Prior to World War I, the Tkhuma were one of five principal Assyrian Tribes subject to the spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of the Assyrian Patriarch with the title Mar Shimun. The Assyrians claimed the status of a firman of protection from the Arab Caliphate and of an Ottoman millet to preserve their customs and traditions along with the tribes of Jelu, Baz, Tyari, and Deez/Diz, "forming the highest authority under His Holiness Mar Shimun, the patriarch." The Tkhuma Tribe is a tribe of Assyrians that lived in upper Mesopotamia until 1915, when they were dispersed into Persia, Iraq, and Syria during the Assyrian Genocide. In 1915, the representative of the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun XXII Paulos wrote that the Tkhuma of "many Christian villages" had "been entirely destroyed." A journalist of Ottoman Turkey wrote that: "The people of Tkhuma put up a great defense on September 27th and 28th [1915]. But while they were building trenches for themselves the Kurds were destroying them with guns. The Turks destroyed ... Inner Tkhuma and many other places.". In 1933, Malik Loco, the chief of the Tkhuma Tribe, went with the chief of the Tiyari tribe and 700 armed Assyrians into Syria, at the outset of the Simele Massacre. The League of Nations took responsibility for the resettlement of the Tkhuma Assyrians, reporting in 1937 that 2,350 Tkhuma had been settled in three villages in Syria.
Tkhuma is a sub-tribe of the Jilu tribe.