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THE LOST ARMENIAN COMMUNITIES OF OTTOMAN TURKEY
Rediscovering Armenian Bardizag (Bahchejik) |
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UNEDITED TEXT. RED
NUMBERS REFER TO MAPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. I am delighted to have the opportunity of introducing you to my ancestral village, Bardizag. Those of you who are from either Constantinople (now Istanbul but known to many western Armenians as Bolis) or from the towns and villages in that part of Turkey, you will know Bardizag as one of the largest villages in Bithynia (Putania). Bardizag, of course means “small garden”. This talk must of necessity be only the briefest sketch of the village’s history, people and customs. The story of a village like Bardizag is very a big subject, so I’ve only been able to touch on some of its salient aspects. I will do my best answer any questions you may have afterwards. I should also like, during this talk, to tell you a little about how I came to know about my family. In fact the story of the village and my research into my own family compliment each other, giving me a greater insight into both. I would like to apologise for the paucity of photographs; I have only got a few, which I will share with you, but it seems that most of those seen in various publications are copies of previous examples, and are not available in a form that can be made into something that may be put up on this screen. The village of Bardizag is situated on a the side of a long hill, running roughly west to east, on the south side of the Bay of Izmit, about 5 - 7 kilometres from the shore and facing it. 001. On the shore it had its seaport, known as Seymen or Iskeleh, now a Turkish naval establishment, which was linked to the village itself by a narrow roadway built by the villagers as a communal enterprise (the road no longer exists, but was famous in village folklore, both for the story of its construction and its use). This height is backed by rolling hills, has a good, healthy climate and is well supplied with water.002, 004. The village itself had a fairly straight, cobbled main road running through it. It went through the commercial part of the village, 005 past the Armenian Apostolic church of St James of Nisibis (Mtspina Sourp Hagop), as far as far as the American High School and the Favor Boys Home, and continued on beyond. I referred to Seymen, the port for Bardizag. 021 It had been established even before the beginning of the 18th century, being used as the loading point for goods going to Istanbul – charcoal, timber and firewood. Later Medz Hadji Zakar Agha continued the trade, and then was succeeded by his son Hayrabed and others. Later on the Kutnerians took over and, after them, my family the Zobis (Melkonians), although we don’t know exactly when or for how long. Seymen was important right up to 1915. It was used for the movement of local products – raisins, dried figs, wine, oghi, olive oil, olives, soap and ceramics, all of which were traded as far afield as the islands near Istanbul. It was, up until the deportation, a noted port in the Bay of Izmid. Let us now begin our journey. Where did the original settlers of Bardizag come from? The simple answer is from Bardizag near Sepastia (Sivas), but like so many aspects of Armenian history, it’s a little more complicated than that. It is entirely probable that the original home of the Armenians of Sepastia (Sivas) was Vaspouragan in the Van basin. This we know from all the various Byzantine and Armenian historians, who relate that the Byzantine Empire, during the reign of Basil II Bulgaroctonus (Slayer of the Bulgars), pursued a policy of annexing the kingdoms and principalities on the empire’s eastern borders, exchanging the land belonging to the local lord or king – and his people – with lands within the empire itself, making the king or lord a lord of the Empire. The historians Leo, Toumanov and Manantian, basing their works on Aristages of Lastiverd’s ‘History’ which was a virtual eyewitness account of the seventy one years of Armenian history from 1000 to 1071, tell us that King Senekerim Ardzrouni exchanged his kingdom of Vaspouragan for the cities of Sepastia and Larissa further west, with all the land in that area, and moved there with his people between 1014 and 1021, leaving Vaspouragan virtually denuded of its Armenian population at the time when the incursions by the Seljuks were gaining momentum. According to Mekhalian, Alboyadjian, Patriarch Yeghishe Tourian and others, as well as by tradition, the village was founded by a small number of families that had escaped the great Jelali rebellion in the 1570s/80s from the village near Sepastia (Sivas) called Bardizag, finally stopping in a clearing in what was then forest near the Bay of Izmid. This was where the present village stands. They were among the very first Armenians to settle in that entire area. One should note that this move westwards by the Armenians from the eastern provinces from the last quarter of the 16th century was a trend that eventually made Bithynia (and Izmid) a centre of Armenian colonisation and culture. Things at that time were, unsurprisingly, very uncertain; this small group of Armenians who had settled on the site decided to clear some of the forest and, being peasants, planted food crops on the cleared land. To protect themselves, the men split into two groups: the “zobis” or guards and the “khashmans” or farmers. No one knows how the arrangement worked, but as Armenians took ‘ian’ surnames, the Zobian and Khashmanian families were born. As an aside, one of these settlers, whose name is unrecorded, was my direct ancestor. His son, Zobi Melkon, was the first of my family to be known by name. By the way, every family and most individuals in the village had nicknames. Sometimes these were descriptive, others related to a family characteristic, or even an event connected with the person or family involved. My own family and some of its members had four that I know of – Zobi, Khozi Jins (that generation had many children), Paboudji (hence Paboudjian) and Arabadji (my grandfather). The village these people founded, called by the name of their original one in Sepastia, gained official recognition in the 17th century, a firman being obtained in the name of Sultan Murad IV in 1625. It was ruled by members of the leading families known as the “ishkhans” of the village. They made decisions concerning village life by agreement, without formalities or keeping written records. Incidentally, according to the Soviet Armenian Enclopaedia, the original Bardizag, near Sepastia, with its church of St. Kevork, still existed in 1914. In fact more than one occasion has been recorded when a decree from a Patriarch of Constantinople concerning one or other of the two went to the wrong one, leading to much confusion. I noted recently that the Sepastia (Sivas) village is also still there – named, of course, Bahcecik! Over the course of the next 100 years or so the village grew, with not only a high birth rate, but also with influxes of Armenian refugees from the eastern provinces. It is said that a considerable number of these refugees were from Agn, but in any event, their individual peculiarities disappeared, being replaced by those of the Bardizag village community at large, and they became indistinguishable for the original settlers, adopting their dialect, customs and manners. It should be said that maybe some of their characteristics were bequeathed to later generations of Bardizag villagers, because as we know, the people of Agn were renowned for their musicality, and the people of Bardizag also loved singing and music. The “ishkhan” form of governance lasted until the national constitution was promulgated in the 1860s, when the village was divided into 6 areas each governed by a council called “taghagan khorhourt”. You might like to know that the Armenian dialect spoken in Bardizag was different from that spoken in the neighbouring villages. It was much less guttural and retained much of its original lilt and accent. In fact it was very similar to that spoken in Sepastia, so much so that when, in 1909, a group of Armenians came from there to Constantinople as refugees, one of the priests who had been seconded to the Patriarchate from Bardizag itself thought that the refugees were from the village! Der-Hagopian, who had ample time to assimilate the language spoken in the village, writes: “The best Armenian spoken in the Bithynia region was that of Bardizag, with its clarity of diction and lilt. The grammar used was simple and the spoken language was devoid of foreign or severe accents, such as those of Adabazar, Arslanbeg or other nearby villages.” It should also be said that although all Armenians from the village understood Turkish and used it in their contacts with the outside world, it was often necessary for interpreters to be used so that the villagers could really understand finer points of what was being asked of them by officials. (An example of this was when a census was carried out on the basis of identity documents in the latter half of the 19th century.) Now let us come to the twentieth century. Bardizag, with the nearby towns of Adabazar, Boursa, the village of Ovadjek, and small hamlets like Manoushag and Jamavayr, were all under the jurisdiction, as part of the Armenian religious community (millet), of the diocese of Izmid (now Kochaeli). It was know as the Bishopric of Nicomedia, which had jurisdiction over about 90,000 Armenians. Another place of importance in the region (as far as Armenians were concerned) was the theological seminary of Armash, whose abbot was originally the Bishop of Izmid, but the title was later held by the Patriarch himself. It turned out many important, erudite clergy-men, some of whom achieved high rank, several of who were from the village. Bardizag itself only ever had one Armenian mayor (mudir), the journalist Hagop Der-Hagopian, from late 1908 to 1914. He had been nominated for the post by the Ottoman parliament deputy Vartkes, working with Bedros Haladjian. Der-Hagopian published his experiences and some important data in his book ‘Bardizage Khadoudig’ (Dappled Bardizag), published in Paris in 1960, which drew heavily on Krikor Mekhalian’s book about the village called ‘Bardizagn ou Bardzagtsin’ (Bardizag and its people) published in Cairo in 1938. Bardizag had local administrative jurisdiction over 5 Armenian, 1 Greek and 2 Moslem (Georgian) villages. These were: Dongel, a village of 75 houses inhabited by Laz Armenians. Dongeli Sourpe (Dongel’s Saint), a little beyond Dongel itself, having 28 houses of Laz Armenians. It was called that because of its chapel dedicated to St Sarkis. Ovadjek, with 500 houses inhabited by Armenians. It was known locally as a well-to-do village. Jamavayr, with 40 houses of Laz Armenians. This village was known by its Turkish name of Kiliseh Duzu. The Greek village of Yenikioy (not the Istanbul one) of approximately 500 houses. This was known by the Bardizag people as “Hrom Kiugh”. Another Laz Armenian village, Zakar Kiugh, known in Turkish as Sakar-Bechke, with 65 houses. The two Georgian Muslim villages were Hassar Kioy and Tatar Kioy. The government, with its policy of diluting the Armenian population by importing Muslim refugees, had brought Muslim Georgians, Gurdjis and Lazes from the Trabzon region and settled them in a few villages nearby. Incidentally, Laz Armenians were those who, over a long period of time had become Laz in dress, language and customs, but retained their Armenian Apostolic faith, knowing themselves to be Armenians. Bardizag itself, by 1914, had about 10,000 inhabitants, all Armenians, made up of about 2,000 families living in about 1,400 wooden houses. Street 010, 019. Several hundred individuals had left, either permanently to go into trade or the professions, or temporarily, to go into service with wealthy families in Istanbul. Most of the latter were women and girls. The village was always, however, under the jurisdiction of the local Turkish bey or agha, who didn’t harm the villagers very much as they were one of his sources of income. The bey or agha did however intervene in things like the building of the church, in disputes where the villagers were fighting one another (a frequent occurrence, as we shall see), concerning taxation etc. Another thing that regularly took place in the early days of the village was the forced collection of boys from the village to join the Janissary corps. Of course, we don’t know how many or when they were taken, and it stopped with the final destruction of the corps in 1826. Those children were totally lost as Armenians. Apart from that, the Armenian males of the village did not do military service, being exempt, as ‘infidels’, but were made to pay ‘bedel’ or military service exemption tax, levelled on the entire village. Life was, in the main, reasonably peaceful – as far as peace could be considered to prevail… But it should be emphasised that the lives of the villagers was harsh: the constant toil to provide bread for the family; the continual threat of death by the Muslims in the area and by bandits that infested the hills when anyone left the village; epidemics – forms of sanitation, for example, were rudimentary at best; taxes; accidents like fire, which could set all the houses alight; the constant feuding between the well-to-do families which affected the whole community; as well as the climate (there was usually heavy snow in winter, for example, and great hailstorms at other times, and the summers were very hot); all had their part to play in the well-being of the community. A major factor in the poverty that pervaded all Armenian villages in the area – as well as elsewhere, especially in the early days – was the practice of detachments of the armed groups that made up the Turkish Army billeting themselves on villages at a moment’s notice. The larger the village the bigger the detachment – and they lived at the village’s expense. This happened several times to Bardizag, with – as usual - disastrous results. In time the village grew in importance, and developed various trades, some at the behest of local influential Turks, others thanks to the villagers own determination and drive, and still others due to the influence of the Armenian Amiras in Constantinople. One major activity was the large-scale production of baskets, with vast quantities being ordered from as far afield as Istanbul. There were 120 basket makers in Bardizag in 1905, according to Vahram Mouradian. Another trade that started very early on in the village’s development was that of charcoal burning. This was started at the initiative of the Haladar Turkish aghas of the village, to provide charcoal for the Imperial Ottoman Mint. Mekhalian tells us that the villagers learnt the trade then, after some time, and through the efforts of the Duzenians and especially of Kazaz Artin Amira, they were entrusted to continue it, eliminating the middlemen Turks. The golden era for this trade was from 1810 to 1835. Linked to this was the provision of lumber, known as “barmakdji”. These trades ended when the whole area was denuded of trees. A further important occupation was the manufacture of horseshoes. Unfortunately I’ve not found out much about it yet, but it would have involved blacksmith’s skills and associated activities. The Djangalozian family were masters in this trade, and one of their tombstones showed a carving of a hammer striking an anvil on it. Tobacco was much grown in the area, especially by the people of the village. When I visited it in the 1960s, tobacco growing still continued, although on a minor scale. Even then there were clusters of tobacco leaves hanging on strings along the walls of some of the houses to dry. 011. I met an old man there, a Turk named Ayoub Ousta, 016 who was in the area before 1915, who told me that the tobacco crop no longer grew successfully as we, the Armenians had left, taking our good luck (bereket) with us… The main trade, especially towards the end of the village’s life, was undoubtedly sericulture – silkworms. The Helvadjian, Avedian, Megerian and Saroukhanian families especially, had great silkworm works in the village, and they provided many of the village women and girls with employment. Sericulture was, until the advent of Pasteurisation, a very hit-and-miss trade, the silkworms and cocoons being decimated by diseases, but with increase in knowledge and the introduction of clean conditions, the trade became steady and profitable. It should be noted that there were plantations of mulberry trees in the immediate area of the village, serving the needs of the trade. The other “trade”, carried on by a class of villager called “Efe” (who dressed in a style all their own) was the smuggling of tobacco or “Ayinga”. This was carried on at night, under the noses of the local and regional Regie (government tobacco regulating authority) inspectors and police, and very successfully. There were many famous efes, some of who fought battles famous in village folklore against the Muslim Georgian settlers in the hills around the village, and whose names are still remembered, such as Chavoush Hovhannes, Ataments Krikor and Perkhadzin Vanes. Two of the most famous of all were Biber Ardash and Bolig Hagop. From the end of the 19th century, it became popular for intellectuals, travellers and well-to-do Armenians from Istanbul to visit Bardizag. Towards the end of the village’s Armenian era, families used to go to Bardizag from Istanbul for holidays. This of course brought in revenue, in the form of money spent in the village by these visitors. It also increased the contact between the villagers and city Armenians, leading to the villagers’ desire to emulate them as much as possible. There was also another significant result of these visits. The village, as an Armenian entity, began to be written about by journalists and writers from as early as the 1850s. Many articles appeared in the Istanbul press, the occasional book was published and so the village became famous. Authors like Minas Veradzin, Antranig Bedigian, Arshag Chobanian and Hagop Der-Hagopian all wrote books or articles about the village and aspects of life in it. As an Armenian cultural venue, Armenian theatre troupes from Istanbul also visited the village, giving performances in the High School hall. One of my relatives, the actor Yenovk Shahen Yepranosian, was one of the instigators and participants of this movement. Choirs would also visit, and Gomidas Vartabed’s choir gave performances there too. Gomidas even transcribed one of the famous songs, ‘Dan Dan’, and thus saved it for posterity. Prominent intellectuals such as agronomists, teachers and authors gave talks there; these were usually given in the church, with all the altar curtains closed. An important aspect of the developing cultural and social links with Istanbul was the gradual influence of political and religious thought in the village. The village, through its well-to-do families, was always pro-Hntchag (these families held sway generation after generation), and a small group of older men were actually members of that party. From 1890 onwards, however, young men from the village who had been in Istanbul brought back Dashnak ideology, and these younger men formed a Dashnak group. These groups survived right up until the end of the village’s existence, although it is not clear which of the opposing ideologies was in the ascendant. Apart from this political movement, there were a number of local organisations that were active in the village: there was the ‘People’s Bank’, the Durgers’ Association, the AGBU, The Steamship Association, the Dashnak Cooperative and the Village Agrarian Defence Union. All of these were active until the destruction of the community in 1915. Until the missionary movement gained pace, Bardizag was wholly Armenian Apostolic in religion. The people were devout and observant. But in the middle of the 19th century Protestant and Catholic missionaries began to make their presence felt, and so the High School was founded; the Catholics, in other words the Mekhitarians from Venice, created a monastery and school; and the Protestants opened a meeting house. All this had repercussions within the village: some people, for various reasons, changed their religion, families fragmented, co-religionist groupings were formed, and the unity centred around the traditional church was weakened. This was reflected in the ‘taghagan khorhourts’ – one was named ‘Catholic’ another ‘Protestant`. This incursion by other faiths did have some positive aspects, however. The Mekhitarians opened a school with good teachers, the Protestants encouraged the printed word in modern Armenian (based mainly on the Protestant New Testament and tracts published in modern Armenian by their leaders elsewhere), and the Community and High schools benefited in later years with teachers who had received their initial education in these schools and, in the case of the Mekhitarians, some who had studied in Venice. As for children… Most families were large, and there were children everywhere. As a result, the educational movement began earlier in Bardizag than in other villages. At the beginning, before schools were founded, some boys would be apprenticed to this or that tradesman, and they would learn the rudiments of reading and writing in the course of their apprenticeship. There were also a few teachers of the old kind – perhaps of the “Der Totig” type immortalised in Armenian literature – who taught using the cane to aid memory. These teachers also taught girls, although details are lacking as to what they learned. However schools were established, and, for example, the newspaper “Meghou” of Istanbul, in its issue number 97 of 1860, stated: “There is one boys’ school, with 450 pupils being taught by 7 teachers. The subjects taught are reading, grammar, history, mathematics, music, writing and religious studies. There is also a girls’ school with 220 pupils. They are taught reading, writing, religious studies, grammar, and needlework. The amount collected (including gifts) for the two schools together is 40,000 kroush, and the expenses 32,000.” It should be noted that this means, at the time when the schools weren’t properly organised, there were 670 children in school in the village! Later, of course, the famous “Bithynia High School” (Amerigian Partsrakouin Varjaran), the community school (Azkayin Varjaran), the Mekhitarian School and one or two kindergartens were opened, and the new generation of children began to receive regular, good quality education, after initial problems to do with buildings and teachers were ironed out. The high school especially was known throughout the Ottoman Empire, and students attended from all parts, as well as even from the Sudan! It was run by Rev. Robert Chambers, a Canadian missionary, and his wife Elizabeth Lawson; Rev. Chambers, who spoke read and wrote Armenian fluently, was much respected by all. It might interest you to know that Lynch, in his monumental “Armenia: travels and studies”, met him in Erzerum and wrote about him with approbation, when he and his wife were running a school there. Many of the graduates of the High School went on to Robert College or became intellectuals, churchmen or journalists, as well as successful businessmen, doctors etc. It may be of interest to know that two of the High School buildings, the Chambers’ own house (still used as a house) 009 and Chambers Hall (often quoted as “an American church” today because of its architectural style) 008, 006 which was built using donations from the High School Graduates Society before the First World War, are still standing. They are pointed out to visitors as buildings of another time… The future patriarch Yeghishe Tourian, then a vartabed, was a great influence from 1880 onwards, when he was the general overseer of the community school (azkayin varjaran) as well as being the preacher in the church. There is one curious sidelight to the education scene. There was sometimes a shortage of teachers. This wasn’t because there weren’t enough, but because, by tradition, the villagers nominated teachers (as educated men) to the priesthood as kahanahs (parish priests), as well as others leaving to go to other schools. So, for example, at the last ordination that took place in 1907 (an occasion when much fighting took place), three teachers were eventually ordained out of the total of seven men to become kahanahs. I should perhaps talk about the character of the villagers. Individually most were good, hardworking people eager to please, and did what they were asked. But, as a mass, a crowd, they became loud, often violent and wouldn’t listen to reason. I should like to use the story of the building of the village bathhouse as a typical example that showed the people for what they were – just ordinary, spirited Armenians. The village council had determined that a bathhouse should be built, with profits made from its use going to the church. Due to the way the water flowed through the village, it was decided that its site would be on a particular plot in the small valley, and that half of the community’s water that flowed that way would be used for it. So the arguments started. The popular cry was that “They’ll steal all the water, not just take half of it!” and opposition began, mostly by the women. But the work was started, trenches being excavated to take the piping to the site of the bathhouse. During this activity the labourers, who were all from the village and usually neighbours of the protestors, were stoned and hounded off the site by the protesting women (and their older children). Then the protestors went to the village council offices, smashed the windows, and shouted, “You’re no longer the village council, get out!” The council held firm, but no amount of persuasion did any good. The protestors themselves, led by Zaptieh Mariam (also famous for her piety!) and Gelgel Aghavni (both of who quite often went about armed, and were known for that) then returned to the site and lay down in the trenches to prevent further work. Once more persuasion was tried, without result. Aghasi Effendi Der-Megerditchian, one of the architects of the scheme, then went to try to get things sorted out but, having been hit on the head by one of the women, grew angry, picked up the nearest protestor and threw her to one side, shouting, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? This is for the church!” He was hit again, so picked up the new assailant and threw her to one side too. Pandemonium ensued. The men in the commercial area of the village, hearing the noise, rushed to Aghasi Effendi’s help, and the real battle began. The women and their children threw stones and used staves and other implements to hit the men with. The women were then suddenly attacked from the rear by boys who’d also heard the row, and, eventually, after much angry fighting and injuries being sustained, the protestors retreated, order was restored and construction resumed. This is renowned in Bardizag folklore as “the battle of the bathhouse”. The building was still standing in 1969 when I went to the village. There were a few noteworthy places in and around Bardizag. Lousaghpiur was where picnics (with the whole village taking part) were held, as well as Manoushag (a considerable distance from the village) and St Minas, both places of pilgrimage. But there was another place, known as “the priests cabin” Vartabedin Khoutse” that had historic significance, and whose fame went beyond the village. The vartabed referred to was actually Bishop Hovhannes Goudjoukian (or Goudjoukents), who lived there as a hermit in the late 18th and early 19th century. The story is this. There was a group of men from the village who were very religious, and who tried to live a blameless life, serving the church in the village. After a time they decided to go to the famous monastery of Gdouts on the shore of Lake Van, where they served it as lay brothers or perhaps just as servants. Eventually one of them, Krikor Goudjoukian (a distant relative of my family), was ordained in that monastery, finally reaching the rank of bishop. He then returned to Bardizag and made himself the cabin I mentioned before, where he lived and prayed. Word got around that he was a healer as well as a saint, so people began to visit him to be cured and receive his blessing. In a short period of time his fame had reached such proportions that it came to the ears of the deputy abbot of Armash, who sent a letter of protest to the Patriarch, as his source of income, the pilgrims’ gifts, was drying up as they were all going to see Bishop Hovhannes. The Patriarch arranged for the bishop to be arrested and exiled, in the depths of winter, to Kayseri (Gesaria), where he died and was buried. It is interesting that in recent times, one of the last members of the Goudjoukian family, also named Krikor, as ordained as a vartabed and named Megerditch Aghavnouni, becoming a member of the Armenian brotherhood in Jerusalem, dying there in 1940 with the rank of archbishop. You might not know that the late Archbishop Besak Toumayian, who was the officiating clergyman here in London, was a survivor from Bardizag who was rescued when a child in Der Zor and taken to Jerusalem, where he was later ordained. Here I should like to digress, if I may for a moment, and tell you how I gained some of what I know and how I found out about my family. Being born in Britain, I knew nothing about my Armenian ancestors at all, except that they came from Bardizag. Over many years I stored up pieces of information in notebooks and in my head – there are no official records surviving – and tried to piece together things relating to the village to create a basis for further questions. I was fortunate to spend three years in Beirut, where there were a few people from the village. I talked to them at length and learned much. In the meantime, having learnt Armenian, I corresponded with my great aunt, the wife of Rev. Arshavir Varteressian, a parish priest in Cairo. An erudite woman, she wrote much that was of value to me, and was able to give me my precise relationship with her family, the Sinanians. Thus the first (tentative) family tree was drawn. I subsequently went to Istanbul, where I met some more relatives who took me to Bardizag and told me lots more about my family, having been born and raised in the village, surviving the deportation and returning in 1918/19, only to have to finally leave it in 1922. Their information allowed me to fill some of the gaps in my knowledge, and so my family tree grew. Over a long period, since then, I have been able to obtain books and periodicals, photographs and articles about the village – which all provided useful information. Chance finds, like a photograph reproduced in one of the Gomidas Institute’s own publications, still happen, further enriching my knowledge. My family tree grew – and is still growing. I also found, through the internet, various relatives who live in the USA. I correspond with them, and we exchange information. In all this research, it is imperative that all the information should be recorded and checked, then finalised. That way a legacy will be left to new generations that don’t have immediate access to our parents’ and grandparents’ memories – or even our language. I should like to give a note of warning however. When talking to elderly relatives, questions should be asked with the greatest tact and care and allowances made for their possible reticence in talking about the past. Many people of the 1915 generation don’t like to recall people, events and other things. It hurts too much. One interesting sidelight to all of this – and an important one – was my visit to the AGBU library in Paris to photocopy, in its entirety, the copy of Mekhalian’s book ‘Bardizag and it’s people’ (Bardizagn ou Bardizagtsin’) they hold. There I met two people who gave me great encouragement – the Librarian Mr Raymond (Haroutiun) Kevorkian, and the library researcher, Vahe Tashjian. It was the latter who gave me Mr Sarafian’s name. Mr Sarafian was instrumental in my resuming my involvement in Armenian studies, including this talk. I owe him a great deal. I should also like to tell you of a very strange coincidence. As I said earlier, Sultan Mourad IV granted Bardizag its firman in 1625. You may know that the same sultan conquered Yerevan in 1635. Exactly 370 years later, I was in Yerevan looking for my Bardizag relatives… One interesting thing that happened to me in my search for my relatives was this. I occasionally, obtained old copies of “Hayreniki Tsayn”, the newspaper published in Yerevan during Soviet times, often months after they were published. This journal often had a section called “Pndroum en harazadnerin” (looking for relatives). In one old edition I saw that someone named Johnson was looking for Melkonian relatives from Bardizag. I wrote to the newspaper, but heard nothing for two years. Then I got a telephone call from Brisbane, Australia. It turned out to be from my Hovhannessian relatives; the caller’s mother and my grandfather were brother and sister… Another link in the chain! Let me now return to my main theme. I’d like to say a word about the church. Bardizag had one Armenian Apostolic church, dedicated to St James of Nisibis (Mdspina Sourp Hagop). The last one (destroyed after 1922) was the fourth or fifth of that name on the site in the village from the beginning. It was as large as some in Istanbul, and had three altars. It was built of stone in 1830-1831, the completion being celebrated on March 31st 1831 (old style). The previous ones were built of wood and, sometimes, strange conditions were imposed on their construction. The last-but-one had to be built in a month from the date of permission being granted by the local Turkish agha. That one had been built of wood, wattle and daub and deteriorated very quickly. There is quite a story connected to the building of this final, stone-built church. The firman for building it was easily obtained from the Imperial government by Kazaz Artin Amira in a few days. It was deliberately vague: it didn’t, for example, define the church’s size. The village council, gaining the government inspectors’ confidence, and with the use of hefty bribes, got their agreement to build it according the village’s wishes. The whole community worked with a will and with great fervour on its construction. It is said that every villager did what he or she could to assist. The local teacher, the deacon Garabed, was the overseer. The whole structure was completed in 9 months and cost 361,500 marshils or 663 purses of gold. After its completion it was dedicated in the presence of the Bishop of Izmid, vartabeds from Armash and the parish priests from the village and the Armenian villages in the area. It must be said that Kazaz Artin Amira was much respected in the village. He was a philanthropist: when he got the firman for the re-building of the church, he gave a 20,000 kurush gift to the building fund and a thousand okhas weight of lead sheeting to cover the domes over the altars. He was the greatest benefactor the village ever had; apart from his generosity in terms of the church, he often helped individual Armenians from the village with regard to problems concerning their rights. There was also the small wooden chapel of St Minas, on a hill near the village, also a site of pilgrimage. I found it a strange place; a hillock, with four large trees on its summit, one of which is held in great awe and superstition by the local people, as it has been struck by lightning several times. It has been burnt through from the topmost branches to the ground (making it completely hollow) but still produces full leaf every spring… There were also a series of trenches where the chapel’s stone foundations had been: the local people had dug them out looking for gold, having demolished the chapel. Needless to say they found none. To me it was a little haunted. In the village itself was the khonakh or government building, in the commercial part of the main road, opposite the fountain called “The Agha’s Fountain” and next to the church. This (and its predecessors) had been there since the early days of the village, and was where the Turkish agha, always from a family originally from Deyirmendereh, had his residence, and under which was a cellar where the vakef payments in kind (crops) were stored. Until 1835 Hajji Pasha, Chelebi Agha, Osman Agha and Eomer Agha lived there. The agha’s family however, lived about three quarters of an hour’s distance away in the Greek village of Yenikoy (Hrom Kiugh). Once or twice a year the people of Bardizag were called upon to provide the agha’s house with all its necessities and to provide labour to cultivate his land. The agha collected the one-tenth of the produce grown by the village, so he was also called the multezim (tax collector). For example, when silkworm cocoons were collected and spun into threads, the agha’s portion would be collected on a particular day. The taxation extended to one tenth of everything produced in the village. At the time when there were no courts of law in the provinces at all, the agha had the right to try criminals and punish them. On this basis the agha would have his men arrest the suspect and would cross-examine him. When guilt was established, one of two punishments, according to the severity of the crime, were used – the first, beating and prison; the second, fines. The agha also had the right to intervene in the provisions made in terms of bequeathed property. There were other things he was involved in, like mahlul (ownerless land) and emlak (ownerless shops etc). This happened when there was no male heir to a property. Even if the family concerned had several daughters, they were not permitted to be recipients of the will in question. This lasted until 1845, when the law was changed, to make daughters equal with sons. I’d like to say a few words about births, marriages and deaths and other things in the village. First, the people of the village were very devout. They held their parish priests in great esteem (unless a priest proved to be an unworthy individual) and who would be called in quite often to mediate between families etc. If someone from the village went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, on his (or her) return he or she would be met at the edge of the village by the parish priest and choir, would be led to the church and celebratory prayers would be said. (Quite often the person or family that had made this pilgrimage would add the name “Hadji” to their name.) Work in the fields and the village would cease when the church bell was sounded in the evening. People would return to their homes when they heard it and it was then that the village took on an incredibly noisy, bustling air until the time came for each family to sit down to its evening meal. Patriarch Torkom Koushagian writes: “…But the thing that made the village so well-known was its constant vitality and bustle... In the evenings, after the bell sounded, when men, women and children returned from the fields, factories and schools, the whole village, from one end to the other, resounded with the noise of the childrens’ singing and the shouts of individuals. If an outsider was to stand on St Minas hill or in Tezoug forest and listened to that noise, he wouldn’t be able to understand what an expression of joy or pleasure it was.” The village community was very keen on singing and dancing, and annual get-togethers in Lousaghpiur, at Sourp Minas (St. Minas), in the Veri Galer (Upper Fields) and on feast days at places like Manoushag or at Sourp Takavor (the chapel of the Holy King) were major events. They were also the times when young people could meet, under strict supervision, and where many future spouses saw each other for the first time in the open, outside the village, in a social atmosphere. The birth of a baby in a family was a joyous event and considered to be the greatest blessing. The new mother and her baby were given the greatest care and attention, and the whole household would be as happy as if the birth was a wedding! If the child were a boy, the joy would be very great; if it was a girl however, whose mother had given birth to girls before and no boys, the pleasure would be much more muted. The newborn child would be washed and swaddled and given to its mother. When the child’s relatives arrived after the birth, having heard the news, the child would be handed from one person to the next, with many expressions of love and prayers. Visitors would arrive for days afterwards to congratulate the family. If the newborn child seemed to be weak and it was thought that it would not survive, it was rushed, there and then, to the church, to be baptised, so as not to let it die without being received into the church, which would have been a great misfortune for the family. A healthy child would be baptised, during the Badarak service, on the Sunday after it was born. It would be given gifts by its godfather and parents’ relatives. Engagements followed traditional Armenian customs. When a girl was found (having either been seen at one of the picnics or in normal village life) and deemed suitable by the young man’s family, a senior female member of the prospective groom’s family would approach her parents. A gift would be given as a sign of interest, and a few days later the girl’s family would agree to an engagement or not. If they agreed, it was considered that an agreement had been reached. Then the full engagement ritual would begin, with mutual family visits, exchanges of gifts etc. The family priest would bless the engagement. In the mean time, the girl’s mother and sisters (or other female members of the family) would help her prepare her dowry chest, the contents of which had been built up over the years with clothing, material, jewellery and so forth. An important stage in the wedding preparations was the group visit by representatives of both families and their priests to the town council, where the relationship between the prospective bride and groom would be gone into in great detail, to verify that they were not related closely enough to prevent the marriage. (The Armenian Church is very strict in the matter of consanguinity.) The wedding would be forbidden if the relationship was too close. Weddings were only permitted in the village on two days a year. These were on the feast days of St Sarkis and St Hagop, at the end of autumn and in the winter. The whole village would be a scene of celebration as all the couples would be married on the same day. Weddings lasted a week, starting on the Wednesday or Thursday before the actual church service on the Sunday, and ending on the following Tuesday or Wednesday. Even then the celebrations would continue, with special visits being made to the bride and groom’s house, to those of the respective parents etc, at specific intervals, in accordance with village tradition. There were many rituals connected with marriage, including much feasting, exchange of presents, processions to the various homes, the dressing of the bride and groom, the bride’s dowry and so on. There were also many traditional songs sung, principally for the bride, and to wish the couple good fortune. All the couples got married at one or other of the feast days, during the service (badarak) when up to 50 couples would be married at the one service, all together. At the end of the service each couple would be escorted by the priest and choir, singing sharagans, to their respective homes, one after another. It is said that some years there were so many newly-married couples that it took at least half a day to escort them to their houses! It was also the custom not to allow the newly married couple to be alone together until the Wednesday evening after they were married in church. Until that time, the bride was still part of her family, and wasn’t released to her new husband until then. On the other hand, a death was attended only by the family and its parish priest, who came to hear the dying person’s confession, give him or her Communion and hear their last wishes. After death, the body would be washed and dressed in his or her best clothes, and put on a fresh bed. The (now) bier was surrounded with fresh flowers, and the songs of sorrow and praise for the deceased would begin. It was the custom to keep the deceased in the house for at least one night. Finally the priest and choir would arrive at the house on the following morning, and the hearse would be prepared. The deceased would be put into the coffin and it put on the hearse. At this point the extremes of sorrow would be seen: distraught women and girls, sorrowful men… Women never attended funerals. The hearse carrying the bier would be taken to the church, where the final service would take place. Then the bier, held by pallbearers (the hearse being dispensed with), with its attendant procession, would go to the New Cemetery, about a quarter of an hour’s distance from the village, where the main part of the final prayers would be said under the Requiem Tree near the entrance. After the burial and final prayers, those present were given a snack at the cemetery and then, with the parish priest at their head, the mourners would return to the deceased’s home. There the priest would say a final prayer in the house, after which the female neighbours would prepare a meal and everyone would eat something. They would then disperse, leaving the family to its grief. After the peaceful days from 1908 until 1914 ended and war could be seen to be on the horizon, the Ottoman government instituted compulsory general conscription of men for the Ottoman Army on August 9th 1914. War was declared in November of the same year. In three days in that August, between 1,000 and 1,500 men aged between 18 and 45 from the village went off to join the army. (The number varies according to which source one checks.) Thus the village lost virtually all its able-bodied men in one fell swoop; it left the village virtually leaderless and without men to do the heavy work in the fields, at the port or in the various trades in the village, which therefore ceased. Those who didn’t want to join the army paid large sums of money as military exemption tax, not just once, but several times! The men who did join the army were used as ordinary soldiers at the front at first, then were withdrawn, disarmed, and used as forced-labour battalions to build roads and repair communications links, under extremely brutal conditions. Very, very few survived. Apart from this, the village was forced by the authorities to provide significant funds for the two Ottoman Army relief organisations. In spring of 1915 more than 20 important people, doctors, teachers, government employees, shopkeepers, artisans and ordinary individuals, without any reason or trial, were arrested in the village and banished to the interior. Later, at the end of June or the beginning of July, the government officially ordered the people of the region, be they Islamic or Christian, to hand over every type of weapon in their possession within 10 days. It reserved the right to return any it chose to. The people of Bardizag handed over all they had: mostly hunting rifles and weapons used for self-defence. The government publicly returned all the weapons owned by Muslims, even those that had been proscribed, retaining all those handed in by Christians. In July 1915, the Turks surrounded the village and, selecting the remaining notable men, about 50 in number, tortured them in an effort to find arms and bombs. Only a few rifles were found. The Turks then searched the church, damaging it in many places. Nothing incriminating was found there. The tortured men were released the following day. These same Turks then visited all the houses, collecting everything they could find, such as knives, saws and sickles, in other words anything that could wound someone. There were several hundred such things collected. Then they left the village. The Turkish mayor then said that if the people of Bardizag could raise 100 gold liras (an enormous sum for the village) for each of the two military relief organisations, he would try to get the government to allow the villagers to stay where they were. The villagers collected the money, but of course nothing of the sort happened. He might well have pocketed the 200 gold liras. At the end of July the order for deportation arrived, to be put into effect a few days later. Immediately the village took on the appearance of a bazaar. Everyone wanted to sell what he had, so as to have money for his journey into the unknown. In five days the villagers sold what they could, at knockdown prices, to the local Muslims. On the 4th of August 1915, the first groups of people left via Izmid, along the Anatolian Railway line. Almost the entire population of the village, close to 9,000 individuals, were cleared in about a week. They went via Eski Shehir, Konia, Bozanti, Osmanie, Katma, and on to Der-Zor. Most perished in the ensuing deportation and massacres, although some survived and reached Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Beirut, Mosul and other places in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. About 250 people, however, took to the hills around the village to escape deportation under the leadership of Zalem Garabed. They took as much food as they could carry, but they didn’t last for more than a few months, being subject to attack by the local Muslims, the weather, disease, lack of nourishment and so on. Very few of them survived. With the end of the war, about 2,000 survivors managed to return to the village from various places. They re-occupied their homes (if they were still standing), re-consecrated the church, repaired or rebuilt some of the other houses and began to rebuild their lives. It was noticeable that the old differences had vanished – they were now all Armenians, and knew that they had to stay together in harmony to survive. They received aid from the Americans through the Near East Relief, from the British Lord Mayor’s Fund as well as various Armenian charitable organisations such as the National Assistance (Azkayin Khnamadaroutiun). Armenian children were collected from the nearby villages and the orphanage in the High School, full of Armenian boys, that had been set up by the Turks to make them Muslims, was taken over. Life limped along in this manner until 1922, when the Greek Army withdrew from the Turkish mainland. The village was then finally abandoned, 340 years after its foundation, and Armenian life there ceased forever… Armenians from the village could be found both immediately after the war and certainly after 1922 in Istanbul and other cities in Turkey, some in Greece – a few of these went to Armenia in 1947 - others in France and in many other countries. The local Muslims returned to the village when the last Armenians left, and have been there ever since. They do recall who the previous inhabitants were – I was shouted at in 1969 when I took a picture of a house my great-grandfather had built… After the Second World War, Turks migrated from the Balkans (Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia) and some were settled in the village by the then Turkish government. Since then people have settled there from other parts of Turkey. The village as it stands today has nothing in common with the original Armenian village. Even in 1969, when I visited it, most of the houses built by our ancestors had been destroyed by the people who had taken up residence in them: their mode of living was such that they lived in a house until it fell down through neglect. 017. Now there are stone-built houses there, a mosque and other edifices that are strictly Islamic and Turkish. But I do have a copy of the bill of sale of a piece of land, in Armenian and dated April 10th 1874, written in Bardizag… 020 The Old, Upper and New cemeteries 018 have disappeared; the Old Cemetery had become a public park, complete with a bust of Ataturk; The Upper and New Cemeteries are now used for grazing cattle and sheep. I was told by local people that most of the several hundred (it really must have been more than that) tombstones were smashed up and used as hardcore in the building of the town hall, which was the only new building in the village when I was there. Others were defaced, on orders of a mullah, who said that unless the inscriptions were erased, the souls of the people named wouldn’t rest. They were then used as doorsteps or paving slabs.013, 012 Some, however, were readable when I was there, and I collected the inscriptions on them. 014, 015 Chambers Hall is still standing, as is the Chambers’ residence. Other than these, there is nothing left of the old village, and one would think that no Armenian had ever set foot there. But I will say this. I’m not superstitious, but it seemed to me in 1969 that certain places had a sort of atmosphere about them as if they were peopled by ghosts. The town hall was one of those… The 1999 earthquake shook Bardizag, where several hundred inhabitants died. Since then, according to local information, there has been some reconstruction in the village, thanks to donations by generous Turks. I should also add that the village does not appear on a travel map of Turkey printed in 2004. It has disappeared… As a final note, I would like to say that, to my knowledge, there are very few people who know much about places like Bardizag at all. All of us Armenians know where we originate from, but the detailed knowledge of what the place was and how our forbears lived is almost lost, especially if one comes from a place that is not a large town or city, and if ones grandparents are no longer living to tell the stories – if they knew them. As a first-generation descendant of a survivor of the massacre and deportation from the village, I feel it is up to people like me to try to help to keep alive some of our village histories and recall and record them for people who come after us. I hope to publish a book about Bardizag in English in the not too distant future. If there are any of you whose ancestors came from Bardizag, would you spare me a moment afterwards? If you know of anybody, not here, whose family come from the village, would you ask them to get in touch with me through the Gomidas Institute website? Finally, it’s been a pleasure telling you about Bardizag. Thank you all for coming. Any questions? _____________________________ Ara Melkonian is a Fellow at the Gomidas Institute, London, where he specializes in Armenian-English translations and works on other special projects. His recent work includes translations of Vahram Dadrian’s Forsaken Love (Taderon Press, 2006) and Raffi’s Tajkahayk, (Taderon Press, 2007). He just began a database series on Armenian Orphans in the Aftermath of WWI. He is the author of “Memory Faultlines” which appeared in the July 2006 issue of Ancestors, the journal of the British National Archives.
Melkonian's talk formed part of a new series of lectures organised by the
Gomidas Institute on The Lost Armenian Communities of Ottoman Turkey.
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