Çukuryurt (; ) is a village in the

Gercüş District Gercüş District is a district of Batman Province in Turkey. The town of Gercüş is the seat and the district had a population of 19,304 in 2021.

Batman Province Batman Province (, ; ) is a province in Turkey. It was created in May 1990 with the Law No. 3647 taking some parts from the eastern Province of Siirt and some from the southern Province of Mardin. Its area is 4,477 km2, and its population i ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. The village is populated by

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

of the Arnas tribe and had a population of 478 in 2021. It is located in the historic region of

Tur Abdin Tur Abdin (; ; ; or ) is a hilly region situated in southeast Turkey, including the eastern half of the Mardin Province, and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris, on the Syria–Turkey border, border with Syria and famed since Late Antiquity for ...

. The

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

of Tutumlu is attached to the village.

History

Ben-Kelbe (today called Çukuryurt) has been tentatively identified with the village of Bar Kalbe mentioned in the ''

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

'' of

Simeon of the Olives Simeon of the Olives (''Shimʿun Zaytuni'', 624–734) was a Syriac Orthodox bishop of Harran from Ḥabsenus in the eight century. He is attributed to have built or rebuilt several churches and monasteries in the region around Nisibis, such as th ...

(). In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that there were twenty-seven households, who paid twenty-seven dues, and the village did not have a church or a priest. In 1915, it was inhabited by 30 or 35 Syriac families. The village served as the residence of two feuding Kurdish clan leaders, Izzeddin, chief of the Tammero clan, and Shamdin from the clan of Hasan Shamdin, with the village's Syriac population also divided in their allegiances between the two. Amidst the

Sayfo The Sayfo (, ), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian people, Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan (Iran), Azerbaijan province by Ottoman Army ...

, Izzeddin and Shamdin escorted their respective closest Syriac allies and their families to safety at ‘Ayn-Wardo whilst those who were left behind at Ben-Kelbe were killed. There were 125 Kurdish-speaking Christians at Ben-Kelbe in 1966. The village was populated by 12 Syriac families in 1978. By 1979/1980, there were no remaining Syriacs at the village.

References

Notes Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * {{Gercüş District Villages in Gercüş District Kurdish settlements in Batman Province Historic Assyrian communities in Batman Province Tur Abdin Places of the Sayfo