Fa'iz Ghusayn

“ But as soon as they had themselves seized the reins of authority, and tasted the sweets of power, they found that despotism was the best means to confirm themselves in ease and prosperity, and to limit to the Turks alone the rule over the Ottoman peoples. On considering these peoples, they found that the Armenian race was the only one which would resent their despotism, and fight against it as they previously fought against Abdul-Hamîd. ”

“ Hitherto, the Kurds have been in a very degraded state of ignorance; disorder is supreme in their territory, and the cities are in ruins. The Armenians, therefore, prefer to remain under Turkish rule, on condition that the administration is carried on under the supervision of the Great European Powers, as they place no confidence in the promises of the Turks, who take back to-day what they bestowed yesterday. These two Societies thus earnestly labour for the propagation of this view amongst the Armenians, and for the attainment of their object by every means. ”

“ I have published this pamphlet in order to refute beforehand inventions and slanders against the faith of Islam and against Moslems generally, and I affirm that what the Armenians have suffered is to be attributed to the Committee of Union and Progress, who deal with the empire as they please; it has been due to their nationalist fanaticism and their jealousy of the Armenians, and to these alone; the Faith of Islam is guiltless of their deeds. ”

“ Armenia remained independent in the time of the Romans, extending her rule over a part of Asia Minor and Syria, and a portion of Persia, but, in consequence of the protection afforded by the Armenians to certain kings who were hostile to Rome, the Romans declared war against her, their troops entered her capital, and from that time Armenian independence was lost. The country remained tossing on the waves of despotism, now independent, now subjected to foreign rule, until its conquest by the Arabs and subsequently by the Ottoman power. ”

“ They told me that there were some among them who had not been used to walk for a single hour, having been brought up in luxury, with men to wait on them and women to attend them. These had fallen into the hands of the Kurds, who recognize no divine law, and who live on lofty mountains and in dense forests like beasts of prey; their honour was outraged and they died by brutal violence, many of them killing themselves rather than sacrifice their virtue to these ravening wolves. ”

“ Those who should have carried him were weary of him—for the women were unable to carry even themselves—so they had abandoned him in the waste, far from human habitation. Man, who shows kindness to beasts, and forms societies for their protection, can be merciless to his own kind, more especially to infants who can utter no complaint; he leaves them under the heat of the sun, thirsty and famishing, to be devoured by wild creatures.
Leaving the boy, our hearts burning within us, and full of grief and anguish, we arrived before sunset at a khân some hours distant from Diarbekir. ”

“ So after the gendarmes had killed a number of Armenian men, they put on them turbans and brought Kurdish women to weep and lament over them, saying that the Armenians had killed their men. They also brought a photographer to photograph the bodies and the weeping women, so that at a future time they might be able to convince Europe that it was the Armenians who had attacked the Kurds and killed them, that the Kurdish tribes had risen against them in revenge, and that the Turkish Government had had no part in the matter. ”

“ After the removal of the Vali—in consequence, as it was said, of abuses in connection with the sale of effects left in Armenian houses and shops—orders arrived that the conversion of any who desired to enter Islam should be accepted, be they men or women. Many of the Armenians who remained, of both sexes, hastened to embrace the Faith in the hope of saving their lives, but after a time they were despatched likewise and their Islamism did not save them. ”

“ The Armenians and the Arab Tribes.—As I approached Diarbekir, I passed through many Arab tribes, with whom I saw a number of Armenians, men and women, who were being well treated, although the Government had let the tribes know that the killing of Armenians was a bounden duty. I did not hear of a single instance of an Armenian being [Pg 43] murdered or outraged by a tribesman, but I heard that some Arabs, passing by a well into which men and women had been thrown, drew them out when at the last extremity, took them with them, and tended them till they were recovered. ”

“ The Government despatched a military force under Fakhry Pasha, who proceeded to the spot, destroyed a part of Zeitoun, and killed men, women and children, without encountering opposition on the part of the Armenians. He collected the men and women and sent them off with parties of troops, who killed many of the men, whilst as for the women, do not ask what was their fate. They were delivered over to the Ottoman soldiery; the children died of hunger and thirst; not a man or woman reached Syria except the halt and blind, who were unable to keep [Pg 7] themselves alive ”

“ At Moush, a part were killed in straw-barns, but the greater number by shooting or stabbing with knives, the Government hiring butchers, who received a Turkish pound each day as wages. A doctor, named Azîz Bey, told me that when he was at Marzifûn, in the Vilayet of Sivas, he heard that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the Kaimakâm and said to him: "You [Pg 28] know I am a doctor, and there is no difference between doctors and butchers, as doctors are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. ”

“ It is incumbent on the Moslems to declare themselves guiltless of such a Government, and not to render obedience to those who trample under foot the Verses of the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet, and shed the innocent blood of women, old men and infants, who have done no wrong. ”

“ I am a Bedouin, a son of one of the Heads of the tribe of El-Sulût, who dwell in El-Lejât, in the Haurân territory. Like other sons of tribal Chiefs, I entered the Tribal School at Constantinople, and subsequently the Royal College. On the completion of my education, I was attached to the staff of the Vali of Syria (or Damascus) , on which I remained for a long while. I was then Kaimakâm of Mamouret-el-Azîz (Kharpout) , holding this post for three and a half years, after which I practised as a lawyer at Damascus, my partners being Shukri Bey El-Asli and Abdul-Wahhâb Bey El-Inglîzi. ”

“ I have enquired of many Armenians whom I have met, but I have not found one who said that he desired political independence, the reason being that in most of the Vilayets which they inhabit the Armenians are less numerous than the Kurds, and if they became independent the advantage to the Kurds would be greater than to themselves. ”

“ The Government has perpetrated these deeds although no official, Kurd, Turk, or Moslem, has been killed by an Armenian, and we know not what the weighty reasons may have been which impelled them to so unprecedented a measure. And if the Armenians should not be reproached with a negligence for which they have paid dearly, yet a people who do not take full precautions are liable to be taxed justly with blameworthy carelessness. ”

“ But hitherto there has been no instance of the people of Turkey proceeding to the slaughter of Armenians on a general scale unless incited and constrained to do so by the Government. In the massacre of 1896, 15,000 were killed in Constantinople itself, and 300,000 in the Vilayets.
Armenians were also killed in the Vilayet of Adana, some months after the proclamation of the Constitution, but this slaughter did not extend beyond the two Vilayets of Adana and Aleppo, where the influence of Abdul-Hamîd was paramount till the year 1909. ”

“ Armenians in Ottoman territory does not exceed 1,900,000 souls. I have borrowed this figure from a book by a Turkish writer, who states that it is the official computation made by the Government previous to the Balkan war; he estimates the Armenians residing in Roumelia at 400,000, those in Ottoman Asia at 1,500,000. The Armenians in Russia and Persia are said not to exceed 3,000,000, thus bringing the total number of Armenians in the world to over four and a half millions. ”

“ The Vilayets Inhabited by Armenians.—The Vilayets inhabited by Armenians are Diarbekir, Van, Bitlis, Erzeroum, Mamouret-el-Azîz, Sivas, Adana, Aleppo, Trebizond, Broussa, and Constantinople. The numbers in Van, Bitlis, Adana, Diarbekir, Erzeroum, and Kharpout were greater than those in the other Vilayets, but in all cases they were fewer than the Turks and Kurds, with the exception of Van and Bitlis, where they were equal or superior in number. ”

“ Truly, they have committed an act at which Islam is revolted, as well as all Moslems and all the peoples of the earth, be they Moslems, Christians, Jews, or idolators. As God lives, it is a shameful deed, the like of which has not been done by any people counting themselves as civilised. ”

“ Narrative of a Provincial Governor.—We were talking of the courage and good qualities of the Armenians, and the Governor of the place, who was with us, told us a singular story. He said: "According to orders, I collected all the remaining Armenians, consisting of 17 women and some children, amongst whom was a child of 3 years old, diseased, who had never been able to walk. When the butchers began slaughtering the women and the turn of the child's mother came, he rose up on his feet and ran for a space, then falling down. ”

“ Two thousand Armenians were slaughtered at a place outside the walls of Diarbekir, between the Castle of Sultan Murad and the Tigris, and at not more than half an hour's distance from the city.
Brutality of the Gendarmes and Kurdish Tribes.—There is no doubt that what is related as to the proceedings of the gendarmes and the Kurdish [Pg 29] tribes actually took place. On receiving a caravan of Armenians the gendarmes searched them one by one, men and women, taking any money they might find, and stripping them of the better portions of their clothing. ”

“ When they were satisfied that there remained no money, good clothes, or other things of value, they sold the Armenians in thousands to the Kurds, on the stipulation that none should be left alive. The price was in accordance with the number of the party; I was told by a reliable informant of cases where the price had varied between 2,000 and 200 liras.
After purchasing the caravans, the Kurds stripped all the Armenians, men and women, of their clothes, so that they remained entirely naked. ”

“ What are we to do? If we do not collect a quantity every week and give it to the Kurds, they insult and beat us, so we give these things to some of them so that they may protect us from the outrages of their fellows. ”

“ In Syria they have hanged the leading men of enlightenment, without fault on their part, such as Shukri Bey El-Asli, Abdul-Wahhâb Bey El-Inglîzi, Selîm Bey El-Jezairi, Emir Omar El-Husseini, Abdul-Ghani El-Arîsi, Shefîk Bey El-Moweyyad, Rushdi Bey El-Shamaa, Abdul-Hamîd El-Zahrâwi, Abdul-Kerîm El-Khalîl, Emir Aarif El-Shehâbi, Sheikh Ahmed Hasan Tabâra, and more than thirty leading men of this class. ”

“ In view of this, how can the Turkish Government [Pg 51] be justified at the present time in killing off an entire people, who have always paid their dues of every kind to the Ottoman State, and have never rebelled against it? Even if we suppose the Armenian men to have been deserving of death, what was the offence of the women and children? ”

“ The priest collected some articles of clothing and gave them to the woman and the children; the officer sent a man to the post of gendarmes which was near by, and ordered the gendarme whom the man brought with him to send on the woman and children to Urfa, and to bury the bodies which were near the guardhouse. The sick woman told me that the dead woman refused to yield herself to outrage, so they killed her and she died nobly, chaste and pure from defilement ”

“ He told her not to be afraid, and ordered his servant to take her to his house. On returning thither he asked the reason for her terror of him, and she told him that she and her mother had been sent from Ras-el-Ain in charge of a Circassian gendarme, many other Armenian women being with them. On the way, the gendarme called her mother, and told her to give him her money, or he would kill her; she said she had none, so he tortured her till she gave him six liras. [G] ... He said to her: "You liar! You [Armenians] never cease lying. ”

“ Despatch of the Armenians to the Slaughter.—This was a most shocking proceeding, appalling in its atrocity. One of the gendarmes in Diarbekir related to me how it was done. He said that, when orders were given for the removal and destruction of a family, an official went to the house, counted the members of the family, and delivered them to the Commandant of Militia or one of the officers of Gendarmerie. Men were posted to keep guard over the house and its occupants during the night until 8 o'clock, thereby giving notice to the wretched family that they must prepare for death. ”

“ When they heard what had fallen upon their brethren at Diarbekir and the vicinity they assembled, fortified themselves in three villages near Madiât, and made a heroic resistance, showing a courage beyond description. The Government sent against them two companies of regulars, besides a company of gendarmes which had been despatched thither previously; the Kurdish tribes assembled against them, but without result, and thus they protected their lives, honour, and possessions from the tyranny of this oppressive Government. ”

“ These authorities [Pg 39] accepted their conversion, and they were married to men of Diarbekir, either Turks or Kurds.
After a while, the Government began to collect these women, so the Mufti and the Kadi went to the Vali and said that the women in question were no longer Armenians, having become Mussulmans, and that by the Sacred Law the killing of Mussulman women was not permissible. The Vali replied: "These women are vipers, who will bite us in time to come; do not oppose the Government in this matter, for politics have no religion, and the Government know what they are about." ”