Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History

300 Pages·2016·3.48 MB·English

by  Joseph Yacoub

YEAR OF THE SWORD

JOSEPH YACOUB
Year of the Sword
The Assyrian Christian Genocide,
A History
Translated by
James Ferguson
A
A
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Joseph Yacoub.
Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History.
ISBN: 9780190633462
Printed in India on acid-free paper
“I am determined to record the martyrdom of a small people, the
most worthy of interest yet at the same time the most abandoned,
arising out of a great empire of the world’s most ancient civiliza-
tion, whose country, like Armenia, was the stage for Turkish
abominations in which men were tragically murdered, women,
children and the aged deported into the desert, pillaged, martyred
and subjected to the worst atrocities.
This people is the Assyro-Chaldean people.”
Joseph Naayem, 11 November 1919

“The persecutions and sufferings that the Nestorians undergo
from time to time are similar to those that have been endured by
the Armenians and the Jews, and their treatment by the hostile
nations is identical. Of the troubles of the Armenians and the
Jews, however, we hear quite often, while the Nestorians in Persia
and Turkey, probably due to their small number and lack of liter-
ary representatives, have excited almost no interest.”*
Abraham Yohannan, September 1916

To my paternal grandparents, Yacou Auchana and Mariam, from the
village of Khosrava in Persia, massacred by the forces of hatred in
1915.
To my paternal aunt, Angèle, who shut herself in a tanoura (a clay
bread oven) for a week, trying to escape the carnage. When she
emerged from her hiding place she discovered, to her stupefaction,
that nobody was left alive in the village. Forced into exile, she fol-
lowed other fugitives from her community towards Iraq and then
Syria, where she was reunited with my father at Hassakeh, in 1933.
To my maternal grandparents, Gaurié and Sara, from the village of
Pataver, near Khosrava, who in January 1915 took the gruelling road
of collective exodus towards the Caucasus, where they found sanctu-
ary in Tiflis (Tbilisi) in Georgia, together with other members of the
family who had preceded them.
To my father Paulus (Bablo), who died in Beirut in July 1974 after a
long sojourn in Syria and Lebanon, via Georgia, Argentina and
France, always homesick for his native land. Wandering across oceans
in search of work, he had not seen the village of his birth since 1911.
To my mother, Bosha, who found her last resting place in Lyon in
November 1975. Happy with her children and grandchildren in Syria
and Lebanon, she always carried within herself the sadness of having
been separated from her parents, whom she never saw again after 1922.
To the Assyrians-Chaldeans-Syriacs, three parts of the same people,
who have been ceaselessly migrating since 1915, the fateful Year of
the Sword (farman, seyfo), which saw half of this resilient nation anni-
hilated by the murderous madness of Ottoman power, driven by a
hideous form of unbridled nationalism and by a tyrannical strain of
religious fanaticism.
To Claire, my wife, who has been part of this work from its conception
to publication. Her presence can be felt within the pages of this book.