Surma D'Bait Mar Shimun

Lady Surma D'Bait Mar Shimun (27 January 1883 – 7 December 1975) was the sister of the Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East and leader of the Assyrians, Mar Shimun XIX Benyamin.

[1] The descendants of the Assyrian Empire had lived as a semi-independent nation in the Hakari mountains, but they were massacred and driven out by the Ottomans and Kurds in 1915.

When Mar Eshai went to school in England until 1927, she assisted the Metropolitans Mar Yosip Khnanisho of Rustaqa in Church affairs and was in charge of the secular affairs together with her brother, General David d'Mar Shimun, father of the Patriarch.

She continued to act as a consultant throughout Mar Eshai's life, given her temporal and secular expertise.

At the time of the disturbances in 1933 in Iraq, the Patriarchal family were taken to Cyprus, where they remained until 1952 when they moved to England and finally settling in the United States in 1960 thanks to a private law enacted in Congress and signed by the President.