The Syriac Orthodox Church

Denomination·Founded 451 CE·est. ~2 million worldwide excluding the Indian archdiocese, which is counted here as the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church; Syrian and Turkish figures have fallen sharply since 2011.

Judaism → Christianity → Oriental Orthodoxy → The Syriac Orthodox Church → 2 branches

The Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the EastArchiveDepartment of Syriac Studies

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Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Syriac Orthodox Church Discussion
Story of The Syriac Orthodox Church

Sayfo — the year of the sword.

In 1915 the Ottoman deportations and massacres that killed the Armenians killed the Syriac Christians of Tur Abdin, Hakkari and the Diyarbakir plain alongside them. Estimates of the Syriac dead range from about 150,000 to 300,000 and the figure is genuinely uncertain. Sweden's parliament, Armenia and several other states have recognised it as genocide; Turkey rejects the term for all of it.

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Where it is toldVillage memory, survivor testimony, and the memorial services kept each 15 June
Who appearsThe Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldean communities of Tur Abdin, Hakkari and the Nineveh plain
What it teachesThat the church's heartland is a place most of its people now know only by name
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Sayfo is the Syriac word for sword, and it is what Syriac speakers call 1915. The dead were Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Assyrian Church of the East and Protestant Syriacs; entire villages of Tur Abdin were destroyed and the monastery of Mor Gabriel was besieged. Because the Syriac communities were smaller and scattered across the Ottoman-Persian frontier, the record is thinner than the Armenian record and the death toll is correspondingly less certain, with published estimates from about 150,000 to 300,000. Sweden recognised it as genocide in 2010; the Netherlands, Armenia and several other bodies have followed. The commemoration date, 15 June, was set by the church in 2015.

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