Note 22 — Chapter XXIV · STATISTICAL AND POLITICAL

On the tableland of Armenia such relations between the Kurds and the Armenians are altogether unknown. Their existence in one form or another among the inaccessible retreats of Kurdistan provided material for the revolutionary propaganda of the agitator, Damadean, whose early doings in the Sasun region I have chronicled in my chapter on Bitlis, and who presents a striking and almost legendary figure even in the sober narrative of the Blue-books.22 This man and his successor Boyajean knew full well that there in Sasun they were breaking virgin ground. They were further encouraged by the fact that the Armenian peasantry of that region were in possession of arms and knew how to use them. The result of their efforts and of the ill-advised action of the local authorities was the Sasun massacre of 1894. It was followed by the massacres of 1895, which devastated the country districts and most of the great towns of the Armenian tableland, but of which the principal and new feature was the occurrence of such tragedies among the Armenian communities spread over the face of the Ottoman Empire.