Tkhuma

rdf:langString Tkhuma

rdf:langString Prior to World War I, the Tkhuma (Syriac: ܬܚܘܡܐ, romanized: Tkhūmā "Borderland") were one of five principal and semi-independent Assyrian tribes subject to the spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of the Assyrian Patriarch with the title Mar Shimun. The Assyrians claimed the status of a firman of protection from the Caliphate and of an Ottoman millet to preserve their customs and traditions along with the tribes of Jelu, Baz, Tyari, and Deez/Diz, "forming the highest authority under His Holiness Mar Shimun, the patriarch." The Tkhuma Tribe is a tribe of Assyrians that lived in upper Mesopotamia until 1915, when they were dispersed into Persia, Iraq, and Syria during the Sayfo or Assyrian genocide. In 1915, the representative of the Assyrian Patriarch Shimun XX Paulos wrote that the Tkhuma of "many Christian villages" had "been entirely destroyed." In 1933, Malik Loco Badawi, the chief of the Tkhuma tribe, from the Royal House of Badawi, went with the chief of the Tyari and 700 armed Assyrians into Syria at the outset of the Simele massacre. The League of Nations took responsibility for the resettlement of the Tkhuma Assyrians, reporting in 1937 that 2,350 Tkhuma had been settled in three villages in Syria.