I listened to the Society for Armenian Studies podcast with Vera Sahakyan, a PhD student and researcher at the Matenadaran, about her first book: The Armenian Populated Villages of the District of Bulanik in Mush According to the Letters Sent to Catholicos Mgrditch Khrimian. She is looking at over 8,000 previously unpublished letters written to then Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimian Hayrik during the Hamidian massacres.
The multi-volume work will be divided by the provinces where the letters originated. The majority of the letters are from Van, Mush, Kars and Erzrum and include details of the “interrupted history” of the Armenians living there. The letters are written in the various dialects of Western Armenian and Grabar, with rare occurrences of letters written in foreign languages. The letters give a clearer idea of the genocidal process as they tell of massacres, kidnappings of minors, forced marriage and conversion, murder and mutilation.
The letters also include actual addresses of the authors before they were uprooted and killed. The over 8,000 letters were all directed to Mkrtich Khrimian “Hayrik” during a time when there was no national government and Armenians everywhere looked to Hayrik as their defender and rescuer. The letters were “written by tortured Armenians in hope of a solution.” They also “make Khrimian’s title of ‘Hayrik’ tangible.” He was their savior, their earthly beacon of good.
As the author notes, “Armenians relied on God in Heaven and Hayrik on Earth.”
This is a huge work that gives detailed accounts of the Hamidian massacres while they were occurring and also sheds more light on the relationship between the people and one of the most celebrated and important, yet also understudied, figures in Armenian history, Khrimian Hayrik.
You can listen to the podcast here.
The PDF of the first volume can be found here.