taken away to a life of slavery. The mother protested and tried to
save her child, who was ruthlessly torn from her. As the daughter
was being dragged away the mother made so much trouble for her
oppressors, and clung to them so tenaciously, that they stabbed her
twelve times before she fell, helpless to save her little girl from
her fate. This woman recovered from her wounds. Some people were
shot as they ran, and children that they were carrying were killed
or wounded with them. In some cases men were lined up so that
several could be shot with one bullet, in order not to waste
ammunition on them.
At the height of the epidemic not less than two thousand were sick.
The mortality reached forty-eight daily, and the fact that four
thousand died, besides the one thousand who were killed, will help
to make vivid the terrible conditions that prevailed in our crowded
premises. All ranks have suffered—preachers, teachers, physicians,
etc., as well as the poor—for all had to live in the same unhygienic
surroundings.
One of the most terrible things that came to the notice of the
Medical Department was the treatment of Syrian women and girls by
the Turks, Kurds and local Mohammedans. After the massacre in the
village of ——, almost all the women and girls were outraged, and two
little girls, aged eight and ten, died in the hands of Moslem
villains. A mother said that not a woman or girl above twelve (and
some younger) in the village of —— escaped violation. This is the
usual report from the villages. One man, who exercised a great deal
of authority in the northern part of the Urmia plain, openly boasted
of having ruined eleven Christian girls, two of them under seven
years of age, and he is now permitted to return to his home in peace
and no questions are asked. Several women from eighty to eighty-five
years old have suffered with the younger women. One woman who was
prominent in the work of the Protestant Church in another village
was captured by eighteen men and taken to a solitary place, where
they had provided for themselves food and drink. She was released
the next day and permitted to drag herself away. Later she came to
the city to accuse her outragers, and practically did not get a
hearing from the Government.
There is little to relieve the blackness of this picture. The
Government gave some assistance in the finding and returning of
Christian girls. A few have been brought back by Kurds. In one case
eleven girls and young women, who had been taken away from Geogtapa,
were sent to me by the chief of the Zarza tribe of Kurds. Several
companies have been sent also by the Begzadi Kurds to Targawar.
Since the return of the Russians to Urmia some of the Kurds have
tried to curry favour by returning prisoners that they have held for
months, but quite a number are still held by them, some of them
women who have been married to some of the principal servants of the
chiefs.
It would not be right to close this report of medical work in Urmia
without a word about the native physicians. One of them received a
martyr’s crown early in January in the village of Khanishan. Four
died in the epidemics. One had been a worker for many years in the
plain of Gawar, two days’ journey to the west of Urmia. One of them
was a companion in the attempt to find Karini Agha at the very
beginning of the troubles here that resulted in the rescue of the
people of Geogtapa. One was the assistant in the hospital. He had
been in the hospital since his graduation in 1908, and was a most
faithful and efficient man. During the awful first days of fear,
murder and rapine, it was his hands that dressed and re-dressed most
of the wounded, with the help of medical students. He thought little
of himself and wore himself out until he could not eat, keeping on
at his work for three days after he began to be ill. His life was
given in the noblest self-sacrifice, and many people will remember
him with deep affection. The fourth was one of the refugees in our
yard who, though he was not very active, frequently prescribed for a
number of patients. His wife, who is a graduate in medicine in
America, in spite of the death of her husband and two children, kept
bravely on with her work, trying to relieve some of the suffering.
She had charge of the maternity cases and examined many of the
outraged women and girls after they finally reached us.
The most diabolically cold-blooded of all the massacres was the one
committed above the village of Ismael Agha’s Kala, when some sixty
Syrians of Gawar were butchered by the Kurds at the instigation of
the Turks. These Christians had been used by the Turks to pack
telegraph wire from over the border, and while they were in the city
of Urmia they were kept in close confinement, without food or drink.
On their return, as they reached the valleys between the Urmia and
Baradost plains, they were all stabbed to death, as it was supposed,
but here again, as in two former massacres, a few wounded, bloody
victims succeeded in making their way to our hospital.
_The testimony of the survivors of the massacre at Ismael Agha’s
Kala is confirmed by the following extract from a letter, dated 8th
November, 1915, from the Rev. E.T. Allen of Urmia_:—
Politically, things are in apparently good order. People are easily
frightened and are nervous, but we have good hopes. Yesterday I went
to the Kala of Ismael Agha and from there to Kasha, and some men
went with me up the road to the place where the Gawar men were
murdered by the Turks. It was a gruesome sight—perhaps the worst I
have seen at all. There were seventy-one or two bodies; we could not
tell exactly, because of the conditions. It is about six months
since the murder. Some were in fairly good condition—dried, like a
mummy. Others were torn to pieces by the wild animals. Some had been
daggered in several places, as was evident from the cuts in the
skin. The majority of them had been shot. The ground about was
littered with empty cartridge-cases. It was a long way off from the
Kala, and half-an-hour’s walk from the main road into the most
rugged gorge I have seen for some time. I suppose the Turks thought
no word could get out from there—a secret, solitary, rocky gorge.
How those three wounded men succeeded in getting out and reaching
the city is more of a marvel than I thought it was at the time. The
record of massacre burials now stands as follows:—
At Tcharbash, forty in one grave, among them a bishop. At Gulpashan,
fifty-one in one grave, among them the most innocent persons in the
country; and now, above the Kala of Ismael Agha, seventy in one
grave, among them leading merchants of Gawar.
These one hundred and sixty-one persons, buried by me, came to their
death in the most cruel manner possible, at the hands of regular
Turkish troops in company with Kurds under their command.
36. URMIA, SALMAS AND HAKKIARI: STATEMENT[52] BY MR. PAUL
SHIMMON[53], PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “ARARAT,” OF
LONDON, NOVEMBER, 1915.
Seeing that _Ararat_ is truly a searchlight on all the sufferings of
Eastern Christians, a comforter to the broken-hearted and a fighter
for their rights, I have felt it my duty and privilege to write just
some bare facts of the past and present position of the Syrians in
Urmi (Urmia) and Salmas in Persia, and in the Kurdistan mountains
south of Van. What I will say of Urmi and Salmas applies equally to
the Armenians of the two places, in the latter of which they
predominate.
The Russian troops had been in occupation of Azerbaijan,
north-western Persia, for a number of years, and their presence
meant safety, prosperity and security of person and property both to
Christians and Moslems alike. Under the conditions then prevailing,
the Kurds had been restrained entirely from their occupation of
plunder, and the Turks were deprived of prominence in that part of
Persia which they have coveted for years. The Persians also have
been restless, and their attitude towards the Christians was
somewhat doubtful. On the 2nd January, 1915, it was suddenly known
that the Russian army, consulate and all, were leaving Urmi—and not
that alone, but it was found later that they were withdrawing from
all northern Persia. It came like a thunderbolt, for it had been
positively stated all along to the Christian population that the
Russian army would under no circumstances withdraw from Urmi. Here,
then, in the heart of winter, some 45,000 Christians, from nine to
ten days’ journey from the nearest railway station to the Russian
border, found themselves in a very precarious position. No
conveyances, horses, &c., &c., could be had for love or money.
Roughly speaking, one-third of the people who happened to know of
this withdrawal, through whose villages the army was to pass, left
for Russia. The great majority simply left their homes and walked
out. Some only heard of the withdrawal during the night, and so
could hardly make any provision for the journey. A good number of
people from Tergawar and Mergawar, and outlying districts, who were
already refugees in Urmi—having been plundered on two or three
occasions previously—left with the army. So there was a concourse of
over 10,000 people, mostly women and children, walking in the bitter
cold, scantily provided, sore-footed, wearied, that had to make
their way to the Russian frontier over mountains and along miserable
roads and through swamps. Their cries and shrieks as they walked
were heart-rending. The people of Salmas had left two or three days
earlier and under somewhat better conditions. There was a swamp
between Salmas and Khoi where people actually went knee-deep, where
oxen and buffaloes died of cold, and where there was no real resting
place and provisions could only be procured from a distance of some
ten miles. The agonies of the children were inexpressible. Some
mothers had two or three children to take care of, and they dragged
one along while they carried the other on their shoulders. Many died
on the roadside, many lost their parents, many were left unburied,
many were picked up by the Russian cossacks and were taken to the
Russian Caucasus to be there cared for by Armenians and others. Such
was their plight when they reached Russia, and in some way or
another were provided for in the Syrian and Armenian villages in
Erivan and in Tiflis, where they passed their time till the spring,
when they again wearied of their lives and returned to Urmi and
Salmas in the months of May and June.
About two-thirds of the people who stayed behind at Urmi had the
cruellest of fates. No sooner had the Russian forces withdrawn than
the roads were closely guarded, and no one was permitted to come in
or go out of Urmi for over four months. The Kurds poured in from
every quarter, and the Persian Moslems joined hands with them. They
engulfed the Christian villages; plunder, pillage, massacre and rape
were the order of the day. Every village paid its share. First they
killed the men, then they took the women—those who had not
escaped—and carried them away for themselves or forced them to
become Moslems, and finally they plundered and burned the villages.
In one village 80 were killed, in another 50, in a third 30, and so
the thing went on in varying degrees among the 70 odd villages in
Urmi. About one thousand people were disposed of in this way. In the
meantime all that were able escaped to the city to the American
mission quarters, whose premises were soon filled to suffocation,
and altogether some 20,000 people or more found shelter in the
American and French mission quarters, while some hid themselves
among Moslem friends and landlords. These refugees, in their flight,
were repeatedly robbed on the way by soldiers and officers sent for
their protection, and by civilians as well. Many a woman came
terror-stricken, shrieking, and bleeding, and almost naked; and many
were forced to become Moslems. Some 150 cases or more of these
unfortunate women came under the notice of the American
missionaries, who tried to restore them to their own folk. One woman
had two sons, four and six years of age, who were thrown into a
brook to freeze, while the brute of a mullah set to work to force
their mother. She at last escaped and took away the children alive,
but they died of exposure the next morning.
Thus in the course of a fortnight all the 45,000 Syrians and
Armenians were plundered—not one village escaped. There was no
exception. The village of Iriawa was in the keeping of an Armenian—a
Turkish subject. He, with twelve other Armenian soldiers, was shot,
and the village plundered. Gulpashan was the last to be attacked,
when, on the 1st February, 51 of its elders were taken during the
night to the graveyard and there murdered most horribly and their
brains knocked out. The orgies committed on women and tender girls
can be left only to the imagination. I have known the village from
childhood and all its inhabitants.
The refugees in the French and American mission yards remained there
for over four and a half months, in daily terror and fear of their
lives; the quarters were crowded to suffocation, and no man dared
leave the premises. Seeing that a few houses of Christians were left
in the city which were not plundered, the dozen or less of Turkish
officials, who had control of things, began to fleece the people.
They forced them to pay a fine of 6,600 _tomans_ (a _toman_ is about
one pound sterling[54]), on the pretext that the Christian stores,
offices and shops in the city would be saved from plunder. But no
sooner was this sum extracted through the kindly offices of the
American missionaries than they began to put up to auction and
dispose of all the shops, offices and stores. Not satisfied with
what they had done, they obtained 5,500 _tomans_ as blood money for
Mar Elia, the Syrian Bishop, whom they found in hiding on the roof
of a house, and threatened to kill him unless the money was paid.
Then, again, such prominent men as Shamasha Lazar, Shamasha Babu and
Dr. Isaac Daniel had to pay 3,000, 2,000 and 1,000 _tomans_
respectively to save their lives. Such was the perpetual terror in
which the whole community lived.
Soon disease broke out, typhoid played havoc, and over 4,000 died of
the epidemic alone. There was scarcely any life left in the remnant
of the people when the Russians retook Urmi in May. They were worn
out and so emaciated that one could hardly recognise them. It was
the first time for months that they were able to crawl out of their
filthy winter quarters and to inhale fresh air. The Americans, who
had fed these people all through the winter, now gave the men and
women spades and sickles to return to their villages, and some flour
to start life in their ruined homes. I have seen villages turned to
ashes, where not one window, door or any woodwork was to be found.
Indeed, one day a woman came and said to me: “I have one room out of
seven left on the second storey, but what shall I do? There is not a
single ladder in all the village that I can borrow so as to mount to
it.” What they had left in their “homes,” these people found on
their return to have been eaten by dogs and cats. They have not sown
anything this autumn, nor were they able to do any sowing or
cultivating in the spring. Ninety per cent. of them have absolutely
nothing left, and they sleep on the bare hard earthen floor, with no
bedding or any other protection beyond their ordinary rags. This is
their second winter!
The majority of the Salmas Christians had left for Russia by the
time the Urmi people reached Salmas. But there were some left who
had hidden themselves among kind Moslems here and there. When the
Turks took possession of Salmas, they used every means to find out
the whereabouts and number of all the Christians that had remained
behind, and one night during March last they took some 723 Armenians
and Syrians to the fields in Haftevan and mangled and butchered them
in a most brutal manner. Three days later the Russians retook Salmas
and buried these people in some trenches which they dug for them.
The same fate was awaiting the women, and perhaps worse, but the
advent of the Russians saved them.
The troubles of Mar Shimun’s independent tribes of Tiari, Tkhuma,
&c., in Kurdistan, south of Van, began last June. Mar Shimun’s seat
in the village of Quodshanis was attacked by regular troops and
Kurds, destroyed and plundered. Most of the people escaped to
Salmas. Mar Shimun at the time was in the interior with the main
body of his congregation. A regular Turkish force with artillery and
some 30,000 Kurds, &c., marched on the Christians. The forty
villages of Berwar, those nearest towards Mosul, were destroyed
first, and only some seventeen of them are known to have escaped.
The women of many of the others have been forced to become Moslems.
For forty days the people defended themselves against superior
forces, and that only with flintlocks and antiquated rifles. At
last, unable to withstand the onslaught of modern artillery, with
which the Turks also bombarded the Church of Mar Sawa, the people
withdrew to the interior of the mountains with the Patriarch’s
family in their centre; and here they subsisted on herbs and some
sheep they had taken with them, while many were daily dying of
starvation. Mar Shimun came to Salmas—I had an interview with him
there, and he has sent me to speak for him and his—to effect the
escape of his people, or at least of as many of them as could be
saved. All this happened in the latter part of September, when,
according to the telegram received here from H.B.M. Consul Shipley
at Tabriz, some 25,000 had already arrived, and with them Mar
Shimun, himself as destitute as the rest, while 10,000 more were to
follow. The condition of the remnant, for in all there are over
100,000, is very precarious, but let us hope not hopeless.
Assistance can be sent to them through Mar Shimun and through H.B.M.
Consul Shipley.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission and the Armenian (Lord
Mayor’s) Relief Fund have sent £500 and £550 respectively to these
people. I understand that the Lord Mayor’s Fund is telegraphing a
further £500 for the relief of the Christians in Persia, for which I
for one feel infinitely grateful, as it cannot but assuage some of
the terrible suffering that exists.
Let us now survey the whole situation. As over 90 per cent. of the
Christians at Urmi are destitute, and the condition of some 10,000
to 15,000 Armenians and Syrians in Salmas is not much better, we
have at once some 80,000 people and more who must be assisted, if
they are not to starve during the coming winter. In this we are not
taking into account the remnant of Mar Shimun’s people or any
Armenians that might have found their way to Persia, where the
Russians are now in occupation, and where the condition of the
Christians will be, so far as personal safety goes, more hopeful.
The turn events are taking politically in Persia seems also
favourable, but one must never be too confident of the political
situation there.
I am delighted to see such a magnificent spirit of response from all
corners of the world whence Armenians themselves are coming to the
help of their countrymen. We have to cheer each other up in our
misfortunes in every way we can, till God in His own way shall solve
the problem. And with such noble friends as we have in England,
among whom are the Primate, Lord Bryce, and Members of Parliament
like Mr. Aneurin Williams and Mr. T.P. O’Connor, and I am sure in
America as well—people who would do anything for us—let us be
patient and prayerful, hoping for recompense and release from this
tyranny that has had us in its grip ever since Mohammedan rule began
in our country.
-----
Footnote 52:
For a fuller version of Mr. Shimmon’s statement see p. 577 below.
Footnote 53:
Mr. Shimmon is a graduate of Columbia University, New York, and
has been resident at Urmia for the past fourteen years. He was an
eye-witness of the events he relates; and, after the retreat of
the Turks and Kurds, he was appointed Commissioner for the
Baranduz District of Urmia (under the authority of the Russian
Consul and the Persian Governor) for the restoration of plundered
Christian property. He has since undertaken a mission to Great
Britain and the U.S., as the representative of His Beatitude Mar
Shimun, the head of the Nestorian Church.
Footnote 54:
1 toman = 10 krans, and its actual value in English money is about
3_s._ 4_d._—_Editor._
37. HAKKIARI: FURTHER STATEMENT BY MR. PAUL SHIMMON, PUBLISHED IN
THE “CHURCHMAN” NEWSPAPER, AND SUBSEQUENTLY ISSUED AS A
PAMPHLET; COMMUNICATED BY MRS. D.S. MARGOLIOUTH, OF OXFORD.
The following is the story of how a Bishop, nay, an Archbishop, at
the risk of his own life, saved 35,000 souls—one-third of his
flock—from the pursuing Kurds and Turks, and from impending
starvation on the heights of the Kurdistan Mountains. He was already
in the zone of safety, where he could well have stayed; but he
turned back, saying: “I am going back to die with my people.” By so
doing, he rescued a multitude of his people from almost certain
massacre.
It will be remembered that the Assyrians (better known in Church
history as the Nestorian or Syrian Christians) dwell on both sides
of the Turco-Persian frontier. The bulk of them live in the very
inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan, east of Mosul, which is in
Mesopotamia, and south of Lake Van; while a goodly number live in
the beautiful plains of Urmia and Salmas in north-western Persia and
in the adjacent country districts bordering on Turkey. Over the
former district Mar Shimun, the Patriarch, is the supreme
ecclesiastical and civil ruler.
Early last June the Turkish forces with irregular Kurds, under the
leadership and direction of the Kaimakam, made an attack on the
court of Mar Shimun in Quodshanis—a Turkish governor making an
attack on peaceful subjects of the Turkish Empire for the simple
reason that they were Christians. Quodshanis is an isolated place.
The Patriarch and members of his court were in the interior with the
main body of his church, so the people of the village could hardly
be expected to make more than a bare resistance. For two days they
fought from within the church, but soon their ammunition was
exhausted, and the women and children were in a desperate position.
At night they set out for the plains of Salmas in Persia, where I
saw them in a most pitiable condition. The Patriarchal house, the
English mission, and the larger part of the place was plundered and
burned. Even the tombs of former Patriarchs were violated.
In the meanwhile a formidable army was being gathered against the
independent dwellers in the valleys of Tkhuma, Tiari, Baz, &c. Both
Turkish regulars and Kurds, it is said, to the extent of some
30,000, made a combined attack on the people who had kept their
independence since Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan had driven them to the
craggy mountains, where in some places they have to carry soil on
their backs to make artificial fields. For the first time in the
life of the people, artillery was brought up to bombard their
ancient and venerable churches, while they themselves made a stout
resistance with flintlocks and ammunition of their own make.
For forty days they carried on an unequal warfare against tremendous
odds, until at last with their families they took refuge on the top
of a high mountain in the Tal country. The Patriarchal family took
shelter in the famous church of Mar Audishu, and the others who had
been able to effect an escape surrounded them, making a big camp.
The Turks and Kurds, after having destroyed the Christian villages
in the valleys below, carrying away the crops and plundering
everything, endeavoured to starve the fugitives out. Near the church
mentioned above there is a small fountain gushing from a rock which
was hardly enough to supply drinking water, and for washing and
bathing they would often steal at nights to the valleys beneath. The
people stayed here for nearly three months, never taking off their
clothes and always on the lookout for an attack by night. The few
sheep that they had taken with them on their flight were almost
eaten up now—they had no salt at all, and soon hunger and sickness
began to make their ravages. There was no necessity to deport this
Christian population. Its mere starvation in the mountains was all
that was needed to make an end of the oldest Apostolic Church in
existence.