Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Pe ...

Persian Azerbaijan

Towards the east, the country of the Assyrian tribes was two hours’ distance from Urmia.¹⁷ The Assyrians of Persian Azerbaijan were concentrated throughout the whole region of Lake Urmia, which measured fifty miles long. Here were the fertile plains, which stretched westward to the border of Turkey. As Dr. Grant learnt from the local Muslims, the Assyrians had been settled there before the advance of the Muslims and even in the pre-Christian era, while according to local Muslim scholars, Afshars and other Muslim groups had settled there only in the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The Assyrians had succeeded in turning their land into a veritable paradise as western visitors and observers described it; however, massacres and persecution and ethnic cleansing had gradually thinned this dense population of Assyrians, until in the latter half of the nineteenth century, only 102 villages remained.¹⁸ It was among the Assyrians of Persian Azerbaijan that Rome enjoyed its greatest successes in converting the followers of the Church of the East to Catholic doctrine.¹⁹ Similar activities took place in the Ra’aya districts of Bash Qala, adjoining the Persian border, near the uppermost tributaries of the Zab.²⁰

Districts of Ra’aya

There were many districts containing large numbers of Assyrian Ra’aya. They were subject to Kurdish and Afshar landlords, and according to western observers they suffered continual oppression, persecution, and exploitation. Among these were the districts of Gawar or Gavar, Somai, Chara, and Mamoodiah.²¹ In the district of Berwar, located south of Tiyari, its intense Assyrian concentration was reduced to seventeen villages, which were all that remained from the preceding changes: Bebal, Ankari, Malkta, Halwa, Bismiyah, Duri, Iyat, Aina Nuni, Derishki, Mayah, Akushta, Misekeh, Robarah, Dereghl, Tashish, Besh, and Hayis.²² In 1846 Layard visited Berwar and reported that the district contained villages belonging to both Kurds and Nestorians.²³ Similar developments had affected the Assyrian settlement in the upper regions of Persian Azerbaijan.