title: History of the papacy

text: Unlike their European peers, popes were not hereditary monarchs, so they could only promote their family interests through nepotism. The word "nepotism" originally referred specifically to the practice of creating cardinal-nephews, when it appeared in the English language about 1669. According to Duffy, "the inevitable outcome of all of this was a creation of a wealthy cardinalatial class, with strong dynastic connections." The College was dominated by cardinal-nephews—relatives of the popes that elevated them, crown-cardinals—representatives of the Catholic monarchies of Europe, and members of the powerful Italian families. The wealthy popes and cardinals increasingly patronized Renaissance art and architecture, (re)building the landmarks of Rome from the ground up.


title: History of the papacy

text: The Papal States began to resemble a modern nation state during this period, and the papacy took an increasingly active role in European wars and diplomacy. Pope Julius II become known as "the Warrior Pope" for his use of bloodshed to increase the territory and property of the papacy. The popes of this period used the papal military not only to enrich themselves and their families, but also to enforce and expand upon the longstanding territorial and property claims of the papacy as an institution. Although, before the Western Schism, the papacy had derived much of its revenue from the "vigorous exercise of its spiritual office," during this period the popes were financially dependent on the revenues from the Papal States themselves. With ambitious expenditures on war and construction projects, popes turned to new sources of revenue from the sale of indulgences and bureaucratic and ecclesiastical offices. Pope Clement VII's diplomatic and military campaigns resulted in the Sack of Rome in 1527.


title: History of the papacy

text: Popes were more frequently called upon to arbitrate disputes between competing colonial powers than to resolve complicated theological disputes. Columbus' discovery in 1492 upset the unstable relations between the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile, whose jockeying for possession of colonial territories along the African coast had for many years been regulated by the papal bulls of 1455, 1456, and 1479. Alexander VI responded with three bulls, dated May 3 and 4, which were highly favorable to Castile; the third "Inter caetera" (1493) awarded Spain the sole right to colonize most of the New World.


title: History of the papacy

text: According to Eamon Duffy, "the Renaissance papacy invokes images of a Hollywood spectacular, all decadence and drag. Contemporaries viewed Renaissance Rome as we now view Nixon's Washington, a city of expense-account whores and political graft, where everything and everyone had a price, where nothing and nobody could be trusted. The popes themselves seemed to set the tone." For example, Leo X was said to have remarked: "Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us." Several of these popes took mistresses and fathered children and engaged in intrigue or even murder. Alexander VI had four acknowledged children: Cesare Borgia, Lucrezia Borgia, Gioffre Borgia, and Giovanni Borgia before he became Pope.


title: History of the papacy

text: The pontificate of Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) opened up the final stage of the Catholic Reformation, characteristic of the Baroque age of the early seventeenth century, shifting away from compelling to attracting. His reign focused on rebuilding Rome as a great European capital and Baroque city, a visual symbol for the Catholic Church.


title: History of the papacy

text: The last eight years of his long pontificate – the longest in church history – Pope Pius IX spent as prisoner of the Vatican. Catholics were forbidden to vote or be voted for in national elections. However, they were permitted to participate in local elections, where they achieved successes. Pius himself was active during those years by creating new diocesan seats and appointing bishops to numerous dioceses, which had been unoccupied for years. Asked if he wanted his successor to follow his Italian policies, the old pontiff replied:


title: History of the papacy

text: Pope Leo XIII, considered a great diplomat, managed to improve relations with Russia, Prussia, German France, England and other countries. However, in light of a hostile anti-Catholic climate in Italy, he continued the policies of Pius IX towards Italy, without major modifications. He had to defend the freedom of the church against Italian persecutions and attacks in the area of education, expropriation and violation of Catholic Churches, legal measures against the church and brutal attacks, culminating in anticlerical groups attempting to throw the body of the deceased Pope Pius IX into the Tiber river on July 13, 1881. The pope even considered moving the papacy to Trieste or Salzburg, two cities under Austrian control, an idea which the Austrian monarch Franz Josef I gently rejected.


title: History of the papacy

text: His encyclicals changed church positions on relations with temporal authorities, and, in the 1891 encyclical "Rerum novarum" addressed for the first time social inequality and social justice issues with Papal authority. He was greatly influenced by Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, a German bishop who openly propagated siding with the suffering working classes Since Leo XIII, Papal teachings expand on the right and obligation of workers and the limitations of private property: Pope Pius XI "Quadragesimo anno", the Social teachings of Pope Pius XII on a huge range of social issues, John XXIII "Mater et magistra" in 1961, Pope Paul VI, the encyclical Populorum progressio on World development issues, and Pope John Paul II, "Centesimus annus, commemorating the 100th anniversary of "Rerum novarum" of Pope Leo XIII.


title: History of the papacy

text: The pontificate of Pope Pius XI was marked by great diplomatic activity and the issuance of many important papers, often in the form of encyclicals. In diplomatic affairs, Pius was aided at first by Pietro Gasparri and after 1930 by Eugenio Pacelli (who succeeded him as Pope Pius XII). Cardinal Gasparri's masterpiece was the Lateran Treaty (1929), negotiated for the Vatican by Francesco Pacelli. Nevertheless, the Fascist government and the pope were in open disagreement over the restriction of youth activities; this culminated in a strong papal letter (Non abbiamo bisogno, 1931), arguing the impossibility of being at once a Fascist and a Catholic. Relations between Mussolini and the Holy See were cool ever after.


title: History of the papacy

text: Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman Question began in 1926 between the government of Italy and the Holy See, and in 1929 they culminated in the agreements of the three Lateran Pacts, signed for King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and for Pope Pius XI by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri in the Lateran Palace (hence the name by which they are known).


title: History of the papacy

text: The Lateran Treaty included a political treaty, which created the state of the Vatican City and guaranteed full and independent sovereignty to the Holy See. The pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in international relations and to abstention from mediation in a controversy unless specifically requested by all parties. The concordat established Catholicism as the religion of Italy. And the financial agreement was accepted as settlement of all the claims of the Holy See against Italy arising from the loss of temporal power in 1870.


title: History of the papacy

text: A national concordat with Germany was one of Pacelli's main objectives as secretary of state. As nuncio during the 1920s, he had made unsuccessful attempts to obtain German agreement for such a treaty, and between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German governments, but the opposition of Protestant and Socialist parties, the instability of national governments and the care of the individual states to guard their autonomy thwarted this aim. In particular, the questions of denominational schools and pastoral work in the armed forces prevented any agreement on the national level, despite talks in the winter of 1932.


title: History of the papacy

text: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and sought to gain international respectability and to remove internal opposition by representatives of the church and the Catholic Centre Party. He sent his vice chancellor Franz von Papen, a Catholic nobleman and former member of the Centre Party, to Rome to offer negotiations about a Reichskonkordat. On behalf of Cardinal Pacelli, his long-time associate Prelate Ludwig Kaas, the out-going chairman of the Centre Party, negotiated first drafts of the terms with Papen. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on 20 July and ratified on September 10, 1933.


title: History of the papacy

text: Between 1933 and 1939, Pacelli issued 55 protests of violations of the "Reichskonkordat". Most notably, early in 1937, Pacelli asked several German cardinals, including Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber to help him write a protest of Nazi violations of the "Reichskonkordat"; this was to become Pius XI's encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge". The encyclical, condemning the view that "exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State … above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level", was written in German instead of Latin and read in German churches on Palm Sunday 1937.


title: History of the papacy

text: When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the Vatican declared neutrality to avoid being drawn into the conflict and also to avoid occupation by the Italian military. The Church policies after World War II of Pope Pius XII focused on material aid to war-torn Europe with its 15 million displaced persons and refugees, an internal internationalization of the Catholic Church, and the development of its worldwide diplomatic relations. His encyclical "Evangelii praecones" increased the local decision-making of Catholic missions, many of which became independent dioceses. Pius XII demanded recognition of local cultures as fully equal to European culture. He internationalized the College of Cardinals by eliminating the Italian majority and appointed cardinals from Asia, South America and Australia. In Western Africa Southern Africa British Eastern Africa, Finland, Burma and French Africa Pope Pius established independent dioceses in 1955.


title: History of the papacy

text: While after years of rebuilding the church thrived in the West and most of the developing world, it faced most serious persecutions in the East. Sixty million Catholics came under Soviet dominated regimes in 1945, with tens of thousands of priests and religious killed, and millions deported into Soviet and Chinese Gulags. The communist regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and China practically eradicated the Catholic Church in their countries


title: History of the papacy

text: On October 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council. The 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church emphasized the universal call to holiness and brought many changes in practices. On December 7, 1965, a Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I lifted the mutual excommunication against Catholic and Orthodox which had been in force since the Great Schism of 1054.


title: History of the papacy

text: The bishops agreed that the pope exercises supreme authority over the church, but defined "collegiality", meaning that all bishops share in this authority. Local bishops have equal authority as successors of the Apostles and as members of a larger organization, the church founded by Jesus Christ and entrusted to the apostles. The pope serves as a symbol of unity and has additional authority to ensure the continuation of that unity. During the Second Vatican Council, Catholic bishops drew back a bit from statements which might anger Christians of other faiths. Cardinal Augustin Bea, the President of the Christian Unity Secretariat had always the full support of Pope Paul VI in his attempts to ensure that the Council language is friendly and open to the sensitivities of Protestant and Orthodox Churches, whom he had invited to all sessions at the request of Pope John XXIII. Bea also was strongly involved in the passage of "Nostra aetate", which regulates relation of the church with the Jewish faith and members of other religions


title: History of the papacy

text: Pope Paul VI (1963–1978), however, continued the ecumenical efforts of Pope John XXIII in his contacts with Protestant and Orthodox churches. Pope Paul VI faced criticism throughout his papacy from both traditionalists and liberals for steering a middle course during Vatican II and in the course of the implementation of its reforms thereafter. His passion for peace during the Vietnam War was not understood by all. The urgent task of overcoming World poverty and start real development resulted partly in benign neglect of papal teachings by the influential and the rich. On basic church teachings, this pope was unwavering. On the tenth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, he strongly reconfirmed his teachings. In his style and methodology, he was a disciple of Pius XII, whom he deeply revered. He suffered under the attacks of his predecessor for his alleged silences, knowing from personal association with the late pope the real concerns and compassion of Pius XII. Pope Paul is not credited to have had the encyclopaedic culture of Pius XII, nor his phenomenal memory, his amazing gift for languages, his brilliant style in writing, nor did he have the Charisma and outpouring love, sense of humor and human warmth of John XXIII. "He took on himself the unfinished reform work of these two popes, bringing them diligently with great humility and common sense and without much fanfare to conclusion." In doing so, Paul VI saw himself following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, torn to several directions as "Saint Paul, who always said, I am attracted to two sides at once, because the Cross always divides."


title: History of the papacy

text: He became the first pope to visit all five continents. Paul VI systematically continued and completed the efforts of his predecessors, to turn the Euro-centric church into a church for the whole world, by integrating the bishops from all continents in its government and in the Synods which he convened. His August 6, 1967 Motu Proprio "Pro Comperto Sane" opened the Roman Curia to the bishops of the world. Until that time, only Cardinals could be leading members of the Curia.


title: History of the papacy

text: An inner joy seems to have been a characteristic of Paul VI. His confessor, the Jesuit Paolo Dezza arrived at the Vatican every Friday evening at seven p.m. to hear confession of Paul VI. The only words he ever spoke about his long service to Paul VI during his pontificate were, "that this pope is a man of great joy." After the death of Pope Paul VI, Dezza was more outspoken, saying that "if Paul VI was not a saint, when he was elected pope, he became one during his pontificate. I was able to witness not only with what energy and dedication he toiled for Christ and the Church but also and above all, how much he suffered for Christ and the Church. I always admired not only his deep inner resignation but also his constant abandonment to divine providence.". It is this character trait, which led to the opening of the process of beatification and canonization for Paul VI.


title: History of the papacy

text: With the accession of Pope John Paul II after the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I (who only survived as pope for 33 days), the church had, for the first time since Pope Adrian VI in the 16th century, a non-Italian pope. John Paul II has been credited with helping to bring down communism in eastern Europe by sparking what amounted to a peaceful revolution in his Polish homeland. Lech Wałęsa, one of the several founders of the Solidarity worker movement that ultimately toppled communism, credited John Paul with giving Poles the courage to rise up. The former Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged publicly the role of John Paul II in the fall of Communism. The pope himself stated after the fall of Communism that "the claim to build a world without God has been shown to be an illusion" (Prague, April 21, 1990).


title: History of the papacy

text: But this world without God exists in Capitalism too. Therefore, as did his predecessors, John Paul repeated the content of Christianity, its religious and moral message, its defense of the human person, and warned against the dangers of capitalism. "Unfortunately, not everything the West proposes as a theoretical vision or as a concrete lifestyle reflects Gospel values."


title: History of the papacy

text: The long pontificate of John Paul is credited with re-creating a sense of stability and even identity to the Catholic Church after years of questioning and searching. His teaching was firm and unwavering on issues which seemed to be in doubt under his predecessor including the ordination of women, liberation theology and priestly celibacy. He virtually stopped the liberal laicisation of problem priests policy of Pope Paul VI, which inadvertently may have contributed to problems in the USA. His authoritative style was reminiscent of Pope Pius XII, whose teaching he repeated in his own words, such as the identity of the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ and his condemnations of capitalism "viruses": secularism, indifferentism, hedonistic consumerism, practical materialism, and also formal atheism.


title: History of the papacy

text: As always after a long pontificate, a new page was opened in the history of the church with the election of a new pope. Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005. In his inaugural homily, the new Pontiff explained his view of a relation with Christ:


title: History of the papacy

text: On February 11, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would tender his resignation on February 28, 2013, less than three weeks later. On March 13, 2013, Pope Francis—the first Jesuit pope and the first pope from the Americas—was elected to the papacy.


title: Luka Romero

text: Luka Romero (born 18 November 2004) is a professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for club Lazio. Born in Mexico and raised in Spain, he represents Argentina at youth international level.


title: Luka Romero

text: Coming through the youth system, Romero made his first-team debut with Mallorca in La Liga aged 15 years and 219 days, becoming the youngest player to play in the top-five European leagues. After alternating in 2020–21 between Mallorca's first team and B team, Romero joined Serie A side Lazio in Italy in 2021. His first goal in 2022 made him the first 2004-born player to score in the Italian top flight.


title: Luka Romero

text: Born in Durango City, Mexico, to Argentine parents, Romero moved to Villanueva de Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain, at the age of three. He moved to Formentera, Balearic Islands at the age of seven, and started to play at Ibiza-based PE Sant Jordi.


title: Luka Romero

text: In 2011, Romero had a trial with Barcelona, but could not sign as he was under the age of 10 and did not live in the area. In 2015, at the age of ten, he signed an eight-year youth contract with Mallorca. In his first four years, Romero scored 230 goals in 108 matches.


title: Luka Romero

text: Romero was called up to train with the main squad of Mallorca by manager Vicente Moreno on 5 June 2020. Eleven days later, he was included in the list for a La Liga match against Villarreal after being given special authorization at the age of 15 years and 221 days, but remained an unused substitute in the 1–0 away loss. Romero played his first match with Mallorca on 24 June, replacing Iddrisu Baba late into a 0–2 away defeat against Real Madrid. Aged 15 years and 219 days, he broke Sansón's record for the youngest player to ever play a professional match in La Liga. He also broke the age record for the five top European leagues which was held by Kalman Gerencseri since 1960.


title: Luka Romero

text: Romero started the 2020–21 campaign with the main squad, but also appeared with the reserves in Tercera División in some occasions. He scored his first senior goals on 1 November, netting a brace with the B-side in a 3–0 away win against CD Llosetense. Romero scored his first professional goal on 29 November, netting the fourth in a 4–0 Segunda División home routing of UD Logroñés.


title: Luka Romero

text: On 19 August 2021, Romero was signed by Serie A club Lazio. On the opening day of the 2021–22 season, he became Lazio's youngest ever player when he made his debut at the age of 16 years, 9 months and 10 days in their 6–1 victory over Spezia. On 17 October, Romero was included in "The Guardian"'s 60 best young talents in world football born in 2004. He scored his first goal for Lazio on 10 November, the winner of a 1–0 win against Monza, becoming the first player born in 2004 to score in Serie A.


title: Luka Romero

text: Born in Mexico to an Argentine family, he moved to Spain at a young age. Romero holds all three passports, and is currently eligible to represent all three senior national teams. He represented Argentina internationally at under-15 level in the 2019 South American U-15 Championship, where they finished runners-up, scoring two goals in six matches. In March 2020, Romero was called up to represent Argentina's under-17s at the Montaigu Tournament, but the competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Luka Romero

text: On 6 March 2022, Romero received his first-ever call up to Argentina's senior team by manager Lionel Scaloni. On 26 March 2022, Romero played for the under-20 team in a 2–2 draw against the United States U20s.


title: Luka Romero

text: Romero's father, Diego, was a professional footballer. His twin brother Tobías is also a footballer, and plays as a goalkeeper.


title: Sayfo

text: The Sayfo or the Seyfo (; see below), also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian / Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I.


title: Sayfo

text: The Assyrians were divided into mutually antagonistic churches, including the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Before World War I, they lived in mountainous and remote areas of the Ottoman Empire (some of which were effectively stateless). The empire's nineteenth-century centralization efforts led to increased violence and danger for the Assyrians.


title: Sayfo

text: Mass killing of Assyrian civilians began during the Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan from January to May 1915, during which massacres were committed by Ottoman forces and pro-Ottoman Kurds. In Bitlis province, Ottoman troops returning from Persia joined local Kurdish tribes to massacre the local Christian population (including Assyrians). Ottoman forces and Kurds attacked the Assyrian tribes of Hakkari in mid-1915, driving them out by September despite the tribes mounting a coordinated military defense. Governor Mehmed Reshid initiated a genocide of all of the Christian communities in Diyarbekir province, including Syriac Christians, facing only sporadic armed resistance in some parts of Tur Abdin. Ottoman Assyrians living farther south, in present-day Iraq and Syria, were not targeted in the genocide.


title: Sayfo

text: The Sayfo occurred concurrently with and was closely related to the Armenian genocide, although the Sayfo is considered to have been less systematic. Local actors played a larger role than the Ottoman government, but the latter also ordered attacks on certain Assyrians. Motives for killing included a perceived lack of loyalty among some Assyrian communities to the Ottoman Empire and the desire to appropriate their land. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000 (about half the prewar population); the accuracy of this figure is unknown. They later revised their estimate to 275,000 dead at the Lausanne Conference in 1923. The Sayfo is less studied than the Armenian genocide. Efforts to have it recognized as a genocide began during the 1990s, spearheaded by the Assyrian diaspora. Although several countries acknowledge that Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were victims of a genocide, this assertion is rejected by the Turkish government.


title: Sayfo

text: There is no universally accepted translation in English for the endonym "Suryoyo" or "Suryoye". The choice of which term to use, such as "Assyrian", "Syriac", "Aramean", and "Chaldean", is often determined by political alignment. The Church of the East was the first to adopt an identity derived from ancient Assyria. The Syriac Orthodox Church has officially rejected the use of "Assyrian" since 1952, although not all Syriac Orthodox reject Assyrian identity. Since the Ottoman Empire was organized by religion, Ottoman officials referred to populations by their religious affiliation rather than ethnicity. Therefore, according to historian David Gaunt, "speaking of an 'Assyrian Genocide' is anachronistic". In Neo-Aramaic, the languages historically spoken by Assyrians, it has been known since 1915 as "Sayfo" or "Seyfo" (, ), which, since the tenth century, has also meant 'extermination' or 'extinction'. Other terms used by some Assyrians include "nakba" (Arabic for catastrophe) and "firman" (Turkish for order, as Assyrians believed that they were killed according to an official decree).


title: Sayfo

text: The people now called Assyrian, Chaldean, or Aramean are native to Upper Mesopotamia and historically spoke Aramaic languages, and their ancestors converted to Christianity in the first centuries CE. The first major schism in Syriac Christianity dates to 410, when Christians in the Sassanid Empire (Persia) formed the Church of the East to distinguish themselves from the official religion of the Roman Empire. The West Syriac church (later the Syriac Orthodox Church) was persecuted by Roman rulers for theological differences but remained separate from the Church of the East. The schisms in Syriac Christianity were fueled by political divisions between empires and personal antagonism between clergymen. Middle Eastern Christian communities were devastated by the Crusades and the Mongol invasions. The Chaldean and Syriac Catholic Churches split from the Church of the East and the Syriac Orthodox Church, respectively, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. Each church considered the others heretical.


title: Sayfo

text: In its millet system, the Ottoman Empire recognized religious denominations rather than ethnic groups: Süryaniler / Yakubiler (Syriac Orthodox or Jacobites), Nasturiler (Church of the East or Nestorians), and Keldaniler (Chaldean Catholic Church). Until the nineteenth century, these groups were part of the Armenian millet. Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire lived in remote, mountainous areas, where they had settled to avoid state control. Although this remoteness enabled Assyrians to avoid military conscription and taxation, it also cemented internal differences and prevented the emergence of a collective identity similar to the Armenian national movement. Unlike the Armenians, Syriac Christians did not control a disproportionate part of Ottoman commerce and did not have significant populations in nearby hostile countries.


title: Sayfo

text: There were no accurate estimates of the prewar Assyrian population, but Gaunt gives a possible figure of 500,000 to 600,000. Midyat, in Diyarbekir province (vilayet), was the only town in the Ottoman Empire with an Assyrian majority (Syriac Orthodox, Chaldeans, and Protestants). Syriac Orthodox Christians were concentrated in the hilly rural areas around Midyat, known as Tur Abdin, where they lived in almost 100 villages and worked in agriculture or crafts. Syriac Orthodox culture was centered in two monasteries near Mardin (west of Tur Abdin): Mor Gabriel and Deyrulzafaran. Outside the core area of Syriac settlement, there were also sizable populations in villages and the towns of Urfa, Harput, and Adiyaman. Unlike the Syriac population of Tur Abdin, many of these Syriacs spoke non-Aramaic languages.


title: Sayfo

text: Under the Qudshanis-based Patriarch of the Church of the East, Assyrian tribes controlled the Hakkari mountains east of Tur Abdin (adjacent to the Ottoman–Persian border). Hakkari is very mountainous, with peaks reaching and separated by steep gorges; many areas were only accessible by footpaths carved into the mountainsides. The Assyrian tribes sometimes fought each other on behalf of their Kurdish allies. Church of the East settlement began in the east on the western shore of Lake Urmia in Persia; a Chaldean enclave was just north, in Salamas. There was a Chaldean area around Siirt in Bitlis province (northeast of Tur Abdin and northwest of Hakkari, less mountainous than Hakkari), but most Chaldeans lived farther south in present-day Iraq.


title: Sayfo

text: Although the Kurds and Assyrians were well-integrated with each other, Gaunt writes that this integration "led straight into a world marked by violence, raiding, the kidnapping and rape of women, hostage taking, cattle stealing, robbery, plundering, the torching of villages and a state of chronic unrest". Assyrian efforts to maintain their autonomy collided with the Ottoman Empire's nineteenth-century attempts at centralization and modernization to assert control over what had effectively been a stateless region. The first mass violence targeting Assyrians was in the mid-1840s, when Kurdish emir Badr Khan devastated Hakkari and Tur Abdin, killing several thousands. During intertribal feuds, the bulk of the violence was directed at Christian villages under the protection of the opposing tribe.


title: Sayfo

text: During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Ottoman state armed the Kurds with modern weapons to fight Russia. When the Kurds refused to return the weapons at the end of the war, Assyrians—relying on older weapons—were at a disadvantage and subject to increasing violence. The irregular Hamidiye cavalry were formed in the 1880s from Kurdish tribes loyal to the government; their exemption from civil and military law enabled them to commit acts of violence with impunity. The rise of political Islam in the form of Kurdish shaikhs also widened the divide between the Assyrians and the Muslim Kurds. Many Assyrians were killed in the 1895 massacres of Diyarbekir. Violence worsened after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, despite Assyrian hopes that the new government would stop promoting anti-Christian Islamism. In 1908, 12,000 Assyrians were expelled from the Lizan valley by the Kurdish emir of Barwari. Due to increasing Kurdish attacks which Ottoman authorities did nothing to prevent, Patriarch of the Church of the East Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin began negotiations with the Russian Empire before World War I.


title: Sayfo

text: Before the war, Russia and the Ottoman Empire courted populations in each other's territory to wage guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The Ottoman Empire tried to enlist Caucasian Muslims and Armenians, as well as Assyrians and Azeris in Persia, and Russia looked to the Armenians, Kurds, and Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire. Prior to the war, Russia controlled parts of northeastern Persia, including Azerbaijan and Tabriz.


title: Sayfo

text: Like other genocides, the Sayfo had a number of causes. The rise of nationalism led to competing Turkish, Kurdish, Persian, and Arab national movements, which contributed to increasing violence in the already conflict-ridden borderlands inhabited by the Assyrians. Historian Donald Bloxham emphasizes the negative influence of European powers interfering in the Ottoman Empire under the premise of protecting Ottoman Christians. This imperialism put the Ottoman Christians at risk of retaliatory attacks. In 1912 and 1913, the Ottoman loss in the Balkan Wars triggered an exodus of Muslim refugees from the Balkans. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government decided to resettle the refugees in eastern Anatolia, on land confiscated from populations deemed disloyal to the empire. There was a direct connection between the deportation of the Christian population and the resettlement of Muslims in the depopulated areas. The goals of the population replacement were to Turkify the Balkan Muslims and end the perceived internal threat from the Christian populations. With local politicians predisposed to violence against non-Muslims, these factors helped generate the preconditions for genocide.


title: Sayfo

text: CUP politician Enver Pasha set up the paramilitary Special Organization, which was loyal to himself. Its members, many of whom were convicted criminals released from prison for the task, operated as spies and saboteurs. The Ottoman Empire ordered a full mobilization for war on 24 July 1914, and concluded the German–Ottoman alliance shortly thereafter. In August 1914, the CUP sent a delegation to an Armenian conference offering an autonomous Armenian region if the Armenian Revolutionary Federation incited a pro-Ottoman revolt in Russia in the event of war. The Armenians refused; according to Gaunt, a similar offer was probably made to Mar Shimun in Van on 3 August. After returning to Qudshanis, Enver Pasha sent letters urging his followers to "fulfill strictly all their duties to the Turks". The Assyrians in Hakkari (like many other Ottoman subjects) resisted conscription into the Ottoman army during the mobilization, and many fled to Persia in August. Those in Mardin, however, accepted conscription.


title: Sayfo

text: In August 1914, Assyrians in nine villages near the border were forced to flee to Persia and their villages were burned after they refused to join the Ottoman army. On 26 October 1914, a few days before the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, Ottoman interior minister Talaat Pasha sent a telegram to Djevdet Bey, the governor of Van province (which included Hakkari). In a planned Ottoman attack in Persia, the loyalty of the Hakkari Assyrians was doubted. Talaat ordered the deportation and resettlement of the Assyrians who lived near the Persian border with Muslims farther west; no more than twenty Assyrians would live in each resettlement, destroying their culture, language, and traditional way of life. Gaunt cites this order as the beginning of the Sayfo. The government in Van reported that the order could not be implemented due to the lack of forces to carry it out, and by 5 November the expected Assyrian unrest did not materialize. Assyrians in Julamerk and Gawar were arrested or killed, and Ottoman irregulars attacked Assyrian villages throughout Hakkari in retaliation for their refusal to follow the order. The Assyrians, unaware of the government's role in these events until December 1914, protested to the governor of Van.


title: Sayfo

text: The Ottoman garrison in the border town of Bashkale was commanded by Kazim Karabekir, and the local Special Organization branch by . Russian forces captured Bashkale and Sarai in November 1914 and held both for a few days. After their recapture by the Ottomans, the towns' local Christians were punished as collaborators, out of proportion to any actual collaboration. Local Ottoman forces consisting of gendarmerie, Hamidiye irregulars, and Kurdish volunteers were unable to mount attacks on the Assyrian tribes on the highlands, confining their attacks to poorly-armed Christian villages in the plains. Refugees from the area told the Russian army that "nearly the entire male Christian population of Gawar and Bashkale" had been massacred. In May 1915, Ottoman forces retreating from Bashkale massacred hundreds of Armenian women and children before continuing to Siirt.


title: Sayfo

text: Mar Shimun learned about the massacre of Assyrians in lowland areas, and believed that the highland tribes would be next. Via Agha Petros, an Assyrian interpreter for the Russian consulate in Urmia, he contacted the Russian authorities. Shimun traveled to Bashkale to meet Mehmed Shefik Bey, an Ottoman official sent from Mardin to win over the Assyrians for the Ottoman cause, in December 1914. Shefik promised protection and money in exchange for a written promise that the Assyrians would not side with Russia or permit their tribes to take up arms against the Ottoman government. The tribal chiefs considered the offer, but rejected it. In January 1915, Kurds blocked the route from Qudshanis to the Assyrian tribes. The patriarch's sister, Lady Surma, left Qudshanis the following month with 300 men. Early in 1915, the tribes of Hakkari were preparing to defend themselves from a large-scale attack; they decided to send women and children to the area around Chamba in Upper Tyari, leaving only combatants behind. On 10 May, the Assyrian tribes met and declared war (or a general mobilization) against the Ottoman Empire. In June, Mar Shimun traveled to Persia to ask for Russian support. He met with General Fyodor Chernozubov in Moyanjik (in the Salmas valley), who promised support. The patriarch and Agha Petros also met Russian consul Basil Nikitin in Salmas shortly before 21 June, but the promised Russian help never materialized.


title: Sayfo

text: In May, Assyrian warriors were part of the Russian force which was rushed to relieve the defense of Van; Haydar Bey, the governor of Mosul, was given the power to invade Hakkari. Talaat ordered him to drive the Assyrians out and added, "We should not let them return to their homelands". The ethnic-cleansing operation was coordinated by Enver, Talaat, and military and civilian Ottoman authorities. To legalize the invasion, the districts of Julamerk, Gawar, and Shemdinan were temporarily transferred to Mosul province. The Ottoman army joined local Kurdish tribes against specific targets. Suto Agha of the Kurdish Oramar tribe attacked Jilu, Dez, and Baz from the east; Said Agha attacked a valley in Lower Tyari; Ismael Agha targeted Chamba in Upper Tyari, and the Upper Berwar emir attacked Ashita, the Lizan valley, and Lower Tyari from the west.


title: Sayfo

text: The joint encirclement operation was launched on 11 June. The Jilu tribe was attacked at the beginning of the campaign by several Kurdish tribes; the fourth-century church of Mar Zaya, with historic artifacts, was destroyed. Ottoman forces based in Julamerk and Mosul launched a joint attack on Tyari on 23 June. Haydar first attacked the Tyari villages of Ashita and Sarespido; later, an expeditionary force of three thousand Turks and Kurds attacked the mountain pass between Tyari and Tkhuma. Although the Assyrians were victorious in most of the battles, they had unsustainable losses of lives and ammunition and lacked their invaders' German-manufactured rifles, machine guns, and artillery. In July, Mar Shimun sent Malik Khoshaba and bishop Mar Yalda Yahwallah from Barwari to Tabriz in Persia to request urgent assistance from the Russians. The Kurdish Barzani tribe assisted the Ottoman army and laid waste to Tkhuma, Tyari, Jilu, and Baz. During the campaign, Ottoman forces took no prisoners. Mar Shimun's brother, Hormuz, was arrested while he was studying in Constantinople; in late June, Talaat tried to obtain the surrender of the Assyrian tribes by threatening Hormuz' life if Mar Shimun did not capitulate. The Assyrians refused, and he was killed.


title: Sayfo

text: Outnumbered and outgunned, the Assyrians retreated further into the high mountains without food and watched as their homes, farms, and herds were pillaged. They had no other option but fleeing to Persia, which most had done by September. Most of the men joined the Russian army, hoping to return home. During the 1915 fighting, the Assyrians' only strategic objective was defensive; the Ottoman goal was to defeat the Assyrian tribes and prevent their return.


title: Sayfo

text: In 1903, Russia estimated that 31,700 Assyrians lived in Persia. Facing attacks from their Kurdish neighbors, the Assyrian villages in the Ottoman–Persian borderlands organized self-defense forces; by the outbreak of World War I, they were well armed. In 1914, before the declaration of war against Russia, Ottoman forces crossed the border into Persia and destroyed Christian villages. Large-scale attacks in late September and October 1914 targeted many Assyrian villages, and the attackers neared Urmia. Due to Ottoman attacks, thousands of Christians living along the border fled to Urmia. Others arrived in Persia after fleeing from the Ottoman side of the border. The November 1914 proclamation of jihad by the Ottoman government inflamed jihadist sentiments in the Ottoman–Persian border area, convincing the local Kurdish population to side with the Ottomans. In November, Persia declared its neutrality; however, it was not respected by the warring parties.


title: Sayfo

text: Russia organized units of Assyrian and Armenian volunteers to bolster local Russian forces against Ottoman attack. Assyrians led by Agha Petros declared their support for the Entente, and marched in Urmia. Agha Petros later said that he had been promised by Russian officials that in exchange for their support, they would receive an independent state after the war. Ottoman irregulars in Van province crossed the Persian border, attacking Christian villages in Persia. In response, Persia shut down the Ottoman consulates in Khoy, Tabriz, and Urmia and expelled Sunni Muslims. Ottoman authorities retaliated with the expulsion of several thousand Hakkari Assyrians to Persia. Resettled in farming villages, the Assyrians were armed by Russia. The Russian government was aware that the Assyrians and Armenians of Azerbaijan could not stop an Ottoman army, and was indifferent to the danger to which these communities would be exposed in an Ottoman invasion.


title: Sayfo

text: On 1 January 1915, Russia abruptly withdrew its forces. Ottoman forces led by Djevdet, Kazim Karabekir, and Ömer Naji occupied Azerbaijan with no opposition. Immediately after the withdrawal of Russian forces, local Muslims committed pogroms against Christians; the Ottoman army also attacked Christian civilians. Over a dozen villages were sacked and, of the large villages, only Gulpashan was left intact. News of the atrocities spread quickly, leading many Armenians and Assyrians to flee to the Russian Caucasus; those north of Urmia had more time to flee. According to several estimates, about 10,000 or 15,000 to 20,000 crossed the border into Russia. Assyrians who had volunteered for the Russian forces were separated from their families, who were often left behind. An estimated 15,000 Ottoman troops reached Urmia by 4 or 5 January, and Dilman on 8 January.


title: Sayfo

text: Ottoman troops began attacking Christian villages during their February 1915 retreat, when they were turned back by a Russian counterattack. Facing losses which they blamed on Armenian volunteers and imagining a broad Armenian rebellion, Djevdet ordered massacres of Christian civilians to reduce the potential future strength of volunteer units. Some local Kurdish tribes participated in the killings, but others protected Christian civilians. Some Assyrian villages also engaged in armed resistance when attacked. The Persian Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the atrocities to the Ottoman government, but lacked the power to prevent them.


title: Sayfo

text: Many Christians did not have time to flee during the Russian withdrawal, and 20,000 to 25,000 refugees were stranded in Urmia. Nearly 18,000 Christians sought shelter in the city's Presbyterian and Lazarist missions. Although there was reluctance to attack the missionary compounds, many died of disease. Between February and May (when the Ottoman forces pulled out), there was a campaign of mass execution, looting, kidnapping, and extortion against Christians in Urmia. More than 100 men were arrested at the Lazarist compound, and dozens (including Mar Dinkha, bishop of Tergawer) were executed on 23 and 24 February. Near Urmia, the large Syriac village of Gulpashan was attacked; men were killed, and women and children were abducted and raped.


title: Sayfo

text: There were no missionaries in the Salmas valley to protect Christians, although some local Muslims tried to do so. In Dilman, the Persian governor offered shelter to 400 Christians; he was forced to surrender the men to Ottoman forces, however, who executed them in the town square. The Ottoman forces lured Christians to Haftevan (a village south of Dilman) by demanding that they register there, and arrested notable people in Dilman who were brought to the village for execution. Over two days in February, 700 to 800 people (including the entire male Christian population) was murdered in Haftevan. The killings were committed by the Ottoman army (led by Djevdet) and the local Shekak Kurdish tribe, led by Simko Shikak.


title: Sayfo

text: In April, Ottoman army commander Halil Pasha arrived in Azerbaijan with reinforcements from Rowanduz. Halil and Djevdet ordered the murder of Armenian and Syriac soldiers serving in the Ottoman army, and several hundred were killed. In several other massacres in Azerbaijan in early 1915, hundreds of Christians were killed and women were targeted for kidnapping and rape; seventy villages were destroyed. In May and June, Christians who had fled to the Caucasus returned to find their villages destroyed. Armenian and Assyrian volunteers attacked Muslims in revenge. After retreating from Persia, Ottoman forces—blaming Armenians and Assyrians for their defeat—took revenge against Ottoman Christians. Ottoman atrocities in Persia were widely covered by international media in mid-March 1915, prompting a declaration on 24 May by Russia, France, and the United Kingdom condemning them. The Blue Book, a collection of eyewitness reports of Ottoman atrocities published by the British government in 1916, devoted 104 of its 684 pages to the Assyrians.


title: Sayfo

text: A Kurdish rebellion in Bitlis province was suppressed shortly before the outbreak of war in November 1914. The CUP government reversed its previous opposition to the Hamidiye regiments, recruiting them to put down the rebellion. As elsewhere, military requisitions became pillage; in February, labor-battalion recruits began to disappear. In July and August 1915, 2,000 Chaldeans and Syriac Orthodox from Bitlis were among those who fled to the Caucasus when the Russian army retreated from Van.


title: Sayfo

text: Before the war, Siirt and the surrounding area were Christian enclaves populated largely by Chaldean Catholics. Catholic priest estimated that there were 60,000 Christians living in the Siirt district (sanjak), including 15,000 Chaldeans and 20,000 Syriac Orthodox. Violence in Siirt began on 9 June with the arrest and execution of Armenian, Syriac Orthodox, and Chaldean clerics and notable residents, including the Chaldean bishop Addai Sher. After retreating from Persia, Djevdet led the siege of Van; he continued to Bitlis province in June with 8,000 soldiers, whom he called the "butcher battalion" (). The arrival of these troops in Siirt led to more violence. District governor (mutasarrif) Serfiçeli Hilmi Bey and Siirt mayor Abdul Ressak were replaced because they did not support the killing. Forty local officials in Siirt organized the massacres.


title: Sayfo

text: During the month-long massacre, Christians were killed in the streets or their houses (which were looted). The Chaldean diocese of Siirt was destroyed, including its library of rare manuscripts. The massacre was organized by Bitlis governor Abdülhalik Renda, the chief of police, the mayor, and other prominent local residents. The killing in Siirt was committed by "çetes", and the surrounding villages were destroyed by Kurds; many local Kurdish tribes were involved. According to Venezuelan mercenary Rafael de Nogales, the massacre was planned as revenge for Ottoman defeats by Russia. De Nogales believed that Halil was trying to assassinate him, since the CUP had disposed of other witnesses. He left Siirt as quickly as he could, passing deportation columns of Syriac and Armenian women and children.


title: Sayfo

text: Only 400 people were deported from Siirt; the remainder were killed or kidnapped by Muslims. The deportees (women and children, since the men had been executed) were forced to march west from Siirt towards Mardin or south towards Mosul, assaulted by police. As they passed through, their possessions (including their clothes) were stolen by local Kurds and Turks. Those unable to keep up were killed, and women considered attractive were abducted by police or Kurds, raped, and killed. One site of attacks and robbery by Kurds was the gorge of Wadi Wawela in Sawro kaza, northeast of Mardin. No deportees reached Mardin, and only 50 to 100 Chaldeans (of an original 7,000 to 8,000) reached Mosul. Three Assyrian villages in Siirt—Dentas, Piroze and Hertevin—survived the Sayfo, existing until 1968 when their residents emigrated.


title: Sayfo

text: After leaving Siirt, Djevdet proceeded to Bitlis and arrived on 25 June. His forces killed men, and the women and girls were enslaved by Turks and Kurds. The Syriac Orthodox Church estimated its Bitlis province losses at 8,500, primarily in Schirwan and Gharzan.


title: Sayfo

text: The situation for Christians in Diyarbekir province worsened during the winter of 1914–1915; the Saint Ephraim church was vandalized, and four young men from the Syriac village of Qarabash (near Diyarbekir) were hanged for desertion. Syriacs who protested the executions were clubbed by police, and two died. In March, many non-Muslim soldiers were disarmed and transferred to road-building labor battalions. Harsh conditions, mistreatment, and individual murders led to many deaths.


title: Sayfo

text: On 25 March, CUP founding member Mehmed Reshid was appointed governor of Diyarbekir. Chosen for his record of anti-Armenian violence, Reshid brought thirty Special Organization members (mainly Circassians) who were joined by released convicts. Many local officials (kaymakams and district governors) refused to follow Reshid's orders, and were replaced in May and June 1915. Kurdish confederations were offered rewards to allow their Syriac clients to be killed. Government allies complied (including the Milli and Dekşuri), and many who had supported the anti-CUP 1914 Bedirhan revolt switched sides because the extermination of Christians did not threaten their interests. The Raman tribe became enthusiastic executioners for Reshid, but parts of the Heverkan leadership protected Christians; this limited Reshid's genocide, and allowed pockets of resistance to survive in Tur Abdin. Some Yazidis, who were also persecuted by the government, aided the Christians. The killers in Diyarbekir were typically volunteers organized by local leaders, and the freelance perpetrators took a share of the loot. Some women and children were abducted into local Kurdish or Arab families.


title: Sayfo

text: Thousands of Armenians and several hundred Syriacs (including all their clergymen) in Diyarbekir city were arrested, deported, and massacred in June. In the Viranşehir kaza, west of Mardin, its Armenians were massacred in late May and June 1915. Syriacs were not killed, but many lost their property and some were deported to Mardin in August. In total, 178 Syriac towns and villages near Diyarbekir were wiped out and most of them razed.


title: Sayfo

text: Under Reshid's leadership, a systematic anti-Christian extermination was conducted in Diyarbekir province which included Syriacs and the province's few Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics. Reshid knew that his decision to extend the persecution to all Christians in Diyarbekir was against the central government's wishes, and he concealed relevant information from his communications. Unlike the government, Reshid and his Mardin deputy Bedri Bey classified all Aramaic-speaking Christians as Armenians: enemies of the CUP who must be eliminated. Reshid planned to replace Diyarbekir's Christians with selected, approved Muslim settlers to counterbalance the potentially-rebellious Kurds; in practice, however, the areas were resettled by Kurds and the genocide consolidated the province's Kurdish presence. Historian Uğur Ümit Üngör says that in Diyarbekir, "most instances of massacre in which the militia engaged were directly ordered by" Reshid and "all Christian communities of Diyarbekir were equally hit by the genocide, although the Armenians were often particularly singled out for immediate destruction". The priest Jacques Rhétoré estimated that the Syriac Orthodox in Diyarbekir province lost 72 percent of their population, compared to 92 percent of Armenian Catholics and 97 percent of Armenian Apostolic Church adherents.


title: Sayfo

text: German diplomats noticed that the Ottoman deportations were targeting groups other than Armenians, leading to a complaint from the German government. Austria–Hungary and the Holy See also protested the violence against non-Armenians. Talaat Pasha telegraphed Reshid on 12 July 1915 that "measures adopted against the Armenians are absolutely not to be extended to other Christians... you are ordered to put an immediate end to these acts". No action was taken against Reshid for exterminating Syriac Christians or assassinating Ottoman officials who disagreed with the massacres, however, and in 1916 he was appointed governor of Ankara. Talaat's telegram may have been sent in response to German and Austrian opposition to the massacres, with no expectation of implementation. The perpetrators began separating Armenians and Syriacs in early July, only killing the former; however, the killing of Syriacs resumed in August and September.


title: Sayfo

text: Christians in Mardin were largely untouched until May 1915. At the end of May, they heard about the abduction of Christian women and the murder of wealthy Christians elsewhere in Diyarbekir to steal their property. Extortion and violence began in Mardin district, despite the efforts of district governor Hilmi Bey. Hilmi rejected Reshid's demands to arrest Christians in Mardin, saying that they posed no threat to the state. Reshid sent Pirinççizâde Aziz Feyzi to incite anti-Christian violence in April and May, and Feyzi bribed or persuaded the Deşi, Mışkiye, Kiki and Helecan chieftains to join him. Mardin police chief Memduh Bey arrested dozens of men in early June, using torture to extract confessions of treason and disloyalty and extorting money from their families. Reshid appointed a new mayor and officials in Mardin, who organized a 500-man militia to kill. He also urged the central government to depose Hilmi, which it did on 8 June. He was replaced by the equally-resistant Shefik, whom Reshid also tried to depose. The cooperative Ibrahim Bedri was appointed as an official and Reshid used him to carry out his orders, bypassing Shefik. Reshid also replaced Midyat governor Nuri Bey with the hardline Edib Bey in July 1915, after Nuri refused to cooperate with Reshid.


title: Sayfo

text: On the night of 26 May, militiamen were caught attempting to plant arms in a Syriac Catholic church in Mardin. Their intent was to cite the supposed discovery of an arms cache as evidence of a Christian rebellion to justify the planned massacres. Mardin's well-to-do Christians were deported in convoys, the first of which left the city on 10 June. Those who refused to convert to Islam were murdered on the road to Diyarbekir. Half of the second convoy, which departed on 12 June, had been massacred before messengers from Diyarbekir announced that the non-Armenians had been pardoned by the sultan; they were subsequently freed. Other convoys from Mardin were targeted for extermination from late June until October. The city's Syriac Orthodox made a deal with authorities and were spared, but the other Christian denominations were decimated.


title: Sayfo

text: All Christian denominations were treated the same in the Mardin district countryside. Militia and Kurds attacked the village of Tell Ermen on 1 July, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately in the church after raping the women. The next day, more than 1,000 Syriac Orthodox and Catholics were massacred in Eqsor by militia and Kurds from the Milli, Deşi, Mişkiye, and Helecan tribes. Looting continued for several days before the village was burned down (which could be seen from Mardin). In Nusaybin, Talaat's order to spare the Syriacs was ignored as Christians of all denominations (including many Syriac Orthodox Church members) were arrested in mid-August and murdered in a ravine. In Djezire (Cizre) "kaza", Syriac Orthodox leader Gabro Khaddo cooperated with the authorities, defused plans for armed resistance, and paid a large ransom in June 1915; almost all Syriacs were killed with the "kaza" Armenians at the end of August. Some Armenian and Syriac Orthodox men were drafted to work in road construction or harvesting crops in place of those who had been killed. In August 1915, the harvest was over; the Armenians were killed, and the Syriacs were released.


title: Sayfo

text: In Tur Abdin, some Syriac Christians fought their attempted extermination. This was considered treason by Ottoman officials, who reported massacre victims as rebels. Christians in Midyat considered resistance after hearing about massacres elsewhere, but the local Syriac Orthodox community initially refused to support this. On 21 June, 100 men (mostly Armenians and Protestants) were arrested, tortured for confessions implicating others, and executed outside the city; this panicked the Syriac Orthodox. Local people refused to hand over their arms, attacked government offices, and cut telegraph lines; local Arab and Kurdish tribes were recruited to attack the Christians. The town was pacified in early August after weeks of bloody urban warfare which killed hundreds of Christians. Survivors fled east to the more-defensible Iwardo, which held out successfully with the food aid of local Yazidis.


title: Sayfo

text: In June 1915, many Syriacs from Midyat "kaza" were massacred; others fled to the hills. A month earlier, local tribes and the Ramans began attacking Christian villages near Azakh (present-day İdil) on the road from Midyat to Djezire. Survivors fled to Azakh, since it was defensible. The villages were attacked from north to south, giving the attackers at Azakh (one of the southernmost villages) more time to prepare. The primarily Syriac Orthodox village refused to hand over Catholics and Protestants, as demanded by the authorities. Azakh was first attacked on 17 or 18 August, but the defenders repelled this and subsequent attacks over the next three weeks.


title: Sayfo

text: Against the advice of General Mahmud Kâmil Pasha, Enver ordered the rebellion suppressed in November. Parts of the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Armies and a Turkish–German expeditionary force under Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter and Ömer Naji were sent to crush the rebels, the latter diverted from attacking Tabriz. To justify the attack on Azakh, Ottoman officials claimed (with no evidence) that "Armenian rebels" had "cruelly massacred the Muslim population of the region". Scheubner, skeptical of the attack, forbade any Germans from participating. German general Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz and the German ambassador in Constantinople, Konstantin von Neurath, informed Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg of the Ottoman request for German assistance in crushing the resistance. The Germans refused, fearing that the Ottomans would insinuate that the Germans initiated the anti-Christian atrocities. The defenders launched a surprise attack on Ottoman troops during the night of November 13–14, which led to a truce (lobbied by the Germans) which ended the resistance on favorable terms for the villagers. On 25 December 1915, the Ottoman government decreed that "instead of deporting all of the Syriac people", they were to be confined "in their present locations". Most of Tur Abdin was in ruins by this time, except for villages which resisted and families who found refuge in monasteries. Other Syriacs had fled south, into present-day Syria and Iraq.


title: Sayfo

text: After their expulsion from Hakkari, the Assyrians and their herds were resettled by Russian occupation authorities near Khoy, Salmas and Urmia. Many died during the first winter due to lack of food, shelter, and medical care, and they were resented by local residents for worsening living standards. Assyrian men from Hakkari offered their services to the Russian military; although their knowledge of local terrain was useful, they were poorly disciplined. In 1917, Russia's withdrawal from the war after the Russian Revolution dimmed prospects of a return to Hakkari. About 5,000 Assyrian and Armenian militia policed the area, but they frequently abused their power and killed Muslims without provocation.


title: Sayfo

text: From February to July 1918, the region was engulfed by ethnic violence. On 22 February, local Muslims and the Persian governor began an uprising against the Christian militias in Urmia. The better-organized Christians, led by Agha Petros, brutally crushed the uprising; hundreds (possibly thousands) were killed. On 16 March, Mar Shimun and many of his bodyguards were killed by the Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak, probably at the instigation of Persian officials fearing Assyrian separatism, after they met to discuss an alliance. Assyrians went on a killing and looting spree; unable to find Simko, they murdered Persian officials and inhabitants. The Kurds responded by massacring Christians, regardless of denomination or ethnicity. Christians were massacred in Salmas in June and in Urmia in early July, and many Assyrian women were abducted.


title: Sayfo

text: Christian militias in Azerbaijan were no match for the Ottoman army when it invaded in July 1918. Tens of thousands of Ottoman and Persian Assyrians fled south to Hamadan, where the British Dunsterforce was garrisoned, on 18 July to escape Ottoman forces approaching Urmia under Ali İhsan Sâbis. The Ottoman invasion was followed by killings of Christians, including Chaldean archbishop Toma Audo, and the sacking of Urmia. Some remained in Persia, but there was another anti-Christian massacre on 24 May 1919. Historian Florence Hellot-Bellier says that the interethnic violence of 1918 and 1919 "demonstrate[s] the degree of violence and resentment which had accumulated throughout all of these years of war and the break-up of the long-standing links between the inhabitants of the Urmia region". According to Gaunt, Assyrian "victims, when given the chance, turned without hesitation into perpetrators".


title: Sayfo

text: During the journey to Hamadan, the Assyrians were harassed by Kurdish irregulars (probably at the instigation of Simko and Sayyid Taha); some died of exhaustion. Many were killed near Heydarabad, and another 5,000 during an ambush by Ottoman forces and Kurdish irregulars near the Sahin Ghal'e mountain pass. Dependent on the British for protection, they were resettled in a refugee camp in Baqubah (near Baghdad) which held fifteen thousand Armenians and thirty-five thousand Assyrians in October 1918. Conditions at the camp were poor, and an estimated 7,000 Assyrians died there. Although the United Kingdom requested that Assyrian refugees be allowed to return, the Persian government refused.


title: Sayfo

text: In 1920, the camp in Baqubah was shut down and Assyrians hoping to return to Azerbaijan or Hakkari were sent northwards to Midan. About 4,500 Assyrians were resettled near Duhok and Akre in northern Iraq. They worked as soldiers for the British rulers of Mandatory Iraq, which backfired when the British did not follow through with their repeated promises to resettle Assyrians in areas where they would be safer. After the end of the mandate, Assyrians were killed in the 1933 Simele massacre. After the massacre, France allowed 24,000 to 25,000 Assyrians to resettle along the Khabur in northeastern Syria. Other Assyrians were exiled in the Caucasus, Russia, or Lebanon, and a few emigrated to the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe.


title: Sayfo

text: A few thousand Assyrians remained in Hakkari after 1915, and others returned after the war. Armed by the British, Agha Petros led a group of Assyrians from Tyari and Tkhuma who wanted to return in 1920; he was repulsed by Barwari chieftain Rashid Bek and the Turkish army. The remaining Assyrians were driven out again in 1924 by a Turkish army commanded by Kazim Karabekir, and the mountains were depopulated. In Siirt, Islamicized Syriacs (primarily women) were left behind; their Kurdified (or Arabized) descendants still live there. The survivors lost access to their property, becoming landless agricultural laborers or (later) an urban underclass. The depopulated Christian villages were resettled by Kurds or Muslims from the Caucasus. During and after the genocide, more than 150 churches and monasteries were demolished; others were converted to mosques or other uses, and many manuscripts and cultural objects were destroyed.


title: Sayfo

text: After 1923, local politicians went on an anti-Christian campaign which negatively impacted the Syriac communities (such as Adana, Urfa or Adiyaman) unaffected by the 1915 genocide. Many were forced to abandon their property and flee to Syria, eventually settling in Aleppo, Qamishli, or the Khabur region. Despite its effort to court the Turkish nationalists, including denying that Syriac Orthodox had been persecuted during the war, the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate was expelled from Turkey in 1924. Unlike the Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, Assyrians were not recognized as a minority group in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. The remaining population lived in submission to Kurdish aghas, subject to harassment and abuse which drove them to emigrate. Turkish laws denaturalized those who had fled and confiscated their property. Despite their citizenship rights, many Assyrians who remained in Turkey had to re-purchase their property from Kurdish aghas or risk losing their Turkish citizenship. A substantial number of Assyrians continued to live in Tur Abdin until the 1980s. Some scholars have described the ongoing exclusion and harassment of Assyrians in Turkey as a continuation of the Sayfo.


title: Sayfo

text: In 1919, Assyrians attended the Paris Peace Conference and attempted to lobby for compensation for their war losses. Although it has been labeled "the Assyrian delegation" in historiography, it was neither an official delegation nor a cohesive entity. Many attendees demanded monetary reparations for their war losses and an independent state, and all emphasized that Assyrians could not live under Muslim rule. Territory claimed by the Assyrians included parts of present-day Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Although there was considerable sympathy for the Assyrians, none of their demands were met. The British and the French had other plans for the Middle East, and the rising Turkish nationalist movement was also an obstacle. The Assyrians recalled that the British had promised them an independent country in exchange for their support, although it is disputed if such a promise was ever made; many Assyrians felt betrayed that this desire was not fulfilled.


title: Sayfo

text: Assyrian delegates at the Paris Peace Conference said that their losses were 250,000 in the Ottoman Empire and Persia, around half of the prewar population. In 1923, at the Lausanne Conference, they raised their estimate to 275,000. The source of these numbers is unknown and, according to Gaunt, their accuracy has been impossible to verify and the Assyrian delegation had an incentive to exaggerate. Although more than 50 percent of the population was killed in some areas, Assyrian communities in present-day Syria and Iraq were left mainly intact. The Sayfo was less systematic than the Armenian genocide; all Christians were killed in some places, but local officials spared Assyrians and targeted Armenians in others. It is less well-known than the Armenian genocide, partially because its targets were divided among mutually-antagonistic churches and did not develop a collective identity. According to historian Tessa Hofmann, the killing of Assyrians in Diyarbekir may be considered a spillover of the Armenian genocide; Hakkari and Azerbaijan, however, was "a typical wartime and retributive genocide".


title: Sayfo

text: For Assyrians, the Sayfo is considered the greatest modern example of their persecution. Eyewitness accounts of the genocide were typically passed down orally, rather than in writing; memories were often passed down in lamentations. After large-scale migration to Western countries (where Assyrians had greater freedom of speech) during the second half of the twentieth century, accounts began to be communicated more publicly by grandchildren of survivors.


title: Sayfo

text: During the 1990s, before the first academic research on the Sayfo, Assyrian diaspora groups (inspired by campaigns for Armenian genocide recognition) began to press for a similar formal acknowledgement. In parallel with the political campaign, Armenian genocide research began to include Assyrians as victims. In December 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution recognizing the Assyrian genocide. The Sayfo is also recognized as a genocide in resolutions passed by Sweden (in 2010), Armenia (2015), the Netherlands (2015), and Germany (in 2016). Memorials in Armenia, Australia, Belgium, France, Greece, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States commemorate victims of the Sayfo.


title: Sayfo

text: The Turkish government denies that the Sayfo was a genocide; unlike its denial of the Armenian genocide, however, it prefers to avoid the issue. After the 1915 genocide, the Turkish government initially silenced its discussion in high culture and written works. Non-Turkish music and poetry were suppressed, and the Syriac Orthodox Church discouraged discussion of the Sayfo for fear of reprisals from the Turkish government. Those attempting to justify the destruction of Assyrian communities in the Ottoman Empire cite military resistance by some Assyrians against the Ottoman government. According to Gaunt et al., "Under no circumstances are states allowed to annihilate an entire population simply because it refuses to comply with a hostile government order to vacate their ancestral homes". Assyrian idealization of their military leaders, including those who committed war crimes against Muslims, has also been cited as a reason why all Assyrians deserved their fate.


title: Sayfo

text: In 2000, Turkish Syriac Orthodox priest Yusuf Akbulut was secretly recorded saying: "At that time it was not only the Armenians but also the Assyrians [Süryani] who were massacred on the grounds that they were Christians". The recording was given to Turkish prosecutors, who charged Akbulut with inciting ethnic hatred. Assyrian diaspora activists mobilized in support of Akbulut, persuading several European members of parliament to attend his trial; after more than a year, he was acquitted and released.


title: Sayfo

text: Turkish Australians interviewed by researcher Adriaan Wolvaardt had identical attitudes towards the Sayfo and the Armenian genocide, rejecting both as unfounded. Wolvaardt wrote that bringing up the Sayfo was "viewed as a form of hate directed against Turks", some of whom had considered leaving the Sydney suburb of Fairfield after a Sayfo memorial was built there.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Amrinder Singh Gill () is an Indian actor, singer, songwriter, and film producer who makes Punjabi-language films and music. He has been nominated for twenty-four PTC Punjabi Film Awards, winning seven including three for Best Actor, and two for Best Playback singer and has been nominated for five Filmfare Awards, winning two for Best Actor and Best Playback singer, among other accolades.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Gill recorded his first song for Jalandhar Doordarshan program "Kala Doria". He came into the limelight with his track "Paigam", followed by songs like "Daru", "Madhaania", "Khedan De Din", with Sunidhi Chauhan, and many others like "Mel Kara De" and "Dildarian". In 2012, "Judaa" received a Brit Asia Music Award for 'best album'. After the success of Judaa, in mid 2014, Amrinder Gill came up with a sequel "Judaa 2", which won Best Album award at PTC Punjabi Music Awards. His last single "Supna" was released in 2015 since then he has released only film tracks. Gill has been credited as playback singer in various films including "Chaar Sahibzaade" (2014).


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Gill has developed other ventures, including Rhythm Boyz Entertainment, with manager Karaj Gill, which helped launch the careers of artists such as Gurshabad, Bir Singh, Amrit Waraich. He started his acting career with a supporting role in the film "Munde UK De" in 2009. Then he acted as lead in films "Ik Kudi Punjab Di", "Taur Mittran Di", and many more. Finally he had success with films "Daddy Cool Munde Fool" and "Goreyan Nu Daffa Karo". Later, films like "Angrej", "Love Punjab", "Lahoriye", "Golak Bugni Bank Te Batua", and "Ashke" won various awards at different ceremonies. Five of his films, "Angrej", "Chal Mera Putt", "Chal Mera Putt 2, Chal Mera Putt 3", and "Chhalla Mud Ke Nahi Aaya", have grossed over ₹30 crore globally, with the second grossing more than ₹50 crore becoming the second highest grossing Punjabi film at the time, before it was surpassed by "Saunkan Saunkne" the next year.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Gill was born on 11 May 1976 in Amritsar, Punjab. In an interview, Gill disclosed, "During my childhood days, I would stand in front of the mirror, assuming myself as an actor and would imitate scenes. My father was a doctor, mother was a teacher and my sister was married, therefore often when I was alone at home I would practice to be an actor." He is graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar. He received master's degree in agriculture science. He is an alumnus of Guru Nanak Dev University. He is married to Suneet Gill and they have one son and one daughter.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: <br>During college, he performed Bhangra dance as a support artist for personalities like Sarbjit Cheema. Before starting his singing career, he worked in the Ferozepur Central Cooperative Bank as a Manager. He recorded his first song "Sanu Ishq Ho Gaya" in 1999, for Jalandhar Doordarshan program "Kala Doria" but credited song to Rhythm Boyz instead of himself. Gill has developed other ventures, including Rhythm Boyz Entertainment, with manager Karaj Gill, which helped launch the careers of artists such as Gurshabad, Bir Singh, and Gurpreet Maan.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Gill released his debut studio album "Apni Jaan Ke" in early 2000. The album was produced by Sukhpal Sukh, and was released by Goyal Music. "Ki Kariye" and "Ishq Ho Gaya" were well received by audience. In 2002, Gill released his second studio album "Ek Vaada". Song "Je Mile Oh Kudi" from the album was a commercial success. The album was produced by Gurmeet Singh. Also, Gill referred to the song as one of his favourite songs. The album was followed by the studio album "Chan Da Tukda", released in 2003. This album was produced by Sukhpal Sukh, and was released by Finetouch Music. Gill finally got his breakthrough with the album "Dildarian", which was released in 2006; and was produced by Sukhshinder Shinda. Songs "Dildarian" and "Sohni Kuri" from the album were well received. The album was nominated for three categories at 2006 PTC Punjabi Music Awards. In 2008, his fifth studio album "Ishq", produced by Shinda was released. The album was released by Speed Records and Times Music. The album was followed by Dooriyan, which was released in late 2009 by Speed Records and Times Music. The album received numerous nominations at 2010 PTC Punjabi Music Awards.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: His album "Judaa" received a Brit Asia Music Award for 'best album. After the success of Judaa, In mid 2014, Amrinder Gill came up with a sequel Judaa 2. His song "Mera Deewanapan" from the album topped the Asian music chart upon its release. "Pendu" from the album also entered the chart. His last single track "Supna" was released in 2015. Since then he has released songs in films only. His songs like "Kurta Suha" from Angrej, "Heerey" from Love Punjab, "Akhar" from Lahoriye, and "Aisi Taisi" from Golak Bugni Bank Te Batua have been nominated for many awards and won many. In May 2020, Gill announced he has recorded over 25 new songs, and will release his ninth studio album after the lockdown. In May 2021, he announced "Judaa 3". The 6-song album "Judaa 3" was released in August and one of its songs "Chal Jindiye" trended on music charts.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: He made his acting debut under Punjabi director Manmohan Singh's Punjabi Film Munde UK De in 2009 in a supporting role with Jimmy Shergill and Neeru Bajwa. He replaced Harbhajan Mann in the film. Before making debut he took acting classes from Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Institute in Mumbai. He followed that up with a lead role in Singh's "Ik Kudi Punjab Di". His next film "Taur mittran Di" for Jimmy Shergill productions released in May 2012, it paired him with actress Surveen Chawla and MTV VJ and Bollywood actor Rannvijay Singh. It opened to a below average response, it had the seventh highest opening day in Punjabi Films. His next movie was Tu Mera 22 Main Tera 22 which pairs him with Punjabi rapper Honey Singh and actress Mandy Takhar.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: After that he was seen in "Saadi Love Story" that co-starred Diljit Dosanjh, "Neeru Bajwa" and "Surveen Chawla" and was directed by Dheeraj Rattan who has written several films for Punjabi Cinema. He then worked in "Daddy Cool Munde Fool" in the same year. In 2015, his film "Angrej" was released which was produced by Rhythm Boyz Entertainment, a company co-founded by him in 2013. Set against the backdrop of the waning British Raj, the film chronicles the love story of a young man and a woman belonging to different social strata. Critics noted Gill's positive transition from a singer to an actor; Jasmine Singh of The Tribune wrote that while Gill might not "evoke laughter from loud dialogues, but his innocent face and dialogue delivery will leave you in splits". Also, he won his first "Best Actor Award" at PTC Punjabi Film Awards for his performance. The film grossed in its theatrical run and was second highest-grossing Punjabi film of the year and third highest-grossing of all time upon its release.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: His releases, "Lahoriye" (2017) and Love Punjab were also the commercial success which further made him the leading star in Pollywood and garnered praise from both critics and audiences. Gill has been paired with Sargun Mehta in lead three times in "Angrej" (2015), "Love Punjab" (2016), and "Lahoriye" (2017). In 2018, his film Ashke was released which is based on Bhangra for which he won "Best Actor (critics)" award at PTC Punjabi Film Awards 2019.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: His film "Love Punjab" had clashed with Gippy Grewal directed "Ardaas" starring Ammy Virk. It was the first clash between two Punjabi movies and both were hits. With this clash it was made clear that Amrinder Gill was the next big star as he defeated not only Gippy Grewal and Ammy Virk but also gave tough competition to Diljit Dosanjh starrer "Ambarsariya" in overseas and domestic box office, and later surpassed "Ambarsariya" in its total box office collection.


title: Amrinder Gill

text: In 2019, Gill was seen in "Laiye Je Yaarian" followed by "Chal Mera Putt". The latter became the highest grossing Punjabi film at overseas. Its sequel "Chal Mera Putt 2" released in 2020 and is currently the third highest grossing Punjabi movie to date. Another sequel, Chal Mera Putt 3, was released in 2021. He is also producing Diljit Dosanjh starrer "Jodi".


title: Amrinder Gill

text: Gill made his directorial debut with Chhalla Mud Ke Nahi Aaya. Released in 2022, the film was a hit and the seventh highest grossing Punjabi film of all time as of 2022.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Spider is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by David Cronenberg and based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: The film premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and enjoyed some media buzz; however, it was released in only a few cinemas at the year's end by distributor Sony Pictures Classics. Nonetheless, the film enjoyed much acclaim by critics and especially by Cronenberg enthusiasts. The film garnered a Best Director Award at the Canadian Genie Awards. The stars of the film, Ralph Fiennes and particularly Miranda Richardson, received several awards for their work in the film.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Dennis Cleg is a schizophrenic man who has just been released from a mental institution. Known as "Spider", he is given a room in a halfway house catering to mentally disturbed people which is run by unrelenting landlady Mrs. Wilkinson. While in his new abode, Spider starts piecing together in his memory of an apparently fateful childhood event.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Roaming the nearby derelict urban area and the local canal, Spider starts to relive a period of his childhood in 1950s London with his mother Mrs. Cleg and unfaithful father Bill. Here, Spider witnesses Bill murder his mother by hitting her on the head with a spade with the passive support of his mistress, a prostitute named Yvonne. Much to Spider's horror, she moves into the house and is presented as his "mother".


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Now grown up, Spider begins seeing Mrs. Wilkinson turn into Yvonne. He responds by using strands of yarn to form a web-like construction in his room, and steals Wilkinson's keys to gain access to different rooms.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Meanwhile, Spider begins to relive a memory from childhood where he kills Yvonne by using a similar web-like pulley mechanism to turn on the gas in the kitchen. However, it appears to show Mrs. Cleg lying dead instead, implying it really was his mother all along, and Yvonne was actually a delusion.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Spider comes to this realization when he sneaks late one night into Mrs. Wilkinson's room, still seeing her alternatively as the mistress, and appears ready to kill her, but backs away after she turns back to normal. He is then taken back to the asylum after she reports him.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: During a Q&A session at the Kodak Lecture Series in May 2005, Cronenberg revealed that neither he, Fiennes, Richardson, nor the producers received any sort of salary during the shooting of the film. All chose to waive their salaries, so the money could be used to bankroll the under-funded production.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of based on reviews from critics. The site's critical consensus reads, "Ralph Fiennes is brilliant in this accomplished and haunting David Cronenberg film." On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 35 reviews.


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 3/4 stars, writing, "The details of the film and of the performances are meticulously realized; there is a reward in seeing artists working so well. But the story has no entry or exit, and is cold, sad and hopeless. Afterward, I feel more admiration than gratitude." Nev Pierce from the BBC awarded the film 3/5 stars, calling it "dour, thoughtful, and oppressive". Stephen Holden from "New York Times" praised the film, calling it "as harrowing a portrait of one man's tormented isolation as the commercial cinema has produced." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" awarded the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing, "What catches us in "Spider"‘s web — besides the indelible performances of Fiennes and Richardson — is the director’s sympathy with this freak man-child who struggles to order his confused memories into a kind of truth. That’s what makes Cronenberg a world-class provocateur: His movie gets under your skin." Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" rated the film 4/5 stars, calling it " an intensely controlled, beautifully designed and fascinatingly acted account of Patrick McGrath's original novel". Mike Clark from "USA Today" awarded the film 3/4 stars, commending the film's direction, cinematography, and performances, while also stating that it was not particularly "sizzling" as in his previous films "The Fly" and "eXistenZ".


title: Spider (2002 film)

text: The film also won a Genie Award for Best Director; the TIFF award for Best Canadian Feature; and the TFCA award for Best Canadian Film.


title: Richard Dormer

text: Richard Dormer (born 11 November 1969) is an actor, playwright and screenwriter from Northern Ireland. He is best known for his roles as Beric Dondarrion in the HBO television series "Game of Thrones" and Dan Anderssen in Sky Atlantic's "Fortitude".


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland. He studied at the RADA school of acting in London. After living and working in London, he returned to Northern Ireland. He lives in Belfast and is married to director Rachel O'Riordan.


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer gained recognition following his performance as Northern Irish snooker star Alex Higgins in "Hurricane" in 2003, which he wrote and starred in. Dormer won "The Stage" award for Best Actor in 2003.


title: Richard Dormer

text: In 2004, Dormer won the "Irish Times" Best Actor Award for his performance in Frank McGuinness's "Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme" and in 2005 completed a season with Sir Peter Hall at the Theatre Royal and starred in Bath as Antonio in William Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", Jean in August Strindberg's Miss Julie and in a production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot".


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer has since written a number of plays including "The Half" and "Gentleman's Tea Drinking Society" which were produced through Belfast's Ransom theatre company. In 2012, Dormer was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to write a play. Set in Brooklyn in the summer of 1969, Dormer's "Drum Belly" gives an insight into the dark edgy underworld of New York's Irish gangsters and opened April 2013 to mainly positive reviews and was published by Bloomsbury Publishing


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer has provided the voices for over twenty BBC Radio 4 plays, documentaries and advertising campaigns. In 2020, he played the Director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Sky drama series, "COBRA", starring Robert Carlyle as the British Prime Minister.


title: Richard Dormer

text: Following a run of film castings playing secondary characters, he was cast as the lead in the 2012 "Good Vibrations" which tells the story of Northern Ireland personality and punk rock visionary Terri Hooley. The film premièred at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, was awarded Best Film at the Galway film awards, best screenplay, "Dinard" and nominated for the Outstanding Debut award at the 2014 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. The film was well received by critics gaining consistent reviews, most of which highlighted Dormer's performance as a strength. Dormer's portrayal of Terri Hooley saw him nominated in the Best Actor award in the 2013 Irish Film and Television Awards. He has since played roles in Yann Demange's critically acclaimed film "'71" alongside Jack O'Connell. In 2019, Dormer portrayed Curtis Welch, town physician of Nome, Alaska, in the Disney film "Togo".


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer has become a well known television actor, more recently playing key roles in the Cinemax drama series "Hunted" and BBC One's "Hidden". 2012 also saw Dormer taking over the role of Lord Beric Dondarrion, known as the "Lightning Lord", the leader of the "Brotherhood Without Banners", for the third season of the HBO series "Game of Thrones". In 2016, Dormer reprised his role as Dondarrion in the sixth season of the series and returned for the seventh season, airing in 2017 as well as the eighth and final season, airing in 2019.


title: Richard Dormer

text: Dormer is the voice of the Dad on the children's animated series "Lily's Driftwood Bay". The series aired in May on Nick Jr. in the UK and on Sprout in the US. It also airs on RTÉ in Ireland, ABC Australia, KiKa in Germany, MTV in Finland, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden, and HOP! in Israel. Broadcasters in Australia and the US are keeping the original voices to the series.


title: Richard Dormer

text: In 2014, Dormer began filming on Sky Atlantic's "Fortitude". Described as "their most ambitious project to date", he takes the role of Sheriff Dan Anderssen and stars alongside Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston and "The Killing"'s Sofie Gråbøl. "Fortitude" aired on 29 January 2015. The series is set in the fictional Arctic Norwegian settlement of Fortitude. On 9 April 2015, Sky Atlantic recommissioned the show for a second series consisting of 10 episodes.


title: Richard Dormer

text: Also in 2015, Dormer starred in the BBC drama "We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story" as TV producer David Croft. The comedy drama retells the creation of the popular BBC sitcom "Dad's Army" as well as the relationship between Croft and Jimmy Perry who became successful TV comedy writers.


title: Richard Dormer

text: In 2020, Dormer appeared in the lead role of Captain Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in the BBC series "The Watch", based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He also has played Fraser Walker, Director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, in two series of "COBRA".


title: Long rifle

text: The long rifle, also known as the longrifle, Kentucky rifle, Pennsylvania rifle, or American longrifle, a muzzle-loading firearm used for hunting and warfare, was one of the first commonly-used rifles. The American rifle was characterized by a very long barrel of relatively small caliber, uncommon in European rifles of the period.


title: Long rifle

text: The long rifle is an early example of a firearm using rifling (spiral grooves in the bore), which caused the projectile, commonly a round lead ball in early firearm, to spin around the axis of its motion. This increased the stability of its trajectory and dramatically improved accuracy over contemporary smooth-bore muskets, which were cheaper and more common. Rifled firearms were first used in major combat in the American colonies in the eighteenth century during the French and Indian War, and later the American Revolution, with increasing use in the War of 1812, Texan Revolution, and American Civil War.


title: Long rifle

text: The main disadvantages of muzzle-loading rifles compared to muskets were higher cost, a slower reload time due to the use of a tighter-fitting lead ball, and greater susceptibility to fouling of the bore after prolonged use, which would ultimately prevent loading and make the weapon useless until cleaned. The invention of the Minié ball in 1847 resolved the technical disadvantages and allowed the rifle to replace the musket.


title: Long rifle

text: The long rifle was made popular by German gunsmiths who immigrated to America, bringing with them the technology of rifling from where it originated. The accuracy achieved by the long rifle made it an ideal tool for hunting wildlife for food.


title: Long rifle

text: The long rifle was developed on the American frontier in southeastern Pennsylvania, in the early 1700s. It continued to be developed technically and artistically until it passed out of fashion in the 19th century. The long rifle was the product of German gunsmiths who immigrated to new settlements in southeastern Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, and later in Virginia and other territories, reproducing early Jäger (anglicized Jaeger) rifles used for hunting in Germany in the 17th and early 18th century. Tax records from these locales indicate the dates these gunsmiths were in business. Strong pockets of long rifle use and manufacture continued in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina well into the 20th century as a practical and efficient firearm for those rural segments of the nation. Long rifles could be made entirely by hand and hand-operated tooling, in a frontier setting.


title: Long rifle

text: Initially the long firearm of choice on the frontier was the smooth bore musket, or trade gun, built in factories in England and France and shipped to the colonies for purchase. Gradually, long rifles became more popular due to their longer effective range. While the smooth bore musket had an effective range of less than 100 yards, a rifleman could hit a man-sized target at a range of 200 yards or more. The price for this accuracy was that the long rifle took significantly longer to reload than the approximately 20 seconds of the musket.


title: Long rifle

text: In Pennsylvania, the earliest gunsmiths that can be documented are Robert Baker and the Martin Meylins, father and son. Robert Baker formed a partnership with his son Caleb, and on August 15, 1719, erected a gun boring mill on Pequea Creek. In the tax records of Berks County, Pennsylvania, there were several gunsmiths plying their trade along the banks of the Wyomissing Creek.


title: Long rifle

text: Martin Meylin's Gunshop was built in 1719, and it is here that the Mennonite gunsmiths of Swiss-German heritage crafted some of the earliest, and possibly the first, Pennsylvania Rifles. No rifle signed by Martin Meylin has been found; although two have been attributed to him, one in the Lancaster Historical Society has been found to be a European musket of a later date, and one with a date of 1705 is a forgery, as the Meylins arrived in America in 1710. The Martin Meylin Gunshop still stands today in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, on Long Rifle Road. An archaeological dig performed in 2005 by Millersville University around the so-called Meylin gunshop found thousands of artifacts, but only for blacksmithing, with no evidence of gun-making. The Lancaster County Historical Society has an original Pennsylvania Long Rifle thought to have been smithed by Meylin that was passed down within the family for seven generations, then donated to the society in the middle of the twentieth century. It was analyzed and the barrel removed during the Lancaster Long Rifle Exhibit at Landis Valley Farm Museum, Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2005. The barrel was found to be European, and the stock dated from later than 1710-1750. The initials on the barrel, "MM", were found to have been added later than any other part of the gun, so it could not have been made by either Martin Meylin.


title: Long rifle

text: Some historians have written that the role of Martin Meylin as one of the earliest gunsmiths in Lancaster is not clear. The argument is that the will of Martin Meylin Sr. makes no mention of gunsmith items, while the will of Martin Meylin Jr. is replete with them, so that the reference to Meylin as a gunsmith is more properly placed on the son. In any case, no rifle has been found to be positively attributed to any Meylin.


title: Long rifle

text: There is documentation stating that the first high-quality long rifles were from a gunsmith named Jacob Dickert, who moved with his family from Germany to Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1740. The name 'Dickert Rifle' was considered a 'brand name' and the name 'Kentucky rifle' was not coined until much later in history (circa 1820s) and became the "nickname" of this rifle. This is primarily because Dickert made rifles for the Continental Army, and later had a contract dated 1792 to furnish rifles to the United States Army. The rifle is sometimes referred to as the "Deckard / Deckhard" rifle, as descendants of Jacob Dickert used these variations, as shown by census documents, marriage and death certificates. Nearly all descendants of Jacob Dickert go by the surname "Deckard", and mostly live in Indiana and Missouri.


title: Long rifle

text: Among documented working rifle makers are Adam Haymaker, who had a thriving trade in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Moravian gunshops at Christian's Spring in Pennsylvania, John Frederick Klette of Stevensburg, Virginia, and in the Salem area of North Carolina. All three areas were busy and productive centers of rifle making by the 1750s. Another prominent rifle maker was Isaac Haines of the Lancaster school, known for the elaborate Rococo woodcarving decorations on his rifles, who was taxed as a gunsmith in Lampeter Twp., Lancaster Co., from 1772 to 1792. The Great Wagon Road was a bustling frontier thoroughfare, and rifle shops traced this same route, from eastern Pennsylvania, down the Shenandoah Valley, and spilling into both the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and the Yadkin River (Salem) area of North Carolina.


title: Long rifle

text: The settlers of western Virginia (Kentucky), Tennessee, and North Carolina soon gained a reputation for hardy independence and rifle marksmanship as a way of life, further reinforced by the performance of riflemen in the American Revolution, especially Morgan's Riflemen, who were pivotal in the Battles of Saratoga and Cowpens, as well as the War of 1812. In that war, the long rifle gained its nickname "Kentucky Rifle", after a popular song "The Hunters of Kentucky," about Andrew Jackson and his victory at the Battle of New Orleans. The long rifle also was used by the Texans in their War for Independence from Mexico.


title: Long rifle

text: The reason for the long rifle's characteristic long barrel is a matter of adaptation to the new world by the German immigrant gunsmiths. The German gunsmiths working in America were very familiar with German rifles, which seldom had barrels longer than 30 in., and were large-caliber rifles using large amounts of lead. Hunters in the vast and sparsely populated new world forests had to carry more of their supplies with them. The smaller caliber required less heavy lead per shot, reducing the weight they had to carry; the longer barrel gave the black powder more time to burn, increasing the muzzle velocity and accuracy. A rule of thumb used by some gunsmiths was to make the rifle no longer than the height of a customer's chin because of the necessity of seeing the muzzle while loading. The longer barrel also allowed finer sighting. By the 1750s it was common to see frontiersmen carrying the new and distinctive style of rifle.