Beth Garmai

Beth Garmai, (Arabic: باجرمي‎ Bājarmī, Middle Persian: Garamig/Garamīkān/Garmagān, New Persian/Kurdish: Garmakan, Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܓܪܡܐ‎ Bêṯ Garmē,[1] Latin and Greek: Garamaea) is a historical region around the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.[2] It is located at southeast of the Little Zab, southwest of the mountains of Shahrazor, northeast of the Tigris and Hamrin Mountains, although sometimes including parts of southwest of Hamrin Mountains, and northwest of the Sirwan River.

Map showing the Roman-Sasanian borders.

The name "Beth Garmai" or "Beth Garme" may be of Syriac origin which meaning "the house of bones", which is thought to be a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids after a decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Darius III on the plains between the Upper Zab and Diyala river. However, according to Michael G. Morony, it was named after a people, possibly a Persian tribe.[3]

The region was a province, Garmekan, under the Sasanians. It was a prosperous metropolitan province centered at Karkha D'Beth Slokh (Kirkuk), It had a substantial Nestorian Assyrian population until the fourteenth century when the region was conquered by Timurlane.[4]