by Benny Morris
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II
massacres to take place, and that if it had not so wished, they could not have
taken place.”241
The immediate trigger of the first massacre was the stabbing, on October 27,
of an Armenian moneychanger by a Muslim in his debt. The murderer was
seized by Armenians and, initially, handed over to gendarmes. But, fearing that
the gendarmes would release him, Armenians raided the guard house, and the
prisoner was killed in the ensuing scuffle. Exactly who killed the man is un-
clear; an Armenian doctor who insisted that the injuries were caused by
bayonets— indicating the responsibility of gendarmes— was later murdered by
Turkish troops.
The massacre began the next morning. A Muslim mob attacked mer-
chants in the bazaar and chased the survivors to their homes amid cries of
“death to the infidels.” Resisters at the entrances to the Armenian quarter
drove back the mob, killing four or five Muslims. The mob then plundered
hundreds of Armenian shops and homes outside the quarter, killing “all Ar-
menian [males] found” there. Assisted by gendarmes, the mob continued
looting throughout the next day, and the quarter would remain under siege
for two months.242 In a letter to friends dated a few days later, Corinna Shat-
tuck, the only Western missionary in town, wrote, “We felt distrust of all but
God.”243
Hassan Pasha, the mutesarrif, had been out of town when the massacre
began. When he returned on October 30, he sought to restore order, albeit in
a highly repressive fashion. Hassan demanded that the Armenians surrender
their weapons, which allegedly included 1,800 modern Martini rifles. He
promised also to disarm Muslims. Reserves were deployed in small units in-
side the Armenian quarter, ostensibly to protect the inhabitants. What fol-
lowed was extortion and intimidation. Turks
were undeterred in their
plunder. The soldiers joined in, demanding protection money and robbing
passersby of “watches, money and outer clothing in broad daylight.” Soldiers
were overheard saying that the government had ordered the extermination of
the Armenians.244 Meanwhile, outside Urfa, Arabs attacked and robbed Ar-
menian villa gers. So bereft were these country Armenians that they sought
shelter in a Kurdish village.245
Shattuck recorded that gendarmes were “arresting men . . . and requiring
them to declare themselves to be Mohammedans, the penalty for refusal being
The Massacres of 1894–1896
death.” Converts were ordered to don white turbans and raise white flags
above their homes. Twenty flags went up on October 30 and many more the
following day as gendarmes went from house to house, “axe in hand with their
demand for the people to become Mohammedans.”246 Six months later,
Fitzmaurice reported that “the Armenians in utter despair turned Moslem en
masse.” In the surrounding villages, Kurds pressed Armenians to convert,
sometimes murdering those who refused. Shattuck doubted that the mute-
sarrif had a hand in the conversion campaign and asserted that “he stopped
the full execution of the plan.”247
As the weeks ground on, the authorities continued to demand Martini rifles,
and the Armenians continued to deny that they had any. But they gave up other
weapons to appease the Turks. By mid- December, the discarded arsenal
amounted to 1,200 weapons: old rifles, revolvers, daggers, and one Martini.
Armenians also handed over “large sums of money to the mutesarrif, the
[military] commander Nazif Pasha, and other Moslem” notables. To some
extent, the authorities held up their end of the bargain, pushing back a mob
that attacked the quarter on December 1. But the siege was unrelenting, and
food and water supplies were dwindling.
Throughout December the authorities seemed to be softening up to the
Armenians. On December 13 Nazif ordered them to open their shops, pre-
sumably to pretend that all was well and perhaps to create targets for looting.
Some Armenians complied but were attacked when they left the quarter. Then
officials forced twenty- five Armenian notables to telegraph Constantinople
that their compatriots had disturbed the peace and that Urfa was now calm.
“Friendly Turks” warned Armenians “to be on their guard” and non- Armenian
Christians were told to don black turbans so that they could be identified
and spared.248
The second massacre began on the morning of December 28. Nazif sent
word to non- Armenian Christians “to assem ble in their churches and not stir
out” and to refrain from sheltering Armenians. In a further sign of official com-
plicity, the captain of the gendarmes fi nally granted Shattuck permission to
leave on a long- planned trip to Antep, after weeks of rejections. (She didn’t
go.) The troops were then drawn up at the entrances to the Armenian quarter.
Behind them “an armed Mussulman mob [gathered], while the minarets were
crowded with Moslems evidently in expectation of some stirring event. The
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II
Turkish women, too, crowded onto the roofs and the slopes of the fortress,
which overlooked the Armenian Quarter.” The mob was “cheered on by their
women, who kept up the well- known zilghit or peculiar throat noise, used on
such occasions by Oriental women to encourage their braves.” At around noon
a muezzin cried out the midday prayer as “a glittering glass ornament resem-
bling a crescent was seen shining from the top of the fortress” overlooking the
town. “A mullah waved a green banner from a tall minaret overhanging the
other end” of the town. Shots were fired and a “trumpet sounded the attack.”
The soldiers opened their ranks so that the mob could pour into the quarter,
assaulting “males over a certain age.”249
According to Fitzmaurice’s investigation, Nazif was seen “motioning the
crowd on,” the mob guided by troops who had familiarized themselves with
the quarter during the siege. A “body of wood- cutters,” armed with axes, led
the way, breaking down doors. Soldiers then rushed inside and shot the men.
“A certain sheik,” Fitzmaurice wrote, “ordered his followers to bring as many
stalwart young Armenians as they could find. To the number of about 100
they were thrown on their backs and held down by their hands and feet, while
the sheik, with a combination of fanat i cism and cruelty, proceeded, while re-
citing verses of the Koran, to cut their throats after the Mecca rite of sacrificing sheep.” Those hiding were dragged out and butchered— stoned, shot, and set
on fire with “matting saturated with petroleum.” Women were cut down
shielding their husbands and fathers. More Armenians were shot as they scam-
pered along rooftops trying to escape. When the killing subsided, the houses
were looted and torched. As sunset approached, the trumpet sounded again,
calling the troops and the mob to withdraw.250 Soldiers specifically forbade
the mob to “touch” Shattuck’s house, “the residence of a foreigner.” The mis-
sionary, who witnessed a portion of the massacre from her win dow, reported
&n
bsp; that “Syrians and Catholics were also spared.”251
The atrocities resumed the following day, December 29, with a trumpet
sound at dawn. The largest number were killed at the Armenian cathedral,
where thousands had gathered for sanctuary. The attackers first fired through
win dows into the church, then smashed in the doors and killed the men clus-
tered on the ground floor. Fitzmaurice relates that, as the mob plundered the
church, they “mockingly call[ed] on Christ . . . to prove himself a greater
prophet than Mohammed.” The Turks then shot at the “shrieking and terrified
The Massacres of 1894–1896
mass of women, children and some men” in the second- floor gallery. But
gunning the Armenians down one- by- one was “too tedious,” so the mob
brought in more petroleum- soaked bedding and set fire to the woodwork and
the staircases leading up to the galleries. For several hours “the sickening
odour of roasting flesh pervaded the town.” Writing the following March,
Fitzmaurice noted, “Even today, the smell of putrescent and charred remains
in the church is unbearable.”252 Shattuck described the horror as “a grand
holocaust” and for days afterward watched “men lugging sacks filled with
bones, ashes” from the cathedral.253
The trumpet again sounded at 3:30 p.m., the time of the Muslim after noon
prayer, and the mob withdrew from the Armenian quarter. “Shortly after-
wards,” Fitzmaurice wrote, “the mufti, Ali Effendi, Hussein Pasha, and other
notables, preceded by a band of musicians, went round the quarter, an-
nouncing that the massacre was at an end . . . , and that there would be no
more killing of Christians.”254 For the next three days, the authorities employed
“Jews and donkeys” to remove the dead.255 The soldiers clearing the church
reportedly collected “large quantities of melted gold” that Armenians had
hidden on their persons.”256
Before the massacres, Urfa was home to about 20,000 Armenians. All told,
“close on 8,000,” perhaps as many as 10,000, died over the course of the two
days, 2,500–3,000 of them at the cathedral. Forty Assyrians and one Greek
Catholic also died. Three months on, according to Fitzmaurice, the condition
of the survivors, who included many widows and orphans, was “wretched in
the extreme,” and mortality was high. The majority had lost all “except the
clothes on their backs.” The authorities announced that there would be a res-
titution of plundered property, but it was a “sham.”257 For months, Shattuck
wrote, stolen goods were openly sold in the marketplace.258 Armenian finan-
cial losses also included a large number of debts Muslims refused to honor.
The government failed to punish the murderers but took care quickly to
remove to distant provinces officials linked to the massacres. These included
Hassan Bey, the major of gendarmes, who was sent to Yanina (Ioannina),
Greece, and Nazif Pasha, who was transferred to Kornah (Al- Qurnah), at the
confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. But Hussein Pasha, a “local magnate . . .
prominently connected with the massacres,” apparently was allowed to return
to Urfa in summer 1896 after a brief exile, none the worse for wear.259
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Between October and December, hundreds of Christians converted.260 In
the weeks following the December massacre, another 600 converted “in the
hope of saving their lives.” But most reverted over time to Chris tian ity, some
after leaving Urfa. In September 1896, Fitzmaurice wrote that two hundred
Muslim converts remained in the town.261 Some Gregorian Armenians turned
Catholic or Syrian, a lesser apostasy also designed to save life and limb. In-
deed, turning Muslim hadn’t necessarily been of much use in December;
Shattuck observed that many, after declaring themselves, were “quickly
murdered.”262
The Sublime Porte denied that any massacre had occurred. As the sultan
told Currie, the British ambassador, in January 1896, “ there had been an
affray . . . and some lives had been lost on both sides.” The ambassador pre-
tended that the sultan was unaware of the true facts and played along, telling
him he was being “willfully deceived” and “hoodwinked” by his agents.263
Diyarbekir
After the 1894 massacre at Sason and subsequent appointment under Eu ro-
pean pressure of a commission of inquiry, Thomas Boyajian noted rising
anti- Christian sentiment in Diyarbekir, where he was vice- consul for Her
Majesty’s Government. He felt the “lower classes” were especially afflicted.
Such hard feelings were routinely reinforced, as in spring, during a visit by
Kurdish chieftains on their way to Mecca. One, the sheikh of Zilan (Zeylan),
was “deeply implicated” in the Sason Massacres, according to Boyajian. He
was also out spoken, warning the townspeople that Armenians were “in revolt
and doing their utmost to undermine the Empire.” He questioned the locals’
patriotism, asserting that the “Kurds appear more religious and patriotic in
defending the authority of the Sovereign than the Turks.” Boyajian blamed
such inflammatory rhe toric for the hardship of Diyarbekir’s Christians. They
were, he observed, “treated very shamefully in the bazaars, being assailed,
insulted and threatened with extermination.” The situation in the neigh-
boring districts of Palu and Silvan appeared even worse.264
The pent-up rage in and around Diyarbekir exploded on November 1.
Turks and Kurds rioted for three days, “absolutely unchecked by the
authorities.” Armenians were killed in the bazaars, the streets, and their
The Massacres of 1894–1896
homes. About 1,000 Armenians and 160 Assyrians died, and some 2,500
shops and 1,700 homes were pillaged or burnt.265
About 700 Christians found refuge in the French consulate, which success-
fully repulsed an attack. The Turks claimed that Armenians had provoked
the “clashes,” but Hallward concluded that the “authors of the disturbance
were well under Government control.” Soldiers and gendarmes “took an ac-
tive part” in the vio lence, and the rioting ended immediately upon the arrival
of an order from the Porte. It was generally believed, Hallward wrote, that the
vio lence was or ga nized by the vali of Sivas, Ennis Pasha, and leading local
Muslims.266 Another example of orderly planning came immediately after the
massacre. Just as the vio lence was ending, local Muslims already had their
story straight; hundreds sent a tele gram to the sultan justifying what had hap-
pened. They bemoaned the reforms as harbingers of Armenian in de pen-
dence and blamed Armenian “intrigue” for the outbreak of vio lence.267
The massacre was followed by Kurdish attacks on nearby Armenian and
Assyrian villages and towns, including Nisibin, Midyat, and Siirt, and on two
Yezidi villages. In most, churches were burned and priests murdered.268
Mardin was assaulted by Kurds on the ninth, eleventh, and sixteenth of
November, but each time the town’s Muslims and Christians made common
cause to drive them back. Muslim leaders feared that the Kurds would also
> sack Muslim homes, and some Muslims came from Assyrian stock, fostering
bonds of sympathy. Assyrian villages around Mardin were raided, and some,
such as Tell Armen and Al Kulye, completely destroyed. The Syriac inhabitants
of Qalaat Mara fled to the nearby Za’faran Monastery (Deyrulzafaran), which
they successfully defended against a Kurdish force, perhaps with the assis-
tance of soldiers.269
Hallward estimated that 800 or 900 Christians were murdered in the vil-
lages around Diyarbekir, and 155 women and girls were carried off by Kurds.270
By mid- March 1896, “perhaps twenty” girls had been recovered, some having
“declared themselves Moslem.” This may have been a smart move, for them-
selves and their families. After an abducted Assyrian from the Silvan district
was “restored to her husband” unconverted, Kurds proceeded to kill “both
her husband and father- in- law.” In many of the region’s villages, massacre sur-
vivors were forced to convert, and churches were converted to mosques. In
Lice all of the men were circumcised.271
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Silvan and Palu suffered especially. According to Hallward, of the estimated
20,000 Armenians residing in Silvan before the disturbances, 7,500 were “re-
duced to destitution,” 7,000 were “forcibly made Moslem,” and 4,000 had
“dis appeared.” Twenty- three villages were entirely burned. Palu, home to an
estimated 15,000 Armenians, saw 900 deaths. Six villages were razed and
seven “half- burned.” Hallward counted 195 women and girls abducted and
“a large majority” of the Christian females aged 12–40 “ violated.” In one vil-
lage, Yeniköy, Christians took refuge “with a certain Shukri Bey who, with his
servants, [then] violated all the young women and girls.” The “worst man” in
Palu district, according to Hallward, was the mufti, who “was very active in
the massacre and killed the principal Protestant, Manoog Aga, with his
own hand.”
Altogether, in Diyarbekir vilayet, some “8,000 appear to have been killed,”
Hallward wrote. He put the number of those converted at 25,000. “Upward
of 500 women and girls” were abducted. “One of the principal ele ments of
disorder here is the so- called ‘Young Turkey,’ ” Hallward added, referring to