Geography, Demographics, and the Value of Medieval Syriac Historical Texts: A Case Study of the Vita of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā (II)

Nicholas Al-Jeloo

The Geographical Area Covered by the Text

The area covered by the Vita of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā is quite specific. While some references are made to places further afield, most of the characters in the narrative hail from, and most of the events transpire in, the same overall region. In general, this is bounded on the west by the Khābūr River (Ḥāvorā in the text),[1] in the north by the mountains of Zawzān, to the east by the Greater Zab River (Zāvā in the text), and to the south by the Tigris River and the two cities of Mosul and Balad. The later, however, seems to have been significant to the monastery, as we observe that, on two occasions, monks were specifically sent there on business.[2] The districts more frequently mentioned in the text, therefore, are Bēth-Nūhadrā, Margā, Dāsan and Zawzān. Sometimes geographical names are just named in passing while, at others, some very interesting details are given. Margā, for instance, is only mentioned as the region of origin for certain monks, as well as the location of a mountain where a particular solitary named Rabbān Benjamin lived.[3] On the other hand, a valley to the east of Rabbān Hormīzd Monastery, leading to its vineyards, is named specifically in the text as Nērwā d-Daywē (i.e., the ravine of demons).[4] According to Fr. Chūlāgh, this name has survived among the local people of Alqosh, whereby the name has morphed into Gallīyā d-Nē(h)rā d-Aywē (i.e., cloud river pass), which sounds similar to the original, but has a very different meaning.[5]

Bēth-Murdnī (ܒܹܝܬ̣ ܡܘܼܪܕܢܝܼ)

As mentioned above, the text of the Vita largely deals with the Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery, which is located in the valley of the Ṣapnā River, south of Dāsan, north of Bēth-Nūhadrā and west of Margā. The nearest major village to the monastery was Bēth-Murdnī which, at the time, was inhabited by Christian Assyrians. It is now the Kurdish Muslim village of Bāmarnē. This village is first mentioned in the Vita of St. Za‘yā (309-431) as Murdnī. In this particular text, the saint and his disciple visit the village soon after the year 400 and find it to be the residence of Bishop Mār Shamlī who had been his teacher back in Palestine.[6] If such an account is to be believed, then Bēth-Murdnī would have been a Christian village for at least five centuries prior to Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā’s arrival at Bēth-Ṣayyārē and, as mentioned above, at least two of the monks there during that time were Murdnāyē. In the text of the latter’s Vita, therefore, we find that the faithful of Bēth-Murdnī would bring their sick to him to be cured, including a local master-builder named Glolā (ܓܠܘܿܠܵܐ, i.e., “round”), who had become paralysed.[7] This episode is followed by that of a “famous and great man” in Bēth-Murdnī named Abbulqā (or Abū Laqā?) who was from the Harzdāyē, and whose wife brought their fever stricken son to the saint to be healed.[8] According to Fr. Chūlāgh, the Harzdāyē were Kurds from the nearby village of Āriz (or Hāriz). If this is correct, then this would imply that Kurds had already moved to Bāmarnē and were living with the local Christian Assyrians as early as the mid-tenth century. Moreover, if Abbulqā was Kurdish and a Muslim, then the fact that his wife brought their son to the monastery to be healed can imply one of two things; either she was originally a Christian Assyrian herself, or she practised a form of religious syncretism, whereby Muslims would bring their sick to be healed by Christian holy men, indicating a high degree of co-existence.

Mosul and its Christians

The way in which the city of Mosul and its inhabitants are portrayed in Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā’s Vita is quite interesting. In at least three instances in the text, we find people from Mosul travelling about 85 km north to Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery to be cured of their various illnesses by the saintly Rabbān Joseph. In all of these cases, the sick person is a Christian adhering to the Church of the East. In order, their names are the priest Marqos of St. Pithyon church on the Tigris, the deacon ‘Īsā who served the sons of Elijah (probably meaning the monks of St. Elijah of Ḥīrthā Monastery), and two famous scribes named Abū Zakrī and ‘Abd al-Masīḥ, the sons of Ka‘b.[9] What is striking here is the amount of Arabic personal names, in fact four out of five people, indicating that the Christian population of Mosul had already been highly Arabised, either because of direct rule in a confined urban space by a powerful Arab majority, or through admixture with Arab Christians who had immigrated to the city after it was founded in 641. Additionally, we learn that Rabbān John Bar-Khaldūn, who was originally from Mosul, was commissioned by his master to reply to his letters in Syriac; however, he found this extremely difficult, since he was more proficient in Arabic.[10] Moreover, considering that Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā spent the final 40 years of his life at Bēth-Ṣayyārē, between 939 and 979, we can thus observe that the Christians of Mosul had already been thoroughly Arabised within three centuries of the city’s founding. Later on, in the seventh chapter of the Vita, in a section relating to the life and miracles of Rabbān Īsho‘ of Minyānish, we notice his prophecy regarding the ruler of Mosul, who he names Abū Tha‘lab. The monk rebukes him for having dared to tax ascetics, and predicts a quick, merciless punishment for him.[11] Indeed, this ruler is the same as the abovementioned Hamdanid Abū Taghlib (r. 967-979) and, for some unknown reason, he called here by the same name later used by Ibn Khaldūn (1332-1406) in his historical writings concerning this period. From this, however, we can significantly observe that the Hamdanids’ Mosul-based rule extended north at least to the Ṣapnā valley, where the Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery was located.

Defining Dāsan (ܕܵܣܲܢ)

Another district which features prominently in the text of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā’s Vita is that of Dāsan, which comprised a suffragan diocese of the ecclesiastical province of Adiabene and Assyria between the years 410 and 1282. According to Fr. Fiey, this area lay to the north of Margā and encompassed the Berwārī-Bālā district to the southwest of Ashīthā, comprising all of the country enclosed by the loop of the Great Zab River.[12] Fr. Chūlāgh, on the other hand, only notes that it lies to the northeast of ‘Amādīyah.[13] In the Vita, however, we read of the monk Avūn, who used to travel from Bēth-Ṣayyārē to Dāsan quite frequently and easily, implying that the Ṣapnā valley was actually not a part of that region; it may instead have been dependent on Bēth-Nūhadrā.[14] The different recensions of the text, though, differ on one particular detail. The oldest manuscript, kept at the Vatican, quotes the monk as saying, “On the way, I go forward to the banks of the river Zab, that great one.”[15] On the other hand, the newest copy of the text at the Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate in Baghdad only reads, “On the way, I go forward to the banks of the great river,” and Fr. Chūlāgh’s Arabic translation just reads, “My way passes the (Great) Zab River.”[16] This would thus indicate that the Dāsan area extended across the Zab to the Assyrian tribal regions of Tḥūmā, Bāz and Jīlū, which are described in medieval texts, such as that of St. Zay‘ā, as being located in “Upper Dāsan.”[17] Adjacent to Dāsan was the area known as Bēth-Ṭūrē (i.e., between the mountains). Fr. Fiey identifies this as the Gahrā Mountains and the valleys of Naḥlā and Ṭalānā, which were transferred from the diocese of Margā to that of Dāsan in the eighth century.[18]

According to the text of Rabbān Joseph’s Vita, as mentioned previously, at least four of the monks at the Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery during that time were Dasnāyē. Furthermore, in the Vita we find the mention of a village named “Halmūn, which is in the rustāqā (district) of Ays” (other recensions of the text have it as Harmon d-Iyās).[19] If Ays / Iyās can be positively identified as the modern Assyrian village of Hayyis in Berwārī-Bālā, 26 km to the southeast of Halmūn, as per Fr. Chūlāgh, then this would locate it within the region of Dāsan, indicating that it could have stretched as far west as the Khābūr River.[20] On the other hand, according to biographical notes regarding the seventh century bishop and theologian Mār Sāhdonā (Martyrius) of Halmūn, the village, at that time, was dependent on the diocese of Bēth-Nūhadrā, indicating its northernmost extent.[21] Finally, it would seem that, at this time, the inhabitants of Dāsan consisted not only of Christian Assyrians, but also Muslim Kurds. As such, we find the narrative of Kāmil (or Kēmil) – “a Kartwāyā man, from those that are called Dasnāyē,” who was a murderer and thief that had killed many people mercilessly.[22] However, the reason he is identified as a Dasnāyā is probably because he was a Kurd from Dāsan that was living outside of the area, in a district called ‘Ayn-Bibil, which we will discuss further below. After Rabbān Joseph’s death in 979, we learn that Dāsan was destroyed by the evil Kartwāyē (Kurds) who lived there, those called Hakkarāyē (Hakkarians), who killed 5,000 of its inhabitants (presumably all Christian Assyrians) and scattered the survivors. As mentioned above, the author of the Vita adds that this, as well as the rebuilding of Dāsan, had already been predicted by Rabbān Joseph prior to his death.

Locating ‘Ayn-Bibil (ܥܹܝܢ ܒܸܒܸ̇ܠ)

One rustāqā (ܪܘܼܣܬܵܩܵܐ, i.e., district) mentioned in the Vita of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā which is quite elusive is that of ‘Ayn-Bibil, also written as ‘Ayn-Bāvil in the latest manuscript copy of the text. It would have to be close enough to Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery for people to be able to travel there on foot with their sick, but also geographically separate enough to constitute being considered its own district. Furthermore, the text mentions the names of two villages in this district from which people came to the monastery seeking healing. One of these is Kpar-Sāmkhā and the other is Kpar-Qūrē, which was the home of the previously mentioned Dasnāyā Kurd Kāmil, who attempted to murder the unsuspecting monk Rabbān Komā, just because he was from the same village as some people who had murdered his own brother.[23] Without providing any explanation, Fr. Chūlāgh explains that ‘Ayn-Bibil is ‘Ayn-Bilbil, to the northeast of ‘Amādīyah and he subsequently guessed that Kpar-Qūrē might be the modern Assyrian village of Qāro (in the Nērwā district).[24] However, nowhere on any map is there any mention of a place named ‘Ayn-Bilbil or Kānī-Bilbil (Kānī being the Kurdish equivalent of Syriac ‘Aynā, which means a spring or water source). Furthermore, I would tend to believe that, since Kāmil is identified as a Dasnāyā, this district would have been located outside of Dāsan and may have been dependent, rather, on the diocese of Bēth-Nūhadrā.

Instead, I would rather posit that ‘Ayn-Bibil/Bāvil is the modern Assyrian village of Kānī-Balāv, about 9 km northwest of Bēth-Ṣayyārē. Not only do the names appear somewhat similar, but they also have similar etymologies. Whereas the second part of the Syriac name ‘Ayn-Bibil might originate from Būvlā (ܒܘܼܒ̣ܠܵܐ), meaning an ibex, mountain goat, wild bull or buffalo, it most probably comes instead from Bāvlā (ܒܵܒ̣ܠܵܐ), meaning din, tumult, uproar, noise, disturbance or agitation, but also disorder, absence of order, stir, up-stir, unrest, chaos, upheaval, jumble, storm or disorganisation. On the other hand, whereas the second part of the Kurdish name Kānī-Balāv might originate from Balav, meaning waterside laundry, bathing or washing, it most probably comes instead from Belav, meaning scattered, dispersed, dissipated, disseminated, widespread, spread out, out of order, stirred up, distributed or generous, but also unrest, disorganisation, great storm, jumble, upheaval or chaos. Hence, the place name, whether in Syriac or in Kurdish, may refer to a wild natural spring that provides so much water that it is disorderly, stirred up, chaotic, stormy, restless or tumultuous.

Moreover, evidence from a late eighteenth century manuscript colophon demonstrates that Kānī-Balāv was considered as belonging to a separate district altogether to both Ṣapnā and Berwārī-Bālā. This district, named Shūkho, was based around a fortress of the same name, located less than 2 km southwest of Kānī-Balāv.[25] Additionally, the toponym Kpar-Qūrē, or rather Qūrē, may be seen to have survived in the name of one of at least three modern-day villages to the northwest of Kānī-Balāv – Kurkā, 5.5 km away; Cham-Kurk, 20 km away; and Kurk, 27.5 km away. Most probably, however, the place mentioned in the text of the Vita is that closest out of the three. Furthermore, it is likely that the Kpar- preformative in the names of villages such as Kpar-Qūrē and Kpar-Sāmkhā, which is literally the construct state of the Syriac noun meaning “a hamlet,” was only used as a way to indicate that these were just tiny villages, rather than actually being part of their names.[26]

Delineating Zozān/Zāwzan (ܙܵܘܙܲܢ، ܙܘܿܙܵܢ)

Another region mentioned in the text of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā’s Vita is that of Zāwzan, also vocalised as Zāwzān or Zozān. This name appears as that of one of the regions evangelised, along with Dāsan and Gāwar, by St. Ṭomīs, a disciple of St. Mārī in the second Christian century, according to the text of the latter saint’s Vita which, presumably was written in the sixth century, before the coming of Islam.[27] In Armenian sources, this toponym appears as either Zāvazān or Zozān and, in Arabic texts, it is vocalised either as Zawzān or Zūzān. Moreover, this word exists in various dialects of Eastern Armenian, Kurmanji Kurdish and Assyrian Aramaic, and relates to summer pastures in the mountains. Hence, this would provide the image of the region as a rugged, mountainous area that is lush in the summer, supporting the grazing of domesticated animals. Armenian sources identify Zāvazān with the region of Andzevatsik, corresponding to the area known by Assyrians as Nūdiz, and by Kurds as Nordūz, between the Shatākh (Çatak) and Khoshāb (Güzelsu) valleys. Between the fourth and eighth centuries, this area comprised an Armenian principality ruled by the Andzevatsi family.[28] Later, however, it was incorporated as the eleventh gavar (canton) of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan, the capital of which was at Van. Significantly, Andzevatsik was one of the nine main principalities of Greater Armenia, which prevented the Sasanians from advancing their borders and those of their vassals Iberia and Albania (present-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) further into the interior of Armenia, after the Armenian kingdom was partitioned between the Sasanian and Roman empires in 387. According to Armenian geographers, there were three fortified cities in this region: Ālamān/Olamān (Atabinen), Mihrāvān/Marwānān (Topyıldız) and Akhzī/Akhsīn (Oğuldamı).[29] Also in the region was a significant monastery of the Virgin Mary (Hogeats Vank), which was the residence of the local bishop since the mid-fifth century, and its capital was at the fortress of Kangavār (Örmeli), later moved to the village of Qasrik (Kırkgeçit).[30] Between the fourth and tenth centuries, this area supplied a number of prominent Armenian clergy and noblemen, and continued to have an Armenian population until 1915.

According to Arab geographer and chronicler Ibn Ḥawqal (died c. 978), who was a contemporary of Rabbān Joseph, Zūzān was a part of Outer Armenia, along with Ahlat, Pergri (Muradiye), Erciş and Vastan. The master of Zūzān was thus al-Dayrānī, probably Derenik, the Armenian king of Vaspurakan. He does not mention any trace of a Kurdish presence in that region, where Christians made up a great part of the local population.[31] Writing around the same time, al-Maqdisī (945-991) instead regarded Zūzān as a nāḥiyah (sub-district) of Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar (modern-day Cizre).[32] Another Islamic geographer, Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (1179-1229), writes in the Mu‘jam al-Buldān (Dictionary of Countries) that Zūzān is a region located in the centre of the Armenian mountains between Ahlat, Azerbaijan, Diyarbakır and Mosul. According to him, its inhabitants were Armenians, but there were also some groups of Kurds there.[33] In the same period, Arab historian Ibn al-Athīr (1160-1233) wrote that Zūzān was a vast region located on the eastern border of the Tigris River in the region of Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar, starting at a distance two days from Mosul, extending to the boundaries of Ahlat and, on the Azerbaijan side, extending to the district of Salamas. According to him, there were several fortresses there held by the Bashnawīyah and Bukhtīyah Kurds.[34] This would, therefore, extend the boundaries of Zūzān much further than the Armenian principality of Andzevatsik, stretching from the banks of the Tigris in the west to the Salamas Plain in the east, in the mountains between Lake Van and Mosul – corresponding roughly to the early-modern Kurdish emirates of Hakkâri and Bohtan.

Here, the Vita of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā adds a number of important details regarding the geography and demography of Syriac Zawzān, which are not provided by Armenian or Arabic Islamic sources. For instance, a major character in the narrative is Rabbān Moses who, until his death in 947, served as the abbot of Bēth-Ṣayyārē Monastery, and contributed to its rehabilitation along with his master Rabbān Bar-Yaldā. Originally, he had been a monk at the Rabbān Bokhtyazd (also vocalised “Bukhtīzād”) Monastery in Zawzān, but he was recruited by Rabbān Bar-Yaldā when the latter took refuge there for a brief period. Furthermore, according to the text of Rabbān Joseph’s Vita, Rabbān Moses was from the village of Golmard (vocalised in later copies as Gūlmard), also in Zawzān.[35] Indeed, this is an earlier witness to the toponym Jūlmar – metathesized to Gūrmal and Jūrmal, which is what Hakkâri Assyrians, in their vernacular dialects, called the town of Julāmerk (the present-day provincial centre of Hakkâri).[36] On the other hand, a Church of the East calendrical text describes him as being Ṭālnāyā, i.e., from the Ṭāl valley.[37] As for the location of the Rabbān Bokhtyazd Monastery, scholars such as Fr. Fiey and Wilmshurst have tended to search for it somewhere near the village of Kurkhē (Kurdish: Kulkān) in the Lower Ṭyārē district, 500 metres to the northwest of Līzan (Köprülü).[38] This is plausible, however, there are no local traditions related to such a saint and no church or monastery at Kurkhē – unless the church of St. George at ‘Umrā-Khtāyā, just over a kilometre to the northeast of both Kurkhē and Līzan, can be considered to have been the church of such a monastery. Another option would be the village of Chambā d-Kurkhē in Upper Ṭyārē, which also did not have a church, but the closest village to it, Bē-Mariggo, did have one dedicated to St. Azad, locally known as Bē-Mār-Āzad (i.e., the house of St. Azad), a saint also known to have been associated with Kurkhē.[39] Interestingly, Fr. Fiey suggests that Azad may be an abbreviated doublet of Bokhtyazd. This, however, is unlikely since they are often paired together in ecclesiastical literature, with the former described as the disciple of the latter.[40]

Furthermore, another place in Zawzān mentioned in the Vita of Rabbān Joseph Busnāyā is Māryos, also appearing as Marānos in later copies of the text. This can be none other than the village of Māronis (Kavaklı), known in Kurdish as Marūnis or Marinüs, near the western boundary of modern-day Hakkâri province. As we learn from the Vita, this village was the home of the monk Rabbān Komā, who was set upon by the Dasnāyā Kurd Kāmil, in revenge for his brother who had been killed there.[41] In the Church of the East’s liturgical calendar, we find the name of another monk from this village, Rabbān Yaldā Mārosnāyā, of whom we know nothing else about.[42] By the nineteenth century, however, Māronis had become a Kurdish Muslim village, but locals still point out a spot they call cihê dêrê (i.e., the place of the church), where the church used to be. In sum, according to the clues provided by Rabbān Joseph’s Vita, the tenth-century Assyrian perception of Zawzān and its territory was that it covered the northern and western parts of today’s Hakkâri province, encompassing the Great Zab valley and its tributaries from Kurkhē in the south up to Julāmerk in the north and from Māronis in the west to the mountains bordering the Gāwar Plain in the east. Indeed, this remote area must have been the part of Zawzān populated by an Assyrian, rather than an Armenian majority, which is probably why their accounts of the region’s boundaries do not go much further than the district of Nordūz. Incidentally, much of this “Assyrian” part of Zawzān is occupied by the districts of Upper and Lower Ṭyārē, the name of which can be semantically related to that of the former. This is because, in Syriac, a ṭyārā refers to an enclosure, herd, flock, encampment for flocks, stall or pen for livestock, pastoral village, sheepfold or barn (also metaphorically to a church, convent or community of monks!). It is thus conceivable that Zawzān, the land of summer pastures in the mountains, could be the equivalent of Ṭyārē, the land of pastoral villages and encampments for flocks. Significantly, Rabbān Joseph’s Vita is one of the texts that provide evidence of a significant Christian Assyrian presence in the Hakkâri highlands prior to the Mongol and Turkic invasions of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.[43] At any rate, we notice that Zawzān was not considered a diocese of the Church of the East and did not have its own bishop. However, since it almost exclusively bordered Dāsan to the south, and since these regions were evangelised together by St. Mārī’s disciple St. Ṭomīs, its Christian Assyrian communities must have been under its episcopal jurisdiction. Additionally, we observe in the Acts of St. Mārī, that he sent St. Ṭomīs on his mission from “the land of Erbil,” the centre of what later became the metropolitan archdiocese of Adiabene, of which Dāsan was a suffragan diocese.[44]

(Continued in the next issue)


[1] Vat. Syr. 467, 105r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 167; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 184; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 99.

[2] Vat. Syr. 467, 130r, 132r; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 204, 208; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 311, 313; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 119, 121.

[3] Vat. Syr. 467, 43r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 71; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 2 (1897), p. 404; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 48. This region, it should be noted, lies to the southeast of Bēth-Sayyarē Monastery and is roughly bounded by the triangle formed by the rivers Zab, Gomel and Khazlā (Khāzir).

[4] Vat. Syr. 467, 94v-95r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 152; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 173; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 90-91.

[5] Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 91, fn. 4.

[6] Paul Bedjan (ed.), Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum Syriace, Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1890, Vol. 1, pp. 414-415. Additionally, an old mosque in Bāmarnē, which used to be a church, is held to be the final resting place of Mār Shamlī.

[7] Vat. Syr. 467, 58r-59v; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 94-95; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC,  Vol. 3 (1898), p. 90; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 61-62.

[8] Vat. Syr. 467, 59v; CPB Syr. 193, p. 96; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 91; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 62-63.

[9] Vat. Syr. 467, 55r-56r, 64r-65v, 86r-86v; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 89-91, 103-105, 138-139; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 87-88, 96-97, 117-118; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 59-60, 66-67, 82-83.

[10] Vat. Syr. 467, 79r-81r; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 127-130; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 110-112. Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 77-79.

[11] Vat. Syr. 467, 160v-161r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 243; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 476. Fr. Chūlāgh renders this name in his translation as Abī Taghlib, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 146.

[12] Jean-Maurice Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus novus: répetoire des diocèses Syriaques orientaux et occidentaux, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993, p. 73.

[13] Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 56, fn. 5.

[14] Jean-Maurice Fiey, “Proto-Histoire chrétienne du Hakkari turc,” L’Orient Syrien, Vol. 9, No. 36 (1964), pp. 446-447.

[15] Vat. Syr. 467, 85v.

[16] CPB Syr. 193, p. 137; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 82. Chabot’s translation reads, “On the way [to Dāsan] I must encounter a large river,” “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 116-117.

[17] Bedjan (ed.), Acta Martyrum, Vol. 1, pp. 409, 418, 419.

[18] Fiey, “Proto-Histoire chrétienne du Hakkari turc,” p. 447.

[19] Vat. Syr. 467, 84r-85r; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 135-137; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 115-116; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 81-82.

[20] Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 81, fn. 1.

[21] Chabot (ed.), Le Livre de la Chasteté, pp. 56, 67.

[22] Vat. Syr. 467, 119r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 188; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 300; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 110.

[23] Vat. Syr. 467, 119r-120v; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 188-190; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), pp. 300-301; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, pp. 110-111.

[24] Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 110, fn. 1.

[25] This manuscript, a Qdham w-Vāthar (ܩܕ̣ܵܡ ܘܒ̣ܵܬܲܪ, Book of Divine Office) kept in a private collection near Tell-Tamr, Syria, was completed on Saturday 28 January 1794 by the deacon Haydēnī, son of the priest Yāhvo, son of Moses of Gissā, at Dehē in the Ṣapnā district, for the church of the Virgin Mary in Kānī-Balāv, in the Shūkho district. It should be noted that Dehē is only 5km away from Kānī-Balāv as the crow flies, and 11 km by road.

[26] On its own, for instance, Qūrē (ܩܘܼܪܹ̈ܐ) could means frosts, furnaces, bundles or ladies, and Sāmkhā (ܣܵܡܟ̣ܵܐ) could mean a pillar, column, base, support, cell or monk’s hut!

[27] Amir Harrak (ed.), The Acts of Mār Mārī the Apostle, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005, pp. 24-27; Fiey, “Proto-Histoire chrétienne du Hakkari turc,” p. 462-463.

[28] Aram Nahapetovich Ter-Ghevondyan, Армения и арабский халифат [Armenia and the Arab Caliphate], Yerevan: Academy of Sciences of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1977, pp. 22, 182.

[29] The first two of these fortified cities were known to be Assyrian villages already in the seventeenth century. Suren Tigrani Yeremian, Հայաստանը ըստ “Աշխարհացոյց”-ի [Armenia According to the “Ashkharatsuyts”], Yerevan: Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic Academy of Sciences Publishing House, 1963, p. 36.

[30] Thomas Alan Sinclair, Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey, London: The Pindar Press, 1987, Vol. 1, pp. 316-317.

[31] Boris James, “Constructing the Realm of the Kurds (al-Mamlaka al-Akradiyya): Kurdish In-betweenness and Mamluk Ethnic Engineering (1130-1340 CE),” in Steve Tamari (ed.), Grounded Identities: Territory and Belonging in the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East and Mediterranean, Leiden: Brill, 2019, p. 38.

[32] Vladimir Minorsky, “Kurds,” in M. Th. Houtsma, A. J. Wensinck, T. W. Arnold, W. Heffening and E. Lévi-Provençal (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936), Vol. 4 (‘Itḳ-Kwaṭṭa), Leiden: E. J. Brill and Luzac & Co., 1927, p. 1135.

[33] James, “Constructing the Realm of the Kurds,” p. 38.

[34] Minorsky, “Kurds,” p. 1135.

[35] Vat. Syr. 467, 112r; CPB Syr. 193, p. 178; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 293; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 105. In 757, there was a Syriac Orthodox bishop in ‘Gulmargā’ named Jonah, dependent on the Maphrianate of Tikrit, Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus novus, p. 202. Much later, in 1607, we find a metropolitan of the Church of the East named Savr-Īsho‘ at ‘Giulmar’ or ‘Giulmahr,’ ibid., p. 77. More recently we find that, in 1913, there were 200 Chaldean Catholics in Julāmerk, with a priest, chapel and school, Joseph Tfinkdji, L’Eglise Chaldéenne Catholique: Autrefois et Aujourd’Hui, Paris: Bureau des Études Ecclésiastiques, 1913, p. 69.

[36] Surma d’Bait Mar Shimun, Assyrian Church Customs and the Murder of Mar Shimun, London: The Faith Press, 1920, p. 2. It should here be noted that the –k ending of the town’s Kurdish name comes from the Kurmanji diminutive –ik or –ke.

[37] Surgādā Mvashlā [The Complete Calendar], Urmia: Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission Press, 1894, p. 7. The entrance of the Ṭāl valley is 10 km away from the old town of Julāmerk (present-day Biçer Mahallesi) as the crow flies, and 16 km by road.

[38] Fiey, “Proto-Histoire chrétienne du Hakkari turc,” p. 466; Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East, p. 290.

[39] Surgādā Mvashlā, p. 5. Kurkhē (ܟܘܼܪ̈ܚܹܐ) is a Syriac word meaning huts, sheds, hovels or cabins, but also hermitages or cells.

[40] Joannes Cornelius Josephus Sanders, Assyrian-Chaldean Christians in Eastern Turkey and Iran: Their last homeland re-charted, Hernen: A. A. Brediusstichting, 1997, p. 30.

[41] Vat. Syr. 467, 119r-119v; CPB Syr. 193, pp. 188-189; Chabot, “Vie du moine Rabban Youssef Bousnaya,” ROC, Vol. 3 (1898), p. 300; Chūlāgh, Tārīkh Yūsuf Būsnāyā, p. 110.

[42] Surgādā Mvashlā, p. 7.

[43] This was a theory first propagated by Sir Austen Henry Layard and perpetuated by Rev. George Percy Badger who, quoting him, baselessly claimed that: “[Tamerlane] ‘followed them with relentless fury, destroyed their churches, and put to the sword all who were unable to escape to the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the Coordish mountains.’ This would bring down the arrival of the Nestorian colonies in Coordistan to the middle of the fourteenth century, and I am strongly inclined to believe that previous to that period there were no Christians inhabiting that district. Had it been otherwise we should certainly find some account of them in the more ancient histories of this sect; but among the many catalogues of Nestorian bishoprics still extant there is not one mentioned which answers to any of those now existing in Coordistan proper. Moreover there are no architectural or other monumental records in the mountains which argue in their behalf a greater antiquity of residence than the period generally assigned to them,” Nestorians and their Rituals, Vol. 1, p. 257; Cf. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains: with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians, London: John Murray, 1849, Vol. 1, pp. 257-259.

[44] Harrak (ed.), Acts of Mār Mārī, pp. 24-25.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap