Talk:Massacres of Diyarbekir (1895)

Use of Syriac vs Assyrian

1. We have to respect cited references. As far as I have seen all of them use the name "Syriac", the word "Assyrian" is nowhere to be found.
2. The name corresponds to their religious affiliation and not ethnicities. As the bulk of the murdered where either Armenian (Apostelic, Catholic) or Syriac (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant)

Wikilinks redirect to the Assyrian people page anyway so I don't think a naming conflict would be an issue here.--Rafy talk 11:44, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Their religious affiliation was not "Syriac" since that word didnt even exists as a reference to people. It was Syrian Orthodox or Syrian Catholic. It doesn't go in line with Wiki's guidelines to use a new name for something in old content. For example, the city of Istanbul is always referred to as Constantinople anywhere in Wikipedia that that the city is mentioned prior to 1493. Chaldean (talk) 12:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there are any guidelines regarding the use of currently more popular names, otherwise we should replace Kurdistan and Romania with Courdistan and Roumania when used in a pre-20th century context, since these names were more popular prior to the first world war.--Rafy talk 14:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

You just proved my point. Northern Iraq is labeled Assyria prior to the name change of the region. Does it make sense to state in the article of Adiabene that it was located in Kurdistan? Of course not. Chaldean (talk) 16:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

These are two different entities, Syrian and Syriac are different spellings of the same thing. I opted for the second because it's more common and it doesn't create confusion with the modern Syrians.--Rafy talk 17:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

You're wrong on this issue Rafy. The people that died in this massacre didn't call themselves "Syriacs". It would be like changing "was a massacre of 4,500 captive rebel Saxons" in the page of Massacre of Verden to "was a massacre of 4,500 captive rebel Germans" since that's what they're called today. That simply doesn't make sense. Besides the Wiki guideline I mentioned, you're also breaking another guideline in that the names sub-pages like this should use the name of the main page (Assyrian people). So any reference to "Syriacs" on Wiki should be Assyrians per:

Wikipedia:NAMINGCRITERIA#Deciding_on_an_article_title - "Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles? Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions."

You can't have a group of ethnic people be called one thing in one page and something else in another page. It's simply not consistent. We've had multiple consensus on the naming issue and have multiply decided that the group as a whole should be labeled as Assyrians. Chaldean (talk) 18:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

They did call themselves Suryoye which translates comfortably to Syriacs. We should follow what sources say about them, since all references mentions the victims as Syriacs then Syriacs they are.

You are misinterpreting the guideline. First of all it concern titles, secondly by consistency they mean the title should be constructed in a familiar way, for example "Massacres of Diyarbakir" instead of "Diyarbakiri massacres".--Rafy talk 20:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

In the context of this article, the appropriate translation for Suryoye, given the date of this massacre, would be 'Syrians'. That's what all the European missionaries called them then, and (just as importantly) that's what they called themselves. Using the term 'Syriacs' or 'Assyrians' is massively anachronistic. You might have to explain that the term 'Syrians' connoted Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Nestorian and Chaldean Christians alike, and that it was a term that had been used for well over a millennium to distinguish Syriac-speaking Christians from the Greeks. You might also have to explain that it doesn't imply that they were natives of the modern state of Syria, which of course did not exist at this period.

Djwilms (talk) 06:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I will replace it accordingly, although this will lead to confusion with modern Syrians imho.--Rafy talk 11:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Use of a single source

The big problem with this article is that it uses only one source, giving rise to suspicions of bias, editorial selctivity, and a lack of notability to the subject. Surely there must be other secondary sources or sources contemporary to the envents. Meowy 20:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the region were illiterate which explains the lack of contemporary literature on the events. The main source of this article is the English translation of de Courtois's book which is mainly drawn from on the memoires of Isaac Armalet and French missionaries active around Tur Abdin during the events. I have a version of Armalet's book in Arabic which is more or less identical to de Courtois's book which is why I opted for not using them. My poor French (or rather the lack of it) prevents me from using the other references.--Rafy talk 01:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

One of W. A. Wigram's books (maybe "The Cradle of Mankind" or "The Assyrians and their Neighbours") might contain something - Dalrymple in "From the Holy Mountain" mentions Wigram's description of Diyarbekir in 1913 in which he said there were still physical traces of the 1895 massacres. So maybe Wigram mentions something of what happened in 1895. Meowy 03:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, I will look into them.--Rafy talk 17:35, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I've added two refs I came across from Wigram's Cradle of Mankind and Cambridge's History of Christianity.--Rafy talk 17:00, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Crimes against humanity category removal

Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)