In brief

The essential points

  • Sayfo, meaning “sword,” is a community name for connected episodes of mass violence during the First World War, especially in 1915.
  • Experiences differed across Hakkari, Diyarbekir and Tur Abdin, and Urmia-Salmas; sources must be read region by region.
  • Genocide scholars and some states or institutions recognise the events as genocide, while recognition is not universal and published death estimates vary.

What does Sayfo mean?

Sayfo means “sword” in Syriac and related Neo-Aramaic usage. It names mass killing, forced expulsion, abduction, starvation, destruction of villages and religious sites, and the dispersal of Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac and Aramean Christian communities during the First World War. The year 1915 is central, but violence and flight extended across 1914–1918 and into a longer post-war crisis.[1][2]

The people affected did not all use one identity label or belong to one church. Some scholars use “Assyrian genocide” as the most recognisable English term; others write Sayfo or name Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean communities together. Good usage explains this range rather than treating terminology as a reason to doubt the violence itself.[1][8]

Communities before the war

Before 1914, Church of the East communities lived in the Hakkari mountains, where village and tribal structures existed within an Ottoman-Kurdish borderland. Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic communities were concentrated in Tur Abdin, Mardin, Diyarbekir and other districts. Assyrian and Chaldean communities also lived in the Urmia and Salmas plains of Qajar Iran, alongside Armenians, Muslims and other neighbours.[3][4]

These settings were politically distinct. Ottoman provincial administration, tribal authority, missionary networks, Russian-Ottoman rivalry and local alliances differed by region. Describing one uniform campaign everywhere erases the mechanisms historians are trying to understand. It also encourages collective blame, as if every Kurdish, Turkish or Muslim neighbour acted alike.[3][1]

Hakkari: war, resistance and expulsion

In Hakkari, wartime mobilisation, pressure from Ottoman authorities and attacks by armed forces and some local tribal groups produced siege, resistance and eventual mass flight. Assyrian communities were not passive; armed self-defence and political alliances shaped events. That fact does not make civilian targeting or expulsion a conventional battle between equal forces.[3][2]

Survivors moved through Iran and later toward Iraq and the Caucasus under extreme conditions. The loss of villages and the patriarchal centre at Qudshanis transformed Church of the East geography. Post-war attempts to secure return or a protected settlement failed, and refugee politics became central to later Assyrian history in Iraq.[5][1]

Diyarbekir, Mardin and Tur Abdin

In Diyarbekir province and neighbouring districts, arrests, organised convoys, village attacks, looting and killing struck Armenian and Syriac Christian populations. Research traces the roles of Ottoman officials, party networks, military and irregular formations, and local actors. The pace and form differed between towns and rural areas, and some communities survived through defence, negotiation or refuge in monasteries.[1][3]

Local Muslims and Kurds appear in the record as perpetrators, bystanders and protectors. Naming officials, units or organisations where evidence allows is more accurate than assigning guilt to an entire people or religion. It also preserves the moral significance of rescue and protection without using exceptional helpers to minimise systematic persecution.[3][2]

Urmia and Salmas

The Urmia-Salmas region lay in Qajar Iran but became a battlefield for Russian, Ottoman and local forces. Christian communities experienced repeated changes of control, killings, siege, disease and flight. The presence of armed groups and foreign armies produced a chronology distinct from Ottoman districts farther west.[4][3]

In 1918, a mass exodus carried survivors south toward British-held territory in Iraq; many died from attack, hunger and illness. Urmia’s flourishing Neo-Aramaic print and educational culture was dispersed. Some Assyrians later returned to Iran, while others rebuilt community institutions in Iraq, the Soviet Union, the United States and elsewhere.[6][1]

How do historians know?

The evidence includes Ottoman documents, diplomatic and military reports, German, Russian, French and British records, missionary papers, church archives, contemporary publications, survivor testimony and later oral history. Each has strengths and limitations. Missionaries had institutional motives; diplomats saw only part of a region; state records can conceal as well as reveal; memory preserves experience while changing through later narration.[3][1]

Responsible scholarship compares source types and reconstructs local sequences. It does not discard survivor testimony because it is emotional, nor accept every retrospective figure without checking how it was produced. The relative shortage and dispersal of archives make songs, family narratives and oral memory especially important, but they work best when context and transmission are made visible.[1][7]

Death tolls, genocide classification and recognition

Published death estimates differ substantially. Records are incomplete; historians define geographic scope, years and community labels differently; and wartime flight, disease and disappearance are difficult to separate. A single precise number without attribution creates false certainty. The historical scale is established by converging regional evidence, not by one universally accepted total.[1][2]

The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a 2007 resolution recognising Ottoman campaigns against Assyrians and Greeks, alongside Armenians, as genocide. That is recognition by a scholarly association, not a court ruling or a universal state position. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Armenian Genocide overview also situates Assyrians among Christian populations affected by CUP policies, but Sayfo-specific research remains necessary.[8][9]

Aftermath and living memory

Sayfo changed the human geography of Hakkari, Tur Abdin and Urmia. Survivors built refugee settlements, joined older urban communities and carried manuscripts, liturgy, songs and village memories into new countries. Later violence—including Simele in 1933—deepened insecurity and made the First World War a reference point for political claims and family history.[5][10]

Commemoration serves mourning, education and campaigns for recognition. It can also become a setting for contested numbers and nationalist accusation. Evidence-led remembrance names responsible governments, officials, military or irregular formations and individual actors without blaming entire present-day populations. Precision does not soften the crime; it protects history from collective hatred and denial.[7][3]

Evidence trail

Sources and further reading

  1. David Gaunt, Naures Atto and Soner O. Barthoma, eds.. Let Them Not Return: Sayfo—The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Berghahn Books, 2017.
  2. Joseph Yacoub. Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide: A History. Hurst, 2016.
  3. David Gaunt. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Gorgias Press, 2006.
  4. Adam H. Becker. Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

    Emphasises missions, education, print and modern national formation in Iran.

  5. Sargon George Donabed. Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
  6. Heleen Murre-van den Berg. From a Spoken to a Written Language: The Introduction and Development of Literary Urmia Aramaic in the Nineteenth Century. Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1999.
  7. Arbella Bet-Shlimon. “Propaganda of the Victims”: Atrocity Denial, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Disparagement of Assyrians in Middle East Studies. Review of Middle East Studies, 2026.

    A recent critical historiographical intervention; used with, not instead of, underlying historical sources.

  8. International Association of Genocide Scholars. Resolution on Genocides Committed by the Ottoman Empire. IAGS, 2007.

    Recognition by a scholarly association; not a judicial ruling or universal state position.

  9. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Armenian Genocide (1915–16): In Depth. Holocaust Encyclopedia.

    Places Assyrians among other Christian populations affected by CUP population policies; pair with Sayfo-specific research.

  10. Naures Atto. Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora: Identity Discourses among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora. Leiden University Press, 2011.