Beth Kustan, Mardin

The Syriac name of the village is derived from "beth" ("house" in Syriac) and "Kustan" ("Constantine" in Syriac), thus Beth Kustan translates to "house of Constantine".[5]

The Church of Mor Eliyo was constructed in 343 AD.[6] It is suggested that the village was founded by a member of the Roman limitanei (frontier militia) named Constans in the 4th century AD.[7]

In 1900, Beth Kustan was inhabited by an estimated 200 Assyrian families.[8] At the onset of the Assyrian genocide, in 1915, Haco, agha (chief) of the Kurtak clan, warned the villagers of an impending attack by Turkish and Kurdish soldiers.[9] Despite initial hesitation, upon receiving news of the massacre of Assyrians at Zaz, all but two villagers fled to Hah.[9] Beth Kustan was subsequently ransacked by Kurdish soldiers, and the two remaining villagers were killed.[9] The villagers resisted Kurdish and Turkish attacks at Hah until a truce was negotiated by Haco, but were not able to leave until Çelebi, agha of the Heverkan clan, helped them to return to Beth Kustan in 1922.[3][9]

The village was officially named Alagöz in the 1930s as a result of the state's turkification policy.[8][10] In the 1960s,[10] most of the village's population emigrated abroad to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland.[11] In 1993, it was alleged that seven villagers were detained and tortured by Turkish paramilitaries.[12] As of 2013, 15-23 Assyrian families inhabit Beth Kustan.[11] On 12 February 2015, Beth Kustan was restored as the official name of the village.[10] The inhabitants speak Turoyo, a dialect of Neo-Aramaic.[8]

• Saint Gabriel of Beth Qustan (573/574-648), Syriac Orthodox Bishop of Tur Abdin
• Timotheos Samuel Aktaş (b. 1945), Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Tur Abdin

Notes

Citations

• Courtois, Sébastien de (2013). "Tur Abdin : Réflexions sur l'état présent descommunautés syriaques du Sud-Est de la Turquie,mémoire, exils, retours". Cahier du Gremmamo, vol. 21 (in French): 113–150.
• Gaunt, Gaunt (2006). Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I. Gorgias Press.
• Gaunt, Gaunt (2012). "Relations between Kurds and Syriacs and Assyrians in Late Ottoman Diyarbekir". Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870-1915, ed. Joost Jongerden, Jelle Verheij. Brill. pp. 241–267.
• Palmer, Andrew (1990). Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier: The Early History of Tur Abdin. Cambridge University Press.
• Takahashi, Hidemi (2011). "Also via Istanbul to New Haven- Mss. Yale Syriac 7-12". Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honour of Dimitri Gutas, ed. Felicitas Opwis, David Reisman. Brill. pp. 157–179.