Çatalçam, Dargeçit

The Syriac name of the village is derived from "dayro" ("monastery" in Syriac) and "Slibo" ("cross" in Syriac), thus Dayro da-Slibo translates to "Monastery of the Cross".[5] The village's alternative name, the Monastery of Beth El,[4] is composed of "beth" ("house" in Syriac) and "El" ("God" in Syriac), and therefore translates to "Monastery of the House of God".[7]

The foundation of the monastery, that would later become a village, is attributed to Saint Aho the Solitary in the 6th century, but it is suggested that it was founded earlier.[5] The monastery was named after a piece of the True Cross that Saint Aho brought back from Constantinople.[6] Saint Gabriel of Beth Qustan is alleged to have resurrected the abbot of the monastery in the 7th century.[8] Dayro da-Slibo is first mentioned in 774, in which year many monks there died from plague.[9] Bishop Sovo of Tur Abdin is attested at the monastery before 790.[9] In 1088, after the division of the diocese of Tur Abdin into the sees of Qartmin and Hah, Dayro da-Slibo became the seat of the bishops of Hah.[6] Masud of Zaz, who later became Patriarch of Tur Abdin, was abbot of the monastery from c. 1462/1463 until his ordination as bishop of Ḥesno d'Kifo in 1480/1481.[10]

In the mid-19th century,[4] the monastery became a village, and roughly 20 Assyrian families inhabited Dayro da-Slibo in 1892.[6] Dayro da-Slibo was populated by 400 Assyrians in 1914; the Assyrian genocide in the following year resulted in many deaths, including Antimus Yaʿqub of Esfes, the last Bishop of Dayro da-Slibo.[6] 70 Assyrians were later killed by Kurds in the aftermath of the genocide.[7] During the Sheikh Said rebellion, in 1925-1926, Kurdish rebels used Dayro da-Slibo as a military base.[11] The villagers found shelter in nearby caves whilst the village was damaged by Turkish aerial bombardment.[7] In 1967, 88 Assyrians populated Dayro da-Slibo,[6] however, the population declined as villagers emigrated to Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Australia as a consequence of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict.[7]

On 2 August 1992, the cemetery and villagers' houses were destroyed, and its population forcibly evacuated by the Turkish army.[12][13] Villagers later returned and by 2000, the village was inhabited by 13 people.[1] On 17 July 2004, Gevriye Arslan, the village mukhtar, was murdered by Kurds after he refused to transfer to them the land of a Christian woman who had been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam.[14] Dayro da-Slibo was inhabited by 2 Assyrian families in 2013.[2] A land dispute over the seizure of villagers' land by a neighbouring Kurdish clan that began in 2008 was not resolved until 2015 due to the Kurds' threat of violence.[15] The Kurds were dislodged from the Assyrians' land by a large Turkish military force accompanied by military helicopters.[15]

Notes

Citations

• Atto, Naures (2011). Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora: Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora (PDF). Leiden University Press. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
• Baumer, Christoph (2016). The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Courtois, Sébastien de (2013). "Tur Abdin : Réflexions sur l'état présent descommunautés syriaques du Sud-Est de la Turquie,mémoire, exils, retours". Cahier du Gremmamo (in French). 21: 113–150.
• Güsten, Susanne (2016). A Farewell to Tur Abdin (PDF). Retrieved 27 December 2019.
• Johnson, Dale A. (2008). Tracts on the Mountain of the Servants. ISBN 9781435739918.
• Palmer, Andrew (1990). Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier: The Early History of Tur Abdin. Cambridge University Press.
• Sinclair, T.A. (1989). Eastern Turkey: An Architectural & Archaeological Survey, Volume III. Pindar Press. ISBN 9780907132349.
• Takahashi, Hidemi (2011). "al-Ṣalīb, Dayr". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition. Gorgias Press.
• Teule, Herman G. B. (2011). "Masʿūd of Ṭur ʿAbdin". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition. Gorgias Press.