Illustrated Armenia and the Armenians / by the Rev. Ohan Gaidzakian.

  • Ohan Gaidzakian
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Illustrated Armenia and the Armenians / by the Rev. Ohan Gaidzakian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    300/318 (page 242)
    The Hojas say tliat first you ask them to accept our faith; if they do you must not harm them, but if they will not, kill them, because they have no right to live in a Mohammedan country. It is a great virtue the more Christians you kill, and the greater reward you will have from Allah (or God) and his prophet Mohammed. The Turks slaughter Armenians to earn this reward; there is no nationality like Turks which ever respects or gratify the females. If a woman falls into their hands she need not hope to keep her virtue and religion; they violate her first, then force her to become a iSIohammedan after all. In the years of 1894 and 1895 in a good many places in Armenia or Turkey, a number of able-bodied young Armenians were captured, bound, covered with brushwood and burned alive, but thousands surrendered. themselves and plead for mercy. Many of them were shot down on the spot and the re- mainder were dispatched with sword and bayonet. Lots of women, variously estimated from 60 to 160, were locked up in a church and the soldiers were commanded to let loose, kill them. Most of them were outraged to death in a different way. Once, when a number of young women were in one place, locked up, the Turks advised them that if they were car- ried off to the harems or their houses they could get along with them very nicely, but if you refused you would be killed, so they did. Children were placed in a row, one behind another, and a bullet fired through the line, apparently to see how many could be shot down with one bullet; houses were surrounded by sol- diers, set on fire and the inmates forced back into the flames at the point of the bayonet as they tried to escape. A number of men of one village, during their escape, took the women and children, about five hundred in number, and placed them in a sort of grotto in a ravine: after several days the soldiers found them and butchered those who had not died of hunger.