CHAPTER XXI
THE TURKS AND THE CHRISTIAN TRIBES
Guerrilla warfare—Who the Nestorian and other Christian tribes are—Turkish massacres—Russian withdrawal and its effect—British intervention.
The Nestorians, Jelus, and other racially connected Christian groups who, in the region around Lake Urumia, had been carrying on a guerrilla warfare against the Turks, at the beginning of July were reduced to very sore straits indeed by losses in the field, disease, and famine.
As already related in a previous chapter, Lieutenant Pennington, a British aviator, flew into Urumia in the first week in July, carrying General Dunsterville's assurance of speedy help. The leaders of these Christian peoples, in full accord with the British, decided that after evacuating Urumia an attempt should be made to break through to the south in the direction of Sain Kaleh and Bijar, in order to get in touch with the British relieving column which was marching north from Hamadan bringing ammunition and food supplies.
For the better understanding of this narrative, some explanation is due to the reader as to who and what are the Nestorians and their kindred Christian clans who were now about to run the gauntlet of the Turkish Army operating in the Lake Urumia district.
The Nestorians are the followers of the Patriarch of Constantinople who was condemned for heresy in the year A.D. 431. They inhabit Kurdistan and north-western Persia, are also known as Assyrians, and are indeed often loosely referred to as Syrians. They live in that portion of the country which the Bible has familiarized to us as Assyria, and are confusedly termed Syrians, not because they come from Syria proper on the Mediterranean littoral, with its cities of Antioch, Aleppo, and Damascus, but rather because their rubric and sacred writings are in ancient Syriac, while the language of the people themselves is modern Syriac.
Hundreds of years ago the seat of the Nestorian or Assyrian Patriarchate was near Ctesiphon on the Tigris, a short distance below Bagdad. But the Turkish conquerors persecuted the Christians, the Patriarch was forced to flee, and finally took refuge at Qudshanis, in the highlands of Kurdistan. The present spiritual head of the Assyrians, who is ecclesiastically designated Mar Shimun, is said to be the one hundred and thirty-eighth Catholicos, or Patriarch, of the Nestorian Church.
At the outbreak of the European War there were three distinguishable main groups of Assyrian Christians. One inhabited the Upper Tigris Valley beyond Mesul and the hilly country towards Lake Van; a second was to be found on the Salmas-Urumia plateau and in the mountainous country bordering on the Persian-Turkish frontier; the third group lived on the Turkish side of the frontier between Lake Van and Urumia. Roughly they may be classified as Highlanders and Lowlanders, with various tribal subdivisions, of which one of the better known is the Jelu group.
Urumia itself is the scene of considerable foreign missionary activity, and is the headquarters of the Anglican, American, French, and Russian religious missions to the Assyrian Christians. Each had its own well-defined sphere of influence, and worked in the broadest spirit of Christian tolerance. When war burst upon this unhappy land, anything in the nature of sectarian rivalry and proselytizing zeal vanished, to give place to a united effort to aid and materially comfort the victims of Turkish fury.
The retreat of the Russians from Urumia, at the beginning of January, 1915, left some thousands of Urumia Christians who were unable to accompany them at the mercy of the Turks and their savage auxiliaries, the Kurds; and the usual massacre followed. The Christians, though poorly armed, defended themselves as best they could, and the survivors were driven to seek sanctuary in the American Mission Compound. Those who surrendered and gave up their arms to the Turks were put to death without mercy. At the beginning of May, 1915, the army of Halil Bey, operating in North-Western Persia, was routed by the Russians, who reoccupied Urumia. But the beaten Turks in their retreat westwards killed every Christian tribesman they could find. A second Russian evacuation of Urumia in August, 1915, led to a fresh exodus of the able-bodied Assyrian fighting men, and to another massacre of those who remained behind.