Gelinkaya, Midyat
Village in Mardin Province, Turkey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gelinkaya (Arabic: کفر خۆار, romanized: Kafarḥuvar;[1] Syriac: Keferhavro, lit. 'white stone village')[2][a] is a village in the municipality and district of Midyat, Mardin Province, Turkey.[5] Its population is 1,542 (2022).[6] Before the 2013 reorganisation, it was a town (belde).[7][8] The village is populated by Kurds and Mhallami.[2] It is located in the historic region of Bēth Muḥallam in Tur Abdin.[9]
History
Keferhavro (today called Gelinkaya) was historically inhabited by Syriacs.[2] The Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I Dicorus (r. 491–518) is said to have donated the village to the Mor Gabriel Monastery.[10] The village's population converted to Islam to escape persecution in 1583.[11] It became the administrative centre for the Mhallami in the 1850s when a beg from nearby Dêrizbin settled at Keferhavro after a conflict with his relatives and seized the village's church to use as his residence.[12] Kurds from the nearby villages of Deywan and Helex and the Sinjar region later also settled at the village.[2]
Notable people
- Orhan Miroğlu (b. 1953), Turkish politician