by Benny Morris
excite the minds of the latter against the unsuspecting Christians. . . . The telegraphic circular . . . contributed largely to bring about the massacres. . . . The news . . . led to a distinct ebullition of fanatical feeling among the Moslems of
[Urfa] while at Birejik they became fiercely excited against the former converts
to Islam.”157
The Massacres of 1894–1896
The exact phrasing of these tele grams is unknown; no copies are accessible
in Turkish archives. There is clearer evidence regarding the transmission of
massacre orders lower down the chain of command. For example, in May 1896
a British diplomat, Raphael Fontana, sent to his embassy the translated text
of two signed statements by Kurdish agas from the Harput and Malatya areas.
In the first, six agas swore that one Hadji Khalil Aga of Kizil Ushaghi (Kızıl
Uşağı) had led 2,000 Kurds in a raid at Harput kaza on “the command of our
Padishah”— a term denoting the sultan. In the second, an aga of the Kızılbaşı
Kurds from the village of Bekir Uşağı, testified that Herirje Zade Abdüllah Aga,
a member of Malatya’s administrative council, had “sent us a letter inviting
us to attack the Malatia Armenians.” The aga and his men refused to partici-
pate. Some days after the “disturbances” in the town, Herirje sent another
official to the Kızılbaşı Kurds to “take back the letter,” which was returned.158
Trabzon (Trebizond)
A multiethnic seaside town inhabited by 20,000 Turks, 15,000 Greeks, and
7,000 Armenians, Trabzon in the mid-1890s was ripe for an explosion.159 Turks
in the area claimed they feared large- scale Armenian vio lence, though as one
missionary put it, “it seems incredible that they could have been sincere in
this.”160 “Rumors of massacres at Constantinople tended to aggravate matters,”
Longworth reported.161 There was considerable homegrown instability,
too. On October 2, 1895, Lieutenant General Bahri Pasha, the out going vali
of Van, was nearly assassinated in Trabzon, on his way to Constantinople.
Bahri had been walking with the Trabzon town commandant, Ahmed Hamdi
Pasha, when both were lightly wounded by a gunman. The shooter was not
caught, but the Turks charged two Armenian “accomplices.”162
The situation escalated further on the night of October 4, when “large
bands of armed Muslims from the neighboring villages,” intent on plunder,
attacked Christian houses, firing guns and breaking in doors and win dows. A
rumor then spread that Christians were massacring Turks—or, alternatively,
that Armenians had assassinated the vali.163 A mob of “at least 3,000” mustered,
“with knives, pistols and revolvers,” and rushed through the streets. Christians
fled to consulates and public buildings. But the vali, Kadri Bey, and some
Muslim notables intervened and troops were deployed. They arrested the
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ring- leaders and “unmercifully beat” many of the “rowdies.” The crowd
dispersed before any lives were lost. The next day, the local consuls—
British, Rus sian, French, Belgian, Austrian, Greek, Persian, and Italian—
ostentatiously rode in pro cession down the main street to government
house. Their aim, Longworth explained, was to “calm the fears of the Chris-
tians and strike fear in the hearts of the Turks!”164
The Turks were not impressed. On October 8, at about eleven o’clock in the
morning, the mayhem in Trabzon began “like a clap of thunder in a clear sky.”
Turkish authorities later claimed that “it was impossible to determine on which
side the brawl began” and that Armenians “from their shops and bazaars . . .
indeed from anywhere and everywhere . . . fired at random on soldiers, police,
zapties, and citizens alike” such that the “crowd which found itself in the square and the adjoining streets was obliged to respond.”165 But Western observers— not
to mention Armenian witnesses—offered a different story: the Turks had
initiated the massacre without provocation. According to an unsigned report,
prob ably by an American missionary, Armenians were shot down in the street
“or sitting quietly at their shop doors. . . .” Some were slashed with swords.
The Turks “passed through the quarters . . . killing the men and large boys,
generally permitting the women and younger children to live. For five hours this horrid work of human butchery went on.” The report continued:
Every shop of an Armenian in the market was gutted and the victors . . .
glutted themselves with the spoils. . . . So far as appearances went, the
police and soldiers distinctly aided in this savage work. They were min-
gled with the armed men and so far as we could see made not the least
effort to check them. Apparently they took care to see that the right
ones— that is, Armenians, were killed; also that an offer of surrender
might be made to all that were found unarmed. To any found with arms
no quarter was given, but large numbers were shot down without any
proffer of this kind.
In the eve ning, after a full day of murder and plunder, the vali and his troops
stepped in and stopped the massacre.166
The vio lence spilled over into the rural surround. The French consul in
Erzurum noted, “The whole country between Trabzon and Erzerum is
The Massacres of 1894–1896
devastated. On the outskirts of Bayburt, he counted one hundred dead
bodies lying together near the road. Nearly all the villages are burned and in
many cases the male population is entirely wiped out.” The consul also re-
ported the “ cattle and grain stolen.”167 According to Longworth, the attackers
spared only communities that had “dressed as Moslems [and] professed
their conversion to Islamism.” Much of the area had been “entirely depopu-
lated,” at least temporarily.168
Most of Trabzon’s Armenians escaped death by fleeing to consulates and
public buildings guarded by troops. The town’s Greek inhabitants by and
large refused shelter to the “hunted down” Armenians. Some 2,000 took
refuge in the Catholic Freres’ Mission house.169 Several local Muslim officials
also tried to help. The following March, the authorities arrested Essad Bey, a
judge, apparently because he had assisted Armenians. “Honest, impartial, and
tolerant,” the French ambassador wrote, “Essad Bey demonstrated the most
laudable attitude during the October massacres. . . . Such a judge could not
have found grace among the fanatical Muslims of Trabzon. They denounced
him to the palace.”170
The local branch of the Anglo- American Relief Committee carefully
tabulated casualty figures: 298 Armenians were killed, along with another
100 or so “wayfarers and strangers,” 9 Turks, and 3 Greeks. Another 200
Armenians were killed in the surrounding villages, including 118 in Gümüşhane
(Gumush Khaneh). Altogether 1,500 houses were looted and 320 burned.
By February 1896, when the body counts were published, some 1,700
Trabzon Armenians and more than 3,000 from the surrounding countryside
had fled the empire.171
Following the massacre the authorities rounded up some 400 Armenians,
though all but 50 were rele
ased by early November.172 The authorities
pressured Armenians to sign a declaration blaming the bloodshed on revolu-
tionaries.173 By early November, “not one Turk” had been arrested. Turks
and Greeks— under Muslim pressure— boycotted Armenian shops, adding
to Armenian woes. The British consul described the Armenians as “virtually
outcasts, bereft of their belongings, reduced to beggary and expelled from their
hired houses.”174
As with other massacres, the government sought to portray Armenians as
aggressors who brought vio lence on themselves. Trabzon authorities claimed
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the “disturbances” had started when an Armenian fired at soldiers after he
had heard that his brother had been killed in Constantinople.175 They further
claimed that, in the days and hours before the outbreak, Armenians had walked
about town “armed to the teeth.”176 In late October, Cambon reported, “The
Sublime Porte is . . . sending [circulars] to its representatives abroad, claiming that . . . Armenian armed bands are now burning Muslim villages, invading
mosques and slaughtering Muslims.”177
Yet foreign observers were not taken in; their condemnation of the Turks
was swift and definitive. Even the Germans, who at this stage tended to jus-
tify Ottoman policy, were appalled. Upon hearing of the events at Trabzon,
the kaiser reportedly said, “This surpasses every thing before. This is indeed
a St. Bartholomew’s massacre!”178 The British consul wrote that the Turkish
mob at first shot down every Armenian they encountered; then, joined by sol-
diers and later “Greeks and Persians,” the mob systematically looted Arme-
nian “houses, shops and storerooms throughout the town,” killing anyone
who resisted.179 Greeks, “possibly from fear, refused in the majority of cases
to shelter the hunted down people in their shops and houses, schools and
churches.”180
Longworth considered the affair “well or ga nized.”181 Although the vali and
the president of the criminal court opposed the massacre, the civilian and mili-
tary authorities had “behaved disgracefully”; Longworth found “serious
reasons to suspect that the slaughter was encouraged if not planned and
ordered by some officials.” As he understood it, between October 2 and 8,
the authorities had disarmed Armenians in the streets and in their houses
while word of an impending massacre spread. Per the rumors, non- Armenian
Christians “ were to be spared.” Longworth also reported that Bahri Pasha
had been overheard on October 7 persuading Hamdi Pasha to allow a
massacre. Hamdi then “unaccountably delayed his departure” for Constan-
tinople. Moreover, bands of Muslims appeared to have been “armed and
or ga nized” in advance and, on the eighth, the troops were ordered by their
officers “to shoot at or towards Armenians in the square and in their houses.”
The carnage only ceased when the vali himself declared that “the Sultan had
pardoned the Armenians.” The looters spared Greeks, suggesting that they
were instructed to assault only a par tic u lar set of Christians— Armenians.182
Longworth assessed that the “government of the country is entirely to blame”
The Massacres of 1894–1896
and that the massacre was “more po liti cal than fanatical,” stemming less from
religious fervor than from Turkish fears of Armenian rebelliousness and the
pos si ble disintegration of the empire.183
Perhaps the strongest evidence of organ ization came from a Mr. Cypreos,
the Greek acting consul. Longworth wrote that Cypreos had witnessed part
of the massacre. Based on his observations and information collected by his
agents, Cypreos concluded that the vio lence at Trabzon constituted “a planned
attack” on Armenians. He accused the troops of taking “a prominent part in
the butchery,” which had commenced almost si mul ta neously in five diff er ent
parts of town, triggered by a trumpet signal from a mosque minaret.184
Maraş
Hard on the heels of Trabzon, Armenians were massacred in some two dozen
sites in eastern Anatolia.
The carnage was especially great in Maraş. The town had a population of
roughly 50,000, about one- third Armenian. They had long been subject to
persecution and ethnic hatred. Sanders, the American missionary, reported
in January 1895 that “suspicion and fear reign there supreme” and that the
local military force was “more anti- Christian” than the civilian inhabitants.
A key figure was the police chief, Shahan (Şahin?) Effendi, “one of the . . .
bitterest haters of Christians, and especially Armenians.” A major prob lem,
Sanders felt, was “the credulity of the Moslems.” They would “act at once on
the wildest stories.” Maraş was therefore like “a loaded and cocked musket,”
ready to go off. When it did, Sanders predicted, “not much of the Christian
population would be left.”185
The musket powder was fi nally lit on October 25. A Muslim had been killed
in a fracas with Christians, provoking murderous rage. As news of Constan-
tinople’s planned reforms spread, Turks killed dozens of Armenian men—at
least twenty- five and as many as fifty—in the streets and surrounding fields.186
Fearful for their lives, Armenians closed their shops, schools, and churches
and “shut themselves up in their houses.”187 Prominent Armenians were
arrested.188
On November 18 a full- scale massacre erupted. The killing began in the
town center and spread outward, as soldiers sealed off the roads into Maraş
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II
to prevent escape. They set fires in three or four locations in town. An Amer-
ican missionary reported that, at one of these sites, “the soldiers were drawn
up in a line, and the bugle sounded, and they rushed to their work of plun-
dering and murder.” Joined by a mob, the soldiers eventually entered the
American missionary compound, which was on a hill overlooking the town.
The Turks set fire to the theological seminary and looted the buildings. Some
soldiers participated in the arson, but others tried to stanch the flames. “Arab
soldiers, followed by a rabble of men, women and children” attacked Arme-
nians and looted homes just outside the compound.189
Missionaries who treated the wounded reported, “The work was fearful,
children were disemboweled, men’s heads [ were] used as balls by the soldiers,
or carried on pikes through the street.” Armenians were threatened with death
unless they converted. One of the missionary school teachers was “flayed and
cut to pieces.” “ Women and children took refuge in a church which was then
burned to the ground.”190 All the Armenian churches were looted and van-
dalized and a number of priests were tortured and killed. Hundreds who
refused to convert were murdered.191 Dozens of Armenians were imprisoned,
many severely tortured. But fifty were released just before a del e ga tion of diplomats was due to arrive.192 All told, the immediate death toll was around
650, with more subsequently dying of wounds.193
Locals and soldiers also attacked Armenian villages around Mara�
�, causing
Armenians to abandon their orchards and vineyards.194 One missionary was
reminded of “the Sioux massacre in Minnesota in 1862.”195 The greatest
bloodletting appears to have taken place in Furnuz. The village had become
a gathering point for refugees throughout the Maraş area. In mid- November
troops surrounded Furnuz and slaughtered the men. One woman said that
the soldiers took her two children “and threw them into a river.”
Hundreds of survivors, all women and children, reached Maraş, pushed
by Turkish troops “like a drove of cattle.” They arrived “sick and footsore,
weeping and ragged, cold and hungry” and were imprisoned in a Protestant
church. The authorities gave them bread rations and eventually allowed the
town’s Christians also to send food: “Moslem women . . . came to jeer and
laugh at the sufferers. . . . One morning such a crowd of Moslems gathered
on the balcony of a house overlooking the church, to feast their eyes on the
sight of the captives, that suddenly the balcony gave way and some 60 people
The Massacres of 1894–1896
fell into the street.” One died. “We trust,” a missionary wrote, “that some at
least felt that this was a righ teous judgment.”196 Eventually the authorities set the captives in the church free and allowed the Maraş Christians to take them
in. But dozens died of dysentery.197 Some Protestants were spared, but not
all; of the Maraş area dead, about 250 were Protestants.198
Conversion was one possible means of self- preservation. “In the district
of Albistan all the Christians are reported to have saved their lives by em-
bracing Islam,” the British consul reported. The story was diff er ent at Yenice
Kale, where twelve monks and their superior, Padre Salvatore, were forced to
leave for Maraş in chains, under Turkish escort. Along the way, they were given
the option of converting. They refused and were “massacred, and their bodies
burnt.”199
The killing in and around Maraş proceeded “with all the appearances of a
preconceived plan,” as one missionary put it.200 Barnham wrote to Currie that
what had happened in Maraş was “evidently with the approval of [the] Gov-
ernment.”201 Barnham later reported that on November 18 the mutesarrif was
