The Agony of a People

Haig Toroyan’s Eyewitness Account of the Armenian Genocide

Zabel Yesayan, Maral Aktokmakyan, Tamar Marie Boyadjian, Arakel Minassian, Maral Aktokmakyan, Tamar Marie Boyadjian

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780755654338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Haig Toroyan's account of his journey from Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir in modern-day southeastern Turkey) along the Euphrates River to Mesopotamia and Iran is a unique and hauntingly detailed account of the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

Recounting first the ominous final months of 1914, Toroyan is employed in Jarabalus by a sympathetic German Army Sergeant, Otto Oehlmann, as his assistant and interpreter, on a mission to transport arms to Iran. Posing as a Syrian Catholic Arab, Toroyan keeps notes on the atrocities he sees being committed against his own people but knows he cannot reveal his true ethnicity. He records the stories of the refugees he meets, as well as the conversations he can have with Turkish soldiers, unaware they are speaking with an Armenian.
In the summer of 1916, Haiyg Toroyan told his story to celebrated Armenian writer Zabel Yessayan, who had herself escaped from the round-up of intellectuals in Istanbul in April 1915. Yessayan published his testimony in 1917 in Western Armenian.

With this translation, Haig Toroyan's testimony, the first full-length eyewitness account of the Armenian Genocide ever published in Armenian in the wake of 1915, is available in English for the first time.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Editor’s Acknowledgments
• Translator’s Preface
• Translating Hokevark or the Untranslatable Life-form
• Between the Lines: Haig Toroyan’s Testimony and the Armenian Genocide
• Note on Transliteration
• Chapter 1: Dikranagerd, November 1914. Economic Boycott. The Burning of the Bazaar. Military Requisitions and Mobilization.
• Introduction by Zabel Yesayan from Original Publication in Korz, February and March 1917, Baku
• Chapter 2: Jarābulus, December 1914 to November 12, 1915. The Condition of the Armenians Until February 1915. The First Signs of Enmity. The Attempt to Massacre 2,000 Armenian Workers. The Incident of the Loggers.
• Chapter 3: The Deportations in Cilicia
• Chapter 4: The Story of a Wealthy Village. The Sight of the Arriving Refugees. The Collapsed Woman. Nighttime Assaults. A Complaint to the Turkish Authorities.
• Chapter 5: An Armenian Mother. Children Are Sold Off. The Role of a Greek Woman.
• Chapter 6: The Distribution of Bread. The First Corpses on the Euphrates. Seventy Children Drowned.
• Chapter 7: Episodes from the Deportations of Armenians from Armenia. Dikranagerd. Mardin. In Resulayn. In Tell Abyad. In Edessa. Arap Pınar.
• Chapter 8: The Plain of Suruç/Suruj Plain (Armenian Cemetery). Jarābulus’s Bazaar. The Image of the Nizib Khan.
• Chapter 9: The Transportation of the Population by Train. Water . . . Water . . . A Woman from Yerznga, and the Deportation of Yerznga. The Story of Chemeshgadzak.
• Chapter 10: The Deported Population on Foot Toward Aleppo. A Bride’s Escape. The Passage of Seventy Armenians from Erzrum (the Deportation of Erzrum).
• Chapter 11: Groups of Armenians Passing through Birecik. Murad, Murad, You Have Fulfilled Our Wishes.
• Chapter 12: Aleppo. Turkish and Armenian Committees for Settling the Deportees. The Behavior of Aleppo’s Armenian Population. The Condition of Aleppo’s Armenian Population. A General Picture. The Passage of the Armenian Intellectuals. Zohrab and Vartkes.
• Chapter 13: The Edessa (Urfa) Resistance. The First Steps of Deportation. The Armenians Are in Revolt. Negotiations. A Turkish Army Besieges the Armenian Quarter. Fifteen Days of Fighting. Edessa Ruined. The Former Situation.
• Chapter 14: A Wedding Among the Kurds. A Temporary Order Concerning the Property of the Exiled Armenians. The Birecik Armenians Convert to Islam, yet Are Still Deported. The Words of a Turkish Soldier from Marash.
• Chapter 15: The Turks’ Suspicious Attitude Toward Me and the Other Local Armenians. Jarābulus’s the German Hospital at Jarābulus. Captain Otto Oehlmann, a German Officer. My Departure.
• Chapter 16: Meskene. The Teacher. Toward Raqqa.
• Chapter 17: Raqqa. The Armenian Cemetery. The Sight of the People Gone Mad in the Field. The State of the Exiles on the Left Bank in Raqqa. The Burial of a Girl.
• Chapter 18: Toward Deir ez-Zor. Marash’s Armenian Villagers. The Image of the Population on the Banks of the Euphrates. A Second Meeting with a Group of Armenian Exiles.
• Chapter 19: Deir ez-Zor. Meeting with the Colonel. The Market. A Girl from Mezere. Before the Pharmacy.
• Chapter 20: Toward Anē. Anē. An Old Man Loses Consciousness. The Market.
• Chapter 21: Toward Hadise. Hadise. The Price of Freeing an Armenian Girl.
• Chapter 22: Hīt. The Students of Aintab’s Seminary. The Market. An Armenian Girl Is Requested from Baghdad.
• Chapter 23: Ramadi. 300 Armenians from Zeytun in a Cave. The Conduct of an Arab Baker. Fallujah. The Story of a Wealthy Armenian Family.
• Chapter 24: Baghdad. Forty-nine Armenians Are Deported. The Gallows. The Armenians’ Situation. The German Consul’s Resistance. The Words of Halil Pasha.
• Chapter 25: Toward Persia. The Arabs Steal Two Trunks of Weapons. We Cross the Border. The German Officer Takes to Illness. He Goes Mad. Toward Kermanshah. The German Officer Commits Suicide. The Russians Capture Kermanshah, and I Go to the Caucasus.
• Chapter 26: Afterword: Testimony and Authorship: Zabel Yesayan’s The Agony of a People
• Index