Dargeçit

Dargeçit
District and municipality
Map showing Dargeçit District in Mardin Province
Dargeçit Location in Turkey
Coordinates: 37°32′38″N 41°43′12″E / 37.544°N 41.720°E / 37.544; 41.720
Country	Turkey
Province	Mardin
Area	519 km2 (200 sq mi)
Elevation	940 m (3,080 ft)
Population  (2022)[1]	27,147
• Density	52/km2 (140/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+3 (TRT)
Area code	0482

Dargeçit (Arabic: كربوران, Kurdish: Kerboran,^[2] Syriac: ܟܦܪܒܘܪܐܢ, romanized: Karburan)^[3][a] is a municipality and district of Mardin Province, Turkey.^[6] Its area is 519 km²,^[7] and its population is 27,147 (2022).^[1] The town is principally populated by Kurds of the Erebiyan tribe.^[8] It is located in the historic region of Tur Abdin.^[9]

The Syriac name of the village is derived from "kefr" ("village" in Syriac).^[10]

There was a Church of the East monastery of Mar Shallīṭā, located on the west bank of the Tigris near Karburan (today called Dargeçit), which was last mentioned in the eleventh century.^[11] A community of adherents of the Church of the East is known to have existed at Karburan from the scribe and deacon Masʿūd, who copied a manuscript there in 1429/1430 (AG 1741).^[12] It was recorded by the priest Yuhanna of Basibrina from the Qardash family that Karburan was set on fire by an emir called Bidayn in 1714.^[13] Muhammad Beg was killed at Karburan by Yezdanşêr and Musawwar Beg during their revolt in 1855.^[14]

In 1914, Karburan was inhabited by 2000 Assyrians, according to the list presented to the Paris Peace Conference by the Assyro-Chaldean delegation.^[15] The village was populated by 500 Christian families, including Assyrians and Armenians, and 60 Muslim families.^[16] The Assyrian population was divided between adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, and Protestants.^[16] There were more than 350 Syriac Orthodox families.^[17] Twelve Syriac priests, one monk, and Mor Antimos Ya’qub of Esfes, the Syriac Orthodox bishop of Dayro da-Slibo, resided at Karburan.^[18]

Amidst the Sayfo, in 1915, survivors of massacres in neighbouring villages fled to Karburan and informed the villagers of their plight.^[19] A council held by the Assyrian notables was unable to agree upon a course of action and Mor Antimos Ya’qub was taken to the town hall by the Turkish mudir (village-level government official), where he eventually converted to Islam, believing that this would spare him.^[19] The Assyrians were consequently forced to barricade themselves in seven large building complexes, popularly known as the "seven palaces", after coming under attack from Kurds led by Ömar and Mustafa, the sons of Ali Ramo.^[19] Some Assyrians who agreed to leave the buildings after having received assurances from the Turkish mudir were taken to the town hall and killed whereas another group that refused to leave their building was attacked by the Turkish gendarmes and massacred.^[19]

The Assyrian villagers managed to hold off the Turkish troops for four days until they ran out of ammunition and thus their building complexes were stormed one by one and, after each building was captured, the Turkish troops took the captive Assyrians outside and killed them in front of the other defenders.^[20] Mor Antimos Ya’qub, despite his conversion to Islam, was seized by Mustafa ibn Ali Ramo and was tortured on the roof of a building and either had his throat slit or he threw himself from the roof.^[21] The bodies were then collected and burned on a large fire.^[21] The French Armenian historian Raymond Kévorkian notes that 600 Assyrians were able to flee whilst the British historian David Gaunt attests that about 100 Assyrians from Karburan survived.^[22] Some Assyrians survived as they had fled to Hah whereas others had been away from Karburan when the massacres took place, and some children were kept as servants in Muslim households.^[21]

In the aftermath of the Sayfo, the Assyrians of Karburan largely adopted the Kurdish language as their mother tongue, whilst only a few continued to speak Syriac.^[23] The population was 1285 in 1960.^[24] In 1966, 875 Kurdish-speaking Christians in 150 families inhabited Karburan.^[24] In 1970, Karburan was inhabited by 2000 people, of whom two thirds were Assyrians.^[25] From 1970 onwards, as a result of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, the Assyrians of Karburan were forced to emigrate to Sweden, particularly the city of Västerås, Germany, and Belgium to escape the violent living conditions and thus the population dropped from about 300 families in 1975 to only 20 families in 1976.^[26] The final Assyrian family left Karburan in 1979.^[25] The Church of Mar Cyriacus, which had been abandoned after the departure of the village's Assyrian population, was later confiscated by the state treasury.^[27]

The district of Dargeçit was established in 1987.^[28] Dargeçit gained the status of town in 1989.^[29] Since the 2013 administrative reform, Dargeçit is a metropolitan district and municipality. Prior to the reform, the district comprised the main town of Dargeçit (four neighbourhoods: Bahçebaşı, Safa, Saray and Tepebaşı), two towns (Kılavuz and Sümer), thirty-six villages and twenty-six hamlets.^[30]

There are 41 neighbourhoods in Dargeçit District:^[31]

• Julius Abd al-Ahad Antar (r. 1882–1885), Syriac Orthodox bishop of the Monastery of the Cross.^[32]
• Yusuf Çetin (b. 1954), Syriac Orthodox metropolitan and patriarchal vicar
• Fuat Deniz (1967–2007), Assyrian-Swedish sociologist and writer

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