Do not give us to the Red Caps! – Armenian runaways from the Ottoman Empire to the region of Salmas in the 1890s

The Hamidian Massacres of the mid-1890s have long been in the shadow of the Armenian Genocide of the First World War, often being understood as the prelude to later developments rather than as an independent subject of study. Still, recent years have seen a large body of new research on the subject. In this vein, a little-known manuscript in the Central Library of the University of Tehran serves as a valuable and still unstudied source for this topic. It contains the interrogation of witnesses to the capture of a number of Armenian refugees in the area of Salmas in the 1890s (who went into hiding after being attacked by a group of Kurdish raiders), as well as of the Armenians themselves. The group numbered ca. 40 people, who fled because of the raids and massacres by the Kurdish tribes, determined to reach safety and to stay and work in Iran. Above all else they did not want to be returned to the Ottomans. The group consisted only of men, as the women were separated from them during a clash with the Kurds.
The present paper contains an analysis of the document and puts it in its historical and stylistic context. This is achieved by comparing it with other Qajar reports on the interrogation, as well as by looking at some other Iranian sources on the period and subject in question. Apart from the obvious subject of the Hamidian Massacres, the manuscript in question is an important source for a number of reasons: far from simply dispelling some of the notions of the Turkish nationalist propaganda regarding the situation of the Ottoman-Iranian frontier, it gives us a glimpse into the official proceedings on the said frontier and the relations between the traditional, local elites and the state authorities in the region. It looks into the question of nationality or subjecthood and state loyalties on the frontier. It also offers a glimpse into the practice of report-writing and recording interrogations in the Qajar period. Finally, it shows Iran’s and Iranian’s approach towards the persecuted minorities of the late Ottoman Empire. This leads to a few observations regarding the perennial problems faced by the refugees and victims of persecution, which are evident from the contents of the analyzed document.