Adıyamanlı Süryânîler

Adıyamanlı Süryânîler is a work I prepared that collects texts relating to the Syriac (Süryânî) community of Adıyaman and its environs in the early twentieth century. The document is composed of two parts, first being Adıyaman Tarihi, a biographical manuscript written by Bulıs Monofar and the second a collection of articles collected from early-twentieth century Syriac journals published in the Ottoman Empire and the United States.

All of the source material that I relied on to compile Adıyamanlı Süryânîler was written in Syro-Ottoman (Ottoman Turkish using the Syriac alphabet) which I have transliterated into the Latin alphabet so that the texts can be read more easily by modern-day Turkish speakers.

My work also contains a glossary of Ottoman and Adıyaman dialectal terms, but I intentionally have not rewritten the original documents into modern Turkish. Adıyaman Tarihi exhibits many non-standard grammatical and orthographic practices compared to the more formal language used in the journals, and these have been preserved as much as possible.

Adıyaman Tarihi

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Adıyaman Tarihi is one of the more remarkable works I have had the pleasure of working on: a first-hand account of the lives of the Syriac population in the Ottoman town of Adıyaman (also known as Hısn-ı Mansûr) during the late Ottoman Empire.

During the First World War, the author avoids the local massacres, but in light of ongoing post-war persecution, he eventually flees to mandate Syria, where he would spend the rest of his life and where he would write his biography.

I gave a talk on the text during SAYFO 1915: An International Conference on the Genocide of Assyrians/Arameans during the First World War held at Freie Universität Berlin in 2015.

A map from the text was also featured on The Afternoon Map blog devoted to Ottoman and Ottoman-adjacent cartography.¹

Newspapers

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I relied on several Süryânî journals as sources on Adıyaman and while none were published in the city itself, they often published letters written by Süryânî residing there or who had emigrated from the region. The following journals were used:

• Mürşid-i Âsûryûn, Harput
• Kevkeb Mednho, Diyarbakır
• İntibâh, College Point (New York)
• Savto d-Othuroye, Paterson (New Jersey)
• Bethnahrin, Paterson (New Jersey)
• The New Assyria, Jersey City (New Jersey)
• Huyodo, New York