Sayfo; Village of Urdnas

Village of 'Arnas

The village of ‘Arnas, also known as Urdnus, is located approximately nine kilometers northeast of the city of Midyat within the Tur Abdin region of southeast Turkey. It is situated on a plateau that historically served as a significant Christian enclave between the Tigris River and the plains of Nisibis. The religious center of the village is the Church of Mor Quryaqos, which housed historical inscriptions dating back to 761 A.D.

Although the region of Tur Abdin generally suffered from repeated raids by Kurdish tribes and Ottoman taxation, there are no recorded attacks on this village prior to 1915. During the Hamidian massacres of 1895–1897, many neighboring villages were attacked, though ‘Arnas is noted primarily for its resilience and its role as a local center for the Syriac Orthodox population. At the turn of the century, the Christian population numbered approximately seventy families, consisting of sixty Syriac Orthodox families and ten Protestant families, alongside a few Kurdish families. The Syriac leaders of the village were Gergo Jaqub and Malke Gawro. The Kurdish leaders of the Dakshuri (or Dashurnaja) confederation also lived in this village; they were under the leadership of Osman Tammero and better known as the Osman Tamer family.

The most detailed documentation of atrocities in ‘Arnas occurred during the Sayfo genocide between 1915 and 1924. In mid-1915, when the Syriac people in Salah were murdered, some managed to escape to Urdnus and informed the people there about the massacre. The villagers refused to believe the news until the Muslims also attacked Midyat and they could hear the sound of shots being fired. Recognizing that the "Sayfo," the annihilation, had begun, the Syriac inhabitants of ‘Arnas attempted to flee to the fortified village of ‘Ayn-Wardo that very same night, taking everything they could carry. Local Kurdish groups attempted to prevent their departure, but they could not stop them because the Syriac people outnumbered them, and the majority of the Christian population successfully forced their way through and reached ‘Ayn-Wardo in peace.

Those who did not want to believe the reports about the massacres and refused to leave numbered twenty-three men. They were taken prisoner by the Kurds the following day, led up a mountain, and murdered. The women remaining in the village were not killed but were instead sent to ‘Ayn-Wardo.

The primary perpetrators of the 1915 atrocities in ‘Arnas were the Kurdish tribesmen of the Osman Tamer family. A significant massacre involved a local Kurdish leader named Agha Saleh, who used a Syriac man named Yaqo to trick thirty-eight men who had fled into returning under a false oath of protection. Once these thirty-eight men returned, the Kurds disarmed and chained them before dragging them to the Fero cave, located in a triangle between the villages of ‘Arnas, Bote, and Ahlah. In the cave, the victims were subjected to torture, including the removal of their eyes and the severing of their limbs, before they were killed.

Clergy and specific notables were targeted during this period. The priest Afrem was killed during the initial waves of violence, and his family members who attempted to hide in underground caves were discovered and murdered. One survivor, the son of a notable, described witnessing a Muslim attacker stab a boy named Yusuf and beat him to death with a piece of wood. Following the primary massacres, Kurdish aghas, such as Najo of the Tammero family, took Syriac women from the village to work as forced laborers or slaves after killing their male relatives.

The fate of the survivors involved relocation and displacement. Approximately one thousand people from ‘Arnas and surrounding areas reached ‘Ayn-Wardo, where they joined the resistance against a siege that lasted fifty-two days. The villagers of Urdnus stayed in ‘Ayn-Wardo until the end of the massacres, staying away from their village for a total of six years before returning when peace came. Captive children and women were sent to the caravanserai of Musa Shamosho, where the Ottomans gathered the young boys to be taken out by soldiers and killed. Women, girls, and some younger children were sent to the village of Anhel to be raised by Christians there. In the years following the genocide, the Kurdish population in ‘Arnas increased as they occupied the lands and properties of the murdered or exiled Syriacs, and the village became predominantly Muslim.