Chris Gratien, Georgetown University
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| Street Scene in Bitlis Source: Victor Pietschmann, Durch kurdische Berge und armenische Städte, Wien, 1940 |
An American journalist named George Hepworth traveled through Eastern Anatolia in 1897 following the waves of violence against Ottoman Armenians commonly referred to as the Hamidian Massacres. His goal was to ascertain the true nature and magnitude of the events, which had been variously sensationalized or underplayed in the foreign and Ottoman press. He was particularly critical of the Hamidian regime's meticulous efforts to obscure the reality of the massacres, downplay the number of victims, and silence reports about them. This censorship, he argued, made it all the way into official reports, and he lamented the fact that the reports were misleading or even fabrications, "yet it is from an official document which the future historian will read when he wishes to compile the facts concerning those massacres."1 Hepworth's own biases aside, his account reflects the concern faced by most historians trying to deal intelligently with documents related to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during its final decades. On one hand, there is an intense need to approach the reality of events that occurred; on the other we know that both the archival record as well as foreign accounts have undergone many layers of distortion in the time that they were produced and since.
This article takes a quick look at a file regarding a particular incident that may shed light onto the type of misinformation, distortion, and uncertainty one encounters in the archival record. At the end of March of 1895 with Easter fast approaching, a puzzling incident was reported to the municipality of Siirt involving the alleged defamation of the Armenian community by some local Muslims. However, the concerned local officials later claimed that the event was nothing more than some innocent children playing in the street. The conflicting reports in the case I am about to describe are made doubly problematic by the cloud of intense doubt surrounding any document concerning a sectarian issue such as this, which occurred just months before the height of the Armenian massacres in Eastern Anatolia.
The documents discussed in this article are embedded here as a PDF and can be downloaded here
Crosses in the Mud
The first page above is a copy of a report issued by the representative of the Armenian Marhasa in Siirt Father Teodoros containing allegations against the governorship of Bitlis. He had only recently been appointed to his post there and was reporting the events as he experienced them. A few days before "our feast day (bayramımız)," he said, some troublemakers had allegedly put two wooden crosses in the "filth and muck (pislik ve çamur)" in the middle of the two roads leading to the market in the center of the town of Siirt. As Christians passed by the market, the men would say to them "Look, here's the cross you believe in. It's fallen in the muck and filth. Come spit on it and push it in the mud (İşte ona iman götürdüğünüz saliptir. Pislik ve çamur içinde düşmüştür. Gelin üzerine tükürün ve çamura batırın)." The incident was immediately reported to the municipality, but Father Teodoros indicated that his complaints were yet to bear fruits.
Meanwhile a few days earlier in a nearby village where there were some 15 Christian households, a man named Seyit Musa had recently scared a Christian man from his own home, taking up residence in the house and using it essentially as a party house where "unseemly individuals (uygunsuz kesanlar)" would carouse, gamble, and drink, coming and going at all hours of the day and night. The locals were too afraid to report this to the government and instead had brought their case to Father Teodoros who once again complained to the local governor to no avail. Similarly, when he reported the incident to the local council, his messenger received the following reply:
Go to the Marhasa and tell him that Marhasas have no right to issue reports (takrir vermek). He's not a foreign consul. Aside from spiritual matters, he should not interfere in any affairs, and just as I paid no attention to the first report he issued, I am tossing this out as well. Go tell him exactly this way that he should not issue another report like this, and if by chance he might, then he will not continue here (şayet böyle giderse burada devam etmez).
Following these multiple incidents of dismissal and threats by local officials, an appeal was issued to the central government and the person of Sultan Abdülhamid II for justice, and an investigation ensued.
Out of the Mouths of Babes
The next set of documents in this file is the interrogations of the relevant municipal officials of Siirt who were notified of the incident. These three officials, two employees (çavuşlar) and the municipality treasurer, an immigrant from Dagestan named Mahmudoğlu Hüsnü Efendi, filed testimonies that were altogether similar in nature; in fact, many sentences are recorded as almost word for word matches. Needless to say, they did not witness the incident in question or testify to the presence of any crosses, nor did they report knowing about the issues involving Seyit Musa or anyone else harassing Christians. What they did consistently report, however, was that the alleged object in question was not at all a crucifix.
According to the testimonies, after a Christian man came to the municipality to issue a complaint about the cross incident, the three employees were sent out to investigate. They all reported that when they arrived, a few small children they did not recognize were there playing with some kind of object and some rags. In two of the three testimonies, this doll-like object was identified as being part of a local tradition involving a prayer for rain. Hüsnü Efendi gave the most detailed description of this tradition, wherein children would bring the doll to the houses in the neighborhood saying "ghifi ghifi ghifina, rabb matar atina,"2 an Arabic rhyme asking for rain, and the neighbors would put water on the doll and give the children nuts and raisins. This phrase is what our witnesses reported the children to be chanting in front of the market, though this did not explain why the children suddenly dropped the toy and ran away when the men arrived to a scene with no other adult males in the vicinity. The clear intent of these testimonies was to communicate the notion that the incident interpreted as defamation of Christians was actually nothing more than some children participating in a local tradition somewhat analogous to the practice of trick or treat.
Troubling Indications
The testimony of the three municipality employees described here would seem to suggest that the entire affair involving the alleged crosses was a misunderstanding. The local government sent a report on the matter explaining that this misunderstanding had been resolved and that upon this resolution, Father Teodoros had gone to the government and formally apologized. However, this report came under suspicion when Father Teodoros indicated in a subsequent letter that among other inconsistencies in the report from the Bitlis governorship, he had never gone to apologize for the misunderstanding.
The final document in the file regarding the case of the crosses of Siirt issued on July 29, 1895 by the Justice and Denominations Minister (Adliye ve Mezahep Nazırı) left little resolved but many indications of severe corruption and even malice on the part of the local government in Siirt. Father Teodoros had apparently responded to the claims of the local government saying that in fact the children who had been playing with a doll were not children at all but rather adults who were known entities involved in commerce in the market. Beyond lying about his apology, local officials had also sought to hide the truth regarding the situation on the ground and dismissed calls for the removal of Seyit Musa as unlawful.
This incident of sectarian tension exacerbated by indifference and even outright contempt towards the Christian population of Siirt on the part of the local government leaves many questions unanswered but offers unsettling insights into what was at stake with the failure of rule of law in the region whether reflecting deliberate neglect on the part of the central government or otherwise. The potentialities for violence were shortly thereafter activated when Siirt was placed at the center of massacres Armenians and other Christians that began to spread throughout the provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van that fall.
The contentious nature of this particular issue makes clear the hazards of taking archival documents regarding the Ottoman state's relations with non-Muslims during the Hamidian era at face value, but similar doubt can be raised about any particular document when studied in isolation. The crosses of Siirt point to the soundness of the aforementioned journalist Hepworth's warnings about the implications of contemporary fabrications for future generations. After all, the primary actors in this drama, both Father Teodoros as well as the local officials on the other side, had a clear sense of the nature of the events that were taking place, whatever they reported back or wrote down concerning them. Even the central government in Istanbul would likely have had enough information about the general nature of politics in Siirt to discern between fabrication and reality, and indeed, it would seem that the highest levels of government were implicit in deception. Instead, it is the future historian, with an incomplete knowledge of events, relative lack of context, and dependence on the few sources that remain, who is more easily deceived and most likely to have trouble discerning between angry men engaging in degrading public expressions of contempt for their neighbors and children playing with dolls.
Troubling Indications
The testimony of the three municipality employees described here would seem to suggest that the entire affair involving the alleged crosses was a misunderstanding. The local government sent a report on the matter explaining that this misunderstanding had been resolved and that upon this resolution, Father Teodoros had gone to the government and formally apologized. However, this report came under suspicion when Father Teodoros indicated in a subsequent letter that among other inconsistencies in the report from the Bitlis governorship, he had never gone to apologize for the misunderstanding.
The final document in the file regarding the case of the crosses of Siirt issued on July 29, 1895 by the Justice and Denominations Minister (Adliye ve Mezahep Nazırı) left little resolved but many indications of severe corruption and even malice on the part of the local government in Siirt. Father Teodoros had apparently responded to the claims of the local government saying that in fact the children who had been playing with a doll were not children at all but rather adults who were known entities involved in commerce in the market. Beyond lying about his apology, local officials had also sought to hide the truth regarding the situation on the ground and dismissed calls for the removal of Seyit Musa as unlawful.
This incident of sectarian tension exacerbated by indifference and even outright contempt towards the Christian population of Siirt on the part of the local government leaves many questions unanswered but offers unsettling insights into what was at stake with the failure of rule of law in the region whether reflecting deliberate neglect on the part of the central government or otherwise. The potentialities for violence were shortly thereafter activated when Siirt was placed at the center of massacres Armenians and other Christians that began to spread throughout the provinces of Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van that fall.
The contentious nature of this particular issue makes clear the hazards of taking archival documents regarding the Ottoman state's relations with non-Muslims during the Hamidian era at face value, but similar doubt can be raised about any particular document when studied in isolation. The crosses of Siirt point to the soundness of the aforementioned journalist Hepworth's warnings about the implications of contemporary fabrications for future generations. After all, the primary actors in this drama, both Father Teodoros as well as the local officials on the other side, had a clear sense of the nature of the events that were taking place, whatever they reported back or wrote down concerning them. Even the central government in Istanbul would likely have had enough information about the general nature of politics in Siirt to discern between fabrication and reality, and indeed, it would seem that the highest levels of government were implicit in deception. Instead, it is the future historian, with an incomplete knowledge of events, relative lack of context, and dependence on the few sources that remain, who is more easily deceived and most likely to have trouble discerning between angry men engaging in degrading public expressions of contempt for their neighbors and children playing with dolls.
1. George Hepworth (1898). Through Armenia On Horseback. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. pp. 239–41
2. I have transcribed these Arabic phrases exactly as they are written in the report though their may be slight errors in the spelling. The Arabic in Hüsnü Efendi's testimony is غيفي غيفي غيفينا رب مطر اعطينا. In another testimony the second part of this rhyme is recorded as نقطت مطر تعطينا, "give us a drop of rain," which is the more rhythmically logical of the two variations.
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