Jīlū was a district and one of the five independent Assyrian tribes, located in the Hakkari region of upper Mesopotamia in modern-day Turkey. Before 1915, Jīlū was home to mostly Assyrians and as well as a minority of Kurds. There were 20 Assyrian villages in this district. The area was traditionally divided into Greater and Lesser Jīlū, and Ishtāzin – each with its own Malik, and consisting of a number of Assyrian villages. In the summer of 1915, during the Assyrian genocide, Jīlū was surrounded and attacked by Turkish troops and neighbouring Kurdish tribes under the leadership of Agha Sūtū of Oramar. It is now located around Yeşiltaş, Yüksekova.
After a brief struggle to maintain their positions, the Assyrian citizens of Jīlū were forced to flee to Salmas in Iran along with other refugees from the Hakkari highlands. Today their descendants live all over the world including Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. In Syria's al-Hasakah Governorate there are two villages, Tel-Gorān and Abū-Tīnā, established in 1935 by Jīlū refugees from Iraq on the banks of the Khabur River.
Geography and Nature The Jīlū district is home to the second highest mountain range in Turkey, the Cilo-Sat range, which are an eastern extension of the Taurus Mountains. The highest peak in the Cilo-Sat range is Toura Jelu (also known as Cilo dağı, maximum elevation 4,168 m), from the summit of which one can see as far as the city of Mosul in Iraq. The southern slopes of the massif are covered with broad-leaved forests (primarily oak), and the northern slopes are covered with steppes and shrub thickets where the inhabitants of Jīlū and Dīz would graze their herds during the summer. Among the animals which abound in these mountains are bears, leopards, wolves, foxes, chamois, wild goats, and ovis (wild sheep), of which there are three varieties. There are also many birds, especially the large yellow partridge, and the red-legged variety.
History Not much is known about Jīlū's pre-Christian history due to its inaccessibility and instability, restricting any form of fieldwork, though prehistoric rock carvings have been found in the Gevaruk valley near Sāţ and on the Tirisin Plateau. These have been dated to 10,000 years ago.
According to the Acts of Saint Mari, it was his disciple St. Ţomīs who was the first to bring Christianity to the region of Gawar and Zozān (including Jīlū) in the 1st century AD.The text also mentions that he was martyred somewhere in the Gawar plain, not far from Jīlū, and that later on a church was established on his burial site. Indeed, the ancient church in the Jīlū village of Sāţ (modern-day İkiyaka) is dedicated to St. Mārī, and is the only church in the Hakkari region or northern Iraq historically known to have had been. Mārī was also the name of one of the area's earliest bishops. He was among the signatories of the acts of the synod of Catholicos Mār Dādīshoʿ in 424 AD.Chabot, J.B., Synodicon Orientale, Paris, 1902, p. 285
A hitherto unpublished text of the Acts of St. Mammes of Caesarea, who lived in the 3rd century AD, also credits him with having traveled to the village of Oramar (modern-day Dağlıca) where he built a church, known today as El Ahmar Kilisesi. A church also in Oramar dedicated to his disciple St. Daniel is now the village mosque. Afterwards, St. 'Azīzā - reputedly a disciple of Mar Awgin - is credited with having arrived in Jīlū during the 4th century AD, establishing a monastery in the village of Zêrīnī. The earliest surviving manuscript from the Jīlū district was copied in this monastery and dates back to 1212/3.Wilmshurst, David, The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2000, p. 300
The Jīlū district is also home to one of the region's oldest churches, founded by St. Zayʿā and his disciple St. Tāwor in 427 AD. According to the Saint's vita, Jīlū at that time was the center of a kingdom named Jīlām-Jīlū and the church construction project was led by its king Bālaq son of King Zūraq. This church for many centuries was the cathedral of the Mār Sargīs Metropolitan Bishops of Jīlū. Most Jīlū's ancient churches are still standing, despite having been abandoned and in a state of decay for nearly a century.
5th century, Church of the East origins
The Jīlū district was also important in the history of the Church of the East from an early period. At the synod of Catholicos Mār Isaac in 410 AD Beth-Bghāsh, located in the Jīlū village of Bé-Baghshé, was confirmed as a suffragan diocese of the ecclesiastical province of Adiabene.Chabot, J.B., Synodicon Orientale, Paris, 1902, p. 273 The future Catholicos-Patriarch Timothy I, an influential figure in the Church of the East's missionary movement, became bishop of Beth-Bghāsh c.770 AD, upon the retirement of his elderly uncle Gīwargīs, and remained in the diocese until his election as Catholicos-Patriarch in 780 AD. Although a native of Hazzah near Arbil, his family is traditionally held to have originated from Jīlū.Beth-Zay‘ā, Esha‘yā Shamāshā Dāwīd, Tash‘īthā d-Beth-Nahreyn, Tehran: Assyrian Youth Cultural Society Press, 1963, p. 895
15th century, destruction and revival In 1448 the Jīlū district was ravaged by the Qara Qoyunlu and many of its villages lay abandoned for over a century. This is probably the reason why the colophon of a manuscript copied in 1490 at Bé-Silim in the Baz district mentions only the metropolitan of Mosul. Normally, Baz would have been included in either the diocese of Beth-Bghāsh or Jīlū.Wilmshurst, David, The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2000, p. 278
Most of the refugees from Jīlū fled to Assyrian districts in neighboring Iran. Evidence for this appears in the inclusion of Jīlū in the title of the metropolitan of Salamas around 1552, and the copying of a manuscript in the village of Naze north of Urmia in 1563 by the priest Paul of Oramar. Additionally, many Chaldean families in the Urmia region trace their ancestry to settlers originally from Jīlū. Among the most well known are the Malek-Yonan family of Geogtapa, who are descended from a Jīlū chieftain who founded the village in the 16th century. He also built a church there dedicated to St. Zayʿā which he set with stones brought from the original church in Jīlū.
Later in the 16th century, many inhabitants from Jīlū returned to rebuild their homes and churches. Those of Zêrīnī found the church of St. 'Azīzā in ruins and, after rebuilding it, they acquired a text of the saint's legend from the town of Bakhdida in the Nineveh Plains.Wilmshurst, David, The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2000, p. 301
16th-17th century Since the 16th century, and probably even earlier, the village of Mātā d-ʿUmrā d-Mār Zayʿā was the seat of a metropolitan bishop of the Church of the East. The diocese of this metropolitan bishop included the Hakkari districts of Jīlū, Baz, Tkhuma, Chāl (modern-day Çukurca), Ţāl, and Rékān.
The first historical mention of the diocese of Jīlū is from 1580, when the metropolitan of Jīlū, Siirt and Salamas, was elevated to the patriarchate of the Chaldean Catholic Church as Mār Shim'on IX Dinha (1580-1600). That year the new patriarch consecrated a metropolitan for Jīlū named Mār Sargīs, who was among the signatories of a letter from him to Pope Gregory XIII, and he is probably the same as the Metropolitan Mār Sargīs of Jīlū mentioned in hierarchies listed in the reports of 1607 and 1610 sent by Catholic patriarch Mār Shim'on X Eliyā (1600-1638) to Pope Paul V.
In 1610 also, the large village of Sāţ is recorded as being the residence of bishop named Mār Gīwargīs, who was probably a suffragan of Mār Sargīs. The report of 1610 also mentioned that the Malik of Jīlū was named David, and he commanded 4,000 fighting men; the Malik of Ishtāzin was named 'Caitar', and he was in charge of 500 fighters; and Sāţ was led by a man named 'Chartus', probably also a Malik, who in his turn commanded 300 fighters.Wilmshurst, David, The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2000, p. 286-7
In the late 17th century the diocese severed its ties with Catholicism, along with the rest of the Qudshānis patriarchate, and returned to being traditionalist. The metropolitan bishops of Jīlū were usually nominated from the same clan and all bore the hereditary title Mār Sargīs. An exception to this appears to have been the patriarch Mār Shim'on XV Michael Mukhattas (1740-1780), who is said to have been metropolitan of Jīlū before being elevated to the patriarchate and, indeed, the Cathedral of Sts. Zayʿā and Tāwor is commonly held to have served at certain times as the residence of the patriarchs of that line.
It is during this period that a new line of bishops belonging to the same clan as the metropolitans of Jīlū, Bé-Yagmālā, was established at the village of Gāgawran (modern-day Aksu) in the nearby Gāwār plain. These distant blood-relatives, who took the name Mār Slīvā, probably began as suffragans of Mār Sargīs and are first mentioned in a manuscript colophon from 1743.Wilmshurst, David, The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2000, p. 282
19th century Nineteenth-century bishop Mār Yawsip Sargīs was described by Sir Austen Henry Layard, who met him at the village of Nahrā in late August 1849, as "... a young man of lofty stature and handsome countenance..." and likened his look to that of a hunter or warrior.Layard, Austen Henry, Discoveries in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon: with travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the desert: being the result of a second expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum, London: G.P. Putnam and Co., 1853, p. 434
In 1891 he was visited by British explorer and writer Isabella Bird, who described him as "a magnificent-looking man with a superb gray beard, the beau-ideal of an Oriental ecclesiastic."Bird, Isabella, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs, London: J. Murray, 1891, vol. ii, pp. 282 and 306
This bishop was approached by the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1890 and 1895, but on both occasions he refused to convert to Catholicism.Coakley, J.F., The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of The Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 175 and 178 It is around this time that the inhabitants of the large and isolated village of Sāţ converted to the Catholicism in their entirety.
+Metropolitan Bishops of JīlūNameBirthConsecrationDeathMār Yawsip Sargīs1819, Mātā d-ʿUmrā d-Mār Zayʿā1839, Qudshānis1899, Mātā d-ʿUmrā d-Mār ZayʿāMār Zayʿā Sargīs29 July 1888, Mātā d-ʿUmrā d-Mār Zayʿā5 July 1900, Qudshānis12 May 1951, BaghdadMār Īshoʿ Sargīs1911, Mātā d-ʿUmrā d-Mār Zayʿā14 May 1951, Baghdad19 December 1966, London (buried at St. Zayʿā Cathedral in Karrādat Maryam, Baghdad)Mar Yawsip Sargis1950 Baghdad2 March 1967, BaghdadCurrently residing in Modesto, California
20th century, post-genocide
The last of these metropolitan bishops to reside at Mātā d-Mār Zayʿā was Mār Zayʿā Sargīs, who was consecrated at 11 years of age. During the Assyrian genocide the bishop moved to the Salamas district between 1915 and 1918, then remained at the Baqubah refugee camp between 1918 and 1920, before moving to Mosul in 1920. From 1921 onward his see was fixed at the village of Khirshéniyah, immediately to the northwest of Alqosh in the Dohuk Governorate, where a small church was built dedicated to St. Zayʿā. Then in 1941 his see was moved to Baghdad, where a large Jīlū émigré community existed at Camp al-Sikak (the "Railroads Camp") with a mud-brick church dedicated to St. Zayʿā built in the 1920s.