Hah

This title is no interjection, but a place name, which, however, you will find on no map. In the 1930s, in the heat of Turkish nation-building, even those settlements were renamed to Turkish names coined ex nihilo, from which the Armenian, Syriac, Greek or Kurdish minorities had not been completely eradicated. Hah, one of the largest and most Christian towns of the Syriac monastery region of Tur Abdin was named Anıtlı.

That Hah and its surroundings were able to preserve their Christian population was largely due to its fortified monastery church, where in 1915, the year of Seyfo, the sword, they found refuge from the genocide, until the besiegers withdrew.

The monastery and its church may have been founded in the 5th century. It owes its unusual shape to the fact that it was the episcopal center of the Tur Abdin highlands (and from 1089, of its northern part), so in many details it imitates the Saffron Monastery near Mardin, which was the seat of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch until the 19th century. Its nave, which has a square floor plan, is bordered by four arches, on which rests the octagonal tambour of the dome. The dome is enclosed in a square roof tower decorated by double-columned arches on the outside. The apse is decorated from the inside with sitting niches, probably for the monks participating in the episcopal mass. But the most impressive feature is the rich Late Antique stone carving which, just as in the Saffron Monastery, covers the apse and its niches, the arches and capitals, the gate and the wall of the vestibule. Such rich carvings are only found in rich Hellenistic urban centers. This decoration indicates the early relations between Tur Abdin and Byzantium, and that at the time of the institutionalization of the Syriac Church, at the beginning of the 500s, it enjoyed significant imperial support, since Theodora, the wife of Emperor Justinian, sympathized with the Syriac Monophysite confession that deviated from orthodoxy.

According to local tradition, the church was built shortly after the birth of Jesus by the twelve kings who followed the Star of Bethlehem. Nine of them stayed here in Hah under the protection of the local king Hanna, and three were sent to explore the terrain. They did find Jesus in the manger, and returned with a strip of cloth from his swaddling clothes. It should have been divided among them, but they did not want to cut it. Finally they burned it to divide up its ashes. But the strip turned into twelve golden medals in the fire. At the sight of the wonder, King Hanna built a church to proclaim the glory of the Mother of God unto the ends of the earth.

The dome tower of the Church of the Mother of God, 1907, with only one arcade. Photo by Gertrude Bell

The Syriac priest of the Church of the Mother of God and his wife, with the gospel book written in 1227. Photo by Gertrude Bell

The gospel book on the church’s reading stand. Photo by Gertrude Bell

The Hah gospel book, today in the library of Mor Gabriel monastery

The scene of Jesus’ birth in the Hah gospel book

The courtyard of the monastery is open all day, but the church can only be visited between 9:30 and 12 in the morning, and 13:30 and 16:30 in the afternoon. If the monks do not notice the stranger roaming in the courtyard, you have to climb up to the upper floor of the monastery and ask them.

I read in the literature that Hah had 40 churches in the Middle Ages, and twenty-one of them are still standing today. “How many temples do you have here in Hah?” I ask the monk who let us in. He counts. “Fourteen.” Partly functional, partly broken. We dedicate this day to discovering them.

From the monastery on the edge of the village, we enter the zigzag streets. We stop at the first ruined tower. It has Arabic inscriptions on it, but it was probably a church, which was only converted into a mosque after the Muslims moved in.

Next to it, huge, imposing arches rise on the inner side of a half-demolished building. This is the episcopal cathedral of Mor Sabo, which was set on fire by the attackers in 1915. Its apse is still standing, with many carved stones.

The collapsed south wall of the cathedral and the still-standing carved south gate open onto the Christian cemetery. Most of the graves have Syriac inscriptions, from the middle of the 20th century until recent years.

At the eastern end of the cemetery – right across the tower converted into a mosque – is the lonely apse of a former church, with a large carved cross on its vault, similar to the one in the apse of the monastery church. This was the so-called “summer church” until it was demolished in 1915.

We leave the cemetery gate and go around the cathedral on the narrow road leading between the gardens. To the north of it stands a small white church dedicated to Mor Şmuel, with a characteristic Syriac tower, completely renovated. The community just had enough resources for that. The restoration signs here and there show the year of 2018. The church is open. The gate opening from the vestibule into the nave is framed by a richly carved pattern of vines.

We move on. Dry-laid stone walls on both sides, sometimes incorporating carved stones from older buildings, vines in the gardens and crosses on the carved gates, both indicating the same thing. Large fortress-like houses made of carved stones, with beautiful vaults and carvings above the windows. There is not a soul on the streets, and the vegetable gardens are shabby, but the fact that the houses are inhabited is indicated by the filtered conversations, the water tanks on the roofs, and the animals roaming the streets: goats, turkeys, chickens. Towards the end of the town illage is the house of Denhooğlu Barsaumo – that is, Bartholomew –, restored in 2010, which already has a small guest house. And on the northern border of the town rises a huge building, the Kasr, the Castle, in which several Christian families live and cultivate the surrounding lands. Now only a few old people and little children are at home. The latter are playing in the courtyard, the former are sitting in the cool vaulted doorway.

The hill of the Castle offers a good view of the surrounding fields and pastures. A pistachio grove was recently planted, its tall, dry-laid red wall stands out vividly from its surroundings. And right in front of us, already outside the village, another church tower rises, with a ruined monastery next to it. This is the church of the 4th-century martyrs Sergius and Bacchus. As soldier saints, they were especially revered along the borders of the Roman Empire: the “little Hagia Sophia” in Constantinople, the Assyrian Catholic church in Tehran, or the Rasafa monastery in Syria were also dedicated to them.

In front of the monastery is another cemetery with few graves. Presumably, illustrious persons were buried here. Some of them died in Germany, and their epitaphs are also in German. Several persons from the Acar family rest here. The last two (mother and daughter?) died almost on the same day this January: maybe in Covid? The graves, here and in other Syriac cemeteries, were decorated in recent years with images and religious object of Catholic origin, just like in the Armenian countryside. Perhaps because these denominations are originally aniconic, that is, they use texts for decoration instead of images, but their resistance was broken sometime around the 18th century, and since then the largest supplier of images, the Catholic holy image industry, has conquered among them without hindrance.

A small wooden gate leads from the cemetery to the monastery. I try it: it is open. You have to bend deep under it. The buildings around the courtyard are partly in ruins. They look abandoned, but some of them are used as warehouses. Although the church is shabby, it is maintained, and a new altar was recently built in it. The wide arch leading from the courtyard to the church was made of tombstones with old Syriac inscriptions, and much graffiti has been scratched into the plaster.

Google Maps indicates two more churches to the east of the village: Mor Şimuni and Mor Eliyo, in close proximity to each other. I ask the monk if they are really there. He replies that both exist, but the map puts them to the wrong place. Mor Şimuni is actually Mor Şmuel, the small renovated church we just saw, while Mor Eliyo is the church of the village of Bethkustan (Alagöz) further north.

Along the road leading to the east, immediately after leaving the town, there is a newly built gendarmerie barracks. I overcome my nervousness at the expected check. After all, they have already checked us a lot on the road, and Macaristan was always greeted with an obligatory smile and sometimes with the name of Attila (Szalai). We get started. As we approach the gate, two gendarmes in tank-tops and blue underpants, T-shirts and beach slippers come out, obviously going to the village for a drink. We wave and move on. Soon a road sign in Latin and Syriac letters shows that we have to turn left towards Bethkustan. The only village in Tur Abdin whose name is also written in Syriac: .ܒܝܬ ܩܣܝܢܐ

We stop at the point where Google Maps marks Mor Eliyo’s church. There is nothing around but the scorched hills with holm oaks and pistachio trees. We move on. A flock of sheep comes towards us around the bend, and when the cloud of dust clears, we see a large stone with two handwritten labels: the village’s Syriac name and the Turkish name from the 1930 (Alagöz), with a small cross next to both. And beyond it, in the valley, is the village.

Bethkustan means “House of Constantine” in Aramaic. According to tradition, it was founded in the 4th century by a Roman legionary officer named Constans. Its inhabitants have been Christian ever since. Before the genocide, some two hundred Syriac families lived here. In 1915, a Kurdish chieftain warned them of an impending attack, so they all fled to the monastery of Hah, where they survived the siege. From the 1960s, most of the locals emigrated to Germany. In recent years, many people have returned, especially retirees, who are building magnificent new houses with their German capital. In addition to returning temporary residents, today some 18 families permanently live in the village.

The church rises in the background of the village. A nice white building, the size of a monastery, obviously restored with German money. I roughly figure out how to get there, and then I get lost in the streets of the village that are winding like a bull’s guts. Of course I miss it, I get out from the guts at the dirt road at the end of the village. I turn out, heading back. The residents are already standing outside the houses, having noticed the strange car driving in front of their houses. A middle-aged sturdy man comes to me with his two teenage sons, they lean in through the window. What are we doing. We want to see the church. His reaction is not unequivocally positive, but invites me to tea as usual, and I decline as usual: “we have to go”. “Macaristan. Do Muslims or Christians live there?” he asks. “Christians.” His face brightens. “Then by all means come in for a tea.” I can no longer refuse an invitation made in the name of Christian solidarity. We park in front of the house, so others could drive along the street, no matter how small the probability of this is.

A refreshing breeze goes in the vaulted doorway. Here, the grandmother is lying on a bed, apparently having just woken up from her afternoon sleep. She greets us with a smile, the word flows from her – in Aramaic. The family also speaks Aramaic to her. She knows no Turkish. Noémi listens to her in awe. Words related to Hebrew, shlomo – shalom, taudi – toda emerge again and again from the text. “After Hebrew, it would not be difficult to learn it”, she says. Her butterfly collection is expanding.

Cold water and tea are brought to us, the fourteen-year-old girl offers cakes she made by herself, and her younger brother Swiss chocolate wrapped in tinfoil from a much-guarded gift box. I ask how many Christians live in the village. Bitterness erupts from the father like pent-up steam. We are already at the genocide of 1915: “The Muslims killed the Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs, all Christians, men and women. Even small children were stabbed like this”, he shows, with such vivid pain as if it had happened yesterday.

Another guest comes, a tall man with white hair. He is a textile wholesaler in Giessen, he visits his home village once a year. Now he heard that his relatives have foreign guests, so he dropped in to talk with them, a man-about-town with men-about-town. With him we speak in German, he proudly flaunts his knowledge in front of his relatives. It is interesting that if you ask here emigrants visiting their home country, they do not say “I come from Germany”, but without exception, “I am German”, even if they break their chosen mother tongue into a million splits. I don’t think this is because they identify so much with their host country, where they mostly live in a closed migrant community. Perhaps the reason is that people in the East basically assume the identity of the country they live in, and only mention their different mother tongue or nationality in the second line, if at all.

The older teenage boy wears a strange T-shirt. A large letter R is on it, made up of Syriac words and Assyrian cuneiform characters, considered here as the ancestor of Syriac. I ask what it means, and he says that they indicate various positive concepts – culture, friendship, love.

We talk for a long time, until the question arises of where we will stay for the night. “In Mardin.” “Well, then you have to move on, it is still two hours from here, and evening is nearing.” They let the youngest boy go for the key of the church, and the two teenagers get into the car with us so that we don’t get lost. We say goodbye to the family with our newly acquired knowledge of Aramaic.

Above the gate of the church is the proud year of foundation: 343. However, from that time nothing remains, apart from the title. On both sides of the gate, 1971 and 2013 restoration plaques in Syriac. As we get there, the woman with the key is already coming: a young woman with five little boys, the youngest still sitting on her arm. The middle boy in a Swedish soccer jersey opens the door of the church, fully aware of his own importance.

An arcaded courtyard joins the southern side of the church, as in the monasteries, probably made possible by the generous funding. It is said that an energetic young Syriac monk lives here, who teaches the children in Aramaic.

The church – a rarity – has two naves, so that a thick row of columns runs along the middle line of it, supporting the two barrel vaults. Everything in it has been completely restored, except the two old Syriac inscriptions walled up on both sides, to which the boys draw our attention separately.

Before the three gates of the sanctuary there are three new curtains imitating 18th-century printed Syriac textiles with the naive folk images of the Virgin Mary and the prophet Elijah, as well as the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

When we say goodbye, the two teenagers solemnly ask my name. When we first met, I only introduced myself to their father, but here now they are the oldest men, so they have to assume the male roles. The older one is called Isaac, the younger one Gabriel. They have heard and now they say thanks to us for how much Hungary helps the Syriac churches.