
Ibid., p. 56.
p. 56.
6 Ibid., p. 62.
7 Ibid., p. 60 for the structure and content of the Liber Scholiorum.
8 Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees, p. 14.
9 Addaï Scher (ed.), Liber Scholiorum Textus, 1910–1912 [Corpus
scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Scriptores Syri ; ser. 2, t. 65–66].
4

5 Ibid.,

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

167

extant manuscript of the Liber Scholiorum, dated between the 9th and
11th centuries. He recorded variants with other manuscripts from
the Siirt recension 10 dating from the 16th century, namely MS Siirt
23, destroyed in 1915, and MS Diyarbekir 21, its location currently
uncertain. These were the oldest extant manuscripts after MS Siirt
24.
MS Siirt 24 was originally part of the collection of the
Chaldean episcopal library at Siirt and was described in AddaïScher’s catalogue of these manuscripts. 11 He described the hand as
‘very careful’ (très soignée) and of the same hand as MS Siirt 13. MS
Siirt 24 is written in Nestorian script except for a couple of
characters that are written in the Jacobite manner. 12 Later scholars,
notably Ernest Clarke, thought that MS Siirt 24 might date to the
10th or 11th century, contra Addaï-Scher’s 9th century dating. 13 While
there is variance on the question of its dating, all scholars agree that
Hespel and Draguet, Théodore bar Koni note that the terms SeertKlasse and Urmiah-Klasse were first employed in Lutz Brade, Untersuchungen
zum Scholienbuch des Theodoros Bar Konai (Wiesbaden: 1975) [Göttinger
Orientforschungen I, 8], 27. They prefer to use the term ‘recension,’ since
differences between the two groups indicate a redaction of the 791/2 CE
Liber Scholiorum text.
11 Addaï Scher, 1905, p. 17, Codex No. 24.
12 Addaï Scher, op. cit., 17 making reference to p.10. Physical
descriptions of the manuscript can also be found in Brade, op. cit., 22–24;
Hespel and Draguet, op. cit., 7–8 and François Briquel-Chatonnet,
Manuscrits syriaques de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (nos. 356–435, entrés
depuis 1911), de la bibliothèque Méjanes d’Aix-en-Provence, de la bibliothèque
municipale de Lyon et de la bibliothèque nationale et univeristaire de Strasbourg.
1997, pp. 36–37.
13 Clarke, The Select Questions of Isho Bar Nun on the Pentateuch, p. 185,
n.2 states, ‘[i]t is considered to be more likely a tenth or eleventh century
manuscript: on parchment with additions on paper (folios 1–11, 131–
140).’ Briquel-Chatonnet, op. cit., 36 writes, ‘[o]n ne peut suivre Mgr Addaï
Scher (Chronique de Séert II, P.O. XIII.4, p.278, n.1), selon qui ce
manuscript est probablement l’autographe de l’auteur’ ‘one cannot follow
Msgr. Addai Scher … according to whom this manuscript is probably the
autograph of the author.’
10

168

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

MS Siirt 24 is the oldest extant version of the Liber Scholiorum.
Fortunately, prior to the outbreak of World War I, Addaï-Scher
sold MS Siirt 24 to the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, where it is
now held under the shelfmark MS Paris syr. 366. 14
Addaï-Scher’s catalogue of the holdings of the Chaldaean
episcopal library in Siirt also included MS Siirt 23 [Sc], dating from
1539, under the title  ĸĭĿĭĪƦƆ IJƢƊƆ űƀũƕĪ ķŴƀƆŴƄƏĥĪ ťŨƦƃ
ƢƄƤƃĪŧĿŁĥƎƉĪťƍƙƇƉ. ‘Book of the Scholion Created by Mar Theodoros,
Doctor from the District of Kashkar’. 15 His description noted that MS
Siirt 23 was paper, 32 cm x 21, comprising 33 quires of 10 folios
with 27 lines per leaf. He noted the division of the contents into
eleven books, the last of these dealing with ‘toutes les sects et les
religions antérieures et postérieures à notre ère’ ‘all the sects and
religions prior to and posterior to our era’. 16 Regrettably, this 16thcentury manuscript, the second oldest copy of the Liber Scholiorum,
was destroyed when the library at Siirt was burned down in 1915
during reprisals against the Christian communities. This was a
tragic loss, for MS Siirt 23 was undoubtedly a critical manuscript in
the transmission history of bar Koni’s great work.
MS Siirt 23 had been the source of an early-seventeenthcentury copy of the Liber Scholiorum which Addaï-Scher had
included as Codex 21 in his 1907 resumé of the episcopal holdings
of Diyarbekir that appeared in the Journal Asiatique. 17 He supplied a
physical description and noted the division of the work into eleven
books as well as the date of the original composition of the work
that appears at the end of the ninth book: ƦƆŁĭŦŤƉĭƚƭƦƍƤŨ
ĸĭĿűƍƐƄƆĥĪ ‘in the year 1103 of Alexander’, 792 CE. The
colophon stated that the manuscript was completed at the
Clarke, op. cit., 185, n.2 he states that the information was supplied
by Mr. W. Baars of Leiden.
15 Addaï Scher (1905), op. cit., 17 viz: paper volume, 32 cm x 21,
comprising 33 quires of 10 folios, 27 lines per leaf.
16 Addaï Scher (1905), op. cit., 17.
17 Addaï Scher (1910–12), op. cit., 2; Hespel and Draguet, op. cit. 9–10
where they note that the manuscript went to Mosul and then to Baghdad.
On p. 22 they record that Arthur Vööbus had obtained a microfilm of this
manuscript which was in Baghdad.
14

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

169

monastery of John the Solitary on the 13th of Ab, 1919/August
1608 CE, during the incumbency of Patriarch Mar Simeon and of
Mar Elia, the metropolitan of Siirt and Amida. 18
Fortunately, MS Siirt 23 had been copied several times in the
th
19 century, a fact of which Addaï-Scher was aware. One such
copy was MS Alqosh 50, written in 1884 and incorporated into the
Chaldaean episcopal library at Alqosh. 19 Later, this manuscript
would be relocated from the monastery Notre Dame des Semences
to Baghdad, where it became part of the library of the Chaldaean
Seminary in Dora. 20 Addaï-Scher wrote that MS Alqosh 50 served
as the source of four codices in French consul Henri Pognon’s
private possession, 21 as well as for a fragment inserted into MS
Cambridge Add. 2812. It also was the source of the copy of the
Liber Scholiorum (Books I–IX), made in July 1898 at the monastery
of Rabban Hormizd and examined by the distinguished German
Orientalist, Anton Baumstark. 22

Clarke, op. cit., 185, dates the manuscript to 1618.
Addaï Scher (1910–1912) op. cit., 2 n. 2, where he writes, ‘etiam
servatur in bibliotheca monasterii Chaldaeorum Alqosensis, exscriptus
anno 1884 e cod. Seertensi 23’, ‘it is also kept in the library of the
Chaldean monastery of Alqosh, copied in the year 1884 from manuscript
Siirt 23’.
20 The whereabouts of this manuscript are now uncertain, but it
appears that the library was moved to Erbil following the 2003 invasion of
Iraq. It was copied presumably in the Monastery of Notre Dame des
Semences at Alqosh, to which the monks of the ancient monastery of
Rabban Hormizd had relocated in 1869.
21 H. Pognon, Inscriptions Mandaïtes des Coupes de Khouabir, (1898, 5)
states that he was unable to procure a complete manuscript, but that these
copies were made from different manuscripts.
22 Hespel and Draguet, op. cit., p. 9 n. 52 referring to A. Baumstark,
‘Die Bücher I-IX des Kataba Diskolion des Theodorus Bar Koni,’ Oriens
Christianus 1 (1901) 173–8. On p. 173–174 he supplied physical details: 32
quires, 20 folios per quire, measuring 35 x 23 cm, with 628 of the folios
having 26 lines of writing per page, as well as the copyist’s identity. Thus,
Fol. 318 recto, l.6 – Fol. 317 verso, l.7 names the copyist as Joseph, son of
18
19

170

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

Addaï-Scher also maintained that MS Siirt 23 was the source
of MS B(ritish) L(ibrary) Or. 9372, as did Butrus Haddad and
Jacques Isaac in their catalogue. 23 On the other hand, Hespel and
Draguet proposed that MS BL Or. 9372 was copied from MS
Alqosh 50. 24 With 289 folios in 22 quires of 18–22 folios each, MS
BL Or. 9372 was written in a Nestorian hand with rubricated
lemmata. The colophon records that it was a bespoke copy made for
E. A. Wallis Budge by the copyist Isa bar Isaïe on 21 Tammuz/
July 21st, 1891 at Alqosh. 25 The British Museum purchased it from
Budge’s personal collection in May 1924. 26
In 1902, another copy of the Liber Scholiorum was copied for
the European market, 27 this time for Pognon, mentioned above in
connection with the four manuscript copies of MS Alqosh 50. This
manuscript passed subsequently into the possession of Fançois
Graffin and was examined by Hespel and Draguet. 28 The colophon
of this copy, written by a priest named Marutha, records Pognon’s
discovery of the parent manuscript of his copy in the library of Mar
Photion at Diyarbekir. 29 This was, of course, the manuscript MS
Diyarbekir 21, written in 1608, a description of which Addaï-Scher
Thomas, grandson of deacon SiIâ and great-grandson of presbyter Peter
from Beth Abbûnâ.
23 Butrus Haddad and Jacques Isaac, Syriac and Arabic Manuscripts in
the Library of the Chaldean Monastery, Baghdad (Baghdad: Iraq Academy,
1988) list the Syriac title and supply Colophon details including the dating
as ‘Month of Iyar 1884 A.D. See also the description in Jacques Vosté,
Catalogue de la Bibliothèque syro-chaldéene du couvent de Notre-Dame des Semences
près d’Alqosh (Iraq), 1929, p. 21.
24 Hespel and Draguet, op. cit. 9 coming to this conclusion on the
basis of errors that were reproduced.
25 Hespel and Draguet, op. cit. 9, n. 55. Brade, op. cit, 18 for a detailed
description.
26 Hespel and Draguet, loc. cit. record that this was a detail on the
microfilm.
27 Brade, op. cit., 21 noted a date of 802. See the counter discussion
by Hespel and Draguet, loc. cit.
28 Hespel and Draguet, op. cit., 10.
29 Hespel and Draguet, op. cit., 10.

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

171

had published already in 1907 in the Journal Asiatique. Whilst
Pognon’s copy of MS Diyarbakir 21 was acknowledged not to be
per se important, 30 its significance lay that in that it derived indirectly
from MS Siirt 23 via MS Diyarbekir 21, confirming that it had been
copied from the older manuscript, as Addaï-Scher had proposed.
[S] SIIRT RECENSIONS
Sm: MS Siirt 24
now MS Paris syr. 366
Sc: Siirt 23 , now lost
D: Diyarbekir 21
A: Alqosh 50
now Baghdad 80
L: BL Or. 9372
P: Pognon

Date of Copy
9th/11th century

Copied for

1539
1608
1884 [copy of Sc]
1891 [copy of A]
1902

E.A.W. Budge
Henri Pognon

Table 1: Manuscripts belonging to the Siirt Recension of the
L iber Scholiorum .

ADDAÏ-SCHER AND THE CRITICISM OF BAUMSTARK
The text and critical edition of Theodore bar Koni’s Liber
Scholiorum was a distinguished contribution to scholarship and the
culmination of Addaï-Scher’s scholarly career. Sadly, he was
murdered, in the most despicable circumstances, barely three years
after the work’s publication. Although several European scholars
had worked sporadically on the Liber Scholiorum, Addaï-Scher was
the first scholar to attempt a systematic examination of the work’s
transmission. 31 Applying his skills, he was able to unravel many of
the complexities in the long transmission history of the Liber
Scholiorum, providing a base for the work of later scholars. In
particular, on the basis of his close textual analysis, Addaï-Scher
opined that MSS Siirt 23 and Diyarbekir 21 had not descended
Hespel and Draguet op. cit., 11 where they state, ‘[d]ans l’ensemble,
P, simple reflet de D, n’a par lui-même aucune importance critique’ ‘[O]n
the whole, P, a mere reflex of D, is per se of no critical importance.’
31 Griffith, op. cit., 53 notes the work of Pognon in 1898, Nöldeke in
1899 and Kugener in 1908.
30

172

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

from MS Siirt 24/Paris Syr. 366). 32 Instead, he proposed that MS
Diyarbekir 21 was copied from MS Siirt 23, a finding that was
endorsed by Hespel and Draguet in their 1981 publication. 33
Addaï-Scher’s work had brought the Liber Scholiorum out of
the ecclesiastical libraries and into the domain of European
scholarship. It was a monumental achievement, but was not
without its detractors. His work was savagely criticized by no less
an authority than Anton Baumstark. He considered Addaï-Scher’s
methodology to be so defective that the work ought to be redone. 34
In particular, he dismissed the selection of MS Siirt 24 as the base
text stating, ‘gerade die schlechteste Grundlage’ ‘precisely the worst
basis’ had been chosen. 35 Rejecting the textual authority of MS Siirt
24, Baumstark proposed that a new critical edition should be
prepared in order to establish the archetype of MSS Si’irt 23Diyarbekir 21-Pognon-Alqosh 50. He considered that AddaïScher’s relegation of MS Berlin Or. quart 871 to an appendix
signaled a missed opportunity for scientific analysis. This
manuscript, recently acquired for the Königliche Bibliothek in
Berlin, was a nineteenth-century copy belonging to the Urmia
recension. As Sidney Griffith has written, ‘the Berlin manuscript …
is seen to be the fullest and therefore probably the latest rendition
of the work’. 36
It is accepted that the autograph of the Liber Scholiorum no
longer exists, but contrary to Addaï-Scher, Baumstark maintained
that MSS Siirt 23 and Diyarbekir 21 contained preferential readings
and derived from an independent source over and above the older
MS Siirt 24. 37 Hespel and Draguet have upheld Baumstark’s
finding, but have postulated that the convergence between MSS
32
33

Scher (1910–12), loc. cit
Scher (1910–12), op. cit., p. 2; Hespel and Draguet, op. cit. pp. 9–10,

22.
Clarke, op. cit., pp. 184–185 where he gives details.
See the review by A. Baumstark, ‘Theodorus bar Koni. Liber
Scholiorum. Edidit A. Scher’ in Oriens Christianus (1913) pp. 148–152,
especially p. 150.
36 Griffith, op. cit., p. 66.
37 Baumstark (1913) op. cit., p. 150.
34
35

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

173

Siirt 23 and Diyarbekir 21 may point to conformity in the scribal
tradition, rather than their derivation from a common Urtext. 38
Whilst all manuscripts in the Urmia and Siirt recensions have
ultimately derived from an early prototype, Hespel and Draguet
downplayed the importance of the Urmia recension, maintaining
that it was the more recent tradition, having made additions to an
ancient manuscript that belonged to the Siirt recension which
harked back to the 10th century, via the witness of MS Siirt 24. 39
Their reconstruction of the stemma of the Liber Scholiorum has
essentially followed that already proposed by Addaï-Scher. 40

Fig. 1 Stemma of the Liber Scholiorum Si’irt recension
ccording to Hespel and Draguet.

Hespel and Draguet, op. cit., p. 6.
Ibid, p. 19.
40 Hespel and Draguet have included in the Urmia recensions several
manuscripts hailing from the early part of the 20th century, namely MS
Cambridge Or. 1307 [C] and MS BL, Or. 9372 [L], both of which were
previously mentioned by Clarke, op. cit., 186, Brade, op. cit., 13, 18.
38
39

174

ERICA C. D. HUNTER

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The tragic end of Addaï-Scher extinguished a scholar of great
promise, one who was able to combine his natural understanding
of the important heritage of Syriac manuscripts with the latest
European methodology. His prodigious output would have surely
continued had his life not been cut short so prematurely with the
rich episcopal libraries at his disposal, Addaï-Scher would have
undoubtedly made further contributions to Syriac scholarship.
Nevertheless, his legacy endures in various ways. His compilation
of catalogues of the manuscript holdings of the libraries destroyed
in the Sayfo provide poignant but important records of the cultural
destruction that took place and, regrettably, which continues today.
His various translations of great pedagogical works opened new
vistas in the understanding of the Church of the East’s educational
repertoire. Finally, his text critical work on Theodore bar Koni’s
Liber Scholiorum brought, for the first time, this seminal text within
the realms of European scholars. Addaï-Scher had loosened the
Gordion knot enabling European scholars to debate and discuss
the transmission history of this great work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Addaï Scher, Ibrahim. Catalogue des mss syriaques et arabes conserves dans
la Bibliothèque épiscopale de Séert (Kurdistan) avec notes
bibliographiques. (Mossoul: 1905).
–––––– (ed. & trans.) ‘Mar Barhadbšabba ‫ދ‬Arbaya, évêque de
ʗalwan (VIe siècle): Cause de la fondation des écoles /
Barʘadbšabba’. Patrologia Orientalis IV: 4, 1907.
–––––– ‘Notice sur les manuscripts syriaques et arabes conserves à
l’archevêché chaldéen de Diarbékir’, Journal Asiatique 10, 1907.
–––––– (ed. & trans.) Histoire nestorienne inédite (Chronique de Seert).
(Paris: 1907–1918).
–––––– .LWćEʯDO-ʯDOIćʲʯDO-)ćULVĪ\DKʯDO-muұarrabah. (Beirut: 1908).
–––––– (ed.) Liber Scholiorum Textus. Corpus scriptorum
Christianorum Orientalium. Scriptores Syri ; ser. 2, t. 65–66.
(Paris: E Typographeo Republicae, 1910–1912).
–––––– (ed. & trans.) ‘Traités d’Išaï le docteur et GH ʗQDQD
d’Adiabène sur les martyrs, le Vendredi d’Or et les Rogations:

9. ADDAÏ SCHER AND HIS SCHOLARSHIP

175

suivis de la confession de foi à reciter et par les évêques avant
l’ordination’. Patrologia Orientalis 7 (1911).
Baumstark, Anton. ‘Die Bücher I–IX des Kataba Diskolion des
Theodorus Bar Koni’. Oriens Christianus 1 (1901).
–––––– ‘Theodorus bar Koni. Liber Scholiorum. Edidit A. Scher’.
Oriens Christianus (1913).
Brade, Lutz. Untersuchungen zum Scholienbuch des Theodore bar Konai:
due Ubernahme des Erbes von Theodoros von Mopsuestia in der
nestorianischen Kirche (Wiesbaden: 1975).
Briquel-Chatonnet, François. Manuscrits syriaques de la Bibliothèque
nationale de France (nos. 356–435, entrés depuis 1911), de la
bibliothèque Méjanes d’Aix-en-Provence, de la bibliothèque municipale
de Lyon et de la bibliothèque nationale et univeristaire de Strasbourg.
(Bibliothèque nationale de France: Paris: 1997).
Burkitt, Francis Crawford. The Religion of the Manichees. (Cambridge:
1925).
Clarke, Ernest G. The Select Questions of Isho Bar Nun on the Pentateuch.
(Leiden: 1962).
Griffith, Sidney. ‘Theodore bar Koni’s Scholion: A Nestorian Summa
Contra Gentiles from the First Abbasid Century’ in N. Garsoian
(ed.), East of Byzantium. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks:
1982).
Haddad, Butrus and Jacques Isaac, Syriac and Arabic manuscripts in the
Library of the Chaldaean Monastery, Baghdad. (Baghdad: Iraq
Academy, 1988).
Hespel, Robert and Réne Draguet, Théodore bar Koni: Livre des Scolies
(recension de Seert). C.S.C.O. Scriptores Syri, vol. 187. (Louvain:
1981).
Moffett, Samuel Hugh. A History of Christianity in Asia. (San
Francisco: Harper, 1992).
Pognon, Henri. Inscriptions Mandaïtes des Coupes de Khouabir. (Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1898).
Vosté, Jacques. Catalogue de la Bibliothèque syro-chaldéene du couvent de
Notre-Dame des Semences près d’Alqoš (Iraq). (Rome, Paris: 1929).

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING USED IN
THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE
B. BETH YUHANON
The way Assyrians 1 describe the annihilation of their people from
1914–1918 as Sayfo 2 or the Sword suggests that the majority of their
victims were killed during massacres. In essence, like the terms
Meds Yeghern 3 used for their genocide by the Armenians or Shoah
used by the Jews to refer to the Holocaust, Sayfo represents a
synonym in the collective memory of the Assyrians when they
describe the genocide inflicted on them in 1915. More than any
other murderous incidents, the horrendous stories of the mass
slaughter of the Assyrians told by the survivors seem to have been
burned into the collective memory of the Assyrian people.
Unsurprisingly the slaughter became the defining feature of the
Assyrian genocide. Without going into detail, it is important to
mention here that, even prior to the genocide of 1915, the

The ethnic name Assyrian includes all Assyrian denominations:
Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Chaldean Catholic
Church and Assyrian Church of the East. There are also some Protestant
congregations among Assyrians.
2 Another transcription for Sayfo ťƙƀƏ is Seyfo or Saypa (in the Eastern
Assyrian Aramaic or Syriac dialect). Sayfo is also referred to as Shato d-Sayfo
(the Year of the Sword). The expression is also found in the plural as the Years
of the Sword. The term Sayfo is used synonymously to mean extermination
and annihilation.
3 Meds Yeghern means ‘great calamity’ in the Armenian language and
refers to the Armenian Genocide.
1

177

178

B. BETH YUHANON

Assyrians had been subjected for centuries to violence, pillage and
oppression. 4
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse one specific aspect
of the Assyrian Genocide: the methods of killing. How were the
Assyrians killed and what instruments were used by the
perpetrators? Of course descriptions of the methods of
annihilation are mentioned briefly in studies dealing with the
Assyrian genocide, 5 but by focusing on the specific methods used
to kill Assyrians, the purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the
nature of the violence used against these people and to contribute
to further research on the genocide of 1915. Given the broad scope
of the subject, the focus concentrates mainly on the Assyrian
community. I shall commence by presenting examples from
eyewitness accounts and put them in the general context of the
genocide. Each method of killing will be discussed separately.
Secondly, I shall draw on these examples and other testimonies to
discuss how the intention to humiliate was often inherent in the
method of killing. Although the question of the methods of killing
allows some conclusions to be drawn about the systematic plan of
the violence, this should not be detached from the context and
historical background of the genocide or from the motives and
See, for example, Yohannan, The Death of a Nation, pp. 95–9, 104–
110; Qarabash, The Shed Blood, pp. 29–32; Barsoum, History of Syriac
Literature and Sciences, pp. 52, 55. In this context the massacres in Hakkari
by Kurds under the leadership of Bedr Khan Bey between 1842 and 1846
should be mentioned. Based on contemporary sources, it is said that in
the Tyari district alone, 10,000 Assyrians were massacred. Many other
massacres were perpetrated on the Assyrians of Hakkari and the Turabdin
region in the same period (Aprim, Assyrians, pp. 25–33; Aboona, Assyrians,
pp. 208–212). Assyrians were also massacred between 1894 and 1896
under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who promoted the concept of PanIslamism as state ideology to unite all Muslims in the empire and to
reinforce Ottoman power and superiority (Aprim, Assyrians, pp. 33–35;
Meyrier, Les Massacres de Diarbékir, pp. 88–89, 95–98, 104–105, 112, 125–
139, 153–156).
5 For key publications about the Sayfo see the bibliography at the
end.
4

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

179

intentions of the perpetrator groups. It is assumed that their
methods of destruction reveal much about the inner attitude of the
perpetrators and, by association, also something about their
motives and intentions. Adopting this line of thought, the motives
of the perpetrators will be sketched very briefly in the context of
the killing methods. In my discussion of the killing methods, I shall
make use of Avishai Margalit’s concept of humiliation. Margalit
defines humiliation as follows: ‘(1) treating human beings as if they
were not human – as beasts, machines, or sub-humans; (2)
performing actions that manifest or lead to loss of basic control;
and (3) rejecting a human being from the “family of Man”’. 6 In
other words, humiliation means treating people not as human
beings but as if they were things, animals or sub-humans. 7 Margalit
uses humiliation as a normative concept. From this point of view,
humiliation does resemble dehumanization but it is not the same.
Margalit argues that humiliation presupposes the humanity of the
person who is to be humiliated because only humans can be
humiliated. That is to say, only humans can humiliate other humans
and, conversely, feel humiliated by their actions. 8 By my choice of
concept, I want to emphasize the humiliating rituals in the acts of
killing Assyrians. As said, in this exploration of the killing methods,
this chapter relies on eyewitness testimonies, contemporary reports
and memoirs as well as documents detailing the genocide of 1915. 9
Margalit, The Decent Society, p. 144.
Margalit, The Decent Society, p. 121. There are, of course, other
definitions of the term humiliation which are not as specific as the one
developed by Margalit. Silver et al.; ‘Humiliation’, p. 169, for instance,
look at humiliation as an emotion and as a social fact. They discuss
different examples such as excremental assault, powerlessness and insults
in their explorations of humiliating practices.
8 Margalit, The Decent Society, pp. 109–110; Quinton, ‘Humiliation’, p.
81.
9 This includes the collection of eyewitness reports assembled by
James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee and published by James Bryce, the
British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in 1916. A new and uncensored
edition of this British ‘Blue Book’ has been edited by Ara Sarafian in 2000.
I have used this edition. Another valuable source are the records edited by
6
7

180

B. BETH YUHANON

THE METHODS OF KILLING
Various testimonies and documents about the genocide indicate
that different methods were used to murder the victims. When the
instruments of killing are categorized, five different methods can be
distinguished. A large number of Assyrians were butchered with
hand-held weapons. Others were shot dead. In many cases,
Assyrians were burned alive. A significant part of the Assyrian
population was eliminated indirectly through imposed starvation,
thirst and other privations as well as by death marches organized
under the pretext of relocations. The following sections outline the
principal methods of extermination, each described in detail and
underpinned by different examples from eyewitness accounts and
contemporary sources.

Wolfgang Gust, which contain documents from the Political Archive of
the German Foreign Office. Other sources used are the memoirs of the
Venezuelan mercenary Rafael de Nogales, who served for the Ottoman
Empire during the First World War, and the memoirs of the American
ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau. Both works provide
invaluable insights into the genocide of 1915. Another primary source is
the manuscript Les Chrétiens aux bêtes of Jacques Rhétoré, a French
Dominican from Mosul, who was interned in Mardin until November
1916. I use the Italian edition of this eyewitness report by Marco
Impagliazzo (2000). In addition to these sources, there are also eyewitness
accounts from survivors of the Assyrian Genocide themselves. Among
those which should be mentioned here is the chronicle written by Abed
Mshiho Ne‘man Qarabash. As a young novice in the Syriac Orthodox
Monastery of Mor Hananyo (known also as Dayro d-Kurkmo or Dayr
Za‘faran), he witnessed the annihilation of the Christians first hand.
Another testimony is the oral history collection edited by Sleman Hinno.
He collected testimonies from 13 Assyrian survivors living in Syria. His
collection focuses mainly on the Turabdin region. Joseph Naayem also
published a book on the genocide of 1915. It is based on eyewitness
accounts of survivors whom he met in Aleppo or Constantinople.
Another book based on personal experiences and eyewitness reports was
published by Yonan H. Shahbaz in 1918. For this and other sources see
the bibliography at the end.

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

181

Killing by Massacre
The wholesale slaughter of the Assyrians was carried out
systematically so that during a short time Assyrian villages and
towns in northern Mesopotamia, in Hakkari and in the Urmia
region were pillaged, set alight and their populations wiped out.
The weapons used to massacre the Assyrians ranged from swords,
daggers, scimitars, axes, sickles, scythes, yatagans, knives, pickaxes,
and bayonets to hammers, lances, clubs and saws. When describing
the purpose for using such tools, the American ambassador, Henry
Morgenthau, states that they were selected because they ‘… not
only caused more agonizing deaths than guns and pistols, but, as
the Turks themselves boasted, they were more economical, since
they did not involve the waste of powder and shell’. 10 As a rule,
although the massacres were carried out in different ways, they
were characterized by excessive cruelty, degradation, humiliation,
looting, pillaging and different forms of torture, as among them
bastinado (whipping of feet), beatings and tying the victims upsidedown. The following examples define in greater detail the diverse
picture of the massacres and provide insights into the mechanism
of the genocide process.
After the Russian retreat from Urmia on 2 January 1915,
Turkish troops and Kurdish irregular units occupied the province
of Azerbaijan in northwest Persia (Iran). From the beginning of the
occupation until their withdrawal in late May, the Assyrian
population of the Urmia and Salmas districts – situated north of
Urmia – was the victim of a continual onslaught by Turks, Kurds
and Persian Muslims. 11 Yonan Shahbaz, who witnessed the killing

Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, p. 312.
Persian Muslims refers to the mixed Muslim population in the
province of Azerbaijan in north-west Persia. It consisted of Turkicspeaking Azeris or Shiite Muslims. The other Muslim groups were Kurds
and ethnic Persians (Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, p.
135). In this regard the term ‘Persian Muslims’ is used in this article to
mean in general the Muslim population in the province of Azerbaijan in
northwest Persia.
10
11

182

B. BETH YUHANON

and looting in Gogtapa, 12 which had been attacked by more than
25,000 Kurds and some thousands of Iranian (Persian) Muslims,
gives detailed information about the extermination of Assyrians,
carried out by different methods of torture and killing:
In Gogtapa the wife and daughters of the old minister whose
legs and arms were cut off with a saw were all murdered and
mutilated beyond recognition. Some men were found with
their eyes gouged out with knives. They were left to wander
about for a time, then shot. Women were found with their
backs broken from having been doubled up and thrust into an
earth-oven. Pregnant women were cut open and the unborn
babes taken from them. A man seventy years of age, who was
confined to his bed through illness, was dragged from his
couch and his mouth used as a toilet. Another, still older, was
taken from his house, tied to a horse by a long rope round his
neck, and the horse beaten to a gallop. His head and back were
scraped almost clean of flesh from contact with rough ground.
Of course he soon died from the effects of this treatment.13

Many Assyrians escaped the massacres and sought shelter in the
compounds of the American and French missions in Urmia, but
thousands less fortunate lost their lives. Their villages were
attacked, looted, devastated and set on fire. The slaughter was
accompanied by the desecration of Assyrian graves:
Many of the Christian dead were dug from their graves; some
had been buried for twenty years. The ghouls took the skulls,
placed them on poles, and paraded the streets with them. A
woman who was soon expecting to be confined, was sitting
beside her tanoora (stove) [clay oven] with her six children and
her brother gathered round her. They were attacked by Kurds,
the children slaughtered before her eyes, and she herself then

Gogtapa was a large Assyrian village in the Baranduz district,
south of the city of Urmia.
13 Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 131.
12

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

183

murdered. Hundreds of Christian people were killed and left in
the snow for more than three months unburied. 14

When the Ottoman Turkish troops retreated from Van and the
province of Azerbaijan as the Russians advanced into these
provinces, Jevdet (Cevdet) Bey, who was the vali of Van province
and Enver Pasha’s brother-in-law, gathered all the remaining 800
Christians in Salmas and massacred them in early March 1915. 15
Many of these victims were shot, decapitated, hacked to pieces and
mutilated. Shahbaz writes: ‘Some of these townspeople of Salmas
were skinned alive, others left with the skin of their arms hanging
loose in shreds.’ 16 After the Russian Revolution in October 1917,
the Russian troops on the Caucasian front were ordered to
withdraw, which paved the way for the Ottoman Turkish army to
expand into and occupy the province of Azerbaijan. In early June
1918, the Assyrians were once again targeted by the combined
armed forces of Turks, Kurds and Persian Muslims. The
description below shows that every Assyrian who fell into their
hands was killed without mercy:
The French mission buildings were now sheltering more than
six thousand refugees. The murderers entered with every
conceivable weapon, from a long sword to a wooden mallet.
They commenced with the little children and infants. The latter
were held by their tiny feet and their heads dashed against the
walls and the stone pavements. The older ones were held up
by the hair of the head, hanging, while their bodies were
severed by one stroke of the sword. The little girls were
publicly assaulted and then cut in twain. Women had their
breasts first cut off, and then pierced by daggers. Others were
taken to the roofs of the buildings, and from there dashed to
their death into the street below. Others had their hands and
their limbs amputated by sickles and axes, and then had their
skulls crushed by wooden mallets. The spacious courtyard
became impassable from the still bleeding fragments of the
Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 129.
Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, pp. 139, 153, 587.
16 Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 127.
14
15

184

B. BETH YUHANON
victims’ mutilated bodies, while blood literally leaked from the
floor of each building to the one below. Of the entire number
of the Christians, estimated at more than six thousand, in the
French mission buildings alone, not more than sixty souls
remained who escaped in a miraculous way; and all the rest
were put to death in less than forty-eight hours, the official
time for the application of the mandate of the “jehad”. 17

Sleman Hinno, who compiled testimonies of Assyrian survivors
from the Turabdin region, provides evidence that the Assyrian
population of Nsibin (Turkish: Nusaybin) 18 was killed in the same
way as lambs are ritually slaughtered:
A day after the murder of raban 19 Estefanos, that is to say on
Tuesday, 15 June 1915, they assembled all the Assyrian men,
women and children and took them to the town hall. Then
they were told that they would be taken to Mardin. But when
they were led out of Nsibin going along the road to Mardin,
they knew that they were being taken to be slaughtered. They
began to sing spiritual songs and the women chanted and
encouraged each other saying: “Soon we shall be with Christ
our Lord”. Then the soldiers escorted them as far as a place
called Nirbo d-Farfoshe and there they began to kill them one
after the other, slaughtering them like lambs on the rim of a
well which was there. And as they stretched each for slaughter
they were told: “Become a Muslim and we won’t kill you”. Not
a single one complied with their wish and not a single one
renounced Christ their Lord. In this way, they killed all of
them and threw them into the well. This is how Nsibin was
completely depopulated of Christians. 20

Werda, The Flickering Light, p. 184.
Nsibin is also known in Assyrian as Nisibin, in European
languages it is usually called Nisibis.
19 A title used for monks and abbots.
20 Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, p. 28. My own translation of
the Assyrian text.
17
18

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

185

These descriptions of the actual killings show that the massacres
were motivated by religious hatred exacerbated by a religious zeal
to pressurize the victims to convert to Islam. They also
demonstrate the perpetrators’ desire to see their victims suffer in
agony and reduce them to a sub-human status by killing them as
animals are slaughtered or by employing other humiliating rituals as
part of the actual killing. The mention of jihad or the Islamic holy
war, which was declared against the ‘infidels’ and the ‘enemies of
Islam’ by the Sultan and the Sheikh-ul-Islam 21 in November 1914, 22
underlines the religious dimension that played an essential role in
mobilizing the Muslim masses and legitimizing the annihilation of
the Christians.
The act of slaughtering human beings as if they were animals
demonstrates the rejection of the status of the victims as humans.
It also exhibits an attitude of hostility and superiority that regards
the killing and humiliation of the other as a ‘necessary task’. To
substantiate this aspect, it is helpful to recall the living conditions
of the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire. For centuries, Assyrians
had lived in a hierarchical system of inequality, which required the
subjugation, humiliation and subordination of non-Muslims
(Christians and Jews) as sign of their inferiority 23 and in which it
was Muslims who constituted the millet-i hâkime or the ruling

The Sheiukh-ul-Islam is the highest religious authority in Islam. The
declaration of jihad which inflamed and mobilized anti-Christian
sentiments and created a Pan-Islamic fervour was read in the mosques,
published in the newspapers and propagated among the Muslims in
different countries. Morgenthau notes that, besides the official declaration
of the holy war, there was also a secret pamphlet containing quotations
from the Koran giving concrete instructions to the Muslims to participate
in the jihad. It was distributed in all countries with a Muslim population
(Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, pp. 162–166).
22 Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, pp. 160–162; Alichoran,
‘Un Dominicain témoin du genocide’, pp. 264–268; Gust, Völkermord an
den Armeniern, pp. 356, 373.
23 Regarding the situation of Christians as dhimmis, see Ye’or (1985).
21

186

B. BETH YUHANON

nation. 24 In this context, their dispatch of the Assyrians as if they
were animals to be slaughtered was intended to show and remind
the victims that their lives were worthless and to demonstrate their
total subjection. It is reasonable to assume that even the public
parade showing the skulls of the Assyrian dead as well as leaving
the Assyrian victims unburied for months during the occupation of
northwest Persia by Turkish troops and Kurds had an unequivocal
humiliatory purpose. The burial of a person is naturally associated
with dignity and honour, therefore its prohibition implies the
rejection of the victims’ dignity as humans. In short, they were
regarded as inferior creatures and unworthy of having a proper
burial place.
Another point that should be raised in this discussion is
indulgence in the bodily mutilations. When added to others, the
accounts given above about the Sayfo suggest that such mutilations
as the chopping off of genitals and breasts, the slitting off of ears
and noses, the tearing out of nails and the ripping out of beards
were a form of torture that was integral to the process of
annihilation and these atrocities have also had psychological
impacts on the victims and the generations that have come after
them. The victims were exposed to a situation in which they were
completely at the mercy of their tormentors. Shapiro has said that
the main goal of torture is not only to inflict pain but to break the
victim’s will by inflicting physical suffering. This act of total
subjugation is humiliating and engenders feelings of shame and
powerlessness in the victims because they have been robbed of the
ability to prevent whatever is happening to them. 25 This kind of
torture is also recorded in the account given by Wahida, a twelveyear-old Assyrian girl, interviewed by Naayem 26 in Aleppo in 1918.
She witnessed the torture and killing of her father in Diyarbakir
after he had been arrested and put in prison:
Dabag, ‘Jungtürkische Visionen’, pp. 160–161; Morgenthau,
Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, pp. 279–280.
25 Shapiro, ‘The Tortured’, pp. 1141–1143.
26 Joseph Naayem was an Assyrian priest from Urhoy/Edessa (then
Urfa, now þanliurfa) who escaped the massacres of the Christians in the
city by disguising himself in Bedouin clothes. He escaped to Aleppo.
24

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

187

Through a window I saw policemen go into his cell.
Executioners, armed with clubs, and soldiers who used the
butts of their rifles, struck my father terrible blows. They hit
him on the head and made him cry out, and then gave him
many blows with their daggers. They put out his eyes with a
knife which had a sharp point and cut his stomach open. I
wept and cried for a time and then I opened the door and ran
away. 27

The level of mercilessness unleashed did not spare the lives of
unborn babies: the wombs of pregnant women were cut open and
their babies ripped out and smashed against rocks. 28 Although it is
difficult to say exactly what the intention behind these sorts of
mutilation and other forms of cruelty was, some observations can
certainly be made. Firstly, it can be assumed that the intention
behind this brutality was to symbolize the desire for the complete
destruction of the victim group, since unborn infants were seen as
a symbol of the preservation and continuity of the Assyrian people.
Beyond this, it seems as if the perpetrators sought not only the
death of their victims but also sought for a way to maximize their
suffering. Furthermore, these tormenting and degrading practices
can be seen as a means by which the perpetrators sought to
demonstrate their superiority and power over the victims, whom
they did not think of as equal human beings but as sub-human
compared to Muslims, who constituted the millet-i hâkime or the
ruling nation. Indeed, dominance over Christians 29 was considered
natural, and the Muslim claim to power and supremacy could serve
as a means to justify the annihilation of the Christians in the
Ottoman Empire. Therefore, the murder of the Christians has to
be viewed in light of the Young Turks’ (ýWWLK¿GYH7HUDNNL) ideology
of Turkism and Turanism. 30 The goal of the Young Turks, who
Naayem, 6KDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", p. 196.
Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 95; Hinno, The catastrophes of the
Assyrians, p. 11; Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 131.
29 Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, pp. 279–281; Dabag,
‘Jungtürkische Visionen’, pp. 160–161.
30 See more in Alp 1915, Gökalp 1968 and Dabag 1998.
27
28

188

B. BETH YUHANON

came to power in the 1908 revolution and strengthened their
position by staging a coup d’état on 23 January 1913, was to achieve
the unity of all Turkic-speaking peoples 31 and subsequently the
creation of a national state for Turks called Turan. 32 Pragmatically,
the implementation of this ideology would involve a societal
transformation of the Ottoman Empire into a new and
homogenized Turkish nation, which would also include a
transformation of the identity of its inhabitants from that of
Muslim Ottomans to Muslim Turks. Their visionary concept of
Turan with its territorial orientation to the Turkic-speaking peoples
of the Caucasus and Central Asia led the Young Turks to consider
the presence of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire as an
obstacle on the path to the fulfilment of this dream. 33 Against this
backdrop, the Christians were ideologically and religiously singled
out, defined as ‘internal enemies’ 34 and exterminated because it was
thought it would have been an impossibility to have them
integrated into a new Turkish nation-state with Islam as its state
religion. The ideology of the Young Turks, inspired by their vision
of Turan and their objective of achieving national homogenization,
is significant if the intentions and motives of the perpetrators are to
be understood. Nevertheless, it would be fallacious to say that the
Kurds participated in the genocide because of any call to Turkism
or Turanism. In their case other factors, intentions and motives
were at play, driving them towards the extermination of the
Christians. As perpetrators, the Kurds, who were part of the
Muslim ummah, were motivated by their own goals and intentions.
They interpreted and implemented the vision and ideology of the
Young Turks in their own Kurdish-Islamic context in which the
extermination of the Christians was seen not only as a religious

This included the Turkic-speaking peoples in the Ottoman
Empire, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia all the way to China.
32 Dabag, ‘Jungtürkische Visionen’, pp. 162, 176–186; Travis, ‘Native
Christians Massacred’, pp. 341–344.
33 Gust, Völkermord an den Armeniern, p. 497, Morgenthau, Ambassador
Morgenthau’s story, pp. 284–286.
34 Gust, pp. 171, 522–523, 610.
31

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

189

duty to participate in a jihad, but much more also as an opportunity
to seize and occupy Assyrian land and property. 35
As said above, the murder of the Assyrians was not confined
to the territory within the Ottoman Empire. It also extended to
Assyrian-inhabited regions in Iran that were occupied by Turkish
troops and Kurdish irregular units, for example, the province of
Azerbaijan in north-western Persia. Here, Persian Muslims, who
had secret agreements with Turkey and Kurds, answered the call to
jihad with zeal and joined in the looting and extermination of the
Assyrians. 36 Within this ideological framework, the annihilation of
the Assyrians both ideologically and religiously was seen as the
achievement of a sacred and essential goal.
Assyrians in other places were killed by similar methods. In
Tel Hassan, east of Nsibin, the Assyrian population, who occupied
fifteen houses, was massacred by Ömer Osman, the Kurdish agha
in the village. Hinno attests to the fact that Ömer Osman
slaughtered seven widows, offered them as a sacrifice and then
bathed in their blood to achieve the religious ‘stage of perfection’. 37
This example also reveals that the attitude of the perpetrators was
to regard the killing of the victims as a sacred ritual act. In the
village of Kafro ‘Elayto (Turkish: Arica) in Turabdin, the Kurds,
led by Yusuf Agha, massacred the inhabitants after inflicting great
pain and torture on them. The monk Odom was flayed alive and
his eyes were put out with hot rods. 38 As in many other villages, the
Assyrians of Kafro ‘Elayto, who had barricaded themselves in the
church of Mor Ya‘qub (St Jacob), tried to resist annihilation but
could only hold out for five days, Hinno says. Yusuf Agha made

There had been earlier attempts by Kurds to seize Assyrian land.
In particular, the invasions and assaults of various Kurdish emirs and
tribes in the 18th and again in the 19th century wrought great destruction
among and the looting of the Assyrian population, see Barsoum, History of
Syriac Literature, 127–133; Aprim, Assyrians, pp. 25–35.
36 Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, pp. 47, 57–58, 68; Alichoran, ‘Un
Dominicain témoin du genocide’, pp. 293–294.
37 Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, p. 43.
38 Hinno, pp. 94–95.
35

190

B. BETH YUHANON

attempts to deceive the victims by swearing oaths, 39 promising not
to kill them if they surrendered. Facing death from thirst and
hunger, they opened the door of the church, only to be killed
immediately afterwards. Many of the women were done to death by
being thrown into the village cisterns, which was also a common
way of disposing of the dead. 40 Sources provide evidence that in
many cases the perpetrators attempted to deceive the Assyrians by
swearing oaths and perjuring themselves in order to lull their
victims into a false sense of security and break down their
resistance. In view of this sort of behaviour, it seems that the
determination of the perpetrators to annihilate the victims was
their chief motivation.
The Assyrians in the town of Siirt and its surrounding villages
underwent a similar fate. In June 1915, in his retreat from Van, the
vali and military commander, Jevdet Bey, entered the province of
Bitlis with his army and unleashed a general massacre in Siirt. 41 The
Assyrian population in the surrounding villages was looted and
massacred by the Kurds. 42 Halata, 43 a witness from Siirt, testified
that after the massacre and shooting of the adult males and boys,
the remaining children aged six to fifteen were separated from their
Speaking of the village M’are, for instance, Gawriye Beth-Mas’ud
(born 1926), interviewed in July 2002, gives the content of such an oath as
follows: ‘Their father assured them that he was given the word of honor
of the Kurdish agha, Hajji Yusuf, that no harm would come to them.
Yusuf swore that he would sleep with Fatima [the daughter of
Muhammad] in Ramadan on the skin of a pig before any harm would
happen to the Christians there.’ This was done with a purely malicious
intent: ‘In the morning, the Kurdish agha, Hajji Yusuf, gathered the
[West] Syriacs and chained them and butchered them like animals’ (Gaunt,
Massacres, p. 384).
40 Naayem, 6KDOO WKLV 1DWLRQ GLH", pp. 177–178, 192; Rhétoré, Una
finestra sul massacro, pp. 155, 171, 175; Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians,
p. 28.
41 Nogales, Four Years beneath the Crescent, pp. 107–112.
42 Beylerian, Les grandes puissants, p. 478.
43 Halata was a native from Siirt and 55 years old when Naayem
interviewed her in Constantinople in 1918.
39

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

191

mothers, taken to the top of a mountain outside the town and
killed by slitting their throats:
One day the Moslems assembled all the children from six to
fifteen years and carried them off to the headquarters of the
police. There they led the poor little things to the top of a
mountain known as Ras-el-Hadjar and cut their throats one by
one, throwing their bodies into an abyss. 44

Why were these little children killed in this manner if it were not
for ideological and religious convictions and motives? In his
memoirs, the Venezuelan mercenary Rafael de Nogales, who
served in the Ottoman army during the war, confirms the
occurrence of the massacres at Siirt. He arrived there at midday on
June 18, 1915. As he entered the town, he witnessed scenes of
carnage, which shed light on the methods used to kill the Assyrians:
The momentary sensation of tranquillity evoked in my
troubled spirit by that pastoral scene was rudely shattered,
however, by the atrocious spectacle afforded by a hill beside
the highway. The ghastly slope was crowded by thousands of
half-nude and still bleeding corpses, lying in heaps, or
interlaced in death’s final embrace. Fathers, brothers, sons, and
grandsons lay there as they had fallen beneath the bullets and
yatagans of the assassins. From more than one slashed throat
the life gushed forth in mouthfuls of warm blood. Flocks of
vultures were perched upon the mound, pecking at the eyes of
dead and dying, whose rigid gaze seemed still to mirror the
horrors of unspeakable agony; while the scavenger dogs struck
sharp teeth into the entrails of beings still palpitating with the
breath of life. 45

In another account, he describes the humiliation of the procession
of the Assyrian bishop and the contemptuous treatment of the
corpses of children and old men:

44
45

Naayem, 6KDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", p. 150.
Nogales, pp. 108–109.

192

B. BETH YUHANON
While I sat there amiably chatting with them, I could observe
in detail the fearful spectacle offered by the population of Sairt
[Siirt] at the moment. Among the least edifying pictures which
I was forced to witness with a smile on my lips was that of a
procession headed by a picket of gendarmes which led along a
venerable old man. His black tunic and purple cap clearly
indicated that he was a Nestorian Bishop. Blood-drops trickled
over his brow, and flowed down his cheeks like scarlet tears of
martyrdom. … When he reached it, he stood with folded arms
among his flock who had preceded him along the road to
death, until he too fell under the iron of his assassins. Soon
afterwards another mob appeared, dragging along the corpses
of several children and old men, whose heads bumped along
the cobblestones while passer-by spat upon them and sped
them on their way with curses. 46

Reflecting on the massacres and deportations of the Christians in
the different provinces, Nogales states that there was a plan to get
rid of all Christians in the Ottoman Empire without distinction. 47
The fact that rituals of humiliation and dehumanization were
characteristic of the method of killing is also glaringly apparent in
the treatment of Assyrian clerics, who were regarded both as
representatives of their Christian faith and as leading personalities
representing their community. ‘Abed Mshiho Ne‘man Qarabash, 48
who compiled a chronicle about the Sayfo, writes about two
Assyrian clerics from Siirt who were tortured and humiliated before
being beheaded. One of them was the Syriac Orthodox 49 priest
Abrohom, who after grievous torments had his head cut off by

Nogales, pp. 109–110.
Nogales, p. 118.
48 Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 129.
49 At the time of the Sayfo, the Syriac Orthodox Church was known
in English as the ‘Old Assyrian Church’ or ‘Assyrian Apostolic Church of
Antioch’. In Turkish it was/is called ‘Süryani Kadim Kilisesi’. See for
further information in Donabed and Mako (2009).
46
47

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

193

Ahmed Agha Khajo 50 and was then thrown onto the street in front
of the Muslim population. His head was abused by being used as a
football. The other cleric was the Chaldean priest, Gabriel Kabo
Adamo. He was taken from his home by Qaseme and his
companions and was scourged on the way to the government
building. There, he was stripped of his clothes and beaten again.
With each stab they inflicted on him with sabres and swords, they
renewed their efforts to force him to convert to Islam. And, after
he had been tormented to death, they cut off his head and threw it
into a ditch near the house of Ahmed Agha. Another Assyrian
priest, Ibrahim Qrom 51 from the Syriac Catholic Church of Derike,
was cut to pieces after having been subjected to humiliation and
torture. The Kurds had his beard torn out and forced him to crawl
on all fours so as to abase him to the state of an animal for the
amusement of the Muslim onlookers. One of his tormentors
climbed on his back while others kicked him, stabbed him many
times with a dagger, and finally cut him to pieces. 52 In Gogtapa, the
Assyrian priest with most of his flock and family was slaughtered
by Kurds at the altar of the church. 53 An important document
provided by Lazar George, a delegate to the Paris Peace
Conference, also points out that the humiliation of the Assyrians
and mockery of their Christian faith was integral to the act of
killing:
At Khosrowa, a town of some 7,000 Chaldean inhabitants, the
Kurds dressed themselves in sacred vestments, and paraded
the streets on horseback, some in chasubles, some in copes,
and one of them in surplice and stole, wearing even the
Bishop’s mitre on his long Kurdish head carrying the pastoral
cross, in the midst of which profanations our martyrs were
conducted to their death in groups of fifty to sixty persons.
According to Ishaq Armalto, cited by Gaunt, Massacres, p. 253, his
name is also written as Ahmed Agha Koja al-Si’radi or Kocha Sa’irti.
51 Rhétoré calls him Garrome. In the book of Gaunt, Massacres, pp.
217 and 304, he is called Ibrahim Qrom or Kuroum.
52 Rhétoré, Una finestra sul massacro, p. 127.
53 Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 117.
50

194

B. BETH YUHANON
These things were done by the order of Djavdet Bey, son of
Tahir-Pacha, who with all his staff occupied the French
Mission of the Lazaristes at Khosrowa. In one of these
convoys an old man of seventy-five, named Isaac Terrâkh, not
being able to walk, the Turkish soldiers took him and placed
him on the back of a priest, Israel Bi-Sava, and so led him to the
place of his death where he was executed with seven hundred
others. 54

What makes the cases above so humiliating is the fact that they
contain symbolic gestures devised to expose the powerlessness and
rejection of the victims. Moreover, they are communicative acts
that express the subjugation of the victims’ will to that of the
perpetrators. Without reading too much into these practices, the
examples suggest that the intention of the perpetrators in torturing
and humiliating the Assyrians as a group always played an
important role in the killings. They were not content with merely
inflicting pain on the victims but they were also intent on depriving
them of control over their lives. At this point I refer again to
Margalit, who defines humiliation as the ‘rejection of a person from
human commonwealth’ and as the ‘infliction of utter loss of
freedom and control over one’s vital interests’. 55 Before and during
the act of killing, Assyrians were deprived of control over
themselves and were subjected to the will and whims of their
tormentors. They were tortured, dismembered, degraded, beaten,
spat upon, mocked, stripped naked, robbed, their homes
devastated and their family members killed and tormented before
their very eyes. They also had to witness symbolic acts of torture
and insults devised to violate their dignity as human beings and to
degrade their faith, which is what one very pertinent example,
having to stretch one’s head on the ground or on the rims of
cisterns and pits in order to be slaughtered, signifies.
Equally important to their utter degradation were the rape and
forced Islamization of Assyrian women and girls, both acts seen by
Naayem, pp. 271–272.
Margalit, p. 3, 115; see also Lukes, ‘Humiliation’, pp. 41–42;
Ripstein, ‘Responses to Humiliation’, pp. 96–97.
54
55

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

195

the perpetrators as another method to humiliate the Assyrian
community and to demonstrate its symbolic annihilation.
Remembering the fate of Assyrian women and girls, it is reported
that many chose to drown themselves to escape rape, abduction
and forced Islamization. 56 From the point of view of the Muslim
perpetrators, the dishonouring and forced Islamization of Christian
women and girls were tantamount to the dishonour, humiliation
and degradation of Christians. The occurrence of rape during the
Sayfo is mentioned in various sources. 57 This raises the question of
what rape, as a form of torture, reveals about stigmatization,
exclusion and the legitimization of violence in the genocide
process. My purpose is not to discuss rape but to emphasize that all
Assyrians were targeted for annihilation because of who they were.
Summing up, it can be said that the perpetrators not only sought
the death of their Assyrian victims, but also their collective
humiliation and degradation by every possible means.
Killing by Shooting
During the Sayfo, shooting as a means to kill was used to dispose of
individuals as well as in the mass executions of Assyrians. There is
plenty of evidence to indicate that Assyrian lives were
systematically destroyed by the use of modern weapons and
ammunition. One such example happened in the Hakkari
Mountains. Kurdish forces and Turkish troops under the
command of the governor of Mosul, Haydar Bey, attacked the
Assyrian population of Hakkari with machine-guns, cannon,
mountain artillery and modern rifles in early June 1915. Within a
few months, the Assyrian population of the entire Hakkari region
had been annihilated. There is no doubt that tens of thousands of
Assyrians were killed in this extermination campaign using different
methods of execution, including shooting. 58
Yohannan, The Death of a Nation, p. 127; Hinno, The catastrophes of
the Assyrians, p. 154; Bryce and Toynbee, p. 211.
57 Shahbaz, pp. 94, 122–123, 132; Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment
of Armenians, pp. 192, 196.
58 Bryce and Toynbee, pp. 200–201; Khosroeva, ‘The Assyrian
Genocide’, p. 270.
56

196

B. BETH YUHANON

Whenever Assyrians put up any resistance to defend
themselves, they had to withstand being assailed by shooting and
artillery fire by Ottoman Turkish troops, Kurds and gendarmes.
This happened, for instance, in Midyat, ‘Ainwardo, Beth Zabday
(Azakh/Hazakh), Beth Sbirino, Zaz and Bnebil. 59 Qarabash 60 says
that, on June 2, 1915, death squads called Al-Khamsin 61 militiamen,
under the command of Yahya Effendi, seized thirty-five men in the
village of Charukhiye, south of Omid 62 (Turkish: Diyarbakir).
Among them was the priest Touma. The perpetrators tied a bell on
a cord around his neck and clambered onto his back as if they were
mounting a mule. When they reached the village Gulla, everybody
had their clothes stripped off, after which they were lined up in
rows of five and then shot to see how many could be killed with
one bullet. There is also evidence of the shooting of Assyrians in
the Urmia region. The Annual Report presented by the Medical
Department in Urmia for the year 1915 states that Assyrians were
shot while fleeing to escape the slaughter and persecution: ‘Some
people were shot as they ran, and children that they were carrying
were killed or wounded with them. In some cases men were lined
up so that several could be shot with one bullet, in order not to
waste ammunition on them’. 63
The same report testifies to the killing of Assyrian men from
Gawar (part of the Hakkari region in the province of Van), who
were used as ‘beasts of burden’ 64 by the Turks to carry telegraph

All these places are in the Turabdin region of which Midyat is the
main town. The Turkish names of these Assyrian villages are as follows:
‘Ainwardo respectively ‘Iwardo (Gülgöze), Beth Zabday (Idil), Beth
Sbirino or Bsorino (Haberli), Zaz (Izbirak), Bnebil (Bülbül).
60 Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 98.
61 See, for the Al-Khamsin militia, Gaunt, Massacres, pp. 230, 314 and
Alichoran, pp. 313–315.
62 Omid is also called Amid in Syriac.
63 Bryce and Toynbee, p. 192.
64 Bryce and Toynbee, p. 190.
59

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

197

wire across the border. 65 During the genocide Assyrians were
compelled to do forced labour, transporting heavy supplies on their
backs or in the construction of roads. 66 After the Gawar men had
accomplished their task, they were shot, slaughtered to a man,
between Urmia and the Baradost Plain. In a letter (dated 8
November 1915), the American missionary E. T. Allen, who went
to the place of execution to bury the corpses, describes the
condition of the victims as follows:
The most diabolically cold-blooded of all massacres was that
one committed above the village of Ismael Agha’s Kala, when
sixty Syrians [Assyrians] of Gawar were butchered by the
Kurds at the instigation of the Turks. It was a gruesome sightperhaps the worst I have seen at all. There were seventy-one or
two bodies; we could not tell exactly, because of the
conditions. It is about six months since the murder. Some were
in fairly good condition – dried, like a mummy. Others were
torn to pieces by wild animals. Some had been daggered in
several places, as was evident from the cuts in the skin. The
majority of them had been shot. 67

He also buried another forty Assyrians in the village of Charbash
near the town of Urmia, among them a bishop, and yet another
fifty-one in Gulpashan – located on the western shore of Lake
Urmia: ‘These one hundred and sixty-one persons, buried by me,
came to their death in the most cruel manner possible, at the hands
of regular Turkish troops in company with Kurds under their
command’. 68
In his narrative the physician Jacob Sargis from Urmia
confirms what happened in Gulpashan, and this was recorded in a
dispatch (dated Petrograd, 12 February 1916) from the Petrograd
correspondent of the American Associated Press, which states that
Another source mentions that it was barbed wire, Bryce and
Toynbee, p. 190. It could have been both. According to Abel Zayia, they
had to carry loads of more than 70 kilos, Griselle, Syriens et Chaldéens, p. 51.
66 Qarabash, The Shed Blood, pp. 64–72.
67 Bryce and Toynbee, p. 193.
68 Bryce and Toynbee, pp. 193–194.
65

198

B. BETH YUHANON

seventy-nine men and boys were shot by Kurds on a hill outside
the village. 69 He also mentions the shooting of forty-nine Assyrians
taken by Turks from the French mission and that of seventy-five
women from Ardishai, south of Urmia. Additional information
about the killing of the men seized from the French mission is
given by Shahbaz and Ya’qub A. Manna, the Chaldean bishop of
Van. 70 Shahbaz attests to the fact that the men were tortured and
their bodies mutilated before they were shot in rows. He also
testifies to the killing of more than one hundred young Assyrian
men from Ada, a village in the Nazlu River district to the north of
the town Urmia. 71 Regarding events in Salmas, a document
obtained by Naayem from Lazar George of Khosrowa gives
evidence not only about the humiliating treatment of Assyrian
women, but also that they were either shot or slaughtered by other
methods:
At Diliman, several hundreds of women were stripped of their
clothes and forced to march up and down the streets in
groups. There they were given one hour’s grace in which to
become Moslem, the alternative being death. All immediately
fell to praying for strength to die. All were martyred. 72

In general, to die a Christian martyr was linked to heroism and the
hope for an eternal life, but conversion was regarded as a
dishonour and subjugation as well as betrayal of one’s own faith
and community. Given the central importance of Christian values
in Assyrian cultural and social life, the determination of Assyrian
women not to succumb to the will of their tormentors, but to die
as martyrs and to keep their honour and dignity as humans intact
shows that martyrdom was seen as a form of spiritual resistance by
which they could escape public humiliation and shame and also to
deny the perpetrators pleasure in the domination of their victims.

69
70

Bryce and Toynbee, p. 189.
Griselle, Syriens et Chaldéens, p. 36; Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p.

126.
71
72

Shahbaz, p. 136.
Naayem, ShDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", p. 288.

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

199

This kind of resistance in which death is chosen over conversion
and a life of humiliation was also observed in other places. 73
Further testimony to mass shootings of Assyrians comes from
a report by John Eshoo, who escaped the killing of Assyrians in
Khoi, a district located north of Urmia, in 1918. 74 He says that the
victims were executed in groups of ten and twenty. In this one
place no fewer than 2,770 Assyrian men, women and children were
killed. Many of them were led in a procession accompanied by two
Muslim clerics reading passages relating to jihad. Before they were
killed, their fingers and hands were chopped off after which ‘they
were stretched on the ground after the manner of the animals that
are slain in the East, but these with their faces turned upward, and
their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood.’ Then they
were battered with clubs and sticks and their throats were half cut
ensuring a prolonged agony. As these examples also suggest,
torture as well as humiliation and degradation preceded and
accompanied the shooting and slaughter of Assyrian victims.
Killing by Burning Alive
The mercilessness with which the Assyrian genocide was carried
out is also shown in the burning alive of Assyrians. Villages,
houses, hay, haylofts, firewood, straw and churches were set alight
either to burn the victims alive or to suffocate them. Many
Assyrians were assembled together and then thrown into the
flames, while others were doused with naphtha, oil or kerosene
before being incinerated while still alive. The following accounts,
though far from exhaustive, provide details on the burning to death
of Assyrians. Karmo Salma-Gawwo (born 1908), interviewed in
July 1993 by Jan Beth-Sawoce, reports how Assyrians in Midyat
died of burning or suffocation.
When the Muslims saw that, they took the opportunity to loot
the houses freely and without any scruples. Then they came to
the house of ‘Adoka, which was full of people. They
Rhétoré, Una finestra sul massacro, pp. 122, 172, 174, 193; Bryce and
Toynbee, p. 211.
74 Werda, The Flickering Light, pp. 156–158.
73

200

B. BETH YUHANON
surrounded it and set the pieces of wood surrounding the
house on fire. It became a tremendous fire, which caused the
death of many women and children. 75

The testimony of Ne‘man Beth-Yawno (born 1908), interviewed in
November 1993, confirms the setting alight of houses and the
consequent burning alive and suffocation by smoke inhalation of
Assyrians in Midyat in the quarter of Qasho [Father] Aho (Gaunt
2006: 330). In his account, Isho‘ Qasho-Malke (born 1913),
interviewed in November 1993, describes the story of an Assyrian
woman from Siirt, who was ten years old during the genocide and
who managed to escape from the devouring flames. She told him
how the Kurds took between 20,000 and 30,000 books 76 from the
church of Dayr-Salib and stacked them in piles in the churchyard.
After they had set fire to the books, they threw Assyrian children
into the flames. Those who tried to escape were immediately
shot. 77 In her testimony Halata confirms the accounts of Assyrians
being burned alive in Siirt:
From soldiers and Kurds who had come to the Governor’s
house I learned that the women and children of the Chaldean
village of Redwan, near Sairt, had been gathered together in
one place and burned alive with petrol. 78

In a poem Gallo Shabo, who was an eyewitness to the events in
Midyat and took part in the defence of ‘Iwardo, also testifies to this
holocaustic method of killing Assyrians. 79 Burning alive and
suffocation by smoke inhalation was among the other forms of
Gaunt, Massacres, p. 336.
These books were very probably from the rich library and archive
of Archbishop Aday Sher, who was famous for collecting books and old
manuscripts. Many churches and monasteries which contained books
were burned. It was common to destroy Assyrian books during the
genocide, see Werda, The Flickering Light, p. 106; Bryce and Toynbee, The
Treatment of Armenians, pp. 209, 584; Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 108;
Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 142.
77 Gaunt, Massacres, p. 396.
78 Naayem, 6KDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", p. 161.
79 ¤LÄHNPoems on the swords suffered by Christians in Turkey, pp. 31–70.
75
76

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

201

killing applied in the Assyrian villages of Bote, Dayro d-Slibo, Beth
Sbirino and Qelet in Turabdin. 80
The Assyrian villages near the Turkish-Iranian border were
among the first to become the targets of extermination. An account
which also mentions the burning alive of Assyrians among other
methods of extermination in the district of Gawar by Kurds states:
The unprotected villages and communities of the Assyrians,
which were situated on the plains, were immediately attacked.
A few managed to escape to the mountains where their
brethren were. The larger number of them, however, which
included women, children and the aged, were killed in manners
that outdid the ferocity of Taimurlang. All the inhabitants of
Gavar district were gathered together. Some were pressed into
the houses, and the houses were set on fire; others were
thrown into wells and ditches and were buried alive. All the
Nestorians of Gavar and the adjoining plain country were
totally exterminated, including the Christians of Albak and
Barvar and of Qoodchanis. 81

Burning alive as a method of killing was not restricted to certain
places, a claim which is corroborated by other accounts. In his
narrative, Dr Jacob Sargis produces evidence of the burning alive
of Dr Shimmun in Supurghan, a village in the Nazlu district. His
clothes were doused in oil and set afire. As he struggled to escape
the flames, he was shot and then decapitated by Turks. American
witnesses from Urmia also reported incidents of victims being
burnt alive. In an article published in The Lowell Sun from March 25
1915, based on telegrams and letters sent from Urmia via Tiflis and
Petrograd, it is reported that, ‘Turkish regular troops and Kurds are
persecuting and massacring Assyrian Christians’ and that 200
Assyrians have been burned in a church in Gogtapa. Shahbaz
records likewise that his neighbour was ‘soaked in oil and
burned’. 82 The Assyrian priest of the village Bafawa, north-east of
Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, pp. 93, 144, 126; Courtois,
The Forgotten Genocide, p. 186.
81 Werda, The Flickering Light, pp. 8–9.
82 Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, p. 117.
80

202

B. BETH YUHANON

Mardin, was also burned alive. 83 A document obtained from Lazar
George of Khosrowa states that 300 Assyrians were burned alive
inside a church in Ada. 84 The same document also describes the
extermination of the victims caused in part by fire in Urmia in
1918:
Salmas, after numerous battles, was no longer able to
withstand the shock of Ali Ihsan’s army, which alone
numbered 12,000 regular soldiers. But a handful of the
population of Urmia was able to escape; the rest, more than
9,000 in number, were massacred, stoned to death, sawn in
two, steeped in petrol and burnt alive. All the Christian villages
of the province of Salmas suffered the same fate; schools and
churches were devastated and burnt to the ground; women and
young girls were carried off by these enemies of Christianity
and retained in their harems. 85

In addition to the burning alive of the victims, sources attest to the
fact that it was also customary to burn the bodies of slaughtered
Assyrians. After the murder of the Assyrians in Kfarboran
(Turkish: Dargeçit), the Kurds gathered all the corpses of the
victims and set them alight. Even during the massacres, the
perpetrators tried to burn and suffocate victims who took refuge in
the fortified buildings of the village to defend themselves against
the attacks on their lives. The Kurds climbed onto the roofs of the
buildings, made openings in them, threw hay and dried grass on
them and set them on fire. 86 After killing the men of Helwa (an
Assyrian village east of Nsibin) and throwing the bodies into the
river, Qeddur Bey, head of a militia unit, together with a vast
number of Kurds gathered the Assyrian women in a house, in
which they were slaughtered and then burned. 87 A similar incident

Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 109.
Naayem, ShaOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", p. 272.
85 Naayem, 6KDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", pp. 287–288.
86 Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, p. 149; Qarabash, The Shed
Blood, p. 131.
87 Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, p. 29.
83
84

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

203

is confirmed in the case of the Assyrians in the large village of
Ka‘biye near Omid. 88
Likewise, the corpses of the 366 Assyrian victims from the
village of Zaz, who were massacred and shot by Kurds in a place
called Perbume not far from Zaz, close to the village of Shtrako, 89
were later burned. However, this aspect of the slaughter is missing
from the book compiled by Sleman Hinno. The principal purpose
of the burning alive of the victims was obviously to ensure their
complete destruction and obliteration. However, it is difficult to
pinpoint exactly the main motivation behind the burning of the
corpses. One possible answer is that the burning of corpses was
seen as an easy and fast way to get rid of the victims’ bodies and
simultaneously obliterate the traces of annihilation. The corpses of
the victims might also have been burned in order to locate any gold
pieces or precious stones which the Christians might have
swallowed. 90 In fact, throughout the sources the plunder,
expropriation and confiscation which preceded and accompanied
the acts of killing is consistently mentioned. 91 It cannot be denied
that the genocide provided an opportunity for the perpetrators to
enrich themselves by seizing the property, belongings and villages
of the Christians.
Killing by Death Marches
Although the majority of the Assyrians were killed by the methods
described above, there are documents which prove the deportation
of Assyrian women, girls and small children. 92 The women and
children were not massacred on the spot but were to be gradually
decimated and killed in the course of their deportation. In short,
Qarabash, The Shed Blood, p. 94.
Hinno, The catastrophes of the Assyrians, pp. 135–139.
90 Naayem, 6KDOOWKLV1DWLRQGLH", pp. 172–173.
91 Rhétoré, Una finestra sul massacro, pp. 123–127, 138, 185–187, 235,
241–243; Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, pp. 154, 196–
197, 582–584; Naayem, 6KDOO WKLV 1DWLRQ GLH", 148, 187–188, 201–202;
Qarabash, The Shed Blood, 141–142; Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam, pp. 92, 107.
92 For the deportation of Assyrian survivors from Hakkari in 1924
and 1925 see Donef Racho 2009.
88
89

204

B. BETH YUHANON

the real purpose of the deportations was to cause the death by
wilful intent of the deportees by starvation, dehydration, exposure
or outright murder. Foreign diplomats and missionaries who
witnessed the deportation convoys of Christians kept written
records of them. As war allies of Ottoman Turkey, the Germans
were well informed about the situation in the Ottoman Empire
during the First World War. On 3 September 1915, the German
consul in Aleppo, Rößler, reports that, ‘quite a number of nonArmenian Christian women’ had arrived in Aleppo without their
men. 93 ‘There can be no other possible conclusion than that their
men have been killed’, continues Rößler. In a report of September
27 1915, Rößler notes that the local Syriac Catholic bishop told
him that 300 women and children of his community had arrived
from Kharput, Diyarbakir, Viranshehir (Tel Mawzalt) and Mardin.
His conclusion is: ‘In any case, there is no doubt that Christians
other than Armenians are also being subjected to the
persecution’. 94
To give some idea of the fate of the Assyrian women who
were deported, the testimonies of two Assyrian survivors from
Siirt, interviewed by Naayem in 1917 and 1918, will be used as
examples. The accounts of the two women, Jalila and Halata, shed
light on the treatment of the deportees during these death marches.
The women and girls were humiliated in several ways. They were
searched by Turkish gendarmes and soldiers under the pretext to
find hidden valuables. Not only were they robbed of all their
belongings, these body searches were also accompanied by
harassment and other criminal assaults on their human dignity. As
they were marched from one place to another, each time they were
robbed and assaulted by the nearby Kurdish and Turkish
population, so that slowly but surely they were robbed of their
food, money and clothes. As they were expected to march on bare
feet, they were tormented by the burning sun and assailed by the
whips, sticks and bayonets of the accompanying soldiers and
gendarmes. Those who were unable to move forward were
massacred on the spot. Jalila, the sister of the Chaldean
93
94

Gust, Völkermord an den Armeniern, p. 280.
Gust, p. 309.

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

205

archbishop’s 95 secretary, describes how the women in the convoy
were attacked and maltreated:
When we came to the village of Guazere, bands of Kurds fell
upon us and snatched away our money, food and clothes. A
woman servant of ours who carried a bundle containing our
food, after having her own belongings stolen, was thrown into
the river which ran along the edge of the village. After crossing
the water we were lined up while the soldiers searched us and
took our money and jewelry. Like the Kurds, they threw
themselves upon us, chose the girls and women who were
pretty and ill-treated them. This fate befell, among others,
Salima, my sister-in-law; Naima, daughter of Reskolla
Chammas Abboche; Naima, my uncle George’s daughter;
Latifa, whose father was Fathalla, my other uncle; Karima,
daughter of Betros Kas Chaya, and her cousin Emelda,
daughter of Chamas Youssef. 96

Many of the girls and women were killed after having been
subjected to systematic abuse by the accompanying Turkish
gendarmes, soldiers and Kurds, as the testimony of Halata affirms:
When night came and darkness enveloped us, the soldiers
began their terrible work. Coming among us by the aid of
lighted torches they chose the more beautiful of those who
remained and led them away; passing them on later to the
Kurds. From 150 to 200 of the more beautiful Chaldean girls
met this terrible fate, among them the four daughters of Sede
Chammas-Abboche. I myself saw them killed after they had
been violated in my presence. All women who were unable to
walk were put to death. 97

Aware of their defenceless state, in the hope of avoiding rape and
abduction many women and girls smeared their faces with mud to
conceal their attraction. Quite apart from any physical suffering
Archbishop Mor Aday Sher was shot by Turkish soldiers and his
head was later cut off, Naayem, Shall this 1DWLRQGLH" pp. 159, 168.
96 Naayem, Shall this 1DWLRQGLH" pp. 137–138.
97 Naayem, p. 154.
95

206

B. BETH YUHANON

they might have had to endure, having to witness the brutal
treatment and killing of other women before their eyes must have
been traumatizing for the deportees. Considering that these women
and girls came from a society where chastity and piety played an
important role in their cultural life, it can be assumed that such a
situation induced intolerable feelings of shame, fears and
powerlessness in these women. Taking these cultural concepts into
consideration, the experience of helplessness and the violation of
their honour must have represented total humiliation and
degradation for these deeply religious Assyrian women. Their
suffering aggravated as they passed from one village to another,
many of them holding their babies in their arms, as they heard the
cries of their children asking for food:
Our conductors led us, poor defenceless women, along the
country roads with every possible cruelty. They thrashed us
with whips, and many died victims to their barbarity. The road
was strewn with the decomposing bodies of women and
children who had preceded us. We wept unceasingly because
of our ill treatment at the hands of the soldiers, our hunger and
thirst, and the sight of our children who, tortured by the lack
of food, screamed piteously begging us for bread which we
could not give them. 98

After several days of marching onward without any set destination,
they reached a valley called Wadi Wawela in Sawro, north of
Mardin, where they were again attacked, robbed and stoned by
waiting Kurds:
From the top of a high mountain we saw at a distance
hundreds of Kurds, men and women, on the watch for their
prey. Our guards led us into the famous valley Wadi Wawela.
There the Kurds and their women fell upon us like wild beasts,
and picking up large stones, began to bombard the convoy.
The female Kurds also stoned us, and carried away whatever
effects they found upon us. A Kurd came towards me, and
surprised to find I still wore a dress and shoes, tore them off
98

Naayem, pp. 152–153.

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

207

me, struck me with his fists and made off. As I ran I saw a
poor woman, who was quite naked, had been wounded in the
side by a dagger thrust. She was covered with blood. As she
ran from these human beasts she held up her intestines which
emerged through her terrible wound. Absolutely terrified, I
fled, carrying my baby in my arms. 99

The testimonies of the two Assyrian survivors just discussed
provide insightful information about the suffering and fate of the
deportees as well as about the methods used to decimate them by
gradually disposing of them. As noted above, these deported
Assyrian women, girls and small children were subjected to all sorts
of humiliation, degradation and torture before their deaths.
Killing by Imposed Starvation and Deprivations
During the genocide, Assyrians were subjected to extreme
hardships, deprivations and misery. The razing and burning of
Assyrian villages, the looting of their houses and property and the
mass slaughter and persecution left Assyrians without food,
bedding, clothes and other basic necessities of life. In the wake of
this forced deprivation, thousands died of starvation, illnesses,
thirst and cold. Given the scope of this topic, only a few references
will be made to outline the starvation and suffering of the Sayfo
victims. When the Urmia region was occupied by Turkish and
Kurdish troops at the beginning of January 1915, to escape the
continuous massacres between 20,000 to 25,000 Assyrians sought
refuge in the American and French Lazarist Mission compounds.
Eyewitness reports reveal how they lived in terror like captives for
nearly five months, crowded densely together, with no bedding or
even a space to lie down. 100 The conditions of the refugees are
described by the missionary Mary E. Lewis as follows:
As I stand at my window in the morning I see one after
another of the little bodies carried by, wrapped mostly in
ragged piece of patch-work, and the condition of the living is
Naayem, pp. 139–140.
Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, pp. 175, 184;
Griselle, Syriens et Chaldéens, p. 53.
99

100

208

B. BETH YUHANON
more pitiful than that of the dead – hungry, ragged, dirty, sick,
cold, wet, swarming with vermin – thousands of them! 101

Subjected to these inescapable conditions, more than 4,000 102
succumbed to privation, starvation, cold, fear and such epidemic
diseases as typhus, dysentery and measles. 103 The Assyrians who
managed to escape the annihilation in Hakkari first reached the
plains of Salmas and then those of Urmia between August and
October 1915, already emaciated and exhausted after several weeks
of fleeing for their lives from Turkish and Kurdish troops who
pursued them with murderous intent. In the months which
followed countless numbers were to die of exposure, starvation
and illnesses. Youel B. Rustam gives a detailed account about their
plight in a letter dated February 1916:
Out of the 3,200 refugees in this village 1,000 had already died
and there were many who were very ill. In another place I saw
a mother and two children, a girl and a boy, sitting under the
kursi warming themselves. The mother was groaning faintly,
but the voice of the little girl could hardly be heard, as she had
nearly starved to death. The little boy was lying quietly beside
his mother and made no sound. The father and two daughters
had already gone to their rest. Just to think, also, that many of
these people were once well-to-do and had plenty to eat and to
wear, and have now been reduced to this condition, longing
for a warm meal to satisfy their cravings. 104

Sleman Hinno and Gallo Shabo make similar references to the
plight of Assyrian victims in Turabdin who were perishing from
famine, illnesses, exhaustion, cold, and thirst, from the result of the
wilful intent to murder the Assyrians and pillage their belongings,
confiscate their property and destroy their homes and other basic
necessities of life. They speak about the victims being reduced to
Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, p. 163.
M. Abel Zayia says that more than 4,500 died, Griselle, Syriens et
Chaldéens, p. 54.
103 Bryce and Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians, pp. 585, 187.
104 Quoted from Rockwell 1916, The Pitiful Plight, p. 48.
101
102

10. THE METHODS OF KILLING

209

the conditions of animals ‘grazing grass’, foraging from place to
place to find something edible. Those compelled to work as slaves
for Muslims to obtain some bread were subjected to ‘spitting,
mockery and [other] humiliations besides murder’, Shabo records
in his eyewitness poem. 105 As these testimonies contain explicit
information about the conditions suffered by Assyrians during the
Sayfo, they provide a valuable insight into the physical and
emotional suffering of Assyrian victims, dying in a long drawn-out
agony of starvation, exposure, thirst and sickness.

CONCLUSION
This article has outlined the main methods resorted to by the
perpetrators of the killings during the Assyrian genocide. After an
examination of the sources, the following summary can be drawn
up. Firstly, Assyrians were killed in all kinds of situations and by
every possible means and instrument which would cause the death
of the victims and inflict suffering on them. By and large, five main
methods were used in the killing: directly in wholesale massacres,
shootings and burnings alive but, besides these murders, a
significant number of Assyrians were annihilated indirectly through
deportations (death marches) and imposed starvation, disease and
deprivations in the wake of the destruction of their homes and
livelihoods. In massacres, the victims were exterminated in a variety
of ways using swords, daggers, scimitars, bayonets and axes. In
such mass murders, they were butchered, beheaded, stabbed to
death and dismembered on the spot or close to where they lived.
Furthermore, there were also cases of Assyrians being hanged,
impaled, skinned alive, stoned, drowned and thrown off of roofs.
These massacres are most probably the reason the horrific stories
of the mass slaughter of the Assyrians told by the survivors have
symbolically shaped the collective image of the genocide in terms
of the Sayfo (Sword), despite the fact that the term itself can also
be used to signify extermination or annihilation.
Secondly, the perpetrators not only sought to exterminate the
Assyrians, they were also determined to humiliate and degrade
105

¤LÄHNPoems on the swords suffered by Christians, p. 66.

210

B. BETH YUHANON

them as a group. Humiliation and degradation were inherent in the
acts of killing. Generally, the impunity to kill, torture and plunder
on large-scale requires the segregation, stigmatization and
elimination from society of the victim group. I have shown that
this was also true of the Assyrian genocide, in which the killing of
the victims was usually characterized by atrocious cruelty
exacerbated by various practices used to inflict optimal physical
and mental anguish. These conditions indicate a hostile,
supremacist inner attitude of the perpetrators, motivated by
religious hatred, driving them to exterminate the gavur (infidels), 106
who had been identified as the ‘other’ in the Ottoman society.
Indubitably, the fervour with which the massacres were carried out
also hints at the ideological and political dimension of the
annihilation.
Today almost a hundred years after the genocide of 1915,
Assyrians in Iraq and Syria are again threatened with extinction in
their ancestral homeland Mesopotamia as they are confronted with
murder, expulsion and the confiscation of their property from
different sides.

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Cerf, 2005).
Alp, Tekin. Türkismus und Pantürkismus. (Weimar: Kiepenheuer,
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Aprim, Fred. A. Assyrians: From Bedr Khan to Saddam Hussein. Driving
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Gust, Wofgang. (ed.). Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16:
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The Lowell Sun [Newspaper] (1915, March 25). ‘Stars and Stripes
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Putmnam’s Sons, 1916).

11. ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER
PERSPECTIVE
SABRI ATMAN
Images of tormented women are commonplace in the portrayal of
wars and conflicts, especially when depicted by the media. In
contrast, men are usually presented as the active force in warfare.
Images that include both men and women engender a limited
emotional response in the audience because there is no
differentiated depiction of the distinct ways in which the two
groups suffer. For this reason, the representation of lamenting men
is almost absent in the portrayal of war. Since both men and
women play different roles both in war and in peacetime, it is of
interest to investigate how these gender-specific roles differ during
the perpetration of mass violence, in particular genocide.
Even though women did not participate in the call of duty,
they did manage households and assist soldiers. Women often
make up more than half of the population in conflict-affected
countries and this fact should be reflected in the media reporting.
Failure to depict women’s roles in conflicts is condemnable
because the background of any conflict is defined by the presence
of both genders. Possessing sufficient knowledge about the ways in
which women are being victimized will help us understand the
ways in which we can prevent similar atrocities from happening
again.
The year 1915 is well remembered by today’s Assyrians as the
‘Year of the Sword’. The sword beheaded two out of three
Assyrians. This is why the Assyrians call this genocide ‘Sayfo’,
meaning the Sword in our language. In the last few years, there has
been considerable progress in recognizing the Assyrian genocide.
The International Genocide Scholars Association officially
recognized the Assyrian and Greek genocide in 2007. On March
215

216

SABRI ATMAN

10th 2010, the Swedish Parliament recognized the Assyrian
Genocide. On March 24th 2015, the Republic of Armenia
recognized the Assyrian genocide. The Assyrian, Greek and
Armenian genocide was recognized in a Mass by Pope Francis on
April 12th, 2015 and on April 10th 2015 by the Dutch Parliament. In
the very near future the number of countries who will recognize
the Assyrian, Armenian and Greek genocide will increase
dramatically and Turkey will have more and more difficulty with its
policy of denial.
However, this paper concentrates on a brief analysis from a
gender perspective and the experience of the Assyrian women
during the genocide. The scholarly focus on both the Holocaust
and the Armenian or Assyrian genocide has not been genderneutral. On the contrary, it privileged male experiences. History
shows that males and females have often been affected by the
genocide in different ways, whether as victims or as perpetrators.
Focusing on aspects such as gender is important if one seeks to
fully understand the modes, motives, dynamics, and consequences
of the genocide and other mass crimes. When the ultimate goal of
the perpetrators is to secure the disappearance of an entire group
of people – men, women, and children – related matters such as
sexual abuse or whether and to what extent factors such as gender
or age played a role in the selection of victims may seem of
secondary importance.
Rape is a deliberate act of dominance and violence that targets
women’s sexuality and gender roles. Like all rape, genocidal rape
and other forms of sexual violence such as abduction and sexual
enslavement has particular as well as general impact. Treatment
against women such as abduction or rape is an official policy
during genocides. It is regularly used as weapons of war to further
the military and political goals of the parties engaged in conflict. 1
This policy is neither only aligned with the pleasure of male
power, which happens also in peacetime; nor does it serve only to
torture, humiliate, and demoralize the other side, as is frequently
the case during armed conflict. Rather, in this context the express
order to rape is a policy of the organizers of genocide. This is not a
1

Allen, Rape Warfare, pp. 88–89.

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

217

side-effect of the policy of genocide, but rather a controlled aspect
thereof. It is also a policy to kill and to make the victims wish they
were dead instead to go through all they went through. It is
violence against women as an instrument of forced exile, to make
them leave their homes, their relatives, and never want to go back.
Rape and enslavement are measures taken in order to destroy a
people and their entire society, 2 to make them feel as though they
no longer exist.
It is difficult to say to what extent rape and enslavement
occurred during the genocide of 1915, but it is easier to say that
many perpetrators took advantage of these circumstances to
commit rape. They raped and abducted many Armenian and
Assyrian women. The sensitivity of the gender aspect of genocide
against Armenians and Assyrians has been ignored largely in the
analysis of the genocide which took place against the background
of the First World War.
This paper will attempt to examine the role of gender in the
Assyrian genocide by presenting three first-hand accounts: a brief
portion of the testimony of Ishak Armale, the testimony of Jozef
Nacim, and, the story of one of the many Assyrian woman who
were targeted for physical destruction, sexual abuse, slavery, forced
marriage, and forced assimilation.

TESTIMONY OF ISHAK ARMALE
Ishak Armale was one of the survivors who published his
testimony, under the title: Al- Qouasara fi Nakabat Al- Nasara (The
Calamities of the Christians). 3 In his narrative, Armale did not place
much distinction between Assyrian or Armenian victims.
According to him, caravans of women from Diyarbakir began
arriving in Mardin beginning July 5th–15th, 1915; among whom
were also children. The good-looking boys and girls were taken out
of the groups and brought to Muslim homes where they would
then reside. Those who remained in the groups had to continue
walking towards 9LUDQÿHKLU and Ras Al-Ayn. When the people
2
3

Ibid., 90–91.
Lebanon: Al Sharfe 1919, reprinted Beirut 1970.

218

SABRI ATMAN

reached the towns, they were stripped of their clothes and
slaughtered. The bodies of victims were thrown into caves and
wells after witnessing the perpetrators take all of their clothing,
jewellery, and spiritual valuables. A second female caravan from
Diyarbakir to Mardin arrived on July 8th. Also on this occasion the
perpetrators seized their jewellery and clothing. A man by the name
of Sadik, son of Ali Tarzi, chose two beautiful girls to take to the
brothel. He obliged them to renounce their faith but the girls
refused to do so. He then took them south of the town and
undressed and raped them, after which they were killed. 4
Scholars such Beverly Allen, who describes the policy of rape
in The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia refers to ‘the
woman’ as a ‘sexual container’, or in the Bosnian context,
something to be used as a weapon of war. Allen argues that if a
woman survives this violence, she will be worth little in the eyes of
her ethnic group. Does she then become a testament to the
treatment she endured? 5 She is a ruined possession. The Ottoman
example conveys that the soldiers, Kurds, or local paramilitary
groups would gladly kill their “containers” and go on to find new,
beautiful, young women.
Armale says that another perpetrator named Tjetjano
kidnapped two beautiful girls from the same group from which
Tarzi had done. In addition to taking the girls’ money and
jewellery, Tjetjano went a step further in his treatment of these
girls: he misled them into believing that he would protect them
from all evil and allow them to live. After two nights in his home,
he began to torture them:
With a skewer, Tjetjano pierced their feet, pulled rope through
the holes and tied them together. He then undressed the girls
and raped them. He hastily dragged them into the wilderness
over hard rocks, so that their legs broke and they fainted. This
torture was not enough for him, so he picked up a large stone

4
5

Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, p. 263.
Allen, Rape Warfare, p. 89.

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

219

and crushed their skulls. Then he returned home with the
jewellery. 6

The third caravan of women came from Diyarbekir shortly
afterward on transport trucks. There were about four hundred
women in this group. The perpetrators separated the boys and girls
from their mothers. The women were taken away to a secluded
spot, where they were stripped naked and murdered. The children
were transferred to Mardin and auctioned off to Muslim families. A
fourth female caravan then reached Mardin. 7
These accounts confirm that age does not play a role in who is
selected to be a victim of rape. What is essential to these
perpetrators is that the victims are feminine and beautiful. This
pressed Allen to further her research on the Bosnian War, which
revealed that the perpetrators in Bosnia exploited anyone: as long
as the victim was weak and inferior, the perpetrators believed they
had the right to do so. 8
Women were abducted from their homes through deceit,
misrepresentations, and lies. Some of the lies included telling the
women that the men, who in reality had been previously abducted,
had sent for their wives. The soldiers manipulated the women into
handing over their jewellery, clothes, and other valuables, stating
that they would keep them safe. The women were told they would
get their belongings back when they arrived where the men were.
All of this was a lie, of course. A vehicle containing the women’s
belongings fled from the area, and the valuables were delivered to
the government building. The first caravan of women traveling by
IRRWZKLFK$UPDOHGHVFULEHGZDVIURP9LUDQÿHKLU$VWKHJURXS
approached Tel Arman, one of the older ladies was tired and
remained some distance away from the rest. The soldiers went to
her; they then re-joined the rest of the group where they told the
other women she had been killed. Kurds attacked the group and
tried to kidnap the girls and the small children. Those who escaped
reached a new group of soldiers who took command over them.
Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, p. 264.
Ibid., pp. 264–265.
8 Allen, Rape Warfare, p. 27.
6
7

220

SABRI ATMAN

7KRVHLQWKHFDUDYDQVEHOLHYHGWKDWDMRXUQH\WR9LUDQÿHKLUZDVMXVW
a forestalling of their deaths. 9
Between July 16th and 17th, the massacre of the group began.
The victims were stripped naked and placed in trucks, then driven
away to a nearby tomb where they were slaughtered: ‘They
threatened to kill us immediately if we did not keep quiet. Then
they called family after family, undressed women and girls, drove
them away. They took pity, however, on those who wanted to
adopt Islam.’ 10
A woman would not keep quiet and asked the officers why
they did not prevent the Kurds from kidnapping the girls and
children. She was quickly led away from the group and asked to
adopt Islam, but she refused to answer. She then fell to her
sentence and the offender came back with only her clothes. 11
In the context of this material, the reader follows the story of
Hana and her experiences. Hana explained how she, too, was
beaten and thrown among the corpses. Similar to other women,
perpetrators tried to force her to adopt Islam, but she opposed.
She had her two children in her arms when the perpetrators began
to beat her so much that she fainted. As she was lying there naked
they pulled her by her feet and threw her on top of the corpses. A
Bedouin and a soldier were going through the corpses, partly to
find valuables and to kill those who were still breathing. A woman
asked for mercy in exchange for payment, but she was shortly
thereafter killed. Hana had her screaming daughter by her side, and
the soldiers discovered them and beat Hana again. The soldiers
then left, believing that she was dead. When Hana regained her
consciousness, she began to plead to the Bedouin for her daughter.
Hana begged for help and protection. The Bedouin listened to her
and took her to his home, where she was taken care of and treated
until her wounds had healed by December 1915. 12
In mid-July, caravan after caravan of women from Armenia
arrived in the area of Mardin. One of these groups consisted of
Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, pp. 271–273.
Ibid., p. 273.
11 Ibid., p. 274.
12 Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, pp. 275–6.
9

10

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

221

about 14,000 people. When they reached Diyarbakir, they were
attacked by the special force, the 50th Company Overpower
Guards. These perpetrators stole the victims’ clothes and other
belongings, and at every stop a small portion of people was
separated from the main group and killed. Before the group
reached Diyarbakir, they were attacked by Kurdish tribes aiming to
kidnap children and murder as many people as they could. The
Kurds tried to convert the members of the caravan to Islam. When
they did not adopt this initiative, the victims were exposed to
hunger, indignity, theft, rape, and death. Some of the people were
sold to Kurds as prisoners for low prices. When the amount of
people in the caravan became too much to handle, they were
divided into smaller groups, undressed, and shot to death. Another
measure to retrieve valuables from the victims was as follows:
The perpetrators cut open their stomachs, pulled out their
intestines, examined women’s braids, clothes, shoes, and so as
not to lose anything of value. Even those individuals who had
a gold tooth were unfortunate, because those teeth were pulled
out even before they had been killed! All this effort generally
presented the perpetrators with good yields. 13

Another deportation cargo arrived from Armenia through
Diyarbakir to Mardin on July 4th. The caravan had amounted to
50,000 people, but many died or were murdered along the way.
Those who survived numbered about 10,000 people and consisted
mostly of women, children, and the elderly. The soldiers in Mardin
surrounded them and attacked them, seizing the young and
beautiful ones who appealed to them. The rest of the group was
transferred to the monastery in Mardin and forced into the inner
and outer courtyards there. A new group of soldiers then arrived,
who picked out the young and beautiful among the group of
victims. Those who were not selected would endure endless
beatings with wooden sticks, stones, and the like. At midnight they
were taken out to Gharas, where they were beaten and killed. The
soldiers would then sort through the corpses to obtain the victims’

13

Ibid., p. 281.

222

SABRI ATMAN

jewellery, money, and clothes – or simply anything that appealed to
them. 14
Deportations were not only limited to the regions mentioned
above. In August, deportations included three caravans of women,
children, and the elderly. These victims were forced out of their
homes and compelled to go to Ras al-Ayn. From there they were
dispersed into Syria and then forced to adopt Islam. Some
converted to Islam while others stood firmly against it. A group of
women had reached the town of Tafila in Syria. They were taken
south of the city on the 11th of August, the night of the feast of
Ramadan, to be sacrificed for the feast of honour. When they
arrived at a nearby well, the victims were all slaughtered and
thrown into it. They divided the women and children and went so
far as to perform monstrosities on the women who had been
previously tortured. 15
A man who escaped with his life told Armale about what he
witnessed. When they fled to northern Syria, they were chased by
the Kurds, who would pick out the most beautiful women, two at a
time, undress them and parade them around in front of everyone.
One of the men picked out a woman who was carrying her son;
she stood firm and refused to go with him. The soldiers then lead
her, along with her friends, to a nearby well where two Kurds were
awaiting them. The two Kurds tried to force the women submit to
Islam, but the women refused to do so. The Kurds carried out their
threat to kill the women and threw them in pairs into the well. The
woman with the child was then dragged towards the well with her
son, where she was threatened again. She stood her ground and
said that she would not betray her Lord by following the Kurds to
convert to Islam. She asked to be killed like her friends, but the
Kurds refused; she then threw her son into the well and asked to
be killed in order to unite with her son. The Kurdish men became
so angry that they immediately killed her and threw her in the
well. 16

Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, pp. 287–278.
Ibid., pp. 296–297.
16 Ibid., p. 310.
14
15

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

223

Armale recounts the massacre of the Assyrians in Tel-Arman
during June and July, 1915. He wrote that the soldiers brought a
group of Christian men, women, and children into the church. The
soldiers took the men, tied them up in fours, and stoned them to
death in front of everyone. Those who remained in the church
were stripped of all of their belongings and were beheaded with
swords and daggers. There were some who had been left to die but
somehow survived. When the soldiers returned at the dusk they
yelled:
Those who are still alive can arise and not be afraid, because
the authorities decided three hours ago that no further
executions would be completed. Four of the wounded dragged
them selves up and were immediately hacked to death by the
soldiers. The bodies of the women were driven away to
different locations. The executioners were not content with the
killings, so they took the corpses, burned them, and threw
them into a well. The children were driven to the farmland and
crushed to death like a combine crushing wheat. About
seventy women and girls were spared from execution. They
were taken out to the barrack square, stripped of their clothes,
and raped in public by the soldiers without shame. During the
last week of carnage, when the women were starting to
recover, the enemy began capturing and killing whomever they
wanted as they pleased. 17

TESTIMONY OF JOZEF NACIM 18
Jozef Nacim wrote about the unfortunate experience of witnessing
the perpetrators’ horrific acts. According to Nacim, the first groups
of deportees were women, children, and elderly who arrived in
Urfa in May 1915. He stated that the women had been separated
from the men, whom were killed. The women were subjected to
many hardships and much suffering during their deportation. The
deportation process took several days, which led to many deaths.
The prolonging of the deportation period was a deliberate policy
17
18

Armale, De kristnas hemska katastrofer, p. 413.
Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord på assyrier-kaldeer och armenier.

224

SABRI ATMAN

carried out by the soldiers to compel the Christians to surrender
everything they owned to the Muslims along the deportation route.
The police and the soldiers had a monopoly on the trade route.
According to Nacim, this was not the worst nightmare because
more unbearable and horrific things befell the deportees during the
night marches:
During the night, the soldiers climbed over the walls of the
large courtyard where the Christians were kept. They forcibly
took some women and young girls over to the flat rooftops.
After the women were sexually abused for days, the soldiers
killed them and abandoned their spiritless bodies. The stacks
of corpses, along with the stench of rotting flesh, attracted
various insects. These atrocities lasted for several months,
where ten to fifteen people were killed every day. The bodies
were later loaded on trucks and taken outside the city, where
they were thrown into ditches. 19

Father Dangelmonier was a Priest in a German regiment, who gave
his testimony to Jozef Nacim in Constantinople on September 14th,
1917. The Father made several trips to the region surrounding
Mardin and Diyarbakir and witnessed first-hand the conditions and
events that occurred there. Those who were deported from their
homes were mostly wealthy, influential Christian men who were
taken away by police and soldiers. They were all taken to distant
places and killed in a similar fashion across many towns and
villages:
In the remote villages, the soldiers trusted that the Kurdish
clans would help them carry out their tasks. The Kurds joined
the soldiers in burning and pillaging everything in their path,
where they killed everyone except the women and children
who they wanted to keep as their own spoils. It can be
concluded that two million Christians were wiped out over a
period of two years. Deportations took place between the
years 1914–1916. Even in 1917, more than 40,000 people were
killed. In addition to all the loss of life, a large number of
19

Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord, p. 19.

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

225

Christian women, especially the good-looking, were detained
as Turkish Harem. 20

The cost of such acts is high for the victims, but also for the
perpetrators. By destroying homes, communities, and the lives of
others, they also destroyed their own social fabric on which they
depended. Ethnic cleansing is a degradation process, in which
sadistic violence and aggression numbed the perpetrators’ normal
human emotions and sanity. 21
Rape is a crime because it destroys the lives of its victims and
harms the coherence of a society that is built on caring and trust. It
is these bonds that hold together families and communities. Rape is
also considered an unconscionable act and a direct attack against
the woman’s family and community, a conscious attempt at
destroying her bond to her family and her community. 22
Mrs. Jalilas’ testimony regarding the events surrounding the
town of Siirt chronicles the planned deportation method, where the
soldiers forced themselves into Christian homes. They brought the
Christians to a meeting place and forced them to march to their
deaths:
One Sunday morning in July they gathered us women and
children in the military barracks. There we spent the night
outside, under the open sky. The next day we gathered in the
hospital’s courtyard, where the men had gathered a few days
earlier. They wrote down our names and deported us along
with a group of women who had arrived from Bitlis. We were
over a thousand women, young girls, and children, some of
who were not yet six years old. We were forced to make the
journey on foot and the elderly who could not continue the
journey were killed. 23

Furthermore, she explained that when they reached the village of
Gozere, Kurds who robbed them of their money, food, and
Ibid., pp. 80–81.
Doubt, Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo, p. 34.
22 Ibid., pp. 63–65.
23 Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord, pp. 95–96.
20
21

226

SABRI ATMAN

clothing attacked them. She also spoke of a woman who was
thrown in flood water, as well as how the soldiers lined up the
deportees and performed body searches, confiscating all of their
valuable possessions. Later on, Kurdish collaborators and the
soldiers picked out the pretty girls among them and sexually abused
them. 24
A Chaldean woman named Halata provided in her testimony
the names of the victims documented by the military officials. She
also stated that soldiers went from house to house looking for
items that were of value.
There were two government officials, one whom wrote down
our names and another who had a purse full of money. He
gave one and a half Piaster to each one of us. He promised
that we would get that amount every day. It was just a ploy for
the officials to get the names of all the women who were to be
kept as spoils, in order to prevent their deportation with the
rest. However, it was the last time we were given any money. 25

A few days later, the group of women from Siirt, led by the
soldiers, was on a long, marching journey. The women were struck
by police officers and soldiers, who tore the clothes off the most
beautiful girls in the group. The women who survived the mayhem,
out of desperation, took action and smeared their faces with clay to
appear unattractive. Being so vulnerable during their deportation,
they also had to endure many atrocities, which included lashes
from whippings and the striking of women on their heads. In
addition, they endured great pain and suffering when passing by
masses of corpses of women and children scattered along the road.
They could not avoid the horrific scenes. The cruel acts of the
soldiers began when darkness fell. With torches in their hands, they
selected the beautiful girls from the group and handed them to the
Kurds as rewards.
Halata told Nacim,‘I saw with my own eyes how the girls were
killed after they had been sexually abused and raped in my

24
25

Ibid., p. 96.
Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord, pp. 104–105.

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

227

presence. All women who were unable to walk were killed. 26 A
thirteen-year-old girl named Karima was able to tell me what she
had been through as a devout Christian:
She told me about her family members who were killed and
about how she was taken away to the village of Zawida, where
she was rounded up with a group of Chaldean girls of her
peers. Girls ten years and younger where held in the village for
one year. Karima added, ‘In the evenings, some of the Kurds
sexually abused me. I did not dare to resist, fearing they would
kill me.’ 27

Another eyewitness named Luwiz Ganima, from Urfa, told Nacim
about the number of women who arrived in groups. She stated that
in the autumn of 1915, groups of about 10,000 women, girls, and
children arrived at the Mohammadi-He region, which lies between
9LUDQÿHKLU8UIDDQG5DVHO-Ayn. The groups were from Erzurum,
Harput, Siirt, Mardin, and Diyarbekir. She heard that soldiers had
raided those towns, pillaging and robbing the victims of their
valuables. Many people were killed by the Kurds and thrown in
ponds, where corpses piled up. A group of about a thousand
Christians was surrounded by armed Kurds and police, and was
subsequently robbed. Then, the perpetrators assembled the victims
atop dry grass and set it ablaze. Those who tried to get away from
the flames were hunted down with deadly bullets – death was
inevitable. The perpetrators did not miss any opportunity to seize
what was left of the valuables belonging to the victims: ‘After the
terrible blaze subsided, Kurdish women and children used sieves to
sift through the ashes of the corpses to see if they could find gold;
it was a common practice among Christian women to swallow gold
coins for future use.’ 28
Luwitz Ganima continued telling Nacim about a conversation
she had with the mayor of a Kurdish village. Ganima gave the
mayor the impression that she was a Muslim. The mayor believed
her, and soon Ganima gained his confidence. Amongst one of the
Ibid., p. 106.
Ibid., p. 115.
28 Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord, p. 124.
26
27

228

SABRI ATMAN

groups that reached the mayor’s town was the daughter of a family
whom the mayor knew, so he brought her and seven other girls to
his home. The mayor’s son fell in love with the girl and wanted to
marry her. At first, he tried to convince the girl to marry him, but
she refused to have any relation with a Muslim man. As a result,
she received many threats, but stood her ground. However, one
day when no one was home, ‘I observed the soldiers undressing
and putting their clothes aside. Then, I began to threaten them.
“You must all marry Kurds,” I said to them. I swore at them and
threatened to kill them all if they did not listen to me. Those young
girls who refused the soldiers advances were raped.’ 29
The girl continued to resist and encouraged the other girls to
do the same. The mayor then drew his revolver to shoot her, but
she reminded him of when he had eaten dinner with her in her
parent’s home. This made him feel shameful, because she was
standing naked in front of him. She then pleaded with him to not
shoot her. The mayor said: ‘When I heard the girl pleading, I began
to hesitate and remembered the old friendship with her family, so I
decided to spare her. However, I was afraid that this brave girl
would one day destroy my reputation by speaking out about how I
had treated her, so I shot her in the back and killed her.’ 30
Ethnic and religious identity, sexual identity, and gender often
determine if a person becomes a victim of rape or if that individual
is targeted to be murdered. 31 In the case of the mayor and the girl,
this illustrates the masculine power he had, that he had the right to
threaten, rape, and then kill her because she resisted marrying his
son. Exercising his masculinity, the mayor gave her no chance to
express her right to live. Tradition in the Christian community
prohibited marriage to Muslims.
A Christian woman named Habiba, from Trabzon, shared her
1918 experiences with Nacim, among others. A military gang
separated the men from women and forced the men to march on
foot to an isolated area where they were all killed. The women had
to endure further suffering – they were also forced to march on
Ibid., p. 126.
Ibid., p. 127.
31 Allen, Rape Warfare, p. 26.
29
30

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

229

foot, hungry, naked, and powerless, on the way to Daldaban. They
were kept outside under the rain and in the cold, and suffered
many illnesses. However, it was the nights that were most
unbearable. Armed police officers strolled through a trail of
women with their flashlights looking for the beautiful ones. They
brought the chosen women to an isolated location and forced them
into a horrendous orgy of rape and murder. A few hours later the
armed police officers returned to the group looking for younger
women. 32
When Habiba reached Erzinjan, near the city’s Christian
cemetery, she heard the appalling news that the soldiers were
selling the girls to Turkish and Kurdish civilians. Some women,
who could not stand the atrocities and the length of the journey,
surrendered to the Turks, becoming their wives or service women
in their harems. Other women were abducted and kept in tents that
were established by the mayor to receive the deportees. 33

YADE SADE’S STORY
The genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey provides prime examples
of such war crimes. They bring focus to the issue of intolerance
exercised against Christians, an intolerance that is being violently
demonstrated one hundred years later in Syria, Iraq, Libya and
elsewhere in the Middle East.
The story that I retell here is drawn from one of dozens that I
have gathered from among Assyrians living in Sweden, Germany,
Belgium, The Netherlands and Switzerland, all countries to which
Assyrians have fled for security and diminished systematic
discrimination that has been their lot in the Middle East. I chose
this very personal story of an Assyrian woman to illustrate the
complex role of gender in the Assyrian genocide. Many Assyrian
females, as we learn from the testimonies of Armale and Nacim,
were targeted for physical destruction, sexual abuse, slavery, and
forced marriage or forced assimilation. The following is Yade
Sade’s story.
32
33

Nacim, Turkarnas folkmord, pp. 160–168.
Ibid., pp. 173–174.

230

SABRI ATMAN

When Assyrian men were killed and children were abducted
and made part of Muslim households, the women were also
forcefully taken. These women were forced to convert to Islam and
marry Kurds, Turks and Arabs. In 1915, Yade Sade was among the
many who witnessed terrible events during the Armenian and
Assyrian genocide, including the killing of her brothers and the
rape of other Christian women like her.
Fourteen years old when she was abducted with seven other
Assyrian women, she was taken to Köza, a Kurdish village not far
from Mardin in southeast Turkey. Once there, Yade had only one
option if she wanted to survive: marry a Muslim man and convert
to Islam. During her captivity, Yade attempted four times to escape
and return to her Assyrian village of Hapses. However, initially she
failed. Her captors controlled her every move, and watched her
constantly. For her, the Muslim town where she was held captive
was like a prison, as was her marriage to the Kurdish man.
A few months after the marriage was consummated, Yade
became pregnant and gave birth to a boy who was named Hüseyin.
After the birth of Hüseyin, the Kurds reduced their close watch on
Yade because experience has taught them that even a once nonMuslim would not have the fortitude to escape and leave her child
behind. But they were wrong. When Hüseyin was three months
old, Yade ran away, on foot. Finally she was free, though separated
from her child. She finally reached Hapses.
Many years later she remarried, this time an Assyrian man, and
bore four children. She tried very deliberately to disremember her
past. Despite all she had endured she concentrated on enjoying a
happy life with her new family.
The Kurds called her first child ‘infidel’ Hüseyin. In Kurdish
the word is fallah (meaning Christian): Fallah Hüseyin, or Gawur
Hüseyin, is how he was labelled. The general Turkish word is gawur,
which means ‘infidel.’ His fellow villagers often jeered him,
throwing these labels at him as he was growing up by those among
whom he lived. They believed Hüseyin had a defect because his
mother had abandoned him. He grew up with his Kurdish father
and the rest of the family, but never forgot that he had a long-gone
mother.
When Hüseyin turned eighteen, he began the search for his
mother. After much questioning, he discovered the name of the
village in which she was living. He knew that his mother had

11. GENOCIDE FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

231

remarried, and had other children but he still wanted to see her. So
he went to her village. When Hüseyin arrived at her house, Yade
Sade refused to see him. For nearly two decades she had tried to
forget she had a Muslim child, and when he found her, she claimed
that he was lying. She did not want to see him. Many times Hüseyin
attempted to see his mother but she continued to refuse. Finally
Hüseyin stopped trying and went back home. But he didn’t want to
give up. He made two more trips to his mother’s village but she
insisted, again and again, that she wanted nothing to do with him.
Every time anyone tried to broach the subject of a first son, she
would cry, and deny having another son.
Two reasons for Yade Sade’s behavior emerge: first, her
personal trauma and history of abuse which she had tried to forget,
and second, the ‘shame’ in her Assyrian social setting that is
associated with giving birth to a Muslim child. In her social milieu,
when confronted with rape, as she was, she could have committed
suicide, as many Assyrian and Armenian women were expected to
do, and did.
Hüseyin tried to see his mother four times altogether. On the
last visit he sent his mother an entreaty through a respected elder
from her village. She finally acquiesced but said she would give him
only five minutes. Yade Sade told him she forgave him. He kissed
her hand and they embraced, both weeping. Five minutes after, she
told him to leave and said she would never want to see him again.
On his way out of his mother’s house, Hüseyin met a young man,
who turned out to be one of her sons, his half brother named
Brahim Amno. Brahim, like many others from this region of
Turkey, immigrated later to Switzerland, where he now lives. The
two stayed in touch for many years. Although I did not have the
privilege of interviewing Hüseyin, I did meet and interview two of
his half-brothers, Yade Sade’s Assyrian sons, one living in
Switzerland and the other in Germany. I am also in contact with
Hüseyin’s children who live in Izmir, Turkey. Yade Sade’s
descendants know this story, the tragic story she tried hard to
forget.
‘Infidel’ Hüseyin passed away on April 10th 2008 and his
mother Yade Sade died long before him on April 31st 1984. She
was always known by the appellation as ‘Yade’, which means
‘mother.’

232

SABRI ATMAN

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Beverly. Rape Warfare. The Hidden Genocide in BosniaHerzegovina and Croatia, Minneapolis (London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996).
Armale, Ishak. De kristnas hemska katastofer: Osmanernas och ungturkarnas folkmord i norra Mesopotamien 1895/1914–1918
(Stockholm: Bokförlaget Nsibin, 2005).
Nacim, Jozef. Turkarnas folkmord på assyrier-kaldeer och armenier
(Stockholm: Bokförlaget Nsibin, 2003).
Doubt, Keith. Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000).

III – POST-SAYFO PERIOD

233

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY:
THE MILITARY, THE PATRIARCH AND
THE BRITISH IN YAQU BAR MALEK
ISMAEL’S ASSYRIANS IN T WO WORLD
WARS (TEHRAN 1964)
HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG
One of the books that is often referred to when the history of the
Assyrians during and after the First World War is discussed, is
Yaqu bar Malek Ismael’s ĆWRUć\ĔZ-WUĔ\SOćxĔWbLOD\Ĕ, KGĆWRUć\Ĕ PHQ
1914 hal 1945, ‘The Assyrians and the Two World Wars, that is, the
Assyrians between 1914 and 1945’ (ATPT). 1 According to its title
page, the book was published in Tehran in 1964, at the presses of
the Literary Production of the Assyrian Youth. In 1999, I bought
an original copy in Tehran, in the bookshop of the metropolitan
church of Mar Giwargis. Despite its regular presence in
bibliographies and reference sections of works on Assyrian history
of this period, to my knowledge there have been neither
translations of this work, nor an in-depth study of the book and its
author. This contribution is intended as a first attempt to chart the
work’s importance for the further study of Assyrian history,
especially in the light of the growing interest in the history of the
genocide and expulsion of the Assyrian/Syriac Christians during
the First World War and of this group’s complicated trajectories of

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0ćOHN (VPćʱĔ\O GD-ʝ\ćUH ʲ(Oć\Wć WKH UHQGHULQJ LQ WKLV FRQWULEXWLRQ LV
how he is usually referred to in English language texts.
1

235

236

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

integration and minoritization following during the period of the
creation of the Arab states.
Yaqu bar Malek Ismael’s book indeed can be considered one
of the primary sources for the study of the Assyrian history during
and after the First World War. As such, the volume deserves a
more detailed study than it has received so far. What I would like
to argue is that a close reading of Yaqu bar Malek Ismael’s
contribution will lead not only to a renewed appreciation of this
volume as an important source but also will show how the
perception of the ethnic cleansing of Hakkari changed over time
within the Assyrian/Syriac community. However, it should be
noted that the present discussion does not allow for a full
reappraisal of the chequered history of the Assyrians in Iraq during
the British Mandate and the early days of Iraqi independence. Some
of the other authors whose work I quote have started to do just
that and it is not necessary to repeat that here, though a full and
careful account based on all available sources has yet to be written. 2
Taking into account Yaqu bar Malek Ismael’s interpretation of this
history would be an important element of such a reappraisal. For
that reason, it is important to take a closer look at his contribution.

THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHORS
According to the author’s introduction, this volume was long in the
making. The book’s genesis started with the war journal kept by his
brother Shlimun during the First World War. After his brother’s
death in 1944, Yaqu decided to make a book out of it which finally
was published in 1964 in Tehran, at the press of the Assyrian
Youth. At the time, this was one of the few places in the Middle
East where such printing could be done. As becomes clear towards
See below in the fourth section for a quick scan of the most
important studies so far. One aspect of such a reappraisal is to better
understand how the unique trajectory of the Hakkari Assyrians in Iraq ties
in with the history of the larger Syriac/Assyrian/Chaldean community in
the region as well as with that of minority groups more generally,
religious, ethnic or other, a topic that is addressed in: S.R. GoldsteinSabbah, H.L Murre-van den Berg (eds.), Modernity, Minority, and the Public
Sphere, 2016.
2

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

237

the end of the book, Yaqu had been deployed in Iran during the
Second World War and had been in touch with Assyrians there,
further explaining the somewhat unexpected place of printing. 3
There are indications that perhaps the bulk of it was written in the
late 1940s rather than in the early 1960s. 4
As Yaqu informs us in the introduction, the brothers
belonged to the clan of Upper Tiari. Their surname, bar Malek
Ismael, ‘son of Malek Ismael’, refers to the name of their father
Ismael, and indicates that they belonged to the ruling family of the
clan or tribe, the maleks. Upper Tiari is the name for this particular
clan, but the term also refers to a concrete part of the Hakkari
mountains, just north of the current border between Turkey and
Iraq, southwest of the city of Hakkari, also known as Julamerik.
‘Upper’ in this context refers to the northern, higher mountains of
Tiari, ‘Lower’ to the southern and lower part of the same
mountainous area. The family of Malek Ismael maintained close
ties with the patriarchal family; Shlimun was married to Rumi, one
of the sisters of patriarch Shimun XIX Benyamin, in office
between 1903–1918. 5
Both brothers were military men who had joined the Assyrian
troops that were formed in the years before the First World War.
Different from most Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire,
who as dhimmis or raya (‘flock’) had not been allowed to wear arms,
the ashiret (‘tribal’) Assyrians of the Hakkari mountains always had
carried arms, fighting their battles alongside and against the
ATPT, p. 242; the book itself is silent about the reasons for
choosing this printing house; I thank Mr. Abraham Giwargis from Tehran
who during the Berlin Sayfo conference where I presented the first draft
of this paper informed me that the Assyrian Youth Press printed many
materials that were send to them from other parts in the Middle East
where Assyrian printing was more difficult. According to Giwargis, the
volume was well known among the Assyrians of Iran.
4 ATPT, p. 249. Yaqu here refers to military service for the British of
‘27 years’ which may indicate that he wrote this part of the book in 1949,
27 years after the first incorporation of the Assyrians in the Iraq Levies, in
1922.
5 ATPT, pp. 28–29.
3

238

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

Kurdish tribal federations of the region. 6 When the war started in
1914 and the Christians of the Eastern provinces were targeted by
Turkish and Kurdish troops, the Assyrian men took up arms to
defend their homes and families. After the war, both Shlimun and
Yaqu continued their military careers as part of the troops that
were incorporated in the British army, the so-called Assyrian
Levies, later known as the British Levies. After the events of 1933,
to which we shall return shortly, the brothers joined the migration
to the Jazirah region in northeast Syria where the French Mandate
government allowed the Hakkari Assyrians to settle. In 1944,
Shlimun died in Tel Tamer, the main Assyrian village of the region.
Yaqu returned to British military service and served as commander
during the Second World War. He died in Baghdad in 1974. 7
Although Yaqu writes in the introduction that the book is
based on journal notes taken by his brother Shlimun, the text
suggests that the authorial ‘I’ refers to Yaqu at all times. 8 That Yaqu
rather than Shlimun should be seen as the primary author is
certainly the case for the introductory sections that precede the
main chapters. As in most Assyrian writings of the 20th century,
these include a concise history of the Assyrians from pre-Christian
times till the present, as well as a discussion of religion and
customs. Following an extensive presentation of the so-called
‘covenant of Mohammed with the patriarch of the East’, 9 this
prologue also includes a brief discussion of the history of the
Assyrians in Hakkari and their relations with the Kurds. The early
history of Christianity is treated concisely, though with explicit
Joachim Jakob, Ostsyrische Christen und Kurden, 2014.
Solomon Solomon, ‘1933: The Assyrians of Khabur, Syria’.
8 For some examples, see ATPT, pp. 5, 31, 188, 250.
9 ATPT, pp. 11–14; though the text is substantially different from
the more common versions of this apocryphal text, it reflects the basic
idea of a covenant between early Islamic rulers, in this case Mohammed
himself, with the Christians, represented here by the ‘Patriarch of the
East’, offering them protection in lieu of submission to the worldly
authority of the Islamic rulers. The text represented here is situated as
addressed to the patriarch in Qodshanis, whose copy of the covenant is
said to have been robbed and brought to Istanbul.
6
7

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

239

discussion of the conversion of the ‘Assyrian’ royal house of Abgar
in Edessa to Christianity, which the author places in the 1st century
CE, most likely to underline the deep links between the Church of
the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church with its basis in more
western regions of what is considered ancient Assyria. 10 The
historical sections are followed by ethnographic ones about
clothing, livelihood, farming and hunting, warfare, and climate.
This part concludes with one page about faith, Syriac KD\PćQXWć,
and how the Assyrians had come to accept it, 11 culminating in
describing the two most important xDKUćs (feasts) of the ashiret of
the mountains, that of August 15th, the Dormition of the Virgin
Mary, in Waltob, and that of September 13th, the Feast of the
Cross, in the church of Mar Sawa, both in Upper Tiari. According
to the author these two festivals were the prime occasion for the
leaders of the Assyrian tribes to discuss their communal affairs. 12

FROM HAKKARI TO SEMELE
The main part of the book is devoted to the events the First World
War and its aftermath. It is divided by the author in two main parts,
the first of which covers the events during the war, the second the
developments between 1918 and 1934. One page only touches on
the Second World War and the Assyrians’ military contribution to
the Allied cause. 13
In the last months of 1914, the Ottomans had started to kill
and deport first mostly Armenian but later also Chaldean, Syriac
and Assyrian Christians. As a result, a full-fledged war between
Christian troops and the Ottoman army broke out in the eastern
provinces. Armenians and Assyrians, supported by Russian
personnel, intelligence, training and weapons, tried to stop the
ATPT, pp. 10–11. Here Yaqu seems to follow Yusuf Malek, The
British Betrayal of the Assyrians, p. 12.
11 The version here conflates various versions of apostolic origins
that have been used in the Church of the East, referring to the preaching
of Simon Peter in Babylon, to Addai and Mari, to Bartholomew and to
the apostle Thomas.
12 ATPT, p. 23.
13 ATPT, pp. 24–143, 144–241.
10

240

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

Turkish advance. In May 1915, the Assyrians officially declared war
against the Turks and became part of the Allied forces that fought
Germany and Turkey. Yaqu, perhaps supported by Shlimun’s
notes, provides the reader with a detailed description of many of
these battles, quite a few of which were won by the Assyrian
troops. However, despite such temporary victories, they were not
able to hold their positions in the mountains. They were forced to
send their women and children to safer parts in Iran, and later in
1915 the Assyrian troops gave up their positions in the mountains
and retreated to Urmia, though they kept attacking Turkish and
Kurdish troops in the mountains. Later, the Turkish troops
advanced to the Urmia region, and with the support of Kurdish
troops continued to put pressure on the allied troops of
Armenians, Russians and Assyrians.
Two particular incidents of the war years receive Yaqu’s
detailed attention. The first of these is the murder of one of the
patriarch’s opponents, his cousin Nimrod and his two sons. Yaqu’s
description mostly serves to exonerate the patriarch of any direct
involvement, stressing his deep grief when hearing about it. 14 The
second incident concerns the murder of Catholicos-Patriarch Mar
Shimun Benyamin himself, on March 3rd, 1918. 15 He had agreed to
meet with his newfound ally, the Kurdish leader Agha Ismael
Shasheknaya (Shikak) near Salmas, to talk about peace. When the
patriarch and his party of more than hundred men were about to
take the road after seemingly amicably discussions, they were killed
in cold blood by Agha Ismael, aka Simko, and his men. The
Assyrians revenged themselves by attacking local Muslims, but the
killing of the patriarch dealt a major blow to Assyrian morale. In
later years many Assyrians, among whom Yaqu himself, tried to
ATPT, pp. 31–34. On this episode, see Ashur Giwargis, ‘The
Assyrian Liberation Movement and the French Intervention (1919–1922)’.
For the earlier history of this quarrel, see J.F. Coakley, The Church of the
East, 1992.
15 ATPT, pp. 93–106; this particular date indicates that Yaqu used
the Julian calendar; other sources, such as Surma de Bait Mar Shimun,
Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of Mar Shimun, p. 80, give the New
Style date of March 16th, 1918.
14

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

241

take revenge on Simko, but the latter was killed in 1930 by the
Iranian government because of his role in the Azerbaijani Kurdish
independence movement. The year 1918 also saw the harrowing
flight of many of the Assyrians from Urmia, then under pressure
from Turkish and Iranian troops, with little help to be expected
from the Russians or Armenians. A British pilot encouraged the
Assyrians to flee to Hamadan in Iran, and from there to Baquba
near Baghdad, where the British set up a refugee camp for
Assyrians and Armenians under League of Nations protection. The
massive flight in the heat of July, often under attack by various
armed groups looking for their valuables, costed thousands of lives.
In the second part of the book, the events following upon the
arrival in Baquba are narrated, including the consecration of two
new patriarchs, first Mar Paulos in 1918, and after his death in
1920, his very young nephew Mar Ishai. Yaqu further notes the
unsuccessful trip of the senior member of the family, Lady Surma,
Catholicos Binyamin’s sister and aunt of Catholicos Ishai, to the
League of Nations in 1919. After the closure of the Baquba camp
in 1920, many of the Hakkari Assyrians moved to a new camp in
Mindan, while the patriarchal family settled in nearby Mosul.
Meanwhile, the Assyrian troops, including the Malek Ismael
brothers and their men, had been incorporated in the British army.
In 1922, a number of Assyrians under the command of erstwhile
military commander Agha Petros attempted to resettle in Turkishcontrolled southern Hakkari, but had to leave again in 1924, after
Hakkari was returned permanently to Turkey. 16
The years leading up to the events of 1933 are told mostly via
a series of battles that were fought by the Assyrian troops in the
north of Iraq, where they were deployed to suppress Kurdish
revolts. When Iraq was set to receive its independence in 1932,
Yaqu describes the discussions within the Hakkari Assyrian
community about which course to follow. In general, he supports
the patriarchal position, striving for the recognition of the
patriarch’s temporal (SDĠUćQć\ć – ‘bodily’) as well as religious
(UXʚćQć\ć – ‘spiritual’) leadership over the Assyrians by the British
and the Iraqis while hoping to cash in on the promise of both the
16

ATPT, pp. 144–182.

242

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

British and the League of Nation of an autonomous “homeland”
for the Assyrians. The opposition to the patriarchal party was led
by Malek Khoshaba and bishop Sargis of Jilu; they were willing to
cooperate with the Iraqi government and settle for minority status
without an autonomous region or special status for the patriarch.
Meanwhile, many Assyrians had become worried about the
growing anti-Assyrian feelings in Iraqi society, and had started to
negotiate with the French government over settlement in Syria. 17
When in June 1933 a group of armed Assyrians were asked by
the French to return from Syria to Iraq, a perhaps carelessly fired
bullet triggered a fierce battle between Assyrian and Iraqi troops,
setting off retaliation on mostly unarmed Assyrians in Semele and a
number of other places in the northwestern region near Dehok. 18
The patriarch, who was blamed for the actions of the Assyrians
troops, was expelled to Cyprus, whereas the majority of Assyrians
from Hakkari accepted the French offer to settle in the northeastern Jazeera region in Syria. Yaqu concludes his historical
overview with a description of the growing Assyrian community in
Tel Tamer, the main place of Assyrian settlement in Syria.
Before ending the volume with acknowledgements to those
who helped him with the book, 19 Yaqu in a somewhat surprising

ATPT, pp. 183–231; see pp. 203–214 for the general meeting of
the leaders of the ashiret in Amadiya in May 1932.
18 The start of the battle of Deraboun has become the topic of much
discussion in the literature; see Stafford, Donabed, Husry and Zubeida;
for full references, see below.
19 ATPT, pp. 250–251: Yaqu mentions Deacon Oshana Yusep of
Halmon, who together with Hedini Cappo from Waltob wrote the
manuscript, and Dawid son of deacon Yawnan of Daraba, who drew the
maps. The first of these maps, an overview of the Assyrian Triangle
between Urmia, Mosul and Jazirah in Syria, is based on the map in R.S.
Stafford’s The Tragedy of the Assyrians. For the second map, which tracks
the post-war wanderings of the Assyrians and includes Urmia, Hamadan,
Baghdad, Mosul, the Hakkari region and the new settlements along the
Khabur in Syria, so far no model has been found. He further mentions a
YLVLW WR WKH 8QLWHG 6WDWHV LQ  DQG WKH VXSSRUW RI ,VʘDT 5HʘDQD RI
17

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

243

move that is not always borne out by the way he described the
events in earlier parts of the book, argues that the British carry the
greatest responsibility for what happened to the Assyrians after the
war. The British at first seemed different, because they were not
interested in convincing the Assyrians to convert to their church.
However, they too ‘set a trap’ for the ‘guileless Assyrians’.
According to Yaqu, five crucial moments leading to the massacre
of Semele are the result of British choices. These were the
expulsion of the Assyrians from the mountains in 1915, perhaps
because the British did not come to support their Assyrian allies;
patriarch Benyamin’s meeting with Simko in 1918 which led to his
killing, with whom he had allied at the advice of a British officer;
the promises made by Captain Pennington when he arrived with
his plane in Urmia in 1918 inducing the flight of the Hakkari
Assyrians to Hamadan and Baquba, which in Yaqu’s opinion was
unnecessary; Assyrian military service that only yielded hatred from
their countrymen; and finally the ‘betrayal’ by Major Thomson in
1933, who was perceived as having allowed the Iraqi army to go
through with the massacres. 20

CONTEXT AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Yaqu’s book is part of a modest collection of books and articles
that address the history of the Hakkari Assyrians during and after
the First World War. The reflection on this history started not long
after the end of the war, when the Assyrians and their supporters
began to realize that what they had perceived to be Great Britain’s
promise of a ‘national home’ somewhere in what were to become
Turkish or Iraqi lands, was not very likely to be acted upon. The
lack of support for the Assyrian demands during the Paris Peace
conference of 1920 and the Lausanne negotiations in 1923 made
them realize that a restoration of pre-war conditions was becoming
ever more unlikely. In 1923, just before the final decisions were
taken, Lady Surma published Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder
Shapatan who served the migrant community in New Britain,
Connecticut; he also served as informant to Yaqu, see ATPT, p. 201.
20 ATPT, pp. 246–249.

244

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

of Mar Shimun. In it, she brought the plight of the Assyrians to the
attention of the British public, whose government she too (though
more politely formulated than Yaqu) paints as primarily responsible
for the Assyrians’ predicament. Surma’s publication was endorsed
by William A. Wigram, a former Anglican missionary among the
Assyrians. 21 He shared her sentiment of disillusion and published a
number of works to support the Assyrian case with the British and
the League of Nations, the most important being the pamphlet
programmatically entitled, Our Smallest Ally (London 1920). The
Assyrians and their Neighbours (London 1929) covers Assyrian history
more broadly, but also concludes by reminding British readers of
their obligations towards this small people that had fought for the
British during the Great War.
It is after the events of 1933 that Yusuf Malek, another
military Assyrian, coined the phrase The British Betrayal of the
Assyrians for the title of his book that was published in Chicago in
1935. 22 For Yusuf, the problem is more in the broken promises
made after the war, especially in 1925, than in the British demeanor
during the war. 23 Whereas the publications before 1933 tried to
coach the British and others on the international stage to provide
guarantees for the Assyrians in the new state of Iraq or elsewhere,
after 1933 the situation is considered beyond repair and the British,
as well as the League of Nations more generally, are held fully
responsible, especially because they allowed Iraq to become
independent, though knowing full well that promises about
minority protection were not dealing adequately with the situation
of the Assyrians. In 1935, in an attempt to exonerate the British at
least partly from complicity in the events, Ronald Stafford
The current edition of Surma d’Bait Mar Shimun’s book was
published by Vehicle Editions in 1983; the first edition was published in
London in 1923. See further Claire Weibel Yacoub, Surma l’AssyroChaldéene, 2007.
22 Published by the Joint Action of The Assyrian National
Federation and The Assyrian National League of America. Yusuf Malek is
not related to Yaqu and Shlimun; he comes from a Mosuli (Assyro)Chaldean family.
23 Malek, British Betrayal, p. 65.
21

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

245

published The Tragedy of the Assyrians in which he argues that while
the British may have failed the Assyrians, the Assyrians themselves
are to be blamed for their unwillingness to seriously consider
anything less than full restoration of the pre-war situation. Stafford
in particular blames Yaqu bar Malek Ismael as one of the Levy
officers who incited the people against cooperation with the Iraqi
and British governments and who was one of the leaders of the
group that became involved in the battle of Deraboun.
It took until 1961 before the topic was taken up again by John
Joseph, in his The Nestorians and their Muslim Neighbours. 24 There is
no indication that Yaqu, though he may have encountered this
publication in the United States, had a chance to read it before he
published his version of events in Tehran in 1964. Furthermore, he
does not engage explicitly with the publications of Stafford and
Yusuf Malek, though much of his argumentation follows the lines
set by Malek and he seems aware of Stafford’s accusations about
his personal involvement. In 1967, Kerim Attar’s so far largely
unnoticed Columbia PhD thesis extensively discussed the Assyrian
case, especially with regard to the role of the Mandatory Power
which he deemed largely ineffective in these matters. 25 In 1974, the
discussion was taken by the Iraqi historian Khaldun Husry, the son
of Sati al-Husry, a prominent Arab nationalist in the 1930s. In his
two-part article on the Semele incident, he acknowledges the
overreaction to the events at Deraboun in the killing of the
Assyrians of Semele by army units, but suggests that the massacre
was the initiative of a local officer rather than a premeditated action
of the Iraqi army. According to Husry, the escalation as such was
due to the Assyrians’, and especially the patriarch’s, unwillingness
to seriously consider the demands of the Iraqi government about
integration and terms of resettlement. 26 This line of thought was
A revised version of this monograph was published in 2000: The
Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions,
Archeologists, and Colonial Powers (SCM 26; Leiden: Brill).
25 ‘The Minorities of Iraq During the Period of the Mandate, 1920–
1932’.
26 Husry, ‘The Assyrian Affair of 1933’, pp. 161–176 (I) and pp.
344–360 (II).
24

246

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

continued by Iraqi author Sami Zubaida, who is more appreciative
of the difficult position of the Assyrians, seeing their predicament
as essentially the result of the impossibility of the Iraqi state project
in particular and of minority integration more generally. 27
Already before Zubaida had published his articles, Awdisho
d’Barzane’s The Age of Hardship: The Battle of Deraboun and the Atrocity
of Simile was published in Modern Aramaic. This author, more than
other Assyrian writers, felt free to elaborate on the considerable
disagreements within the Assyrian community about the political
decisions of the patriarchal family and its supporters. 28 The most
recent contribution to the debate are chapters two and three from
Sargon Donabed’s revised thesis, Reforging a Forgotten History. 29
Donabed transforms the earlier Assyrian perspective of British
betrayal into a postcolonial analysis in which the Assyrians as
indigenous inhabitants of the region have become the victims of
the power play of the colonial powers, understating the role of the
Assyrians’ internal divisions. The most detailed recent contribution
with regard to the war period and its immediate aftermath is that of
Florence Hellot-Bellier, who extensively researched the First World
War in the Persian realm, adding much to the existing
historiography of the Assyrian experience by using many sources so
far untapped. 30

Zubaida, ‘Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians’, pp. 363–
382. For a more general overview of Assyrians in Iraq, see Vahram
Petrosian, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’, pp. 113–148; Suha Rassam, Christianity in
Iraq, 2005; David Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church, 2011.
28 kLQQĔG-$xTXWć4UćEćG-Dayrabun w-*XQʚćG-6LPĔOĔ (1st ed. 1993; 2nd
ed. Chicago 2003 or 2004 (Assyrian Academic Society Press). I have not
been able to consult the Aramaic edition but had to rely on the English
translation by Rabee Youab I Yonan that was published in 2011 (private
edition, no place or publisher).
29 Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 2015.
30 Hellot-Bellier, Chroniques de massacres annoncés, 2014.
27

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

247

ASSYRIANS AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: YAQU’S
INTERPRETATION
… I thought I ought to finish this precious story of my
brother Shlimun, which is about our Assyrian nation and
people, especially for the benefit of young men and women
and students and readers who wish to read stories about the
past of our nation, to become familiar with the story of
victories and heroism of their forefathers. Because of the
calamities and troubles and persecutions and bloody fights and
uncountable abuses, we keep and preserve their Assyrian
identity and nationalism and language, and above all, their
apostolic orthodox faith of the East. In this story, you will see
the photographs of many people worthy to be remembered,
showing many heroic victories in the Assyrian story. They did
good deeds for the benefit of our people. However, it is sad to
say that some of them have become the cause of division and
the destruction of the unity of our Assyrian people, for their
personal gain. 31

These lines from Yaqu’s introduction can now be compared by
what we have seen from the book’s contents, in order to better
understand what he wanted to achieve when he published it in the
Middle East of the 1960s. The first remark to be made is that,
indeed, as Yaqu mentions in these introductory lines, his history of
the First World War is not so much one of massacre and
persecution, but one of heroic resistance and active participation
on the Allied side of the war, in close cooperation with the Russian,
Armenian and later British armies. His is a military history, which
although ultimately ending in defeat, also included many battles
that were won due to the bravery of the Assyrian soldiers, battles
that he described in sometimes gruesome detail, and that are almost
always concluded with precise numbers of the wounded and fallen
on both sides. Yaqu wanted young Assyrians to be proud of that
military history, to be proud of the military men that fought for the

31

ATPT, p. 5.

248

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

Allied course, not only for the safety of Assyrians in Hakkari and
Iran.
Secondly, as he notes in his introduction, religion is of utmost
importance for his understanding of Assyrian identity. 32 Indeed, as
I have argued elsewhere, much of the problems of the post-war
period can be attributed to the patriarchal family’s position in the
Assyrian community, especially in that of the tribal Hakkari
Assyrians. 33 Yaqu takes a firm stand, even if he admits to not
always agree with the line of the patriarchal family. In his opinion,
this family is the main hope of keeping the Assyrians together in
difficult times, through the church that symbolizes this unity –
which also explains why he is extremely negative about missionary
work that threatened to undermine this unity. Though the author
explicitly refers to an ‘Assyrian identity’ based on language and
nation, he seems to believe that the bond created by the Church of
the East is the one that is able to hold the people together.
Therefore, perhaps the book should be read primarily as a
deliberate attempt to explain his position in the discussions about
the role of patriarch and church – defending himself against the
accusation that the actions undertaken by him in support of the
patriarchal family were the main cause of the events of 1933 which
led to the expulsion of the patriarchal family and the migration of
his supporters to Syria. 34
Thirdly, this book was written in a period dominated by
decolonization and increasingly vocal criticism of the colonial and
imperial practices of the Western powers. Yaqu’s harsh criticism of
the British, though justified by colonial arrogance and many
On Assyrian identity formation in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, see most recently Adam Becker, Revival and Awakening:
Christian Mission, Orientalism, and the American Evangelical Roots of Assyrian
Nationalism (1834–1906) (2015). For the role of ecclesiastical community
and practices in the parallel developments within the Syriac Orthodox
Church, see Sarah Bakker Kellogg, ‘Ritual sounds, political echoes: Vocal
agency and the sensory cultures of secularism in the Dutch Syriac
diaspora’ (2015).
33 Murre-van den Berg, ‘Light from the East’, pp. 115–134.
34 Barzani, The Age of Hardship, pp. 238–241; ATPT, pp. 225–226.
32

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

249

concrete mistakes, to a modern reader might seem overdone,
especially when compared to the atrocities of Turks, Kurds,
Iranians and Iraqis that he himself describes in gruesome detail.
However, in Yaqu’s opinion, much of the ‘bloodthirstiness’ of
Muslims resulted from circumstances created by the Western
powers, rather than from an innate hatred of Muslims for
Christians. Especially the Kurds, more so than the Arabs, are seen
as led astray rather than as irreconcilable enemies of the
Assyrians. 35 Thus, the removal of Western influence from the
Middle East is the only guarantee that Assyrians could live
peacefully in the region, as they had done before the arrival of
Western missions in the 19th century. Here too, of course, Yaqu’s
own position is at stake: his long-term service in the British army
must have been seen by many as complicity in the Western
domination of the East that he denounces so explicitly in this
concluding paragraphs.
In the light of these three themes, the book is indeed highly
relevant for a further study of the Assyrian experience in the
Middle East of the 20th century. For one, it is important to
integrate military history more thoroughly into the history of war
and genocide – it seems that although the book is regularly
referenced, few earlier authors seem to have consistently used it as
a source. Such an integration would probably lead to
interpretations that do more justice to internal Assyrian
developments, especially when taking due notice of Yaqu’s
partisanship. The way in which differences of opinion between
Hakkari Assyrians and those of Urmia and Iraq, as much as among
the Hakkari Assyrians themselves, have played an important role in
this part of Assyrian history, is yet to be fully analysed and
understood.
Yaqu’s narrative is also important in understanding how
Assyrian positions changed over time. Even within the book,
‘Islam’ is described as a reason for the Turkish attack on
‘Christians’ at the beginning of the war in 1914, though the author also
mentions the ‘rebellion’ of the Armenians as an additional cause, see
ATPT, p. 24. See ATPT, p. 11 for a description of the good relationships
of Kurds and Assyrians before the war.
35

250

HELEEN MURRE-VAN DEN BERG

Yaqu’s position appears to shift from one that is more cognizant of
the impact of the policies of Turks, Iraqis, and Kurds to one that
appears to put the blame squarely on outside forces, especially the
British. It is likely that the situation in which Assyrians found
themselves after the Second World War played a large role in this
shift. Their gradual acceptance by secularizing Middle Eastern
governments was facilitated by the patriarch’s official
relinquishment of his temporal powers in 1948 and acceptance of
the Arab governments of Syria and Iraq. Thereby patriarch Mar
Ishai accepted the situation he did not accept in 1933: that of being
a minority like all other religious minorities without any special
worldly prerogatives for its leader. 36
Finally, the book reminds us that the discussions about the
First World War in Syriac/Assyrian circles in the middle of the 20th
century did not carry the same meaning as they do today. To be
sure, taking stock of these cruel years started almost immediately
after the war in circles of all of the churches involved, the Church
of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean and
Syriac Catholic churches, even if little of those early recordings
were published or circulated widely. However, recording and
transmitting in family circles differ from creating a unified history,
and also differ from activism geared at public recognition of
genocide. Yaqu’s book was written at a time when non-Muslim
minorities of every kind were seeking to integrate in the Middle
East, and the issue therefore was to shift the blame from Middle
Eastern actors to those outside of the region.
In the meantime, both the regional and the global stage have
changed considerably, leading to the creation of a strong diaspora
of Syriac Christians. This new transnational community tends to
compare and if possible fuse the histories of the various Syriac
communities, being inspired by the successes of Armenian activists.
This new transnational community also addresses a public as much
outside as inside the Middle East, once again seeking help from
institutions similar to those that failed them in 1915 and in 1933:
the United Nations as the successor of the League of Nations, the

36

Murre-van den Berg, ‘Light from the East’.

12. WRITING ASSYRIAN HISTORY

251

European Union and the individual governments of countries
around the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Attar, Kerim. ‘The Minorities of Iraq During the Period of the
Mandate, 1920–1932’. (Columbia University, PhD thesis,
1967).
bar Malek Ismael, Yaqu. ĆWRUć\Ĕ Z-WUĔ\ SOćxĔ WʦLOD\Ĕ, KG ĆWRUć\Ĕ PHQ
1914 hal 1945 [The Assyrians and the Two World Wars, that is, the
Assyrians between 1914 and 1945]. (Tehran: Literary Production
of the Assyrian Youth, 1964).
d’Barzane, Awdisho. The Age of Hardship: The Battle of Deraboun and
the Atrocity of Simile. (Private publication, no place/date/year).
Translation of kLQQĔ G-DxTXWć 4UćEć G-Dayrabun w-*XQʚć G6LPĔOĔ. Assyrian Academic Society Press. 1st ed. 1993; 2nd ed.
(Chicago 2003 or 2004).
de Bait Mar Shimun, Surma. Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder
of Mar Shimun. (Vehicle Editions, 1983).
Becker, Adam. Revival and Awakening: Christian Mission, Orientalism,
and the American Evangelical Roots of Assyrian Nationalism (1834–
1906). (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015).
Coakley, J.F. The Church of the East and the Church of England: A
History of The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
Donabed, Sargon George. Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the
Assyrians in the Twentieth Century. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2015).
Giwargis, Ashur. ‘The Assyrian Liberation Movement and the
French Intervention (1919–1922)’. http://www.aina.org/
articles/almatfi.htm. (last seen 25/3/16).
Goldstein-Sabbah, Sasha and H. Murre-van den Berg, (eds.).
Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the
Middle East. (Leiden: Leiden Studies in Islam and Society, Brill,
2016).
Hellot-Bellier, Florence. Chroniques de massacres annoncés: Les AssyroChaldéens d’Iran en du Hakkari face aux ambition des empire, 1896–
1920. (Paris: Geuthner, 2014).

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Husry, Khaldun S. ‘The Assyrian Affair of 1933’. International
Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974), 161–176 (I) and 344–360
(II).
Jakob, Joachim. Ostsyrische Christen und Kurden im Osmanischen Reich
des 19. und frühen 20.Jahrhunderts. (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2014).
Joseph, John. The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with
Western Christian Missions, Archeologists, and Colonial Powers.
(Leiden: Brill, 2000).
Kellogg, Sarah Baker. “Ritual Sounds, Political Echoes: Vocal
Agency and the Sensory Cultures of Secularism in the Dutch
Syriac Diaspora.” American Ethnologist 42/3 (2015), 431–445.
Malek, Yusuf. The British Betrayal of the Assyrians. Chicago: Joint
Action of The Assyrian National Federation and The Assyrian
National League of America, 1935.
Murre-van den Berg, Heleen. ‘Light from the East (1948–1954) and
the De-Territorialization of the Assyrian Church of the East’.
In Wim Hofstee and Arie van der Kooij (eds.) Religion beyond
its Private Role in Modern Society. (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Petrosian, Vahram. ‘Assyrians in Iraq’. Iran & the Caucasus 10/1
(2006), pp. 113–148.
Rassam, Suha. Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Developments to the
Present Day. (London: Gracewing, 2005).
Solomon, Solomon. ‘1933: The Assyrians of Khabur, Syria’. Nineveh
Magazine. (http://www.atour.com/history/1900/20001011b.
html. (last seen 25/3/16).
Stafford, Ronald S. The Tragedy of the Assyrians. (London, 1935).
Wigram, William A. Our Smallest Ally. (London, 1920).
––––––– The Assyrians and their Neighbours. (London, 1929).
Wilmshurst, David. The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the
East. (London: East & West Publishing, 2011).
Yacoub, Claire Weibel. Surma l’Assyrio-Chaldéene (1883–1975) dans la
tourmente de Mésopotamie. (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2007).
Zubaida, Sami. ‘Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians’. Nations
and Nationalism 6, no. 3 (2000), pp. 363–382.

13. ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS IN IRAQ,
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND
TRANSNATIONAL CHRISTIAN
ADVOCACY (1920S–1940S) 1
HANNELORE MÜLLER
The League of Nations played for Assyrian Christians a far more
important role than for any other religious minority in Iraq. Yet,
our view on this much-entangled history of over two decades is
dominated so far by the official narrative of Mar Shimun XXIII.
Eshai and his followers, by the perspectives of British employees of
the Mandate administration, inter alia Cecil J. Edmonds and Ronald
S. Stafford, and by Anglican clergyman such as William A. Wigram.
The aim of my article is to bring back the League of Nations (LN)
in her own voice into the historiography of the Church of the East
with a focal point on transnational advocacy on behalf of others.
For Assyrian Christians from Iraq since the 1920s, several
personalities from ecclesiastical and political circles mainly from
Britain, but also from the United States and Switzerland, intervened
This article, which is based on post-doctoral research
(Habilitationsschrift), is an expanded version of my presentation at the
conference Sayfo 1915. An International Conference on the Genocide of
Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War organized by the Department
of Semitic and Arabic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and The
Inanna Foundation, Enschede Netherlands, 24–28 June 2015. For their
generous invitation and great hospitality, I would like to thank especially
Prof. Shabo Talay and his staff from the department and as well Soner
Onder from the Inanna Foundation.
1

253

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

frequently with varying success. While this transnational support,
especially from the Anglican Church’s centre in Lambeth Palace is
commonly known, the issue was not yet addressed systematically.
To begin with, the first part of my article draws the main hubs and
layers of this conjunctural transnational network for Assyrian
Christians. The second part deals with three crucial chapters, in
which the LN played a significant role for Assyrian Christians. The
first related to the dispute over the border between Turkey and
Iraq before the LN in Geneva in 1924/25, which was accompanied
by comparatively moderate interventions behind the stage. A
second and more masterful advocacy campaign followed the new
Treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Iraq in June 1930.
Since the Treaty contained no special provisions for minority rights
and protection especially Gilbert Murray, the renowned classicist
from Oxford and Vice-President of the League of Nations Union
(LNU) was deeply concerned. Thus, the British advocacy network
mobilized quickly. Its activities entailed the well-known expedition
of Hormuzd Rassam to Iraq, domestic media campaigns and, not
least, interventions with the British government and the LN. This
time, the activists beyond borders were more successful than in
1925: In May 1932, the Iraqi government signed the compulsory
declaration of guarantees to end the Mandate regime and gain full
sovereignty. Yet the massacre of the Iraqi military against Assyrian
Christians in summer 1933, known as the Simele massacre, brought
the British government and even more the LN under great
international moral pressure, since they consented to the
termination of the Mandate regime in Iraq despite great resistance.
Subsequently, the LN undertook the resettlement of the Assyrian
Christians from Iraq. However, this was a unique project in
Geneva, since the Council had never assumed such a task. Again,
the LNU was deeply involved in this episode, this time mainly
through her longstanding president, Lord Robert Cecil.
Altogether, my article aims to underline the need to
incorporate international dimensions into the history of religions,
since this neglected perspective provides significant explanations
for the history of the Assyrian Christians during the interwar
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TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY
Investigations on transnational advocacy as part of the political
process are still at an early stage, since the activities and influence
of pressure groups in world politics were largely ignored by
political analysts. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink published
in 1998 the first seminal work under the title, Activists beyond Borders.
Advocacy Networks in International Politics. They proposed the
existence of principled values and ideas at the core of transnational
advocacy networks (TAN) which nongovernmental actors can
introduce into political debates. When they succeed, they can gain
leverage over governments and their decisions. In any case, TANs
are relevant players in the political arena. Keck and Sikkink provide
a set of analytical tools concerning members of TANs, the reasons
for their emergence, and how they function. Over time,
transnational advocacy comprised several aims and purposes, such
as human rights, world order, peace, women rights, environment,
and anti-corruption. Its forms differ widely and can comprise many
activities that a person or organization undertakes, often on behalf
of others, to influence governments through activities such as
media campaigns, public speaking, publishing research, and direct
lobbying. Meanwhile, publications on transnational advocacy,
concerning mainly the period since the second half of the 20th
century, are abundant. Their focus is on the development of
national and international non-governmental organizations as
secular institutions leaving actors or organizations with religious
background or objectives outside.
Yet, transnational religious advocacy has a much longer
historical tradition and it concerned very often minorities. From
the middle of the 19th century, former religious activists in world
politics were replaced by secular colleagues and organisations
because of civil and political emancipation. International law
remained an important means to ensure the interests and successes
of transnational advocacy, if obtained. Thus, transnational
advocacy for Assyrian Christians was not an outstanding
phenomenon, but part of a much wider and historically evolving
process in world politics.

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DRAWING THE MAIN HUBS AND LAYERS OF THE
TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORK FROM THE
1920S TO THE 1940S 2
During these two decades, the Church of the East had powerful
spokespersons abroad, mainly in ecclesiastical and political circles
in Britain. Without this support from abroad, her history after the
end of the Ottoman Empire would have evolved in a different way.
The central hub of this TAN were the Archbishops of Canterbury,
Randall Thomas Davidson (1848–1930) and Cosmo Gordon Lang
(1864–1945). Davidson served from 1903 to 1928 and Cosmo
Lang from 1928 to 1942. They, as well as other Anglican clergy
such as George K. A. Bell (1883–1958), Bishop of Chichester,
intervened frequently with the British government and assumed the
patronage of several relief committees and financial appeals for
Assyrian Christians.
Inter-church relations between the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Church of the East date back to the 1840s, when the
Ottoman Empire fell into an international race of Western
missionary societies. Additionally, priests of the Church of the East
requested and received ecclesiastical aid from the Church of
England. Finally, in the 1880s the Archbishop’s Mission to the
Assyrian Christians was established with its headquarters in Urmia,
Iran. Later, due to various local political reasons, the dependencies
in Qodchanis, today Konak, Turkey, and Bibaydi near Amadiya,
Iraq, remained its operating centres. Having no formal constitution
or regular organization this inter-church aid work operated until
1912, when Catholicos Mar Shimun XXI. Benjamin (1861–1903)
announced the breakaway of his church from the Church of
England in favour of an alliance with the Russian Church. After the
end of World War I, Surma d’Bayt Mar Shimun (1883–1975), sister
of the murdered Catholicos Mar Shimun Benjamin and aunt of the
upcoming Mar Shimun XXIII Eshai, established a renewed
Since for most personalities mentioned here biographical research
is lacking so far, a sound analysis of their network cannot be given.
Further basic (archival) research is needed, especially concerning their
interrelations and joint activities and interventions for Assyrian Christians.
2

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257

relationship with Lambeth Palace. Subsequently, in the new
political era attempts were made to resume the Archbishop’s
Mission, partially in conjunction with the Episcopal Church of
New York. But this aid work never reached the pre-war level, not
least because the leadership of the Church of the East requested
above all political rather than ecclesiastical support. However, the
Archbishop of Canterbury was not willing to give such assistance,
and this meant a continuous deterioration of their longstanding
inter-church relations. In 1938, Cosmo Cantuar incorporated the
scant remains of the Assyrian Mission into the Jerusalem and East
Mission of the Church of England, which existed until 1950, when
this institution was suspended for good. 3
A further important yet scarcely known hub of the TAN for
Assyrian Christians was the League of Nations Union, especially its
key figures Robert Cecil and Gilbert Murray, ‘the two British civic
servants most devoted to the organization of peace’. 4 The LNU
was a highly influential organization and popular mass movement
in inter-war Britain, which over the years gave staunch support to
the LN as the main institution and instrument for building stable
collective security and peace. The LNU spent large vigour to
transform British society into a pillar of this ‘experiment’ in
international organization and to educate British people toward
accepting internationalism. Its greatest success was the so-called
Peace Ballot of 1934/35, when over eleven and a half million
people voted in favour of the policy of the LN and collective
disarmament. For the LNU, the international system of minority
protection of the LN was another affair of the heart, since it saw
violation of minority rights generally as a threat to peace and world
order if these were not upheld. 5 This stance recurred constantly
See J. F. Coakley, The Church of the East, 1992.
Salvador de Madariaga, Gilbert Murray and the League, p. 178.
5 This central issue of the LNU has been scarcely explored so far.
The focus of research has been mainly on her importance in domestic
policy. Cf. Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations;
Donald S. Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918–1945; Peter F. Barty. The
League of Nations Union between the Wars; Henry R. Winkler. The League of
Nations Movement in Great Britain.
3
4

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throughout the yearbooks of the LNU: ‘It is essential to a lasting
peace that the rights of Minorities should be guaranteed, and that it
should be recognized (as stated by the British Foreign Secretary at
the Council of the League in March 1931) that “questions
concerning the application of the Minorities Treaties are
international questions, in which all have a common duty and
common interest.”’ 6
The renowned Lord Robert Cecil (1864–1958) was a maverick
British politician and descendant of a well-known aristocratic
family which brought forth four British prime ministers, among
whom was his father, the great conservative Robert A. T.
Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury (1830–1903). Robert Cecil worked
many years as a lawyer before being elected to Parliament in 1906.
He acted in Lloyd George’s wartime Cabinet as Defence Minister
(1916–1918) and campaigned passionately after 1916 for the
founding of the LN. Cecil was a member of the British delegation
to the Paris Peace Conference, where he carried the brunt of the
British negotiations on issues concerning the LN. After 1920, Cecil
was continuously present in Geneva until 1927, either as an
assembly delegate for South Africa, as a British delegate to the
Assembly or as a representative to the Council. From 1923 to 1945
he was the Joint President of the LNU. Under his political vision,
this NGO became by far the most influential organized civil
movement and pressure group claiming to be an ‘all-party’
organization, focusing on a single goal: collective security through
the internationalism of the LN. 7
Gilbert Murray (1866–1957), a second key-figure of the LNU,
had a distinguished career as a classical scholar in Oxford,
becoming the Regius Professor for Greek and in Glasgow but also
as a diplomat in international efforts. He was a renowned British
public intellectual and activist and became chairman of the
LNU, The League of Nations Union Year Book 1933, p. 66.
Cecil himself made no allusions to his engagement for Assyrian
Christians in his autobiographical publications A Great Experiment (1941)
and All the Way (1949). In general cf. Gaynor Johnson, Lord Robert Cecil:
Politician and Internationalist (2013). The dissertation of Maja Bachofen, Lord
Robert Cecil und der Völkerbund (1959) does not meet scholarly standards.
6
7

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Executive Committee of the LNU. His liberalism, rooted in
classical Greek culture, was not rarely deemed to be naively
optimistic. Despite or precisely for that reason, Murray acted as a
substitute member of the British delegation for South Africa to the
Assembly from 1921 to 1924 and chaired the Plenary Committee
of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC)
of the LN from 1928 to 1940. 8
In the second half of the 1920s, during the heyday of the
LNU Murray became closely associated with the termination of the
British Mandate in Iraq. Since the new treaty between Britain and
Iraq in June 1930 secured no special minority rights for the period
after the Mandate, Murray was quite upset. Thus, the LNU
launched a broad advocacy campaign to influence the British
government and the LN, which contained not only Hormuzd
Rassam’s expedition to Iraq in the first half of 1930, but also direct
lobbying in London and Geneva. Even though this campaign
caused internal grievances in the LNU and took an unexpected
turn, it can be deemed an indirect success: the Iraqi government
signed a special compulsory declaration of guarantees for
minorities in May 1932.
Beside Cecil’s and Murray’s commitment to minorities also
Willoughby Dickinson (1859–1943) must be mentioned, even if he
stood rather on the margins of the cause of the Assyrian Christians.
Dickinson, nowadays almost forgotten, was a lawyer and renowned
Liberal parliamentarian in the service of women’s suffrage. With
Aneurin Williams he led the League of Nations Society before it
merged into the LNU in 1918. Dickinson, an Anglican with deep
religious conviction, became Secretary-General, later President of
the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through
the Churches (WA), an ecumenical association of Protestant and
free churches from Europe and the United States. The WA set for
itself the target to prevent future wars, to shape international public
opinion, and build a new political world order through inter-church
Murray’s outstanding prolific work and life has been rediscovered
in recent years. Cf. Christopher Stray ed., Gilbert Murray Reassessed.
Hellenism, Theatre and International Politics (2007). The standard biographical
work is still Duncan Wilson, Gilbert Murray OM (1866–1957).
8

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

friendship. Dickinson, as well a member of the LNU, Chairman of
her Minorities Committee and eventually President of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies (IFLNS), was a
most active British internationalist in the 1920s and 1930s, drawing
on extensive minority rights work. 9 He gave much of his time and
wealth in organizing meetings of church leaders. He travelled
tirelessly through Europe, yet did not reach the mileage of his
contemporary John Mott (1865–1955), whose journeys are
reported to be the equivalent of 68 tours around the world
altogether. 10 The Assyrian Christians were also on the agenda of
the WA. Like the LNU, the WA set up a special committee for
them, but in the mid-1930s arrived at the conclusion that nothing
more could be done for their cause.
Beside these individual, yet close interconnected hubs the
TAN for Assyrian Christians was booted in acute situations into a
second layer of activity, which included the founding of relief
committees, media campaigns, public speaking, publishing of
appeals, articles and books, and not least collecting funds. Most of
these supporters had direct connections to the Assyrian Christians,
such as the Anglicans William A. Wigram (1872–1953) and Francis
N. Heazell. Wigram headed the Archbishop’s Mission from 1902
to 1912 and remained a faithful and passionate advocate of the
Church of the East until his death. As a man on the scene he
provided an important direct connection between Assyrian
Christians and Lambeth Palace; he was kept in London at a
distance, since he was convinced about the broken British pledge
to the Assyrian Christians to support their return to the Hakkari
region. 11 Wigram, a prolific writer on the Church of the East, 12

Investigations have rediscovered him only in recent years. Cf.
Daniel Gorman, ‘Ecumenical Internationalism. Willoughby Dickinson,
the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting
International Friendship through the Churches’, pp. 51–73.
10 Basil Mathews, John Mott: World Citizen, p. 137.
11 Cf. e.g. his contribution ‘A Discussion on the Assyrian Problem’
in Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 21, (1934: 38–57).
9

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made with Our Smallest Ally from 1920 a major contribution to the
longevity of the narrative of the commitment of the British
government to the Assyrian Christians. For years, Wigram and his
entourage kept alive this argument and refreshed it often as moral
blackmail, though special commissions of inquiry could never
found any official or semi-official files or documents supporting
such a pledge of the British government. All in all, Wigram was a
meritorious public spokesperson for the Assyrian Christians,
though later considerably slowed in his advocacy since the end of
the 1930s, when the Archbishop of Canterbury embarked on a
policy of distancing itself from the Church of the East.
Francis N. Heazell, closely aligned with Wigram, felt
intimately linked to the Church of the East. He was in Iraq in
service over five years for the Archbishop’s Mission as its
organizing secretary, but gained little success in establishing a
permanent school in Tiyari. Heazell finally resigned and returned in
1903 to England. 13 There, he was often active in public relations
for the Church of the East. 14
Along with Wigram and Heazell, several other supporters
were involved with aid committees and appeals for Assyrian
Christians. Among these were Captain George F. Gracey,
Lieutenant-Colonel and Ronald S. Stafford, both veterans who had
served in Iraq. Gracey was a British Army officer, who according
to the official narrative of the Assyrian Christians, enticed them
into the war on behalf of the Allies with the promise of support
after the end of war. Colonel Ronald S. Stafford (1890–1972)
E.g. An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church or the Church of
the Sassanid Persian Empire 100–640 A.D. (1910), The Assyrians and their
Neighbours (1929).
13 Coakley, The Church of the East, pp. 250–253.
14 He edited in 1913 the volume Kurds and Christians, which entailed
letters, narratives of journeys and documents pertaining to the
Archbishop’s Mission. He was later again in Britain. In March 1934, one
month after the anonymous The Assyrian Tragedy appeared, Heazell
published The Woes of a Distressed Nation Being an Account of the Assyrian
People from 1914 to 1934 reminding the British public opinion of the
‘Assyrian question’.
12

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

worked until 1934 as Administrative Inspector in Mosul. Of great
importance as well was Arnold T. Wilson (1884–1940), Acting Civil
Commissioner in Iraq from 1917 to 1920. He was also a member
of the LNU and supported Hormuzd Rassam in his preparation of
the petition to the LN from September 1930. The details of this
story are given below.
It is striking that Percy Z. Cox (1864–1937), the first British
High Commissioner in Mandated Iraq (1920–1923) and hence very
familiar with the ‘Assyrian question’, never joined the circle of
British Iraq veterans in support of the Church of the East. Unlike
A. T. Wilson he never held a lecture on Assyrian Christians and his
name is never to be found amongst the several members of aid
committees or appeals over the years.
Lastly, among the TAN for Assyrian Christians, two remote
clergymen must be named. On the list of British aid committees we
find William C. Emhardt (1874–1950), Secretary of the Protestant
Episcopal Church of the United States, which oversaw the
Archbishop’s Mission after its suspension before the First World
War. After Emhardt’s visit to Iraq in 1924 the Episcopal Church
deployed a priest and laymen to the Assyrian Christians. In 1926,
Emhardt published as co-author The Oldest Christian People. History
and Traditions of the Assyrian People and the Fateful History of the
Nestorian Church, which had a similar emotional importance in
influencing public opinion, as that of the above-mentioned publications of Wigram or Heazell. As a means of identification, Abraham
was introduced as ‘an Assyrian who had crossed the River
Euphrates, seeking grass and better conditions in Canaan’. Assyrian
Christians, even reduced to a ‘small people’, were presented as ‘the
most substantial hope for the conversion of Islam that looms upon
the horizons today’. 15
The second remoter clergyman to be mentioned was the Swiss
ecumenicist Adolf Keller (1872–1963). Since the 1920s, he had
been very committed to refugee work for Armenians, Chaldeans,
and Assyrian Christians from the former Ottoman Empire. Keller,
The Oldest Christian People (1926): 10.136. Emhardt was a prominent
figure in ecumenical relations between Anglicans and Orthodox
Christians, as well as Anglican and Old Catholics.
15

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also a member of the Minority Committee of the IFLNS,
intervened for Assyrian Christians with the LN, mostly with regard
to refugee issues. 16
Most members of the sketched TAN for the Church of the
East were motivated by Christian solidarity in view of a persecuted
minority under Islam. Yet it is striking that their advocacy was
never directed towards the Catholic Chaldeans. Were they not also
under this supposed threat?
The Church of England shared common ideas about Assyrian
Christians and tried to influence political decision makers, which
were often prepared at least to listen, if not to help. For most of
them, the tiny minority of Assyrian Christians, alleged heirs of a
great Assyrian past and the ‘oldest Christian people’, according to
Emhardt, needed general support, since they were threatened with
annihilation by the Arabo-Islamic majority. These foreign
advocates never scrutinized this position. They contemplated that
advocacy on behalf of others is a two-edged sword, since
interventions and public campaigns meant not only harmless wellmeaning support, but also a disrupter of the fragile relations of
minorities with their majorities and with governments as well.
Unfortunately, this transnational support fostered not only the
official modern narrative of Assyrian Christians as an eternal
persecuted minority lapsing into damnatio memoriae periods of
fruitful coexistence with Muslims, but as well their problematic
Assyrian ethnic ancestry. This one-sided view failed to recognize
that at the heart of every relationship between minorities and majorities are specific dynamics of power which cannot be reduced to a
unilateral religious-polemical dimension. It also failed to recognize
the underlying rhetoric of group distinction and demarcation which
all minorities use to determine and uphold their identity. Since the
leaders of the Church of the East could safely count on this moral
and financial sustenance from abroad, they saw no need to
accommodate the new era after 1918, but rather insisted on the
continuation of old-fashioned religio-political traditions.

His engagement for Assyrian Christians is omitted in Marianne
Jehle-Wildberger, Adolf Keller. Pionier der ökumenischen Bewegung (1872–1963).
16

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TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY IN ACTION
Gentle Beginnings: The Dispute over Mosul Province or the
Iraqi-Turkish Frontier before the League of Nations
(1924–1925)
Negotiations between Great Britain and Turkey during the
Lausanne Conference in 1922/23 did not lead to an understanding
concerning Mosul Province. The parties to the dispute conceived
the issue very differently. The Turkish government claimed the
whole of Mosul Province as part of Turkey, while for the British
government only the matter of frontier delineation along the
northern edge of the Mosul Province was at stake. Thus, the Treaty
of Lausanne of July 1923 stipulated in Article 3 paragraph 2 that
this contentious topic should be negotiated subsequently and, if no
agreement could be reached, the conflict should be referred to the
LN for arbitration. This was the status quo in summer 1924.
From the archival sources of the LN, apparently only a
moderate intervention for the Assyrian Christians evolved in this
Mosul dispute. Two days after a meeting of the World Alliance on
September 15th, 1924 in Geneva Willoughby Dickinson asked Eric
Drummond, the Secretary General of the LN, in the ‘interest of
Christianity’ to bear in mind the serious results which may occur
for some Assyrian Christians if their deserted homelands (Hakkari
region) were placed outside the British mandated territory. 17 In
light of the zealous engagement of the World Alliance with
minority issues, this single letter from Dickinson was for sure not
the complete story. 18
However, the number of petitions concerning the Mosul
dispute in Geneva was outweighed by the Assyrian Christians
themselves. A detailed analysis of these bulky materials, which
United Nations Office Geneva Library, League of Nations
Archives (hereinafter UNOGL, LNA), R605 (C.520.1924.VII).
18 Further chapters might reveal British archives. Dam Harmjan
deals in his dissertation – Der Weltbund für Freundschaftsarbeit der Kirchen
1914–1948 only with the regional conferences of the World Alliance. The
study of Stefan Grotefeld, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze is focused mainly on
the biography of this German pioneer of the WA.
17

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265

peaked in the 1930s, lies outside the scope of this article.
Nevertheless, these petitions must be mentioned insofar as they
increased highly the density of the advocacy network, which
according to Keck and Sikkink can alter the prospects of success.
For the leading tribes of the Assyrian Christians this hope did not
materialize, since Geneva assigned their ancient homeland, the
Hakkari district, to Turkey, and not to Iraq. After this final decision
of December 1925 a return to the Hakkari region was for them out
of reach. After that, on February 14th, 1926, most of the heads of
their tribes forwarded a petition to the British High Commissioner
in Baghdad, Henry Dobbs (1923–1929). This document is of great
importance because it entails that argument which foreshadows the
subsequent course of events. Most Assyrian Christians were
absolutely determined not to remain in Iraq and asked therefore to
be resettled on a British territory abroad:
But on the 17th of December 1925 we learned that the League
of Nations declared Mosul for Iraq under the British Mandate
with its temporary boundary, and that our land was to remain
in the Turkish Territories, so by learning this, our hopes were
frustrated. While this is fact, now our mind is not changed and
our requests are the same first one which has been submitted
to your Excellency, i.e. either our small lands under British
Mandate, to be returned in any possible way, if not, we beg to
immigrate us to any of the British Colonies where the climate
and water would suit us, and where we would be relieved from
our anxieties, miseries and dark future, because in Iraq we
cannot live in any way. 19

Considering this last paragraph, it is easy to understand why the
several attempts to resettle the Assyrian Christians in Iraq were
bound to fail. Their strong desire for immigration documented
UNOGL, LNA R610. The beginning of the cited text contradicts
J. Joseph’s assertion that the decision of the LN from 16 December 1925
was not communicated to the Assyrian Christians. Inaccurate is also his
assertion that they ‘looked naively to the day when their wrongs would be
righted by the British mandatory’ (The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East,
2000, p. 185).
19

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

since 1926 questions as well the ubiquitous argument, that
persecution forced them to leave Iraq. While this is true for the
massacre of August 1933, it should not be overlooked that
Assyrian Christians were as well active agents of their history, and
not only passive victims, as often described in the literature.
The petition of the Assyrian Christians from February 1926,
the first to reach Geneva from Iraq, was stamped in the Political
Section with the words ‘no action’. This outcome remains
incomprehensible, since petitions were regularly transferred to the
Mandates Commission, like those of Malik Cambar Warda (1890–
1969), leader of the Jilu tribe, 20 who bombarded the LN with
petitions. In his letters from September 8th, 11th, and 25th and
October 27th, 1924, he asked for a direct protectorate under foreign
Christian tutelage, underlining the entitlement of Assyrian
Christians to the Mosul Province. Malik Cambar continued his
petitioning work into 1925, addressing Eric Drummond (February
24th, September 1st and December 20th), Östen Undén, the Swedish
Foreign Minister and leading member of the Mosul Committee
(September 26th) and the Permanent Court of International Justice
in Den Haag (September 25th, 1925). 21
Meanwhile, in London, the first transnational advocacy
campaign for Assyrian Christians was underway. Archbishop of
Canterbury Randall Davidson threw in his weight with a letter to
Prime Minister Baldwin on September 28th, 1925, reminding the
British government of her (moral) obligation towards Assyrian
He gained in 1918 from the French Mandate administration the
promise for an autonomous protectorate in the Syrian ۛazĪra region. This
French counter-solution remained a short episode (1920–1922), since it
did not appeal widely to the Assyrian Christians from Iraq. After this
French adventure Malik Cambar joined comrades in Lebanon, and moved
later to France, where he became associated with Aga Petros and Gorek
de Kerboran, another constant petitioner to the LN.
21 UNOGL, LNA R605. Letters from Malik Cambar are published
in La question Assyro-Chaldéenne et la Société des Nations. Rapports et documents.
As might be expected, Malik Cambar was in the 1930s again very active in
Geneva trying to increase with petitions the moral pressure on the
decision-makers.
20

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Christians, who should not be sacrificed to economic or political
interests. 22 Leo Amery, Colonial Secretary of the conservative
Baldwin government (1924–1929) and British deputy in the Mosul
negotiations in Geneva, engaged immediately in private support of
the Assyrian Christians. He felt somehow uneasy, since he failed to
secure the Hakkari district for them, as he recounts in his diary. On
October 13th, 1925, Amery asked Sir Henry Lunn (1859–1939),
founder of the renowned British travel agency and editor of Review
of the Churches, if he could bring in the churches behind him to
strengthen his position in Geneva. Lunn agreed and promptly
became a fervent advocate for Iraqi Christians. He met with
Randall Davidson, Lord Robert Cecil, and other public figures and
gained several signatures for his aid appeal. 23 By October 27th, 1925
Lunn managed to establish an aid committee for Iraq. At its first
meeting, more than one hundred persons were present, among
others Surma d’Mar Shimun and Willoughby Dickinson. By March
1926 the Assyrians and Iraq Christians Committee and its appeal
could collect £22,000. 24
A first indirect success: The Declaration of guarantees of the
Iraqi government of May 1932
Unlike during the Mosul dispute in 1924–25, international British
advocacy had more success in the 1930s, though indirectly. A new
advocacy campaign was triggered by the announcement of the
British government in November 1929 to terminate the Mandate
regime in Iraq. The Treaty of Alliance between Britain and Iraq of
June 1930 alarmed British supporters, since it did not contain any
special provisions for the treatment of racial and religious
‘Christians in Iraq’, The Times, 3rd October 1925.
The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Francis
Bourne (1903–1935) expressed his sympathy and recommended Lady
Sykes and Mr. Ward as Catholic representatives for the appeal.
24 Of this, £10,000 each were for the Assyrian Christians and the
Chaldean Church, and £2,000 for Presbyterians. Nearing Harbour. The Log
of Sir Henry S. Lunn, pp. 211–220. Coakley paid rather little attention to
this Committee and its appeal of 1925–26 (The Church of the East, p. 353),
while J. John does not mention it at all (Modern Assyrians).
22
23

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minorities. The LNU was greatly concerned by this. After internal
mobilization, she started a multi-layered advocacy campaign for
minority rights in Iraq. In a next step, her members made every
effort to exert influence and/or pressure on political decisionmakers through petitions, letters, and direct lobbying. In a third
step, they proceeded to mobilize public opinion through appeals
and to put more pressure upon key politicians.
Internal mobilization
During the first advocacy step, the expedition of Anthony H.
Rassam to northern Iraq from January to June 1930 was of
outstanding importance. Rassam’s expedition, which appears in the
literature out of nowhere and disappears just as suddenly, regains
an own right of meaning, when being contextualized as a staged
action in the transnational advocacy campaign of the LNU.
But why this expedition? The LN was often criticized for her
handling of minority issues, since it lacked in general direct and
reliable information about them. The LNU and the World Alliance,
both firm pressure groups for the international system of minority
protection of the LN, supplied Geneva as often as possible with
information from the ground. The WA was particularly well
positioned for this assignment, since Willoughby Dickinson had
direct contacts with several ecclesiastical figures from minority
groups all over Europe. However, for Iraq, such channels did not
exist. Thus, to give greater weight to the concern of the LNU,
updated information of the real state of affairs was needed. A
suitable candidate was found in Anthony Hormuzd Rassam (1883–
?), Captain, Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), son of the
renowned Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910) from Mosul, a close
friend of Henry Layard, who worked for Britain as a very
successful archaeologist and made a diplomatic career in Aden and
Abyssinia.
According to Rassam’s masterly official self-expression he
went to Iraq in January 1930 with the task to collect first-hand
information from and about the Iraqi minorities, free from
‘Oriental exaggeration’. On July 11th, 1930, after his return to

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London, he founded the Iraq Minorities (Non-Moslem) Rescue
Committee ‘as a consequence of the consternation felt by these
Peoples when the proposal to terminate the Mandate in 1932 was
made known’. 25 To no surprise, Rassam was the chairman of this
new aid committee, which had initially as patrons The Earl of
Iddesleigh, Henry Stafford (1901–1970), Willoughby Dickinson,
and Edith Davidson of Lambeth, wife of the former Archbishop of
Canterbury. 26 Members were Hugh Seymour Hall (1869–1940),
Trustee and Honorary Treasurer, Lieutenant-Col. W. B. Lane,
Trustee, and H. E. Hollands, Secretary. 27
Public appeals
After its foundation, the Iraq Minorities Committee launched a
public campaign which lasted over one year and comprised the
publication of several articles in The Times, The Manchester Guardian,
Church Times, and other newspapers, but also public speeches, and
not least public appeals for financial aid. On August 1st in The Times
and again on August 9th in The Spectator, Rassam warned against the
Treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Iraq. One year later,
on July 11th, 1931, Seymour Hall and W. B. Lane appealed in The
Times to the conscience of all Christians to engage with the
minorities from Iraq. A. H. Rassam let his voice again be heard on
October 26th, 1931. 28
In addition to this public appearance with the objective to
mobilize and influence public opinion, but also to attract
UNOGL, LNA R2317Jacket4, 59–60. This appeal of August 17th,
1931, and correspondence with the Colonial Office (CO 730/163/2) are
published in Minorities in the Middle East. Assyrian Communities in the Levant
and Iraq 1880–1938 I. vol. 7 ed. Bejtullah Destani (2007: 333–342).
26 Their names were given only with the first appeal of the
committee in January 1931. Initially, Cosmo Cantuar sustained Rassam’s
campaign as well, but he later dissociated from him after having received
negative information about his activities in Iraq.
27 Hall and Lane were also members of the Iraq Committee of the
LNU (for further details see below).
28 He published also ‘The Non-Arab Minorities in Iraq’ (1931: 564–
569).
25

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donations, the Iraq Minorities Committee published the
aforementioned appeals. Apparently, there were three in total
dating January 27th, 29 August 17th, and October 1st, 1931. 30
The first appeal mentions the co-operation with the Assyrian
Relief Committee from the American Episcopal Church. Emhardt
gives two objectives of this Committee in an earlier lecture on
October 1st, 1930, entitled ‘The Present Conditions of Assyrians’.
Firstly, it should assist John B. Panfil, the reverend missionary of
the Episcopal Church in Mosul. The second objective was
To make an Appeal to the League of Nations in the name of
Assyrians, East Syrians, Jews, Chaldeans (Roman Catholics)
[sic] and Armenians, in the hope that they may be allotted a
territory under the protection of the League. This movement
has the sympathy of Lord Cecil and many others in public life
including Mr. Eppstein the representative of Cardinal Bourne
at the League. 31

The first task of the Iraq Minorities Committee, never mentioned
by Rassam, crumbled soon, likely because John B. Panfil and the
Mar Shimuns had parted ways since the second half of 1931. 32
Jerusalem and East Mission, 1984, vol. 3, Box 81, Nos.1.1.
Nelida Fuccaro published this appeal in The Modern Middle East,
pp. 239–243.
31 Confidential US State Department Post Records, Iraq 1925–1941
(hereinafter CUSDPR, Iraq 1925–1941), 12/0244, Department of State,
Washington Wallace Murray to Alexander Sloan, Bagdad, 5 November 1930,
Enclosure, 2. John Eppstein (1895–1988) founded the Catholic Council on
International Relations and was an official figure of the LNU (Assistant
Secretary). Later he became Private Secretary to Lord Robert Cecil.
32 Panfil had been in Iraq with Enoch Applegate since September
1925. Their task was ‘to promote better relations between the Arabic
people and government; to establish schools in the villages and Mosul; to
distribute medicine in the villages affected with malaria; to organize some
industrial work for the needy’. (Jerusalem and East Mission Archive London,
1984, vol. 3, Box 82 Nos. 1.2, 23 January 1933). Panfil conducted 29
schools, one in Mosul, two in Baghdad and 26 in different villages. He
was in close touch with the Mar Shimuns, but a deep conflict arose in
29
30

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Together, these three appeals give good evidence for the
dynamics of internal and external mobilization. They also reveal the
above-mentioned two-edged character of transnational advocacy,
oscillating between reasonable (humanitarian) solidarity with and
harm to the affected minorities. 33 All the more problematic for
these international, Western European activists remained their
motivation and principles, mostly impacted by their own religious
and cultural worldviews and deemed to be superior to Islam and
the Near East in this case. Already the use of ‘non-Moslem’ and
‘rescue’ in the naming of Rassam’s committee reflects this critical
dimension. When going into detail, particularly the first appeal of
the committee on January 27th, 1931, was as much a testimony for
religious agitation against the Islamo-Arabic culture as the
following selected excerpts may reveal:
OUR ASSYRIAN ALLIES who settled in Iraq after the Great
War, under the protection of the British Flag, are to be handed
over, unarmed and helpless, to their hereditary enemies, the
Arabs. THEY WILL PERISH BY MASSACRE, DISSEASE
AND STARVATION UNLESS YOU HELP. […] Iraq is a
MOSLEM COUNTRY, and by Islamic Law laid down by
Mohammed in the Koran, and regarded as the unalterable law
of God by every Moslem, THERE CAN NEVER BE
1931 over questions of teaching Arabic and over the control and direction
of finances. Finally, Panfil terminated all support. After the Simele massacre,
the Iraqi government asked him to leave the country for good. Regardless
of these events, Panfil’s departure would have been a matter of time, since
in July 1933 the Near East Foundation decided to cancel its Iraq mission
(Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs Iraq
1930–1944, Reel 7, 890G.406 Assyrians/46, Barclay Acheson, Near East
Foundation and Wallace Murray, Chief Near Eastern Division Department of State,
28 July 1933).
33 This applies as well to transnational Jewish interventions, which
often complicated the local conditions of their co-religionists and their
relations with the government. Local Jewish leaders often pursued other,
even contrary, lines of action and refused advocacy from abroad, as the
Iraqi Jewish leaders had done before the termination of the Mandate
regime (see below for further details).

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HANNELORE MÜLLER
EQUAL CIVIL OR POLITICAL RIGHTS FOR NONMOSLEMS IN A MOSLEM COUNTRY. […] The need of
the Assyrians and that of other Christian minorities is urgent.
UNLESS THEY ARE SAVED NOW IT WILL BE
IMPOSSIBLE HEREAFTER TO HELP THEM, FOR
THEY WILL HAVE PERISHED FROM THE EARTH. 34

Apparently, this was too much of a good thing, since the Iraq
Minorities Committee refrained in her second and third appeal
from religious polemics and stressed the lineage of the Assyrian
Christians from the ‘once mighty Assyrian Empire’.
Direct interventions behind the scenes
These public appeals of 1931 were meant to intensify the
endeavours of the advocates to exert influence and/or pressure on
political decision-makers. Rassam submitted on September 23rd,
1930, his first petition to Geneva based on the collected materials
during his expedition to Iraq. The bundle of more than 80 pages
contain his own memorandum of 16 pages, five documents
concerning his qualifications and nomination as official
spokesperson for the minorities in Iraq, as well as petitions from
the affected ‘non-Moslem’ minorities allocating special points of
Rassam’s complaints. 35
This extensive petition is not only the most voluminous ever
sent by Assyrian Christians to the LN, but also the most
professional and unique of those which I have come across in the
archives of the LN. Its unusually formal and qualitatively high

34 Jerusalem

and East Mission Archive London, 1984, vol. 3, Box 81, Nos.

1.1.
Additionally, Rassam provided various letters from his cousin
Nimrod Rassam (8 August 1930), from Mar Shimun Eshai (March 1930, 9
April 1930, 27 April 1930, 4 July 1930, 28 July 1930, 30 August 1930),
from the Chaldean lawyer Abdullah Faiq Poless, from reverend John B.
Panfil (26 May 1930, 6 June 1930) and others. All in all, Rassam’s single
petition with related documents and correspondences cover five files in
the LNA.
35

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standard is most likely due to the help of Arnold T. Wilson, 36
former Acting Civil Commissioner in Iraq and member of the Iraq
Committee of the LNU. A. T. Wilson was deeply committed to the
cause of minorities, since he too saw that the LNU had a special
responsibility:
There are many in this country and elsewhere who believe in
the fundamental value of human personality and that racial
minorities have a contribution to make to the world. There are
many who hold that the best rough test of a civilization is its
treatment of such minorities. To press their claims does not
indicate a desire to set back the hands of the clock, but rather
to point the need for some balancing mechanism which will
help the wheels of national life to turn smoothly in the difficult
years ahead. 37

Yet, further transnational advocates were at work. John Eppstein,
mentioned above by Emhardt, handed over personally in Geneva a
private and confidential memorandum, ‘The Liquidation of the
British Mandate for Iraq and the Assyrian Question’. 38 What is
quite striking about his seventeen-page presentation is not only the
date of September 22nd, 1930, i.e. one day earlier than Rassam’s
petition, but all the more the letters and reports from Iraq,
mentioned by Eppstein in preparing his summary. His sources are
partly those which were submitted by Rassam. Obviously, there
must have been direct cooperation. Not surprisingly, Rassam’s and
Eppstein’s communications are almost of the same length, they
raise similar accusations and grievances. Both deplored the
conditions of Assyrian Christians and minorities in northern Iraq,
CO 730/163/1 Minutes, J. E. W. Flood, Colonial Office, to the Foreign
Office, 20 November 1931, in: Minorities in the Middle East, ed. Bejtullah
Destani (2007: 253).
37 “Peace in Iraq. The Protection of Minorities”, The Times, 22 May
1931. Yet, Wilson could not come into advocacy-action since he was on
the payroll of the Iraq Petroleum Company (CUSDPR, Iraq 1925–1941,
12/00243, Department of State, Washington No. 25 to Chargé d’Affaires Baghdad,
16 November 1931, Enclosure, Letter to Stuart Morgan 21 October 1931).
38 UNOGL, LNA R2316 Jacket1, 201–217.
36

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

which lived in such a desolate and miserable manner, that
immediate action was required by sending a commission of enquiry
to Iraq. Both authors were convinced that only a special regime of
protection could secure the immediate survival of the ‘AssyroChaldean nation’ in a delimited own territory.
Rassam’s voluminous petition was organized along five lines
of argumentation. His own memorandum (1) was followed by a
petition from eight Chaldeans and four leaders of sub-tribes of the
Assyrian Christians and another one from the leading chief of the
Yazidi, Sheikh Khidr, Sheikh Kalaf (spiritual chieftain) and Sheikh
Shiru (2), and by five letters from dignitaries who acknowledged
Rassam’s qualification as their spokesperson (3). 39 The next section
(4) entailed various documents in support of Rassam’s statement
about the main concerns and complaints of those Iraqi minorities
which he represented. These were:
a. Fear of reprisal
b. Impoverishment and disease
c. Unsatisfactory settlement of the Assyrians
d. Non-admission of Assyrians
e. Non-grant of local autonomy
f. Curtailment of religious and educational facilities
g. Insecurity of life and property
h. Inadequate representation in government and
Administration
i. Inadequate representation in judicial posts, and the
application of the Moslem-law to non-Moslems
j. Absence of any substitute for the former right of Christians
to appeal to Consular Authorities
k. Economic oppression
l. General persecution and oppression. 40

These were mainly those warrantors, whom Eppstein mentioned.
They are quite close to Eppstein, who listed under para. ‘III.
Recent and Present Hardships’ the following points: ‘Legal Inequality,
Financial and Economic Oppression, Educational Difficulties, Sanitary
Neglect, Civic Inequality, and Insecurity of life’.
39
40

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275

In section 5 Rassam proposed a permanent and peaceful settlement
in the Mosul province. Without European support the Iraqi
kingdom would never be able to secure her borders against the
neighbouring states. Therefore, the territory of the minorities in
Mosul Province should be transformed into a Free State based on
the model of the Free City of Danzig. As a potentially protective
wall in northern Iraq it should be placed under the administration,
control, and protection of the LN, which was to be executed by a
European government. 41
Despite Rassam’s impressive documentation, his expedition
and commitment did not yield resounding success in Northern
Iraq. Only official representatives of Assyrian Christians and
Yazidis sided with him, while for the Jewish community he could
mention solely Mahim Effendi, an almost unknown person. 42
Official Jewish representatives remained silent, since they were
opposed to taking any step to obtain recognition as a national
minority. They considered themselves as Iraqis and thus in no need
of special protection. 43 Overall, Rassam was not fully trusted in
Rassam asked on 12th May, 1931, to replace the ‘free state’ with a
‘local autonomous era within the Kingdom of Iraq’, since he arrived at
this conclusion after several discussions with British personalities, who
had government experience in Iraq (A. T. Wilson). Obviously, a major
change had taken place. Rassam diminished the political scope of his
claim for a somehow exterritorial enclave to preserve the ‘AssyroChaldean nation’ in its own cultural and religious rights.
42 Presumably, he was a relative of the philanthropist Elly Kadoorie
(1865–1944), whose family emigrated from Baghdad to India and
London, since he addresses his letter with ‘My Dear Uncle’ (UNOGL,
LNA 2316 Jacket1).
43 Sasson Heskel (1860–1932), former Minister of Finance and
member of the Iraqi Delegation to the LN on the termination of the
Mandate regime, reiterated this position in Geneva. (Records of Iraq, 1914–
1966, vol. 7, AIR 23/806 Secret report, Appendix A The Jews of Iraq, 9th July
1934, 2, 2001, 630). British Jewish advocacy was afoot in Geneva after
incidents of murder in summer 1931 were exaggeratedly reported in a
Jerusalemite newspaper. After counseling with the Foreign Office, the
British Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and
41

276

HANNELORE MÜLLER

Iraq and thus his mission stirred considerable local unrest, 44 not
only among Assyrian Christians, but also among Kurds. The latter
started their own campaign of petitions to Geneva, which lasted
from August 1930 to April 1931. 45
Pursuant to the official procedure of the LN, most of these
submissions were forwarded to the British and Iraqi governments.
In May 1931, London responded meticulously to Rassam’s petition,
deeming his claims mostly impracticable and maintaining the
official position that no special rights for minorities were needed,
since they were sufficiently secured by the Iraqi constitution and
further laws. The Mandates Commission accepted the official
British statement at its session in June 1931 as satisfactory, though
its fundamental doubts were not dispelled. Its major unease
resulted not only from the various petitions, but also above all
from the pending case of the Baha’i. Since the decision of the
Council from 1929 concerning the redress of the injustice done to
them – the house of Baha’u’llah (1817–1892), founder of the Baha’i
faith, was assigned in a lengthy litigation through all Iraqi courts to

the Anglo-Jewish Association acquiesced in the decision of the Iraqi Jewish
leadership to renounce rights of minority protection (UNOGL, LNA
S345, S264, 9 December 1931). As well, the American Jewish Committee
consented in February 1932 (AJC Minutes, 14 February 1932).
44 To quell this unrest, dignitaries from the Armenian, Syriac and
Chaldean communities in Mosul published official appeals in newspapers
declaring that the various religious communities had lived together in
peace and tranquility in the past and that they hope for the same in the
future (UNOGL, LNA R2317 Jacket5, 176–180).
45 Some complained that their ‘national rights recognized by the
League had never been respected’, and that the administrative and
executive authorities of the Kurdish districts had brought pressure on
them to renounce their ‘legitimate’ rights. They asked for the formation of
a Kurdish government under the supervision of the LN, since their
situation would deteriorate considerably after the termination of the
Mandate becoming even more intolerable as under Ottoman rule.

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the Shia community – the Iraqi authorities did not undertake any
measure. 46
Thus, Pierre Orts as spokesperson for this issue in the
Mandates Commission concluded that there was a general
‘apprehension to which the possible termination of the Mandate
has given rise among certain elements belonging to the minorities
in Iraq’. He recommended that the Mandatory Power should draw
her attention inter alia to ‘the necessity of obtaining from the Iraqi
government, as regards the treatment of racial and religious
minorities and before the termination of the mandate, guarantees
which […] the Iraqi government is prepared to give’. 47
Orts’ suggestion deserves special attention, since a new
transnational advocacy of the LNU was afoot. Major Hubert
Young, the accredited representative of the British Mandate Power,
anticipated at the session of the Mandates Commission in
November 1930 that Iraq, when gaining her full freedom, would be
undoubtedly prepared to sign a ‘declaration drafted in terms similar
to those signed by the government of Romania, if requested to do
so by the League’. 48 The LNU took up Young’s statement and
prepared its own proposal concerning the much-awaited
termination of the mandatory regime in Iraq. On May 14th, 1931,
Gilbert Murray transmitted a draft declaration on minority rights to
the Mandates Commission, which entailed the demand to send a
League Commissioner to Iraq, and as well concrete suggestions for
educational matters. 49 One week later, on May 21st, 1931, Murray
wrote to the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson, Labour
politician, and advocated that minority rights for the non-Arab
minorities in Iraq must be secured before the termination of the
Mandate regime. 50 Then, on June 11th, 1931, Murray withdrew his
proposals, explaining to the Mandates Commission:
Permanent Mandates Commission (hereinafter PMC), Minutes of
the Twentieth Session, (1931), pp. 128–129.
47 PMC, Minutes of the Twentieth Session, (1931), p. 219.
48 PMC, Minutes of the Nineteenth Session, (1930), p. 96.
49 UNOGL, LNA R2315, 70–78.
50 Alan Rush ed. Records of Iraq 1914–1966. vol. 6, 2007, 562–566
(FO 371/15321).
46

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HANNELORE MÜLLER
We ventured to send a Draft Declaration which seemed
suitable for safeguarding the protection of minorities on a
termination of a mandate largely because the Mandate
Commission had been good enough to consider favourably
[sic] our original proposals about the mandate itself. Since
writing, however my colleagues and I have come to the
conclusion that the special situation of Iraq is so complex, and
presents so many diplomatic difficulties, that we do not feel
justified as a private society in making any confident
recommendations on the subject, and should prefer to have
our recommendations treated as not having been made. 51

In the LNU, Murray’s mostly unexpected decision caused intense
disputes, which partly reached publicity. On July 6th, 1931 H.
Seymour-Hall and W. B. Lane from the Iraq Committee criticized
Murray openly in The Times. They accused him of having arrived at
his decision without reference to the responsible committee and
under strong pressure from the British Foreign Office. 52 Murray
replied on July 9th, 1931, even if not very convincingly. He stated
that he was absent from the meetings of the LNU in January 1930
when the recommendations concerning the securing of minority
rights in Iraq were prepared. These had not been discussed with
the Foreign Office before being forwarded to Geneva, as was
usually the case. Having rectified this omission, he now concluded
that the recommendations of the LNU were far behind the
operational line of the British government. Thus, they had to be
abandoned. Murray terminates apologetically by confessing the
above-mentioned basic problem of transnational advocacy. The
Armenian case had taught him ‘how much harm may be done by

UNOGL, LNA R2315, 50. Murray intervened later again with
Arthur Henderson.
52 ‘Minority Rights in Iraq. Safeguards under the Mandate. A Test
for the LNU’. On the very same day, The Times published her own
statement on ‘Iraq Minorities’, wondering why the LNU did not limit
itself to its initial task of ‘propaganda on behalf of Geneva instead of
drawing up a charter for the Kurds and Christians of Mesopotamia’.
51

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279

foreign interference on behalf of minorities in regions where no
real protection can be given’. 53
Yet the end of the affair was not reached. Further statements
followed in The Times. On July 10th, 1931, Henry Dobbs, former
High Commissioner of Iraq, mentioned by Seymour-Hall and Lane
(July 6th, 1931), denied any cooperation with the LNU. On July
11th, 1931, Hugh Cecil, the Conservative politician, Seymour-Hall,
and Lane again spoke out accusing Murray of having withdrawn
because of pressure from the Foreign Office. Murray reiterated his
denial, gaining on July 15th and 20th, 1931, the support of Frederick
Lugard, member of the Mandates Commission, and as well of the
Iraq Committee of the LNU. 54
The Iraqi Declaration of Guarantees, May 1932
Meanwhile, in Geneva the draft of the compulsory declaration of
guarantees made significant progress. Since January 1932 a
commission of experts for minority questions and jurists from the
LN, as well as representatives of the British and Iraqi governments,
had assembled in fifteen meetings and reached an agreement in
May 1932. The Declaration of the Albanian government before the
Council on October 2nd, 1921, served as model for the Iraqi
Declaration, which Noury Said, the Iraqi Prime Minister, signed on
May 30th, 1932. 55 Iraq entered with this document the larger family
of states bounded to the racial, linguistic, and religious protection
of minorities of the LN as an international obligation. 56 However,
‘Minority Rights in Iraq. Policy of L.N.U.’, The Times, July 9th,
1931. Murray’s reflection was rather window dressing, since the LNU did
not restrain herself from further interventions on behalf of minorities.
54 Simultaneously, the issue of Murray’s correspondence with
Henderson reached the House of Commons (July 13th, 1931) and the
House of Lords (July 23rd, 1931).
55 LN, Official Journal, 13 (July 1932), 1343–1350 (with the text of
declaration).
56 Concerned were those new states which emerged from the
collapsed Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empire. Besides Albania,
unilateral declarations to the LN were given by Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919/20, multilateral
53

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

Iraq was compelled to sign the most comprehensive declaration of
guarantees ever given to the LN. From the sixteen articles – the
Albanian Declaration entailed seven in total – ten were related to
minority protection. Yet a climax in the international system of
minority protection they remained altogether unique in the whole
history of the Middle East.
Altogether, these stipulations were ‘recognized as fundamental
laws of Iraq’. The articles two, five, seven, and eight regulate
various aspects of freedom of religion, cult and education,
including the free founding and autonomous administration of
social, charitable, and religious establishments as well as their
protection by the Iraqi government. Article four declares the
equality of all Iraqi nationals before the law without regard of race,
language, or religion. Article six requires the Iraqi government to
undertake measures to secure the family law and personal status of
‘non-Moslem’ minorities, as well as the settlement of these
questions in accordance with their customs. Finally, article ten
places the protection of minorities as an international concern
under the guarantee of the LN, which meant that no alteration
could be made without the consent of Geneva.
With respect to Murray’s own draft declaration, traces can be
found in article seven of the Iraqi declaration, which concerns
pious foundations, and as well in article nine, which stipulates that
in those regions in which the population is predominantly Kurdish,
the Kurdish language should be the co-official language beside
Arabic. Article 15 in the Iraqi declaration, concerning freedom of
conscience, must also be mentioned. 57 Therein lies a long internatreaties with clauses on protection of minorities were signed by Poland,
Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Greece,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Austria. The Treaty of Sèvres was not
ratified by the Turkish National Assembly in Ankara; only the Treaty of
Lausanne of 1923. Yet only the agreement between Sweden and Finland
concerning the Aaland archipelago in June 1921 can be deemed as a
success, while in the other mentioned states minority protection ended
mostly in failure and breakdown.
57 Further articles concern the most-favored-nation clause, as well as
guarantees for interests of foreigners in the judicial sphere, international

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tional tradition since the 19th century, when Christian missionaries
were very keen to secure freedom of conscience in international
treaties as an important judicial instrument and condition for their
activities on the ground.
The LNU must have been pleased with the outcome of this
Iraqi Declaration of Guarantees. Its multi-layered advocacy
campaign since 1930 was not in vain, even if it took unexpected
turns and winding paths, such as Murray’s retreat from the proposals in Geneva and the internal affair, and not least the local uproar
in Iraq because of Rassam’s expedition. Thus, the LNU succeeded
in securing minority rights in Iraq before the termination of the
Mandate regime and special minority legislation came into effect.
But worlds remained sharply divided: burning idealism on one side
and hard facts on the other as further developments in Iraq
revealed.
Further Petitions
While the Iraqi government signed the Declaration in Geneva
among the Assyrian Christians, matters had come to a head. In
October 1931 Mar Shimun Eshai and the principal Maliks
submitted a petition asking – as they had done five years before in
1926 – for a collective migration to Syria or to a European
country. 58 Baghdad forwarded their petition to Geneva, but the
Mandates Commission held her next session only in November–
December 1932. Then the situation in Iraq was overturned. Mar
Shimun Eshai and most of the tribes prepared one last, desperate
stand. They projected a plan to concentrate all Assyrian Christians
in the Dohuk-Amadiya area under the protection of the Assyrian
Levies. Thus, the latter announced they would resign their service
conventions, equal economic opportunity, and the compulsory
jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice, when
differences of opinion arise as to the interpretation or executions of the
said provisions.
58 Rush (ed.) Records of Iraq 1914–1966, vol. 6, FO 371/16033, 572
sqq. The petitions, further correspondences (Humphrys), and British
statements are also published in Sargon Dadesho (ed.), The Assyrian
National Question. A Historical Injustice Redressed (1987).

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in the Levies effective July 1st, 1932. Additionally, Mar Shimun
Eshai and most of the tribal leaders, being convinced of their
indispensability to the British administration in Iraq, submitted on
June 17th, 1932 a petition to Francis Humphrys, the High
Commissioner. They made the following offer: if the special claims
of political and cultural autonomy for a ‘national home’ would be
granted to the Assyrian Christians, then the Assyrian Levies would
refrain from their announced resignation. 59 Yet Humphrys foiled
their plans for a coup, ordering a battalion of British infantry from
Egypt, which arrived in Iraq on June 27th, 1927. When faced with
these hard facts, Mar Shimun and the tribes yielded and conceded
to wait until their petition would be considered by the LN.
Yet in the ranks of the Assyrian Christians was also a smaller
anti-Mar-Shimun faction headed by Mar Yalda Yawallaha from
Barwari (1889–1951) and Malik Koshaba (1914–2000). Their party
also submitted an (undated) petition, which reached Geneva in
September 1932. They assured the LN of their satisfaction with the
living conditions in Iraq, even mentioning that the guarantees for
minorities were sufficient to safeguard their rights. They were
much concerned that the demands of Mar Shimun Eshai ‘should
not be taken into consideration’ and that they ‘may be permitted to
live in peace and tranquillity under the Iraqi flag’. 60
As might be expected, Assyrian Christians from abroad
applied to the LN for their co-religionists in Iraq. They were
motivated by intra-religious solidarity, which occurs among
minorities regularly in situations of danger or transition. This time,
Geneva received various petitions and letters from the USA,

‘Iraq Administration Report January to October 1932’ in: Robert
L. Jarman, ed. Iraq Administration Reports 1914–1932. vol. 10, 1992, 475–
476. Their claims were drafted with the assistance of John P. Panfil
(Jerusalem and East Mission London Archive, 1984, vol. 3, Box 82, 2, 51(2–2),
Panfil to Emhardt, Mosul, 7 May 1932).
60 Cited as in the original petition. UNOGL, LNA R2318 Jacket6,
C.P.M. 1298, p. 143.
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France, and Iran, 61 which, together with the bulk of the petitions
from Iraq, intensified significantly the density of the transnational
advocacy network of the LNU. Thus, the Mandates Commission in
her ordinary session of October–November 1932 had to deal with
a large batch of protests, petitions, and letters concerning the
Assyrian Christians. Most of these were rejected. 62 On the ground
of the four petitions from Mar Shimun Eshai 63 and the petition
from Yalda Yawallaha from Barwari, the Mandates Commission
advised the Council on December 5th, 1932, to draw its special
attention to the provision of the Assyrian Christians with
‘opportunities for settlement in a homogeneous group which
would be in keeping with their traditions and would satisfy their
economic needs. For the rest, it considers, for the reasons stated in
its Rapporteurs conclusions, that there is no need for it to submit
to the Council any other special recommendations in regard to
those petitions.’ 64
Subsequently, on December 15th, 1932, the Council adopted a
somewhat altered resolution which acknowledged the intention of
the Iraqi government to settle ‘all landless inhabitants of Iraq,
including Assyrians’, with the assistance of a foreign expert. The
Council also noted ‘with satisfaction’ that Baghdad was ready to
They were dated February 25th, 1932, April 13th, 1932, both from
the Assyrian National League of America, and September, 1932 (Paris and
Teheran). UNOGL, LNA R2316 Jacket1.
62 The reasons for rejection were different. In general, these petitions
put forward no new complaints, one had no signature, another, no
address (PMC, Minutes of the Twenty-Second Session, 1932, 326). A somewhat
peculiar petition was submitted by one Prince Joel of the AssyroChaldeans on October 4th, 1932, who asked for the establishement of a
United Kingdom of Assyria and claimed the throne as its legitimate heir.
The Minorities section rejected this petition because it lacked criteria
(UNOGL, LNA R2176). Thus, the accusations of some Assyrian
Christians, that their petitions were not considered in Geneva, is
inaccurate.
63 Dated October 20th and 23rd, 1931, June 17th, 1932, and
September 22nd, 1932.
64 LN, Official Journal, 13 (Dec. 1932), 2286.
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HANNELORE MÜLLER

carry out ‘a scheme for the settlement of the Assyrians of Iraq
under suitable conditions and, so far as may be possible, in
homogeneous units, it being understood that the existing rights of
the present population shall not be prejudiced’. If ‘these measures
do not provide a complete solution of the problem and there
remain Assyrians unwilling or unable to settle in Iraq, the Iraqi
government will take all such measures as may be possible to
facilitate the settlement of the said Assyrians elsewhere.’ 65
Mar Shimun Eshai, who had been present in Geneva since
September 1932, protested the very next day against this resolution
of the Council. He was very upset because of the change of the
‘homogenous group’ (Mandates Commission) to ‘homogenous
units’. He implored the Council to cancel its decision and to
consent to a ‘full, homogenous settlement under the auspices of a
Commission of the League of Nations’. If this was impossible, then
at least an impartial employee of the LN should work out the
settlement scheme. 66
But in Geneva, there was nothing more that could be done.
Mar Shimun Eshai returned to Baghdad in January 1933.
Immediately he had a consultation with Francis Humphrys, British
military officials, and Iraqi officials. After their discussions, he
consented to the decision of the LN. Yet, in the succeeding
months, among the Assyrian Christians a policy of noncooperation with the Iraqi government came to the fore and a plan
for collective emigration to Syria was tackled. 67
But this ‘Syrian Adventure’ as Stafford put it failed, and ended
in a horrible massacre. On August 4th–5th, 1933, at the Iraqi-Syrian
border an armed conflict escalated between Iraqi troops and armed
Assyrian Christians who were on their way to Syria. The clash
ended in substantial loss of life. In the following week, Iraqi
soldiers, joined by local Kurds and Yazidis, looted about sixty
villages and killed hundreds of civilian Assyrian Christians. On
Ibid., 1985.
UNOGL, LNA R2176.
67 According to French information, direct contacts were established
on July 17th, 1933, with the emissaries Malik Yaku and Malik Loko (LN,
Official Journal, 14 (Oct. 1933), 1115–1117, C.522.M.257.1933.VII).
65
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August 11th, 1933, in Simele (Sumail), ca. 15km west of the city of
Dohuk, from which Malik Yaku and other rebels had originated,
about 300 Assyrian men, mostly loyal to the Iraqi government and
who had been disarmed previously, were murdered along with
women and children. 68
The next day, on August 12th, 1933, the Iraqi government
decided to expel Mar Shimun Eshai and his father from Iraq;
Surma d’Mar Shimun and other closer relatives followed some days
later. 69 Hence, the Assyrian Christians remained behind in Iraq with
the trauma of a new massacre and without religious leadership.
This tragic massacre against Assyrian Christians adds a further
chapter to the failure of international minority protection, which
turned out once more to be a dead letter in the face of brutal
violence. Nevertheless, what would have been a true alternative?
Perpetual Advocacy? ‘Exceptional Problems’ Require
‘Exceptional Measures’. The League of Nations
Resettlement Project of the Assyrian Christians (1933–
1940)
Even in Europe reliable news about the massacre in Iraq were
scant and moreover censored, still, they caused an international
outcry. In several newspapers, public campaigns ensued, blaming
the British government and the LN for having consented
prematurely to the termination of the Mandate regime in Iraq.
Overnight, the ‘Assyrian Question’ became an international affair
under heavy moral public pressure.

A balanced analysis of this tragedy is still missing, especially as the
role of the French authorities in Syria, which made own provisions to
resettle Assyrian Christians from Iraq, has been hitherto inadequately
considered.
69 The legally controversial ordinance to cancel nationality to ease
the expulsion of the family of Mar Shimun was also used for ‘Law No. 1
of 1950 Supplement to Ordinance of Cancelling the Iraqi Nationality No.
62 of 1933’, which gave the Iraqi Government free reign in the expulsion
of Iraqi Jews after having stripped them of their Iraqi nationality (Iraqi
Government Gazette, 24, 17 June 1951, 232).
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HANNELORE MÜLLER

The Iraq Committee of the LNU 70 with Gilbert Murray as
chairman felt vindicated in its fears, worries, and warnings
concerning minorities. Not surprisingly, the LNU and the
Archbishop of Canterbury became once more activists beyond
borders, pleading fervently to settle Assyrian Christians outside of
Iraq. This time strong advocacy was required, since the British
government took a firm stand in having at the very most a moral
obligation towards the Assyrian Christians, but no other
commitment. 71 Thus, the LNU started new campaigns with the old
means of advocacy: public speaking and publishing, influencing
public opinion and political decision-makers. For instance, during
the Parliamentarian debate concerning Assyrian Christians, Cosmo
In 1935, it was renamed Assyrians of Iraq Committee. The Year
Book of the LNU mentions it in 1937 for the last time. Over the years,
the Iraq Committee of the LNU had had various members. Besides G.
Murray and Robert Cecil, those regularly named were Nigel Davidson,
former judicial adviser and counsellor of the British High Commissioner
in Iraq, Willoughby Dickinson, George F. Gracey, Francis N. Heazell,
William A. Wigram, Ronald S. Stafford, Arnold T. Wilson, Frederick
Lugard, Hugh Cecil, Rev. Alan Don representing the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Archibald H. Sayce (1845–1933), an international renowned
Assyriologist in Oxford from 1891 to 1919, David S. Margoliouth (1858–
1940), we well an international renowned Orientalist in Oxford from 1889
to 1937, and J. Gilbert Browne, Brigadier of the Assyrian Levies from
1925 to 1933.
71 This position, laid down in a memorandum of the Foreign Office
in September 1933, remained the official line in London. Any special
obligation was rejected, since no promise of national support was ever
given to Assyrian Christians. Their decision to enter World War I was
caused by the Russians. Gracey’s utterance was in no way a pledge, but an
assurance of support, which London had fulfilled continuously since the
end of the War. Thus, the British government did not betray the Assyrian
Christians. That Britain would depend in Iraq heavily on the Assyrian
Levies was deemed an exaggeration. Nevertheless because of its former
relations it would be hard for London not to give financial assistance to
their resettlement, which would moreover enhance Britain’s reputation
(British Documents on Foreign Affairs, II B, vol. 9 Eastern Affairs June
1933–May 1934, 1989, 240–243. E 5653/7/93).
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Cantuar held a forceful speech in the House of Lords on
November 15th, 1933, 72 and again several articles were published. 73
Eventually, the LNU adopted on December 15th, 1933 its first
resolution concerning Assyrian Christians in particular:
The General Council of the League of Nations Union,
Conscious of the moral responsibility of Great Britain for the
welfare of the Assyrians who have recently been the victims of
brutal treatment in Iraq,
Trusts that H.M. Government will do all in its power to
expedite the work of the Committee appointed by the Council
of the League of Nations and to assist it in finding a place to
which the Assyrians may be transferred, and in which they may
be enabled to live together in safety. The Council is glad to
learn that the machinery and experience of the Nansen
International Office for Refugees is being utilised [sic] for this
purpose, and urges that H.M. Government should take its full
share of the financial responsibility. 74

Urging for the necessity of transferring the Assyrian Christians
from Iraq, Member of the British Parliament Reginald MitchellBanks, Robert Cecil, and A. T. Wilson intervened in January 1934
with Foreign Secretary John Simon. 75 However, the endeavours of
the LNU yielded no success at home until September 1935, when
the British government revised her hostile attitude and assumed a
financial share in the resettlement project of the Assyrian
Christians.
Lords Sitting of Tuesday, 28 November, 1933, Fifth Series, vol. 90, cc
139–140. In the House of Commons as well a debate was ongoing, which
was closed on the same day.
73 E.g. Arnold T. Wilson, ‘The Crisis in Iraq’ (1933); Robert L.
Baker, ‘The Assyrian Unrest in Iraq’ (1933).
74 LNU, Year Book 1934, p. 71.
75 On January 17th, 1934, the LNU also demanded that Anthony
Eden, the British delegate to the Council, ask the LN to refrain from
sending a British employee to Iraq, since the heated situation on the
ground had not yet calmed down (UNOGL, LNA C1530 Jacket2).
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Under Moral Constraints: The League of Nations
For the LN, the tragic events of August 1933 in Iraq arrived in
unfavourable circumstances, since international conflicts began to
demonstrate its growing political weakness. Just a few months
before, the Manchurian crisis (1931–1933) had ended for Geneva
in a political debacle. 76
The Council of the LN had the issue of the massacre in Iraq
on the agenda in September 1933, but it had to be postponed
because of the sudden death of King Faysal I on September 8th,
1933. At the next Council session in October 1933, the Iraqi
government appealed to the LN for assistance, in conformity with
the aforementioned resolution of December 15th, 1932, declaring
its willingness to contribute ‘as generously as its own resources
permitted’ in order to facilitate the settlement of Assyrian
Christians outside its territory. 77 In his report, Salvador de
Madariaga (1886–1978), representative of Spain to the LN and
spokesperson, arrived at the conclusion that the problem in
question was “exceptional.” In view of these exceptional
circumstances the Council might consider “solutions and measures

Since Japan’s occupied the Chinese province of Manchuria, its
government remained resistant to any arbitration and ignored the
resolutions of the LN. When a special assembly of the LN in February
1933 reiterated the Council’s solicitation of October 1932, that Japan
should withdraw her troops occupying Manchuria and restore the country
to Chinese sovereignty, the Japanese delegation simply walked out of the
hall in March 1933, never to return. Furthermore, other international
conflicts were imminent, which decreased the political reputation of the
LN. Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1933, few days later Germany
withdrew from the moribund Conference of Reduction and Limitation of
Armaments and from the LN entirely. However, Geneva recorded amidst
these various flashpoints some positive developments. Argentina was
finally won back after its Parliament ratified the Covenant of the LN in
September 1933.
77 For this debate see LN, Official Journal, 14 (Dec. 1933) pp. 1784–
1786, plus a selection of further petitions and reports from Mar Shimun
Eshai from August and September 1933, pp. 1786–1841.
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289

which would perhaps exceed the scope of protection of minorities
in the strict sense.”
The Council adopted de Madariaga’s report on October 14th,
1933, 78 and established a Committee of five (later six) Council
members. 79 This outcome was most unique, since the Council had
never assumed such responsibilities for a single minority in its
whole history. Even though opinions in Geneva differed about the
Assyrian Christians, whether to see them as a minority or rather as
refugees, such matters were transferred either to the Minority
Section or to the International Nansen Office for Refugees.
However, in the case of the Assyrian Christians, apparently, the
Council gave in to international moral pressure and accepted this
‘exceptional’ solution, especially since no other viable solution was
in sight. Geneva had to face from year to year a more limited scope
and its ‘work of humanity and appeasement’, as the resettlement of
the Assyrian Christians was soon to be officially called, became in
the end a project of international prestige and honour in order not
to lose face even more considering her several other mentioned
failures.
The Committee Council for the settlement of the Assyrian
Christians resumed work on October 27th, 1933, and approached
several governments, among them Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico,
Argentina, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. 80
Brazil replied positively and offered the Paraná district in her
southern border region. The International Nansen Office for
Refugees, which the Committee enlisted eagerly for this task, made
an international tender for the transportation of Assyrian
Christians. To closer attention came Paraná Plantations, Ltd. from
London, a successful British colonization company in South
America, which forwarded rapidly in November 1933 rough (and
high) cost estimates for transport, purchase of land, and initial
settlement. The total amount was calculated at £162,000 for 5,000

LN, Official Journal, 14 (Dec. 1933), p. 1647.
Until its suspension in 1936, it included alternating Spanish,
British, Italian, French, Danish, and Mexican representatives.
80 UNOGL, LNA C1530 Jacket2.
78
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HANNELORE MÜLLER

persons, £314,000 for 10,000 persons, and £465,000 for 15,000
persons. 81
Moreover, a fact-finding mission on behalf of the LN was
underway to enquire into the conditions of living, housing, and
climate in the Paraná region. It was entrusted to the abovementioned Major J. Gilbert Browne from the LNU, who had
worked with the Assyrian Levies, 82 to Charles Redard, a former
counsellor of the Swiss legation in Rio de Janeiro, and to T. F.
Johnson, Secretary General of the Nansen International Office for
Refugees. From February 12th to April 8th, 1934, they fulfilled their
assignment almost overzealously, as even a movie was produced
for the Assyrian Christians to dispel their worries and fears of
going into a foreign country. In May 1934, official negotiations
were progressing and it was envisioned that, with international
assistance, some five hundred families per month would be settled
in Brazil. It was expected that the Assyrian Christians would
become self-sufficient within a year.
Then everything turned out differently. After the resettlement
plans of the LN became publicly known, heated debates and
nationalistic outbursts ensued. The public atmosphere in Brazil was
already charged, since simultaneous explorations for the settlement
of European Jews were afoot and the Brazilian parliament had
passed rigid immigration laws. Consequently, in May 1934 the
Vargas government retracted its initial offer and accused the LN
and the British government of deception. 83
Thus the first promising attempt had come to nothing and
Geneva had to start anew. On June 7th, 1934, the Committee
Council appealed again to governments worldwide. Various
countries replied negatively; 84 only Britain and France
communicated on September 22nd resp. 24th, 1934, positive offers
to resettle the Assyrian Christians in Rupununi District, British
LN, Official Journal, 15 (Febr. 1934), p. 226.
He published Iraq Levies, 1915–1932 (1932).
83 Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity, p. 65–75.
84 Union of South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, United
Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, and Turkey.
81
82

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291

Guiana resp. in French Sudan. 85 However, both governments
asked for investigations on the spot under the auspices of the LN
before taking any decision. Geneva granted a new mission, which
was again entrusted to Gilbert Browne. This time he set out with
Guido R. Giglioli, who had personal experience in British Guiana.
As in Brazil, the task demanded great efforts, this time owing to the
great distances involved and to local transportation problems.
During their mission from November 1934 to January 1935,
Browne and Giglioli travelled about 2,000 miles, of which about
half were accomplished in the saddle or on foot, and a further 700
miles on small boats on raging rivers. However, the LN emissaries
recognized in their report of May 1935 that more specific
investigations were necessary, since the Assyrian Christians were
accustomed to completely different conditions of life and work.
Even if British Guiana would turn out to be favourable for their
resettlement, this would be on a most ‘experimental basis’, since ‘to
establish the Assyrians as cattle ranchers in the Rupununi under
existing conditions would be disastrous’. Browne and Giglioli
assumed no responsibility for embarking on a very ‘speculative’
scheme of resettlement. 86
With this outcome, the LN was back to square one, viz.
October 1933. However, the Council Committee, which was
‘anxious, in the first place, to discharge the humanitarian duty
entrusted to it’, had appealed before on March 22nd, 1935, to the
French government. French Secretary of State Pierre Laval replied
positively on April 14th, 1935, announcing that the French
Mandatory Power would accept the already temporary settled
Assyrian Christians on her mandated territory as permanent
settlers, and as well those from Iraq, who were willing to leave the
country. Three different areas would be made available for them. 87
For the LN, this very unexpected offer was the very last ray of
hope after eighteen months of several humanitarian appeals,
LN, Official Journal, 15 (Nov. 1934), pp. 1513–1521
(C.427.1934.VII.).
86 LN,
Official Journal, 16 (May 1935), pp. 581–583
(C.211.M.110.1935.VII.).
87 Ibid., pp. 579–581 (C.165.M.91.1935.VII.).
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HANNELORE MÜLLER

fruitless missions and endeavours, and frustrating negotiations.
Hence, it comes as no surprise that the Council consented very
quickly to this action on April 17th, 1935. 88 Subsequently, LN
envoys visited Iraq and Syria in May and June 1935 to establish
around 24.000 persons for resettlement. 89 Their presence stirred
among the Assyrian Christians considerable unrest, who
bombarded them with petitions and protests. They were anxious
because the French and Iraqi governments completed the transfer
of around 550 persons 90 to the Upper Khabur area in eastern Syria
and as well of those around 2.300 persons from the Mosul camp
for the victims of the Simele massacre, which was closed on June
29th, 1935. 91 Some Assyrian Christians from Tall Kayf, ca. 24km
north of Mosul, lost patience and on August 31st, 1935, implored
the LN, ‘So again for the sake of heaven, of the saints, of the
prophets, for humanity’s sake, or, if not, for Satan’s sake, help us
according your wish.’ 92
Meanwhile, the appeal of the Council Committee on July 16th,
1935, for financing of the proposed settlement in the Ghab plain in
Northern Syria 93 received poor coverage. The topic was in poor
condition when it was laid before the General Assembly of the LN
on September 9th–28th, 1935. It gave rise to broad debates.
Vigorously contested was not only the financial contribution of the
LN to the estimated total costs, but also the entire resettlement
scheme. The Political Committee debated the issue in comparative
Ibid., p. 566.
LN, Official Journal, 16 (Nov. 1935), p. 1257.
90 They belonged to the families of those Assyrian Christians, who
had crossed the Iraqi-Syrian border illegally in July 1933.
91 Thus, by September 1935 a total of 6,000 Assyrian Christians lived
in the provisional Khabur settlement.
92 UNOGL, LNA R3939, 3.
93 For details, see the official report LN, Official Journal, 16 (Nov.
1935), pp. 1256–1288 (C.352.M.179.1935.VII.). This project was an older
development plan of the French government. In this respect, Johnson
from the Nansen Office accused Paris of using the LN once more as a
‘docile instrument’. (International Tramps. From Chaos to Permanent World
Peace, 1938, p. 370).
88
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293

calm. On September 19th, 1935, the British delegate Robert A.
James Gascoyne-Cecil (Viscount Cranborne), a nephew of Robert
Cecil and former member of the Executive Committee of the
LNU, recommended consideration of the financial participation of
the LN “in a most sympathetic way.” In addition, he made a
statement which could have been published by the LNU itself. The
case of the Assyrian Christians was:
not a refugee problem, but an eminently political problem,
which the Council, as early as 1933, decided to consider as
exceptional – involving likewise exceptional measures. Its
immediate and radical solution would greatly contribute to the
maintenance of peace and tranquillity [sic] in the Near East. Its
abandonment would have consequences which would affect
not only the Assyrians and Iraq, but also other States with
reactions which would be bound to damage the highest
interests of the League of Nations. 94

After the Political Committee consented to the financial share of
the LN, the issue was transferred to the Financial Committee,
which carried out more fierce debates resembling the atmosphere
of market trade. The comparatively high financial contribution of
the LN, after all more than 10% of the budget of its Secretariat,
was met with deep resistance. The representatives of the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland and other countries strived, to no
avail, to prevent any payment of the LN and to delegate the LN’s
share to the British government. William Rappard (1883–1958),
founding director of the Mandates Commission and a major
personality of the LN, was a spokesman of these criticisms, which
are summarized as follows in the protocol of the meeting:
[…] he [Rappard] could not but observe that the whole
discussion was of a very curious character. According to Dr.
LN, Official Journal. Special Supplement, 143 (1935), Records of the
Sixteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, pp. 69 sq. See also Cmd. 5053,
League of Nations. Sixteenth Assembly. Report of the Delegates of the United
Kingdom to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, (London: HMO 1935), pp.
21–24, 45–49.
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Burgin’s [British delegate] statement, the proposal under
discussion involved the financial co-operation of two States
[…] in addition to the United Kingdom. At the last meeting of
the Fourth [Political] Committee, M. Laval, speaking for
France, had intervened to propose a reduction of 10% in the
League budget under threat of exposing the latter to the
hazards of a parliamentary discussion. To-day the Fourth
Committee was presented with a new proposal – a proposal
which could never have taken shape without the consent of
the French Government. The only effect of that proposal must
be to nullify the suggestions contained in the Supervisory
Commission’s supplementary report and, if it went through to
stymie M. Laval’s proposal. In presence of such a situation, the
representatives of the small countries could not fail to be
astonished. They wondered what part they were called upon to
play in these financial discussions, when they found a great
Power insisting one day on budgetary economies and, on the
following day, supporting a demand for supplementary credits
for new expenditure on a very extensive scale. From the purely
technical point of view, M. Rappard was anything but
enthusiastic. The submission of proposals of this kind during
the Assembly raised grave difficulties. There was no possibility
for delegates to have them studied by competent services of
their respective Governments, and the instructions received by
delegates before coming to the Assembly were as a result
completely vitiated. […] The object must be therefore to find
some means of reconciling the dictates of financial prudence
and the obligations implied in the maintenance of the League’s
prestige. 95

Furthermore, Jules Feldmans, the Latvian delegate, expressed more
general criticism concerning the resettlement of the Assyrian
Christians in Syria. Why were they the only victims of the war who
deserve the Assembly’s sympathy, while other governments had
vainly attempted to draw the League’s attention to other victims
LN, Official Journal. Special Supplement, 141 (1935), Records of the
Sixteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, p. 33.
95

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295

whose fate was no less tragic? Moreover, even if Syria had
comparable climate and geographical conditions to Iraq, her
population was mainly Arab. Which considerations ‘led to the
conclusion that the Assyrians, who rebelled against assimilation
with the Arabs of Iraq, would allow themselves to be easily
absorbed by the Arabs of Syria?’ Could there be any certainty that
the conditions which had arisen in Iraq after the termination of the
Mandate would not arise again in Syria? 96
Beside these hard debates, favourable changes were underway.
On September 12th, 1935, the British government promised to
grant £250,000, and the Iraqi government, just before the closing
of the Assembly session, followed suit announcing on September
26th, 1935, it would contribute £250,000 as well. 97 As a result, on
September 28th, 1935, the Assembly of the LN approved following
financial plan for the resettlement project of the Assyrian
Christians from 1935 to 1940:
France

£380,000

Great Britain

£250,000

Iraq

£250,000

LN

£ 86,000

Total

£966,000

Obviously, moral constraints can turn out to be very expensive.
This very last chance to secure the one and only resettlement
scheme for the Assyrian Christians must have required intensive
advocacy and lobbying behind the scenes, since internal resistance
and harsh critiques were considerable. The ‘exceptionality’ of this
Ibid., p. 70.
This was quite a surprising twist, since a half year earlier in May
1935 Baghdad halved arbitrarily its initial share and refused any
modification. The new decision was probably due to a railway project with
the British government, which was settled at that time after London
reduced the initial costs from £650,000 to £400,000 (FO 371/ 18944,
British Embassy, Baghdad to Sir Samuel Hoare, London, 9 October 1935, in:
Records of Iraq, ed. Alan Rush (2001, p. 623).
96
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final decision becomes clear even more when considering that the
Nansen Office for Refugees settled Armenians in Syria at a much
lower cost and never received funds from the budget of the LN.
Moreover, the growing problem of Jewish refugees from Nazi
Germany must be mentioned, which was treated in Geneva rather
shabbily, and not least the requests of other governments, which
received from Geneva no financial assistance for refugee or
minority problems, as the Latvian delegate Feldmans reminded.
Yet the approved financial plan of £966,000 did not cover the
overall costs for the transfer of the Assyrian Christians to the Ghab
plain. In total, £1,146,000 were needed: £826,000 for the
reclamation of the Ghab area (dam, reservoir, and tunnel) and
£320,000 for the resettlement itself. A residuary sum of £180,000
was lacking, for which the LNU assumed responsibility and
released an appeal on December 5th, 1935. 98 In these days, the
LNU was riding on the crest of her greatest success in Britain after
having organized the largest-ever privately-held referendum in that
country. In the ‘Peace Ballot’ from November 1934 to June 1935,
more than eleven and a half million votes had been cast and the
respondents backed overwhelmingly Britain’s membership in the
LN and international disarmament. 99
The network of the Archbishop of Canterbury was also
working with full force for the Assyrian Christians. 100 New
intercessions with the British government followed, and there was
a speech in Parliament in February 1936. Lambeth Palace initiated a
new public campaign, its last and most comprehensive one in
favour of Assyrian Christians. The Assyrian National Settlement
Appeal, launched on March 31st, 1936, was presided over by
Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Cantuar, who stood once again
in the forefront. Leo S. Amery, former Colonial Minister, was its
vice president. He still felt deeply committed to the Assyrian
Christians, since he considered their fate as a ‘moral obligation
LNU, Year Book 1936, p. 89.
Birn, The League of Nations Union, pp. 143–154; McCarthy, The
British People, pp. 28–36, 199–202.
100 Jerusalem and East Mission Archive London, 1984, vol. 3, Box 81,
1.8, 22 January 1936.
98
99

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297

from my old Colonial Office’. 101 The organizing secretary of the
appeal was G. F. Gracey, meanwhile General Secretary of the Save
the Children Fund. 102 Among the political supporters of the appeal
were listed British Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs, Anthony
Eden, and as well his predecessor, Samuel Hoare. Cosmo Cantuar
strengthened the call by sending circulars to Anglican clergymen, to
the free churches, and to the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches
in USA and Canada. 103
This time, the advocates broadened their repertoire of public
activities, using not only newspapers – including The Times, the
Illustrated London News, the New Statesmen, the Nation, and the
Geographical Magazine – but also radio broadcasts (BBC), talks at
many schools, as well as trying to gain the support of banks, guilds,
and trusts. To secure the broadest possible support was not only
necessary because of the enormous amount required, but also
because of the economic hardships of these years, when the
impacts of the Great Depression had beset most European
countries. Despite these efforts, the appeal failed its set target and
raised only a little money. 104 The campaign for the Assyrian National
Settlement Appeal was continued 105 until May 1939, when it was
closed and the small surplus given to the Mar Shimun family.
Leo Amery, My Political Life (1953), pp. 257–258. Amery
intervened e.g. on December 1st, 1937, together with Antony Eden,
Viscount Cranborne, and Cosmo Cantuar, with the British government to
obtain financial support for Mar Shimun. John Barnes and David
Nicholson (eds.), The Leo Amery Diaries (1988), p. 453.
102 This charitable organization was founded in 1919 by Eglantyne
Jebb and Dorothy Buxton. At the beginning, the task of the SCF was to
provide food for child victims of the post-war blockades in Germany and
Austria. Later, its activities were extended to a wider international level.
103 UNOGL, LNA C1533 Jacket2. The appeal was published in The
Times, 28 March 1936; The Tablet, April 4th, 1936; Journal of Royal Central
Asian Society 23, no. 2 (1936), pp. 363–364.
104 John Fisher ‘The Church of England and British Policy towards
the Assyrians 1914–1955’ in Religion and Diplomacy (2010), p. 241.
105 For instance, Wigram published the article ‘Assyrian Refugees’
(The Times, January 5th, 1938), Cosmo Lang appealed to British public
101

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

Meanwhile, in Geneva the official plan for the resettlement of
Assyrian Christians experienced a new, unforeseen twist. While the
Board of Trustees of the LN resumed work quickly after the
Assembly’s decision of September 28th, 1935, local technical
problems and much greater complications arose on a political level.
In France, Léon Blum’s socialist regime entered government in
June 1936 and announced the termination of the Mandate in the
Levant States (which was later reversed). Under these new,
unexpected circumstances, on July 4th, 1936, the Council
announced the end of the Ghab scheme and charged its
Committee to develop a new plan for the reorganization of the
Khabur settlement as a permanent destination on a fully selfsupporting basis. The Council adopted the commissioned plan and
passed on September 28th, 1937, its very last resolution concerning
the Assyrian Christians. Thus, the shifting of the Khabur
settlement from the British government to the LN, which Viscount
Cranborne brought forward at the Council session, was accepted.
The Iraqi government announced as well a departure from former
agreements and declared that the remaining Assyrian Christians in
Iraq – some 20.000 – would resume their position as an ordinary
national minority. Thus, by September 1937 the transfer of the
Assyrian Christians from Iraq to Syria ended abruptly, leaving
behind some 13.000 persons who were willing to migrate. The Iraqi
government ensured as well that the Council Committee would
have no further competence for them. 106 Simultaneously, the Iraqi
and British governments promised to pay their equal share (42.6%)
of the cost of the reorganization of the Khabur settlement, which
was calculated at £50,930, while the LN promised to pay the
balance of 14.7%. 107
By 1939, the Khabur settlement of the Assyrian Christians
comprised thirty-one villages, which remained under the

opinion in favor of the ‘Betrayed Christians’ (Church Times, January 28th,
1938).
106 LN, Official Journal, 18 (Dec. 1937), p. 929.
107 Ibid., pp. 1171–1199 (C.387.M.258.1937).

13. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND ADVOCACY

299

surveillance of the LN until January 1940, when the last situation
report reached Geneva. 108

CONCLUSIONS
The transnational advocacy on behalf of others at the LN was of
great importance for the Assyrian Christians. It can be safely said
that their history would have taken other directions during the
interwar period without this inter-Christian political (and financial)
support from the Archbishop of Canterbury, from Anglican
clergymen, Iraq veterans, and the LNU. Through her manifold
interventions in Geneva, the LNU increased significantly the
debate over minority protection upon the termination of the
Mandate regime in Iraq. The LNU managed as well to imprint her
terminology and romanticized view on minorities as a problem of
international concern on the political vocabulary of the LN, which
at once used the wording ‘work of appeasement and humanity’.
Yet, the episodes of transnational advocacy, which were
considered in this article, were not singular, since by the 1950s
political developments in Iraq triggered new discussions in Britain.
Even more, transnational advocacy for Assyrian Christians should
be seen as part of a wider historical tradition from at least the 19th
century, when Jewish and Christian circles from Western countries
entered the arena of world politics with new conceptions and
demands.
Beside this private transnational advocacy, the LN itself was
an indirect advocate for Assyrian Christians. Its system of minority
protection, developed as a legal protection shield against possible
atrocities of nationalist majorities, gained enormous relevance for
the young Catholicos Mar Shimun Eshai. He used and misused
minority rights to secure his position as temporal and spiritual
leader of his church. For him, minority rights became a proper
LN, Official Journal, 21 (Jan–March 1940), pp. 36–42. Currently,
several of these villages on the Khabur River were attacked and raided by
the terrorist organization Islamic State. Men, women, and children were
abducted; more than 1.400 families have been forced from their homes
and many executed.
108

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HANNELORE MÜLLER

weapon against the recognition of the sovereignty of Iraq, showing
openly the achilles’ heel of the international system of minority
protection. Nevertheless, the LN was an indispensable and
independent player in the history of the Assyrian Christians.
Moreover, this applies to the Near East in general, since the LN is
to date overshadowed by the presence of the Mandatory powers
Great Britain and France.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unpublished Sources
United Nations Office Geneva Library, League of Nations
Archives
C1530, C1533, R605, R610, R2315, R2316, R2317, R2318, R2176,
R3939, S345, S264
Published Sources
Amery, Leo. My Political Life, Vol. Three The Unforgiving Years 1929–
1940 (London, 1953).
Barnes, John and David Nicholson, eds. The Leo Amery Diaries, vol.
2 Empire at Bay, (London: Hutchinson, 1988).
British Documents on Foreign Affairs, II B., vol. 9 Eastern Affairs
June 1933–May 1934, (Frederick, Md.: University Publications
of America, 1989).
Confidential US State Department, Records of Iraq 1925–1941,
12/0244; 12/00243.
Dadesho, Sargon (ed.). The Assyrian National Question. A Historical
Injustice Redressed, (Modesto, CA: s.n., 1987).
Destani, Bejtullah (ed.). Minorities in the Middle East. Assyrian
Communities in the Levant and Iraq 1880–1938, part I. vol. 7.
(Slough: Archive Editions, 2007).
Jarman, Robert L. (ed.). Iraq Administration Reports 1914–1932. vol.
10. (Slough: Archive Editions, 1992).
Jerusalem and East Mission. Archive London, vol. 3. (Zug: IDC,
1984).
League of Nations Union, Year Book 1933–1937.
League of Nations. Official Journal. 1932–1940.

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League of Nations, Official Journal. Special Supplement 141 (1935).
Records of the Sixteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, (Geneva:
1935).
Malik, Cambar (ed.). La question Assyro-Chaldéenne et la Société des
Nations. Rapports et documents. (Jerusalem: Ratisbonne Printing
Press, 1934).
Permanent Mandates Commission. Minutes of the Twentieth Session.
(Geneva: 1931).
Permanent Mandates Commission. Minutes of the Twenty-Second
Session. (Geneva: 1932).
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Iraq 1930–1944, Reel 7, 890G.406 Assyrians/46.
Rush, Alan (ed.). Records of Iraq 1914–1966, vol. 6. (Slough: Archive
Editions, 2007).
Viscount Cecil (Lord Robert Cecil). A Great Experiment. An
Autobiography. (London: Cape, 1941).
–––––– All the Way. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1949).
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(eds.) The Modern Middle East. A Sourcebook for History. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
Bachofen, Maja. Lord Robert Cecil und der Völkerbund. (Zürich:
Europa Verlag, 1959).
Barty, Peter F. The League of Nations Union between the Wars. The Rise
and Decline of a British Political Pressure Group. (Lexington: Ph.D.
diss., University of Kentucky, 1972).
Birn, Donald S. The League of Nations Union 1918–1945. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981).
Coakley, J. F. The Church of the East and the Church of England. A
History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992).
Emhardt, William C. The Oldest Christian People. (New York:
Macmillan, 1926).
Gorman, Daniel. ‘Ecumenical Internationalism. Willoughby
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Promoting International Friendship through the Churches’,
Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 1 (2010): 51–73.
Harmjan, Dam. Der Weltbund für Freundschaftsarbeit der Kirchen 1914–
1948. Eine ökumenische Friedensorganisation. (Frankfurt am Main:
Lembeck, 2001).
Fisher, John. ‘The Church of England and British Policy towards
the Assyrians 1914–1955’. In Keith Robbins and John Fisher
(eds.). Religion and Diplomacy. Religion and British Foreign Policy
1815 to 1941. (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing,
2010, pp. 225–250).
Grotefeld, Stefan. Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. Ein deutscher
Ökumeniker und christlicher Pazifist. (Gütersloh: Kaiser,
Gütersloher Verl.-Haus, 1995).
Jehle-Wildberger, Marianne. Adolf Keller. Pionier der ökumenischen
Bewegung (1872–1963). (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich,
2008 [English 2013]).
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(Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
Johnson, Thomas F. International Tramps. From Chaos to Permanent
World Peace. (London: Hutchinson, 1938).
Joseph, John. The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East. Encounters with
Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, & Colonial Powers.
(Leiden: Brill, 2000). (Revised edition of the author’s The
Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbours. Princeton: University
Press, 1961).
Lesser, Jeffrey. Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and
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14. THE MEMORY OF S AYFO AND ITS
RELATION TO THE IDENTITY OF
CONTEMPORARY ASSYRIAN/ARAMEAN
CHRISTIANS IN SYRIA
NORIKO SATO
This paper deals with the three different communities of Syriac
Orthodox Christians in Syria, who identify themselves as Arameans
or Assyrians, and who, after experiencing religious intolerance in
Turkish Anatolia between 1914 and 1923, consequently emigrated
to Syria. These communities had not had extensive contacts with
each other before their immigration to Syria. The first community
is the Syriac Orthodox Christian refugees from Tur Abdin, who
settled in Qahataniya in the Syrian Jazira region. The second
community is that which originated from Azakh (present Idil), who
settled in Malkiya, which is also located in the Jazira. 1 In their
former homeland, the most serious act of Christian extermination
took place in 1915 and therefore, these Christians remember the
year of 1915 as the year of the Sayfo ‘sword’ or the Firman ‘the
decree (of Christian persecution/massacre)’. The third community
of Syriac Orthodox Christians originated in Urfa, ancient Edessa,
and immigrated to Aleppo in 1924. Each of these three
communities was mostly composed of refugees who had fled from
the same area in Turkey and had rebuilt their community in a
particular quarter of each town, so that the population density of
Syriac Orthodox Christians became relatively high. After their
immigration to Syria, each community was relatively isolated from
1

Both Tur Abdin and Azakh are located in southeastern Turkey.

305

306

NORIKO SATO

the neighboring population. Members in each of these three
communities, who share experiences of the Christian persecution
in southeastern Turkey have gradually reconstructed their
memories of the persecution in their present political environment
of Syria, where they have now resettled. 2
Figure 1. Emigration of Syriac Orthodox Christians

The members of each of the three communities have remembered
their experience of the Christian persecution and their
displacement in a distinctive fashion. Moreover, both the survivors
of the persecution, and those who have had indirect experience of
the event through the accounts of the survivors and/or their family
The Syriac Orthodox Christian population in Syria includes those
who had lived in Syria both before and during the 1915 persecution. Yet
the majority of the Syriac Orthodox Christian population in Syria are
descendants of refugees from Turkey, and in this respect their ancestors
had a similar experience during the period of Christian persecution in
southeastern Turkey.
2

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

307

members, shape their memory of these events in a similar fashion.
Communities whose members had shared experiences in the past
have common memories, which community members have shaped
through their everyday interactions, which have taken place later in
their lives. 3 The Syriac Orthodox Christian inhabitants of these
three communities, on which this article focuses, share their past
and present experiences in an attempt to keep alive the memory of
the atrocities which their ancestors experienced in southeastern
Turkey. Each of these three communities comprises a “community
of memory” of this historical event, which seems to be related to
their attempt to establish their socio-political position in Syria.
Although experiential communities of memory and political
communities of memory are distinguishable, they often overlap. 4 In
the former, narratives are based on their experiences and are
shaped by individuals, who reenact them in intimate social settings.
Narratives of the latter are structured by political ideologies and are
directed toward political action in the present. In terms of
memories of the Christian persecution in southeastern Turkey,
Syriac Orthodox Christians in Syria have reconstructed such
memories by referring to the present socio-political framework of
Syria and thus, the difference between the two types of ‘community
of memory’ is blurred. As Halbwachs 5 has argued, the memory of
the past is a reconstruction which can be produced by the direct
and indirect consequences of actions in the present. It is also a
collective consciousness of the past, as individuals use social
frameworks in the present in order to ‘remember the past’.
The memory of the Sayfo has been a part of the process that
the Syriac Orthodox Christians use in order to construct their
identity and to be acknowledged as Syrian citizens. Colmeiro 6
argues that small, marginalized diasporic groups, such as those of
Syriac Orthodox Christians, construct collective memory of their
own group as an alternative to official historiographies. Such
3
4

Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering, pp. 53–54.
Danforth and Van Boeschoten, Children of the Greek Civil War, p.

226.
5
6

Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, p. 49.
Colmeiro, ‘Memory and Identity’, p. 20.

308

NORIKO SATO

memories provide them with opportunities to develop their
identities under the present social and political framework of the
state in which they live. The Syriac Orthodox Christians allocate
symbolic meanings to the Sayfo, which is not a representation of
why they left their homeland, but has significance for establishing
their position in Syrian society. In the cases of the Christians of the
Syrian towns of Al-Qahtaniya and Al-Malkiya, remembering the
events of the Sayfo is an attempt for them to demonstrate that they
are different from Kurds and to confirm their Christian identity.
The Syriac Orthodox Christians from Urfa do not remember the
reason why they left Urfa. Their narrative starts from their exodus
from Urfa, and they emphasize how their community members
cooperated in order to establish their lives in Syria. Such attempts
of these Christians are related to the official historiographies of the
Syrian state, which claims that Syria has been an Arab state, as well
as a multi-religious state, in which the communal histories of the
existing confessional groups within Syria constitute a single
national history.
Syrian-Arab nationalism under the Baath regime has
attempted to incorporate a variety of religious groups into its
society and acknowledges their heritage as forming the culture of
the Syrian Arabs. 7 The multiculturalism which has been promoted
by the Syrian government acknowledges the existence of plural
religious groups but does not accept the plurality of cultures based
on ethnicity. In order to unify the state, the regime denotes Syria as
an Arab state and maintains its political order as a multi-religious
state, in which the communal histories of the existing confessional
groups within Syria constitute its national history. The
government’s policy of religious multiculturalism acknowledges the
idea of a religious subculture, which explains the existence of
distinct religious groups in the same geographic space, where the
dominant Arab-Islamic culture flourishes.
The Baathist regime acknowledges that Syrian citizens
embrace different religious, tribal, class, and local identities. Yet the
regime does not want to concede the political rights of those who
are not Arabs. In terms of ethnicity, the regime has regarded Kurds
7

Hinnebusch, Syria Revolution from above, p. 140.

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

309

as an ethnic group different from Arabs, and thus their political
rights have been undermined. 8 Such government policy has a
strong influence on reconstructing the Syriacs’ Sayfo narratives.
The narratives which are given by the contemporary Syriac
Orthodox Christians in both Qahtaniya and Malkiya present how
the Kurds brutally attacked them and how God saved them from
the infidel enemies. They remember that, in 1915, their ancestors
barricaded themselves into churches or villages which were
besieged by the Ottoman Turks and the Kurds. Memories attached
to these barricades symbolize how the Sayfo highlighted the
demarcation between themselves and the Kurds.
The experiences of the Sayfo are traumatic and thus its
memory has been transmitted over generations. By emphasizing
the difference between themselves and the Kurds in their Sayfo
narratives, the Syriac Orthodox Christians are able to portray
Kurds as ‘others’ in terms of religion. Such narratives make these
Christians confirm that they are authentic members of the Syrian
society as their religion proves. Their religion can trace its origin
back to ancient Syria 9 and their liturgical language, Syriac, is a
remnant of ancient Aramaic, which is an ancient language of Syria,
and which many spoke in pre-Islamic Syria. The memory of the
Sayfo provides the Syriac Orthodox Christians with the strong
sense of their religious identity, which also contributes to merging
them into Syrian society. When they refer to the Baathist policy of
religious multiculturalism, the religious culture and language of the
Syriacs form part of the Syrian national culture. Thus, the Syriac
Orthodox Christians are able to claim that they are one of the
indigenous religious groups of Syria. By contrast, the Kurds are not
entitled to claim its membership, as their ethnicity separates them
from Syrian Arabs.
The narrative of the Sayfo is a form of representation which
provides the Syriac Orthodox Christians with an opportunity to
reconstitute their community as members of Syrian society, and
thereby to discover their new home as a place where they enunciate
In the 1962 census, 20% of the Kurds in Syria lost their citizenship
(Tejel 2009: 51).
9 Holy Bible, King James Version, Acts 11:20–21.
8

310

NORIKO SATO

their collective identity as one of the groups in Syria. 10 To
remember the Sayfo is a shared departure point that their
community uses as an attempt to re-establish their lives in Syria.
For the Syriac Orthodox Christians who emigrated from Urfa to
Aleppo, their exodus forms the symbolic departure point from
their former lives which they now use as the basis for constructing
their present lives in Syria. Those from Urfa strived to establish
their position in Aleppine society from which they were isolated.
They seemed to have avoided discussing their foreign roots at that
time, as it impeded them from achieving inclusion into Syrian
society. In the 1930s, many Syriac Orthodox Christians from Urfa
supported Syrian nationalists who strove to create a modern and
secular Syrian nation state. Syrian nationalists acknowledged both
Muslims and non-Muslims who occupied the geographical space of
Syria and who had contributed to the development of Syrian
culture and history, as members of Syrian society. By being
influenced by such political movements, the Syriac Orthodox
Christians from Urfa concealed memories of the religious
persecution and atrocities which they had experienced in Urfa, and
even the reason for their exodus. Even under the Baathist regime,
to disclose their origin does not help these Christians to integrate
them into Syrian society. Instead, their historical narratives
emphasize how their community members respected Christian
precepts and worked together in order to establish their lives in
Aleppo. These Christians understand the government policy of
acknowledging the rights of indigenous Christians of Syria, and
have selected memories which are useful for claiming their religious
identity. These forms of recollection not only promote a communal
version of the past, but also are crucial facets of shared visions of
the present. The communal versions of the past bring together
older and younger generations to implicate them in the task of
securing a position in present Syrian society and integrating them
into the state ideology.
Another distinctive feature of narratives about the Sayfo is
that the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Syria attempt even to
conceal their memories of events which occurred before the 1915
10

cf. Hall ‘Cultural Identity And Diaspora’, pp. 236–37.

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

311

persecution. They do not transmit to their descendants any
memories of their lives before their emigration to Syria, and how
many of their community members became helpless victims of the
massacre. It is impossible for contemporary Syriac Orthodox
Christians to recollect what events exactly took place in their
ancestors’ lives before the 1915 atrocities. Moreover, in their Sayfo
narratives they do not emphasize how large numbers of their
community members were massacred, though Mor Gregorios
Yohanna Ibrahim, the Archbishop of Aleppo, 11 stated that between
1914 and 1918 almost 100,000 Syriac Orthodox Christians had lost
their lives through fighting, and nearly the same number were
displaced.
Details of how Syriac Orthodox Christians lost their lives
during the persecution are not transmitted to younger generations,
for whom knowledge about the helpless victims might detract from
the effective implementation of their present intentions. Earlier
accounts of the Sayfo persecution describe them as helpless victims
of the Ottoman and Kurdish persecution. 12 In these accounts, they
paid attention to the gory details. By contrast, the narratives of the
Sayfo which I have collected from the late 1990s until the eve of
the Syrian Civil War, do not place emphasis on their suffering.
Forgetting becomes part of the process in which a new set of
memories is constructed. 13 When the Syriac Orthodox Christians
abide by government policy, which acknowledges the rights of
indigenous religious group in Syria, they start to emphasize how
their ancestors have managed tactically to find their way out of a
difficult situation. Therefore, it seems that their way of displaying
their memory of the Sayfo has been transformed.
Although the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Syria believe that
they constitute a community of memory, the ways of remembering
the event are not identical. There are three versions of their
communal memories which I collected during my anthropological
fieldwork in Syria prior to the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, and
Ibrahim, ‘Foreword’, p. 8.
See further in Armalto Al-Qusara fi Nakbat al-Nasara, pp. 465–466;
Jastrow Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlahso, p. 265.
13 Connerton ‘Seven types of forgetting’, p. 63.
11
12

312

NORIKO SATO

which have been produced in order for them to develop their
identity as Christian groups in different places in Syria. Each
version is one of the ways of remembering the Sayfo.

THE MEMORY OF THE SAYFO AMONG THE QAHTANIYA
CHRISTIANS
Qahtaniya is located in northeastern Syrian Jazira, which Syrians
regard as a frontier both culturally and politically. Many Syriac
Orthodox Christians living in Qahtaniya had emigrated from Tur
Abdin and settled here during and after the Ottoman Christian
persecution between 1914 and 1923. 14 There is no data which
shows the exact percentage of the ethnic composition in
Qahtaniya, where Kurds, Arabs, and Syriac Orthodox Christians
live. According to a Kurdish source, 15 around 40% of the Syrian
Kurdish population live in the Jazira region.
Their narratives of the 1915 massacre, which I collected
during my fieldwork, show a clear distinction from other written
accounts recorded earlier, in which these Christians in this area
describe themselves as powerless victims of the persecution. 16 The
following is a narrative of the incidents of 1915 given by the Syriac
Orthodox Christians in Qahtaniya. The framework of each
person’s account is almost identical, though some people
remember some details more than others.
The Ottoman soldiers marched into the village of Ain Ward,
which is located to the east of Midyat, in Tur Abdin. Many
Kurdish tribesmen followed them. The villagers braced
themselves for the attack by the Turks and Kurds. Then the
leader, Gallo Shabo, went to the town of Midyat to tell the
Tur Abdin means ‘mountain of servants [of God]’ in Syriac, which
is the liturgical language of Syriac Orthodox Christians. It is located in
present Turkey along the border with the northeastern Syrian Jazira. Both
areas used to be parts of the Ottoman Empire, and no political and
national border existed between them until the end of the Ottoman era.
15 Sahipkiran ‘Kurdish Population in Syria’.
16 e.g. Armalto Al-Qusara fi Nakbat al-Nasara; Al-Korkis Jiraah fi
Taarikh al-Suryan.
14

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

313

Syriac Orthodox Christians there about the situation in Ain
Ward. A beacon was the signal, which notified the Syriac
Orthodox Christian villagers, whose villages were located in
the east and northeast of Midyat, that the war between
themselves and the Muslims was about to start. When they
received this message, they joined the villagers of Ain Ward in
order to defend themselves. Ain Ward lay on the top of an
isolated hill, and therefore it seemed difficult for the Turks and
Kurds to attack the village.
The Christians barricaded themselves in a village church. A
Kurdish Agah and his tribesmen gathered in front of the
church gate. Gallo Shabo tried to dissuade the Agah from
attacking them. The Agah said, “We will abduct your girls and
women.” Gallo and the Christians were furious with the Agah
and killed him. Then the Kurds said, “We will break into the
church tomorrow at seven o’clock.”
After the Morning Prayer, the Kurds broke down the church
door, which the Christians had barricaded with wooden poles,
but when the Kurds entered the courtyard, they could not find
the Christians. The Christians under the command of Gallo,
who had hidden in the upstairs rooms surrounding the
courtyard, started to attack the Kurds. Eighty Kurds were
killed there.
There were 150 families living in the village at that time. In all,
including people from other villages, thousands of people had
been in Ain Ward for two months during the siege. No one
can tell how they fed such a large number of people. Although
the Turks and Kurds had besieged the village for two months,
the Christians did not surrender… 17

The ways in which they described the event are remarkable for
their clarity. Another place where Syriac Orthodox Christian
villagers retreated from their villages and gathered together, was the
monastery of Mar Malke. The story of the monastery of Mar Malke
The Turkish policy of oppressing the Christians had continued for
three years since 1915.
17

314

NORIKO SATO

given by contemporary Syriac Orthodox Christians in Qahtaniya is
similar to their account of Ain Ward. This monastery also stood in
an isolated place, located south of Midyat. Bell’s observation of the
monastery between 1909 and 1919 described its appearance as that
of a little fortress. She also mentions that it had been repaired or
rebuilt 18 recently. The Turkish army and Kurdish tribes besieged it
for a year.
The Syriac Orthodox Christians in Qahtaniya have a
propensity for looking at the event as a ‘war’ between the
Christians and the Kurds. Contemporary Qahtaniya Christians
describe how their ancestors were courageous fighters. The
Christians in Ain Ward even tried to protect the sexual honour of
the Christian women. Yet they do not mention the casualties in
detail.
The reason for which the Qahtaniya Christians place emphasis
on the courageous act of their ancestors can be understood when
comparing it to earlier accounts given by survivors of the 1915
atrocities. A survivor’s account of the siege of Ain Ward, which
Ritter collected in 1961, 19 focuses on how the Christians in Ain
Ward had held its defences for over two months, while the
Muslims exploited the opportunity for eliminating the Christians in
order to steal their land and property. In this earlier version, the
village church is not mentioned, whereas in the Qahtaniya version,
it is a symbol of dealing with difficult situations with courage and
confidence. Divine power miraculously saved the courageous
Christians. Thus, the barricaded church is a symbol of their
Christian identity which separates them from the Kurds. Although
the Kurds besieged the church, they could not set foot inside it.
The church is seen as a sanctuary, which only these Christians were
allowed to enter. The description given by these Christians suggests
a fundamental belief in imminent divine justice, which protects the
Christians from ‘falling into the hands’ of their ‘sinful enemies’,
who had attempted to eliminate the Christians, and so attacked
them. During this ‘war’, the Christians in Ain Ward co-operated
and strove for the collective salvation of their community as a
18
19

Bell The Churches and Monasteries of the Tur ‘Abdin, p. 38.
Yonan Einvergessener Holocaust, p. 283.

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

315

whole, rather than for themselves as individuals. The symbol of the
barricaded church encourages them to enhance their historical
consciousness and gives them pride in being Syriac Orthodox
Christians, who are not feeble, but rather can defend themselves
successfully against their wicked enemies.
There is another reason to stress the difference between the
Syriac Orthodox Christians and the Kurds in their Sayfo narratives.
As many Kurds had emigrated from southeastern Turkey to
northern Syria, the Qahtaniya Christians were surrounded by the
Kurdish population. Memories of the Syriac Orthodox Christians
suggest that many Kurds have ancestors who used to be Syriac
Orthodox Christians and converted to Islam. 20 Once they
converted to Islam, the ex-Syriac Orthodox Christians transformed
their ethnic identity and were incorporated into Kurdish society. In
this regard, the ethnic identity of these Syriac Orthodox Christians
is quite ambiguous. It is not easy to tell whether or not these
Christians are ethnically separated from the Kurds. Moreover, the
Syriac Orthodox Christians in south-eastern Turkey had associated
with their neighbouring Kurds before the Sayfo massacre. Thus,
their elders used to speak Kurdish, as well as the Aramaic dialect,
Turoyo. Due to such historical reasons, the contemporary Syriac
Orthodox Christians in Qahtaniya are afraid that the Syrian
government might ethnically identify them as Kurds and thus
deprive them of their rights as Syrian citizens. This is one of the
reasons that the Qahtaniya Christians describe the Kurds as their
enemies in their Sayfo narratives.
The Sayfo narrative, as given by the Syriac Orthodox
Christians in Qahtaniya, is an attempt to draw a clear distinction
between themselves and the Kurds in terms of religion and
ethnicity. Having seen for myself the Qahtaniya version, I find that
it is different from the earlier version which Ritter has presented. It
suggests that the memory of the Sayfo has been reconstructed in
Some Syriac Orthodox Christians from Tur Abdin converted to
Islam in the 17th century (Barsoum History of Syriac Literature and Sciences,
pp. 353–354). Archbishop Saka (al-Suryan Iman wa Hadara, p. 51) also
mentions the conversion of the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Tur Abdin
in the 14th century.
20

316

NORIKO SATO

the process, insofar as the Syriac Orthodox Christians use it for
constructing their identity, so as to be acknowledged as Syrian
citizens. These Christians have constructed the collective memory
of the Sayfo under the present social and political framework of the
Syrian state.

THE MEMORY OF THE SAYFO AMONG THE MALKIYA
CHRISTIANS
The Syriac Orthodox Christians in Malkiya, which is a small town
in the Jazira and which is close to both the Turkish and Iraqi
borders, 21 describe how their community had been saved by divine
love and power at the time of the Sayfo. Similar to the case of the
Qahtaniya Christians, the siege of 1915 explains how these
Christians joined together and fought against the Kurds. Thus, the
events of 1915 take on a symbolic role in explaining the emergence
of the boundary between the Christians and their neighbouring
Kurds. The Malkiya Christians mention that there used to be
nineteen villages in the area of Azakh, but during the 1915
persecution only those who lived in six of the villages had managed
to escape to Azakh. The following is the historical narratives of the
siege of Azakh in 1915, given by the contemporary Syriac
Orthodox Christians in Malkiya.
When the Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish tribesmen, who were
agents of the government, reached Azakh, the Bishop of
Azakh insisted that the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Azakh
were obedient subjects of the Empire. Despite the efforts of
The official census for Malkiya’s population was published in 1981
when it stood at 13,225 (Marwini Mufahadat al-Hassaka, p. 220). According
to the Christians in the town, in 1998 there were about 380 families of
Syriac Orthodox Christians in the town. The other Christian inhabitants
were 83 Armenian families and about 20 Protestant families plus a small
number of Chaldean Christians in communion with the See of Rome.
Kurds form the majority of the inhabitants of the town. The 2004 census
mentions that Malkiya has a population of 26311 Kurds and that Syriac
speaking population compose the majority of the town population
%R]EXüD, ‘Ethnic and Religious Structures’).
21

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

317

the Bishop, next day, the army started to attack the Christians.
The latter used the basements of their houses, where they had
stored up a large amount of food and arms, for shelter and also
for returning fire. Some of these men slipped over the village
walls and stole guns from the dead soldiers, and supplied these
arms to their community. Due to the heavy attack and
overcrowded conditions, the terrified Christians soon became
exhausted.
Dozens of Kurdish tribesmen heard cannon shot coming from
the direction of the church of the Virgin Mary. They
recognised that the shots were deliberately targeted on the
Turkish and Kurdish sides. The Turkish commander requested
a meeting with the Christian leaders and suggested
investigating the church. The Christians flew a white flag and
invited the officials inside the village gate. The officials said to
the Bishop and the community members, “You should hand
over the latest model cannon to the government as the proof
of your obedience.” The Bishop replied: “We do not own any
cannon. You can search the village if you wish.” Although the
officials searched the church, they could not find any arms in
it. Moreover, there was no window in the church from where
the Christians could fire a cannon. Since the officials could not
find a cannon inside the village, both Turks and Kurds
believed that the fire was the work of God and that God had
intervened in the war. The Turks and Kurds were afraid of
God and therefore, this miracle was the cause of their
withdrawal from Azakh.

By stressing that there were no political dissidents in the
community of the Syriac Orthodox Christians, they try to describe
the siege as unjust. 22 The besieged Christians in Azakh believed
The Contemporary Syriac Orthodox Christians in Malkiya
mention that the Ottoman army had suspected that there were Armenian
nationalists and revolutionaries among the villagers. The Ottomans feared
that Armenians would take the side of the Russians, who would attack
them from behind, and so ordered the army to evacuate the Armenians.
The Turkish government claims that the Ottoman government reacted
22

318

NORIKO SATO

that the Virgin bestows her blessing on those who experienced
fear, hunger, thirst, disease, and death. As the Virgin did not wish
the Syriac Orthodox Christians to be annihilated, she supported
these Christians. It is the contemporary interpretation given by the
Syriac Orthodox Christians in Malkiya that the Virgin Mary acted
as an intercessor with God to save the Christians in Azakh, and
that their enemies had no power before God. The Malkiya
Christians share the view of this ‘miracle’, whose importance is
used to identify their community as that of Christians whose unity
is derived from their collective memory of the ‘miracle’ in 1915.
Their fortified village was saved by divine power, which created a
boundary between them on one side and the Ottoman soldiers and
the Kurds on the other. The latter, who were on the Turkish side
and who were the wicked enemies of the Syriacs, were Muslims.
Among the contemporary Malkiya Christians, the memory of the
Sayfo becomes one of ethnic and religious markers, which set a
clear boundary between the Christians and the Kurds, who in their
new home are now their neighbours.
The oral accounts of the Christian persecution of 1915 given
by the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Qahtaniya and Malkiya stress
that the military operations by the Turks and Kurds provoked a
reaction in the Christians, who then fought back. The quality of
their forces was equal to that of the Kurds. The contemporary
Qahtaniya and Malkiya versions maintain silence about how their
ancestors perished. The Syriac Orthodox Christians blot out the
memory of being victims of the Christian persecution and
substitute for it the reminiscence of the conflict in which these
Christians were saved by God and honourably defended
themselves from the wicked Kurds. Their current anxiety of being
identified with the Kurds can be a stimulus to their creativity, and
result in them attaching symbolic meaning to their claim for having
an identity distinct from that of the Kurds. This is an attempt by
the Syriac Orthodox Christians to give a new definition to their
identity.

reasonably to the Armenian revolts (Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf, and
Crescent, p. 81).

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

319

It is not their inability to portray themselves as a respected
society, but rather their cautious approach to others which arises
from their feeling of insecurity. If their dislocation in society has
disrupted their identity, it is possible that new interpretations of
historical events will emerge in order for them to express their
anxiety and the hope of establishing a more secure identity in their
new home. When a political situation changes, new relationships
between historical referents are created in order to infuse them
with collective significance, and to illustrate and legitimize their
power relations with other groups. 23 In their accounts of the Sayfo,
contemporary Syrian Orthodox Christians in both Qahtaniya and
Malkiya disclose their ambivalent position in their relations with
their Kurdish neighbours, and at the same time attempt to
demonstrate their religious identity in order to separate them from
the Kurds and establish their position in society.

THE MEMORY OF THE SAYFO AMONG THE SYRIAC
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS FROM URFA
The Syriac Orthodox Christians who emigrated from Urfa to
Aleppo portray themselves as Urfalli, ‘people from Urfa’. Many
Urfallis, who had experienced this emigration as children, or are
descendants of the immigrants, do not know why, in 1924, their
community as a whole had to abandon their properties and leave
Urfa, their home. Although it was a deportation, the contemporary
Urfalli maintain that many of their community members did not
know it. They relate that,
Our leaders informed our community members that we would
temporarily move to Aleppo. However, two years after our
emigration to Syria, community members discovered that our
leaders had agreed to leave Urfa permanently. Our leaders
made an agreement with Turkish officials in Urfa to leave there
under the condition that Turkish authorities ensured the safety
of our group while we exited from Urfa to Aleppo.

See further in Santos-Gramero, ‘Writing History into the
Landscape’.
23

320

NORIKO SATO

It seems that in the course of constructing this collective memory,
the Urfalli emigrants concealed two issues. First, their leaders hid
both the written and oral sources which contained the agreement
between them and the Turkish authorities in Urfa. Second,
ordinary Urfallis decided to maintain silence about the issue as to
why they agreed to move to Aleppo. Even in 2008, when one of
the local historians, who had experienced the emigration at the age
of seven, attempted to investigate who concealed the deportation
order, community members were opposed to revealing it. Many
Urfallis have some idea of who may still maintain the historical
documents which are related to their forced immigration. If it is
announced to the public, they believe that the community will
disintegrate. Therefore, they have sealed the archive of the
memories of the religious persecution.
The Urfallis’ voluntary concealment of the memory of their
exodus seems to be related to other memories of their community.
The Urfalli stress how community members cooperated in order to
rebuild their community in their new home, Aleppo. The
contemporary Urfallis estime highly the effort of their community
members to unify them as an Orthodox Christian community. As
one example of such, they stress how community members had
worked together and constructed their church in their quarter soon
after their immigration to Aleppo:
Although our community had a humble wooden chapel, which
we had built in 1926, in 1936, members of the Board of
Trustees in our community decided to build a larger church.
Although in those days we were poor, we made a donation to
our church. It reached the necessary amount for purchasing
materials for laying the church foundation. Due to the shortage
of funds, both men and women were voluntarily engaged in
the construction work. The foundations were completed
almost miraculously in one day. This achievement indicates
how our community members had cooperated in order to
accomplish our goal of rebuilding our lives in Aleppo.

By placing emphasis on their unity and cooperation as a Christian
community, the contemporary Urfallis attempt to conceal how
their community had been divided. The Urfallis were allowed to
stay in Aleppo as refugees, for whom the Syriac Orthodox Bishop,
Siurerius Ephreim Barsum, petitioned the French delegation to

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

321

construct a refugee camp. The Urfalli refugees spoke only Turkish
and Armenian. They did not know Arabic, the lingua franca of Syria.
Lack of communication skills made them isolated from Aleppine
society. Due to the poverty and the isolation in the 1920s and
1930s, many community members had converted to Catholicism,
supported by the French Mandate, in order to get food and
assistance. This had accelerated the disintegration of their
community. Nearly 75% of the population had converted to
Catholicism, though they returned to their original Church after the
withdrawal of the French from Syria. In this situation, the
community became weakened, as members were unable to trust
each other, and so the construction of the church, which was an
imposing edifice, became a symbol of the hope for unifying their
community.
Contemporary Urfalli talk proudly how their community had
accomplished the construction of their church, which gave
prominence to their unity and cooperation. This was also an
attempt to conceal the memory of their conversion to Catholicism,
which had made a marked cleavage between the members. In a
similar fashion, the disclosure of the reason of their exodus reveals
that there was cleavage between their community leaders and other
members. Thus, the Urfalli have tried to forget their memories of
the time before their emigration.
The Urfallis’ voluntary concealment of the past seems to have
started under the influence of the political climate in Syria during
the 1930s, which was the culmination of the Syrian nationalist
movement. Syrian nationalists strove to create a modern, secular
Syrian nation-state, whose inhabitants, both Muslim and nonMuslim, were members of the Syrian national community and
shared the Syrian national history. The isolated Urfalli strove to
establish their position in Syrian society under the aegis of the
Syrian nationalist movement and to avoid discussing their foreign
roots at that time, as it impeded them from achieving inclusion into
Syrian society. Syrian nationalism offered them possibilities to unite
them to the Syrian political community, and to be able to identify
themselves as its citizens.
The Urfalli started to maintain that they have been members
of the Syrian state since its pre-Islamic period, as pre-Islamic
“Syria” encompassed the entire northern Levant, including ancient
Edessa (present Urfa), which was their homeland. The Urfalli

322

NORIKO SATO

attempted to reinforce the belief that their religious culture had
been nurtured in Syria as one of its cultures. Thus, they claimed
that they were indigenous Syrians. Their religion became a means
for incorporating them into Syrian society. The construction of
their own church was to have a symbolic meaning for identifying
themselves as one of the Christian groups in Syria. The new social
category of the Syrian national community provided the Urfalli
with self-definition as Syrian citizens. The failure of the Urfalli to
remember their history before their emigration seems to be related
to the fact that they wanted to forget their Turkish past and grasp
the new opportunity, which emerged for them to establish their
position in Syrian society.
The religious multiculturalism which the Baathist regime has
promoted acknowledges rights of the groups whose religion has
Syrian origin. The contemporary Urfalli strive to define themselves
as members of this community and to legitimize their presence in
Syria, as their religion is part of the cultural heritage of Syria. Yet
their community had eliminated the memory of their days in Urfa
and is unable to prove that their communal history constitutes part
of the Syrian national history. They have to surmount their
forgotten past, when they try to bring the religion and history of
their group to the foreground of their strategy for proving their
Syrian origin and so integrating themselves into Syrian society. The
Urfalli need to seek evidence that would enable them to prove the
apparent continuity of their community and its relation to Syria.
Instead of retrieving their memory before their emigration from
Urfa, they are now more inclined to record the ancient history of
their community and find it through their religious tradition, as it
would be an eloquent testimony for explaining how they have
maintained their ancient Edessian Christian tradition, which is a
cultural tradition of ancient Syria.

CONCLUSION
The Urfalli Syriac Orthodox Christians have attempted to adapt to
the changing political situation in Syria by maintaining silence about
the Christian persecution in Urfa and the reason for their
emigration from Urfa to Aleppo. The Urfalli remember that some
Armenian neighbours in Urfa, who had experienced the religious
persecution in 1915, concealed their identity and immigrated to
Aleppo together with the Urfalli. It is unlikely that the Urfalli did

14. THE MEMORY OF SAYFO

323

not know what had occurred in Urfa in 1915, and the fate of their
Armenian neighbours. Although the Urfalli maintain silence,
British and American diplomatic reports, which were written at the
time of the First World War with the aim of denouncing their
Ottoman enemies, depict the Armenian Christians in Urfa, as well
as those in Zaitun, deciding to turn against the Ottoman
government when they realized that the Turks planned to eliminate
their community. 24 In the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian
massacre in Urfa, no more than 500 out of 20,000 former
inhabitants in the quarter were left alive. 25 The collective memory
of their experience of the Sayfo and the aftermath, which the
Urfalli have reconstructed, is different from the reports which
historians and diplomats recorded. This suggests that universal and
analytical knowledge is not always acknowledged as a
representation of history by the local participants. 26 Collective
history stems from the shared memory of its subjects, whose social
stratum and political stance affect their perspectives of their past.
In the process of recalling the Sayfo atrocities, both Qahtaniya
and Malkiya Christians attempt to set a boundary between them
and the Kurds. The barricades which have appeared in the Sayfo
narratives symbolize the ethnic and religious demarcation between
themselves and the Kurds, who have not been acknowledged as
members of the Syrian nation. The Syriac Orthodox Christians use
this distinction in order to construct their identity in Syrian society.
The three versions of their communal memories of the Sayfo,
which this article has introduced, have been produced in order for
them to develop their identity as a Christian group in Syria.
Although their memories suggest that the Syriac Orthodox
Christians do not always remember the Sayfo in the same way, all
three of these communities emphasize how their members worked
together in order to overcome the critical situation which their
ancestors experienced at the time of the Sayfo. Due to the current
Sarafian, United States Official Documents, pp. 24–25, 31; Toynbee
Armenian Atrocities, p. 71.
25 Grabill, ‘Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East’, p. 167.
26 Yoneyama, ‘For Transformative Knowledge and Postnationalist
Public Spheres: The Smithsonian Enola Gay controversy’.
24

324

NORIKO SATO

Syrian Civil War, many Syriac Orthodox Christians have left Syria.
They may reconstruct their memory of the Sayfo, when they
resettle in different places in the world. Thus, each version of these
events, which the Syriac Orthodox Christians in Syria told, is one
of the variant forms of remembering the Sayfo, which Syriac
Orthodox Christians living in different parts of the world
construct. Alternative versions of the Sayfo narratives emerge when
people claim new identities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armalto, Ishaq. Al-Qusara fi Nakbat al-Nasara. (Beirut: al-Tab‘a alAwwal, 1919).
Barsoum, Ignatius Aphram. History of Syriac Literature and Sciences
(Kitab al-Lulu al-Manthur fi Tarikh al-Ulum wa al-Adab alSyriyaniyya). Translated & edited by Moosa, Matti. (Pueblo CO:
Passeggiata Press, 2000 [1963]).
Bell, Gertrude. The Churches and Monasteries of the Tur ‘Abdin: With an
Introduction and Notes by Marlia Mundell Mango. (London: The
Pindar Press, 1982).
%R]EXüD 5DVLP o(WKQLF DQG 5HOLJLRXV 6WUXFWXUHVp LQ 6DKLSNULDQ
2014. http://sahipkiran.org/2014/08/05/kurdish-populationin-syria/ (accessed May 30, 2015)
Colmeiro, José. ‘Memory and Identity: Some comparative
theoretical perspectives’. In 1DWLRQ RI *KRVWV" +DXQWLQJ
Historical Memory and Forgetting in Post-Franco Spain. Electronic
Journal of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature 4
(2011): 17–34. (Accessed October 16, 2015).
http://www.452f.com/index. php/en/jose-colmeiro.html ͒
Connerton, Paul. ‘Seven types of forgetting’. In Memory Studies 1
no.1 (2008): 59–71. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
(Accessed October 16, 2015).
http://mss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/59
Danforth, Loring M. and Riko Van Boeschoten. Children of the
Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory. (Chicago:
University Of Chicago Press, 2011).
Grabill, Joseph L. Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary
Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1971).

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Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
Hall, Stuart. ‘Cultural Identity And Diaspora’. In Identity: Community,
Culture, Difference. Edited by Johnathan Rutherford, pp. 222–
237. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990).
Hinnebusch, Raymond A. Syria Revolution from above. London:
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Holy Bible, King James Version. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc.,
1991).
Ibrahim, Mar Gregorius Yohanna. ‘Foreword’. In Syrian Christians
Under Islam: The First Thousand Years. Edited by D. Thomas.
(Leiden: Brill, 2001).
Jastrow, Otto. Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlahso. (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1994).
al-Korkis, Asmar al-Qass. Jiraah fi Taarikh al-Suryan. (Lebanon:
Rabitat al-Suriyaniyat, 1985).
Lamont, Michèle and Nissim Mizrachi. ‘Ordinary People doing
Extraordinary Things: Responses to Stigmatization in
Comparative Perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 no. 3
(2012): 365–381.
Marwini, Ahmad Sharif. Mufahadat al-Hassaka. (Damascus: Khalid
Ibn al-Walid, 1986).
Misztal, Barbara A. Theories of Social Remembering. (Maidenhead,
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Poulton, Hugh. Top Hat, Grey Wolf, and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism
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Sahipkiran. ‘Kurdish Population in Syria’, Sahipkiran 2014.
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Saka, Ishaq. al-Suryan Iman wa Hadara. (Damascus: Syrian Orthodox
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Santos-Gramero. ‘Writing History into the Landscape: Space,
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Toynbee, Arnold J. Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of A Nation.
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(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

15. FORGOTTEN WITNESSES:
REMEMBERING AND INTERPRETING
THE ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF
TUR ‘ABDIN
SIMON BIROL
In the past, Syriac copyists used to write colophons, called nuhore 1
in Syriac, with personal remarks, mostly on the last page of their
manuscripts. These remarks cover different areas of life. Although
most of them seem to be intercessions or are limited to noting the
year and the name of the current bishop, remarks about regional
persecutions and massacres can also be found. In particular,
important information about the local massacres by Kurdish emirs
such as Badr Khan or Izz al-din Sher, 2 or about the massacre of
Diyarbakir in 1895/1896, 3 are mentioned in some of the
manuscripts copied in Turabdin.
In this article, I provide a few examples of information one
can find about the Sayfo in the Syriac manuscripts of Turabdin. I
also try to identify the textual sources used by Syriac authors in
Turabdin and explain the use of the traditional elements of Syriac
literature for dealing with such horrific experiences.

The transcription is based upon the traditional pronunciation of
the Surayt Aramaic language of Turabdin (also called Turoyo). Diacritical
signs have been reduced to a minimum.
2 Talay, ‘Turabdin des 19. Jahrhunderts’, pp. 343–362. See also: Birol
‘Interpretation of the “Sayfo” in Gallo Shabo’s poem’.
3 Kaufhold, ‘Christenverfolgungen der Jahre 1895/96,’ pp. 25–43.
1

327

328

SIMON BIROL

BISHOP MOR PHILOXENUS Y8ʙ$121DOLABANI (1885–
1969)
One of the oldest remarks about the Sayfo in the Syriac Orthodox
manuscripts of Turabdin was written by Bishop Philoxenus
<XʘDQRQ'RODEDQLIURP0DUGLQIDPRXVIRUZULWLQJDQGFRPSLOLQJ
ancient manuscripts in Mardin. However, his students would claim
that he neither said nor wrote a single word about the Sayfo.
Dolabani was born in Mardin in 1885, and his formal religious
education began at the school of the Capuchin Fathers in Mardin.
In 1908, aged 22, Dolabani entered the novitiate of consecrated
life. He spent the first five years of his ascetic life at the Monastery
of our Lady situated in the cliffs surrounding Dayr al-Za‘faran, the
Saffron Monastery, in Mardin. In 1913, he became a teacher at the
seminary of Dayr al-Za‘faran. After the Sayfo, in 1918 Patriarch
Ignatius Elias III ordained Dolabani to the presbyterate, and from
1947 to 1969, Dolabani was the metropolitan bishop of Mardin. 4
As mentioned previously, Dolabani did not author any books
or articles about the Sayfo, though his complete writings have not
been studied in detail. Nevertheless, Dolabani’s approach to
dealing with the Sayfo can be reconstructed through his work as
copist. 5 Altogether, two of the three manuscripts that were copied
in 1915 were handwritten by Dolabani: the manuscripts ZFRN 40
and CFMM 144. 6
For Dolabani’s biography, see Gülcan and Brock, ‘A Syrian–
Orthodox %LVKRS DQG 6FKRODU 0DU 3KLOR[HQRV <RʘDQQDQ 'ÓODSÓQX
(1885–1969)’, pp. 46–52; Ibrahim, Dolabani, the Ascetic of Mardin; Kiraz
o'RODEDQL 3KLOR[HQRV <XʘDQRQp SS –130. Dere and Isik
posthumously edited Dolabani’s autobiography in: Dere and Isik (eds.),
Biography of Yuhanon Dolabani.
5 These manuscripts have been scanned through the work of Hill
Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), which used the following
acronyms: ZFRN = Dayr al–Za‘faran; CFMM = Church of the Forty
Martyrs in Mardin. The acronym for the Monastery of Mor Gabriel is
MGMT (see below). Folio respectively page references are from HMML.
6 ZFRN 232 contains an Arabic version of John Climacus’ The Book
of the Ladder, copied by an anonymous scribe. Furthermore, a monk
QDPHG <XVXI IURP %DUʜLOOHK Iraq) replaced some pages of CFMM 363
4

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

329

Except for some additional text at the end of CFMM 144 (pp.
494–514) 7 and two short notes in ZFRN 40 (pp. 494–496), 8 these
1915 manuscripts have the same content and almost identical
pagination.
Author 9
David Puniqoyo
(7 Mimre)

Title 10
1–2: Acrostic Poem
3: On the Affliction of Exile
4: The Praise of the Fathers
5: Beginning prayer for the altar service
6: Prayer during the offering

pp.
1–28

(written in the 18th century) in 1915. Yusuf the monk later added two of
Bishop Ya‘qub bar Shakko’s letters to that author’s previously penned
Book of Treasures. Both letters were also part of the manuscripts, ZFRN 40
and CFMM 144 (both pp. 261–3; 264–8).
7 The extra text comprises two short, untitled poetic selections by
Clement Abraham of Damascus (pp. 494–495), a poetic colophon by
%DVLOLXV 0XVKH RI ʙDGDG S   XQWLWOHG SRHPV E\ 6KHPoXQ RI 4DʛXU
(pp. 496–498) and John of Jerusalem (pp. 498–499), a poetic colophon by
Dionysius the Metropolitan (?) (p. 499), four brief panegyrics to clerics by
<DoTXERI4XʜUXEDO SS– ,VKDo\R'HQʘR6ELULQR\RpVSRHPo2Q
Job and his Wife’ (pp. 510–511) and Stephen of Bethzabday’s ‘Panegyric
on Basilius and Iwannis (?)’. %DVHG RQ WKLV PDQXVFULSW ,VKDo\R 'HQʘR
Sbirinoyo’s poem has been transcribed and translated into English in:
A.C. McCollum, $)UDJPHQWRIWKH0ĔPUćRQ-REDQGKLV:LIHE\,VDLDKRI%ĔW
6ELULQć g :
https://hmmlorientalia.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/isaiah_bet_sbirina_
memra_job.pdf
8 Two mimre, the first untitled (p. 252) and the second called ‘On the
Trinity and the Alphabet’ (p. 253), are located after the index (p. 251–
252). Although the author is not mentioned, it is plausible that Dolabani
could be the author.
9 Barsaum, Geschichte der syrischen Wissenschaften und Literatur, pp. 199–
421, summarized biographical information about most of these authors.
See also A.C. McCollum ‘Remarks on recent Cataloging efforts among
Syriac Manuscripts preserved at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library’,
pp. 362–364.
10 To briefly introduce each poem, the titles of the mimre were noted.
Untitled poems were summarized and italicized.

330

Tuma Puniqoyo
ʗDQDQyo
Akhsnoyo
(2 Mimre)
Bar Qiqi
(2 Mimre)
Ya‘qub
‘Urdnusoyo
(2 Mimre)
Behnam
ʗDGOR\R
Yeshu‘ bar
Khayrun
<XʘDQRQEDU
Andra’os
Timotheos
Gargroyo
(2 Mimre)
Isha‘yo 'HQʘo
Sbirinoyo
(3 Mimre)
<XʘDQRQ Ismael
Michael the
Great
<XʘDQRQ the
Bishop (?)
Ya‘qob bar
Shakko
(2 Mimre)
Anonymous
Elias of Beth
La‘go
Philoxenus
Zaytun
Timotheos
Faulus of Edessa
Anonymous

SIMON BIROL
7: An Explanation of an Enigma,
attributed to Isaac of Nineveh
1 Acrostic Poem
1: Acrostic Poem
2: Lamentation over One’s Sinfulness
and Weakness
1: Acrostic poem: On One’s Weakness
2: Concerning Himself and his Faults
1: On Adam and Eve
2: On Death and the End

29–31
32–40
40–62
62–77

1 Mimro: On Repentance

78–92

1 Mimro: Commandment and Caution

92–108

1 Mimro, taken from his Lamentations

108–116

1: On the Departure of the Theotokos
2: On the Egyptian Fathers […]

117–189

1: On the Incursion of the Turks into
Mesopotamia and the Trouble They
Caused to the Christians There
2: On Tamerlane
3: On Wine
1 Mimro: On the Adversary of the Fast
1 Mimro: On the Accidental Death of
Bp. John of Mardin
1 Mimro: On Wisdom

190–205

1: Letter to Rabban Mar Fakhr al–
Dawla bar Tuma
2: Letter to Rabban Abu ʝahir ʙa‘id
1 Mimro: On Isaac & Bedin (?) of
Edessa
1 Mimro: On the Franks (Europeans)
in Mardin
1 Mimro: On the Controversy with
Metropolitan Anton
1 Mimro: On the Calamity and Murder
of 1908–09
1 Mimro: On the Niece of Abraham of
Qidun

205–208
209–230
231–260
261–268
268–275
275–281
282–287
287–290
290–292

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN
<XʘDQRQ
Sbirinoyo
(2 Mimre)
Lazarus bar
Sobtho
%DUʙDEXQL
ʗDELERI(GHVVD
,JQDʜLXV,VʘDT
‘Azar (?)
ʗDVDQRI0RVXO
Bar Hebraeus (?)
Patriarch
Giwargis
Bar ‘Abdun
'DQLHOʗDWWDE
Giwargis
Anonymous

331

1: On Prayer
2: On the Capture of Tur ‘Abdin

293–316

1 Mimro: On the Holy Myron

317–368

1 Mimro: On Jacob of Serugh
1 Mimro: On Jacob of Serugh
1 Mimro: The Final Benediction of
Communion
1 Mimro: The Final Benediction of
Communion
1 Mimro: On Abraham and his
Offering
1 Mimro: Lamentations over his
Imprisonment
1 Mimro: Lamentation and Praise
1 Mimro: Answer to Khamis the
Nestorian
1 Mimro: On the Ordination of
Patriarch Ignatius George III (1745)
0LPUR2Q3DWULDUFKʗDELE

368–432
432–468
468–472
472–475
476–481
482–482
482
482
482–484
484–494

At first, one finds mimre (poems) on multiple topics, and by various
authors from different epochs. These authors include Bar Qiqi,
who wrote in the 11th century; Ya‘qub ‘Urdnusoyo from the 18th
century, and Behnam ʗadloyo, who lived in the 15th century. A
first glance does not reveal any structure to this collection of
writings, and the sole commonality seems to be that both
manuscripts contain mimre with a fixed number of syllable couplets
exclusively. Nevertheless, at the beginning of both manuscripts,
Dolabani noted that he excluded the writings of famous church
fathers, such as Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh, and that he
intentionally included others in their place. As justification, he
noted in both manuscripts that he had written them, ‘for the rest of
the suppliants and the preservation of these works’ (first page in
both manuscripts).
In this context, it is striking that the first part of both
manuscripts contains several poems lamenting human weakness
and sinfulness. Moreover, the poems hint at catastrophic
experiences.
Some of these poems are explicitly about Sayfo-like events.
Examples include Yeshu‘ bar Khayrun’s ‘On the Destruction of

332

SIMON BIROL

Mardin in 1333’ (pp. 92–108), and the first two poems of Isha‘yo
'HQʘR 6ELULQR\R SS –205). However, the poems about
sinfulness and weakness can be interpreted in the same manner,
because Syriac authors use varying degrees of moral theological
thinking to explain horrific events. 11 Probably pressed by suppliants
asking why the Sayfo happened, Dolabani consulted earlier Syriac
writings in his search to comprehend the present. 12 As a result, he
not only copied these writings, but also reflected on them, as his
nuhore at the end of some of the poems make clear.
His longest and most important remarks follow Ya‘qub
‘Urdnusoyo’s second poem. The author, Bishop Mor Qurillos
Ya‘qub ‘Urdnusoyo of Beth Miriüan, was born in ‘Urdnus (Turkish:
%DüODUEDÿï , a village in Tur ‘Abdin. He became the bishop of
Midyat in 1778 and penned eleven poems about biblical figures,
sinfulness, and the end of the world before his death in 1804. In his
second poem, ‘On the Wars of the End Time and on Death and
the End’, Syriac ‘Al qrobe d–howyon b–]DEQR ʚUR\R X–‘al mawto u–
shulomo, 13 he paints an apocalyptical image of the world’s end.
These two stanzas from the poem summarize its content: 14
O Beloved, at the end of the Muslim Kingdom,
Wars on all borders of the Muslims will be multiplied,
And the men will be finished with fornicating like the people
of Sodom
The world will tremble and shake and also take fright.

Examples of this approach to interpreting calamities are
mentioned in Birol ‘Interpretation of the “Sayfo” in Gallo Shabo’s poem’.
12 Also, Gallo Shabo’s poem about the Sayfo reveals that he was
continually asked why this calamity had befallen them. See Birol
‘Interpretation of the “Sayfo” in Gallo Shabo’s poem’. Gallo Shabo’s
SRHPKDVEHHQHGLWHGLQ¤LÄHNMemre d–‘al Sayfe, pp. 31–70.
13 7KLV ZRUN KDV EHHQ HGLWHG LQ ¤LÄHN HG  Tenhotho, pp. 115–123.
This edition is not based on both manuscripts, therefore small variations
exist between it and both manuscript witnesses.
14 3DJHLQ&)00DQG=)51VHH¤LÄHN HG Tenhotho, p.
119.
11

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

333

And they will open their mouths like beasts and rear up at the
Syriacs.
They persecute them from town to town as if they were
strangers;
Weighed down by the sins of the church’s people and the
solitary monks,
Because they have not obeyed the Lord’s Commandments. 15

At the end of this poem, Dolabani included this nuhoro, which is
exclusively found in in CFMM:
These two poems by Ya‘qub ‘Urdnusoyo were copied by
<XʘDQRQ D PRQN IURP 0DUGLQ DQG WKH VRQ RI WKH SULHVW
Yawsef Dolabani. Supplicate and pray for me and for my
parents [literally: fathers] and for everyone who has relations
with us. Indeed, you should know, beloved readers, that at
some places in these two poems I have corrected a few
senseless details. I have written them, and especially the last
one, because his prophecy has been fulfilled in our time.
Behold, how horrible [his image] was, it has been fulfilled on
the Syriacs, and nothing remained except the small number of
fugitives.

This remark demonstrates the poem’s strong influence on
Dolabani. One can understand why he did not write anything
about the Sayfo later on, apart from this brief note; more than 100
years ago, this prophecy had said all that there was to say. The
historian Jorn Rüsen’s definition of historical thinking reveals how
interpreting the past led to present comprehension and future

In particular, these final quoted words became very popular in the
period after the Sayfo. Many older people learned these words by heart,
and the younger generation grew up with these verses. Ritters’ book,
ʝŠUň\R, testifies to this fact. In it, an eleven-year-old boy sings the verses
from this last stanza, the only poetry in the book in Classical Syriac, or
Kthobonoyo. See Ritter, ʝŠUň\R, pp. 692–693. Thus, this work was well
known in Turabdin in the 1960s and ’70s.
15

334

SIMON BIROL

expectations in this case. 16 For Dolabani, this outlook seems to be
as negative as the Sayfo itself. 17 This is especially true if one
considers that a past event ‘gets its historical meaning by relating it
to the cultural orientation of present-day life.’ 18
In addition, Tur ‘Abdin is home to three other copies of this
poem. Two manuscripts are preserved in Mardin and the other one
can be found at the Monastery of Mor Gabriel. It is striking that
these manuscripts were compiled and copied in 1941 (CFMM 514,
pp. 295–301), 1971 (ZFRN 53, pp. 103–21), or 1972 (MGMT 201,
pp. 1–21). At that time, Turkey was wracked by political crises and
instability. These events so deeply affected the Christians that most
living eye-witnesses remember fearing that the Sayfo would take
place again. 19 Therefore, this poem by Ya‘qub Urdnusoyo seems to
be one of the most famous textual resources to which the Syriacs
referred in such life-threatening situations.
,Q KLV DQWKRORJLHV $UFKELVKRS -XOLXV <HVKXo ¤LÄHN –
2005) describes the Sayfo by rereading former texts and placing his
personal understanding of the genocide in the context of those
ZULWLQJV$UFKELVKRS¤LÄHNDIRUPHUVWXdent of Dolabani at Dayr
al-Za‘faran, published two poems about the Sayfo, detailing horrific
experiences both before and after the genocide. The only feature
that CFMM 144 and ZFRN 4VKDUHLQFRPPRQZLWK¤LÄHNLVWKDW
DOO WKUHH FRQWDLQ D YHUVLRQ RI <XʘDQRQ 6ELULQR\RpV SRHP
‘Captivity,’ Syriac: Shbitho. 20
In his second anthology, Tenhotho d-Tur‘Abdin, published in
 %LVKRS ¤LÄHN HPSOR\V WKH VDPH PHWKRG DQG RQH FDQ DOVR
identify poems which he edited that were part of CFMM 144 and
ZFRN 40. Thus, Ya‘qub Urdnusoyo’s poem is included, even
though it deals with human weakness and sinfulness, rather than
Rüsen, ‘Using History’, pp. 14–18; see also Rüsen, ‘Emotional
Forces’, pp. 41–53.
17 A close statement is in Dolabani’s autobiography; see Dere and
Isik, 37–39.
18 Rüsen, ‘Using History’, p. 47.
19 Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, pp. 100–142.
20 7KLVSRHPKDVEHHQHGLWHGLQ¤LÄHN HG Memre d-‘al Sayfe, pp. 1–
7.
16

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

335

with a Sayfo-OLNHHYHQW,WVHHPVFOHDUWKDW¤LÄHNDQGRWKHUUHDGHUV
interpreted this poem from a perspective similar to that of
Dolabani.
Another poem that the Syriacs recited and used as a literary
resource after the Sayfo is Bishop Giwargis Azkhoyo’s mimro about
Muhammad Pasha of Ruwandez’s massacre of Azekh in 1834.
Fourteen years later, this Bishop was martyred by the
aforementioned Kurdish clan chief, Badr Khan. This poem was
LQFOXGHG LQ %LVKRS ¤LÄHNpV ILUVW DQWKRORJ\ DQG ZDV VWLOO UHFLWHG E\
the people of Bsorino. 21
&KRUSULHVW6OHPDQʗHQQRpVERRN*XQʚHG-Suryoye clarifies the
connection between Bishop Giwargis’s experiences and the Sayfo.
ʗHQQR UHFLWHG WKLV SRHP DORQJVLGH RWKHU mimre, several times at
WKHEHJLQQLQJRIKLVERRN1HYHUWKHOHVVERWKʗHQQR –2006)
and Qarahbashi (1903–1983) broke from this approach. Their style
highlights this fracture: both used prose, rather than a poetic form,
WR ZULWH DERXW DQG PHPRULDOL]H WKH 6D\IR ,Q ʗHQQRpV FDVH LW
seems clear that his aim was not to express his own experiences of
WKH6D\IRDVʗHQQRZDVERUQLQDQGWKXVDIWHUWKH6D\Io, but
to record the information he had collected from eye-witnesses. 22 By
quoting several stanzas from mimre by Gallo Shabo and Monk
<XʘDQRQ IURP .DIUR 23 about the Sayfo, and by repeating other
authors’ laments about Sayfo-like catastrophes and human
limitaWLRQV ʗHQQR SODFHG KLV SURVH LQ WKH ODUJHU FRQWH[W RI WKLV
tradition.
In contrast, Qarahbashi 24 did not use these scriptural
resources directly. Rather, he integrated the Sayfo in the history of
Christian persecutions. Thus, he begins his book by describing antiThis information came from a note from manuscript CFMM 280,
which an anonymous person from Bsorino compiled in 1945. This poem
KDVEHHQHGLWHGLQ¤LÄHN HG Memre d-‘al Sayfe, pp. 8–15.
22 6KRUW ELRJUDSKLFDO LQIRUPDWLRQ FDQ EH IRXQG LQ .LUD] oʗDQQR
Sulayman’, p. 187.
23 +LV ZULWLQJ KDV EHHQ HGLWHG LQ ¤LÄHN HG  Memre d-‘al Sayfe, pp.
16–21.
24 Short biographical information can be found in Aydin and Kiraz,
o4DUDEDVKĪo$EGDO-0DVĪʘ1XoPćQpS
21

336

SIMON BIROL

Christian policies in Late Antiquity, especially the laws of Roman
emperors from Nero to Julian and those of the Persian King
Shapur II. These accounts come before his reports on the Sayfo. 25
4DUDKEDVKL DQG ʗHQQRpV ERRNV VKLIWHG WKH ZD\ LQ ZKLFK
Syriac authors dealt with the Sayfo. The first authors of poems
DERXWWKH6D\IR*DOOR6KDERDQG0RQN<XʘDQRQRI.DIURZURWH
to explain and interpret the Sayfo and to break its unutterable
VKRFN,QFRQWUDVW4DUDKEDVKLDQGʗHQQRZKRZURWHWKHLUERRNV
a few \HDUV RU LQ ʗHQQRpV FDVH VRPH GHFDGHV ODWHU WKDQ WKHVH
poets, recorded the Sayfo’s events to remember and contextualize
them in their people’s history. 26 In particular, the post-Sayfo
generation found a way to express and remember the Sayfo’s
dimensions when Qarahbashi, who was a student at Dayr alZa‘faran during the Sayfo, recapitulated its events, giving others a
way in which to interpret them.

BISHOP MOR IWANNIS AFREM BILGIÇ
Another nuhoro is found in a lectionary (MGMT 600, fol. 329r–
330r) preserved in the Monastery of Mor Jacob the Recluse in the
YLOODJH RI ʙDODʘ 7XUNLVK %DUïÿWHSH $IUHP %LOJLÄ ZURWH WKLV
lectionary 27 as local priest in February 1937 in and for the church
RI 0RU (SKUHP LQ KLV KRPH YLOODJH %RWH 7XUNLVK %DUGDNÄï ,Q
1910, when Bilgiç was 19 years old, he was ordained a priest.
However, he lost his wife in his home village during the Sayfo. In
1952, the widower was consecrated bishop of Tur ‘Abdin. He died
well advanced in years in 1984.
His double-sided colophon consists of two columns. Due to
its assorted personal anecdotes, it constitutes an interesting source
of information regarding the situation before and after the Sayfo.
On the second page, Afrem Bilgiç describes how he became a

Qarahbashi Dmo zliho, pp. 25–38. See also: Talay, ‘Sayfo, Firman,
Qafle’, pp. 238–240.
26 Birol ‘Interpretation of the “Sayfo” in Gallo Shabo’s poem’.
27 I would like to thank Hanibal Romanos and Svante Lundgren for
calling my attention to this colophon.
25

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

337

priest in 1910, how he lost his wife during the Sayfo, and why the
events of 1915 ‘have come upon us.’ As he said,
I announce to you, o my brothers, that I was a teenager of 19
years old when I received the ordination to the priesthood at
the hands of Mor Ignatius, Patriarch of the Apostolic See of
Antioch, that is ‘Abdeh da-0VKLʘR,,IURPʗHVQRG-A[n]ttho
>DOVR NQRZQ DV 4DOoDW 0DUD RU .ïOïWPDUD FXUUHQW 7XUNLVK
Name: Eskikale] close to the Saffron Monastery, situated to
the west of the monastery.
And while he was hated by our bishops and discharged, he
came and lived in Midyat. 28 The year 1910 CE was when he
lived in the Monastery of Mor Sharbel 29 in Midyat. In that year,
I was ordained in that Monastery of Mor Sharbel. Due to
necessity, I received the ordination, because my father had
departed from this world in the year 1910 CE in the month of
January, on the night of Sunday, and afterwards, my father’s
pupils remained without a shepherd, and together, they came
to a decision and said we would not hand us over to another
[person], except to his son [i.e. Afrem Bilgiç, son of the
departed priest ‘Abd an-Nur] or to himself [literally: my father;
i.e. ‘Abd an-Nur Bilgiç].
And I went with them to Midyat, to the monastery that we
remember from above in March with Moran Patriarch ‘Abdeh
da-0VKLʘR DQG KH KDV FRQVHFUDWHG PH ZLWK D VWURQJ GHDFRQ
who was blind with his external eyes. Nevertheless, he was
A similar statement can be detected in the manuscript Mingana
Syr. 112 (p. 210), viewable under:
http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/Collections/Mingana/Syriac_112/Page_210/vie
wer/
29 This monastery was beseiged and later destroyed by the Turkish
Army in 1967. Bilgiç indicates his rage about the continuing siege of the
monastery in 1940 by calling the Turkish Army “sons of fornication
without moderation” (MGMT 622, fol. 157v; written 1940 in the Church
of Mor Ephrem in Bote). For more information about this monastery and
LWV GHVWUXFWLRQ VHH %Hʦ-ʙDZRFH Xori Brahim Hajjo, pp. 57– DQG %HʦʙDZRFHCammo Išoc Qašo Malke, pp. 21–22.
28

338

SIMON BIROL
enlightened in his mind, and he knew all of the church
melodies by heart, and in the year 1915 CE a persecution (syr.
rdufyo) had risen against us, and this deacon was killed in our
church of Bote, at the hands of the Muslims, along with all the
inhabitants of the village, and we have fled to the village of
‘Aynwardo and have escaped there with the help of Our Lord.
O my brothers, what we have seen with our eyes, from
VODXJKWHU V\UTDʜOR DQGSHUVHFXWLRQ V\UUGXI\R DQGIDPLQH
(syr. kafno) and plague (syr. mawtono), while we remained 58
days in oppression, and afterwards God had mercy upon us,
and it has [come to] the liberation.
O my brothers, I had two corporal brothers, one older than
me, and the other younger than me. He who was older than
me, his name was Gawriye, he passed away [in] the year 1902
CE at 33 years of age; and this one who is younger than me,
his name ZDVʙDOLEDKHZDV\HDUVRIDJH when he was killed
with the people [literally: sons] of the village in our church
because of persecution, along with my wife and my partner.
$OVR WKH ZLIH RI P\ EURWKHU ʙDOLED DQG Kis son – his name
[was] ‘Abd an-Nur [named] after my father. My brothers, pray
without disturbance from temptation, and when you will be
disturbed, ask from our Lord for hope that our souls will not
be lost. My brothers, all these have come upon us because of
our sins – praise to the name of the Lord, who blesses. […] 30

Bilgiç’s statement presents an authentic image of the Sayfo in Bote,
which later written accounts have confirmed. 31 He does not give a
detailed description of the course of events because his primary
aim is to commemorate his family members and the exceptional
ability of a blind deacon killed during the Sayfo. 32 Nevertheless, his
He completed this colophon with two of his own short poems
and genealogical remarks.
31 For a description of the Sayfo in Bote, see Henno, Verfolgung und
Vernichtung, pp. 94–96 and Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, pp. 374–
377.
32 Other colophons penned by Afrem Bilgiç contain the same or
similar information (e.g. MGMT 607, written 1936, fol. 80v). In 1956,
30

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

339

exposition, combined with his approach towards understanding the
events of the Sayfo, reveal how local church leaders attempted to
deal with the breadth of the impact after some time had passed.
For the survivors, the living memory of the Sayfo was still present,
and so Bilgiç renders it indirectly as ‘slaughter and persecution and
famine and plague’, indescribable despite the elapsed years. 33
%LVKRS $IUHP %LOJLÄ LQVWUXFWHG ʗDQQD 4HUPH] VLQFH  SULHVW DQG
monk at the monastery of Mor Gabriel) to pen a Lectionary for the Mor
Ephrem Church in Bilgiç’s home village, Bote (MGMT 604). In its long
colophon (fol. 274r–276r), the copist repeats the Bishop’s family story and
adds this information: “[…] and his [cf. Bishop Afrem] other brother,
who is younger than he, his name >ZDV@ ʙDOLED ZKR KDV EHHQ NLOOHd in
 $QG KLV VLVWHU ʗDQD – wife of Yauno Batto of Kafro, who was
originally from Bote from the family Beth Ge’si – she was also killed.
Also, she was killed and drowned in the cistern of the Church of Kafro;
She (was drowned) together with her daughter Elizabeth through the
persecution that has happened in the year 1915 CE […].” For a
description of the Sayfo in Kafro, see Henno, Verfolgung und
Vernichtung, pp. 96–98 and Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, pp.
231– 232 and 371.
33 Bishop Dolabani compiled a series of catalogues of manuscripts
preserved in Jerusalem, Mardin, and its environs, and Mor Gregorius
Yohanna Ibrahim photographically reproduced these in three volumes in
1994. A similar unbound and unaffiliated notice about the blow for
*DEULHORIʗDʘ ZKRODWHUEHFDPHDPRQNG LVIRXQGWZRSDJHV
before the second and third volumes’ first numbered pieces. In 1915, two
months after Gabriel’s marriage to a woman, ‘while not even a month
[after their marriage] had passed, there occurred the tumult of this year,
Syriac: shgushye d-sha[n]to h[o]y and because of the affliction she became ill
and died’ (Dolabany, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, vol. 2 and 3, p. 29). The
anonymous writer’s description of the Sayfo as ‘the tumult of this year’
reveals that he knew that the reader would easily understand the general
allusion to the Sayfo without further description of the events. Sebastian
Brock published a translation of another interesting notice – a list of
bishops and priests killed in 1915 – in the catalogues of Dolabani; see
Brock, ‘A Historical Note of October 1915 Written in Dayro D-Za‘faran’.
As Brock stated, it seems likely that the other remarks in Dolabani’s
catalogue contain information about the Sayfo; see ibid.

340

SIMON BIROL

However, he retains the traditional approach of interpreting Sayfo
as a result of the sins of the Syriac people. 34 Moreover, he
interpreted other difficulties from the post-Sayfo period in the
same manner. 35 While earlier authors, like Gallo Shabo and
Dolabani, describe the Sayfo in an apocalyptical manner, later
writers, like Bilgiç, emphasize interpreting the Sayfo as divine
punishment for the Syriacs’ sins. Such self-incrimination obviously
did not have a positive influence on the self-confidence of a
despairing community struggling to survive in the aftermath of the
Sayfo. Nevertheless, local church leaders saw this traditional
approach, of looking at the past through a religious perspective, as
a means of overcoming an unutterable state of shock and resultant
traumatic silence. 36 On the basis of Bilgiç’s description of 1915, the
Syriac community did not yet have a singular, fixed term to
adequately describe the events that had taken place. 37 Although
Bilgiç, by using four different terms to characterize the Sayfo,
attempted to depict all aspects of it, his formulation reveals that he
did not want to delve into his memories of that era. Rather, he
sought to move past it by pushing it aside. Thus, a traditional
concept, apparently answering the question of why the Sayfo had
occurred, could have served as a useful medium. Another author
provides a depiction of the events in 1915 close to Bilgiç’s
perception. In the nuhoro of the manuscript Montserrat Ms. Or. 31
[fol. 184v and 185r, written 1915 in Mardin], the Syriac-catholic
3ULHVW,VDDFEDU$UPDOʜR DOVRNQRZQDV,VDDF$UPDOHWODWHUDXWKRU
of the book “al-TXʜćUćIĪQDNDEćWDQ-QDʜćUć” [Beirut, 1919]) rests at a
descriptive level without naming a casus belli, but by using two terms
already known from Bilgiç’s statement. At fol. 184v, he noted:
This book was finished and completed […] through the weak
KDQGVRIWKHKXPEOHSULHVW,VDDFEDU$UPDOʜRWKH6\ULDFZKR
See Birol ‘Interpretation of the “Sayfo” in Gallo Shabo’s poem’.
His poem about the Ihtiyat policy clearly reveals this. It has been
HGLWHGLQ¤LÄHN HG Memre d-‘al Sayfe, pp. 22–31. See also his additions to
0RQN<XʘDQRQRI.DIURps poem in ibid., pp. 20–21.
36 See also Talay, ‘Sayfo, Firman, Qafle’, p. 247.
37 See also ibid., 240–247.
34
35

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

341

wrote it in the convent of Mor Ephrem in Mardin in the year
1915 CE. A cruel and bitter war (syr. qrobo qashyo u-mariro)
broke out in this year between all the kingdom of Occident.
And in the same year the tyrannous and unmerciful Turks
accomplished slaughters (syr. TDʞOH), persecutions (syr. rdufye)
and cruelties (syr. ʞOXP\H) against the distinguished race of
Christians in Armenia and Mesopotamia.

RECOVERED MANUSCRIPTS
Syriac manuscript traditions from Tur ‘Abdin have addressed the
destruction of written artifacts. The oral tradition contains
testimonies stating that many books, 38 or even entire libraries 39 of
unique manuscripts, were burned and forever destroyed.
Nevertheless, some manuscripts were salvageable and were later
sold. 40
Talay, ‘Bücher von Bsorino’, pp. 479–494.
Most famous is the destruction of the library of Addai Scher in
1915; see Brock and Kiraz, ‘Scher, Addai’, pp. 361–362 and Macuch,
Geschichte der spat- und neusyrischen Literatur, pp. 402–405. See also Erica
C.D. Hunter’s chapter about Addai Scher in this volume.
40 A lectionary colophon, written 1898 in Garshuni, which is Arabic
written in the Syriac writing system, by the scribe and priest ‘Abd al0DʛLʘFRQWDLQVDQH[DPSOH of these writings from the pre-Sayfo period.
It was written by monk Saliba of Bsorino (also known as Basibrina;
Turkish name: Haberli), who later became a bishop. The manuscript was
completed in 1870. The colophon reports that on 20th October 1895,
Sultan ‘Abd al-ʗDPLG FRPPDQGHG oDPU  >KLV WURRSV@ WR DWWDFN >OLWHUDOO\
punish] the Armenians. To that end, four Christan villages (i.e., T-Armen
[also known as Tell $UPHQ7XUNLVK.ï]ïOWepe], al-*ŠOĪHK>DOVRNQRZQDV
*ROL\HK 7XUNLVK *ÓOOÙ@ 4DOoDW 0DUD >VHH DERYH@ DQG %DQDEĪO >DOVR
known as Bnebil; Turkish: Bülbül] in the district of Mardin were set on
fire and plundered. Thus, the Syriacs fled from these villages to Dayr alZa’faran and their belongings were plundered. After they stayed for eight
months at Dayr al-Za’faran, which was occupied by the Kurds, they
returned to their villages. This lectionary, now preserved in Dayr alZa‘faran, was among those possessions. They writer of the colophon
added that the plunderers tore the silver parts off of the cover and
38
39

342

SIMON BIROL

Manuscript MGMT 279 from the Monastery of Mor Gabriel
contains a noteworthy comment about such occasions. The
manuscript is a lectionary, perhaps written in the 17th or 18th
century, in Garshuni. In the colophon, Malke bar Khuroyo
Gawriye from Midyat, 41 who repaired this manuscript in 1948,
wrote in Classical Syriac (fol. 325v):
This book of the Old Testament suffered at first in the year
2226 of the Greeks (1914–15 CE) from the terrible year of the
VODXJKWHU V\U ʘDUER  DQG WKH VZRUG V\U VD\IR  – which fell
upon the Christians when all the savings of the churches and
of the Christians, as well as the books, fell into the hands of
the Pagans [i.e., Muslims] – some of them they burned and
destroyed, and some of them were sold for a small price. Also
this [manuscript] came into the hands of persons of Midyat,
specifiFDOO\ WKH GHSXW\ RI WKH &KXUFK RI 0RU %DUʛDXPR KLV
QDPHLV*RUJLVRUûXUüo Haidari, and his friends. And after a
while it has been brought to Midun, or specifically to the
Church of Mor Ya‘qub the Teacher.

CONCLUSION
The manuscripts discussed in this paper reveal multiple key
features of the Sayfo’s events, and of perceptions of them, in the
period after the Sayfo. Critical information – including the loss of
population and family members, as well as of old books and
manuscripts – was orally transmitted, and some authors recorded
their memories in writing. Whereas orally transmitted anecdotes
and reports from the time of the Sayfo have dwindled, or have
even been lost over the years, fixed scriptural records still stand

removed the illustrated pages from the lectionary. Also, he noted that he
had repaired the manuscript in 1898. The volume is now preserved in the
aforementioned Dayr al-Za‘faran. The text of the colophon has been
reproduced and translated into German in Harb, ‘Die harklensische
Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments: Neue Handschriftenfunde’, p. 40.
41 The repairer was later consecrated as a priest and afterwards as
chorpriest for Midyat. He was better known as Melki Gülce (d. 1973).

15. ‘SAYFO’ IN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF TUR ‘ABDIN

343

witness to the murders, persecutions, and losses, as well as to how
individuals viewed and interpreted this event.
All in all, the manuscripts from Tur ‘Abdin reveal the slow
process of finding an adequate form of expression to describe the
Sayfo. The manuscripts also demonstrate the essential role that
scriptural sources played in helping the first generation to deal with
the trauma of the Sayfo. Nevertheless, the highlighted texts also
clarify that the Sayfo was a harrowing experience for survivors,
who continuously searched for an adequate way to express such an
unspeakably horrible event.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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al-0DVĪʘ 1XoPćQp ,Q 6HEDVWLDQ 3 %URFN $DURQ 0 %XWWV
George A. Kiraz and Lucas van Rompay (eds.) The Gorgias
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Turkiya men shnath 1714–1914, pp. 22–31. (Holland: Diocese
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Henno, Sleman. Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Syro-Aramäer im
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Reich.’ Oriens Christianus 91 (2007): 25–43.
Kiraz, George Anton o'RODEDQL 3KLOR[HQRV <XʘDQRQp ,Q ,Q
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McCollum, A.C. ‘Remarks on recent Cataloging efforts among
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‘Abdîn, B: Texte 2. (Beirut: Franz Steiner (in Komission),
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Mir Shemdin.’ In Memre d-‘al Sayfe da-sbal Mshihoye b-Turkiya
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während des Sayfo, des Genozids an den syrischen Christen.’
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der islamischen Welt. Festschrift für Martin Tamcke zum 60.
Geburtstag, pp. 479–494. (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2015).
––––––– ‘Politische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen im
Turabdin des 19. Jahrhunderts: Rolle und Bedeutung der
syrischen Christen.’ In Martin Tamcke and Sven Grebenstein
(eds.) Geschichte, Theologie und Kultur des syrischen Christentums.
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362. (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2014).
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der syrischen Christen.’ In Rainer Voigt (ed.) Akten des 5.
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‘Urdnusoyo, Qurillos Ya’qub. ‘‘Al-qrobe d-]DEQH ʘUR\H.’ In
Tenhotho d’Tur‘Abdin HGLWHG E\ -XOLXV <HVKXo ¤LÄHN –123.
(Glane: Bar Hebraeus Verlag, 1987).

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI
ELYAS AND THE REMEMBRANCE OF
TURABDIN
TIJMEN C. BAARDA 1
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas (1911–2008) is one of the best-known poets
of the Arameans/Assyrians, who left us poetry in Classical Syriac
from the years of his youth as well as from his old age. A victim of
WKH6D\IR*KDWWDVRU0DOIňQň'HQʘňDVKHZDVDOVRNQRZn, was
highly influenced by the genocide. But while in his work he actively
engaged the memory of his region of birth as it was before the
Sayfo, the genocide itself is almost absent from his oeuvre.
Turabdin, the area from where Ghattas came, is considered
the heartland of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Part of the Ottoman
Empire, it was a heterogeneous area populated by
Arameans/Assyrians, Armenians, Turks, Kurds, and Arabs. While
the area never became entirely homogeneous – besides Kurdish,
the area still features speakers of Arabic, Turkish and Aramaic –
the events of the Sayfo during the First World War and the
marginalization of non-Muslims in Turkey after the establishment
of the Republic, continuing until the 1990s, resulted in there being
very few Christians left in Turabdin today.

I would like to thank Professor Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Dr
Dirk Bakker and Dr Andrew N. Palmer for their valuable help and
comments during the various stages this paper went through. I would also
like to thank Father Sait of the Mor Ephrem monastery (Glane, The
Netherlands) for providing me with material published by the monastery’s
Bar Hebraeus Verlag.
1

347

348

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

In Ghattas’ early work, the memory of Turabdin from before
the First World War plays a very important role. Many poems
explicitly refer to phenomena in Ghattas’ region of origin, such as
the landscape, cities, churches, schools, and persons. In many
poems, these landmarks are presented as something from the past
– monuments that have become inaccessible for many, but which
retain their significance. These memories are given in an
autobiographical way: usually in the first person, the narrator
describes his past, corresponding to the author’s life.
Another important theme in Ghattas’ poems is the nation.
Ghattas is known to have been in favour of an Aramean identity,
and the belonging of his people to a nation (XPWKň) is indeed a
recurring feature in Ghattas’ work.
Finally, many poems are not simply an eulogy to this nation of
the 6XU\ň\H, but also demand its elevation in the future. The fate of
the 6XU\ň\H is compared to that of other nations, and its members
are urged to prevent it from falling behind. Related to this is the
stress on the nation’s youth having a particular role in making it
stronger. These three themes – nostalgia, the nation, and its future
– are central to this article.
Turabdin, as said, is one of the most important points of
reference for Ghattas. That he wrote about the area, as a point of
nostalgia is understandable, as the poems seem autobiographical
and after the Sayfo Ghattas never returned to Turabdin. But
remarkably, the Sayfo is not explicitly referred to in his poems. In
this article, I will argue that even though an explicit treatment of
the Sayfo is absent, Ghattas indirectly engages it through a
nostalgia of the life it destroyed, and gives it a function in his
understanding of the nation of the SXU\ň\H.
After an introduction to the poet, I will start with an analysis
of the poem that is most relevant to this subject, his 1934 poem
‘Turabdin.’ Then I will explore, though his other poems and other
information that we have about Ghattas, his understanding of the
nation and his ideas about the future of the 6XU\ň\H and the region.

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

349

GHATTAS AND THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL SYRIAC
While Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas (Arabic: αΎϴϟ· ϲγΪϘϣ αΎτϏ *KDʞʞćV
0DTGLVĪ ,O\ćV) 2 is generally considered one of the greatest poets of
the Arameans/Assyrians, there is relatively little academic work
about him. The best place to start at the moment is a long article by
Assad Sauma that was published in 2011 in Parole de l’Orient. 3 This
article, written by a personal acquaintance of Ghattas, is especially
valuable for its biographical information, the links the author gives
to other modern poets of Classical Syriac, and the large amount of
translations from Ghattas’ work. 4
Ghattas was born in the city of Midyat in 1911 in the heart of
the Turabdin region, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, and
which is nowadays in southeastern Turkey, close to the border with
Syria and Iraq. He was born on the eve of the First World War,
which broke out when he was just three years old, and which
would hit the region so severely. In 1915, the city of Midyat was
attacked and Ghattas fled together with many inhabitants of this
city to the village of Ainwardo, known today as Gülgöze. Just after
the war, at the age of seven, he fled from this village with his family
to the city of Adana. There he found refuge in the region of Cilicia,
which in December 1918 had come under French control
according to the Treaty of Sèvres, which formally ended the
Ottoman Empire’s involvement in the war. When it became clear
that the harsh peace conditions of Sèvres could not be enforced
because of fierce resistance from Turkish political groups, France
decided to leave the area so that it became part of the Republic of
Turkey, which forced Ghattas and his family to flee once again. He
698F

69F

70F

Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas is the poet’s name as it appears on the cover
of his volume 7DZJňQH, in Latin and in Syriac script. The Syriac version of
this name, however, reveals that it is actually a rendering of an Arabic
name, given the use of Syriac characters with diacritics that are exclusive
for Garshuni. More often however, he is referred to under the Syriac
name 'HQʘň oVXQULVHp XVXDOO\ SUHFHGHG E\ WKH ZRUG PDOIňQň, ‘teacher’.
ò
ò 7DZJňQHQEňKHZ-UHʰ\ňQH.
ūĭŁ
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, ťƍƀƕǓĭŦųũƌûťƍ
3 Assad Sauma, ‘Denho Makdisi-Elyas (1911–2008)’, pp. 329–366.
4 Assad Sauma was also the editor of a magazine called ARAM, in
which Ghattas published a number of his poems.
2

350

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

went to Damascus, and except for a short stay in Beirut, he
remained there until 1980. That same year Ghattas emigrated to
Brazil, where he died in 2008.
Ghattas was active as an author during two periods in his life.
He wrote his first set of poems in the period from 1928 to 1944,
between the ages of 17 and 33. He was employed as a customs
officer from 1933 until 1962, the year of his retirement. 5 He started
writing again after his emigration to Brazil. The long period in
which he was inactive as a writer is related to his work for the
government. While he kept writing in the beginning years of his
employment, he stopped completely after 1947. The fact that
Ghattas was not able to make his living of writing or similar
services to his community was difficult for him; he gives as an
explanation for the period in which he did not write ‘the official
work that I was submitted to for forty years’. 6
Ghattas is also known as one of the forerunners in the revival
or renaissance of the Classical Syriac language that characterized
the nineteenth and especially the twentieth century. All his work is
written in Classical Syriac, apart from some short pieces in other
languages such as Arabic and Turoyo. This revival of Classical
Syriac was taken on by a number of authors who reinvented the
use of the language for non-religious purposes, both in the Middle
East and in the diaspora. While Syriac has never stopped being
used in church, the language was less and less used for original
work after the thirteenth century. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, however, scholars have described a revival of the classical
language for writing all kind of ‘modern’ texts. 7 Ghattas was one of
the actors in this movement. Not only did he write almost
everything in Syriac rather than in other languages, he was also
explicit about the value of the language in some of his writings and
According to Assad Sauma (ibid., p. 334), he had a good senior
position.
6 He writes this in the introduction to 7DZJňQH, p. 4.
7 Brock, ‘Some Observations of the Use of Classical Syriac in the
Late Twentieth Century’, pp. 363–75. Another key publication about the
revival of Classical Syriac is Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ‘Classical Syriac
and the Syriac Churches: A Twentieth-Century History’, pp. 119–48.
5

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

351

even in his poetry itself. In the introduction to his volume of
poems 7DZJňQH, which is examined below, he explicitly mentioned
the revival of the Syriac language. 8 Ghattas thus stands in a
tradition of modern poetry in the Syriac language. This can also be
said of the fact that he wrote about themes covering the context of
6D\IR1DʲʲŠP)ćʱLT –1930), who was one generation before
Ghattas, wrote already in 1916 a poem with clear references to the
genocide, even using the word VD\Iň. 9
Anecdotic information suggests a considerable legacy of
Ghattas’ poems in popular culture. For instance, Assad Sauma
reports in his article about Ghattas that a poem he wrote in 1931
about the monastery of Qenneshrin in Syria was later adopted as a
song, which ‘became very popular and was sung by the Syriac
students in West Syriac schools’. 10 However, a systematic study of
the way Ghattas’ poems have been read and used by others has yet
to be written. A more in-depth study of Ghattas’ legacy could
moreover not only provide a better understanding of twentiethcentury poetry among the Arameans/Assyrians, but also fill in gaps
of our knowledge of the revival of the Classical Syriac language in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

THE POEM ‘TURABDIN’: THE TERRITORIAL BASIS
One of Ghattas’ best-known poems is ‘Turabdin’ (ʝXU ʰ$EGLQ),
written in 1934, in the author’s early twenties, hence in the first
period in which he was active as a poet. To my knowledge it was
not published until 1988, when it appeared in 7DZJňQH, one of the
five volumes of poems which, it can be said, form Ghattas’ oeuvre. 11
Contrary to the other four volumes, 7DZJňQH includes many poems
from Ghattas’ early period. Other than its appearance in 7DZJňQH,
this poem was included earlier in 4ňOň 6XU\ň\ň, the journal of the
He uses the phrase QXʚňPH G-KňQň OHVKňQň ‘the resurrection of this
language’, i.e. Syriac (7DZJňQH, p. 2).
9 Isaf, ‘Arising, or Awaking: Aramaic Language Poetry at the Turn of
the 20th Century’.
10 Sauma, ‘Denho Makdisi-Elyas’, p. 352.
11 Elyas, 7DZJňQH, pp. 42–44. I used this edition of ‘Turabdin’ and
other poems in this article.
8

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TIJMEN C. BAARDA

archdiocese of the Netherlands published by its former bishop,
0RU -XOLXV <HVKX ¤LÄHN 3DUW RI WKH SRHP DSSHDUHG D FRXSOH RI
times on the Internet in an English translation. With its 13 stanzas
it is the longest poem in 7DZJňQH.
As the name of the poem suggests, ‘Turabdin’ is about the
region where Ghattas was born. It is partly written from a firstperson perspective, and the extent to which events described in the
poem correspond to Ghattas’ life suggests that it can be considered
autobiographic. The poem can be divided roughly into four parts
on the basis of its contents. To give an impression of the poem, as
well as to point out a number of issues for discussion, I will cite
from all four parts. The first section, stanzas one through five,
forms a description of Turabdin:

ƎſűũƕĿŴŹĭĬĪŦƦƊƀʖĿťƕĿĥƁƃĭŵŶŦŤƘťƉ
ƎſƢƟĪťƊƀƃĪťƉǓƁƄſǓŴźŨŁƢƀƙƣťƉ
ò
ò
ƎſƢƀƊƕƎſűƀũƆƁƄƀʛźƣĭƁƄ
ƀũƖŨƦſŤūťƊƃĭ
ò
ò
ƎƀƣĪĥƎƀƣĪĥĪŧǔſĪĬƁƄƀɖĪǔŨŦƦŨƞƉťƊƃĭ
Stanza 1

Your appearance is so beautiful,
beloved land of Turabdin
You are so beautiful with your high
mountains, extending above the stars
I used to enjoy your forests; your open
fields were full of wood and grass
You are so well-formed with your
attractive rivers of all kinds. 12

Two more stanzas describe the nature of Turabdin: one stanza
praises the religious life and the fifth stanza is about Midyat, the
city in the ‘middle of the mountain… keeping an eye on the valleys
as a queen.’
The second section, stanzas six through eight, are about the
people of Turabdin, hailing especially the region’s writers for their
cultural endeavors. I will quote it in full, as it contains many
elements that I will discuss in this paper:

12

Ibid., p. 42. The translations are mine unless otherwise stated.

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

ŦŁŴƀƍƀƃŁ
ĭƢő ƀŎ ƙƣƋƕĪťƉűƟŧĿŁĥ
Ŏ
ŦŁŴƤſŎ űƟĪŦŁĭƢſĪĬƈƃĨ ŵƉƥƍƃ
ŦŁŴƍƊſĬĪŦŁŴƊƀƊŶƦźƇŶŁĥųŨĭ
ŦŁŴƀɖĿŴƏĪŦƦƊŶĿƋƕĭŦŁĭƢſŵƃƋƕ
ŧǔƀʛŨŧǔƙƏĭĭĬĭųƉƦƣĥĭĭĭĬŴŬũƌƎƉŁ
ò
ŧǔũƍūƁƍŨĭĭĬŴƍƤƕŁĥĭĭűƇſƎƉŁĭ
ò
ò
ŧǓƢƉƁòƌĮĭŧĪűūĭŧű
ƍƣŴƇũƏĪķŴƌĬ
ŧǔũƠŨŴƆĬĥťŷŨĭĽŁĭƞſĿŁŁĭƢƀźƌƈźƉĭ
ò
ŦŁŴƀƍſűƉŴſĭĬĥĪƎƀƇſĥĶĿĥĪťƀƍŨ
ò
ŦƦũſƦƃĪŧƢƀƉĪťƍƣĪťƊƇƖƆŴƍƄƣĭ
ò
ò
ŦŁǔƀƠſķĭĬƦŷƄƣĭķĭĬŁ
ĭŁŤŨƎſųŨ
ő
ŦŁŴƇƄƏƎƉŦƦſƢŨųƇƄƆŴƀƆĪĭŴſĪĬ
Stanza 6

Ancient land, which with beautiful
nature
Brought together and united all the
honor of holiness,
Where the zeal of faith was mixed
With bravery and love for 6XU\ň\XWKň.

Stanza 7

There the glorious writers rose and
became famous,
And it is there that mighty people were
born and hardened,
Those who suffered torments and
bitter sorrows, and all kinds of
bitterness,
And because they kept their
orthodoxy, the graves were derided.

Stanza 8

The children of Aram, those who
created civilization
And who gave the world the beautiful
gift of writing,
With that, with their valuable glyphs
and inventions

353

354

TIJMEN C. BAARDA
They guided and raised all of the
Creation from ignorance. 13

Two issues need to be discussed here. First, Ghattas gives here
details about his ideas of the 6XU\ň\H belonging to a nation. While
the word which Ghattas uses elsewhere for ‘nation’, XPWKň, is not
used in this poem, this part is praising the people from Turabdin.
In the sixth stanza, the narrator tells that the land of Turabdin is
not only a place of ‘the honor of holiness’ with the ‘zeal of faith’,
but that it is mixed with a ‘love for the 6XU\ň\Rculture’: 6XU\ň\XWKň,
discussed below. In the seventh stanza, except for highlighting the
suffering of the people of Turabdin, it also praises their merits:
among them there were ‘glorious writers’ and, significantly, they
‘kept their orthodoxy’, not submitting to any other faith. Stanza
eight, then, describes these people as the ‘children of Aram’ (EQD\ň
d-ŇUňP), or Arameans, and interestingly, as creators of civilization.
In the next section, I will go deeper into Ghattas’ understanding of
the nation. Second, while Ghattas confirmed in an interview that
he never wrote about the Sayfo, in the seventh stanza he comes
fairly close: the suffering and derision of graves is likely to refer to
the genocide.
In the third part, stanzas nine to eleven, Ghattas becomes
more explicit about these events. In this part he address the reader
in the second person, urging compatriots who consider emigrating
from Turabdin to think twice. The one who visits Midyat gets a
special task:

ŦŁƢƀƙƣƁƇſĪŦƦƍſűƉűſűƊƆƦƖƍƉƦƉķĥĭ
ò
ŦƦŷɖƞƌIJĬťŶĥĪƧųƀƆƎƉŁƁƍſĪųƕ
ŦƦũƀũŶƁƇſĪƧĮƢƕŴŬŨťƤƍƃƦƉĪIJĬ
ò
ŦŁŴƕƁƉŴƀŨƈƠƣĥĪťƀƇźƆŧƢƃĪƦƉƢũƃ
(Stanza 10)

13

Ibid., p. 43.

If you arrive in Midyat, my beautiful
city,
Bring me back to memory with that
glorious group of brothers
Who are gathered in my beloved hut;

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

355

Maybe they remember the child who
left during the days of need. 14
In other words, the narrator urges the reader to bring him into
remembrance. What is meant by the ‘glorious group of brothers’ in
the narrator’s ‘beloved hut’ is not entirely clear, but the last line is
very significant. It corresponds to what we know from Ghattas’
biography: at the age of three he had to flee from Midyat to Ain
Wardo. It is highly likely that this passage ought to be understood
autobiographical and that this passage therefore refers to the events
of the Sayfo.
The last part, stanzas twelve and thirteen, concludes the poem
and returns to a general praise of Turabdin. In the last stanza the
pain of the mountain is described:

ƁƆƗƀƊƣťƀƄŨŧĿŴŹĵŴƙƤŨƈƀƃűƕƎƉŁ
ƁƆĪĭűƉŦĬŦƦŶĭťƉĥĪťŬƀƍŶƨƟ
ò ƀˁƕƈƕť
ò
ò
ƁƆIJĭĭƢźƘĪƎſųƀƊ
ƤƌƎƊƕǓ
ò
ƁƆƋƀʖĿŧĿŴŹIJĬŴƌĭĭűŨĭųƀƄũŨĻĥĶƢŨ
Stanza 13

There, at the foot of the mountain, I
still hear lamentation,
A sad voice of a mother and a sister –
lo! it bothers me.
The women are sorry for the
youngsters who left, woe is me!
But even with its mourning and misery
I love the mountain. 15

The poem contains only indirect references to the Sayfo: the event
that is referred to in the first instance is mentioned in strong terms:
‘the graves were derided’, but it is not made explicit what exactly is
meant by it, and there is even a possibility that it refers to an event
that did not happen during the First World War. The second
instance is less ambiguous, but refers only to the narrator’s fleeing
from Midyat and does not make explicit the reasons why this was
necessary. Nevertheless, both pieces are enough to show that in
14
15

Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid.

356

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

this poem, which is about the old heartland of the Syriac
Orthodox, the Sayfo is not completely absent.

THE NATION OF S 85<Ň<( AND ITS ELEVATION
As is well known, the features of the nation to which the
Arameans/Assyrians belong are controversial: all actors have their
own positions in this debate. Ghattas was outspoken about his
position in this debate, as is apparent from interviews, but also in
his poems reveal details about his opinions. In this section, I will
argue that a major function of Ghattas’ poems was to help
reinforce a certain kind of community feeling. This community,
that Ghattas often refers to as a ‘nation,’ Syriac XPWKň, of 6XU\ň\H,
has Turabdin as its homeland.
Despite the fact that Ghattas received part of his education at
the orphanage in Adana, which was known as an Assyrian school,
Ghattas explicitly rejected ‘Assyrianism’. This is evident from an
interview that was held by Zakay Joseph and that appeared in
Ghattas’ last volume of poems, )LUH /TLVKň\H, and which was also
published on the Aramean website www.urhoy.info. 16 In this
interview, Ghattas is asked for reasons why he did not support the
Assyrian movement, and in particular why he did not follow his
friend Abrohom Gabriel Sawme (1913–1996), who was a fellow
student in Adana and who became active in Assyrianism.
According to Ghattas, the Assyrian movement did ‘not rely on
solid historic and cultural basis’, saying that he did not discuss
political matters with Abrohom Sawme, but only language and
culture. 17
This website, which was in favor of an Aramean identity, is no
longer available, but its historical pages including the interview can be
found on the Internet Archive: Zakay Joseph, ‘Interview with Denho
Ghattas Makdisi Elias,’ https://web.archive.org/web/20091029161441/
http://www.urhoy.info/interview-ghattas.html (no date). The interview
was later republished on the website of the Aramean Democratic
Organization, and can at the time of writing be found here:
http://www.aramaic-dem.org/English/History/Inte_view_with_Denho_
Ghattas_Makdisi_Elias.htm, last seen 30.03.2016.
17 Ibid.
16

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

357

In this interview, the words ‘Aramean culture’ and ‘Aramean
people’ are used numerous times, both in the question of the
interviewer and in Ghattas’ answers. In this sense, he should be
considered a supporter of Arameanism. Can Ghattas’ Aramean
identity be traced back to the poems from his early period of
writing (1928–1944)? For that, the references to Arameans are
relatively rare; the poem ‘Turabdin’ being an exception. The rest of
his poems and other works in Syriac contain dozens of instances of
the words 6XU\ň\ň, 18 its plural 6XU\ň\H, and related words such as
6XU\ň\XWKň, which could be translated as something like ‘6XU\ň\ň
culture’ or ‘6XU\ň\ň-ness’. 19 This lack of references to the Arameans
is in sharp contrast to his later work, as Assad Sauma points out. 20
However, Ghattas’ development towards an Aramean identity
is not invisible in his volume 7DZJňQH. The volume contains
introductory pieces to the volume in Arabic and in Syriac. The two
texts, both written shortly before the publication of the volume
(1988), are very different from each other, and the Arabic one is
shorter than the introduction in Syriac. The Arabic text is entitled
‘The Syriac Language (Aramaic)’, and contains three pages of
handwritten, highly vocalized text in Modern Standard Arabic. It
I do not translate the word 6XU\ň\ň and the words related to it to
English with ‘Syriac’, ‘Syriacs,’ and ‘Syriac culture,’ except if they are
obviously used in the context of the Syriac language. I keep the option
open that for Ghattas, the Syriac word did not have the same
connotations as their usual English-language counterparts. Indeed, the
word 6XU\ň\ň is considerably often not translated as Syriac, but differently.
Naures Atto mentions an interesting case where somebody, who selfidentifies as Assyrian, translates both the words 6XU\ň\H and ŇWKXUň\H as
‘Assyrier’ in Swedish, because they consider them synonyms. At the same
time, a closer analysis reveals that these words sometimes have different
meanings when she uses them in Aramaic language, the first referring to
the Syriac Orthodox church members and the second to people from the
East Syriac churches as well. Naures Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans
in the Diaspora, pp. 438–9.
19 See for a discussion of this word Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, pp.
370–372.
20 Sauma, ‘Denho Makdisi-Elyas’, pp. 329–66.
18

358

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

starts as a rather general introduction about the Syriac language, as
it explains the similarities between Syriac and Arabic and their
common origins as Semitic languages.
In the Arabic introduction, the word that the author uses for
6XU\ň\ň is, as expected, 6XU\ćQĪ. Like the Syriac word, this word can
refer to the Syriac language, but also to a people, al-6XU\ćQ, or to a
culture. As a reference to the language, it can be translated safely as
‘Syriac’, but as a reference to a people or culture this translation is
not to be taken for granted, just like the Syriac counterpart of this
word. In the Arabic introduction the author writes explicitly about
the difference between the words $UćPĪ and 6XU\ćQĪ. Interestingly,
in the Arabic introduction Ghattas suggests that 6XU\ćQĪis a better
term to refer to his people than $UćPĪ ‘Aramaic,’ as he writes the
following:
ϕΎϧΗϋ΍ ΩόΑ ϡγϻ΍ ΍ΫϬΑ Εϳϣγϭ Δϳϣ΍έϷ΍ ΔΛϳέϭϭ ΔϔϳϠΧ ϲϫ ΔϳϧΎϳέγϟ΍ϭ
ΩόΑϲΗΛϭϟ΍ϲϧόΗϲϣ΍έ΃ΔϣϠϛΕϳϘΑΙϳΣϲΣϳγϣϟ΍ϥϳΩϠϟϥϳϳϣ΍έϷ΍έΛϛ΃
ϥϭέϔϧϳ ϥΎϳέγϟ΍ έΎλϭ ˬΏϳλΧϟ΍ ϝϼϬϟ΍ ϕρΎϧϣ ϲϓ ΔϳΣϳγϣϟ΍ έΎηΗϧ΍
ΩϳΩΟϟ΍ϥϳΩϟΎΑϡϬϘϠόΗΓΩηϟΎϬϧϣ
Syriac is the successor and heir of Aramaic. It became known
under this name after the conversion of most of the Arameans
to the Christian faith, whereas the word ‘Aramaic’ continued to
mean ‘pagan’ after the spread of Christianity in the lands of the
Fertile Crescent. The Sur\ćQĪV 21 started to avoid the name to
strengthen their belonging to the new faith. 22

In the lines above, Ghattas explains the transition from $UćPĪ to
6XU\ćQĪ because of the negative connotation the word had in
relation to paganism. It is indeed a common idea that the name
6XU\ň\ň, with its Arabic counterpart 6XU\ćQĪ, was taken since the
adoption of Christianity. Naures Atto explains that people who call
themselves 6XU\ň\H trace their history back to the early years of the
church. 23 This explanation seems to be conflicting with the positive
feelings of Ghattas for the Aramaic identity as apparent in his
Arabic: al-6XU\ćQ.
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, 7DZJňQĔ, IV.
23 Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, pp. 442–443.
21
22

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

359

interview and the secondary literature about him, but Ghattas gives
no more information in this Arabic text that could clarify his
thoughts. The Syriac introduction that directly follows goes deeper
into the value of the Syriac language for the nation, but in sharp
contrast to the Arabic introduction does not mention its Aramean
origins. 24
The word that Ghattas uses for describing the community is
generally XPWKň, which can be translated as ‘nation’ and which is a
cognate of the Arabic word umma. 25 This should be seen in relation
to the word ʰDPň ‘people,’ which has also been used to refer to
similar identities, but which has more been used to indicate the
6XU\ň\H as a religious group. 26 Other words Ghattas uses to refer to
a certain sense of 6XU\ň\ň identity are PňWKň ‘homeland’ or
‘motherland,’ and also DWKUň ‘region’ and DUʰň ‘land.’
Assyrianism was explicitly rejected by Ghattas according to his
interview, as confirmed by Assad Sauma. But how inclusive is
Ghattas’ understanding of the nation of 6XU\ň\H? Does it embrace
all of Syriac Christianity or is it specifically West-Syriac? Just as
there is no consensus about the name of the Assyrians/Arameans
as a people, there is no universal agreement about the boundaries
of the people: sometimes all (originally) Aramaic-speaking people
are included, including even the Chalcedonian Orthodox and the
Maronite Catholics, but it can also be restricted to one specific
church. 27 An understanding of the nation as only including the
Syriac Orthodox, possibly together with the Syriac Catholics, is not

Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, 7DZJňQĔ, pp. 2–5.
The Arabic umma is well known in the sense of the Islamic umma,
but is also used for worldly nations, as in al-umam al-PXWWDʚLGD ‘United
Nations.’
26 This distinction is also shown by Atto, who shows that many
people in the diaspora have a double idea of an Assyrian/Syriac identity,
one religious and one secular, which may come with different narratives
and boundaries. The word XPWKň‘nation’ is used in a secular sense, while
the word ʰDPň ‘people’ may have both meanings. Hostages in the Homeland,
pp. 437–438.
27 Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, p. 433ff.
24
25

360

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

uncommon and has old roots. 28 It is a possibility that cannot be
immediately ruled out and has to be discussed.
The inclusiveness of Ghattas’ nation to embrace also the EastSyriac world is nowhere denied. However, the strong presence of
Turabdin in his poetry, being a key region for the Syriac Orthodox,
suggests that his words are especially directed towards the WestSyriac branch. The same is true for Ghattas’ references to the
Sayfo. Even though the Sayfo is understood as the whole of the
atrocities against Arameans/Assyrians in and around 1915, the
events to which Ghattas refers happened in the region of Turabdin
and are more or less specific to the West-Syriac branch. In addition
to that, there are certain other factors, such as the fact that Ghattas
mainly worked through Syriac Orthodox institutions to publish his
work, and that his poems were published in West-Syriac (6HUʞň)
script, that Ghattas relates more to people with a Syriac Orthodox
(or to a lesser extent Syriac Catholic) background than others. On
the other hand, there are elements in Ghattas’ understanding of the
nation that naturally embrace the East-Syriac branch as well, such
as his stress on the Aramaic language. Both an explicit denial and
assertion of inclusiveness are lacking, which might have been the
intention of the poet.
Another issue, which I will not go deep into here, is the role
RI UHOLJLRQ LQ *KDWWDVp QRWLRQ RI WKH QDWLRQ RI 6XU\ň\H *KDWWDV
rarely includes religious themes in his poetry and has not talked
about it in interviews. One notable exception is the line from the
poem ‘Turabdin’ I have discussed above, where the fact that the
people of Turabdin ‘kept their orthodoxy’ was praised. Thus,
religion seems to have only a minor role in Ghattas’ understanding
of the nation. This is in line with the general understanding of the
word XPWKň as having a secular connotation. 29

B. ter Haar Romeny with N. Atto, J. J. van Ginkel, M. Immerzeel
and B. Snelders, ‘The Formation of a Communal Identity among West
Syrian Christians: Results and Conclusions of the Leiden Project’, pp. 1–
52.
29 See for a discussion about the importance of the question if
religion has a place in Aramean/Assyrian identity Sarah Bakker Kellog,
28

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

361

TURABDIN, S 85<Ň<( AND THE FUTURE OF THE NATION
Ghattas’ poem ‘Turabdin’ establishes this region of today’s
southeastern Turkey as the foundation of the 6XU\ň\H as a people.
The region is explicitly praised as their place of origin and as a
center of their religion. The poem acknowledges also that terrible
things have happened in Turabdin by referring discreetly to the
events of the 6D\Iň, and that many people – of which Ghattas
himself is one – have left the region. Nevertheless, for the 6XU\ň\H,
the significance of the region has not diminished. Other poems
give details about who these 6XU\ň\H are. We have seen that Ghattas
regards them as a nation (XPWKň), usually called 6XU\ň\H, or al-6XU\ćQ
in Arabic, and in English more often Arameans. This nation might
encompass all people who belong to one of the Syriac churches,
but Ghattas focuses on the Syriac Orthodox heritage.
When reading these poems together, we can assert that for
Ghattas, Turabdin was of great importance to the 6XU\ň\ň nation.
The genocide of 1915 is central to this understanding: in a few
cases by references to the atrocities themselves, and more often by
making visible the Sayfo’s painful consequences, especially by
showing the scattering of the 6XU\ň\H around the world and their
disappearance from Turabdin. However, what does Ghattas think
about the future of this nation of the 6XU\ň\H? Is there hope for
them after the First World War, or is it something which remains in
the past? And should Turabdin be seen as a monument in the
collective memory of the nation – as something of the past – or
should the 6XU\ň\Heven return to the region?
As for the future of the nation, it should be stressed that
Ghattas devotes great attention to the elevation of the nation. For
instance, his poem ‘Youth’ (‘ʰOD\PXWKň,’ 1930), comprising four
strophes with a refrain, (ʰXQLWKň) is a eulogy to the youth of the
nation, again called in Syriac XPWKň. 30 The youth is seen as a promise
for the future, as its refrain says: ‘Peace to you, o youth, / Daughter
of the nation that does not die! / We are carried on your arms /
‘Ritual sounds, political echoes: Vocal agency and the sensory cultures of
secularism in the Dutch Syriac diaspora’, pp. 431–445.
30 Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, 7DZJňQH, p. 30.

362

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

building our revival.’ It should be kept in mind that Ghattas was
only 18 or 19 years old at the time he wrote this, and therefore was
a youth himself. The next generation is supposed to ‘renew’ the
nation, and thus to preserve its antiquity: ‘Renew our nation with
the new generation / Preserve our antiquity with the ideas of today;
/ The years proceed quickly / Do not destroy their opportunities.’
In the last stanza, the ‘boys, girls, men and women’ are urged to
work ‘hastily for the elevation’. Ghattas uses explicitly the word
‘elevation,’ Syriac PʰDO\XWKň, an anagram of the title of the poem
ʰOD\PXWKň, ‘youth’. 31 His poem ‘Compatriots,’ Syriac %QD\ 0ňWKň, in
two stanzas from 1931, 32 addresses the whole people, urging them
as well to haste in order to bring back the honour of their
ancestors, this time because other nations seem to do better, as the
second stanza states: ‘Let us observe all nations, / For see, they
rush forward. / Let us therefore rush / quick, quick, for the
elevation’. The element of elevation of the nation shows that, in
Ghattas’ view, the nation of the 6XU\ň\H is not something that has
been lost, is irrevocably damaged or has no future. Instead, Ghattas
has a rather optimistic view. As long as the new generation works
hard to ‘elevate’ the nation, while preserving its traditions and
presumably also its unity, there is a bright future for the 6XU\ň\H, be
they in the homeland or in the diaspora.
As for the regional aspect of Ghattas’ understanding of the
nation, with Turabdin as its center, it should be noticed that there
are many indications that Ghattas saw emigration outside the
Middle East as something negative. Assad Sauma cites a number of
poems in which Ghattas laments the fact that he spent all the years
from 1980 on outside the Middle East, using phrases such as ‘Woe
unto immigration’. 33 Other poems speak about emotions such as
anxiety and longing, to an extent that Sauma describes Ghattas’ life

I would like to thank Dr Andrew N. Palmer, who noticed this.
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, 7DZJňQH, p. 32.
33 Sauma cites a poem with the translated title ‘Far away from one’s
own Homeland’, from the volume )LUH/TLVKň\H pp. 38–39. ‘Immigration’
should probably be read as ‘emigration,’ but I have not seen the original.
Sauma, ‘Denho Makdisi-Elias’, p. 365.
31
32

16. THE POEMS OF GHATTAS MAQDISI ELYAS

363

in Brazil as ‘unhappy’. 34 There is also reason to believe that Ghattas
felt guilty for immigrating to Latin America. In the Arabic
introduction to 7DZJňQH cited above, Ghattas expresses the hope
that he could ‘pay back a small part of the great debt which was
laying on my shoulders for many years’. 35 While this can be
interpreted as guilt for not having written poetry for a long time,
during his employment as a customs officer, it may also refer to his
emigration to Brazil. 36 By writing poetry, he found himself able to
pay back part of his debt, Arabic dayn, to the nation. In addition to
that, we saw that in the poem ‘Turabdin’ three stanzas are devoted
to urge the reader not to leave the region. For Ghattas, the original
region of the 6XU\ň\H – the Middle East in general and particularly
Turabdin – was still of concrete importance after the First World
War. Nevertheless, it is acknowledged that life in Turabdin is not
anymore as it used to be. Even Ghattas himself never visited
Turabdin after he left. In his interview with Zakay Joseph he says
the following: ‘[L]ater in my long life I travelled to many countries
all over the world, but I was reluctant to go to Turkey. The
atrocities which Turkey committed against our people, left strong
feeling in my heart and mind, and prevented me from traveling
there’. 37

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atto, Naures. Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora:
Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European
Diaspora. (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2011).
Bakker Kellog, Sarah. ‘Ritual sounds, political echoes: Vocal agency
and the sensory cultures of secularism in the Dutch Syriac
diaspora’. American Ethnologist 42:3 (2015): 431–445.

Ibid., pp. 348–350.
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, 7DZJňQH, p. 1.
36 As Andrew N. Palmer noted, someone may feel guilty for leaving
their old life with ‘poverty and piety’ for a situation in which they are ‘rich
and free from suppression’.
37 See citation above for the URL to this interview.
34
35

364

TIJMEN C. BAARDA

Brock, S.P. ‘Some Observations of the Use of Classical Syriac in
the Late Twentieth Century’. Journal of Semitic Studies 34 (1989):
363–75.
ò
ò 7DZJňQHQEňKHZ-UHʰ\ňQH.
Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas. ťƍƀƕǓĭŦųũƌûťƍūĭŁ
(Glane: Bar-Hebraeus Verlag, 1988).
ter Haar Romeny, Bas with Naures Atto, Jan J. van Ginkel, Mat
Immerzeel and Bas Snelders. ‘The Formation of a Communal
Identity among West Syrian Christians: Results and
Conclusions of the Leiden Project’. Church History and Religious
Culture 89: 1–3 (2009): 1–52.
Isaf, Robert. ‘Arising, or Awaking: Aramaic Language Poetry at the
Turn of the 20th Century’. Paper presented at Leiden
University conference ‘Arabic and Its Alternatives’, 15–17
June 2016.
Murre-van den Berg, Heleen. ‘Classical Syriac and the Syriac
Churches: A Twentieth-Century History’. In Syriac Encounters:
Papers from the Sixth North American Syriac Symposium, Duke
University, 26–29 June 2011, edited by M. Doerfler, E. Fiano
and K. Smith, 119–48. (Peeters: Louvain, 2015).
Sauma, Assad. ‘Denho Makdisi-Elyas (1911–2008): The Last Giant
of the Aramean Poets’. Parole de l’Orient 36 (2011): 329–66.
Zakay, Joseph. ‘Interview with Denho Ghattas Makdisi Elyas’. No
date. Available at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20091029161441/
http://www.urhoy.info/interview-ghattas.html

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE:
A LINGUISTIC ASPECT OF THE SAYFO
SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ
The genocide against Christian minorities committed by the Young
Turks is called by Assyrians and Arameans ‘Saypa’ and ‘Sayfo’
respectively, a very suggestive metaphor for the tragic events that
took place in 1915. However, the Sayfo, which aimed to make
Turkey a homogeneous country in terms of religion, nation and
language, was a double-edged sword. One edge was to kill the
people physically; the other was designated to kill the culture and
the identity of those who survived. Both kinds of genocide
concerned the question of linguistic diversity of the nascent
Turkish Republic, in which the languages other than Turkish were
sentenced to death.

LANGUAGE DEATH AND LINGUICIDE
Although the term ‘language death’, being an anthropomorphic
metaphor, often appears in publications concerning changes which
are observed across the diversity of languages of the world, 1 no
In the age of globalization, which favours languages of wider
communication, the future of tongues used by smaller number of speakers
seems to be vulnerable. This reality, however, concerns 95% of 7000
languages spoken today in the world. Despite the fact that only 350
languages have over one million users each, they are spoken by 94% of
the global population. The disproportion in the number of speakers
between smaller and bigger languages is even more glaring if one notices
that virtually half of humanity speaks one of the twenty most-used
languages, among which eight: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Bengali,
1

365

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SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

consensus as yet exists regarding the exact meaning of this
phenomenon. 2 The main question which scholars raise is that of
the criteria by which one assesses whether a given language can be
declared ‘dead’. It would seem the most obvious criterion is the
existence of living speakers. Hence, a given language may be
considered to be alive as long as the last persons who speak it live. 3
Nevertheless, even this assumption is criticized by scholars. Should
a language be called really living, if its last native speakers are
dispersed and do not communicate with each other in it? Another
problematic issue is determining who is a speaker of a given
language. Usually, a language in the terminal stage of its existence
experiences substantial attrition in its structure and vocabulary.
Moreover, domains of its use are restricted to home
communication and sometimes further to some single formulaic
sentences used by people who may not be able even to understand
meanings of particular words which these phrases contain. In such
instances, should they be classified as native speakers of this
language? In light of these problems related to attempts to defy the
phenomenon of language death, a broad definition in categories of
communicative functionality was formulated by Hans-Jürgen Sasse,
who defines ‘the final point of language death as the cessation of
regular communication in the language’. 4
The definition provided by Sasse emphasizes that language
death is a process. For this reason he speaks of ‘the final point of
language death’. The process is initiated in fact by ‘historical events
which lead to uneven distribution of languages in multilingual

Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese, have over 100 million users
each (Crystal Language Death, p. 14; Grenoble Language Ecology, p. 28).
Since these figures change constantly in favour of stronger tongues,
prospects for survival of small languages are gloomy. The optimists
suggest that only 50% languages spoken today will be still spoken at the
beginning of the next century, while the pessimists predict an extinction
rate of 90%. (Crystal ibid., p. 19; Grenoble ibid., p. 33).
2 Thomason, Language Contact, pp. 223–225.
3 Janse ‘Introduction’, p. IX.
4 Sasse ‘Theory of Language Death’, p. 18.

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

367

settings’. 5 Although true, this assumption does not take into
consideration cases when all users of a given language are
annihilated in a natural catastrophe or by intentional human
activity, such as war or genocide. Thus, at least two ways of
language disappearance may be distinguished: one sudden, the
other, gradual. 6 Nevertheless, the phenomenon of language death is
much more complex, and both sudden and gradual extinction of
languages may be characterized by different circumstances. In this
context, the proposal of Campbell and Muntzel to classify various
circumstances leading to language death is useful. They
distinguished four main types of termination of language
communicative function:
1. Sudden death, when the language disappears because of the
sudden death of the whole community of speakers. This rather rare
case is triggered through natural catastrophes, such as an
earthquake, tsunami, disease, or famine, or happens as a result of
war and genocide. 7
2. Radical death, being ‘like sudden death in that language loss is rapid
and usually due to severe political repression, often with genocide,
to the extent that speakers stop speaking the language out of selfdefence, a survival strategy.’ 8
3. Gradual death, the most common type, is a slow shift from one
language to another. 9 Language shift occurs when people change
their linguistic behaviour and adopt a new language to be used in
some domains or cease speaking their mother tongue in favour of
another language. Usually, this process occurs over many years,
involving a few generations of speakers, and the situation of

Sasse, ibid., p. 19; Thomason Language Contact, pp. 225–226.
See also Romaine ‘Contact and Language Death’, pp. 322–325.
7 Campbell and Muntzel, ‘The structural consequences of language
death’, pp. 182–183; see also Austin and Sallabank ‘Introduction’, p. 5.
8 Campbell and Muntzel, ibid., pp. 183–184.
9 Campbell and Muntzel, ibid., pp. 184–185.
5
6

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SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

bilingualism is one inevitable phase. 10 The shift from one language
to another is triggered by various social causes, generally connected
to the ethnolinguistic vitality of a language. Assessing the
parameters of such vitality allows a determination as to whether a
given language is in danger of extinction. 11
4. Bottom-to-top death, whereby the language is lost at the family level
and is no longer used for regular communication, but still remains
in use in rituals and prestige social settings. This is the situation of
Syriac, Coptic, and Latin, 12 among many others.
Considering the abovementioned distinctions between different
types of language death, it is evident that, in general, vulnerable
languages are eradicated due to human activity. It was in this
context that Finnish scholar Tove Skutnabb-Kangas coined the
term ‘linguicide’. Although this term refers to linguistic genocide in
general, Skutnabb-Kangas uses it in a restricted sense to mean
‘(actively) killing a language without killing the speakers (as in
physical genocide) or (through passivity) letting a language die’. 13
Thus, this definition excludes the case of a language vanishing due
to the intentional extermination of all persons who spoke it as
mother tongue. However, such differentiation between killing the
language and killing its speakers seems to be questionable. If the
10

See Muysken and Apple, Language Contact and Bilingualism, pp. 32–

45.
Brenzinger
distinguishes
nine
such
parameters:
1)
intergenerational language transmission; 2) absolute numbers of speakers;
3) proportion of speakers within the total population; 4) loss of existing
language domains; 5) response to new domains and media; 6) material for
language education and literacy; 7) governmental and institutional
language attitudes and policies, including official language status and use;
8) community members’ attitudes towards their own language; 9) amount
and quality of documentation (Brenzinger ‘Language Endangerment
Throughout the World’, p. X). Other scales determining language health
were reviewed by Grenoble and Whaley (Saving Languages, pp. 3–13).
12 See also Campbell and Muntzel, ibid., pp. 185–186 and critics of
distinguishing this kind of language death by Sasse, ibid., p. 23.
13 Skutnabb-Kangas, Linguistic genocide in education, p. 312.
11

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

369

term linguicide refers to the genocidal aspects of language death, it
should take into consideration the most obvious way to terminate
the existence of a language, namely, through killing all of its users.
No language can live without a group who use it for specific
communicative purposes. As Stephen May put it, ‘the fortunes of
languages are inexorably bound up with those of their speakers.’ 14
We shall use ‘linguicide’ in a broad sense to include also the
physical extermination of users of a given language, drawing on the
definition of genocide formulated by United Nations. 15 Hence,
linguicide is defined as any acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, a linguistic community,
that is, a group which identifies itself with a language spoken by its
members.

THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF TURKEY BEFORE AND
AFTER THE YEAR OF THE SAYFO (1915)
On the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, despite
the fact that it has lost its African and almost all of its Balkan
provinces, maintained a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multilingual character. Such was the case also in the Asian and Anatolian
vilayets which would become the territory of the Turkish Republic
in 1923. However, only small groups of Armenians, Greeks and
Assyrians/Arameans continued to live in this new country.
Remarkable changes are observable also in the linguistic map of
Asia Minor and Anatolia in the periods before and after the Sayfo.
May, Language and Minority Rights, p. 134.
According to Resolution 260 (III)-A adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, genocide is defined in
the following manner: ‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of
the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly
transferring children of the group to another group,’ quoted after Totten
and Bartrop, Dictionary of genocide, pp. XXIV.
14
15

370

SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

In this part of the paper we attempt to sketch an image of these
changes, triggered by genocidal acts, alterations in the number of
persons speaking different varieties of Western and Eastern
Armenian, Pontic and Cappadocian Greek, Turoyo (Surayt)
including Mlahso, and Sureth (Modern Assyrian).
Before we pass on to data concerning the linguistic minorities
of Turkey we have to explain that counting the users of a given
language is always a difficult task. In the case of the question at
hand, the problem is aggravated by the lack of any official statistics
regarding numbers of persons speaking the abovementioned
languages during this period. Therefore, we are forced to rely in
general on figures estimated by European and American travellers
or to assume that the ethnic affiliation in a particular case may be
supposed to be equal with a given linguistic identity.
Armenian
It is estimated that in 1868 some 3 million Armenians lived in the
Ottoman Empire: 400,000 in Constantinople and European
Turkey, 600,000 in western Asia Minor and Cilicia, 670,000 in Sivas
and Trabzon provinces and southern Diyarbakir province, and
1,333,000 in Great Armenia, coterminous with the provinces of
Erzurum, Van, Mush, Bitlis, and Siirt. 16 In comparison, the number
of Armenians living in Turkey in 1914 is estimated at 1,800,000
persons. 17 Approximately 1,200,000 of them fell victim to the
genocide of 1915. Among those who survived the massacres and
deportations, 200,000 escaped to Caucasian Armenia, 150,000 were
rescued in camps or hidden by Muslims, and 150,000 avoided the
persecution. The 100,000 Turkish Armenians who survived the
genocide were women and children abducted and incorporated into
Turkish or Kurdish families. 18
For the languages spoken by Armenians before 1915, our
main source is Adjarian’s Classifications de dialects arméniens (1909).
Such data was presented by the Armenian delegation at the Berlin
Congress, see Ternon, Ormianie, p. 66.
17 See Lepsius, Bericht über die Lage des Armenischen Volkes in der Türkei,
pp. 304–309.
18 Ternon, Ormianie, p. 261.
16

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

371

Adjarian distinguished three branches of modern Armenian: -um
dialects used in the Caucasus (seven dialects), gё dialects
widespread mainly in Turkey (21 dialects including 18 spoken in
Turkey), and -el dialects (three dialects: two used in Iran and one in
Artvin in Turkey). According to this data, at the beginning of the
twentieth century in Turkey at least 20 of 31 varieties of modern
Armenian were in use. Geographically, speakers of Armenian
inhabited primarily the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
In western Asia Minor, Cilicia and few villages in eastern Trabzon,
Armenians spoke Turkish. In Aleppo, Mardin, Mosul, Siirt, and
Kirkuk they communicated in varieties of spoken Arabic, while
Kurdish was the mother language of Armenians living in Khizan,
Bohtan, Bsheriye, Kharzan, Slivan, and Samshad. 19 Moreover, small
groups of Circassian-speaking Armenians were also present in the
northeastern part of the Ottoman Empire.
In the light of the data and population statistics estimated by
Lepsius, 20 the number of Armenians who lived in Turkey before
1915 and who spoke one or more Armenian dialects may be
estimated at approximately one million persons. It is difficult to
assess how many Armenian-speaking Armenians survived the
genocide and remained in the Turkish Republic. The majority of
those 150,000 who avoided deportation lived mainly in
Constantinople and Smyrna (Turkish: Izmir) and were rather
Turkophones. 21
The genocide against the Armenian nation in Turkey resulted
in the extinction of almost all Western Armenian dialects. 22 It was
not only because its speakers were massacred, but also due to the
emigration of survivors to adjacent countries Armenia, Syria
Lebanon and throughout the world. Those who came to Soviet
Adjarian, Classification des dialectes arméniens, pp. 12–13.
Lepsius, ibid., pp. 304–309.
21 At present only 50,000 Armenians live in Turkey. They are
concentrated almost exclusively in Istanbul and only 18% can speak
Armenian (cf. Pattie, ‘Armenians in diaspora’, p. 133).
22 The last remnant of the Armenian language in eastern Anatolia is
a variety called Homshetsma spoken by Islamized Armenians (Vaux
‘Homshetsma’).
19
20

372

SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

Armenia shifted from Western Armenian varieties to the Eastern
Armenian dialects spoken in this area. In contrast, those Armenians
who fled to Lebanon, the country which received the biggest wave
of Armenian migration, used different dialects initially but gradually
began to prefer the literary standard Western Armenian formed in
the 19th century on the basis of the Constantinopolitan variety.
Beirut became the centre of the Western Armenian language. 23
Greek
According to various statistics, the number of Greeks living before
the First World War in the area approximately coextensive with the
present Turkish Republic varies between one and two million
persons. 24 Although they could be found in every province of the
country, Greeks were concentrated along the shore of the Black
Sea, in Cappadocia south of Caesarea (Turkish: Kayseri), and in
western Asia Minor along the Aegean Sea, with Constantinople and
Smyrna being their main urban centres. According to Dietrich, only
in the provinces of Aydin and Bursa did the Greek population
reach 1,300,000. 25
It is very difficult to estimate how many Greeks living in the
Ottoman Turkey had maintained their native language up to the
eve of the First World War. Dawkins, after finishing his fieldwork
which he carried out in 1909–1911, focused on the Greek language
spoken in Anatolia. He remarked, ‘in general, the Turks and their
language have so thoroughly taken possession of the land, that
most of the Christians speak only Turkish’. 26 Nevertheless, as far as
the dialectal division of Anatolian Greek is concerned, three
branches of dialects used in Ottoman Asia Minor can be
distinguished. The first was represented by Greek varieties spoken
in about 380 villages in the western part of the country, especially

Pisowicz, *UDPDW\NDRUPLDĿVND, pp. 19–20.
See Dietrich, Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 4; Doumanis, Before the
nation, p. 30; Mutlu, ‘Late Ottoman population and its ethnic distribution’,
p. 11.
25 Dietrich, Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 4.
26 Dawkins, Modern Greek in Asia Minor, p. 4.
23
24

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

373

along the Aegean coastline. 27 These dialects were related to the
vernacular demotic Greek, being the basis for contemporary
literary Greek. The second dialect cluster was Pontic Greek,
spoken mainly in the Pontus Mountains. Before the First World
War the number of Pontic Greeks was estimated to be 250,000–
300,000, however, at least a portion of these was Turkishspeaking. 28 The third variety of the Greek language used in Turkey
was the Cappadocian Greek spoken in about 20 towns south of
Caesarea and Iconium (Turkish: Konya). The number of Greeks
speaking this dialect did not exceed 40,000. 29
Due to the genocide against the Greek population, forced
Islamization, the Turkish-Greek war of 1919–1920, and the
exchange of religious minorities between Turkey and Greece, by
1930 the number of Christian Greeks in the Turkish Republic had
diminished to 200,000. 30 Subsequent emigration caused a further
decline of Greek Orthodox presence in Asia Minor and
Constantinople. 31 These changes affected also the linguistic
situation of the country. The religious criteria of both persecution
and later resettlements allowed a small group of indigenous Pontic
Greek speaking Muslims to remain in the area of the former
province of Trabzon. 32 Nevertheless, the Pontic Greek language in
Turkey is considered to be severely endangered; 33 Cappadocian
Greek is now extinct. 34
27
28

Doumanis, Before the nation, pp. 38–40.
Dietrich, Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 33; Doumanis, Before the nation,

p. 35.
Dietrich, ibid., p. 33; Doumanis, ibid., p. 38.
According to the census of 1928, about 627,000 Greek Orthodox
Christians from Asia Minor were resettled in Greece, of which 240,000
were from Pontus, 182,000 from Anatolia, and almost 257,000 from
Eastern Thrace (Kritikos, ‘The Nationalism of Greek Language’, pp. 151–
152).
31 Tsitselikis, ‘Exchange of population’, p. 142.
32 Mackridge ‘Greek-speaking Moslems of north-east Turkey’.
33 Moseley, Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages, pp. 265–
266.
34 Ibid., pp. 239–240.
29
30

374

SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

Modern Assyrian (North Eastern Neo-Aramaic)
Modern Assyrian dialects represent a continuation of Eastern
Aramaic varieties used in Mesopotamia, beginning from the second
half of the first millennium BCE. In the 19th century, Maclean 35
distinguished four groups of North Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects:
1) Urmi; 2) Northern, being the dialects of Jilu, Gawar, Qudshanis
and the region of Salamas; 3) Ashiret comprising the dialects of the
Tiari, Tkhuma, Tal, Baz, Diz, Waltu, Ashitha, Mar Bishu, and
Shamsdin tribes living in Hakkari mountains; and 4) Southern,
consisting of dialects spoken in Alqosh, Bohtan and Zakho. Most
of these varieties were in use in the Hakkari Mountains lying in the
Ottoman province of Van. It is estimated that the number of
Assyrians living in the province of Van in 1914 lies between 80,000
and 100,000. 36 North Eastern Neo-Aramaic was spoken by
Christians belonging to the Church of East as well as Catholic
Chaldeans, 37 though small groups of Jews, for instance in Zakho,
or even Muslims such as those living on the Siirt plain spoke this
language. 38
Before the Sayfo, the Modern Assyrian language was
characterized by extreme dialectal diversity. Maclean summarized it
thus: ‘The number of variations both in the vocabulary and in the
grammatical forms used is extraordinarily great, and almost every
village has its own way of speaking.’ 39 Nevertheless, through the
Maclean, Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac, pp. XIII–XV.
Karayan, ‘Demography of Van Province, 1844–1914’. In 1901
Oussani estimated the total number of so-called Nestorians and
Chaldeans at 250, 000 (Oussani ‘The Modern Chaldeans and Nestorians,
and the study of Syriac among them’, p. 81). In contrast, the Anglican
legate Cutts in his report of a journey undertaken in 1876 wrote about
56,000 ‘Nestorian mountaineers’ who lived under Turkish rule. He
mentioned also Chaldeans (36,000) and Nestorians from Iran (25,000), for
a total of 117,000 (1877, 11).
37 Moreover, some groups of Assyrians embraced a Protestant
denomination and after 1897 about 10,000 persons became Russian
Orthodox.
38 Soane, To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in disguise, p. 52.
39 Maclean, Grammar of the dialects of vernacular Syriac, p. XII.
35
36

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

375

efforts of American Presbyterian and later Anglican missionaries,
who in the 19th century came to the region of Lake Urmia, a solid
and standardized form of contemporary Eastern Aramaic was
established. Almost simultaneously similar attempts were made by
Catholic missions in Khosrowa, Salamas and Mosul. 40
In a memorandum presented by the Assyro-Chaldean
National Council in 1922 at the Lausanne Treaty negotiations, the
number of Assyrians massacred during the First World War was
estimated to be 275,000. 41 In the years 1915–1916, in the Hakkari
region, where almost all speakers of Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects
lived, approximately 20,000–30,000 Assyrians died due to battles,
massacres, diseases, epidemics, and starvation. 42
The First World War and its aftermath have played a crucial
role for the re-arrangement of the linguistic map of the province of
Van. The Assyrians, harassed both by Turks as well as Kurdish
tribes, decided to abandon their ancestral land. Some 40,000
headed for the Mosul plain seeking the support of the British
authorities for their pro-independence aspirations; 43 these hopes
have never been realized. After 1924, the district of the Hakkari
Mountains was conceded to the Turkish Republic. Assyrians were
prohibited from returning to their homes. 44 As the consequence of
this, only small portions of North Eastern Neo-Aramaic speaking
Christians remained in the area of southeastern Turkey. They were
distributed among isolated villages of Artvan (Hertevinler), situated
east of Siirt, as well as in some other settlements located east of
Cizre. 45

Cf. Murre From a Spoken to a Written language, Bednarowicz
o.V]WDøWRZDQLHVLĚMĚ]\ND literackiego Asyryjczyków z Urmii i okolic’.
41 Totten and Bartrop, Dictionary of genocide, pp. 25–26.
42 Yonan A Forgotten Holocaust, p. 87.
43 Atiya, +LVWRULD.RŔFLRøÐZZVFKRGQLFK, p. 245.
44 Petrosian ‘Assyrians in Iraq’, pp. 131–132.
45 Poizat, ‘The Sureth-speaking villages in Eastern Turkey’, pp. 17–
18; Jastrow, ‘Ein neuaramäischer Dialekt aus dem Vilayet Siirt
(Ostanatolien)’.
40

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SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

Turoyo and Mlahso
Turoyo is classified as a representative of Central Eastern NeoAramaic. This vernacular variety was used in Turabdin probably as
early as in the eighth century. 46 Before the Sayfo, most Turoyo
speakers were Christians belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church,
with small groups of Syriac Catholic and Protestants. 47 In contrast
to the Modern Assyrian language, Turoyo in Turabdin has never
been written and had no literary standard at the time of the Sayfo.
Indeed, about 1880 the American Mission in Mardin requested
from the deacon Isaya of Qilith to translate the Gospel of John
into Turoyo, but this translation had no influence on the local
Turoyo speaking community. 48
Estimation of the number of Turoyo speakers in this period is
based primarily on the information delivered by Prym and Socin.
Prior to the First World War, Turabdin was inhabited by
approximately 30–40,000 Syriac Orthodox Christians distributed
among 79 villages. 49 According to Prym and Socin, the Turoyo
language was used in just 30–40 settlements located mainly in the
central part of Turabdin. 50 The Mlahso language, closely related to
Turoyo, was used in the villages of Mellaha (Malahto) and Ansha
near Diyarbakir by 200–300 families. 51 Considering this data, the

Talay ‘Spuren des Neuaramäischen in den syrischen Inschriften
aus dem Tur Abdin und Umgebung’, pp. 375–381.
47 In 1910 only about 500 Turabdin Christians belonged to the
Syriac Catholic Church and a further 600 were Protestants (de Courtois
The Forgotten Genocide, p. 42).
48 Heinrichs, ‘Written Turoyo’, pp. 183–184.
49 de Courtois, ibid., pp. 76–80.
50 Prym and Socin collected their data before 1895, a year in which
Syriac Christians fell victim to the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–1896, a
persecution directed primarily against Armenians. However, during this
persecution the Christians of Turabdin, with the exception of those of
Midyat, were spared, mostly. A crueler fate befell the Syriac Christians in
Mardin and its surroundings (see de Courtois 2004, pp. 113–121).
51 Prym and Socin Der neuaramäische Dialekt des Tûr Abdín, pp. IIIVIII; Jastrow, 'HUQHXDUDPÁLVFKH'LDOHNWYRQ0ODʚVÑ, p. 3.
46

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

377

total number of Turoyo and Mlahso speakers living in the Ottoman
Empire can be estimated at about 15–20,000 people.
According to the assessment presented by the Syriac
Orthodox Patriarchate to the Paris Peace Conference, during the
First World War in the vicinity of the town of Midyat, where
almost all Turoyo speaking Christians lived, 25,830 members of the
Syriac Orthodox Church were massacred. 52 If we compare this
figure with the Syriac Orthodox population of Turabdin, it
becomes clear that almost two-thirds of the local Christians
disappeared. The Mlahso speakers, in turn, were even less
fortunate. Almost all of them were murdered and their villages
were destroyed. 53 When these data are taken into consideration, it
can be estimated that as a result of the genocide the number of
Turoyo and Mlahso speakers was reduced to about five to seven
thousand people altogether.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
The genocide against the Christian minorities of the Ottoman
Empire influenced substantially the linguistic diversity of Asia
Minor and Anatolia. This impact was negative in its character and
lead to the extinction of many linguistic varieties or undermined
their ability to survive in the ever more homogenous country which
the Turkish Republic became. Those languages, which in the
Ottoman period were spoken mainly by Christians, experienced
after 1915 various kinds of language death.
The massive displacements, being one of the consequences of
the Sayfo, caused the mixing of the Aramaic dialects and triggered a
process of koineicization of the language, as observed, e.g. among
North Eastern Neo-Aramaic varieties in Iraq. 54 Deprived of their
native geographical range, their specific village or town
communities, these dialects began to intermingle one with another

de Courtois, ibid., p. 196.
Jastrow, 'HUQHXDUDPÁLVFKH'LDOHNWYRQ0ODʚVÑ, p. 4.
54 Odisho, The Sound System of Modern Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic), pp. 19–
52
53

24.

378

SEBASTIAN BEDNAROWICZ

and ultimately, out of their demise, a new linguistic variety of
spoken Aramaic emerged.
Apart from the massacres which devoured the lion’s share of
the speakers of Western Armenian, Modern Assyrian, Turoyo and
Mlahso languages, linguicide was conducted also through the
abduction of Christian women and children, who were
incorporated forcibly into Turkish or Kurdish families. As a result,
they ceased to speak their ancestral languages and their
intergenerational transmission was disrupted. Similar Turkification,
though on a smaller scale, took place also in Turkish orphanages, in
which Armenian children in particular were robbed of their
heritage and ethnic and linguistic identity. 55
The most long-term, and simultaneously the most visible
process of language death, being the consequence of the Armenian,
Greek and Assyrian/Aramean genocide in Turkey, was the gradual
shift from Western Armenian, Modern Assyrian, Turoyo and
Greek to Turkish. After the Christian communities in Turkey were
decimated through massacres as well as through Islamization,
Turkification, dispersion, and emigration of the survivors, their
languages became moribund: the fewer users of a language, the
more rapid its attrition. This process was enhanced through the
language policy adopted in the Turkish Republic. According to the
Turkish interpretation of Article 40 of the Lausanne Treaty, the
Turkish Republic granted official recognition to only three nonMuslim minorities: Armenians, Greeks (Rum), and Jews. Although
Assyrians/Arameans met the requirements for such recognition,
the Turkish Republican government deprived them of the right ‘to
establish, manage and control at their own expense, any charitable,
religious and social institutions, any schools and other
establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use
their own language and to exercise their own religion freely
therein’. 56
The main aim of this paper was to sketch the changes in the
linguistic map of the Ottoman Empire before and after the Sayfo.
Shirinian, ‘Orphans of the Armenian Genocide …’, pp. 52–54.
Kurban A Quest for Equality, p. 15; Kaya )RUJRWWHQRU$VVLPLODWHG" p.
17; de Courtois The Forgotten Genocide, pp. 222–223.
55
56

17. BEFORE AND AFTER LINGUICIDE

379

Indeed, as demographic statistics show, in this period many
varieties of Aramaic, Armenian, and Greek disappeared after their
millennia-long presence in Anatolia and Asia Minor. However, we
should not forget that behind each figure stands an individual, who
had his or her own face and represented a specific linguistic
microcosm. Loss of this diversity has been the most deplorable and
irredeemable loss.

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APPENDIX:
SYNOPSIS REPORT OF THE
CONFERENCE
ABDULMESIH BARABRAHAM
& SONER Ö. BARTHOMA
SAYFO 1915: AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE
GENOCIDE OF ASSYRIANS/ARAMEANS DURING THE
FIRST WORLD WAR
(24–28 JUNE 2015, FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN)
The conference ‘SAYFO 1915: An International Conference on
the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War’
was held June 24–28, 2015 at the Freie Universität Berlin, Seminary
for Semitic and Arabic Studies. Prof. Dr. Shabo Talay, of the
Seminary for Semitic and Arabic Studies, organized the conference
in close cooperation with the Inanna Foundation, Netherlands.
With this international conference on the occasion of the
centennial commemoration, the organizers aimed to shed light
from a multidisciplinary perspective on the genocide (Sayfo) of the
Assyrians/Arameans which took place in the same geographical
region and at the same time as the Armenian Genocide, which has
been widely researched by scholars across different academic
disciplines for a long time. Similar to their fate during the First
World War, today, the same people are caught in a terrible process
of forced expulsion from their historic homelands.
Drawing on the expertise of scholars from a variety of
backgrounds, the aim of the conference was also to serve as a
catalyst for developing future scholarship about the Sayfo. Various
papers engaged in empirical, theoretical and methodological
research on the study of the Sayfo were presented. There were
385

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approximately 40 invited scholars from various European
countries, the United States, Canada, Korea, Turkey, Lebanon and
Australia who gave presentations and dozens more who attended
from European countries as observers and participants during
question-and-answer sessions. The entire conference was recorded
by AssyriaTV and SuroyoTV. AssyriaTV broadcasted the event live
on the Internet and made all conference sessions available in a
documentary format on their website (http://www.assyriatv.org).

OPENING CEREMONY
The conference program was preceded by an opening ceremony on
Wednesday, 24 June at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin, and a
subsequent reception, enriched by classic Syriac music by Kamil
Hanna (vocal) and Aziz Bahnan (violin).
On behalf of the organizing committee and as head of the
Institute for Semitic and Arabic Studies, Prof. Dr. Shabo Talay
welcomed the guest speakers including H.H. the Patriarch of the
Syriac Orthodox Church, Ephrem II Kerim. Prof. Talay extended
special welcome to the scholars from all over the world and
expressed his gratitude to the FU Berlin for the generous support
that made this conference possible. He clarified a few terminology
issues: First, he pointed out that during the Ottoman rule most
Christians were called Armenians. Hence, other victims of the
massacres and deportations were generally not explicitly mentioned
in reports related to the genocide of 1915. Also, Prof. Talay
touched on the naming issue of the people that were the focus of
this conference and stressed that ‘Assyrians’ and ‘Arameans’ are the
same people and the historical designations have to be regarded as
synonyms. Furthermore, he elaborated on the objectives of the
conference and pointed to differences in treatment compared to
the Armenian Genocide – both scholarly and literarily. Finally, he
touched upon the debates of 2005 and 2015 in the German
Parliament on the occasion of the commemoration of the
Armenian Genocide where Assyrians/Arameans are mentioned in
a sideline as victims.
In his greetings message, Prof. Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn, Vicepresident of the FU Berlin, formulated the expectation that this
scholarly conference would extend and deepen the existing
knowledge on the genocide of the Assyrians, acknowledging that
this wouldn’t be a straightforward undertaking, as the people in

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focus are threatened by another genocide in their homeland today.
Prof. Mühlhahn argued that a study of the genocide cannot be
done by interpretation and analysis of factual historical evidence
alone – even by the most objective inquiry. The approach also
needs to rely on testimonies and experiences of those who have
been victimized and traumatized. Hence, a balance between a
conventional (a so-called objective reconstruction of the past) and
emphatic approach that considers the experiences of the survivors
is necessary.
Prof. Dr. Karin Gludovatz, Dean of the Faculty of History
and Cultural Studies, welcomed the guests and thanked Prof. Talay
for putting dedication and energy into organizing the conference.
She briefly introduced the faculty, pointing out that the conference
is in line with the multidisciplinary approach of the faculty. She
acknowledged that the genocide on the Assyrians/Arameans
remains a ‘white spot’ in the writing of history and expressed hope
that the conference will be a critical contribution to the urgently
needed re-appraisal of the events of 1915 and that it will inspire
further studies in the future.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Nachama, Director of the foundation
‘Topography of Terror’, called Berlin the ‘center of evil’ (Zentrum
des Bösen). He stressed that one cannot understand victims, if one
does not understand what circumstances and what people turned
them into victims. The crimes of the First World War are familiar
to everybody and have their individual human faces, he said. But
that is exactly what is missing with regards to the crimes of 1915.
Remembering is the secret to the solution, he said. ‘Whoever does
not remember is condemned to experience it again’.
Erol Dora, the newly re-elected first Assyrian MP in the
Turkish Parliament, was not able to join due to the opening
ceremony at the Turkish Parliament. In his letter to the conference
he underlined the importance of building confrontation
mechanisms to combat crimes against humanity targeting
minorities and genocides, which will in the end, contribute to the
formation of a political culture respecting peace, democracy and
human rights. In order to reinforce the social peace in Turkey. Mr.
Dora suggested the urgent need for the establishment of a ‘Truth,
Fact, Revelation and Confrontation Commission’. The recent
developments in the region showed once more that the realization
of universal human rights and principles such as democracy,

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freedom and equality is the only remedy. Otherwise, it will be
inevitable to face new tragedies, new barbarisms and new pains day
by day.
Dr. Christoph Bergner, Ministerpräsident a.D. of SachsenAnhalt, MP in the German Bundestag, initiator of the recent
Genocide resolution in the German Parliament, expressed his
special interest in this conference. Pointing to the commemoration
debate of April 24th in the Bundestag, he stressed that ‘we as
Germans have a special obligation to have this debate and bring it
to conclusion.’ The different petitions of the parties have been
relegated to the working committees; it is intended to come up
with a joint resolution in the course of this fall. Dr. Bergner said
that on one side Germany was the most involved state in the
events of 1915. On the other side, today, a large number of Turkish
fellow citizens live in Germany; hence, ‘we, as German Parliament,
need to enforce the [historical] truth’.

OPENING SPEECH
The Conference Opening Speech was delivered by H.H. Mor
Ignatius Ephrem II, Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.
The Patriarch expressed gratitude to the FU Berlin and his special
thanks to Prof. Talay and his colleagues for organizing this
conference and inviting him to deliver the opening speech as the
commemoration of the centennial of Sayfo is taking place this year.
It is very appropriate to discuss recent scholarly advances in
research in the hope that this will contribute to what took place
during the dark years of Sayfo. Such a discussion is important to
prevent future genocides. More and more documents and archives
reveal facts on the events. Recently the Vatican opened its archives
and a five-volume work was compiled by Dr. Michael Hesemann
on the Armenian case, who promised to edit a future book focused
on Sayfo as well.
The Patriarch tried to answer some key questions related to
Sayfo: what and why Sayfo happened and how it unfolded. He
cited from the book written by the late Patriarch Ephrem Barsoum
[1887–1957], where a number of 90,000 victims is given. However,
the Patriarch stressed that this number does not cover the entire
Syriac population and regions affected. Today many scholars put
the number of victims at around 500,000 considering victims from
all so-called Syriac Churches: Orthodox, Catholic, Chaldean and

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389

Church of the East. He pointed out that many of the martyrs were
bishops and priests. What happened can be described as ethnoreligious cleansing inspired by a pan-Turkish ideology of the Young
Turks who regarded the non-Muslim people – such as the
Armenians, Greeks and Syriacs – as a threat to their unity. Many
accusations of disloyalty and betrayal were made against Armenians
in an attempt to justify the crimes committed against them in 1915.
The Syriac people were not accused of any wrongdoing. They were
simply massacred for being of different religion and ethnicity. More
than two thirds of the Syriac population from different Churches
was exterminated, many dioceses, churches and monasteries and
centuries-old heritage were destroyed.
Referring to the preceding speech of Prof. Dr. Andreas
Nachama, the patriarch agreed with him that victims had individual
faces. As examples, the patriarch mentioned bishops (Athanasius
Denkha, Filoxinus Ablahat Shabo, Addai Sheer, Michael Malke)
and priests from the various Churches (Orthodox, Chaldean and
Catholic) who were killed during Sayfo as individuals and clerics.
As an overall consequence of the events, ‘Sayfo has changed the
way of life of the community’, he said and added ‘even today it has
deep impact in our life’. Sayfo has opened a wound in the hearts of
every member of the community which has not yet healed. The
patriarch pointed to the fact that for many decades the community
did not openly talk about Sayfo. For some, the memories of the
past were too painful to share. Others feared for the safety of those
remaining in the homeland. The commemoration is important to
set on a path towards healing, recognition and reconciliation. Yet,
justice cannot happen through commemoration only, but it also
includes ways of convincing governments what happened. On this
occasion, the Patriarch expressed gratitude to H.H. Pope Francis,
who on April 12th called the events of 1915 the first genocide of
the 20th century and mentioned Assyrians, Syriacs and Chaldeans
along with Armenians as victims, too. The patriarch further
acknowledged efforts of civic Syriac institutions in the Diaspora
commemorating and lobbying for the recognition of Sayfo at
European governments.
The Patriarch thanked countries who already recognized Sayfo
along with the Armenian genocide. He particularly mentioned
Sweden being the first country recognizing the genocide of the
Assyrians/Syriac people along the Pontic Greeks and Armenians.

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SAYFO 1915

Referring to the speech of the German President on April 23rd,
2015, the Patriarch expressed hope that the German Bundestag will
recognize Sayfo on its own – and not as a side remark of the
Armenian genocide.
As the Patriarch took office last year, the Syriac Orthodox
Church had joined these activities by its decision to commemorate
Sayfo officially and annually on June 15th and erected several
monuments – including one in a public garden in Damascus –
remembering the martyrs of Sayfo. Commemorating Sayfo is the
opening of ways for reconciliation between the descendants of the
perpetrators and those of the victims. Reconciliation is a necessary
step in order to establish permanent peace and good relationships
between the people in the region. Here the Patriarch agreed with
Dr. Christoph Bergner that this is also important for social peace in
Germany.
Finally the Patriarch drew a parallel to the situation of the
Christians in Iraq and Syria today, where as a result of extremism
and fanaticism people are being expelled from their homes, killed
or forced to conversion or to paying special tax as dhimmi. Thus,
in his opinion, what is happening in Iraq and Syria is comparable to
a genocide. Expulsion of people from their homes and killings are
daily experiences. The destruction of religious institutions and
buildings is taking place. As an example, the patriarch pointed to
the fact that the Syriac Orthodox Cathedral in Mosul has been
converted into a mosque for jihadists. He mentioned having visited
Northern Iraq four times in order to be with the people expelled
from Mosul and Nineveh Plain by ISIS last summer. He also
expressed understanding for those people forced to leave the
homeland, as they seek security and peace and escape from
abduction and killing.

PANEL I: THE STUDY OF SAYFO FROM A COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE
David Gaunt, Professor Emeritus of History at Södertörn
University and author of ‘Massacres, Resistance Protectors:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during The First
World War’, spoke in the opening lecture on ‘The Place of Sayfo in
Genocide Research’. Prof. Gaunt mentioned the efforts for the
recognition of the Assyrian Genocide and that several
organizations have passed resolutions that the events of 1915 were

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391

a genocide. While recognition is a political activity for the victims,
historical research is interested in the circumstances people
suffered. The latter is interested in the past for its own sake. Sociohistorical research is for the people in focus, describing the
circumstances under which they died. Showing a series of atrocities
that fulfil the criteria of the UN Convention on Genocide of 1948
is a simple categorization of a crime, but it gives little
understanding of what actually happened. Prof. Gaunt went on to
look at the Armenian narrative and its elements which make sense
and are logical: among other aspects, it includes the revolutionary
movement, their representation in Constantinople, contacts with
other nations, interventions by the great powers, the narrative of
massacres by Abdulhamid in the middle of 1890s, the arrest and
killing of intellectuals and the deportations. When this is compared
with the Assyrian case, a not-unified narrative is revealed so far by
the sources we have. Each region (Urmia, Hakkari, Turabdin,
Mardin etc.) seems to have its own narrative. It seems that even
each Church has collected documentation about its own members
and no one is looking at the overall ethnic group. This is, at least,
what the sources are revealing. Those four narratives have not been
put together yet and future research has to work towards that.
Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and author of a recent book
‘Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective
Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009’ spoke about the
comparison of the denial of violence committed against the
Armenians with that of the Assyrians/Arameans. Prof. Göçek
stressed that her presence as an ethnic Turk and scholar is
demonstrative in acknowledging the violence that occurred in the
country she comes from and apologized as a scholar for what
occurred for so many. She does not feel guilty, but as a scholar and
Turkish intellectual is responsible for acknowledging this. Prof.
Göçek developed an explanation of Turkish denial for the
Armenian case arguing that denial is layered over time and across
space. It comprises of four stages, namely, denial of the origins of
the issue (1789–1907), denial of the nature of the violence (1908–
1918), denial of the survival of perpetrators with impunity (1919–
1974), and the denial of responsibility for the violence committed
(1975–2009). She compared the Armenian case in detail to the
Assyrian/Aramean one and found out that the cases are not only

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interconnected but that there are striking similarities in the
suffering as consequence of denial by the perpetrators. Besides
being painful for the victims, the denial is also damaging for the
perpetrators’ community because they too lose trust in humanity.
They adopt the notion that sheer violence is the way to solve
problems. This is why Turkish society has remained violent until
today in dealing with ethnical issues and is unable to democratize.
Fortunately there are some signs of hope as we have now a political
representation of the mosaic of Turkey in the National Assembly.
This looks like an important development that could take Turkey
forward. Only the tolerance of ‘others’ will make Turkey a real
democracy, she stressed.
Hannibal Travis, Professor of Law at Florida International
University College of Law, author of the book ‘Genocide in the
Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan’ explored
Genocidal Role Models: From Genghis Khan to Atatürk. His
presentations surveyed the ideology of purification and revenge
that took hold under Sultan Abdulhamid and even more so in the
first decade of Young Turk rule over the Ottoman Empire. Those
who carried the sword of 1915 to every Christian community in
eastern Anatolia were led by men who practised this worldview.
The aim was the destruction of ancient nations that corrupted the
honest eastern ‘Turkish’ stock with corrupt western ‘Roman’
influences. The Mongol and Turko-Mongol heroes praised by
Young Turk thinkers are blamed for untold millions of deaths of
non-Turks and non-Muslims in Asia, starting in the thirteenth
century. Their embrace as role models by the Young Turks is
important evidence of their intentions. Contrary to recent claims by
the Turkish government, notions of race and racial struggle were
circulating in the late Ottoman period. Prof. Travis concluded with
reflections on the image of Genghis Khan and modern Turkey in
Nazi ideology as exemplars of racial revival and supremacy.
Ciano Aydin, Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Twente and Thomas More Professor of Philosophy at Delft
University of Technology, spoke about identity and identification
in the light of (yet another) genocide. According to him, self-image
and identity, especially the sense of self in relation to others,
determine to a great extent the choice options, not just morally but
also cognitively. Reducing humans to strangers perceived as
different, threatening, or even non-human seems to be a

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prerequisite for genocide. Classifying individuals as ‘people just like
us’ seems to make it more difficult to subject people to acts of
terror. Recently Social Media technologies (Youtube, Twitter,
Facebook, blogs) have been used as a new way to construct and
reconstruct identities and produce images of self and other (torture,
beheading, religious language, etc.). Prof. Aydin further analysed
how these technologies mediate images of self and other and
contribute to the dehumanization of the victims of genocide.
Anahit Khosroeva from the Institute of History, National
Academy of Sciences, Armenia, analysed the significance of the
Assyrian genocide after a century. Her paper focused primarily on
the history of the internationally ‘forgotten’ and not yet recognized
genocide and mass atrocities against the Assyrian population of the
Ottoman Empire during the First World War. During this period
many massacres, slaughters and crimes against humanity took place
against the Assyrian population. The wartime emergency situation
provided the Young Turks with the opportunity to put into action
their plans to get rid of all Christian minorities in Turkey. Based on
historical sources and archive documents, Dr. Khosroeva outlined
that the Ottoman Empire’s widespread persecution of Assyrian
civilians during the First World War constituted a form of
genocide, too, the present-day term for an attempt to destroy a
national, ethnic or religious group, in whole or in part. She
explained that the Assyrian genocide in the Ottoman Empire by no
means was unexpected or accidental. It logically derived from the
brutal and nationalistic policy pursued by the Ottoman rulers and
later the Young Turks against the non-Turkish nations during the
preceding decades. It was not a policy of individuals, but an official
state genocidal policy which alternated between persecution and
carnage.
Tessa Hofmann, Research Associate at the Eastern-Europe
Institutes, FU Berlin, spoke about the Ottoman genocide of 1914–
1918 against Aramaic-speaking Christians in comparative
perspective. She outlined the state policies towards ethno-religious
minorities during the last decade of Ottoman rule and sketched the
Empire’s ‘road to genocide’. How did verbal threats of
extermination extend to massacres and deportations? Who were
the victim groups? A particular focus was given to the Aramaicspeaking Christians, also touching on the problem of their
denominational and tribal segregation. Dr. Hofmann briefly

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explained the concept of exclusion of Ottoman Christians who
were regarded as a threat by state security and underlined this
concept by giving reference to the Hakkari ‘rebellion’ of the
Assyrians and its suppression in 1914/15. She also pointed out that
cultural factors (assimilation) as well as economic and demographic
factors (enforcing balance of Muslim and non-Muslim population)
were important drivers for the destruction of the Christian
communities. She depicted ‘Sayfo’ and ‘Armenocide’ as unique
cases/varieties of an overall anti-Christian genocide and gave
examples of how they became intertwined by genocidal actions
against the Assyrians/Arameans in the Ottoman Empire. The
Turkish attack on the Nestorians in Ottoman-occupied Iran with
the direct intent to destroy the Hakkari Assyrians had a ‘spill over’
effect on the Armenians in the provinces Bitlis and Van.

PANEL II: SOURCES & ARCHIVES
Joseph Yacoub, Professor at the Catholic University of Lyon
and author of a recent French book ‘Who will remember? The
Assyrian-Chaldean-Syriac genocide of 1915’, spoke about Sayfo in
the light of comparative sources. His paper focused on the analysis
of the genocide from a comparative perspective of different
concordant sources. These unveiled acts which were deliberately
committed with the intention to destroy an entire ethnic group.
Outlining an extended list of sources, Prof. Yacoub argued that the
sources prove that the Assyro-Chaldean-Syriac people were victim
of a physical, cultural, religious and territorial genocide with geopolitical characteristics. The genocide of 1915 became a prelude to
their wandering, their uprooting and their sufferings which still
afflicts the community today. Prof. Yacoub further argued that we
are in possession of important first-hand and abundant
documentation covering many regions in the Ottoman Empire
where the tragedy took place. The documents were written in
several languages by authorized and faithful sources, emanated
from personalities belonging to various nationalities, who are
undoubtedly acknowledged by virtue of their high morality and
integrity. Featured for their accuracy and precision, the sources
confirm with certainty the tragedy that took place from early
January of 1915. The information contained in the various
documents, provided by impartial eyewitnesses, has many striking
similarities, while they unanimously condemn the Turkish

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395

government and the local and regional authorities for their actions.
All the documents demonstrate that the massacres were arranged
and execution operations were undertaken by Ottoman authorities.
This means that they were not isolated acts.
Fuat Dündar, Assistant Professor, TOBB-University of
Economics & Technology in Ankara, in his speech examined the
Ottoman population policy regarding Assyrians during the Great
War based on the government cipher telegrams. While analysing
the general population policy of the Government, led by the
Committee Union and Progress (CUP), Dr. Dündar traced the
disparities of the policy concerning the Assyrians and Nestorians
population in the Ottoman Eastern provinces. Assyrians, according
to the Young Turk policy, were not the main problem, but when
the War started the CUP’s mentality regarding the Assyrians
changed. As evidence: In a telegram the Interior Minister Talaat
Pasha sent to Cevdet Bey, the governor of Van, he emphasized that
the Nestorians (Nasturiler) were the only suspicious population for
the government and warned Cevdet Bey that they could become
the fifth column of foreigners, namely Russians. He proposed
Cevdet Bey the expulsion of Assyrians to inner Anatolia, namely to
Konya and Ankara provinces, to settle them dispersed among
Muslim population, at a limit of 20 households of Muslim villagers.
This deportation was not only aimed as a precautionary measure
for the upcoming war but also meant a specific punishment (ceza-i
mahsus). Furthermore, Dr. Dündar showed how Talaat Pasha
followed up his order dealing with the Assyrians with several other
telegrams and concluded his paper by underlining the fact that the
1915-deportation law actually did not emphasize only Armenians,
but also applied to Assyrians and all the Christian population in the
Ottoman Empire.
Michael Abdalla, PhD, Department of Comparative Culture
Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University, presented his paper on the
term Sayfo from a historical perspective. In his presentation, Dr.
Abdalla illustrated how the term Sayfo (sword) carried a powerful
metaphoric meaning for the Assyrians because of their historical
experiences. It is not clear who was the first to use the term Sayfo
or when it happened. Reportedly, the word had been in common
use and passed down through generations, even children
understood what it stood for. After the genocide of the First World
War, Sayfo has become a symbol among the Assyrians of any

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weapon used to exterminate them both physically and culturally. It
is also a term which denotes intolerance, xenophobia, oppression,
aggression and hatred, regardless of the form these might take and
the manner in which they might be executed. It has even been
incorporated into the everyday language and is found in such
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They all express tragedy, catastrophe, unhappiness, breakdown,
unending misfortune, loss of everything, a flood which has washed
away everything, total helplessness, the absence of mercy and the
impossibility of being able to defend or save oneself.
Otto Jastrow, Professor at Tallinn University, explored what
Arabic dialectology can contribute to Sayfo Studies. In his
presentation, Prof. Jastrow showed how he, as a linguist, came
across Sayfo during his fieldwork in Turkey in the 1960s. In his
excursions, Prof. Jastrow discovered different Arabic dialects
spoken mainly by Muslims, but not by local Christians. This led
him to search for the reason of the disappearance of language
communities. Therefore, he decided to visit churches and conduct
interviews with the living communities to ask ‘what happened to
you?’ In his fieldwork, Prof. Jastrow was able to discover a few
languages 60 years after these languages died. He met some people
who were able to remember some elements, words, some forms of
their local language. The most interesting is the language of
Mlahso. He encountered two old people who remembered some
words of this language. Later, he was told that in Qamishli there
was another person, Ibrahim Hanna, who was speaking this
language. Eventually, Prof. Jastrow put the grammar of this specific
language in a book, which became quite important for NeoAramaic studies. This is the least scholars can do to preserve
endangered languages by helping the present generations to learn
the history attached to these languages. Prof. Jastrow ended his
speech with the writing engraved in a stone in the remembrance
place in Jerusalem: Everyone has a name… (Kul nosho kitle
ishmo…).
Hannah Müller-Sommerfeld, PhD, Leipzig University,
presented her latest research based on post-doctoral study and new
archival research from Geneva on the question of Assyrian
Christians in Iraq, the League of Nations and international

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Christian advocacy (1920–1940). After the end of the First World
War, the Assyrian Christians who fled to Iraq tried many ways to
recover their lost ancient homelands in the Southeastern region of
Turkey and to gain at least autonomy in the new era of nationstates. Since this never materialized, most of them refused to be
settled in the predominantly Muslim society of Iraq. The Patriarch
Mar Shimun Eshai began a tireless struggle at the end of the 1920s
for the resettlement of the Assyrian Christians abroad and
additionally for the preservation of the ancient spiritual and
temporal leadership of his Church. For these objectives, the
international system of minority protection of the League of
Nations, but also the advocacy of an international Christian
network from Western Europe, were decisive instruments and
helpers. The Archbishops of Canterbury and the World Alliance
for Promoting Peace through the Churches intervened several
times in London and Geneva respectively. Finally, in 1936, the
League of Nations approved a singular project to resettle the
Assyrian Christians from Iraq to North-western Syria and financed
it until 1940.
Abdulmesih BarAbraham, MSc., independent-researcher
and Chairman of the Yoken-bar-Yoken Foundation, presented
some evidence to answer the question as to how much Germany
knew of Sayfo 1915. Indeed, Germany was a close ally of the
Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Military cooperation
reached a climax during the First World War as hundreds of
German officers were employed as advisers and commanders in
the Turkish army. German diplomats reported regularly to Berlin
about the atrocities committed against the Armenians and other
Christians in Anatolia. Therefore, Germany was well informed with
respect to the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire. However,
the then Chancellor, von Bethmann Hollweg, dismissed critical
information diplomats and military personnel provided, urging
actions through diplomatic channels against the atrocities
Armenians faced. The German Government and the General Staff
did not want to sacrifice the important war aims and military
alliance with Turkey. Mr. BarAbraham presented selected results
from different Ottoman provinces (Urmia, Van, Diyarbakir and
Mardin) based on a systematic investigation of books edited by Dr.
Johannes Lepsius, including German Foreign Office documents, to
reveal the overall knowledge Germany had with regards to the

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SAYFO 1915

destruction of the Assyrians as a Christian population of the
Ottoman State. His research took into account the various
designations of the religious denominations of the Assyrians
(Syrians, Chaldeans, Nestorians) and their various churches. While
some documents explicitly mention Assyrians using common
denominational designations, many other speak generally of ‘other
Christians’ while reporting on Armenians.

PANEL III: LOCAL STUDIES
Florence Hellot-Bellier, Research Associate at CNRS, Paris, and
author of a recent book entitled ‘Chroniques de massacres
annoncés, les Assyro-chaldéens du Hakkâri’, spoke about the
increasing violence and the resistance of the Urmia and Hakkari
Assyrians from 1900–1915. The genocide of 1915 was inflicted on
Armenian and Assyrian Christians living in Eastern Anatolia and in
the Iranian districts of Urmia and Salmas in Azerbaijan. The latter
were the victims of massacres from the beginning of 1915, some
months before the massacres in the Ottoman Empire, when the
Hakkari Assyrians were compelled to flee from the mountains.
How could social, political and geopolitical problems lead to the
massacres on Iranian border districts? There is no easy answer. But
we can examine Assyrian Iranians’ accounts and numerous letters
written by missionaries settled in Azerbaijan. They show how
complex the problems were and the way in which both Urmia
Assyrians and Hakkari Assyrians tried to stand up against
increasing violence during the years 1900–1914 until the year 1915
when the Ottoman armies overwhelmed them.
Nicholas Al-Jeloo, PhD, University of Melbourne, spoke
about the purging of Assyrians from Hakkâri. Drawing from a
number of sources, Dr. Al-Jeloo tried to briefly outline the
historic presence of Assyrians in Hakkâri, detail their expulsion
from the region between 1914 and 1925, as well as describe the
area and its inhabitants since the catastrophic events that
transpired. Before 1915, the Hakkâri highlands held the world’s
largest concentration of Christian Assyrians. Today, their
descendants are estimated to number more than 600,000,
scattered in nearly 50 countries on six continents. None of them,
however, actually live in Hakkâri, which has been devoid of
Assyrian communities since 1925. Dr. Al-Jeloo also touched on
issues such as the resettlement of Assyrians elsewhere and the

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399

settlement of Kurds in Assyrian villages, along with the impact of
this separation and appropriation. His speech further highlighted
the importance of preserving the Hakkâri region’s historical and
cultural legacy, as well as the question of properties and ownership
of cultural monuments.
Racho Donef, PhD and independent researcher, Australia,
and author of a recent book ‘The Hakkari Massacres: Ethnic
Cleansing by Turkey 1924–25’, explored the Assyrian Resistance
during Sayfo, discussing several resistance cases during the First
World War. 1915 was neither the start nor the end of the atrocities
that were committed against the Assyrians and other Christians in
the nineteenth century. In many respects, the Adana massacres of
1909, which mark the end of the Young Turks’ short-lived ‘political
spring’, can also be taken as the starting point for Sayfo. The
massacres of the Assyrian people continued right up to 1926 in
Hakkâri. During this long period of atrocities, the Assyrians
defended themselves as best they could. In most instances, the
Assyrians had no resources to defend themselves; consequently,
they were uprooted or perished. Yet, Dr. Racho pointed out, in
some places they were able to resist enemy forces with resources
vastly superior to them. The Assyrians of the Hakkâri Mountains
tried to resist the Ottoman onslaught, but they were eventually
forced out of their homeland. After the War, many were able to
return to their home and started rebuilding. However, this time the
forces of the newly formed Turkish Republic attacked them and
the Assyrians fought to protect themselves. In October/November
1915, the Assyrians in Hazakh (Beth Zabday) in Turabdin displayed
enormous courage in defending themselves against a detachment
of regular troops in a siege that lasted over a month. The Ottomans
used bandits and gangs as resistance forces. Such references to
Assyrians in Ottoman documents are numerous and are an
indication of Assyrian resistance during the long period of
atrocities.
Efrem Yildiz, Professor, Universidad de Salamanca, explored
the genocide and its repercussion in some villages of Botan, based
on eyewitness accounts, and on Israel Oudo’s and Jacques
Rhetorie’s writings. In the Botan region, according to Prof. Yildiz,
the actual massacres started in the 19th century when Bedirkhan
Bey killed ten thousands of Assyrians and forced the survivors to
obey his rule and pay protection taxes. The massacres of the 19th

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SAYFO 1915

century culminated during the genocide of the First World War and
approximately 27 Assyrian villages in Botan region were directly
affected by the genocide. Prof. Yildiz pointed out that in Sayfo
Studies, the Botan region with its villages is a less known and lessresearched region in the broader picture of the genocide.
Benjamin Trigona-Harany, independent researcher,
Canada, spoke about $Gï\DPDQDQG Sayfo in a Syro-Ottoman text.
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Syriac monasteries, and at the start of the First World War, it was
still home to a small, but active Syriac community. But as in other
areas, the Ottoman authorities began to persecute the local
Christian population in 1914, culminating in harassment, looting of
properties and finally massacre. Many of those who survived fled
$Gï\DPDQLQWKHVGXHWRFRQWLQXHGSUHVVXUHVXQGHUWKHSRVWZDUJRYHUQPHQW7KHVWRU\RI$Gï\DPDQpV6\ULDFSRSXODWLRQDQGD
first-hand account of Sayfo were preserved by a local resident,
Bulos Monofar (the father of former Syriac Orthodox archbishop
Mor Athanasius Ephrem Barsaum). Despite living in Qamishli,
Monofar’s account was written in Syro-Ottoman (this is Ottoman
Turkish using the Syriac alphabet) and is one of the few sources for
WKHVWXG\RIWKH6\ULDFSRSXODWLRQRI$Gï\DPan as well as perhaps
the only one that documents the genocide there. Mr. TrigonaHarany displayed how the book moves between a personal account
of youth in the town, through to the community’s experience of
the war and its ultimate reconstitution in Syria under the French
mandate. This presentation covered the critical details provided by
Monofar’s work and placed them inside the context of the pre-war
Ottoman community and the post-war diaspora. For this context,
Mr. Trigona-Harany utilized in part additional Syro-Ottoman
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which appeared in the Syriac press in the Ottoman Empire and
North America.
Ablahad Lahdo, PhD, Uppsala University, spoke about the
resistance of the people of Iwardo. At the beginning of his
presentation, Dr Lahdo gave some factual information about this
village which played a historical role during the Sayfo.
Iwardo/Aynward is a village in Turabdin, some 2 hours walk from
Midyat. The church building is located at the top of the hill. At the
time of the genocide 230 Assyrian families were living in this
village. Most Assyrians from Midyat and other villages in Turabdin

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came to seek refuge in Iwardo. The resistance was organized by a
local leader, Mesud Mzizahi, who was able to collect 700 fighters.
After the resistance was broken in Midyat in mid-July 1915, 14,000
armed men (government forces, Kurdish tribes and Mhallemi)
besieged Iwardo. Dr. Lahdo, referring to the war theorist
Clausewitz, elaborated on the leadership and strategic defence plan
of Mesud Mzizahi. He showed how the resistance was organized
strategically by all means possible, how strategic locations were
used to defeat the attackers, how counter-attacks were organized
and disinformation was spread to destroy the enemy’s combat
moral. Because of this well-organized resistance, Iwardo was not
conquered. However, the leader of the resistance, Mesud Mzizahi,
was killed in 1918 by local Kurdish tribes.
Ephrem (Aboud) Ishac, post-doctoral fellow, University of
Graz, spoke about the case of Mansurieh. In his presentation, Dr.
Ishac shed light on the genocide of Mansrurieh village (approx. 3
km from Mardin, south-east Turkey). As a member of the second
generation of the Mansurieh survivors, he collected many materials
including manuscript colophons and documentary articles, in
addition to his own relatives’ accounts of the genocide in
Mansurieh. His description gave an image of social life during that
critical period from another side and shared some depictions of the
family archive. Besides utilising the books written by Armele and
Qarabashi for his study, Dr. Ishac pointed particularly to a
manuscript written by Bishop Hanna Dolabani (his mother’s side
being from Mansurieh), which has been dismissed academically. He
also listed other manuscripts mentioning the fate of Mansurieh.
According to his overall findings there were mass killings but no
resistance in Mansurieh took place. The Muslim clan of Da’shiye
played a key role in killing the village’s population.

PANEL IV: AFTERMATH: POLITICS, CULTURE, SOCIETY
AND LITERATURE
Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Professor, Nijmegen University,
lectured on heroism and persecution in Yaqu bar Malek Ismail’s
Assyrians in two World Wars (Tehran 1964). She presented a close
reading of this Assyrian classic about the Assyrians between 1914
and 1945. The book traces the history of the Assyrians of Hakkari,
their struggle during the the First World War and their wanderings
in the post-war period, including their settlement in the Khabour

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SAYFO 1915

Valley, in Northeastern Syria, which recently became a target of IS.
The volume is often referred to in secondary literature about
Assyrian history and may be assumed to have played a large role in
the Assyrian memory of the First World War. Prof. Murre-van den
Berg pointed out that so far, however, the book has not been
studied as an important source for understanding the way in which
Assyrians dealt with the tragic history of resistance, struggle,
massacre and flight. Rather than a straightforward historical
narrative, the book is built up in layers, one of which includes
personal notes from the author’s brother Shlimun that were made
during the First World War. According to Yaqu’s introduction,
Shlimun bar Malek Ismail intended to turn his notes into a book,
but was not able to finish it before his death in 1944, therefore
Yaqu took it upon himself to finish it. Prof. Murre van den Berg
provided a differentiated approach to this volume, therefore, taking
into account the various layers up until its last phase of publication
in Tehran in 1964, and provided insight into the development of
Assyrian national identity as it developed between 1914 and 1964 in
the context of displacement and Diaspora, also shedding light on
how the memories of war and genocide played a crucial part in that
development.
Fadi Dawood, PhD and lecturer, Lakehead University, spoke
about the Assyrians and the Ba’qubah Refugee Camp and the
aftermath of a genocide. His presentation contextualized the
history of the Ba’qubah refugee camp and placed it into the larger
narrative that deals with the formation of the modern Iraqi state
and post-genocide period in the inter-war period. Given that the
camp’s history remains unexamined at present, his study sheds light
on the various policies that helped to manufacture a new Assyrian
identity during the period of the British mandate. Furthermore, Dr.
Dawood argued that British colonial officials modelled the refugee
camp after a ‘modern European’ city, where the Assyrians were
expected to participate in labour and leisure activities introduced by
colonial officials with the aim of managing the social and political
lives of the population. The activities introduced by the British
played an important role in the re-shaping of Assyrian societal
order, and helped in the creation of a new outsider identity for the
Assyrian refugees. Finally, Dr. Dawood examined the struggle
between Iraqi officials and Assyrian refugees at Ba’qubah. Local
Iraqi politicians were reluctant to consider the Assyrians as citizens

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403

of the modern Iraqi state, and these policies created hostilities
between Iraqi and Assyrian residents of the newly created state,
which helped to foster changes in the political and social order of
the Assyrian community. The antagonistic relationship helped to
reinforce an outsider identity for the Assyrians community through
the period of the British mandate.
Mariam Gorgis & Riva Gewarges, PhD candidates,
University of Alberta, Canada, explored the exclusion of the
Assyrian identity in modern Iraq. The presentation focused on the
current and future situation of Assyrians in the Middle East as an
indigenous minority. Specifically, the study focused on how the
Assyrians have sought to integrate themselves and have been
forcibly integrated into dominant structures and state apparatuses
in Iraq. Beginning with Sayfo, the indigenous Assyrians have
continuously undergone genocide, persecution, dispossession of
their lands and assimilation policies. Mrs. Gorgis and Gewargis
argued that the lack of political and academic recognition of Sayfo
perpetuates the political and socio-economic marginalization of
Assyrians in the contemporary Middle East. They utilized a ‘politics
of recognition’ framework and a genealogical method of narrative
analysis through process tracking to show how non-recognition is a
form of violence and oppression, relegating the Assyrian identity to
the past and reducing this community to an ‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’
minority in the modern Middle East.
Erica Hunter, Professor and Head of Department and
Senior Lecturer in Eastern Christianity, SOAS, spoke about the
Chaldean bishop Addai Scher. Her paper focused on cultural
destruction and reviewed the great contributions made by Addai
Scher to scholarship and the tragic circumstances in which his life
ended. Prof. Hunter elaborated on the biography of his grace
Addai Scher who was born on March 3, 1867 in Chaklawa northeast of Erbil, in Northern Iraq, and received his education in
theology, philosophy and linguistics. In 1902 he was consecrated
bishop by the Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon for the Diocese of
Siirt. Six years later, he travelled to Istanbul and met with the
Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II; from there he continued to Rome
where he met with Pope Pius X. During a visit to Paris he
established contacts with a publishing house, which helped in
promoting his scholarly career. The works he produced contributed
not only to Syriac studies, but general Christian studies, emphasized

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Prof. Hunter. She commented on some of his works, publications
and catalogues and underlined their importance. Addai Scher was
killed on June 23, 1915 when Turks invaded Siirt and burned his
library. Prof Hunter presented an investigation on the loss of
manuscripts and the destruction of a Christian heritage which was
developed over centuries and contributed to humanity.
Sabri Atman, PhD candidate, Clark University & Seyfo
Centre, elaborated on the Assyrian genocide from a gender
perspective. Based on the accounts of Ishaq Armele, Joseph
Nayeem and on interviews which he conducted, Mr. Atman
examined briefly the role of gender and the experience of women
during the genocide. As seen in all wars and genocides, rape, sexual
violence, abduction and enslavement are common practices used
by perpetrators. This happened also during the Sayfo: most of the
female victims were raped, abducted and forced to convert and
marry with Muslims. Mr. Atman gave several examples from the
accounts of Armele and Nayeem and ended his presentation with
the story of Yade Sade, an Assyrian woman from Hapisnas village,
who was abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry a
Kurdish man. Yade Sade, after several failed attempts, managed to
escape from slavery and went back to her village and married an
Assyrian man. What was striking in Yade Sade’s story was that after
several decades, when her son Hüseyin from her Muslim
husband/captor wanted to get in touch with her, she refused to
meet him and deliberately avoided remembering her past.
Alda Benjamen, PhD, Department of History University of
Maryland, College Park, explored gender relations in the aftermath
of Sayfo and Simele. The discourse of women’s liberation during
the inter-war period was vigorously debated in Iraqi and Syrian
intellectual circles. Syria had granted women the right to vote in
1949 and was the country Middle Eastern intellectuals were striving
to model after. Dr. Benjamin analysed the way in which Assyrian
male intellectuals engaged in the discourse of women’s
emancipation in secular and religious newspapers published by the
community in Iraq and Syria. She questioned whether the Assyrian
survivors of Sayfo (1915) and Simele (1933) espoused notions of
‘patriotic motherhood’, which developed out of social, political,
and economic problems associated with the First World War.
During the 1930s and 1940s, gender roles became further
complicated amongst the Assyrians as matriarchs headed 13 per

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405

cent of refugee households in Syria. Her paper tried to answer the
question whether Assyrian intellectuals, like Syrian ones, were
affected by a ‘crisis of paternity’ due to the destabilization of the
patriarch’s authority and changing female roles. She further shed
light on the reciprocating intellectual engagements of Assyrians
across the border in their efforts to rebuild their communities and
negotiate gender relations in the aftermath of Sayfo and Simele.
Martin Tamcke, Professor, Gottingen University, spoke
about how the Sayfo was experienced from the perspective of
orphans who were then staying in an orphanage of the German
mission. Based on the letter correspondences and reports of every
orphan child taken by the German mission, Prof. Tamcke
specifically focused on the orphanage in Dilgusha, Urmia, which
was only accommodating Syrian orphans, mainly from Hakkari.
Furthermore, Prof. Tamcke showed how the situation and function
of orphanages were changed through the First World War and
turned into shelters for refugees. The Dilgusha orphanage ended its
activities in 1918 when all Syrian families fled.
Sebastian Bednarowicz, Assistant professor, Kazimierz
Wielki University Bydgoszcz, Poland, explored the neglected aspect
of linguistic genocide. The year 1915 was a turning point in shaping
the ethnic, religious and linguistic map of today’s Turkey. The PanTurkic policy, which in those days resulted in deportations and
overt massacres, aimed to clean Turkey from non-Turkic elements
and used for that purpose Islamic propaganda as well. In
consequence, the multidimensional diversity of the Ottoman
Empire was replaced by the ideology that may be epitomized as
‘one country, one nation, one language’. Dr. Bednarowicz
presented changes on the linguistic map of Turkey before and after
the Sayfo. Discussing words such as linguicide (the death of a
language), linguistic human rights and language survival, he
illustrated the fate of languages spoken among Christian
communities of Turkey, especially Turoyo and NENA
(Northeastern Neo-Aramaic), but also living and dead varieties of
Greek and Armenian languages.
Simon Birol, PhD candidate, University of Bochum,
presented an analysis of the experience of the Sayfo in Syriac
literature. Sayfo has meant a serious break in the history of Syriacspeaking communities. Syriac authors have developed common
patterns of interpretation and justification of events such as the

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Sayfo based on scriptural resources in their literal tradition. Mr.
Birol aimed to make a comparative analysis of the work of selected
authors from Turabdin, explaining their experiences during the
Sayfo and answering various related questions. What was the
background of the authors and of their audience? What were their
sources? What were they aiming at with their texts? Dr. Birol
presented some evidence of their linguistic and rhetoric techniques
and the way they interpreted occurrences such as Sayfo.

PANEL V: SAYFO NARRATIVES
Naures Atto, Post-doctoral fellow, University of Cambridge, gave
a presentation on songs about the Sayfo in the Diaspora. Dr Atto
in her speech stressed that until the 1990s, the Assyrian genocide
was hardly discussed in a political and academic context. This
changed when Assyrians activists in Europe tried to draw attention
to their genocide. This change is also reflected in the songs about
the Sayfo. In her paper Dr. Atto discussed how collective memory
about the Sayfo has been transmitted through five generations of
Assyrians and how they deal with it in their contexts of living.
More specifically, she showed how Assyrian poetry and songs
about the Sayfo have been produced, transmitted and performed.
Tijmen C. Baarda, PhD candidate, Leiden University,
presented results of a study on the poems of Ghattas Maqdisi
Elyas. The Syriac Orthodox poet Ghattas Maqdisi Elyas, who was
born in 1911 in Midyat in the region of Turabdin, wrote a large
number of poems of which a considerable part was written in
remembrance of his region of origin. Having been displaced at a
very young age during the time of Sayfo, he did not write about
these events explicitly in his poems, but many of his poems are
nostalgic for a period that has passed and show his desire that
through a change in attitude of the members of his people the tide
could be turned. 31 of his poems, all of them written in classical
Syriac, were published together in 1988 in a small volume. Mr.
Baarda demonstrated how Ghattas used his poetry to reinforce the
nation of ‘Suryoye’ using common memories and the common
Syriac language, and how this nation is connected to the land of
Turabdin, of which he realizes with pain that it will not be as it was
before. Ghattas, who died in 2008, said in an interview that he
never wrote about the Sayfo itself, but the references that his
poems contain make it an important aspect of his view.

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Tala Jarjour, Assistant Professor of Music, University of
Notre Dame, spoke about loss, survival and the historical narrative
of chant. In what became known as ‘The Last Caravan’, the
Christians of the city known then as Urfa crossed the borders to
safety in Aleppo during the wintry months of early 1926. Dr.
Jarjour pointed to the caravans, according to Yousef Nameq’s
memoirs of the final Christian exodus from Edessa. The city and
its holy sites remain a terminal loss for those ‘Suryanis’ who
disapprove of collective departure, but history tells a different
story: a unique story of survival in the twentieth century. In
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what the most coherent group of Anatolian Suryanis called home.
In it Urfallis found a communal life during the remainder of the
turbulent century, in ways that other migrant groups did not.
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offered an historical narrative of the early Christians who have, in
many ways, never left Edessa.

PANEL VI: MEMORY AND TRAUMA
Önver Cetrez, PhD and Senior lecturer, Uppsala University, and
co-editor of a recent volume ‘Assyrian Heritage: Threads of
Continuity and Influence’ explored the psychological heritage of
Sayfo. His presentation demonstrated how a trauma such as Sayfo
has on-going effects on Assyrian individuals today, when they are
faced with new stressful situations, such as the wars in Iraq and
Syria. His empirical study is based on interviews among AssyrianIraqis and Assyrian-Syrians, with ancestors who emigrated from
Turkey after 1915. His interviews followed a semi-structured guide,
inspired by a life story method, focusing on whether the
informants had heard stories about Sayfo from their parents or
grandparents and whether this has had any relevance in how they
interpret their situation today. Dr. Cetrez outlined another set of
material that was conducted among individuals who have first-hand
experience of Sayfo (material gathered by Jan Bet-þDZRFHLQ0–
2000). A general research question guiding the presentation was:
What can a psychological analysis, primarily from an object relation
perspective, tell us about Assyrian culture?
Noriko Sato, Associate Professor, Pukyong National
University, South Korea, explored the memory of Sayfo and its
relation to the identity of contemporary Assyrian/Aramean

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Christians in Syria. Her paper dealt with three different
communities of Assyrians/Arameans in Syria, which experienced
the Sayfo and were forced to emigrate from their homeland to
Syria. Each community is composed of those: 1) from Turabdin,
who settled in the village of Qahtaniya; 2) from Azakh, who settled
in the village of Malikiya: 3) from Urfa who emigrated to the city of
Aleppo. Each of these three communities composes a ‘community
of memory’ with respect to Sayfo, which seems to be related to
their attempt to establish their present social position in Syria. In
the process of constituting such collective remembrance, they
allocate symbolic meanings to the event, which are significant for
constructing their new ethnic/religious identities both to reinforce
their separate culture and to emphasize their integration into wider
Syrian society. The meanings that these Christians attach to their
memory of the Sayfo are nurtured in the socio-political
environment of Syria, where the government has attempted to
incorporate a variety of religious groups into its society and
acknowledge their heritage as the culture of Syrians.
Thea Halo, United States, and author of the memoir ‘Not
Even My Name’ spoke about the targeting of Assyrians during the
Christian holocaust in Ottoman Turkey. She explored whether the
Assyrians were simply caught up in the attacks against the
Armenians because of their proximity to the Armenians or whether
they were specifically targeted. She complained about the decadeslong ignorance of the Assyrian and Greek suffering in public view
and in academic circles and gave examples of well known genocide
scholars who neglected their fate and are responsible for the
younger generation of researchers who look at the Armenians as
the only Christian population of the Ottoman Empire who
suffered. She pointed to Viscount James Bryce, author of the
British ‘Blue Book’, as the initial eraser who changed the original
title of the collection of witness reports from ‘Arnold Toynbee Papers
and Documents on the Treatment of Armenians and Assyrian Christians by
the Turks, 1915–1916, in the Ottoman Empire and North-West Persia’ to
‘The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916’. Even
though the Assyrian documents are kept in the book, the title
leaves the impression that the treatment of the Assyrians was
incidental to that of the Armenians. Her presentation further
dispelled some of the myths as to why the Ottomans resorted to

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genocide, and explored the targeting of the Assyrians by citing
from key sources.

PANEL VI: VICTIMS & PERPETRATORS
Ragip Zarakolu, Author & Publisher, spoke about Jihadism and
Genocide, both in the past and today. In his presentation, Mr.
Zarakolu explained how in the last century religion was misused to
conduct genocidal acts, massacres and war crimes. He showed how
Germans, under the rule of Wilhelm II (the Red Kaiser), misused
Islam – be it directly and indirectly – supportive for the idea of
Jihad. This was also continued during the First World War. In the
post-War period, this policy was adopted by the US and Islamist
organisations where it was used against Soviet communism. Mr.
Zarakolu gave several examples to show how the US policy
enabled the establishment and empowerment of radical/political
Islam in the broader Middle East. Political Islam was supported
and fed by the US and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Zarakolu ended his
presentation by drawing further parallels between the genocide of
the First World War and the war crimes of the present day carried
out by ‘Jihad fighters’ who are predominantly organized under the
mantle of ISIS. At the end of his presentation, Mr. Zarakolu told
how he first heard about Assyrians when he went to a village called
Shavata in Hakkari in the 1960s to help villagers build a bridge. His
research about Assyrians of Shavata started with that specific
moment in 1969 was spurred by his discovery of a book printed in
Chicago titled From Hakkari to Siberia which explained the destiny
of Assyrians of Shavata.
Gülçiçek Günel Tekin, Turkey, and author of a recent book
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$QODWï\RUp %XU\PHXQZDVKHd – Kurds Speak about the Armenian
Genocide) reported about her Sayfo interviews with locals in
Hakkari. Mrs. Tekin reported that she was forcefully introduced to
the Turkish language in Kozluk Boarding School, like many other
children. Prohibition of their native language led to many traumas
among her community. After she became a teacher, she started
researching the reasons behind this act and became aware of the
hundred years old denial, extermination, assimilation and genocide
policies of the Turkish government. In addition and by chance, she
was born into the hands of an Armenian midwife who was
converted to Islam, as many others did in her village. She started to

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ask about the reasons behind that. In the last 20 years, she has shed
some light on the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, the
deportation of the Pontus Greeks from Turkey and the assimilation
of language, culture and identity in the Turkish Republic. She
reported that she made many visits to the land where she was born,
including Mardin, DiyarbakïU 9DQ +DNNDUL DQG þHPGLQOL DQG
interviewed hundreds of Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, and Arabs,
who were the sons, daughters and grandchildren of the witnesses
to tragedies. She started researching Sayfo and has done interviews
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&KDOGHDQVLQ0DUGLQDQG'L\DUEDNïU
Habib Afram, Director of the Syriac League in Lebanon, in
his presentation on recognition and reconciliation after Sayfo gave
six messages: First, he underlined the fact that the genocide of 1915
is an undeniable historical fact and stressed that his people are its
victims and witnesses. Second, he called on Turkey to admit openly
and clearly that the genocide was committed so that perhaps the
bones of the ancestors killed during that phase can finally rest in
peace. Third, he asked Turkey to act like a giant and admit
responsibility for the genocide, not behave like a midget and deny
or distort a criminal period in its history. Forth, Afram emphasized
that Assyrians/Syriacs as Christians are absolutely against killing,
war, terrorism and violence. Fifth, referring to the current
massacres and terror of so-called Islamic State (IS), he condemned
sabotaging the traditional peaceful joint living through a new
genocide. He condemned the ongoing process of elimination by
the ‘takfiris’ and ‘salafists’ in the region. As the sixth and final
aspect, Mr. Afram stressed that it is the height of immorality that
the international community knows, hears and sees the ongoing
genocide of Eastern Christianity, but does nothing to prevent it.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
In his concluding remarks, Prof. Shabo Talay gave a positive
assessment of the richness of the conference, and the way it had
dealt with a broad spectrum of topics related to genocide research,
covering sources, archives, local studies and narratives, trauma and
politics. A sensitive, not-touched-upon issue remains the role of
religion and particularly Islam in the context of genocide. It is likely
to get resistance from unexpected sides when the issue is raised.
But scholars have the obligation to raise critical questions and not

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411

ignore the issue. The fact is that Islam and its utilization played a
crucial role in the annihilation of the Christian population. This is
continuing today in Iraq and Syria. Prof. Talay thanked Mr.
Zarakolu and Mrs. Tekin for addressing the issue in their
presentations. Prof. Talay pointed to the recent attacks on
Hassakeh, in Syria’s Khabur region, and Iraq’s Nineveh Plain and
Mosul where Christians were targeted and had to flee from their
homes. One cannot expect people affected by religious extremism
to be objective in their assessment and say ‘no no, this has nothing
to do with religion’.
Another issue Prof. Talay touched upon was the gender issue,
where he asserted that this is not yet a well-researched area in the
context of Sayfo and called upon young students to focus on it.
Furthermore, Prof. Talay addressed the transcriptions issue of
native names like villages and cities and demanded a unified and
standardized approach based on a US or German transcription in
order to reduce confusion when it comes to names. With regards
to efforts for the recognition of Sayfo, he categorized this as being
a political issue. Scholars have to first gather the historical facts or
objectively reconstruct the past, as Prof. Mühlhahn said in the
opening speech.
Prof. Talay also touched once again on the issue of Armenian
designation, which was used in the some Ottoman region from
Diyarbakir to Mush as a synonym for Christians. Chaldeans and
Syriac Orthodox were simply called ‘Ermen’: a reason why many
foreign eyewitnesses did not mention the suffering of nonArmenians. As a consequence, it would be justified to speak of the
genocide of 1915 as the ‘Christian Genocide’.
Prof. David Gaunt in his final remarks pointed out that the
scholarship on Sayfo seems split if compared with Armenian
Genocide research. There were very good presentations in this
conference on Urmia, Hakkari, down to Fish-Khabur, etc. The
territory and details are well known, different memories exist, but it
does not form a unified genocide narrative yet. A common
narrative around Sayfo is necessary for the political side in order to
argue for recognition.
Prof. Talay thanked the Inanna Foundation and its directors
Dr. Naures Atto and Soner O. Barthoma for their contribution for
organizing this conference. He mentioned that the Inanna
Foundation has already gained experience in organizing a weeklong

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workshop in 2011 on the same topic and had the network to make
this conference a success. Prof. Talay expressed his gratitude to the
FU Berlin for their financial and logistical support and finally
thanked his staff for the organization of the conference.

DOCUMENTARY FILM
The evening session on June 25th was dedicated to the viewing of a
new documentary produced by the Assyrian Federation in Sweden
and directed by Aziz Said: Sayfo 1915: The Assyrian Genocide. The
documentary tells the story of the genocide perpetrated by the late
Ottoman government against the Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians
– the Christian population of Turkey. The story of the film starts in
Sweden. A Sweden-born journalist of Assyrian origin travels with a
film crew to her parent’s homeland in Turabdin in south-eastern
Turkey in order to follow the remaining traces of the crimes
committed there during the year 1915. Assyrians call the year 1915
Sayfo, meaning ‘sword’. The film crew visited the cities Mardin,
Diyarbekir, Midyat, Siirt and multiple other locations where the
genocide occurred. The film includes testimonies from several
European, Turkish and Assyrian historians, as well as genocide
researchers, including Professor Taner Akcam, Dr. Gabriele Yonan
and Professor David Gaunt. In addition, the film includes
testimonies from survivors of the genocide.
The official program concluded on Sunday, June 28th, after a
memorial service was held for the victims of Sayfo at St. Jacob, the
Syriac Orthodox Church in Berlin, Potsdamer Strasse.