1891-1926
He was born in the village Jaharbesh near Urmia in Iran. He finished his primary education at his homeland. Then he traveled to Russia to study medicine at the University of Saratov, and military science at the University of Petrograd. He became an officer in the Russian army in 1915 He founded (with others) the first national political party known as ‘the Assyrian Socialist Party’ in Urmia in 1917 and he made the statement *Free Unified Ashur’ in which he called for autonomy in the areas of Nineveh, Urmia, Tur Abdin, Julamirk and Nisibis. During his last years he lived in the city of Tbilisi (the capital of Soviet Georgia at the time) and he was an active nationalist. Some of his acquaintances slandered him and he was accused of spying for Britain, and consequently he was executed. He had literary works and nationalistic poems, such as The Prayer of the People’, ‘the First Glimmering, and the Governor of the Flies’, and ‘the Sound of the Trumpet’. He was particularly known for his national anthem Ya Nishra Dkhoma’ or *Ya Nishra D’atur’. He directed the newspaper Naqosha’ (Bell) which was issued in the spoken Syriac in Tbilisi.
