1915 – French soldiers rescue over 4,000 Armenian Genocide survivors stranded on Musa Dagh.
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց ցեղասպանություն,[note 3] Hayots tseghaspanutyun), also known as the Armenian Holocaust,[6] was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians,[note 2] mostly Ottoman citizens within the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey.[7][8] The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople to the region of Ankara, the majority of whom were eventually murdered. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases—the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.[9] Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups, such as the Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks, were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government in the Assyrian genocide and the Greek genocide, and their treatment is considered by some historians to be part of the same genocidal policy.[10][11] Most Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.[12]
Raphael Lemkin was explicitly moved by the annihilation of Armenians to define systematic and premeditated exterminations within legal parameters and to coin the word genocide in 1943.[13] The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides,[14][15][16] because scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out in order to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.[17]
Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, repudiates the word genocide as an accurate term for the mass killings of Armenians that began under Ottoman rule in 1915. In recent years it has been faced with repeated calls to recognize them as genocide.[18] To date, 29 countries and 47 U.S. states have officially recognized the mass killings as genocide, as have most genocide scholars and historians.[19][20][21]
Musa Dagh (Turkish: Musa Dağı; Armenian: Մուսա լեռ, Musa leṛ;[2] Arabic: جبل موسى 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 of the Armenian population of current Turkey, ordered by the Ottoman Empire, 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.[3] 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.[4][5] One of the leaders of the revolt was Movses Der Kalousdian, whose Armenian first name was the same as that of the mountain. Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean under command of Louis Dartige du Fournet, sighted the survivors, just as ammunition and food provisions were running out.[6] French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh to safety in Port Said.[7][8][9] 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.[10]
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, while some of the residents of Vakıflı village chose to stay.[11] Vakıflı is the only remaining ethnic Armenian village in Turkey,[12][13] with a population only 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 remaining survivors, the chief priest was quoted to say: “The evil only happened … to enable God to show us His goodness.”[14] This event was depicted in the 2016 movie The Promise.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
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.
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.[citation needed] 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”.[15] A movie of the same name was released in 1982.[16]
1590 – María de Zayas, Spanish writer (d. 1661)
María de Zayas y Sotomayor (September 12, 1590 – 1661) wrote during Spain’s Golden Age of literature. She is considered by a number of modern critics as one of the pioneers of modern literary feminism, while others consider her simply a well-accomplished baroque author. The female characters in de Zayas’ stories were used as vehicles to enlighten readers about the plight of women in Spanish society, or to instruct them in proper ways to live their lives.
Biography
Born in Madrid, de Zayas was the daughter of infantry captain Fernando de Zayas y Sotomayor and María Catalina de Barrasa. Her baptism was known to have taken place in the church of San Sebastian on September 12, 1590, and given the fact that most of Spain’s well-to-do families baptized their infants days after birth, it may be deduced that de Zayas was born days before this date. So very little is known about her life that it is not even certain whether she was single or married during the time she wrote. What is known is that she was fortunate to belong to the aristocracy of Madrid, because despite earning the low salary typical of writers at the time, she lived well. In 1637, de Zayas published her first collection of novellas, Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (The Enchantments of Love) in Zaragoza, and ten years later, her second collection, Desengaños Amorosos (The Disenchantments of Love), was published. De Zayas also composed a play, La traicion en la Amistad, (Friendship Betrayed) as well as several poems. The author enjoyed the respect and admiration of some of the best male writers of her day. Among her many admirers were Lope de Vega,[1] who dedicated some of his poetry to her, and Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, who named her the “Sibila de Madrid,” (Sibyl of Madrid). Despite the enduring popularity of her works during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nineteenth-century saw her works censured for their perceived vulgarity. As a result, they faded into obscurity, and would remain obscure until the late twentieth century. The exact day of her death remains a mystery. Death certificates bearing the name María de Zayas have been found in both 1661 and 1669, yet neither seems to belong to her.
The only physical description of de Zayas, which is likely made in jest, comes from Francesc Fontanella in his Vejámenes:
(English)
Madame Maria de Zayas
She lived with a manly face,
what great skirt she had,
mustaches spinning high.
She resembled a gentleman,
But, I have just come to discover
that she poorly hides a sword,
underneath the feminine skirts.
In the third décima
she was an unhappy commentator
for she has such a bad third
how quickly she wants to get
in order to award her good desires
of a farthingale’s ?
shall have a heathen crown.
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