He was a regional commander in the Turkish Gendarmerie in Lice, Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey when he was assassinated by a sniper using a Kanas rifle.
The Zuqnin Chronicle appears to have been written towards the end of the eighth century (several decades before Dionysius wrote the Annals) by a monk of the Jacobite monastery of Zuqnin near Amid (Diyarbakir).
He was murdered in 1231 in Diyarbakir by a Kurdish assassin hired by the Seljuks or possibly by Kurdish highwaymen.
These are namely, Çukurova (one of the provinces in the eastern Mediterranean part of Turkey), Amed (in Diyarbakir, one of the provinces in the southeastern Anatolia), Serhat (Erzurum, one of the provinces in the eastern part of Turkey) and the Aegean region.
In August 2009 a group of Peace Mothers organised a peace march from Diyarbakir and Ankara and held a sit-in protest near the Turkish General Staff headquarters in Ankara.