Sayfo; Village of Qarabash

Qarabash: A Village's Annihilation in the Sayfo

The village of Qarabash (also spelled Karabash), located approximately 10 kilometers east of Diyarbekir, was a significant site of atrocities during the Sayfo. It was exclusively populated by Syriac Orthodox Christians and had a history of violence, having been subjected to a pogrom on October 1, 1895, which lasted two days and affected a population of over 1,000 people at that time.

During the Sayfo in 1915, the events in Qarabash were part of a systematic campaign and disarming the village started on the morning of May 20, 1915, when Diyarbekir governor Reşid Bey ordered Yahya and Sıdkı to disarm Qarabash. Fifty men invaded the village, confiscating all weapons, even bread knives, and incarcerating its men, effectively disarming the community. Two days later, on May 22, Yahya and Sıdkı incited neighboring Kurdish villages to attack Qarabash, explicitly granting them permission to plunder. The village was then invaded by mounted Kurds who massacred its population using daggers, axes, and swords. Women were raped, houses were burned, and valuables were seized.

Two priests of Qarabash, Paulus and Behnam, were trampled to death under horses' hooves. One Syriac Orthodox priest from Qarabash, along with others, was jailed in Lice, tortured, and murdered at a place called Dashta-Pis, near Diyarbekir, where their corpses were placed in caves. Another account mentions a Syriac Orthodox priest whose daughters were raped before his eyes and then had their throats slit; he was left alive but went insane.

The few survivors of the massacre fled to Diyarbekir, where some received treatment from Floyd Smith, who reported their arrival. A survivor named Malfono Abdelmasih Qarabashi (likely Na'man Qarabashi, an eyewitness and author) fled to the mountains and survived for a month by eating grass after witnessing his fellow Christians being killed.

The Qarabash incident on May 20, 1915, is identified as a critical event in Diyarbekir, being the first large massacre involving the total destruction of the entire village population. This event was part of the general massacres in Northern Mesopotamia. The "el Khamsin" (Fifties) militia, active in Nisibin, also participated in the massacre of Qarabash.

Na'man Qarabashi, a native of Qarabash and a theology student at the Syriac monastery of Deyr-ul Zaferan during the Sayfo, kept a diary of these events, which was later published as "Dmo Zliho" ("Shed Blood"). His account is considered one of the very few survivor memoirs.