Shamsīyah

The ''Shamsīyah'' were a tribe or sect of sun-worshippers in northern Mesopotamia, concentrated in the city of Mardin (in modern south-eastern Turkey) and the surrounding Tur Abdin region. They converted to the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 17th century in order to avoid persecution in the Ottoman Empire but retained their own set of beliefs and practices; many travellers who observed and met with them doubted the extent to which they were actually Christian. There were still about a hundred families who identified as ''Shamsīyah'' in Mardin in the early 20th century but they appear to have since disappeared.

Terminology

''Shamsīyah'' means "sun-people" or "sons of the sun". Various alternate transliterations and anglicizations of the name have been used through the centuries, including Shamsi, Shamsiyya, Chamsi, Schemsîe, Shemsiye, Shemsi, Shemsy, Shemshi, Shemseeah, Şemsi, and Shemshiehs. The name did not originate as a self-identity, instead being imposed on the ''Shamsīyah'' by adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church. The name derives from the Arabic word ''Al-Shams'' (الشمس, "the sun"). The Armenian inhabitants of Mardin and surrounding settlements called adherents of the sect ''Arevortik'', also meaning "sons of the sun".

The native language used by the ''Shamsīyah'' themselves is not known since they spoke different languages and claimed different ethnic origins depending on the ethnicity of the person they spoke with. They have variously been suggested to have been Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, or even Oghuz Turks, among other hypotheses. The ''Shamsīyah'' considered themselves to be a distinct group and were unwilling to intermarry with other religious groups.

History

Origin

According to the Assyriologist Simo Parpola, the ''Shamsīyah'' were possibly the last known adherents of a late version of the ancient Mesopotamian religion, an ancient set of beliefs thought to have first formed in Mesopotamia in the sixth millennium BC. This would make them the longest standing pagan community in Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia was largely Christian by the third century AD. The sun god Shamash (also called Utu in Sumerian) is recorded in ancient Mesopotamian sources from the earliest periods and his cult was particularly strong in Syria and northern Mesopotamia; many early churches in the region were repurposed pagan sun-temples (like churches, these faced east towards the rising sun). The important 5th-century Syriac Orthodox monastery Mor Hananyo, located near Mardin, was built on top of an ancient temple dedicated to Shamash. The present inhabitants of the region connect the builders of the ancient sun-temples to the later ''Shamsīyah''.

In addition to ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, the ''Shamsīyah'' may have been influenced by Yazidism (Yazidis also pray facing the sun) and perhaps Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism. The Turkish historian Ugur Ümit Üngör has described the ''Shamsīyah'' as "archaic sun-worshippers" and believed them to mostly have their religious origin among the Zoroastrians. The ''Shamsīyah'' might have been connected to the "Sabians" of Harran, another poorly understood Mesopotamian sect active in the early Middle Ages; the Harran Sabians have also been suggested to have been adherents of the ancient Mesopotamian religion.

Medieval records

Armenian records demonstrate knowledge of the ''Shamsīyah'' from at least the fifth century AD onwards.

In the sixth century, Paulicians (a medieval Christian sect) organized rebellions against Armenian nobility and Byzantine authorities. In northern Syria, Paulicians were according to Armenian records joined by Armenian Muslims, the "sun-worshippers" (''arevortik''), and some Arab sects. Medieval Armenian sources record the presence of sun-worshippers in northern Syria for centuries, sometimes involved in local conflicts and conspiracies. Armenian sources appear to consider the north-Syrian sun-worshippers to be Armenians whose faith was connected either to Paulicianism or Zoroastrianism. Whether these specific sun-worshippers were Armenians has been doubted by modern historians since the first modern study on the subject, by Grigor Vantsian in 1896.

15th-century Syriac-language sources suggest that significant numbers of sun-worshippers converted and were welcomed into the Syriac Orthodox Church already in the sixth century AD. A group of sun- or fire-worshippers living in the city of Samsat, perhaps connected to the ''Shamsīyah'', were reported by the Catholicos Nerses IV the Gracious to have converted to Christianity in the 12th century. Coins minted in Mardin in the Middle Ages during the city's rule by the Turkish Artuqid dynasty and the Mongol Empire are noted for prominently incorporating solar iconography, both in the form of the Lion and Sun emblem but also in the form of just the sun alone.

Conversion to Christianity

The ''Shamsīyah'', or adherents of similar beliefs, were once numerous in the northern lands around the Tigris river, worshipping in temples throughout a region largely corresponding to the Ottoman Diyarbekir vilayet. By the 17th century, the group was largely confined to Mardin. They had a separate cemetery and their own quarters in the city. The enclosed ''Shamsīyah'' neighborhood in Mardin, referred to as ''Shemsiyye'', was located on the southern perimeter of Mardin. This neighborhood corresponds to Mardin's modern-day neighborhood of Babussor/Savurkapı. The ''Shamsīyah'' apparently congregated in a temple located in the vicinity of the city gate, remnants of which survived until recent times.

Since the ''Shamsīyah'' were few in number, they long remained largely unnoticed to the outside world. They first came to the attention of the government of the Ottoman Empire when Sultan Murad IV () passed through Mardin on his way back following the 1638 capture of Baghdad. The sultan noted that Mardin was home to about hundred families of sun-worshippers, based on tax records about four hundred people. Under Islamic law, followers of religions not among those of the People of the Book (Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Sabians) are condemned to choose conversion, exile or death. Since the ''Shamsīyah'' freely admitted to the sultan that they were not People by the Book, Murad ordered them all to be executed. The Syriac Orthodox patriarch, Ignatius Hidayat Allah, however took pity on them and agreed to baptize the ''Shamsīyah'' to safeguard them from execution and persecution. Although they were from that point on considered to be Christians and outwardly conformed to Syriac Orthodox beliefs and practices, they kept their old name and continued some of their own pre-Christian traditions. The conversion may have been entirely nominal, with many continuing to entirely cling to their old practices, albeit in secret.

Many ''Shamsīyah'' who did not wish to convert reportedly also fled to Iran or other settlements in the surrounding Tur Abdin region. According to the missionary Giuseppe Campanile, writing in 1818, the ''Shamsīyah'' converted only for protection and abandoned all Christian practices after Murad left the city, only actually adopting them in 1763 under pressure from the Syriac Orthodox and bribed government officials. Campanile reported that the entire ''Shamsīyah'' community lived in dire poverty.

Contact with travellers

The Venetian traveller Ambrosio Bembo, who passed through the Ottoman Empire in 1671–1675, noted the presence of five different Christian sects in the city of Diyarbakır (located near Mardin). Among them were the ''Shamsīyah'', who Bembo wrote "were, and still are, worshippers of the sun". The ''Shamsīyah'' were considered by the French author Michel Febvre in 1675 to be one of the "fourteen nations" of the Ottoman Empire. Febvre classified them among various "heretical" eastern Christian groups and noted that they had only recently converted from paganism. The German explorer Carsten Niebuhr passed through Mardin in 1766 and noted the presence of the ''Shamsīyah'' there. Niebuhr spoke with an old man belonging to the group, who claimed that many of the villages in Tur Abdin had in his youth adhered to their religion but that they by this point were limited to only about a hundred families living in two districts in Mardin and they nominally adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Niebuhr concluded based on the practices he observed that the ''Shamsīyah'' were probably adherents of a remnant of the pre-Christian religion in the region.

The Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff, who passed through Mardin in 1824, noted that the ''Shamsīyah'' told him that they worshipped "the sun, the moon, and the stars" and that the sun was "their '' malech'', their king"; based on phonetic comparisons Wolff came to the bizarre conclusion that they were idolaters who worshipped the god Moloch. Wolff also noted that they although they dressed like Syriac Christians, they did not intermarry with other members of the Syriac Orthodox Church. According to the British author James Silk Buckingham, the ''Shamsīyah'' in 1827 remained "quite distinct, both in belief and practice" and were still sometimes observed to rever the sun. Silk Buckingham claimed that they by this time encompassed about a thousand families. The Austrian historian Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall still considered the ''Shamsīyah'' to "worship only the sun" in 1836.

The American missionary Horatio Southgate visited the ''Shamsīyah'' in the hills surrounding Mardin in 1837. Southgate reported that they at this time called themselves "sons of Ishmael", though he believed this was only to evade the suspicion of the Ottoman authorities. By 1837, there were around 1,250 ''Shamsīyah'' living in Mardin, in 250 households.

Disappearance

''Shamsīyah'' numbers had shrunk by the late 19th century. When the Guyanese bishop Oswald Parry visited Mardin in 1897 he claimed to have found no trace of the ''Shamsīyah''. Contrary to Parry's report, the British priest and scholar Adrian Fortescue claimed in 1913 that there were still about a hundred families who identified as ''Shamsīyah'' in Mardin. Fortescue also doubted the extent to which the ''Shamsīyah'' had actually adopted Christianity, referring to them as "a curious group of semi-Christian Jacobites who were once sun-worshippers".

There were still ''Shamsīyah'' in Mardin at the outbreak of World War I but their subsequent fate is unknown and they appear to have since disappeared, perhaps merging into the rest of the Syriac Orthodox Church. They are thus considered to be extinct as a religious group. The only trace of the ''Shamsīyah'' in present-day Mardin are architectural traces left behind by the community, most notably the motifs carved by the ''Shamsīyah'' at the entrances of their doors, many of which continue to face the sun.

In addition to Syriac Christianity, it is possible that some ''Shamsīyah'' converted to Yazidism or Alevism. Yazidi records claim that there were still ''Shamsīyah'' living in the region in the 1950s and 1960s. These ''Shamsīyah'' are said to have been persuaded by Tahseen Said, the Mîr of the Yazidis, to convert to Yazidism.

Practices

Beyond the fact that the ''Shamsīyah'' worshipped the sun, little certain is known of their traditions and practices due to their own unwillingness to disclose them. There are no ''Shamsīyah''-written texts that record the practices and beliefs of the community. Much of what little has been written of their practices is unconfirmed and appears to derive from second-hand sources rather than from direct observation.

Simeon, a Polish traveller who visited Mardin in the early 17th century, claimed that the ''Shamsīyah'' gathered in their own temple every Saturday night to pray and hold incestuous orgies; an unlikely claim probably based on prejudices against Eastern religions. According to Febvre in 1675, the ''Shamsīyah'' after their conversion adopted the Syriac Orthodox practices of baptisms and burial ceremonies, but kept their own sun-worshipping practices as well, which they performed in secret assemblies.

Niebuhr apparently observed several distinct practices in 1766, including that the ''Shamsīyah'' built "the most elegant doors in their house always facing the sunrise", that the prayed facing the sun, and that they pulled the hair from their dead and put a pair of coins in their mouths. Niebuhr also wrote that their weddings were officiated by Syriac Orthodox priests but that the newlyweds after the ceremony were given a ride down a road, passing by a "certain large stone to which they must show great respect". The pulling of hair was also reported by Campanile in 1818, who wrote that they shaved of the beard, hair and body hair of those who were near death since they believed that their sins were tied to their hairs. Similar to Niebuhr, Campanile reported that the ''Shamsīyah'' dead were buried with gold and silver jewellery alongside household belongings. The specifics of this differ between the reports; Campanile wrote that the valuables or coins were placed in the hands of the deceased (not the mouths).

According to Campanile, the ''Shamsīyah'' prayed three times daily at sunrise, in front of a statue that represented the sun. Campanile further claimed that the ''Shamsīyah'' gathered together three times a year to construct a large idol out of dough in the shape of a lamb, cover its head with a piece of cloth, and place it in a tin bowl. Various acts would be performed in front of this idol, such as prayer, adoration, and kissing the idol. In addition to veneration of the sun and this lamb idol, Campanile also claimed that the ''Shamsīyah'' venerated cows. In terms of appearance, Campanile stated that members of the group could be distinguished by their white overcoats.

Silk Buckingham wrote in 1827 that the ''Shamsīyah'' had refused to give information on their beliefs to other members of the Syriac Orthodox Church and threatened their adherents with death if they did so. According to Silk Buckingham, the ''Shamsīyah'' were observed as showing reverence to the sun through removing their turbans during sunrises. Southgate wrote in 1837 that the ''Shamsīyah'' by his time were still said to perform their "ancient rites" but did not himself observe any of the practices noted by previous travellers.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shamsiyah
Mesopotamian religion
Mardin
Tur Abdin
Religion in the Ottoman Empire