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

As for the conditions of the remaining Assyrian inhabitants of Asheetha, the vice-consul was informed that Bedr Khan had left them destitute. However, the Turkish government was party to the oppression and had no intention of relieving the sufferers. Furthermore, the Turkish envoys sent to inquire into Bedr Khan’s conduct had been bribed: ‘Nizam Effendi’ had received fifty thousand piastres. The contemporary westerners in the region reported that persecution of the Christians was daily practice.¹⁴

What complicated the situation and compounded the miseries of the people was Bedr Khan’s growing fanaticism. Rassam reported that under mounting influence from the extreme fanatical religious leaders around him, he had adopted the tenets of the order of Darwishes and had started practising its rituals. This turn had affected all the non-Muslim indigenous inhabitants of the land, especially the Christians and the Yazidis, whom he was forcing to choose between Islam and the sword. Among other abuses, Rassam reported in January that the Christians of Tur Abdin were being forced to carry heavy stones up to the top of the mountain where the Kurdish leader was building a castle.¹⁵

4. Outstanding Differences Between Bedr Khan and Noor Allah Beg of Hakkari

Noor Allah Beg of Hakkari, Bedr Khan’s brother-in-law, was presented as a prime agitator encouraging him to attack the Christian Assyrian tribes of Tiyari and Hakkari, but he was secretly among the earliest Kurdish leaders to betray him. These early signs of differences, which later turned to enmity, reflected deep-seated rivalries between the two leaders. One was their competition for the Kurdish leadership; another was the control of the lands that had come under direct Kurdish rule, which included the homeland of the newly subdued Assyrian Christians. Their country nominally lay within the authority of Noor Allah Beg but was in fact occupied by Bedr Khan’s forces.