Shamsīyah

Common card · No. 344725

The Shamsīyah (Armenian: Արևորդիներ, romanized: Arevordiner, Syriac: ܫܶܡܫܳܝ̈ܐ, romanized: Šemšāyē) 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.

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