Shimun XIX Benyamin

Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin (1887– 3 March 1918) () was a Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East.
Life.
He was born in 1887 in the village of Qochanis in the Hakkari Province, Ottoman Empire (modern-day southeastern Turkey). His paternal uncle and immediate predecessor was Mar Shimun XVIII Rubil, patriarch from 1860 to 1903). His father was Eshai, a brother of Shimun XVIII Rubil, and his mother was Asyat, daughter of Kambar from Iyl. He had six siblings: Isaiah, Zaya, Paulos (who succeeded him as Patriarch), David, Hormizd, Surma. His brother Hormizd was later killed while studying in Istanbul during the Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915. In May 1915, he ordered the killing of the family of his cousin and rival, Nimrod Shimun, leader of the Jilu tribe, precluding cooperation during the Ottoman assault in the following months.
He was consecrated a Metropolitan on March 1, 1903 by his uncle, the Catholicos Patriarch, who died on March 16, 1903. He was eighteen years old when he succeeded to the position and occupied the patriarchal See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon at Qudshanis for 15 years. In March 1918, Mar Benyamin along with many of his 150 bodyguards were assassinated by Simko Shikak (Ismail Agha Shikak), a Kurdish agha, in the town of Kuhnashahir in Salmas (Persia) under a truce flag (see Assyrian Genocide).