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Acar (Kurdish: Herend), formerly called Argint, is a village in the Sason District, Batman Province, Turkey.[1] The village is populated by Kurds of the Xiyan tribe and had a population of 472 in 2021.[2][3]
The hamlets of Güneşli (Herda) and Hasanlar (Hasanan) are attached to the village.[1]
Acar remained an Armenian village until 1952, when half of the village was sold to Kurds. After threats of violence from their Kurdish neighbours, in 1964 the village's Christian Armenian population mass converted to Islam. As reported in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, the conversion involved 88 people - 48 children and 40 men and women - after which the names of the villagers were changed and the village church was converted into a mosque.[4] Despite the conversion, that same year Kurds burned the Armenian villager's fields and forced most of them to flee to Diyarbekir. Military intervention by the Turkish army allowed most to return the following year. They and their descendants continued to live in Acar until 1985, when the remainder of the village was sold to Kurds and the remaining Armenians moved to Istanbul.[5] Benninghaus reports a further conversion to Islam taking place in 1983.[6]
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