Sayfo; Village of Azakh

Azakh: Christian Resistance During the Sayfo Genocide

The town of Beth Zabdai (also known as Azakh or Hazakh, and İdil in modern Turkish) is located in the eastern region of Tur Abdin near the border between Turkey and Syria, approximately 30 kilometers west of the city of Jezireh (Cizre) and 60 kilometers east of Midyat. It occupies a strategic position atop a hill at an altitude of 1,000 meters, a site that historically formed a borderland between the Roman and Persian Empires contiguous with the mountain of Tur Abdin. The presence of Christianity in Azakh dates to the late first or early second century, with records indicating that Bishop Mizra presided over the church in Beth Zabdai in 120 A.D. The town has housed various ecclesiastical structures, including the Church of Mor Aday and the Church of Mor Osyo. Azakh was also the seat of illegitimate religious leadership when Sawera Ishaq of Azakh sat as a spurious patriarch from 1804 to 1816. During the medieval period, the settlement and the wider region suffered from internal and external warfare, including raids by Kurdish groups in 829 A.D. who inflicted a campaign of terror and destruction on Beth Zabdai.

After the Ottoman occupation, Beth Zabdai was subject to the volatility of the region under the Ottoman Sultanate and various Kurdish clans. In 1711, the region was targeted by robbers who looted herds and killed religious figures, including Priest Lazarus, who served as a village chief. Although many details from this specific range are obscured by time, the Syriac font of the community maintained a presence under Ottoman rule even as Kurdish populations in the vicinity gradually grew.

Between 1832 and 1834, the town faced a severe atrocity when Muhammad Pasha Kur, in collaboration with the Bakhti emirs Sayf al-Din and Badr Khan, attacked the city of Jazira and the region of Bohtan. During this assault, perpetrators slaughtered two hundred men in Azakh, specifically targeting a great number of priests and deacons, and took women and children captive. In 1835, Kurdish aghas led by Kor of Rawanduz and Sayf ed-Din inflicted further destruction and terror, capturing over a thousand Christians. In 1840, Badr Khan Beg and Mire Kor Ahmad planned another attack on Hazakh, resulting in more deaths and the abduction of more women and children. During the Bedir Khan massacres of 1842 to 1846, the region continued to be destabilized by the ambitions of the emir of Bohtan, Badr Khan, who sought to establish an independent state. While many massacres of this period targeted the Assyrian mountaineers in Hakkari, the proximity of Bohtan to Azakh ensured continuous insecurity for the local Syriac population until Badr Khan's surrender to the Ottoman army in 1847.

In 1855, Azakh was again victimized by local Kurdish rulers when Musawwar Beg and Izz al-Din Scher, lords of Bohtan, attacked the town. These perpetrators shouted religious slogans while looting and killing, even digging up houses in search of gold. The Syriac community and other Christian communities were ravished, and women and children were kidnapped because the village had previously supported Omar Pasha during a conflict with the Kurdish emir. Survivors from this period later took an oath to convert to Catholicism if their captured family members were returned. By the 1870s, Azakh remained a predominantly Syriac Orthodox center, though its social and demographic presence was in decline.

The general campaign of annihilation launched by the Ottoman government, known as the Hamidian massacres from 1895 to 1897, resulted in the deaths of approximately 55,000 Syriacs of different denominations. While Azakh was not the primary focus of the most intense urban massacres seen in Mardin, the surrounding rural districts were subjected to the terror of the Hamidiye border cavalry, which targeted Christian villagers to facilitate land confiscation. On December 20, 1901, Kurdish horsemen under Mustapha Pasha attacked the nearby village of Babokat. Inhabitants of Azakh who went to assist were ambushed, resulting in 11 deaths and 7 injuries among the Azakh party. In one incident before the 1915 genocide, Christians from the nearby village of Bafayya, including the brother of a priest, killed an imam and seven Kurds for occupying a church, which led to their flight to Azakh and other areas.

During the Sayfo genocide from 1915 to 1924, also known as the "Year of the Sword," Azakh became a focal point of Christian resistance, representing a notable instance where inhabitants revolted and held their ground against superior attacking forces. Before the attacks, the population was approximately one thousand inhabitants, though it swelled as several hundred Syriac families from surrounding villages like Garessa, Kuvakh, Babeqqa, Esfes, and 'Emerin sought shelter there, mostly Syriac Orthodox. Just before the massacres intensified, the headmen of Azakh, under the leadership of Syriac Orthodox Bishop Mar Behnam Aqrawi (who had fled from nearby Jizire), gathered to select a leader by lottery. Yesua Hanna Gawriye was chosen as the leader, and he selected adjutants to help him. They built fortifications and secret tunnels, manufactured bullets for flintlock rifles, and fortified their houses. The villagers swore to uphold a traditional motto: "We all have to die sometime; do not die in shame and humiliation."

In mid-May 1915, the kaymakam of Jezire and the highest military officer inspected Azakh and demanded that the tallest buildings be handed over to Turkish soldiers for defense against a supposed Kurdish attack. The Azakh villagers later collected a large sum of money to pay off besieging tribes, but these tribes merely moved on to attack other Syriac villages. When authorities demanded that Azakh turn over all Catholics and Protestants among the refugees, the villagers refused, asserting that all residents were Syriacs and related. This was not entirely true, as Azakh was also sheltering Armenian refugees and escapees from deportation caravans.

The confrontation quickly took on a religious character. Azakh leaders organized their defense, forming committees, listening to sermons from their priests, and establishing a suicide group of fifty volunteers called the "Volunteers of Christ" or "Fedais of Jesus." The anticipated attack was delayed out of respect for Ramadan but resumed immediately after the month concluded. An investigator, Gabro Khaddo, tried to reassure them that the Sayfo was primarily directed against Armenians and that Syriacs would be spared, urging the suspects to come to Jezire. The people of Azakh thanked him but asked for arms and fighters instead.

On July 6, a large detachment of Turkish soldiers arrived from Midyat, demanding to be billeted in Azakh under the claim that they were ordered to defend it. The villagers refused entry but allowed them to camp outside. On July 9, the Al-Khamsin militia arrived from Jezire. The siege of Azakh began in August 1915, led by Kurdish clans including the Miran and Hamidi tribes. When these irregular forces failed to penetrate the defenses, the Ottoman military intervened.

The attack on Azakh involved the Turkish army using heavy artillery to bombard the village until it was in ruins. When the Syriac Christians did not surrender, the commander ordered foot soldiers to enter. An officer leading the troops on horseback was killed by a bullet from Azakh, negatively impacting the soldiers' morale. After initial clashes, the Turkish army retreated to a place called Kherbe, and the people of Azakh pursued them to collect rifles from the dead soldiers. The commander had to request reinforcements from Diyarbekir.

The Syriac Orthodox Archbishop in Mosul at that time, Mor Iwanius Elias (later elected Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Elias III), along with Chaldean Patriarch Emanuel Thomas II, petitioned Shawkat Pasha, the Turkish vali in Mosul, asserting Azakh's loyalty and the absence of Armenians. Shawkat Pasha then ordered the Turkish commander in Azakh to withdraw.

Ömer Naji Bey, commander of the Iran expedition force, subsequently laid siege to Azakh. He initially doubted that the rebellious villagers were Armenian, knowing they were Syriacs. Naji, fluent in Arabic, met with Azakh's headmen, first amicably and then with hostility, demanding they surrender weapons and submit to deportation. The villagers deceptively claimed there were only Syriacs, no Armenians, in the village. Naji's first attempt to storm Azakh on November 7 and 8 failed, with casualties on the Turkish side. In November 1915, regular troops from the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Armies, along with a mountain artillery unit and a death squad from the Teskilat-i Mahsusa, encircled the village under his command. The Azakh villagers retaliated with a counterthrust through tunnels on November 24, 25, and 26, routing the besieging forces.

Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of Defense, angered by Naji's failure, ordered the complete destruction of the village and its immediate suppression with utmost severity, requesting reinforcements from the Fourth and Sixth Armies for the Azakh operation. Despite Enver's orders, Naji ultimately agreed to lift the siege and allow the Syriacs to keep their weapons and remain in their homes, as he could not win the battles and the siege delayed his more important mission. This outcome was seen as an embarrassing setback by Kamil Pasha and Enver Pasha. The siege lasted 40 days according to one account, or 52 to 60 days in total within the broader Midyat region. A truce was officially reached on November 16, 1915.

After the ceasefire, Turkish and German officers visited Azakh. When a Turkish officer demanded the cannon used by Azakh, the villagers were confused as they had none. A German officer, after inspecting the spot from which artillery-like fire had come, concluded it was a heavenly intervention, possibly the Virgin Mary protecting the people, noting an open Bible and a burning candle at the site.

Azakh held out until the end of the war and remained a Christian enclave until 1926, when it was forced to surrender its arms only after a promise of protection from Mustafa Kemal. Many villages surrounding Azakh suffered immensely, with Christians killed or forced to convert to Islam, and their names changed to sound Kurdish, leading to a rapid loss of cultural, historical, and religious identity. The memory of the Sayfo in Azakh has been preserved through oral histories and written accounts, such as the diary of Syriac Catholic priest and schoolteacher Gabriyel Qas Tuma Hendo. The story of the resistance is highlighted as a rare epic akin to "The Forty Days of Azakh." After these events, many Syriac Orthodox Christians from Azakh were displaced and eventually emigrated to countries like Syria and Iraq, with many settling in Malkiya, where their memory of Sayfo helps construct their ethnic and religious identities. The final relocation of the settlement's survivors occurred in the late twentieth century; following the assassination of Mayor Sukru Tutus in 1994, the remaining hundreds of Syriac residents fled their ancestral village to seek refuge in Western European countries.

Sayfo; Village of Azakh

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