Sayfo; City of Cizre

Cizre and Surrounding Areas During the 

Hamidian Massacres (1895) and Sayfo (1915)

In 1895, the Hamidian massacres targeted Christian communities in the south-eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire eastern part. The city of Cizre (also referred to as Jezireh, Gziro, and Gzira) is located within the Diyarbekir vilayet, a region significantly affected. The Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Register of Due that was conducted in 1870 and Ottoman census from 1891 indicates the presence of Syrian Orthodox communities in Jizre among other Christian groups. While some chroniclers initially suggested Syriac communities were less affected in 1895, it is noted that massacres were widespread in Eastern Anatolia during 1895–96, and the Syriac Orthodox were fully intended victims in some areas, unlike Diyarbekir where large Armenian populations sometimes made non-Armenians seem like accidental victims.

During Sayfo, Cizre was among the regions in Diyarbakir province that were most targeted in systematic and organized massacres the destruction of Syriac Christians in Diyarbekir province was an integral part of the genocide directed against all Ottoman Christians, as part of the broader anti-Armenian campaign. The organizers of the massacres made little distinction between Armenians and Syriacs, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.

On August 29, 1915, Cizre was targeted under orders from Diyarbakir Vali, Reshid. Deputies Zülfü Bey and Aziz Feyzi, who had toured the province to organize the genocide, frequented Jizre and spoke to local Kurdish leaders. Aziz Feyzi subsequently led an attack. All Christian men were arrested and tortured under the pretext of hidden weapons. They were then bound, marched out of the city, stripped of their belongings, and murdered. Their naked bodies were dumped downstream in the Tigris to prevent discovery by relatives. Two days later, on August 31, 1915, families were placed on rafts (kaleks) and sent off, after local Muslims had selected some children. Most women were raped, shot dead, and thrown in the river. The pollution from decaying corpses in the Tigris was so severe that the population of Mosul was forbidden to drink from the river for a month.

On September 9 and 11, 1915, German Consul, Holstein, reported a recent massacre of "all the Christian inhabitants" of Cizre, noting military participation and passive civil authorities. Specific casualty figures for the city of Jizre include 100 Syriac Orthodox killed, alongside 4,750 Armenians and 250 Chaldeans. Only four women absorbed into Muslim households survived the Jizre massacre; three were later killed, and one, Afife Mimarbashi, bribed her kidnapper and fled to Mardin, becoming the sole survivor of the Jizre massacre. Indirect methods of annihilation included forced deportations, starvation, thirst, disease, and exposure, due to the destruction of homes and livelihoods. Mass slaughter with hand-held weapons, shooting, and burning alive were also common. Many Christian villages between Nisibin and Jizre were completely destroyed.

Mor Severius Aphram Barsoum, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Syria, an observer for the Syriac Patriarch of Antioch, recorded that within the Syriac Orthodox Church's jurisdiction, 156 churches and monasteries were destroyed, and a total of 90,313 persons were killed, including 154 clerics. The Jzire district alone saw massacres in 26 Syriac villages where about 7,510 people and 8 priests were killed and the destruction of 19 Syriac Orthodox churches/monasteries ruined or converted. The Syriac Orthodox Bishop Mor Behnam Aqrawi fled from Jizre to Azakh (Idil) to seek shelter just before massacres there.

The poem "The Extermination of the Syriac Christians of Cizre in Turkey in the Year 1915" by Isho Sulayman Gharib describes the suffering of Jizre Christians during that year.