by Benny Morris
of Armenians were converted during the massacres, fulfilling a doctrinal de-
mand of jihad.449 Mass conversion affected almost every area seared by mas-
sacre. The documentation is incomplete; most conversions in rural areas, like
most massacres, went unrecorded. But here and there we catch glimpses. For
The Massacres of 1894–1896
instance, Hampson reported that in the last months of 1895, 19,000 villa gers
converted in the sanjak of Siirt alone.450 Seven thousand were forced to
convert in Silvan sanjak and 3,000 more in Palu kaza. These districts were
far from alone.451
The pro cess was systematic. In December 1895 Currie, quoting one of his
subordinates, reported that without effective foreign intervention, the Turks
would “prob ably continue until all the surviving Armenians become Mus-
sulmen.” 452 Several months later, an American missionary from Antep wrote,
“The demand that Christians become Moslems is being relentlessly pressed
in all the region east and north of here.” He went on, “Our Governor and other
prominent Moslems have told several Christians . . . that the only security for
life and property now is by becoming Moslem.” 453
Already in the last months of 1894, Armenians were under pressure to
convert. In January 1895, Graves reported that a family in Van vilayet had
converted to Islam in order to avoid paying oppressive taxes levied only
against Christians. Graves added that word of conversions had grown “more
frequent of late.” He was also aware of cases in which officials refused Arme-
nian requests to “embrace Islam . . . on the very practical ground that if the
Armenians all turned Mussulmans, there would be no one left for [them] to
squeeze.” 454 Some officials tried to restrain their subordinates, as in the case
of the vali of Erzurum, who instructed two of his mutesarrifs “not to admit
the validity of these conversions.” 455 Curiously, other officials, including the vali of Sivas, encouraged the conversion of Gregorian Armenians to
Catholicism.456
In many cases converts were forced not only to accept and practice Muslim
rituals and take Muslim names but also to undergo painful and dangerous cir-
cumcision. In November 1895 Harput missionaries reported that “some six
hundred have been circumcised” in two villages.457 At Garmuri, a village in
Harput sanjak, a seventy- year- old priest was “tied to a post and circumcised
in public.” 458 In other places, circumcision was waived.459
Often during the massacres, Armenians were presented by Turkish mobs,
Kurdish tribesmen, and troops with the simple option of conversion or death.
The latter fate befell the Armenians of Tehmeh, Uzunova, Hoh, and other
villages where they refused to convert. Here and there, Armenians com-
mitted suicide to avoid conversion. At Khizan, converts were forced to kill
Abdülhamid
II
relatives who refused to convert.460 Sometimes, after converting, Armenians
were prohibited from speaking their language.461
It is unclear whether authorities carry ing out mass conversions were acting
on specific instructions from Constantinople or on the basis of hints. Pub-
licly, the sultan accepted individual conversion but refused to recognize mass
conversions. When presented with the facts, he either denied that conversions
were coerced— “calumnies in ven ted by ill- disposed persons”— denied all
knowledge of what had happened, or denied responsibility.462 Unrecognized
converts found themselves in a dangerous limbo, with local Muslims threat-
ening their lives even after they had undertaken the humiliation that suppos-
edly could save them.463
For months after forced conversions, holdouts might be threatened with
fresh massacres. Christian missionaries unfavorably compared what was hap-
pening to the seventh- century Muslim conquests in the Middle East, when
Christians could avoid conversion by paying tribute. During the “crusade”
of the mid-1890s, Christians first offered up tribute in the form of valuables
but were then told that “the only condition upon which they would be
spared was to accept Mohammedanism.” 464
The conversions were widely reported and caused outrage in the West.
Christian diplomats complained vociferously, leading to the sultan’s declara-
tion that his government discouraged conversion “when there was reason to
believe it was not prompted by religious conviction.” He added, though, that
“it was difficult for him to discourage persons sincerely desirous of embracing
the faith of Islam.” 465 Abdülhamid was eventually persuaded to agree to the
dispatch of a “delegate,” Fitzmaurice, to investigate one of the largest mass
conversions, at Birecik.466
In April 1896 Fitzmaurice reported that in the area he had toured, 5,900
Christians had been forcibly converted to Islam, 4,300 of them in Birecik itself.
More had been converted in the adjacent Maraş and Albistan areas. He wor-
ried that, what ever the pronouncements against forced conversion emanating
from Constantinople, the local authorities had made no effort to enable the
converts to revert to Chris tian ity, and the local populations intimidated them
into continuing to adhere to the new faith. They were obliged “to wear tur-
bans, to attend mosques, and learn the Koran, to be circumcised, not to speak
Armenian, and to be known officially and privately under the Mussulman
The Massacres of 1894–1896
names.” Some converts abandoned their property and fled to other towns
where, unknown, they might renew their Christian worship. But these were
hunted down and dragged back to their hometowns where they were obliged
to continue living as Muslims.
Fitzmaurice qualified his report by pointing out that much depended on
the characteristics of each town. In Adıyaman, where some 400 Christians had
been massacred, there did not seem to be “intense religious fanat i cism,” and
the majority of local converts had been allowed to revert to Chris tian ity. Sim-
ilar stories emerged from Maraş and Antep. But in Birecik and Albistan, re-
version had been more difficult. Reversion, Fitzmaurice worried, would be
regarded as treachery and “punishable by death, according to the precepts of
the Koran,” so he advised against immediate reversion, lest it trigger a new
wave of killing.467 Instead, he hoped time would cool tempers and that an
Ottoman commission would be sent to the eastern provinces to endorse and
safeguard reversion.468 Some local officials used incentives to prevent rever-
sion. In March 1897 a British consul wrote that authorities in the Khizan area,
in Bitlis vilayet, were “secretly offering charity” to the converts “if they would fi nally embrace Mohammedanism.” 469
Constantinople’s orders to refuse recognition of forced conversions,
which arrived in late 1895 and early 1896, occasionally triggered fresh
atrocities. In March 1896 Hampson reported that fifteen Armenian families
had been massacred by Kurds in Çapakçur (Chabakchur) kaza after reverting
to Chris tian ity following the sultan’s orders. The leading Armenian in the
kaza, Se
rkis Agha, was dragged out of the government house and murdered
“before the eyes of the kaimakam.” Troops restored order, but no Kurds
were arrested, and a number of Armenians were detained.470
The fate of converts was mixed. Writing from Diyarbekir in spring 1896,
Hallward claimed, “The majority of the forced converts . . . have now returned
to Chris tian ity.” But in the Silvan area, he added, “a good many . . . remain
Turk through fear.” 471 Still others may have felt that, in the long term, even
after anti- Christian passions abated, wisdom dictated continued adherence
to Islam. To be sure, the vast majority of Christians in the eastern provinces,
despite the turbulence and threats, never converted.
Abdülhamid
II
Rape and Abduction
Mass rape was part and parcel of the massacres. Thousands of young women
were carried off and enslaved or forced to marry Muslims. In some cases, Ar-
menians committed suicide rather than be raped or carried off.472 Most of
the abductees were never returned. They remained, for the rest of their lives,
in Muslim house holds as servants, wives, or concubines.473
Such be hav ior reflected an escalation of earlier practice. In the years before
1894, rapes and abductions of Armenian women were fairly common in the
eastern provinces, but on the scale of individuals and small groups. After a tour
of Erzurum vilayet in the late 1880s, one American correspondent reported,
“ There were no general atrocities. . . . But the system of abduction of Arme-
nian women by Kurdish agas and landlords was going on, and the violation of
women in Armenian villages by bands of Kurds was almost general.” He pro-
vided a concrete example. Traveling from Erzurum to “the Rus sian frontier” in
1889, “I happened to arrive soon after daybreak at an Armenian village in the
plain of Passim, named Keuprukioi [Köprüköy]. I found it in possession of a
band of Kurds, who had come in during the night, had turned the unarmed
men out of their houses onto the roads, and were indulging in an orgy of
outrage among the women.” 474 In July 1894 Armenians from Karahisar
complained of a recent series of rapes carried out by Kurds and Turkish
soldiers.475
Women abducted during the massacres might find themselves far from
home, making escape nigh impossible. Vice- Consul Hallward, writing
from distant Van in March 1895, reported that nine girls had been brought
there from Sason, two of them ending up with Nuri Effendi, Van’s chief of
police, and another two with the vali’s aides. Abductees from Sason were
given out as pres ents by Kurdish agas.476 The Armenian bishop of Van sent
the vali a list of “twenty- six women and young girls forcibly abducted by
Kurds and made Muslim.” 477 The missionary Thomas Christie wrote in
July 1896 that a fourteen- year- old Armenian girl from the village of Kans
Bazan was being held in an imam’s home in Tarsus, some 125 kilo meters
away. Her father was imprisoned for complaining of the abduction, and “her
ravisher” was allowed “ free access” to her at the imam’s home. The imam
per sis tently tried to persuade her to convert.478
The Massacres of 1894–1896
Much as rape and abduction preceded the massacres, they continued af-
terward. In Harput, the killings and arson occurred in November 1895, but
Gates complained in January 1896 that “the Palu Turks still continue to carry
off girls and women, keeping them a few days and then returning them with
their lives blasted.” 479 In April 1897 Fontana reported testimony from an Eğin
hodja (professor or teacher), who said that “outraging of [Armenian] women still continues” there “and that 80 girls are with child” by their rapists.480
Raped women were damned by the conservatism of their abusers and their
communities alike. Either they were imprisoned in Muslim house holds or, if
abandoned, unable easily to reintegrate in Armenian society. As one mis-
sionary wrote:
In our going about among the villages we saw girls not a few who re-
turned from the hands of their captors, weeping bitterly, shrieking and
crying: ‘We are defiled, defiled! No one will take us in marriage, for not
only are we defiled but those who would notwithstanding that take us,
dare not for fear of our captors, and also the young men are few, most of
them having been slain by the sword. Our fathers and mothers have been
killed and we are become vagrants. What shall we do! Whither shall we
go! . . .’ How pitiable, how hard and bitter such a lot.481
In some cases Muslims who initially protected fleeing Armenians went on
to rape and domesticate them. For instance, as anti- Christian vio lence raged
in the village of Tadem, near Harput, a hundred people, mostly women and
children, took refuge in the house of a Kurdish aga, Haji Beygo. According to
one Western report, “The younger and more attractive were outraged the same
eve ning and subsequently by the Aga, his son Hafiz, and their Kurdish friends.
Many of the victims were afterwards given as pres ents to Bekjis (guards) and to Kurdish visitors from the surrounding country. Several women were led
away from the Aga’s house in a state of complete nudity.” An Armenian offi-
cial estimated that out of Tadem’s thousand women, “not more than 350” had
been “ravished.” 482
Western diplomats and missionaries tried to retrieve abductees, and oc-
casionally Ottoman officials lent them a hand. In early 1896 British Vice-
Consul Philip Bulman managed to get the vali of Sivas to restore to their
Abdülhamid
II
families “fourteen Armenian girls detained in Turkish houses at Kangal.” 483
In general, however, officials denied that women had been abducted or, at
best, allowed that one or two cases had occurred. Typical was the response
by the vali of Diyarbekir, who would allow only that “Christian women and
children took refuge in Mussulman houses” and were subsequently returned
to their homes.
Nonetheless, following French and British complaints, Ottoman commis-
sioners “ were sent to all the villages in the vilayet, but, notwithstanding
searching inquiries, they were only able to discover one [Armenian] woman,
one girl, and two [male] children,” who were all restored to their commu-
nity.484 Hallward was unimpressed by the commissioners’ findings, reporting
that they had allowed few suspected abductees to meet with their Armenian
relatives and, in the end, left large numbers of abductees in Kurdish hands.485
Herbert experienced similar frustration. The authorities’ response to his in-
quiries concerning abductions in Diyarbekir “only supplies another instance
of the uselessness of all similar repre sen ta tions to the Sublime Porte and
the impossibility of obtaining an impartial investigation into the outrages,”
he lamented.486
There can be little doubt that the government intended to impede the re-
turn of abductees. Fontana obtained an official circular demonstrating as
much. The document enjoined provincial officials to take “precautionary mea-
sures” against consular investigations b
ecause these could result in “dis-
honor . . . to the State and to Islamism.” Referring to an “Imperial order and
Firman,” of September 1, 1897, the aim of the circular, according to Fontana,
was “the obstruction, by all pos si ble means, of any effort made by consular
officers to obtain the surrender of Armenian women and children.” 487
Officials were shrewd in carry ing out the order. Consider the be hav ior of
the vali of Mamuret- ül- Aziz, Rauf Bey. On Rauf ’s instructions, a group of girls abducted from Hekim- Han was hauled before the authorities in Malatya, including the Gregorian Catholic bishop, but not until long after they had been
kidnapped. It is no won der that, at this point, all except one refused “to
abandon their Moslem husbands and the Mussulman creed.” Fontana noted
that, given the lapse of time since their abduction, it was likely that all or most had been impregnated by their new husbands or had given birth: “in that case
their unwillingness to re- enter the Armenian community (among whom their
The Massacres of 1894–1896
chance of marriage would henceforward be very slight) and to face pos si ble
destitution accentuated by the care and support of an illegitimate child, would
appear far from unnatural or unjustified.” 488
Indeed, almost invariably, alleged abductees subject to investigation refused
to be separated from their Muslim husbands. Some feared Muslim retribu-
tion if they announced Armenian origin or a desire to re- convert.489 But, in
many cases, no threat was needed. By the time consuls or reluctant officials
began to examine cases, unmarried Armenian girls prob ably understood that
they had nowhere to return to. Given the vulnerability they would face in their
destroyed villages, abducted women were better off staying in the homes of
their Muslim husbands. One also cannot rule out the possibility that some
fell in love with their new spouses or genuinely wished to be with their new
families. When in 1897 Telford Waugh, the British vice- consul in Diyarbekir,
bemoaned the Turkish administration’s “failure to recover any of the Xian
women carried off by the Kurds nearly two years ago,” he may not have grasped
the unfeasibility of the goal.490
Imprisonment and Torture
As with rape and abduction, the arbitrary imprisonment accompanying
