Antiquity Tur Abdin was referred to as the "Land of the Arameans" in the inscriptions of
Assur-Bel-Kala, indicating that some territories west and northwest of Assyria were considered to be inhabited by
Arameans.
Assyrian king
Adad-nirari II, who came to throne in the late 10th century BCE, removed the
Arameans from political power in the Kashiari mountains (Tur Abdin). In the 9th century BCE,
Ashurnasirpal II described crossing the plateau of Tur Abdin (which he calls "Kashyari") on his way to attack the region of
Nairi, more than once. He erected a monument in
Matiate, modern-day
Midyat in Tur Abdin, which remains to be found. His successor,
Shalmaneser III, also crossed Tur Abdin, whom the Arameans later would again rebel against at the end of his term. Most ancient monuments in Tur Abdin are Christian, but as attested by Ashurnasirpal II, the area has a pre-Christian history. Older names of the area indicate that the people living here worshipped
Assyrian deities. Arches on the north side of the churches in
Zaz and
Saleh suggest pre-Christian buildings originally stood on the sites.
Ancient Assyro-Babylonian religion is believed to have survived in the region until as late as the 18th century. In 586 B.C. the prophet
Ezekiel mentions the famed wine of Izlo, on the southern edge of the plateau of Tur Abdin, in his prophecy against Tyre. The
Mor Gabriel Monastery, one of the oldest
Syriac Orthodox churches in the world, was founded in 397 by the ascetic Mor Shmu'el (Samuel) and his student Mor Shem'un (Simon). According to tradition, Shem'un had a
vision in which an
angel commanded him to build a House of Prayer at a location marked by three large stone blocks. When Shem'un awoke, he took his teacher to the site and discovered the stone that the angel had indicated. It was at this spot that Mor Gabriel Monastery was constructed. In
Late Antiquity, the area was part of the
Roman Empire's province of
Mesopotamia and served as an important center of Roman Christianity, referred to in Latin as
Mons Masius or
Izla. The fortress of Rhabdion was mentioned by the 6th-century Greek historian
Procopius, while the 6th-century and the work of the 7th-century Greek geographer
George of Cyprus both attest that
Turabdium was an
episcopal see.
Modern Before World War I, the
Syriac Christian population of the
Ottoman Empire has been estimated at around 619,000. Figures from the
Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople indicate that more than one fifth lived in the
Armenian vilayets: about 60,000 in Diyarbakır, 25,000 in
Sebastia, 18,000 in
Van, 15,000 in Bitlis, and 5,000 in
Kharberd.
Midyat, in
Diyarbekir vilayet, was the only major town in the Ottoman Empire with an Assyrian majority, although this population was divided among
Syriac Orthodox,
Chaldean Catholics, and
Protestants. Syriac Orthodox Christians were concentrated in the hilly rural areas around Midyat, where they populated almost 100 villages and worked in agriculture or crafts. Syriac Orthodox culture was centered in two monasteries near Mardin (west of Tur Abdin):
Mor Gabriel and
Deyrulzafaran. Outside of the area of core Syriac settlement, there were also sizable populations in the towns of
Diyarbakır,
Urfa,
Harput, and
Adiyaman as well as villages. Unlike the Assyrian population of Tur Abdin, many of these Assyrians spoke other languages besides
Syriac. During
World War I, around 300,000 Assyrian Christians were killed in the genocide perpetrated by the
Ottoman Empire, known in Syriac as
Sayfo, meaning 'the sword.' In the last few decades, caught between Turkish assimilation policies against
Kurds and
Kurdish resistance, many Assyrians have fled the region or been killed. Today, only about 5,000 Assyrians remain, which is a quarter of the Christian population from thirty years ago. Most have fled to Syria (where the city of
Qamishli was established by them), Iraq (where significant Syriac Orthodox communities had existed in
Mosul,
Bartella, and
Bashiqa), Europe (particularly
Sweden,
Germany,
France, the
United Kingdom and the
Netherlands),
Australia and the
United States. In the past few years, a few families have returned to Tur Abdin from the
diaspora. Due to migration, the Syriacs' main residential area in Turkey today is
Istanbul, where around 20,000 lives there. (Mother of God)
Syriac Orthodox church in
Midyat As of 2019, an estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 of the country's 25,000
Assyrians live in Tur Abdin, and they are spread among 30 villages,
hamlets, and towns. The late patriarch of the
Syriac Orthodox Church,
Ignatius Aphrem I Barsoum, authored a detailed work on the history of Tur Abdin up to his time, titled
Maktbonuto d-ʿal ʾatro d-Ṭur ʿabdin, with a posthumously-published Arabic translation by Boulos Behnam (1963) and an English translation entitled
History of Tur Abdin by Matti Moosa (2009). Due to his ecclesiastical position, Barsoum had great opportunities to gather significant and previously little-known information for these biographies from various
Syriac prayer books, lectionaries, liturgical texts, and
gospels in various churches throughout the East, particularly in Tur Abdin. He also discovered manuscripts that were unknown to other
Orientalists, who had to rely on those available in Western libraries.
Recent conflicts On 10 February 2006 and the following day, large demonstrations took place in the city of
Midyat in Tur Abdin.
Muslims, enraged by the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, gathered in Estel, the new part of the city, and started marching towards the old part of Midyat (6 kilometers away), where the Assyrians live. The mob was stopped by the police before reaching old
Midyat. In 2008 a series of legal challenges were made against the
monastery of Mor Gabriel. Some local Kurdish villages sought to claim land on which the monastery had paid taxes since the 1930s as belonging to the villages, and made other accusations against the monastery. This led to considerable diplomatic and human rights action throughout Europe and within Turkey. == Monasteries ==