Beth Garmai

Beth Garmai, (Arabic: باجرمي‎ Bājarmī, Middle Persian: Garamig/Garamīkān/Garmagān, New Persian/Kurdish: Garmakan, Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܓܪܡܐ‎ Bêṯ Garmē, Latin and Greek: Garamaea) is a historical region around the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.^[1] It is located at southeast of the Little Zab, southwest of the mountains of Shahrazor, northeast of the Tigris and Hamrin Mountains, although sometimes including parts of southwest of Hamrin Mountains, and northwest of the Sirwan River.

Etymology

The name "Beth Garmai" or "Beth Garme" may be of Syriac origin which meaning "the house of bones",^[2] which is thought to be a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids after a decisive battle between Alexander the Great and Darius III on the plains between the Upper Zab and Diyala river.^[3] However, according to Michael G. Morony, it was named after a people, possibly a Persian tribe.^[4]

History

The region was a prosperous metropolitan province centered at Karkha D'Beth Slokh (Kirkuk), It had a substantial Nestorian Assyrian population until the fourteenth century when the region was conquered by Timurlane.^[5]

See also

• Beth Garmaï (East Syrian Ecclesiastical Province)

References

1. British Institute of Persian Studies. Iran: journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Volume 20. 1982: The Institute. p. 14.
2. "Garmai is the plural of Garma/Garmo meaning "bone"". Retrieved 20 June 2011.
3. Grant, Asahel (1841). Nestorians. Harper. p. 52.
4. Morony 1989, p. 187.
5. Wilmshurst, David (2000). The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Volume 582. Peeters Publishers. p. 185. ISBN 978-90-429-0876-5.

Sources

• Morony, Michael (1989). "BĒṮ GARMĒ". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. IV, Fasc. 2. p. 187.