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Musa Dagh defense
Part of the Armenian genocide
Map of the Musa Dagh Armenian Self-Defense.
Date July 21 – September 12, 1915 (1 month, 3 weeks and 1 day) Location Ottoman Empire Result Armenian victory Successful Armenian resistance Eventual rescue of Armenians by the French navy
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire	Armenians
Commanders and leaders
Captain Rifaat Bey	Reverend Dikran Antreassian Yesayi Yakhubian Yesayi Aprahamian Nerses Kazandjian Movses Ter-Kalutsian
Strength
19,000 (4,000 regular troops and 15,000 fighters)	600 fighters 4,000 Armenian Civilians
Casualties and losses
Unknown	18 fighters killed 12 injured

Musa Dagh (Turkish: Musa Dağı; Armenian: Մուսա լեռ, romanized: Musa leṛ; Arabic: جبل موسى, romanized: Jebel Musa; meaning "Moses Mountain") is a mountain in the Hatay Province of Turkey. In 1915, it was the location of a successful Armenian resistance to the Armenian genocide, an event that inspired Franz Werfel to write the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

History

The deportation orders of the Armenian population of modern-day Turkey, issued by the Ottoman government, in July 1915 reached the six Armenian villages of the Musa Dagh region: Kabusia (Kaboussieh), Yoghunoluk, Bitias, Vakef, Kheter Bey (Khodr Bey) and Haji Habibli. As Ottoman Turkish forces converged upon the town, the populace, aware of the impending danger, refused deportation and fell back upon Musa mountain, thwarting assaults for fifty-three days, from July to September 1915. One of the leaders of the revolt was Movses Der Kalousdian, whose Armenian first name was the same as that of the mountain. French warships of the 3rd Squadron in the Mediterranean under command of Vice Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet, sighted the survivors just as ammunition and food provisions were running out. Five French ships, beginning with the protected cruiser Guichen, under the command of Captain Jean-Joseph Brisson, evacuated 3,004 women and children and over 1,000 men from Musa Dagh to safety in Port Said. The other French ships were the seaplane carrier Foudre, the protected cruiser D'Estrées, and the armored cruisers Amiral Charner and Dupleix.

Starting in 1918, when the Sanjak of Alexandretta came under French control, the population of the six Armenian villages returned to their homes. In 1932, a monument was erected at the top of the mountain to commemorate the event.

The mountain was in Aleppo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire, until after World War I, when the French took possession and put it in Sanjak of Alexandretta, Mandate of Syria.

On 29 June 1939, following an agreement between France and Turkey, the province was given to Turkey. Afterwards Armenians from six of the villages emigrated from Hatay Province, while some of the residents of Vakıflı village chose to stay. Vakıflı is the only remaining ethnic Armenian village in Turkey, with a population of 140 Turkish-Armenians. Most who left Hatay in 1939 emigrated to Lebanon where they resettled in the town of Anjar. Today, the town of Anjar is divided into six districts, each commemorating one of the villages of Musa Dagh.

As the French squads came to the rescue of the survivors, the chief priest is quoted as having said, "The evil only happened... to enable God to show us His goodness." This event was depicted in The Promise , a 2016 American epic historical drama film directed by Terry George and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale, set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

These historical events later inspired Franz Werfel to write his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a fictionalized account based on his detailed research of historical sources. Werfel told reporters: "The struggle of 5,000 people on Musa Dagh had so fascinated me that I wished to aid the Armenian people by writing about it and bringing it to the world". A movie of the same name was released in 1982. Six years after the novel was published, when Nazi Germany started conquering Europe, the copies of “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” spread widely among young adults, some of whom found themselves in circumstances similar to those faced by Armenians. The book was popular in Warsaw ghetto and Vilna ghetto and when the Jewish resisters decided to fight back in the Bialystok ghetto, they spoke of the ghetto’s “Musa Dagh” moment at the planning meeting.

An eyewitness account from the Deir-az-Zur Region in Syria was provided by a Turkish officer, a Jewish Ashkenazy settler from the First Aliya, born in Rishon Letzion, Eitan Belkind.

Gallery

• Armenian combatants in Musa Dagh
• A French warship embarks Armenian refugees from Musa Dagh in September 1915.
• Location of the Armenian camp during the resistance.
• The remains of the monument near the top of Musa Dagh in memory of the French warships that rescued the Armenian people on 12 September 1915. Picture taken on 12 September 2015, the 100th anniversary of the rescue.
• French magazine Le Miroir [fr], 24 October 1915
• The French warship Guichen, pictured above, participated along with several cruisers in the rescue of some 4,000 Armenians who had taken shelter on Musa Dagh.

See also

• Armenia–France relations
• The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
• Vakıflı
• The Promise, a 2016 film climaxing around the events of 1915 on Musa Dagh
• Kessab

References

1. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response By Peter Balakian, p. 210
2. Adalian, Rouben (2010). Historical Dictionary of Armenia. Scarecrow Press. p. 449. ISBN 9780810874503.
3. New Outlook, Vol. 111, edited by Alfred Emanuel Smith, p. 800
4. Richard G. Hovannisian : Remembrance and denial: the case of the Armenian genocide – p. 161
5. Resistance and revenge: the Armenian assassination of the Turkish leaders ... By Jacques Derogy p. 22
6. Franz Werfel: an Austrian writer reassessed – by Lothar Huber, p. 176
7. The great war for civilisation: the conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk.
8. The Christian minorities in Turkey – Wilhelm Baum, p. 92.
9. The new presence by Nadace M.J. Stránského, p.14.
10. Le Contre-Amiral Darrieus, Commandant la 2e Division et p. i. la 3e Escadre de la Méditerranée, à M. Victor Augagneur, Ministre de la Marine (22 septembre 1915).
11. "La Reconnaissance Armenienne" in l'Illustration p. xxIi, 29 October 1932.
12. Başlangıç, Celal (29 July 2002). "Musa'dan notlar" (in Turkish). Radikal. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 22 February 2007.
13. Kalkan, Ersin (31 July 2005). "Türkiye'nin tek Ermeni köyü Vakıflı" (in Turkish). Hürriyet. Retrieved 22 February 2007.
14. Campbell, Verity (2007). Turkey. Lonely Planet. p. 438. ISBN 978-1741045567. Vakifli.
15. Franz Werfel, the faith of an exile: from Prague to Beverly Hills By Lionel Steiman, p. 86
16. Zhang, Yicheng (19 March 2020). "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh – Genocide, Resistance, and Revelations for Today". The Yale Review of International Studies. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
17. Bobelian, Michael (2009). Children of Armenia: a forgotten genocide and the century-long struggle for justice. Simon and Schuster. p. 83. ISBN 9781416558354.
18. "Forty Days of Musa Dagh". IMDb.
19. Lebovic, Matt. "How Armenia's 1915 'Musa Dagh' fighters inspired Jews to resist Nazi genocide". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
20. Belkind, Eitan, This is How it Was, 1972, reference in Hebrew Rishon Letzion City Archives https://gen.rlzm.co.il/persons/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%9C%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%93/

Further reading

• Cohen, Raya (2017). "Musa Dagh". In Dan Diner (ed.). Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture Online. Brill Online.
• Sensenig-Dabbous, Eugene (2016). "The Musa Dagh History Hike: Truth-Telling, Dialogue and Thanatourism". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 229–242. ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
• Varnava, Andrekos (Flinders University/DeMontfort University); Trevor Harris (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) (2018). "'It is quite impossible to receive them': Saving the Musa Dagh Refugees and the Imperialism of European Humanitarianism". The Journal of Modern History. 90 (4). University of Chicago Press: 834–862. doi:10.1086/700215. S2CID 149636135.

External links

• Official Website
• Home of All Musa Daghians & Anjarians
• Armenian National Institute entry on Musa Dagh

36°15′30″N 35°54′13″E / 36.25833°N 35.90361°E / 36.25833; 35.90361

• Armenian resistance during the Armenian genocide
• History of Hatay Province
• Former Armenian inhabited settlements