Beth Garmai, (Arabic: باجرمي, lit. 'Bājarmī', Middle Persian: Garamig/Garamīkān/Garmagān, New Persian: Garmakan, Kurdish: Germîyan/گەرمیان, Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܓܪܡܐ, romanized: Bêṯ Garmē,[1] Latin and Greek: Garamaea) is a historical Assyrian region around the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.[2] It is located at southeast of the Little Zab, southwest of the mountains of Shahrazor, northeast of the Tigris and Hamrin Mountains, although sometimes including parts of southwest of Hamrin Mountains, and northwest of the Sirwan River.
According to Michael G. Morony, it was named after a people, possibly an Assyrian or Persian tribe.[3]
The region was a province, Garmekan, under the Sasanians. It was a prosperous metropolitan province centered at Karkha D'Beth Slokh (Kirkuk), It had a substantial Assyrian population who mostly followed the Church of the East until the fourteenth century, when the region was conquered by Timurlane, who conducted massacres of the indigenous Assyrian population of what is today Northern Iraq, Southeast Turkey and Northeast Syria.[4]
- ^ Thomas A. Carlson et al., "Beth Garmai – ܒܝܬ ܓܪ̈ܡܝ ” in The Syriac Gazetteer last modified 14 January 2014, http://syriaca.org/place/33.
- ^ British Institute of Persian Studies (1982). Iran: journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Volume 20. The Institute. p. 14.
- ^ Morony 1989a, p. 187.
- ^ Wilmshurst, David (2000). The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Volume 582. Peeters Publishers. p. 185. ISBN 978-90-429-0876-5.