12.6 1914–1918

12 · The Assyrians of Urmi: a background · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar

In 1914 Assyrians were one of the largest groups in the region: 78,000, just behind Turks and Turkmen at 80,000, and well ahead of sedentary Kurds (38,000), Armenians (20,000), Persians (10,000) and Jews (4,000).

Then, in order:

The Russians had occupied Urmi in 1911, and Assyrian hopes rested on them.
January 1915 — the Russians withdrew ahead of a Turkish offensive, and many Assyrians left with them. Turkish and Kurdish troops raided the villages, and the villagers fled into the missions in the town.
May 1915 — the Russian army returned and people went back to their villages.
Winter 1916 — Assyrians from the Hakkari mountains, fleeing massacres, arrived on the plain seeking refuge.
Autumn 1917 — the Russians left for good, because of the Revolution. The Patriarch raised his own Assyrian battalion and held Urmi, helped by the missionary W.A. Shedd and a few Russian officers who stayed.
March 1918 — Patriarch Shimun XIX Benjamin was murdered by Kurds, and the Assyrians mounted a major offensive.
April 1918 — the Turkish army and Kurdish forces attacked Urmi together. Everyone left in the town fled to British-held Hamadan; many died on the way, and the survivors ended in a refugee camp at Baquba.

Roughly 40,000 Persian Assyrians were killed in the events of the First World War.

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