Yünlüce (; ) is a

neighbourhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

in the municipality and district of

Lice Louse (: lice) is the common name for any member of the infraorder Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera was previously recognized as an order, until a 2021 genetic study determined th ...

Diyarbakır Province Diyarbakır Province (; ; ) is a province and metropolitan municipality in southeastern Turkey. Its area is 15,101 km2, and its population is 1,804,880 (2022). The provincial capital is the city of Diyarbakır. The Kurdish majority province ...

in Turkey. It 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 ...

and had a population of 298 in 2022.

Etymology

It has been suggested that the village's name in

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

and Syriac is derived from ''mālaḥtā'' ("saltworks" or "salt garden" in Syriac).

History

Mlaḥso (today called Yünlüce) was historically inhabited by

Syriac Orthodox Christians The Syriac Orthodox Church (), also informally known as the Jacobite Church, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian denomination, denomination that originates from the Church of Antioch. The church currently has around 4-5 million followers. The ch ...

. In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that the village had 34 households, who paid 79 dues, and was served by the Church of Mortī Šmūnī and two priests. Outside of the village there were churches of Mar Tuma, Mar Eliyo, and Nǎbi Yawnan. In 1914, it was populated by 800

Syriacs Syriac may refer to: * Suret, a Neo-Aramaic language * Syriac alphabet, a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Syriac Christianity, a branch of Eastern Christianity * Syriac lan ...

, according to the list presented to the

Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include: Listed by name Paris Accords may refer to: * Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...

by the Assyro-Chaldean delegation. It had 200–300 Christian families, including

Armenians Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia.Robert Hewsen, Hewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiq ...

and Syriacs, all of whom spoke the Mlaḥsô language. The village was destroyed and almost all of the villagers were killed by

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

Kurds from the neighbouring villages 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 ...

. The name of the village was consequently Turkified to Yünlüce.

References

Notes Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * Neighbourhoods in Lice District Kurdish settlements in Diyarbakır Province Historic Assyrian communities in Diyarbakır Province Former Armenian communities in Diyarbakır Province Places of the Sayfo {{Diyarbakır-geo-stub