In 1849, British traveler
Austen Henry Layard described Simele as a
Yazidi village “crowned with a mud-built castle,” and recorded meeting a Yazidi chieftain named Abde Agha there. Simele was populated by Armenian and Assyrian refugees fleeing massacres during the
Assyrian and
Armenian genocides. During the
Simele massacre in 1933, around three thousand Assyrians were massacred prompting many to flee the country as a consequence. The main Assyrian tribe in Simele at the time was
Baz. In 2011, the population was mostly
Kurdish with a small Assyrian minority of 635 people. Around half of the Assyrian minority adhere to the
Assyrian Church of the East. A small Armenian minority still exists in the town. ==Footnotes==