Ortaca, Turkey

History

The Church of Mar Addai at Eshtrākō (today called Ortaca) has been dated to the first century AD. According to an inscription at the Church of Mar Addai, the church and/or the outdoor oratory (Syriac: beth ṣlutho) was constructed in 771/772 (AG 1083). The monk Musa of Eshtrākō is named amongst those who were killed in the Cave of Ibn Siqi by the soldiers of Timur in 1394. The village was attacked by Turks in 1405. In 1454 (AG 1765), many men from the village were suffocated to death by smoke by Turks of the clan of Hasan Beg, as per the account of the priest Addai of Basibrina in c. 1500 appended to the Chronography of Bar Hebraeus. Turks attacked Eshtrākō again in 1535 and 1555.

The village became the seat of a Kurdish agha in the nineteenth century. In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that Eshtrākō had three households, who paid ten dues, and did not have a priest. There were 20 Syriac families and 200 Kurdish families in 1915. The Syriacs adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Amidst the Sayfo, on 3 July 1915, most of the village's Syriac population was massacred by their Kurdish neighbours and only twelve survivors managed to get to Hah. The Church of Mar Addai was converted into a mosque. In 1960, the village had a population of 858. In 1966, there were 25 Turoyo-speaking Christians in four families at Eshtrākō.

From the History section of Ortaca, Midyat on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.