Tur Abdin

Map of Tur Abdin showing Assyrian villages and monasteries. Extant monasteries are indicated by red crosses; abandoned monasteries, by orange ones.
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Tur Abdin (Arabic: طور عبدين; Kurdish: Tor;[1] Latin: Turabdium; Syriac: ܛܽܘܪ ܥܰܒ݂ܕܺܝܢ or ܛܘܼܪ ܥܲܒ݂ܕܝܼܢ, Ṭūr ʿAḇdīn[2]) is a hilly region situated in southeast Turkey, including the eastern half of the Mardin Province, and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris, on the border with Syria and famed since Late Antiquity for its Christian monasteries on the border of the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire. The area is a low plateau in the Anti-Taurus Mountains stretching from Mardin in the west to the Tigris in the east and delimited by the Mesopotamian plains to the south. The Tur Abdin is populated by more than 80 villages and nearly 70 monastery buildings and was mostly Syriac Orthodox until the early 20th century.[3] The earliest surviving Christian buildings date from the 6th century.[3]

The name "Tur Abdin" is Syriac: ܛܘܪ ܥܒܕܝܢ, lit. 'Mountain of the Servants [of God]'.[3][4] Tur Abdin is of great importance to the Syriac Orthodox Assyrians, for whom the region used to be a monastic and cultural heartland.[5] The Assyrian/Syriac community of Tur Abdin call themselves Suryoye, and traditionally speak a central Neo-Aramaic dialect called Turoyo.[6][7]

  1. ^ Aras, Ramazan (2020). The Wall: The Making and Unmaking of the Turkish-Syrian Border. Springer Nature. p. 16.
  2. ^ Thomas A. Carlson et al., “Ṭur ʿAbdin — ܛܘܪܥܒܕܝܢ ” in The Syriac Gazetteer last modified December 9, 2016, http://syriaca.org/place/221.
  3. ^ a b c Keser-Kayaalp, Elif (2018), Nicholson, Oliver (ed.), "Tur 'Abdin", The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (online ed.), Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-866277-8, retrieved 2020-11-28
  4. ^ James, Liz (29 January 2010). A Companion to Byzantium. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781444320022.
  5. ^ Aphram I. Barsoum; Ighnāṭyūs Afrām I (Patriarch of Antioch) (2008). The History of Tur Abdin. Gorgias Press. ISBN 978-1-59333-715-5.
  6. ^ The Middle East, abstracts and index, Part 1. Library Information and Research Service. Northumberland Press, 2002. Page 491.
  7. ^ Central Asia and the Caucasus: transnationalism and diaspora. Touraj Atabaki, Sanjyot Mehendale. Routledge, 2005. Page 228.