Sayfo Massacres 1915 - 1924

The History and Legacy of the Syriac Genocide

The Syriac people who descended from the Arameans are identified as the indigenous inhabitants of the Near East including Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel. They possess a unique ethno-religious heritage that traces its roots back to the ancient empires of Mesopotamia. This ancient ancestry connects modern Syriac, Chaldean, and Assyrian populations to the Arameans who lived along the Tigris-Euphrates valley and Upper Mesopotamia for millenniums. By the fourth century, Christianity was well established in this region, which served as a frontier between the Roman and Persian empires. The core geographic center for the West Syriac population was Tur Abdin, a mountainous plateau in southeastern Anatolia whose name is often interpreted as the Mountain of the Servants of God. The language of these populations was Aramaic, specifically the dialect of Edessa, which became the vernacular and written language of the Roman provinces in the region. This linguistic heritage differentiated the Syriacs from their neighbors and was maintained through the liturgy of their churches. By the late nineteenth century, the Syriac Christian community survived in a reduced form under the Ottoman Sultanate, organized into autonomous religious groups known as millets. The largest Syriac group in the Diyarbekir province was the Syriac Orthodox, traditionally and erronesly referred to as Jacobites, whose patriarchal seat was located at the Dayro d’Mor Hanania (Zafaran Monastery) near Mardin. Other denominations included the Chaldean Catholic Church, which broke away from the Church of the East in the sixteenth century to enter communion with Rome, and the Syriac Catholic Church, which formed after a schesim in the eighteenth century. To the east of Tur-’Abdin area in the Hikkary mountains lived the Church of the East. These communities lived in a complicated mosaic of cultures and religions, frequently isolated from one another by denomination, distance, and dialect.

The Catalyst and Precedents

The genocidal process that culminated in the Sayfo was preceded by decades of increasing violence and institutional discrimination under late Ottoman rule. Throughout the nineteenth century, Ottoman Christian communities made demands for legal and social equality, which were often met with harsh suppression by the central government. One common denominator in this process was an atmosphere of intolerance toward non-Muslims, rooted in the status of dhimmi, which guaranteed protection only on the condition of submission and the payment of a poll tax. Significant precursors to the 1915 genocide occurred during the reign of Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, most notably the Hamidian massacres of 1894 to 1896. In 1895, a wave of plundering and killing struck Christian communities throughout Anatolia, resulting in the loss of more than 30,000 Syriac and Armenian Christian lives in the Diyarbekir province alone. During these events, 119 villages were plundered and burned, and the material loss was estimated at two million Turkish pounds. In the city of Mardin, the presence of influential notables and the intervention of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Abdulmassih II, helped spare the city from the worst of the massacres, though its surroundings were devastated. Another violent massacre occurred in Adana in 1909, where no distinction was made between Armenians and other Oriental Christians. These events fostered a permanent state of insecurity for Syriac villages, as the creation of the Hamidiye irregular cavalry regiments in 1882 gave Kurdish tribesmen government sanction to act with impunity. By the eve of World War I, the Young Turk regime (CUP) had adopted a radical nationalist ideology aimed at creating a homogeneous Turkish national identity, viewing the indigenous Christian populations as internal enemies and obstacles to modernization.

The Mechanism of the Syriac Genocide

The execution of the Syriac genocide was facilitated by a structured system of state-sanctioned ethno-religious hostility that emerged in early 1915. A critical component of this mechanism was the mobilization of a jihad, or holy war, proclaimed by Sultan Mehmed V and the Sheikh-ul-Islam in November 1914. This declaration appealed to Muslim solidarity and was used to legitimize the annihilation of Christians by labeling them infidels and traitors. The central government organized a Secret Commission, with Interior Minister Talaat Pasha at its head, to oversee the implementation of anti-Christian policies. In the Diyarbekir province, the governor Dr. Reshid Bey orchestrated a systematic campaign of extermination against all Christian populations without distinction of race or confession. Special Organization units, or Teshkilat-i Mahsusa, were transformed into instruments for mass murder, recruiting convicts, bandits, and local irregulars into death squads known as Al-Khamsin. These units were given uniforms and government-issued weapons to conduct raids on Christian villages. The genocide followed a specific procedure: first, the disarmament of the population under the pretext of state security; second, the arrest and execution of community leaders and notable men; third, the deportation and killing of the remaining adult males; and finally, the formation of caravans for women and children who were often subjected to rape, abduction, or death on the road. Local officials who refused to comply with these orders, such as the mayors of Midyat and Beshiri, were often removed from office or assassinated. This combination of centralized planning and local initiative allowed for the rapid and thorough destruction of Syriac communities across the eastern provinces.

The Massacres and Victims in the Heartland

The systematic destruction of Syriac populations reached its height in the summer of 1915 across the geographic centers of Tur Abdin, Nisibis, and the Mardin sanjak. In the town of Midyat, the only town in the empire with a Syriac majority, massacres began in July after the authorities had already arrested and executed over 100 Protestant and Armenian males. Kurdish tribes, aided by regular soldiers, invaded the Christian sectors, and the secular head of the community, Hanne Safar Pasha, was beheaded. In the district of Nisibis, a committee headed by Qaddur Bey organized the atrocities, arresting all Christian men on June 14 and executing them at a nearby stone quarry. The remaining men, women, and children were led out of town to a place called Nirbo d-Farfoshe, where they were slaughtered one by one on the rim of a well. The city of Mardin saw the arrest of its leading citizens, including Armenian Archbishop Ignatius Maloyan, who were marched toward Diyarbekir and killed in three separate groups at Sheikhan and Zirzavan. In Siirt, the massacre began on June 15, when displaced Muslims from Van arrived and began purging the city of all Christians, leaving the streets filled with blood and corpses. The Chaldean bishopric of Siirt, which included more than thirty villages, was completely pillaged and those who dwelt there were killed including bishop Addai Sher. In many rural areas, Syriac villagers organized armed resistance to save themselves from certain annihilation. The village of Azakh became a major center of defense, fortifying itself with walls and trenches and repelling multiple sieges by Kurdish tribes and Ottoman troops. Similarly, the village of Ayn Wardo sustained a siege from July to October 1915, during which many families from the surrounding region sought sanctuary within its defenses. Despite such resistance, the total number of victims of the Sayfo is estimated at 90,313 members of the Syriac Orthodox Church alone, while other scholars put the total number of casualties from all Syriac churches at a significantly higher number.

Syriac Ecclesiastical Cultural and Religious Heritage Destruction

The intentional targeting of sacred spaces and manuscript repositories during the Sayfo aimed to erase any evidence of Syriac existence in the Ottoman Empire. In the course of the massacres, 156 Syriac Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed or occupied by Kurdish tribes. These buildings were often desecrated, with altars treated with indignity and churches transformed into stables or warehouses for stolen goods. In Siirt, the library and archives of the church, which had once been an ancient Nestorian monastery, were deliberately burned, resulting in the loss of twenty to thirty thousand books. A survivor recounted how Kurdish attackers set a pile of books on fire and threw children into the flames while women wailed in distress. The library of Addai Sher, the Chaldean Bishop of Siirt, which contained thousands of priceless manuscripts, was also destroyed following his murder. At the Jilu monastery of Mar Zaya, antique Chinese vases dating from the time of the great Nestorian missions were destroyed along with other contents. The destruction extended to the Syriac language itself, as the massacre of native speakers caused numerous Neo-Aramaic dialects to vanish from the region. The national revival movement that had emerged in the nineteenth century, aimed at standardizing Classical Syriac, was abruptly halted as schools were closed and teachers were killed or forced into exile. This linguicide was furthered by the abduction of Christian women and children, who were incorporated into Turkish or Kurdish families and forced to abandon their ancestral language. The loss of these tangible and intangible cultural assets represented a break in the continued communication of memory for the Syriac community.

The Syriac Refugee Trails

Survivors of the initial attacks used precarious escape routes to seek sanctuary in regional centers or fortified enclaves and many villagers from the Tur Abdin plateau fled to the larger monasteries, such as Mor Malke on Izlo Mountain or the Zafaran monastery outside Mardin, which could function as fortresses if needed. In the village of Arbo, seventy Syriac families sought safety in the Mor Malke and Mor Eliyo monasteries when the massacres broke out. Those who were not able to reach such refuges often hid in caves or underground tunnels, though many were discovered and suffocated by smoke. The Yezidis of the Sinjar Mountains emerged as significant protectors, establishing a colony for escaped Armenians and Syriacs of all denominations and by November 1916, close to a thousand refugees were living in Sinjar, including members of the Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean, and Syriac Catholic churches. In the Urmia region, thousands sought shelter in American and French mission compounds, though these were eventually invaded by Turkish troops. When the Russian army retreated from northwestern Iran in early 1915, approximately 20,000 Christians managed to escape with them across the border into Russian territory. For those who remained, the roads and pathways of the Diyarbekir province became killing fields where caravans of deportees were regularly attacked. Survivors often had to endure extreme hunger and exposure to the elements, perishing on top of mountains where they had been left naked by looters.

The Aftermath and the Birth of the Syriac Global Diaspora

The permanent displacement of survivors from their ancestral villages led to the birth of a global Syriac diaspora. After the First World War ended, many survivors lived as refugees in Iraq, Syria, or the Caucasus. Although some attempted to return to their homes, they were finally pushed out by the Republic of Turkey in the early 1920s. In 1924, the remaining Syriac Orthodox Christians were forced to leave Urfa, ancient Edessa, eventually settling in the city of Aleppo. The patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church was forced to relocate his seat from Mardin to Syria in 1924, signaling a definitive end to his community’s presence in its historic center. In the Jazira region of Syria, new settlements were established by refugees from Tur Abdin and Azakh, particularly in towns like Qahataniya and Malkiya. Simultaneously, Church of the East Assyrians from the Hakkari region who had fought as a militia with the Russians were driven into Iraq, where they were eventually granted a homeland promise that led them to join the British Levies. The trauma of the Sayfo was followed by further massacres, such as the one at Simele in 1933, which contributed to an accumulation of trauma and prompted further migration. By the 1960s and 1970s, mass migration to Western Europe, America, and Australia had begun, with large populations settling in countries like Sweden and Germany. Currently, the whole region of Tur Abdin is inhabited by no more than 2,500 Syriacs, while the majority of the nation lives in a worldwide diaspora.

Maintaining Syriac Identity After Sayfo

The contemporary global diaspora preserves its historical memory and cultural cohesion through the transmission of narratives related to the Sayfo. For many Syriacs, the memory of the genocide is a living trauma that triggers the remembrance of a traumatic past. This memory is often expressed through the terms Sayfo, Firman, and Qafle, which provide a shared departure point for community identity. In the diaspora, the Syriac language remains a primary marker of identity, used for prayer and spirituality wherever community members reside. Efforts to revive and standardize Classical Syriac have continued in exile, as seen in the work of Archbishop Julius Cicek, who published numerous poetic laments and poetic collections about the genocide in the Netherlands. The psychological legacy of the Sayfo includes an inter-generational transmission of fear and distrust, as stories of spirits hidden in mountain caves are used to socialize children into their community’s history of suffering. Historical memory is also maintained through the construction of monuments and the establishment of annual commemoration days, such as June 15, which was designated by the Syriac Orthodox Holy Synod to honor the Sayfo martyrs. These practices serve to affirm a unique cultural identity and provide a world-wide community with the categories of thought needed to describe their experiences. Despite the lack of formal recognition by the Turkish state, the blood of Sayfo victims remains a symbol of resistance and a reminder of the need to protect the rights of the minority group in their ancestral lands.