Sayfo; City of Lice

Lice and the Surrounding Areas During the Hamidian Massacres (1895) and Sayfo (1915)

The city of Lice (also spelled Lije) was part of the Diyarbakir Vilayet and situated about 86 kilometers to the northeast of the city of Diyarbakir, serving as an administrative center in the district of Ma’den-Arghana. The city emerged as a focal point of ethno-religious tension in the late nineteenth century and was characterized by competition between the Syriac and Armenian communities over ecclesiastical properties, specifically regarding the Akkilise monastery, which required government mitigation to resolve. By 1890, demographic surveys indicated that over ninety percent of the population in Lice was Christian, with a significant majority being Armenians and the Syriac Orthodox representing a minority. Geographically, the valley of the Lice district lay to the northwest of Diyarbakir.

The period of the Hamidian massacres from 1895 to 1897 brought significant violence to the settlement. The massacres spread rapidly across the six eastern Ottoman vilayets, including Diyarbekir, by late November 1895. On November 1, 1895, Muslim groups launched attacks against the Armenian and other Christian inhabitants of Lice. In the first half of November 1895, the towns of Lice and nearby Hani were beleaguered by Kurdish tribal forces, where Ottoman reports indicated "disorders with loss of life" in Lice. Official reports of the time suggested that Armenians in Lice engaged in defensive fire from their homes during these attacks, highlighting the breakdown of civil order. British reports categorized Lice among the districts that suffered more severely than others during this cycle of violence. The valley of the Lice district was a site of massacres where victims were found with throats slit and stomachs disemboweled, demonstrating that Christians in this area, broadly including the Syriac Orthodox, were subjected to mass killings. During the Hamidian massacres, the Syriac Orthodox were targeted. While hostile Kurds attacked without differentiation between Syriac Orthodox and Armenian victims in many cases, in still other areas, the Syriac Orthodox formed the great majority of victims.

During the era of the Sayfo and Syriac Genocide from 1915 to 1924, Lice Kaza contained a population of approximately 12,000 inhabitants, of whom 7,000 were Christians. This included a Syriac and Chaldean population of about 4,100 persons alongside the larger Armenian settlement. The Syriac Orthodox community specifically within the Lice district was recorded as having 658 families across ten villages, with an estimated 4,706 people from this group eventually falling victim to the massacres. The primary instigators of the genocide in this region were the Governor of Diyarbakir, Dr. Reshid, and his associate Ibrahim Bedreddin, who were supported by a local militia of Muslim volunteers and various Kurdish tribesmen. In spring 1915, this local militia of Muslim volunteers was created in Lice. Christians were ordered to collect all their weapons and leave them at their churches, and the militia then armed themselves with these confiscated weapons.

A notable moment of administrative resistance occurred when the Kaymakam (district governor) of Lice, Hüseyin Nesimi Bey, vociferously refused to participate in the anti-Christian activities and execute orders to massacre the Christian population, demanding instead a written mandate. He was subsequently removed from office and assassinated by Reshid's henchmen on the road to Diyarbakir. The police also executed several other local adminstrators judged too moderate in their anti-Christian sentiments. Following the Kaymakam's assassination, guards were immediately placed outside all Christian homes, and all Christian civil servants were fired from their jobs.

The next day, 50 Christian notables and representatives were arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to severe torture. Methods of torture included the bastinado, the piercing of hands, and the tearing out of beards and fingernails. After several days, these arrested individuals were tied together arm-in-arm in pairs, marched outside the town, and slaughtered by Kurds at a place called Dashta-Pis near Diyarbakir, where their corpses were placed in caves. Another primary site of mass execution was a cave named Gohê Gumho, where victims had their throats slit.

The clergy and surrounding settlements were specifically targeted during this period. The priest of the village of Foum was arrested and dragged through the streets of Lice by his beard to prison. Furthermore, Syriac Orthodox priests from the villages of Qarabash and Ka’biye were incarcerated and eventually killed in Lice. Neighboring Christian villages, including Foum, Chemchem (also spelled Semsem), Jum, Tappa, Nagle, Pasor, and Khaneke, were plundered, and their inhabitants were put to the sword by irregular gangs and Kurdish tribes.

This period of destruction in Lice occurred before the holiday of Ramadan (mid-July), with no further massacres reported during that month. However, once Ramadan ended, murders resumed, focusing on the deportation and exploitation of women and children, as the adult males had already been eliminated. The valley of the Lice district was again noted as a site of widespread killings during this period, and many women and children were subjected to sexual violence or died from exhaustion and hunger on the roads.

The methods of killing included mass slaughter with hand-held weapons (swords, daggers, scimitars, bayonets, axes), shooting, and burning alive. A significant number of Syriac Orthodox were also annihilated indirectly through forced deportations (death marches), resulting in deaths from starvation, thirst, disease, and exposure due to the destruction of their homes and livelihoods. While some Christian families in the district managed to survive by converting to Islam, the majority of the pre-war Christian community was effectively eradicated.