The city became the base for the Ottoman statesman of Kurdish origin Ibrahim Pasha , leader of the Kurdish Milan tribe , in the late nineteenth century . Beginning in 1891 , Ibrahim Pasha led several regiments of the state-sponsored tribal light cavalries known as the Hamidiye Brigades . He enjoyed the favor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II , and also extended protection to local Christian populations , with some 600 families taking up residence in the district by the early 1900s . The British spy and diplomat Mark Sykes claimed that Ibrahim Pasha had also saved some 10,000 Christians in the midst of the massacres of the 1890s . The historian Janet Klein writes that " on the eve of the Young Turk Revolution , Ibrahim Pasha was one of the most powerful figures in all of Kurdistan . " Yet after the revolution , Ibrahim Pasha could no longer count on the support of the palace . He died on 27 September 1908 of dysentery , hotly pursued by Ottoman troops near Nusaybin
massacres
Hamidian massacres
Viranşehir