“The book opens a window onto what happened in Midyat and Tur Abdin,” says Emanuel Poli, an Assyrian intellectual based in Sweden who undertook the project of editing and publishing the until now forgotten writings of Safar Safar, titled Seyfo Rabo – The Massacres of Midyat and the Calamities of Tur Abdin.
Author Safar Safar was born in Midyat, in Tur Abdin. He spent much of his life in New Jersey, USA, where he died in 2000. Safar was the son of Abdel-Aziz Safar and the grandson of the prominent Assyrian leader Hanna Safar, who also held the prestigious Ottoman title of pasha, a rank roughly comparable to that of a governor or senior official.
“In the final years of his life, Safar Safar devoted himself to documenting the historical accounts he had heard from his father and which had remained in his memory,” explains the editor Emanuel Poli. “He understood that the best way to preserve his family’s cultural and historical heritage was to put everything down in writing.”
The new publication is based on these writings, but it also includes accounts written by Safar Safar himself. Beyond documenting the history of the Safar family, the book offers a rare insight into the history of the Assyrian people, life in Midyat and the circumstances and environment in which the community lived.
Poli says he had previously read several books about Seyfo and Assyrian history, including Gabriele Yonan’s The Forgotten Genocide and David Gaunt’s Massacres, Resistance, Protectors. Yet he often felt that something was missing. “For example, Gabriele Yonan writes extensively about what happened in eastern Turkey, because she did not have much material about what took place further west, in Tur Abdin,” he says in his interview with local newspaper Lanstidningen.
Poli himself belongs to a branch of the Safar family. He had heard about a book written in Arabic by Safar Safar, the grandson of Hanna Safar, and learned that a copy had been preserved by a relative in Aleppo. The manuscript had been written during the 1970s. “I contacted the relative and asked for a copy of the handwritten book,” Emanuel says.
The relative had shown the manuscript to a bishop in Aleppo, who advised against publishing it because it could provoke anger among Kurds.
Poli read the manuscript and quickly realized that it contained a wealth of valuable material, covering a wide range of subjects and tracing the history of Tur Abdin from 1830 to 1930. He also asked others to read it. Once he understood the significance of the material, he began working to have the book published.
“I have always been interested in the history of our people, particularly what happened during the Seyfo genocide. I have also done some research myself. My family originates from Kabiye in Diyarbakir, and we came to Midyat around 1640.”
The book paints a detailed picture of the clans of Midyat and recounts a number of historical events. These include disputes between different families and how they were resolved, the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and their impact on Midyat, as well as the spread of Protestantism in a town otherwise dominated by Christian Orthodox communities.
The book also contains a love story. “A young princess from the Russian imperial family and Iskandar, the son of Hanne Safar, fall in love. However, they were together for only a few months before both of them died.”
Safar Safar was born in Midyat in 1921 but grew up in the city of Qamishli in northern Syria. He later moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he trained as a journalist. Among other positions, he worked for a Kuwaiti radio station until the beginning of the 1970s, when he moved to the United States.
