ULUSLARARASI ŞIRNAK VE ÇEVRESİ SEMPOZYUMU (14–16 Mayıs 2010) INTERNATIONAL ŞIRNAK AND ITS VICINITY SYMPOSIUM (14–16 May 2010) SEMPOZYUM BİLDİRİLERİ SYMPOSIUM PAPERS EDİTÖR Yrd. Doç. Dr. M. Nesim DORU 2 ULUSLARARASI ŞIRNAK VE ÇEVRESİ SEMPOZYUMU ŞIRNAK ÜNİVERSİTESİ ULUSLARARASI ŞIRNAK VE ÇEVRESİ SEMPOZYUMU 1 ISBN : 978-605-88496-0-0 www.sirnak.edu.tr e-posta: [email protected] Redaksiyon : Harun Takçı Yapım - Baskı : MRK Baskı ve Tanıtım Hizmetleri Ltd. Şti. Örnek Oto Sanayi Sitesi 1254. Sokak No:2 OSTİM / ANKARA Tel : 0312 354 54 57 Faks : 0312 385 79 05 Birinci Baskı : 2000 Adet Basım Yeri – Tarihi : Ankara – 2010 Uluslararası Şırnak ve Çevresi Sempozyumu Bildirileri: Editör M. Nesim Doru Şırnak Üniversitesi Yayınları 2010 / 1246 Sayfa Dizin ve kaynakça var. ISBN : 978-605-88496-0-0 Kitabın içindeki makalelerden makale sahipleri sorumludur. Kullanım hakları Uluslararası Şırnak ve Çevresi Sempozyumu yetkili organlarına aittir. İzinsiz alıntı yapılamaz. CHRISTIAN SETTLEMENTS AND POPULATION IN BOHTAN IN LATE OTTOMAN TIMES ∗ By David GAUNT If we look at Şirnak and its immediate surroundings, this corresponds with the older geographical concept of Bohtan. Bohtan has never been an administrative entity, but in general it is a territory bounded in the north by the Bohtan River, in the south by the Khabur River, in the west by the Tur Abdin and in the east by the Hakkari mountain range.1 In late Ottoman times this was a transitional region with a mixture of Kurds and Arabs, and a sizeable minority of Armenian, Nestorian and Chaldean Christians. The intention of this article is to bring together documentation on the size and extent of the Christian population on the eve of World War I. A modern French geographer Michel Chevalier has concluded “Unfortunately it is not very easy, despite the relative abundance of our documentation, to locate in a sure way the Christian peoples of Bohtan”.2 After having recently gone through the material, I am forced to agree with him. This was an area that few travelers stayed for long periods of time. The few important towns – basically Cizre and Siirt – were on the periphery of the region. As far as is known there was never a foreign consulate located there. As Chevalier noted there are some primary sources. The problem is that the sources do not agree with each other. This means that there is very little continuity between reports as to the size of population. But to make matters worse there is no correspondence even about the number and names of the Christian settlements, let alone their size. Probably we will just have to accept this lack of logical cohesion. The Ottoman government published population figures by vilayet and sancak. The Ottoman state statistics divided the population by male and female, and then into various religious groups. These have been collected and published by Kemal Karpat.3 He gives three tables that are of relevance for the Siirt sancak, see table 1. Table 1. Ottoman census for Siirt sancak by religious group. Religion 188/82-1893 19006-07 1914 Muslim 49,095 69,499 86,463 Armenian 11,971 6,666 10,828 Armenian Catholic Not given 2,596 Not given Protestant 561 368 519 Monophysites (Syrian 261 Not given Not given Orthodox?) Syrian Orthodox Not given Not given 3,642 ∗ Professor of History, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Swden. E-mail [email protected]. 1 Hartmann, Martin, ”Bohtan. Eine topographisch-historische Studie” parts 1 and 2, in Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 1896 and 1897. 2 Chevalier, Michel. Les montagnards chrétiens du Hakkâri et du Kurdistan septentrional. (Paris : Publications du département de Géographie de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne 1983). P. 118. 3 Karpat, Kemal H. Osmanli Nüfusu (1930-1914) Demografik ve Sosyal Özellikleri. (Istanbul : Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari 2003), p. 170-171, 200-201, 212-213. 846 ULUSLARARASI ŞIRNAK VE ÇEVRESİ SEMPOZYUMU Chaldean Not given 3 4,356 Catholics 2,446 Not given Not given Gypsies Not given 73 Not given Total 75,760 77,342 105,808 It is possible that the territory covered by Siirt sancak had been enlarged by 1914 (it included the kazas of Siirt, Eruh, Pervari, Sirvan and Garzan) and that this would explain some of the great increase in population in the few years between 1907 and 1914. The table is very erratic in expressing the non-Muslim groups and one major group that we know was present, namely the Nestorians, is totally missing despite the historical fact that they had two bishoprics in the region serving many villages east and south-east of Siirt as well as in the Atel region.4 The Chaldeans must have been much greater than the 3 indicated in the census of 1907. What the census does indicate is awareness that there was a significant non-Muslim presence in the region and that there was a mix of Armenians (Gregorians and Catholics) as well as Assyrians (belonging to the Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean churches). This article mostly deals with the Assyrian populations, but there is information on the Armenians. In the nineteenth century there was an Armenian Gregorian Orthodox diocese based on Siirt. It served about fifty villages in the Bohtan and Müküs valley with 6,240 families.5 The Assyro-Chaldean Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 included a table indicating its estimates of the population of certain provinces and districts. Among the territories was the sancak of Siirt, which then administered the Bohtan region. According to this list there were 97,000 inhabitants of whom 61,000 were Assyro-Chaldeans (a political term indicating non-Armenian Christians) and 6,000 Armenians. This would give a Christian presence of 69 percent. This percentage may be incorrect, but it indicates that contemporary observers perceived the region as having a very strong Christian presence. The other population elements were given as 2,000 Turkmen, 15,000 settled Kurds and 13,000 settled Arabs. The French Dominican Monk estimated that there were 60,000 Christians in the Siirt sancak – 15,000 Chaldeans, 25,000 Armenians and 20,000 Syrian Orthodox (Rhetoré p 225). Other types of enumeration give an idea of the spreading and density of settlement. A long list composed for Agha Petros, the Assyrian leader, was delivered to the diplomatic delegations at the Paris Peace conference.6 This was obviously based on statistics supplied by the various religious organisations as the territorial divisions appear to be bishoprics and parishes. A clear disadvantage is that the list often only gives the number of houses, not the number of persons. It is not very clear what is meant by “house” because it is possible that several related families could live together inside the same building. Table 2 enumerates the villages in the Nestorian diocese of Bawar in Bohtan. The area covered should be in the eastern Bohtan and it extends from Silopi in the south to Khumara in the north. An interesting feature of this list – as well as that in Table 3 – is that it deals not just with Assyrian villages, but also takes up villages designated Kurdish or Armenian. Why this is done is somewhat mysterious, as it obviously does not include all Armenian or Kurdish villages. It may be that that these villages at one time were Nestorian, but that the inhabitants had converted or were displaced by other people. Internal evidence cannot solve this problem. The names in the list are in French transliteration, which was the working language of the peace conference. Thus some of the spelling may be strange. It has not always been possible to identify these places. Here in parenthesis are place-names if it has proved possible to make 4 Wilmshurst, David, The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East 1318-1913 (Lovain: Peeters 2000), p. 92. 5 Wilmshurst, p. 92. 6 Printed in Destani, B., ed., Minorities in the Middle East. Christian Minorities 1838-1967. Assyrian Communities in the Levant and Iraq, Part 1 1880-1938. (Cambridge: Archive Editions 2007) 91-121. INTERNATIONAL ŞIRNAK AND ITS VICINITY SYMPOSIUM 847 a new identification. The place names were typewritten, but the numbers of houses were written in ink and probably by Petros himself. Table 2. The Nestorian District of Bohtan Barwar Village Name Houses Ethnicity Akouchan 53 Armenian Alkip 35 Armenian Ari 25 Kurd7 [Armenian ?] Arichcass 50 Assyrian Armakh 180 Kurd Armichatt [Ermishat] 63 Armenian Awbin 17 Kurd Banidjan 95 Armenian Bidara 50 Kurd Bindoui 70 Assyrian Bourbe 30 Assyrian Caival 9 Assyrian Casrouki 18 Kurd Chaminiss 60 Assyrian Charnak 63 Armenian Chwita [Hwitla] 52 Assyrian Dachtik 32 Armenian Gouchaniss 80 Assyrian Houl 20 Armenian [ruin] Karmiance 50 Assyrian Kep [Kib] 25 Assyrian (Muslim since 1895) Khaskir 150 Kurd Khoumar [Khumara] 36 Armenian Kidia 80 Asirían Kouratch 60 Assyrian Malik 60 Armenian Moullagbeïro 52 Armenian Ourtch 65 Assyrian Oussian 13 Assyrian Ouzim 62 Armenian Pakh 11 Assyrian Parkhikhi [Parakh] 100 Kurd Sagoukir 40 Kurd Sarap 88 Kurd Sloupia [Silopi] 70 Armenian Valace 50 Armenian Yourachine 72 Assyrian Total 727 Assyrians 691 Armenians 668 Kurds Table 3 is puzzling because the place-name Ispirad is otherwise completely unknown. The territory covered was traditionally termed the diocese of “Atel and Bohtan”. The region covers includes Cizre and Siirt as well as villages near Zahko. This should represent the most westernmost outpost of the Nestorian Church. 7 Admiralty War Staff, A Handbook of Mesopotamia vol iv Northern Mesopotamia and Central Kurdistan (London 1917) states it was Armenian, p. 182. 848 ULUSLARARASI ŞIRNAK VE ÇEVRESİ SEMPOZYUMU