Karemlash was the seat of the Nestorian patriarch Denna II and home to Jacobite and Armenian communities in the 11th century.
The continuator of the Ecclesiastical History of Bar Hebraeus mentions several contacts between Denha II and the Jacobite church in Karamlish between 1358 and 1364. At this period Karemlash had Jacobite and Armenian communities alongside its Nestorian majority, and its village chiefs styled themselves 'emirs'. 
