Çiftlikköyü, Turkey

History

Guerektha d’Badro (today called Çiftlikköy) was historically inhabited by Chaldean Catholics and Syriac Orthodox Christians. The scribe Isha'ya, son of Peter, of the Mir Sharif family of Arena, copied a manuscript at the village in 1844. In 1850, Guerektha d’Badro was populated by 12 Chaldean Catholic families and had one church as part of the Chaldean Catholic diocese of Gazarta, according to the English missionary George Percy Badger. The priest Zakarya, son of the priest Yalda, of the Monastery of Mar Sabrisho, is recorded to have copied a manuscript at the village in 1859 as well.

In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that the village had 10 households, who paid 38 dues, and it had one priest, but it did not have a church. There were 600 Chaldean Catholics with one church and one priest in 1913, as per the Chaldean Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkdji. In 1914, it was inhabited by 800 Syriacs, according to the list presented to the Paris Peace Conference by the Assyro-Chaldean delegation. It was located in the kaza of Jazirat Ibn ʿUmar. Amidst the Sayfo, Guerektha d’Badro was attacked on the feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, on 3 July 1915, and most of the villagers were massacred inside the church and the village itself was destroyed.

From the History section of Çiftlikköy, Silopi on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.