Beth Garmai

{{short description|Historical region around the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}}

Image:N-Mesopotamia and Syria.svg-Sasanian borders.]]

Beth Garmai, ({{langx|ar|باجرمي|lit=Bājarmī}}, Middle Persian: Garamig/Garamīkān/Garmagān, New Persian: Garmakan, Kurdish: Germiyan/گەرمیان, {{langx|syc|ܒܝܬ ܓܪܡܐ|translit=Bêṯ Garmē}},Thomas A. Carlson et al., "Beth Garmai – ܒܝܬ ܓܪ̈ܡܝ ” in The Syriac Gazetteer last modified 14 January 2014, http://syriaca.org/place/33. Latin and Greek: Garamaea) is a historical Assyrian region around the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.{{cite book|last=British Institute of Persian Studies|title=Iran: journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Volume 20|publisher=The Institute|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HN4RAQAAMAAJ&q=%22beth+garme%22+kirkuk|pages=14|year=1982}} 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.

The name "Beth Garmai" or "Beth Garme" may be of Syriac origin which meaning "the house of bones", which is thought to be a reference to bones of slaughtered Achaemenids after a decisive Macedonian victory in the Battle of Gaugamela.{{cite web|title=Garmai is the plural of Garma/Garmo meaning "bone" |url=http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/syriac/dosearch.php?searchkey=2592&language=id |access-date=20 June 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727085745/http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/syriac/dosearch.php?searchkey=2592&language=id |archive-date=27 July 2011 |df=dmy }} An alternative explanation for the name's origin suggests that it may have been derived from a people, possibly an Assyrian or Persian tribe.{{sfn|Morony|1989a|p=187}}

The region was a province, Garmekan, under the Sasanians. It was a prosperous metropolitan province centered at Karkha D'Beth Slokh (Kirkuk), It had a substantial Assyrian population who mostly followed the Church of the East until the fourteenth century, when the region was conquered by Timurlane, who conducted massacres of the indigenous Assyrian population of what is today Northern Iraq, Southeast Turkey and Northeast Syria.{{cite book|last=Wilmshurst|first=David|title=The ecclesiastical organisation of the Church of the East, 1318-1913, Volume 582|year=2000|publisher=Peeters Publishers|isbn=978-90-429-0876-5|pages=185|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jB8ir0ek8bgC&pg=PA185}}{{Cite book |last=Aboona |first=Hirmis |title=Assyrians, Kurds, And Ottomans Intercommunal Relations On The Periphery Of The Ottoman Empire |publisher=Cambria Press |year=2008 |isbn=9781604975833 |pages=177}}