Tell Tamer تَلّ تَمْر Girê Xurma ܬܠ ܬܡܪ | |
|---|---|
  Tell Tamer Location of Tell Tamer in Syria | |
| Coordinates:36°39′38″N40°22′17″E / 36.6606°N 40.3714°E /36.6606; 40.3714 | |
| Country | Syria |
| Governorate | al-Hasakah |
| District | al-Hasakah |
| Subdistrict | Tell Tamer |
| Control |  Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria |
| Population (2004)[1] | |
• Total | 7,285 |
| Time zone | UTC+3 (AST) |
| Geocode | C4409 |
Tell Tamer (Arabic:تَلّ تَمْر,romanized: Tall Tamr,Kurdish:گرێ خورما,romanized: Girê Xurma[2] or Til Temir,[3]Syriac:ܬܠ ܬܡܪ[4][5]) also known asTal Tamr orTal Tamir, is a town in westernal-Hasakah Governorate, northeasternSyria. It is theadministrative center of theTell Tamer Subdistrict consisting of 13 municipalities.
Originally built and inhabited byAssyrians of the UpperTyari tribe in the late 1930s,[6][7] the town is predominantly populated by Arabs, withAssyrians remaining a substantial minority of about 20%.[8] At the 2004 census, Tell Tamer had a population of 7,285.[1]
The name of the town, "Tell Tamer", is derived from theArabic andAramaic words "tell/tella", both meaning "hill", and "tamer/tamra", both meaning "date". The name of the town therefore means "Hill of Dates".
In the Khabur Valley ofUpper Mesopotamia, Tell Tamer is situated on the left (eastern) bank ofKhabur River, just south of the smallZirgan River's estuary. About 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) to the east, the landscape ascends to the Ard al-Shaykhvolcanic basalt plateau.
Tell Tamer lies on a direct line between the city ofRas al-Ayn some 35 kilometres (22 mi) to the northwest and the provincial capitalal-Hasakah some 40 kilometres (25 mi) to the southeast. The intersection with theM4 highway (Aleppo–Mosul), the major road between al-Hasakah andDiyarbakır (Turkey), and a nearby river crossing make Tell Tamer an essential transport hub.
It was settled in the 1930s byIraqi Assyrian refugees fleeing theSimele massacre in Iraq, who moved to French controlledSyria and settled in a 25 km stretch of theKhabur River in 35 settlements.
An Assyrian exodus from the town began in November 2012, whenFree Syrian Army (FSA) fighters threatened to invade the town andAl-Nusra front kidnapped a number of Assyrian girls.[9] The exodus further continued when theIslamic State took control of nearby roads just outside the town.[citation needed] This environment led residents to organize local self-defense forces known as theNattoreh.[10]
In October 2013, fourAssyrians were kidnapped by Islamic State (ISIS) militants.[citation needed]
According to theSyriac International News Agency, an ISIS attack on a nearby Assyrian village in May 2014 prompted Tell Tamer's residents to request protection from theKurdishPeople’s Protection Units (YPG), which led to their deployment to the town.[11] During this period, some youth from Tell Tamer joined YPG-allied Christian militias, including theSyriac Military Council, theSutoro forces, and theKhabur Guards, while families fled to the Kurdish-held cities of al-Hasakah andQamishli.[9] UnderKurdish-led administration, Assyrian Christians were permitted to maintain their own political institutions and party offices in the town, including theAssyrian Democratic Party (ADP), which participates in theSyrian Democratic Council (SDC).[12]
After ISIS capturedRaqqa in January 2014, some Assyrians from Raqqa andal-Tabqah fled to Tell Tamer, while others from the town also left. Many Assyrian families later emigrated, primarily to the United States, Europe, and Canada.[citation needed]
In February and March 2015, ISIS militants, along with Arab residents from the village of Gêbish,[13] carried out multiple raids on villages in Tell Tamer's vicinity, leading to heavy clashes with the YPG,Women's Protection Units (YPJ), and Assyrian militas during theEastern andWestern al-Hasakah offensive.[14] During these raids ISIS managed to kidnap around 220 Assyrians from villages surrounding Tell Tamer, and by 26 February, that number had increased to 350.[citation needed] Several of these hostages were released by ISIS in late March.[15][16]
On 7 March 2015,Ivana Hoffmann, a German communist from Duisburg and member of theMarxist–Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/North Kurdistan (MLKP), was killed in Tell Tamer while fighting alongside Kurdish YPG and YPJ forces. She is considered the first German and the first foreign woman to die in combat against ISIS.[17]
On 11 December 2015,three truck bombs killed 60 people and injured more than 80.
On 14 October 2019,Assad regime forces were deployed to Tell Tamer and established joint control following an agreement with theSyrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in wake of the2019 Turkish offensive into northeastern Syria.[18]
Its original inhabitants are Assyrians from the UpperTyari tribe, who came to the area fromHakkari region inTurkey viaIraq.[19][7] As late as the 1960s, they still comprised virtually the entire population of the town.[20] The majority of the town's modern population is composed ofArabs andKurds, while local Assyrian leaders in the 1990s estimated their own community's presence in the town to be around 20%.[8]
Historical population estimates are as follows: 1,244 (1936); 1,250 (1960); 2,994 (1981); 5,030 (1993); 5,216 (1994); 5,405 (1995).[21]
The pre-war scholarly estimates actually placed the total number of Assyrians belonging to theAssyrian Church of the East living all over ofSyria at around 30,000 individuals, with between 15,000 and 20,000 (i.e., 2/3, at most) of them living along the Khabur.[22]
The Assyrian "Church of Our Lady", located in the Old Town, at a prominent place near the actualTell (hill), serves as the center of theAssyrian community. In the early 1980s the original church built of mud-brick in the 1930s was broken down and replaced by a newItalianate-style building. A large green-domed brick mosque built in the 1970s serves the growing Muslim community just to the south of the town center.[23]
Capital:Al-Hasakah | |||||||
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