Sayfo; Town of Al-Qusur

Town of Al-Qusur

The village of Al-Qusur (also known as Koleké, Goliye, or Al-Kūliyya) is a Syriac Orthodox settlement historically situated in Ottoman Upper Mesopotamia, located approximately seven to eight kilometers south-southeast of the city of Mardin along the main road connecting Mardin and Nisibin. Geographically positioned at the northern margin of the Nisibin plain, it functioned as an active agricultural center within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Diocese of Mardin and Dayro d’Mor Hananyo (Za'faran Monastery), serving as a residence and ministry center for several metropolitans during the early centuries of Ottoman rule.

In 1727, the Syriac Orthodox community executed a major structural renovation of the historic Church of St. Theodore (Mar Theodorus). The settlement also maintained the Church of the Virgin Mary (Yoldath Aloho), which served the liturgical needs of the local Syriac Orthodox population alongside a third church structure. Throughout this era, the agrarian community engaged in crop cultivation and viticulture while facing systemic fiscal demands, arbitrary requisitions, regional feudal exactions, and intermittent instability stemming from conflicts between Ottoman provincial governors and autonomous Kurdish tribal federations in the Mardin countryside.

During the military campaigns and regional upheavals associated with Bedir Khan Beg and surrounding Kurdish emirates between 1842 and 1846, the Syriac Christian inhabitants of Al-Qusur experienced heightened economic extortion, forced labor requisitions, and general insecurity caused by widespread Kurdish tribal mobilization and Ottoman counter-centralization campaigns. While primary destruction and mass killings during Bedir Khan's campaigns were concentrated in the Hakkari and Bohtan regions, the agrarian Syriac population of the Mardin and Nisibin plains suffered severe economic impoverishment and threats of violence.

Late nineteenth-century demographic surveys and ecclesiastical registers record Al-Qusur as a Syriac Orthodox settlement in the Nisibin and Mardin administrative districts, with entries noting 250 to 300 dues-paying households. Surveys compiled prior to the 1895 massacres estimate the total population of the village at approximately 300 to 400 Syriac Orthodox households, representing between 1,000 and 2,000 individuals, alongside small Syriac Catholic and Protestant minority households.

On Friday, November 7, 1895, during the Hamidian massacres, armed Kurdish tribal forces, including the Cefes, Ders, and Daquri tribes, surrounded and attacked Al-Qusur following their assault on the nearby Christian town of Tell Armen. The Syriac villagers dispatched a delegation of notables to the Mutasarrif of Mardin pleading for official government protection. In response, the Ottoman governor sent a detachment of 100 regular soldiers under the command of Sadiq (or Dervish), accompanied by local Muslim notables including Ali Efendi and Baba Huseyn. Upon arrival, the Ottoman soldiers accepted financial payments from the Kurdish raiders, refused to intervene, and actively assisted the tribesmen in plundering, killing, and committing arson throughout the settlement. The village homes were systematically looted and set on fire, and the local church was destroyed, inside of which an icon of St. George (Mar Gewargis) was desecrated and pierced with a spear. At least 50 Syriac Christians were killed during the attack, while the surviving villagers fled, stripped of their clothing and barefoot, toward Mardin and Dayro d’Mor Hananyo for refuge.

During the Sayfo genocide in 1915, Al-Qusur, then containing approximately 400 Syriac Orthodox households, was subjected to a coordinated and destructive assault. On June 14, 1915, Ottoman military units and allied Muslim irregular forces assembled in the wilderness surrounding Mardin. An Ottoman military garrison of 120 soldiers stationed in the village under the pretext of maintaining order colluded directly with the raiders to facilitate their entry. Further orders came on July 2, 1915, at eight o’clock in the evening, when Memduh Bey, the police chief of Mardin, directed a renewed attack on the settlement. The perpetrating forces were headed by militia leader Sergeant Yusuf (son of Nuri Ensari) and supported by Chieftain Mohammed Ağa of the Milli tribe, alongside Kurdish tribesmen from the Deşi, Mişkiye, and Helecan tribes, as well as local Arab groups.

During the onslaught, the village population was systematically massacred in their homes, and many villagers were crammed together inside the house of the village headman, Elias Cabbar Hinno, where they were burned alive. Children were subjected to extreme brutality, being thrown from roofs and mutilated with axes. The entire settlement was plundered and set ablaze, creating columns of fire and smoke visible from Mardin that burned continuously for eight days. Out of a population that suffered an estimated 3,200 deaths, only a few hundred survivors managed to escape under cover of darkness to Mardin or find temporary shelter in neighboring Kurdish villages. On the day following the primary June massacre, inspecting officials arriving from Diyarbakir and Mardin counted 700 Syriac Christian corpses lying exposed in the ruins. A local Muslim, Sheikh Ramadan, was executed by Ottoman authorities for attempting to shelter or defend Christian victims. Concurrently, clergy serving the village, including Priest Toma and Priest Mas'ud, as well as lay leader Iskandar ibn Malki Kibro, were arrested, incarcerated, and tortured in Mardin prison before being executed at Babayn alongside other Christian notables.

Following the 1915 extermination campaign, the surviving Syriac population of Al-Qusur was permanently displaced, leaving the village structures in ruins and its agricultural properties confiscated or reoccupied by neighboring Muslim populations. The ecclesiastical properties, including the Church of the Virgin Mary and the Church of St. Theodore, were destroyed, and surviving remnants of the community relocated permanently to Mardin, the Syrian cities of Qamishli and Hasakah, or European diaspora centers.