1839, Sultan Abdul-Medjid I, who reigned until 1861, promulgated an
imperial chart, the Hatt-i-Chérîf, which opened an era of administrative,
financial, judiciary reforms, the Tanzimat. All the subjects within
the empire became equals All
the subjects of the empire became equal, without distinction of nationality
or religion. But
things changed slowly in Northern mountains. Within
Kurdish masses, Christian « Nestorian » population, were
divided into seven independent tribes the
the people of these tribes which paid few (or not) taxes to the sultan
of Constantinople, lived the rayas, a population submitted to the
Turkish or Kurdish chiefs. They were sometimes obliged to heavy work,
overpowered by royalties, and reduced to a serfdom condition.
the political field, Assyro-Chaldéens did not have the right to have
political parties. No public schools nor universities, only reigned
ignorance. Let us stress the ambiguous game played by the Western
States, which created like strongholds “to protect Eastern Christians”…
but they did not protect anything. They obtained rights of capitation.
Jacobit and Nestorian churches divided in two parts
The union of the
Jacobit church with Rome became effective in 1783, thanks to the election
of Michel Garoué. Thus was created the catholic Syrian church, which
took a final form at the XIXème century.
Jacobit church persisted, because a bishop refused to link himself
in Rome. The Chaldean patriarch
of Babylon, Jean Hormez joined in Rome in 1830, thus creating the
branch of the contemporary Chaldean church.
Assyrian church Mar Gewargis in Kirkuk (source :
Assyrians of Kirkuk)
Syriacs are coveted by various missionaries
in Mesopotamia and in Mosul since 1750, two preaching friars arrived
in Mosul in 1759, Dominicans founded the house of Amadia in 1840;
the mission set out again, and at the end of the century, there were
six houses of missionaries, in Mosul, Mar Yacoub, Amadia, Van, Seert,
Lazarists worked in Persia, since 1840, and opened
a house in the village of Khosrawa (district of Salamas), then in
Urmiah in 1870. Catholicism spred in about sixty villages.
Orthodox Russians contacted the Assyrians of ' Azerbaidjan
and Hakkâri in 1859. A mission was installed in Urmiah and developed,
especially since 1898 and met a sharp success. The Nestorian bishop
converted with orthodoxy in 1898, followed by thousands of followers.
the first contacts were made in 1835. In 1842 Doctor Percy G Badger
arrived at Kotchanès to help the Nestorian patriarch. In 1881, the
mission was established in Hakkâri. Later, they created schools, as
American Protestants arrived in 1834, they founded a mission in Urmiah.
In 1855, people saw the first Protestants Assyrian-Chaldeans. The
mission developed since 1870 thanks to the Presbyterians. They founded
a hundred of schools, printed books, trained pastors. They published
a newspaper, Zahrira d' Bara (ray of light)
Exactions and massacres
underwent exactions, massacres, in 1826, in 1843, in 1895.
of Soran, known as Mîr Kôr, the one-eyed prince, reigned in 1826,
proclaimed his independence facing the Othoman Empire. He wanted to
conquer Kurdistan, seized the area, the plains of Mosul, the regions
of Akra, Amadia.
March 15, 1832, the cruel sultan
launched a raid, devastated the village of Alqosh where 367 people
were killed, went to the monastery of Rabban Hormuz, burned the convent.
Gabriel Dambo, and two monks perished. The villages of Tell-Kaif,
Tell-Esqof, were also devastated.
The plague prevails in Alqoche in 1828, there were
Mohammed Pasha returned in the area of Akra and of Amadia, he made pass the Christian villages of Erbil and Aînkawa by many
vicissitudes. At the end of May 1833, its army had established its
authority on the whole of Kurdistan located at the north of Iraq until
Jazira ibn ` Omar. The one-eyed pasha conquered Iranian Kurdistan,
still devastated the Tur ` Abdin, but he had to go to the Turkish
authorities. He was assassinated in Trebizond by Sultan’s men in 1837.
Bedir Khan, the Kurdish fanatic
emir of Bothan, invaded the territory of Tiyari, massacred more than
10 000 inhabitants, reduced in slavery a great number of women and
children, set fire to their villages. The emir crossed the Tiyari
mounts later, walked on the district of Tkhoma, and organized a general
movement, which developed since 1890, caused the hostility of the
Moslems. The rebellion of Sassoun, badly prepared, showed dreadful
massacres. In 1895-96, in the vilayet of Bitlis, in the south of Sassoun,
Diyarbakir, there were three days of slaughters, the 1, 2 November
3, 1895. A lot of Syriac, were killed.
Urfa, the next year, 6000 people perished.
Syriac villages were devastated in the area of Tur'
Assyrian-Chaldeans at the beginning of the XXth century:
November 1st 1914, Turkey engaged in the First World
War at the sides of Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was decided to
fight the Franco-English Agreement and its allies. Assyrian-Chaldeans
lived in the Othoman Empire, and more particularly in the vilayet
of Diyarbakir, in the vilayet of Mosul, Sandjak de Hakkâri which depended
on the vilayet of Van.
Kurds were established in the same areas. Assyrian-Chaldeans (Nestorians)
of Hakkâri were let allure by the vague promises of the Allies, they
left their villages to take part in the world war in May 1915.
From Diyarbakir, Bitlis, Van, Harpout
Othomans occupied Urmia in January 1915. Thereafter, thousand Assyrians-Chaldeans
were assassinated in the surrounding plain, and their villages plundered.
The city was not released before May 24th by the Russians.
latter had driven out the Turks of Van, five days before. Jeudet Bey,
the military governor of Van, was constrained by the Russians to leave
the city, and fled towards Seert, in the south. He penetrated in the city with
8000 soldiers and ordered the massacre of many Christians
Chaldean archbishop Addai Scher, a great erudite and orientalist,
had a friend who was Osman, the agha of Tanzé, a village located at
a few hours of Séert. He was the chief of the Hadide and Atamissa
tribe. Osman suggested that the archbishop disguised in Kurdish and
fled, led by some of his men.
Addai Scher hid several days in the Kurdish chief’s house. Turkish
gendarmes launched out to his track, burnt Osman’s house, threatening
it to kill him and his family. Osman fled with his people. The gendarmes
discovered the archbishop in his hiding place and killed him, on June
In July, more than thousand womn and chikldren were displaced. Les
villages alentour connurent un sort dramatique.
to autumn 1915, the Othoman troops, supported by the governor of Mosul’s
soldiers, pursued the Assyrian tribes of Hakkâri, which fled through
valleys and mountains.
sister of Patriarch Mar Shimoun murdered by the Kurdish Chief Simko
in 1918, wrote
a book on the Haakrî Assyriansî. (source : aina.org).
and Western Syriacs of the vilayet of Diyarbakir knew the deportations
or the horror of massacres. In Diyarbakir, as in August 1914, 1687
shops of Christians were plundered and burned. On September 6, the
whole city was attacked by Othoman soldiers and Hamidiyés regiments.
Christians were arrested, assigned to the construction of the roads
then massacred by Turkish gendarmes.
16, 1915, Armenian notables were under arrest, then Orthodox Syriacs,
the Catholic Syrians and Chaldeans. Some of them were burnt alive.
There were attempts to force people to convert. Convents, churches,
goods of Christians were confiscated.
In the vilayet
of Diyarbakir, there was, according to the Father Rhétoré, a French
Dominican ho was witness of the events, 144 185 killed, disappeared,
and among them, 10 010 Chaldeans. According to another Dominican witness,
Father Simon, 157 200 Christians were killed.
extended on the Christians from Mardin. At the beginning of May, notables
were executed at the gates of the city. A few days later,
Christians of all confessions were arrested. The Christian
villages of the surroundings of Mardin were also attacked, plundered
by troops of soldiers and Kurds. In the sanjak of Mardin, 74 675 were
killed and disappeared, with 6800
had its share of massacres. It was persecuted at the beginning of
the summer 1915 then during the year 1917.
In the city
of Jazireh, in May 1915, they arrested notable also. The catholic
Syrian bishop, the Chaldeans’ one, Mar Yacoub was imprisonned with
his priests, then sent out of the city. The women were dishonoured
and sold like slaves. Two hundred and fifty Chaldeans and hundred
Syriacs perished. In the surroundings, Jacobit villages and 15 Chaldean
villages were destroyed.
In Nisibe, since on June 14, 1915, the Christian district
was attacked by troops which massacred men. On 28, the women perished
in the Saint-Jacob church. More than thousand Christians were killed
and their villages destroyed.
At spring 1915, convoys of women, children, old men
deportees, arrived at Urfa, the men having been already massacred.
According to the same scenario, the notables of the city were arrested,
thrown in prison, beaten and their houses searched. When an Armenian
district revolted, twenty thousand people perished.
It is true also that in Bohtan, some Kurdish muslims,
tried with courage to save their Christian neighbors, threatened by
Assyrians-Chaldeans and Western Syriacs of Mosul vilayet
the vilayet of Mosul was relatively saved, thanks to the intervention
of the Chaldean patriarch Joseph Emmanuel II Thomas (1900-1947) near
the vali Heyder Pasha which did not support really the anti-Christian
movement. The majority of the Kurdish aghas of this province refused
to displace the men and to plunder the houses.
The end of the war
Assyrians constituted in 1916, an army of twenty-five thousand soldiers
who illustrated themselves at the sides of Russians, on the Caucasus
front. In 1917, after the Bolshevik revolution, like the Assyrians
felt abandoned, they joined the British lines. Some engaged like auxiliaries
in the battalions under, to help the English on the Persian Front.
February to July 1918, in Urmia and Salmas, there were riots and massacres.
The Assyrians knew a tragic exodus. They were tracked, harassed by
Turkish soldiers and irregular Kurdish fighters, decimated by diseases,
typhus, cholera, variola. Fifty thousand of them died on the burned
sun roads. Fifty thousand arrived in Hamadan at 480 kilometers. The
English directed them towards the camp of Bakouba, in the north of
Assyrians-Chaldeans under Britton Mandate
took from Othoman empires the vilayets of Bassora and Baghdad. On
March 11, 1917, General Stanley Maud seized Baghdad and on October
10, 1918, the Marshall General entered in Mosul, and took the control
of the city.
25, 1920, the conference of San Remo gave to Great Britain the mandates
on Palestine, Transjordanie and Iraq. The vilayet of Mosul was under
French influence since the agreements concluded in May 1916 by Sykes,
the British Minister for the Foreign Affairs and Picot, a French diplomat.
It had to remain within the borders of Iraq, placed under British
domination. France, on the other hand, intended to receive 25% of
the oil rights of the area of Mosul, which contained rich person layers.
10, 1920, the Treaty of Sevres devoted the dismemberment of the Othoman
Empire. It envisaged the creation of an independent Kurdish State,
placed under the mandate of the League of Nations. It granted to Assyrians-Chaldeans
a protection, within the framework of an autonomous Kurdistan, without
speaking about a creation of a State.
made up of two provinces, Baghdad and Bassora, became in 1921 a kingdom
given to Emir Fayçal, Husein Hashemi ‘son, the sherif of Mecca.
levies, or Assyrian soldiers recruted by Brittons under their
The events precipitated. In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal abolished
the caliphate, created a laic Republic, and contested the Treaty of
24, 1923, a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, recognized to Turkey
the right of being free nation with stable borders. It was unjust
for the Kurds, the Armenians, Assyrians-Chaldeans, considered as simple
minorities to be protected, which did not obtain any autonomy and
wondered about their future.
The question of the borders with Iraq was not solved.
December 16, 1925, the League of Nations decided that the vilayet
of Mosul would be joined to Iraq, and mounts of Hakkâri, attached
to Turkey. The Assyrians, which had engaged in the war on the side
of the Allies, could not return any more in their villages. They had
asked their own territory. Allies had forgotten their promise.
Conference : 5 -8 -2004 Suède
Ephrem –Isa YOUSIF