The 1909 massacres of Armenians in Adana

'In the Ruins: The 1909 Massacres of Armenians in Adana' by Zabel Yessayan (AIWA, $20, 262 pages)

In the spring of 1909, Zabel Yessayan journeyed from Istanbul to Adana, after the massacre of up to 30,000 Armenians around the Mediterranean city. She was part of a group sent by the Armenian Patriarchate, assigned to survey conditions after the killings and provide assistance to orphans and refugees. Born in Istanbul, the 31-year-old Yessayan had also lived in Paris, where she published articles, stories and translations. But her experiences around Adana far exceeded anything she had seen before.

"Among the Ruins" was published on her return to Istanbul in 1911. It is a vivid testimony full of gruesome details, depicting the hellscape that Armenian districts had become and the trauma endured by the locals. "Our race's veins had been slashed open once again, and our blood, still pulsing with joy over our newfound freedom, had been spilled once again on soil fertilized by our sweat," she writes.

The massacres occurred in 1909, in the weeks after a countercoup in Istanbul saw Sultan Abdülhamit II returned to power. The sultan's authority had been seized the previous year by the Young Turks, a cadre of young military officers who pledged to restore the constitution and protect the rights of all Ottoman subjects. The Christian-minority Armenians generally supported the coup against the paranoid sultan, who had inspired earlier pogroms against Ottoman Armenians. When Abdülhamit wrested back control from the Young Turks, he again mobilized popular support by identifying himself with the historically Islamic character of the state, promising to eliminate secular policies and restore the sharia. This precipitated a new wave of anti-Armenian raids in...