Videos
Photos
Kaza of Bulanik - Demography
Author: Tigran Martirosyan
Along with the Manazkert, Vardo, Moush and Sassoun counties, the kaza (county) of Bulanik formed the Moush sandjak (prefecture) of the vilayet (province) of Bitlis and was one of the most densely Armenian-populated counties, not only in the Bitlis province, but in all of the Armenian Highlands in the decades before the genocide; this view is substantiated by several contemporaries. Bensé, an Armenian ethnographer and native of Bulanik, reported that before the 1877 – 1878 Russo-Turkish War, the population of Bulanik was overwhelmingly Armenian and that in the 1890s a few Muslim groups included Kurds, as well as emerging refugees from the Caucasus, among them Circassians and Turks. Vladimir Philippov, a Russian General Staff colonel, observed that in the 1880s, the plain of Bulanik was an area of compact settlement of Armenians in Asiatic Turkey. Henry Lynch, an Irish geographer, noted that in the 1890s in the province of Bitlis, Armenians comprised a majority in the Moush and Bulanik counties and that their impressive population in Bulanik was due in part because they held the county’s vast fertile plains, thus making it one of the principal seats of the Armenian peasantry. Vladimir Mayewski, another Russian General Staff colonel, indicated that in the 1890s, the heartland of Bulanik was one of the few areas in Asiatic Turkey that was most heavily populated by Armenians.
Several Armenian sources were used for this study. One primary source is the household count prepared by the Moush Prelacy from 1899, which was republished in A-Do’s (Hovhannes Ter-Martirosian) brochure in 1912. Another primary source is the household-and-population count prepared by the secretary of the Prelacy, Nazaret Martirosian, published in a statistical table in 1916 in the periodical Van-Tosp. The data from A-Do’s brochure were initially supplied by Nazaret Martirosian, who later, between 1913 and 1915, updated the data. Four other relevant sources are the last of a three-volume travel guide published in 1885 by ethnographer Manuel Mirakhorian, the article “Bulanik” written by Atrpet (Sargis Mubayeajian) and published in 1915 in the periodical Mshak, the book about the sufferings of Armenian clergymen written in 1921 by Teodik (Teotoros Lapçinciyan), and the census data drawn up by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1913 – 1914. The census data can be found in two sources: Kévorkian and Paboudjian’s account on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, as well as Kévorkian’s complete history of the genocide. In 2012, the National Archives of Armenia published a landmark record of the collection of documents, in which a number of witness accounts contain important demographic data. “Dictionary of Place Names of Armenia and Adjacent Territories” by eminent authors Tadevos Hakobyan, Stepan Melik-Bakhshyan and Hovhannes Barseghyan, supplied additional data. Index Anatolicus, an online database of Armenian place names in Turkey created by Sevan Nishanyan, helped identify the locations of the Bulanik villages.
It is at once apparent that Armenian sources are more detailed and offer more plausible figures than Ottoman sources, which have been often accused of decreasing Armenian population numbers. In 1880, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nerses Varzhapetian, initiated a census of Bulanik, Manazkert and Moush, which revealed that the population of Armenians was at 225,000 and the population of Muslims at 55,000. Once these numbers were revealed, local Ottoman authorities in Moush pressured municipal council member Karapet Efendi Potikian to lean on other members to compel them to decrease the Armenian figure to 95,000 and inflate the Muslim one to 105,000. Ottoman sources containing statistical data on the Armenian population of Bulanik are government annuals for the state and provinces, called salnamés. For instance, the 1871 salnamé for the vilayet of Erzrum states there were 3,835 Armenian and 1,341 Muslim men in the county. The 1872 salnamé states there were 4,025 Armenian and 1,441 Muslim men. Yet another, from 1873 lists 4,361 Armenian and 3,892 Muslim men living in 2,049 total households. The 1892 salnamé for the vilayet of Bitlis stands out in that it offers concrete evidence that Armenians were the majority in Bulanik: of 25,456 inhabitants, 8,567 were Muslim, while 16,889 were Armenian; thus, Armenians constituted 66.3% or two-thirds of the total population of the county.
Ottoman government censuses also contain statistics on the Armenian population in the region. A census carried out by the Patriarchate prior to World War I produced a figure of 25,053 for the Armenian population in Bulanik; the Ottoman census placed the number of the Armenian population at 14,662. Significantly, according to Karo Sassouni’s count, the number of Armenians of Bulanik and Manazkert who found refuge in Russian Transcaucasia in July 1915 was estimated to be 34,000. [20] Using solely the pre-WWI Patriarchate figures of 25,053 for Bulanik and 11,931 for Manazkert, the number of Armenians in both counties would be a total of 36,984.
On the other hand, if only using Ottoman data for both counties (14,662 and 4,438 for Bulanik and Manazkert, respectively) the number of Armenians would be a total of 19,100. Another Ottoman source indicated that in 1915, the number of Bulanik Armenians who were to be forcibly deported, or as Turkish sources put it, “relocated and distanced,” was recorded in their registries at 14,309. Interestingly, an Armenian accusatory report published in 1918 in Aleppo put the number of survivors from Bulanik and Manazkert at about 25,000.
Although a report signed by a group of genocide survivors carries less strength than a census or a count, the figure for the two counties contained in it is still 1.3 times larger than the Ottoman figure of 19,100, while the Armenian figure of 25,053 for Bulanik alone is 1.7 times larger than the Ottoman figure of 14,309 for the same county. Given that most Armenians of Bulanik and Manazkert escaped massacres thanks to the advance of the Russian troops into the region in May of 1915, it can be said that the Patriarchate figure seems to be fairly accurately reported.
Armenian sources, however, are not entirely flawless; the numerical discrepancy with respect to households and inhabitants in Bulanik is immediately arresting. This discrepancy is due not only to crude statistical techniques for collecting data at the time, but also to harsh realities on the ground that resulted in frequent undercounting of the Armenian population.
In some instances, Kurds would forcibly take over Armenian villages, drive all or part of the Armenian inhabitants out prior to a census operation, or would ban entry to seized villages to Armenian census-takers, as it happened to Bishop Garegin Srvandztiants in the late-1870s. In other instances, Armenian villagers would minimize their household numbers in fear of increased taxation at time when Kurdish chieftains already imposed unbearable incremental taxes on them. Numerical discrepancy notwithstanding, Nazaret Martirosian’s data stand out as the most comprehensive of all sources exploring Armenian population in the region. It should also be noted that, perhaps paradoxically, Armenian sources omit many of the Armenian-inhabited localities in Bulanik.
Household counts pose another hurdle for researchers. Most Armenian villagers in Bulanik were of kin to each other, godchildren, or in-laws. Families of married sons, branching and multiplying, transformed into kinsfolk, often changing their original surnames in the process. However, they would customarily maintain close family ties with the next of kin and considered themselves members of household. It is, therefore, hard, if not impossible, to estimate with any degree of accuracy, the average number of household members.
Bishop Vahan Ter-Minassian (Partizaktsi), a commissioner at the Patriarchate in the 1860s and 1870s, suggested that the average number of members per household in rural areas should be put at eight, and in urban areas between five and six. Thus, the average number of members per household in Armenian-populated provinces, in his opinion, should be seven. [23] By analogy to Partizaktsi, Mayewski put the average population per household at eight and the number of households per village at twenty for the Bitlis province.
Reporting about 8,600 Armenians living in 770 households in Lower Bulanik villages, Atrpet evidently put the average population per household at eleven. Because Bulanik was a rural area, in this study, eight will be used as an average number of members per household.
There is a discrepancy among sources regarding the number of Armenian-inhabited villages in Bulanik. Authors of “Msho ashkhar” (The Land of Moush), an editorial published in the periodical Lumá in the 1890s, suggested that in the late-1870s there were 43 total villages in the county. For the years 1871, 1872 and 1873 this figure matches up to the total for villages in Ottoman salnamés placed at 43, 42 and 46, respectively.
A-Do put the number at more than 60, of which 29 (elsewhere in the brochure, 28) were Armenian-inhabited. Philippov reported in the early-1880s that Armenian villages totaled twenty and were quite populous. Mirakhorian identified 26 Armenian villages each having on average about 100 Armenian households. Vital Cuinet, a French geographer, reported in 1891 that with its 135 total localities, Bulanik was second only to the kaza of Moush, which, in his estimation, had 194 localities.
Bensé reported in the late-1890s that the county’s population comprised of Armenians and Kurds, and a few Circassians, all of whom lived in 52 villages. [28] Hakobyan et al. counted 63 villages in the early-1900s, of which 29 (a figure they apparently borrowed from A-Do) were Armenian-inhabited. Martirosian tabulated 28 Armenian villages, wrongly adding Malakhdran, a locality in the kaza of Moush, to the list, which brings the number down to 27.
The Patriarchate listed 30 Armenian villages prior to World War I. Atrpet reported 40 Armenian villages in Bulanik prior to the genocide in 1915, wrongly including twelve localities of adjacent counties in the list, which brings the number down to 28. Of all the figures, Philippov clearly underreported the number of villages containing Armenians, while Cuinet over-reported the total number of villages.
One primary source that offered a household count by village for Bulanik is Mayewski’s demographic study of the vilayets of Van and Bitlis, which covered household counts from either 1890 to 1897 or 1899. As noted by Vahakn Dadrian, in 1894, colonel Mayewski was appointed Russian vice-consul of Van and, following the 1894 – 1896 Hamidian massacres of the Armenians, he compiled a statistical pamphlet, which was published in 1904.
When the Ottoman military obtained a copy of this report, they had it translated into Ottoman Turkish. Referring to the translator’s annotation, Justin McCarthy stated that Russian General Staff major general, Mayewski, studied the provinces of Van and Bitlis while on a diplomatic appointment.
However, recent reports suggest that colonel Mayewski was a Russian General Staff intelligence officer and that it was not until 1916 that he rose to the rank of major general. An even greater controversy surrounds a different brochure, allegedly written by Mayewski in 1916, in which the author places the onus for the Hamidian massacres on the Armenian revolutionaries.
Devoting effort to examining the Turkish and French translations, Dadrian denounced them as possible forgeries by World War I Turkish military intelligence.
Researchers have long debated the controversy that surrounds Mayewski’s statistics in that for someone who, as McCarthy put it, “properly studied, travelled and saw nearly every corner of the provinces of Van and Bitlis,” he appears to have borrowed figures from Ottoman salnamés—the only difference being that by multiplying Armenian households by eight, the author increased the number of the Armenian population by about 40 percent.
For instance, when Mayewski’s figure of 23,326 for Armenian households in the province of Bitlis [36] is multiplied by eight, the resulting total of 186,608 is substantially similar to the 1912 Patriarchate census figure of 180,000 for the same province, not counting the Sghert (Siirt) sandjak. [37] Conversely, the 1914 Ottoman government census placed the Armenian population of the province at 119,132, suggesting that Turkish census-takers either misreported Armenian households or put the population per household at four, which is highly improbable.
The Ottoman figure gets even flimsier when compared to the figure for the province of Bitlis contained in a Russian imperial foreign ministry report. According to this report, in 1910, in two of the four sandjaks alone, namely, Moush and Gench (Genç), there were 94,000 Armenians.
In the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, Bulanik was conquered by Tartar-Mongol and Turkmen tribes. Under the terms of the Turko-Persian treaties of 1555 and 1639, the county was included in the Ottoman Empire.
In the early seventeenth century, Shah Abbas I deported thousands of Bulanik Armenians to Persia. A century later, the Bulanik villages were ravaged during a series of renewed Ottoman-Persian wars. During the 1828 – 1829 Russo-Turkish war, hundreds of Bulanik Armenians, fearing an outbreak of Kurdish violence, followed the Russian retreat and settled in eastern Armenia. Almost completely deserted, the Bulanik villages were repopulated by Armenian settlers from the neighboring counties. A number of former residents of Khlat (Akhlat), Khizan, Mokats (Moks) and Arjesh moved to the villages in the eastern part of Upper Bulanik, while groups of former residents of Bsherik, Sassoun, Khout, Motkan and Taron resettled in the villages in the western part of Upper Bulanik and in almost all the villages of Lower Bulanik.
Comments (1)
Write a comment