Siirt is a city in southeastern Turkey and the seat of Siirt Province. The population of the city according to the 2009 census was 129,188. The majority of the city's population is Arabic and Kurdish.HistoryPreviously known as Saird, in pre-Islamic times Siirt was an episcopacy of the Eastern Orthodox Church (Sirte, Σίρτη in Byzantine Greek). An illuminated manuscript known as the Syriac Bible of Paris may have originated from the Bishop of Siirt's library, Siirt's Christians would have worshipped in Syriac, a liturgical language related to Arabic still in use by the Chaldean Rite, other Eastern Christians in India, and the Nestorians along the Silk Road as far as China. The Chronicle of Seert was preserved in the city; it describes the ecclesiastical history of the Persian realm through the middle of the seventh century. From 1858 to 1915 the city was the seat of a bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Most of the city's Assyrians, including their archbishop were killed during the Assyrian Genocide.
