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

The black clouds that were gathering in the sky over Tekhoma in October 1846 were made even darker by Layard’s remarks about the prosperity and the military power of the district. During his tour throughout the country of the tribes, including the district of Tekhoma, just a few days before Bedr Khan began the slaughter, he found the district still prosperous compared with others;⁵ however, when he reached the villages of Birigai and Ghissa, he noticed that their inhabitants were anxious to hear the latest news about the anticipated invasion and Bedr Khan’s Beg threat to massacre them.⁶

Once again, just as during the massacre of Tiyari and Diz in 1843, the Ottoman authorities gave Bedr Khan a free hand to crush the power of the Assyrian tribes. In the autumn of 1846, the tribes were still suffering from the after effects of Bedr’s first onslaught; their country was almost in ruin, and the people had not recovered from the general destruction. Now Tekhoma’s turn came to face a similar fate.

3. The Turks and the Continued Massacres of Assyrian Christians

Bedr Khan’s preparations for the attack on Tekhoma were well observed and closely followed by the Ottoman Turks in Mosul. The inhabitants of the district, feeling their own weakness and inability to stand the thrust of the upcoming Kurdish invasion, applied on many occasions to the pasha of Mosul, begging him for protection, but he seems to have put them off with evasive answers. The pasha’s Turkish envoy to Bedr Khan was well publicised and allegedly ordered to convey a message that if the beg caused any harm to the Christians of Tekhoma, he would pay with his own head. But Bedr Khan’s reply to the pasha to mind his own business, and that he would allow no interference in the affairs of the mountains, shows that he quite correctly took the envoy’s threat for empty words. The different attitudes of the Turks and the Kurds were made to represent a disagreement between them over Tekhoma, when in fact both had a common interest in subduing its inhabitants.⁷

Before the attack, the authorities tried to lull the victims into a false sense of security and so lower their state of readiness. In the midst of all these rapid developments, Noor Allah Beg of Hakkari sent a message summoning all the maliks and ra’eses of the Assyrian tribes. Surprisingly, it was the envoy himself who warned them not to respond because of his leader’s ill intentions towards them, and that if they obeyed, they would all be put to death.