The Death of Mar Shimun

A powerful arms merchant known as Sardar¹ operated at Maku near the Russian frontier. A shipment of French weapons intended for Kurds in the district was seized by a Russian unit and transferred to the men of Mar Benyamin Shimun at Khosrowa. It included French machine guns with three-round magazines, forty automatic weapons, and sixteen large cannon.

With the weapons in hand, Mar Shimun marched against an old Kurdish adversary named Suto². His men were scattered after thirteen days of fighting. The Assyrian force returned to its villages and began intensive training.

Simko watched this growth with anxiety. He sent Mar Shimun a proposal: the Iranian government was weak, and together they could take towns and live as brothers. Mar Shimun refused. He saw himself first as a religious leader and an exile driven from his Ottoman homeland. He hoped one day to return and said he had no designs on foreign soil.

Messages continued, but neither man trusted the other. Simko would not enter Khosrowa, and Mar Shimun would not go to Chahri. At last they agreed to meet on neutral ground, at the home of Qabala Abdullah in Kuhna Shahr.

On a Friday at about three in the afternoon, we heard the pounding of hooves. A column of roughly one hundred horsemen passed, with a carriage at its centre. The Assyrian fighters were armed. My brother and I slipped among the horses and followed the procession to the house, where we stopped with several other young Jewish onlookers.

Simko came out, greeted Mar Shimun with a kiss, and led him inside arm in arm. The escort stood in formation at the entrance, weapons ready. Simko remarked that there was no need for such tension in a brother’s house. A sudden noise caused one fighter to discharge three rounds into the air, and Mar Shimun immediately ordered the weapons unloaded.

Two commanders moved along the line; we later knew them as David Khan, Mar Shimun’s brother, and Nikolai Petrovolo³. My brother sensed danger. When he saw a Kurdish cap and a weapon on a rooftop, he warned us away. We tried another vantage point, then abandoned that too and began to descend.

The meeting appeared to end amicably. Simko and Mar Shimun came down the steps together, kissed in farewell, and moved towards the carriage. Before Mar Shimun could enter it, Simko drew his pistol and shot him; coordinated fire then erupted from concealed positions around the house.⁴

The firing was heavy and continuous. We ran home and barred the doors. Mar Shimun and 103 members of the procession were killed; two escaped. At about five o’clock Simko and his men left for Chahri. For four hours the town fell into a deathly silence.

When the news reached the Assyrian forces, they entered Kuhna Shahr and opened retaliatory fire. Fifty-four Jews and about six hundred Kurdish and Iranian Muslims were killed in the first wave. Mar Shimun’s body was then recovered, and his men gathered soil soaked with his blood.

For nearly a week nothing stirred. We were helpless and waited for the Iranian army. My brother Shimon⁵, who had been in Russia, was then returning to collect his wife. He later told us that at Khoy he saw an armed crowd gathering under a call to jihad to rescue the Muslims of Kuhna Shahr.⁶

In Khoy, Shimon met a judge named Mirza Khalil Khan. He too intended to go to Kuhna Shahr, and they hired a carriage together. Along the road they saw large numbers of men answering the jihad call and Iranian soldiers. Shimon became convinced that so great a force would soon defeat the Assyrians.

When he arrived, our father scolded him for taking such a risk. Shimon replied that the army he had seen would reach us within hours. The community’s hakham, Ezekiel Jacob⁷, came to ask whether rescue was truly at hand; Shimon repeated that help would arrive by the next day.

We waited in a ruined town, its streets filled with bodies being prepared for burial. The crowd and troops did reach the Black Hill. Then light rain began, and the entire force turned around and dispersed. For another three or four days, members of the community asked Shimon where the mujahidin he had seen had gone.

At dawn on the fourth day of Passover, cannon fire began. Batteries had been placed on a church hill between Kuhna Shahr and Pataver, firing towards Chahri and the town. A company of Iranian soldiers and a gendarmerie unit deployed in the Jewish quarter, but fled at the first report.

A Jewish youth named Shale, son of Daba Baba⁸, called on them to hold for one night until reinforcements came. When they refused, he climbed onto the roofs and fought alone. He shot twelve attackers and collected their weapons. After waiting twelve days for Iranian relief, he finally came down and left under cover of darkness.⁹

Assyrian forces pursued Simko‘s men and attacked Kurdish villages. They killed many people, destroyed dozens of villages, and nearly ten thousand Kurds died. Simko took refuge in the fortress of Chahri. A story circulated that he escaped by scattering gold coins from his saddlebag and distracting his pursuers.

Surma Khanum, Mar Shimun’s sister, ordered that no living creature remain where her brother’s blood was shed. Armed men fired on people and animals. We shut ourselves inside and waited.

One group broke into our house. A man who knew my father David assured him that neither he nor his children would be harmed if the door remained open as a passage to the roof. After they left, we crawled to a nearby abandoned Armenian house, where many members of the community were already hiding.

About two hours later, fighters burst into that house and fired at the entrance. Seventeen Jews were killed there. Isaac, one of the district’s wealthiest men, was shot on the roof and fell into the courtyard. Our sister-in-law’s father asked why they were killing people who had done them no wrong; he was shot in the shoulder and managed to tell us to run before collapsing.

We fled to a second Armenian house. Behind us came gunfire and screams. At the same time my brother Shimon, his wife, and other relatives were hiding in our grain store. A child’s crying¹⁰ betrayed them. When shots were fired towards the hiding place, Shimon came out with his hands raised and surrendered.

Two fighters intended to strip and then kill him, but a Russian officer who entered heard Shimon‘s fluent Russian. He ordered that Shimon be spared and taken to his house to tend the horses. On the way, Armenian residents gathered and claimed he was the man who had killed twelve of them; his escorts refused to hand him over because the officer had placed him in their charge.

At the artillery position Shimon was brought before David Khan, Mar Shimun’s brother.¹¹ David recognized Shimon as the son of David the merchant¹² and said in Aramaic, approximately, “The poor Jew — he is so frightened that he does not recognize me.”

David Khan wrote an order to stop the killing and take survivors as prisoners to Khosrowa. Shimon feared the paper would not protect him, but a mounted messenger carried it among the units: “What we have killed until now is enough. From this point, do not kill; take prisoners.”

In the second Armenian house, I estimated that seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty people were packed together. Armed men and women entered, taking clothes, gold, and jewellery, then ordered the men outside. My father told me to stay with my mother because he believed the men were being led out to die. I wept and refused to leave him.

The attackers forced the men back inside and, as we heard, prepared to throw a bomb into the sealed house. At the last moment a messenger kicked the door and shouted for them to stop. He carried David Khan‘s order. He gathered the stolen clothing and returned it so that the women could cover themselves.

We were told that no one else would be killed. Even so, another sixteen of our people were shot at random from outside immediately after the announcement. At last we were placed under six guards and led away as prisoners.