Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian 9781503609150

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p r a i s e f o r Feast of Ashes “Feast of Ashes is a passionate journey of discovery, an exemplary work of craft and design history, and a powerful narrative of the meaning of family identity. An extraordinary book— I loved it." —Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road “Feast of Ashes is a lovingly crafted account of family, loss, and home. Chronicling the last century’s unresolved tragedies and injustices on a most personal level, Sato Moughalian forces us to acknowledge what these events have truly cost us all—a necessary insistence, if we ever hope to be free of the grievous mistakes we too oft repeat.” —Alia Malek, author of The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria “Feast of Ashes is an exceptional story of Armenian artisanship and one of its luminaries, David Ohannessian. As told by his granddaughter, Sato Moughalian, the tumultuous events at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the lasting legacy of Armenian ceramics unfold through her family history.” —Dickran Kouymjian, author of The Arts of Armenia "A hundred years after David Ohannessian brought the art of Armenian ceramics to Jerusalem, his creations still glint from the walls of buildings and in cabinets there—and still testify to his singular talents, his mastery of a time-honored tradition, and his admirably stubborn belief in the possibility that beauty might emerge even out of terrible suffering. With love, care, and an attention to detail as exacting as his own, Sato Moughalian offers a moving tribute to her grandfather and his radiant handiwork." —Adina Hoffman, author of Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City "Sato Moughalian embarks on a sweeping journey from the Armenian Genocide to the present day to tell the story of how her grandfather became a master ceramist. Feast of Ashes is a compelling, brilliant work, revealing how one survivor of that infamous crime honored Armenian culture and created glorious art." —David Scheffer, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, author of All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals “Sato Moughalian is a born storyteller. Her account of the remarkable life of her grandfather, the Armenian ceramicist and tile-maker David Ohannessian, should be read by artists, by historians of the Middle East and, above all, by anyone sensitive to the power of the human spirit to make great art in the face of persecution, migration, and exile.” —Tanya Harrod, coeditor of The Journal of Modern Craft

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Feast of Ashes

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FEAST of ASHES The Life and Art of David Ohannessian S ato Mough alian

r e dwo o d p r e ss  Stanford, California

Sta nfo r d U ni v er si ty Press Stanford, California © 2019 by Sato Moughalian. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Research support for this book has been provided by the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation.

The Hegardt Foundation, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University also provided support for this project. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Moughalian, Sato, author. Title: Feast of ashes : the life and art of David Ohannessian / Sato Moughalian. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054412 (print) | LCCN 2018056316 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503609150 (electronic) | ISBN 9781503601932 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ohannessian, David, 1884–1953. | Potters—Jerusalem— Biography. | Armenian massacres survivors—Jerusalem—Biography. | World War, 1914–1918—Deportations from Turkey—Biography. | Pottery, Armenian—Jerusalem—20th century. | Ceramic tiles—Jerusalem— History—20th century. Classification: LCC NK4210.O395 (ebook) | LCC NK4210.O395 M68 2019 (print) | DDC 738.092 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054412 Text design by Kevin Barrett Kane Typeset at Stanford University Press in 9.5/14 Cover design by Kevin Barrett Kane Cover Images: (Portrait) David Ohannessian at work, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, Jerusalem 1930s. Ohannessian Family Collection. (Tiles) Detail of a tiled fountain niche by David Ohannessian for the Palestine Archaeological Museum (currently, Rockefeller Museum), Jerusalem, c. 1933–34. Photo by Orhan Kolukısa. Endpaper images: Handwritten glaze formulas for tiles created for the Palestine Archaeological Museum (currently, Rockefeller Museum), Jerusalem, overlaid on original stencil patterns. From the papers of David Ohannessian, Ohannessian Family Collection.

To the memory of Tavit and Victoria Ohannessian and their beloved children Sirarpi, Vahé, Ohannes, Mary, Hermine, Pheme, and Garo

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Contents

List of Illustrations Author’s Note

Prelude. The Search

xi xv

1

Chapter 1. Mouradchai: The Armenian Village

15

Chapter 2. Eskishehir: The Engagement

27

Chapter 3. Constantinople and the Art of Kutahya

47

Chapter 4. Kutahya: Princes, Sheikhs, and a Baronet

71

Chapter 5. Exile

105

Chapter 6. In the Mountains, Aleppo, and Meskene

129

Chapter 7. Jerusalem I: The Haven

149

Chapter 8. Jerusalem II: The Feast

189

Chapter 9. The Scattering

229

Postlude. The Return

261

Acknowledgments A p p e n d i x e s A. Buildings Decorated with Kütahya Tiles B. Architectural Tile Works from the Dome of the Rock Tiles Studio C. Correspondence and Reports of the Geological Adviser to the Mandatory Government of Palestine Notes Selected Readings Photo Credits Index

291 299 303 307 313 355 361 367

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List of Illustrations

B l ac k - an d- White Interior of a khan in Tarsus  28 Eskishehir meerschaum workshop  30 Victoria Shahbazian, ca. 1905  45 Yeni Cami and Eminonu Bazaar, Constantinople  50 Balkan émigrés in Stamboul   52 View of Kutahya  54 Kutahya street scene  56 Tombeau de Sultan Suleiman, Constantinople  65 Card of Çiniçi Mehmet Emin  66 Kutahya Government House  69 Ohannessian’s letterhead, Société Ottomane de Faïence  70 Throne Room, Dolmabahçe Palace  73 Holy Trinity Armenian Church, Eskishehir  75 Cuerda seca tiles in the thirteenth-century Karatay Madrassa, Konya  82 Green Dome of the Mevlevihane, Konya  84 Ceramics display by Minassian and Ohannessian, 1909 Brussa Trade Fair  86 Annuaire Oriental Edition (1913), an Ottoman trade directory  87 Sirarpi Ohannessian, 1912  91 Tiled fireplace, Sultan’s Pavilion, Yeni Cami  98 Deported Armenian mother and child  130 Armenian deportees in a tent camp  135 Armenian refugees, Aleppo  137 Armenian refugees outside Convent of St. James  150 Interior of St. James Armenian Cathedral  153 Ohannessian’s 1919 sketch of the Haram kiln  163 xi

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Dome of the Rock tiling, detail  166 Drying pottery on the terrace of the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio  174 Citadel Gardens bench, Ohannessian tile panel  176 Hebron blown glass made in the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop  178 Dome of the Rock Tiles card  179 Drawing designs on pottery, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio  181 Ohannessian supervising apprentice painters  182 Ronald Storrs with Ohannessian’s Dome of the Rock ceramic model  183 Ohannessian and apprentices in Dome of the Rock Tiles studio  184 Araradian band, Jerusalem  185 American Colony entryway, Ohannessian tile panel  190 Ohannessian family, Jerusalem, 1923  194 Stencil pattern, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio  195 Dome of the Rock Tiles ceramics  196 Ohannessian at work, ca. 1930s  201 Victoria and Hermine Ohannessian, 1925  204 Ohannessian family, Jerusalem, 1925  205 Archbishop Mesrop Neshanian at Memorial Altar, St. Saviour, Jerusalem  211 Fimi and friend in folk-dance costumes, ca. 1932  216 Ohannessian tiled mihrab, “Dabbagh” Mosque, Beirut  218 Vahé Ohannessian, Chicago World’s Fair ID, 1933  220 Vahé Ohannessian inside the kiln, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, 1937  221 Tavit Ohannessian painting pottery, ca. 1940  226 Tavit escorting Mary, with Hermine and Fimi, 1945  231 Vahé Ohannessian and Mary Burns, wedding day, 1948  235 Wedding portrait of Mara and Ohannes Ohannessian, 1949  245 Fimi Ohannessian  249 Tavit Ohannessian, ca. 1952  256 Stencil pattern, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio  258 Detail of 1849 cizye tax record, Mouradja  270 Ruin of the Armenian School, Kutahya, 1914  272 Dome of the Rock Tiles envelope  281 Altar, Bethlehem Chapel, Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church, Brooklyn  287

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xiii

C ol or P l at e s Kutahya  (following page 116) Kutahya Government House masjid, tiled mihrab Ewer, Kutahya Plate, Kutahya Kutahya biblical tiles, Etchmiadzin Chapel, St. James Cathedral Classical tile patterns Kutahya window tiles, Constantinople Land Registry Office Kutahya window tiles, Grand Post Office, Sirkeci Kutahya façade tiles, Hobyar Masjid, Istanbul Tomb of Sultan Mehmet Reshad V, Kutahya tiles Bottle, stamped “Hilmi,” Kutahya Kutahya commemorative plate, 1908 Revolution Walter Brierley plan of Turkish bath cooling room, Sledmere House Sledmere House, “Turkish Room” Manial Palace entryway, Cairo Ohannessian working sketch for architect Garo Balyan, Cairo Jerusalem  (following page 228) Arabic-inscribed tile, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio Portrait of David Ohannessian, Jerusalem, 1920s Ohannessian tiled Via Dolorosa street sign Ohannessian Dome of the Rock ceramic model for wedding of Princess Mary Tiled panel by David Ohannessian, American Colony Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, five samples Ohannessian tiled fountain, St. Andrew's Church Stencil pattern, Austen St. Barbe Harrison Elephant tile, David Ohannessian, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio Ohannessian tiled wall for khan of St. John Ophthalmic Hospital Ohannessian architectural tiling, Villa Harun al-Rashid Ohannessian architectural tiling, Araj Apartment House Ohannessian architectural tiling, Villa Gelat Tiled fireplace for Government House, Jerusalem

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Ohannessian’s inscription tile, Altar of St. Saviour Detail of tiled entryway for British and Foreign Bible Society Ohannessian tiled fountain niche for Palestine Archaeological Museum Detail of Ohannessian tiled fountain niche for Palestine Archaeological Museum Ruin of an Armenian house, Mouradchai, Turkey Ruin of Sourp Asdvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God), Mouradchai, Turkey

Author’s Note

Feast of Ashes is the story of my maternal grandfather, David Ohannessian, who mastered the art of ceramic making in Kütahya, in Ottoman Turkey, in the years before the First World War. During the Armenian Genocide, he narrowly escaped a death sentence and, with his wife and young children, survived deportation to Syria. In 1919, he founded the art of Armenian pottery in Jerusalem, a luminous and iconic tradition that continues to thrive today. This account of his life is set against scenes of the tumultuous times and places in which Ohannessian lived and worked. In researching and writing this narrative, I relied heavily on my mother’s 1992 transcriptions of family oral histories and the invaluable collection of photographs, letters, notebooks, memoirs, and other documents safeguarded by Ohannessian’s seven children and sixteen grandchildren, as well as my own recollections of the anecdotes, characters, and emotions related to me so vividly by my mother and her siblings. I made use of published interviews with David Ohannessian as well as Arshag Alboyadjian’s memory book of the Armenians of Kütahya, for which my grandfather was a named source. Additionally, I conducted more than one hundred interviews with cousins, my brother, David, my uncle Hovhaness Donabedian, and others who had known David and Victoria Ohannessian, had worked in or were descendants of those who had worked in the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio in Jerusalem. Archives and libraries in Istanbul, Konya, Ankara, Kütahya, Jerusalem, Hull, Kew, Cambridge, Cairo, Paris, Yerevan, Tarrytown, New York City, and Washington, D.C., also yielded a wealth of material that corroborated and enriched my understanding of our family’s past. A note about place names and other terms: In the Prelude and Postlude I employ current spellings. But I’ve attempted to preserve something of the diction and cadence of our family’s surviving oral heritage in the nine biographical chapters, which are framed within the times in which the events they describe xv

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

take place. Where the Ohannessian family used several closely related placename variants in written records, I selected, for the biographical chapters, the one nearest to the modern version, for example, Kutahya, rather than Keotahia, Kutahia, or Goodina; Eskishehir instead of Eski-Chéhir; Brussa for Bursa. Tavit, the Armenian equivalent of David, is pronounced “Tah-veet.”

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P re lude

The Search

“ Every person has a story, ” said my mother in her lilting half-British, halfArmenian accent. “It’s just a matter of listening and coaxing out the heart of it.” But at the prickly age of thirteen, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and often found her fondness for this kind of lyrical rhapsodizing most annoying. She was trying to explain something she had heard in her college writing class that day, something that resonated strongly with her. She sighed, puffing out her plump cheeks, and pushed her glasses up on her narrow nose before turning back to the textbooks sprawled all over the table. This was the nightly scene of my 1970s adolescence in our small barn-red, white-trimmed house in the leafy New York City suburb of Highland Park, New Jersey. Both of my parents were attempting to replace educational credentials they had lost in their flight to the United States from the Middle East. Each evening, after an early dinner of cumin-scented beef or green bean stew, cooked in the way my mother had learned during her Jerusalem girlhood, my father would withdraw to his paper-crammed study on the ground floor to prepare for his next engineering exam at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. At my mother’s insistence, my parents had scraped together the down payment to buy that little house in 1963, just a few years after fleeing Alexandria and the burgeoning nationalism led by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. “Egypt for the Arabs!” was the slogan they’d heard shouted in the streets of Alexandria as the 1950s ended. As my mother and father watched 1

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their Jewish and fellow Armenian Christian friends quietly disappear from their workplaces and homes, they realized that the time of relative safety had already run out. They used the little savings they had to purchase black-market Egyptian exit visas and prepared to leave with me, their baby daughter, in tow—all of us beneficiaries of an American immigration system that favored educated, English-speaking people trained in needed professions. An engineering job, arranged by a relative, awaited my father in the States. An Egyptian lawyer they knew offered to bring their small valuables—inherited jewelry and some gold—to the airport and deliver them just before the flight so that they could avoid suspicion as they passed through the exit interview. He never showed. Arto and Pheme Ohannessian Moughalian climbed the stairs and entered the plane with me in their arms and $140 in my father’s pocket. Their meager possessions, packed into a few shallow wooden crates, were stowed in the cargo hold below. Once they were seated, Pheme wept, at the loss of her gold crucifixes and bracelets—handmade by her great-grandfather—and for the even greater bereavement of leaving behind every place she had ever known and loved. As the airplane taxied on the runway, my mother crossed herself, as she always did when beginning a journey. In our living room, a white-painted brick fireplace faced the front door. On the mantel, high above the reach of a child’s hands, stood a lustrous pottery vase, about ten inches tall, covered with a vibrant cobalt blue glaze. Even in winter dusk, light bounded from its faintly dimpled curves. Large floral medallions in green and white filled the field, with stylized red carnations laced between them. Feathery leaves traced graceful arcs around the flowers. Turquoise and white diamond figures circled the neck of the vase, strung together with tiny knots of red glaze that piled up in relief. We never ever put flowers in the vase, and from that I learned that sometimes objects exist just to be admired. On the rare occasions my mother took it down, and the rarer occasions still when I was allowed to hold it, I was always surprised by its heft. The glassy surface stayed cool to the touch. I ran my hand along the inside and traced the smoothed imprints of fingers, which had left furrows in the clay as the vase was shaped on the potter’s wheel. “Your grandfather made that,” my mother said. David Ohannessian, her father—Baba, she called him. This was as close as I would come to touching my grandfather’s hand. I had never met him; he

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died before I was born. But this vase, with its elegant form and dancing flowers, which had emerged so many years earlier from the ashes of a far-off kiln, survived my mother’s journeys, from her native Jerusalem to Damascus, Cairo, Beirut, Alexandria, and finally America. It was always present and watched over us. Brooding, threadbare carpets with tribal icons in shadowy reds and blues covered our wooden floors. An antique mahogany and ivory-keyed upright piano, given to us by the aptly named Miss Goodhart, an elderly librarian friend, commanded one wall. In the Middle East, a piano in the living room was a sign that a family valued culture, especially European culture. In our case, in America, the piano’s very bulk and ungainliness was a signifier that neither it nor we were going anywhere anytime soon. Most evenings, I knew I had to leave my parents to their separate silences and went upstairs to my own room. Like my mother, I loved to read. I had decorated the inside of my bedroom closet with deep brown corkboard and haremed up the space with an Indian print bedspread swathed around the clothes pole in a hippie version of a desert tent. A reading lamp and pillow were everything I needed for the hours of solitude I spent inside. Books were our family’s common ground. Books bound us together, surrounded us in every room. Books provided a limitless escape from the confines of our daily lives. Highland Park was, in those years, a town of fourteen thousand people who prided themselves on never voting down a school-tax increase. My parents, following the well-trod path of many immigrants before them, had searched for a place with a superior public school system even if it meant a long commute to the copper factory where my father worked. We didn’t know anyone who lived there, and there was no Armenian community nearby, but the lure of good schools and Rutgers University just across the Raritan River was enough. We soon learned that the town was filled with arts-loving citizens, many of them immigrants themselves, whose primary concern was for their children to enter respected professions. Law and medicine topped the list. Our teachers always directed us with focus and enthusiasm. For example, Mrs. Fisher, my recorder teacher during the first grade, began each of our private lessons by supervising a thorough handwashing, then proceeded to teach me how to play and read music. Three years later, after a schoolwide music aptitude test, the band director called our home at

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dinnertime. My mother answered. “He says you should take up a woodwind instrument,” she relayed. “Ok,” I replied, quickly calculating the earlier wakeup time for morning band practice, and the lengthy walk to school. “What’s the lightest instrument to carry?” I asked. “He says it’s the flute.” “Tell him I’ll play the flute.” Among my friends, who were mostly artsy and theatrical types, there were many Jewish students. I enjoyed hearing about Bar and Bat Mitzvah classes, the Feast of Lights, the Day of Atonement, and briefly contemplated trying to convert from my solitary and somewhat theoretical Armenian Orthodox Christianity to the warmer traditions of Judaism that surrounded me in Highland Park. My Jewish friends felt a sense of connectedness in following the same rituals their parents and grandparents had observed. The joyous ceremonies of initiation were so clearly laid out, as were the lively parties that followed them. Some students traveled to Israel in the summers to work on a kibbutz or attend an intensive Hebrew-language program. They would return with souvenirs: a handmade Hanukkah menorah or a small piece of pottery with a graceful flower design. We studied the Holocaust in school. Every few years there was a screening of Night and Fog, the 1955 French film—one of the first documentaries to show extensive footage of the concentration camps. My mother explained that there had been terrible Armenian massacres with huge deportations as well. But she rarely spoke of it at any length; she was choked by anger and sadness whenever the subject came up. Years afterward, I read that as many as one and a half million Armenians had been slaughtered or forcibly marched from the regions they had historically inhabited in the Ottoman Empire, only to die of starvation or disease in the Syrian desert between 1915 and 1917. As a young child, though, I had only the vaguest understanding that my own family had been swept up in these catastrophic events. At my Jewish friends’ homes, on their parents’ bookshelves, certain titles consistently appeared: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, QB VII, Judgment at Nuremberg, Night, Inside the Third Reich, Treblinka. At twelve or thirteen, I started compulsively borrowing these books from the library. As I read them, I often felt a familiar surge of terror but didn’t understand why. I tried to speak to friends and their parents about the nearly incomprehensible acts the books described. All they would concede was that an uncle had perished, or that a parent or

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sister had survived. A few even bore tattooed numbers—usually concealed, but sometimes visible in an unguarded moment. The books were right there, bursting with answers, but no one, I discovered, wanted to talk about his own relationship to the subject. During those years of focused reading in the 1970s, I also began to notice a ghastly wasting disease in a few of my schoolmates, often after their parents’ divorce or some other major rupture. First, they would pick at their food and grow thinner. Then they would become distracted. Skin wizened, bony outlines emerged. Tufts of fine down appeared on their cheeks and arms. Usually, hospitalization followed. We learned that this illness was something called anorexia nervosa. Years later I wondered: were these young women suffering only because of traumas in their own lives, or were they showing a kind of unconscious loyalty to the anguish of their ancestors? Why in a time of such relative ease and plenty would they set themselves on the road to death? Neither of my parents was very tall. At my full-grown height of five feet four inches, I towered over them both. My mother had copper-colored hair, which faded but persisted in its redness over the years. Her natural condition was roundedness. “We Ohannessians tend to put on weight,” she would say, with a matter-of-fact cheerfulness in that otherwise gamine-obsessed era. My father had wiry black hair, a protruding nose, spoke hesitatingly and much less often than my mother, with her rapid and highly inflected staccato. He had learned a total of seven languages in his native port city of Alexandria, but spun his sentences very slowly, punctuating them with uhs. He cleared his throat or rubbed his knees to gain time. He had a lifelong passion for the pure sciences and achieved a kind of ecstatic oblivion while immersed in a theoretical physics book. Once, he dutifully escorted my American-born, baseball-loving brother, David, to an Old-Timers’ Day game at Yankee Stadium. Thirty-five thousand fans thundered to their feet and roared cheers when Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Phil Rizzuto strode onto the field. The nine-year-old boy glanced down at his seated father, deep in the throes of quantum mechanics. My mother’s superb cooking and hospitality took flight at holiday times with skewers of marinated lamb kebabs grilled with herbed onions, peppers, and tomatoes, garlicky yogurt salads, butter crescent cookies, crispy cheesefilled phyllo triangles, raisined pilafs, cumin-scented ground beef kuftes, stuffed

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grape leaves, and lemony charred eggplant dips that bit the tongue. We were banished from her kitchen as the house filled with aromas that brought on ravenous appetites and later in the day, waves of laughter during lively conversations. She would take the seat at the head of the table, my father next to her. Mmm! she would cry out after her first bite, which always came before the guests had even finished passing around the dishes of food. “This is delicious!” The cuisine was alluringly exotic and also a redeeming counterpoint to our ordinary condition of “otherness.” On quieter nights, my mother’s buoyant exuberance might deflate into a kind of bleak despair. As I was growing up in that little house, I occasionally witnessed my parents lose their grounding in the everyday world. They sometimes burst into a rope-veined agitation, seized by some specter of unutterable grief, dissociated from their normal selves. These storms were terrifying and we would never talk about them afterward, but they would pass. Not much of it made any kind of sense to me. How could I know, absorbed as I was by music, boys, my own all-too-frequent door-slamming rages, and the rambling 1 a.m. conversations about the nature of the universe on my newly installed private phone line, that in my own family’s living memory there was a time when the freshly washed laundry I took entirely for granted was an unimaginable luxury? That a knock on the door in the middle of the night could mean the end of life as we knew it? That some neighbors could save our lives while others might destroy them? By the time I left for college, I had met many people who had a direct connection to the Holocaust. Some had grown up in the shadow of their own parents’ childhoods in concentration camps. Others had parents who threatened to disown them if they married a Gentile. As a child in 1939, the husband of my recorder teacher, an esteemed Rutgers professor himself, had sailed on the German ship m.s. St. Louis, which carried Jewish refugees to Cuba and then Florida; most were turned away and sent back to dark fates in Europe.1 One girl was a member of her father’s second family, the first having been murdered by Nazi hands. My mother told us that her parents had been exiled from their home in Turkey, but the details of the story remained indistinct. While I yearned to know more about our family’s past, especially after having taken a college course in “Armenian Civilization,” where I was introduced to the term “genocide,” I also

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dreaded what I might learn. Over time, it began to feel as though there was some kind of high-voltage fence encircling the facts of our lives. I wanted to get closer to knowing what had happened, but mostly it seemed safer to keep away. I did know some specifics, of course. I knew that my grandfather had been a ceramic artist from Kütahya, an Anatolian city famous for its tile work, in what had been the Ottoman Empire, and that he was an acknowledged master of its then four-hundred-year-old tradition. Sometimes, I would read a reference to him in an art journal or newspaper. One relative or another would proudly circulate the clipping. Eventually, my mother revealed that he had been arrested and sentenced to death in 1915 but had somehow been released from prison. He, my grandmother, and the first three of their small children—the ones that had been born by then—had been deported toward the Syrian desert of Deir Zor in 1916 and had ended up in Palestine, where my grandfather replanted his art in Jerusalem. My mother also told us that she and most of her family had fled the terror of bullets and explosives in her beloved native city of Jerusalem and had become stateless in 1948. But my grandparents had survived. And my parents had survived. They had made a giant leap of faith and traveled to yet another foreign country in the hope that they could root themselves in a different kind of society—one that was free of constant threats, upheavals, and loss. I came to see that my grandparents’ fundamental task had been to keep their family alive. Not only had they done that, heroically, but they were also able, somehow, to take a centuries-old art form and give it a new life in Jerusalem—a tradition that continues to flourish today. They went on to create a family of seven children, each of whom would add his or her gifts to the world. In time, those offspring would disperse across the globe and, in turn, bring new lives into being. They would become teachers and librarians, chemists, poets, and artists themselves. They and their children, like the children of so many immigrants, would bear the burdens of dislocation and unmourned losses, but also embody a ferocious desire to create order and beauty and to search for knowledge and a place in the world. My mother completed her second undergraduate degree and became an English teacher at Highland Park High School. The school literary magazine

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she founded, Dead Center, continues to publish an issue each year. She adored the theater and, with the small taste of financial independence that her teaching job afforded, began the occasional habit of taking the Suburban Transit bus alone to New York City to attend a matinee of a new or provocative play and enjoy a restaurant dinner afterward. Later in the evening, she would recount for us every nuance of the theatrical experience. And if her waiter happened to be an immigrant or a struggling actor and hadn’t been too busy to talk, we would learn his life story as well. In the years after our arrival in the U.S., we had settled into new ways and learned to enjoy the neighborly pleasures of American small-town living—musical soirées in the home of the Lithuanian piano teacher across the street, tête-à-têtes with the Rutgers psychology professor next door, haircuts by the glamorous German émigrée who lived to our left. Every so often, the kind accountant from the end of our block would deliver a skinned, headless rabbit—shared bounty from the test laboratory of his giant toothpaste-manufacturing employer. We practiced amnesia as the scrawny creature braised and transformed into mouthwatering lapin. Once a year or so my mother would take me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later in the day on a walk through a big department store, something that never failed to fascinate her. One afternoon, we were strolling through Macy’s Cellar. “Look!” she nearly shouted, grabbing my arm. “They have marrons glacés!” The candied chestnuts were a treat she hadn’t seen since Egypt. “You must try one! Every cultured person knows the taste of marrons glacés!” My mother derived enormous satisfaction from her teaching and made enduring and devoted friends. After too few years in her job, she was stricken with the debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that tightened an ever-narrowing circle around her physical life and compelled her to take medical retirement in 1983. She grew calmer and more contemplative. In the mid-1980s she began to think more about her past. The death of her younger brother in 1988 spurred her and her sisters into action; they began collecting oral histories from everyone who had known their parents. Perhaps she felt her own impending mortality and wanted to leave something tangible behind. In 1992, three years before she died, my mother finished notating fifty pages of carefully collated family stories. She made copies for my brother and me, and for all of her fourteen nieces and nephews. At last we had a record of the

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collective memory of her generation: the handed-down dialogues of our forebears, stories of my mother’s parents’ birthplaces, their courtship and marriage, my grandfather’s achievements, the brutal exile from Turkey, and their new life in Jerusalem. The stories were veiled in loving language. Descriptions of the cruelest episodes were softened with the patina of distance and time. As the illness consumed her body, she increasingly struggled to breathe. In her final days, the weight of unspeakable grief I had watched my mother bear throughout my childhood metamorphosed into a radiant, otherworldly longing to see her parents once again. During my first years as a professional flutist, I’d gained experience in performing and developed close relationships based on the shared joy of making music. I learned to embrace the hours of daily practice—smoothing out a scale, using focus and repetition to chip away the distance between an idea in music and its actual result in sound. Those efforts bore rewards in chamber music concerts during which we musicians might revel in the bliss of perfect communion, synchronizing swells and falls, rushing forward or lingering on a note in complete coordination. In music—in the throb of a tone, the power of an attack—I found a channel for intense feelings of love, yearning, and loss, emotions that I could not express or even identify in words. Eventually, my parents had abandoned their well-intentioned but futile pleas for me to become a doctor, lawyer, or in short, to enter any “real” profession. By my early twenties, I began to travel as a musician, playing concerts and seeking out architecture and art while touring. I had demanded this kind of life, and little by little I was finding a place for myself. But the big questions remained unanswered. How did I become the person I am? Where did these stubborn drives toward art and music come from? Who were my people? Where exactly did we come from? And on whose shoulders did I stand? My mother had always tried to fill in the gaps, recounting to my brother and me episodes from her childhood and excitedly pointing out towering figures in Armenian culture: William Saroyan, Arshile Gorky, Mesrop Mashtots, Nerses Shnorhali, and of course, Gomidas Vartabed, whose large framed portrait graced our living room wall. Once, while I was in college, St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City announced a performance of the world-renowned Soviet Armenian string quartet named for the musicologist-composer, giving

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the audience only a few days’ advance notice. My mother had insisted that I attend with her, paying me the lost wages from my Sunday bookstore job. For her, Gomidas and his music represented a profound connection not only to her Armenian identity but also to her father, to her earliest memories of his voice raised in song, and to the many stories he had told her about meeting and hearing the revered Armenian priest and musician. During that concert, I too fell instantly and passionately in love with the poignant melodies in haunting settings and immediately began to incorporate Gomidas’s music into my own repertoire. Still, I craved a deeper connection to my artist grandfather. I read anything that mentioned him or his work and discovered that some art historians in the 1980s had begun to write about the establishment of the Armenian ceramics tradition in Jerusalem. As I pored over museum catalogues and articles,2 I saw that a significant number of biographical details were incorrect. Dates of his birth and death were off, the particulars of his arrival in Jerusalem distressingly incomplete.3 These writers were working with the materials available to them, and I began to understand that history, as it appeared in books, was not always a recounting of what had actually happened—it was the writer’s own version of the story of what happened. Some intriguing books and papers about my grandfather’s art appeared in the 1990s and 2000s. From them, I learned more about the early years of the British Mandate in Jerusalem and the way in which my grandfather’s mastery of an old ceramic tradition intersected with the need to restore the badly dilapidated Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a sacred Islamic monument covered with Persian and Ottoman tiles. These texts contributed to the story of David Ohannessian and his work and were built on the writings that had come before. They fueled an urgency in me to try to discover more. Throughout my childhood, a 1916 book called The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lay buried on a shelf in the dimly lit upstairs hallway.4 Four days after I finished high school, I’d loaded up a borrowed station wagon, eager to depart for New York City and the adventures that lay ahead. As I prepared to leave my parents’ home for good, at the age of seventeen, my mother pulled me close, kissed my cheek, and then passed the book into my hand. For decades, it remained untouched on my own bookshelf, moving with

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me from apartment to apartment, like an undetonated bomb, waiting for me to find the courage to confront what it contained. In 2005, ten years after my mother’s death, I finally took a deep breath and opened the volume. Inside the mottled leaves were reports from Armenian Genocide eyewitnesses—British, Italian, and American diplomats, German missionaries and teachers, Danish nurses, and survivors. Page after page recounted marches, massacres, forced conversions, rape, torture, and assault. In the restrained language of the First World War era, Armenian women were “teased,” “ravished,” “outraged,” “ruined.” Armenian men were “flogged without mercy,” “horribly mutilated,” “put to the sword.” These were my people.

On April 20, 2007, I bid on what was described as an “Iznik-Style Pottery Bowl, Kütahya, First Half Twentieth Century” in a Christie’s London auction. The inside of the half-round form had intense greens and blues with a central lobed medallion that by then I recognized from my grandfather’s classic design vocabulary. On the outer surface of the bowl were vines and the same stylized red carnations I had admired as a child. Two Armenian alphabet letters were painted on the bottom, under the glaze. I had stumbled on the auction catalogue by accident and decided to try to buy the bowl as a totem or a kind of symbolic gift from my grandparents to me. I liked the idea that I could build a bridge between generations by “repatriating” one of what was possibly my grandfather’s works. After a nerve-rattling 5:30 a.m. phone call from the London bidding desk, a few tense moments straining to hear what was happening in that sales room on the other side of the Atlantic, and then ninety harrowing seconds of bidding, the bowl was mine! I had also inherited the beautiful blue vase from the mantel of my parents’ house. When the newly purchased bowl arrived, it looked right at home. In fact, the two pieces seemed to come to life. They urged me to find more of their relatives. One afternoon, after a rehearsal in her apartment, composer Eve Beglarian and I were drinking coffee and exchanging family stories from our shared Armenian heritage. “You know,” she said, “you are one of the lucky ones. Your family left breadcrumbs behind.” She pointed out that unlike many other

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children of displaced people, my family had artworks that had survived our various upheavals and held some of the threads of our story. If only I could find more, document the circumstances of their creation, and perhaps trace my grandfather’s footsteps, maybe then I could satisfy the old hunger to connect with my family’s past and resolve the multitude of disquieting and unanswered questions. Later in 2007, my cousin David Donabedian gave me a document written by our aunt Sirarpi Ohannessian, who had died in 1999 after a series of strokes. She had left her longtime home in Washington, D.C., when she first became ill and settled in Los Angeles to be closer to her sister Mary. Sirarpi was the eldest of David Ohannessian’s seven children, an applied linguist and researcher. The eight-page record she left behind included a brief biography of her father and the lineage of his ceramic tradition. Tantalizingly, it also contained a list of his monumental ceramic installations in Jerusalem, Istanbul, Konya, Kütahya, Lebanon, England, Ireland, and France. She had compiled the list in Beirut in 1952, while her father was still alive, but some of the entries contained only minimal descriptions. I began to wonder if these works still existed today. If they did, would it be possible to find them? Would the stories my mother had preserved provide more clues to their whereabouts? Could I follow the trail of these “breadcrumbs” and do the serious detective work needed to find a fuller history of my grandparents’ lives and the ceramic art that my grandfather had founded in Jerusalem in 1919? And could I learn to understand the historical forces that had shaped my family’s experience and attempt to see the world as it might have looked through their eyes? Would there be some reconciliation, or even redemption, for their suffering, along the way? Over the next months, these questions seized my attention and creative energies. I called and emailed my cousins, hounding them for any old records, photos, or letters they might have in their possession. Documents began to trickle in. In September of 2013, my cousin Armen and his wife Jean Markarian were cleaning out their garage in Los Angeles and unearthed the mother lode: the box of archival materials that our aunt Sirarpi had painstakingly preserved. Inside were stencil pattern designs, original drawings, account books from Jerusalem, travel records, letters in Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, and English, notebooks with ceramic forms and designs, photographs of completed installations,

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calling cards, articles, catalogues, glaze recipes, British Mandate documents, proposals, and even kiln designs. They express-mailed the carton, and I opened it to find a wealth of clues that began to answer all sorts of questions about our grandfather’s life and work. A few weeks later, Jean was in New York. We met for dinner at a favorite Greek restaurant near Carnegie Hall, and she handed me a shopping bag with a bubble-wrapped object inside. “We found something else in the garage,” she said, “and I think it belongs to you.” Underneath Aunt Sirarpi’s buried trove of papers, she and Armen had found a luminous blue tile with an Islamic inscription—a product of my grandfather’s workshop in Jerusalem—framed in gold. She pointed out the faintly penciled inscription on the back: for Sato M ou ghalian fr om S. Ohannessian Fourteen years after her death, Aunt Sirarpi’s legacy had been handed to me. I saw her bequest as a sign that I had to keep following the trail. I had to seek out and tell my grandfather’s story. In a sense, it is my story too.

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Chap te r 1

Mouradchai Th e A r m e n i a n V i l l a g e

In the summer of 1889, five-year-old Tavit Galenbajak—who would one day be known as David Ohannessian—loved nothing more than scampering about the hills and bluffs perched above the Armenian village of Mouradchai, an idyllic place hidden away in the mountains of northwest Anatolia. On this hot, dry afternoon, he ran up the path behind his house, past pomegranate and apricot trees. His small bare feet flew through sloping fields and skittered up the stony crags. Several boulders rose to form a ledge above the houses where the Galenbajak family and their relatives lived. The boy took an impish delight in finding wobbly rocks. He clambered up onto the unsteadiest of them—his favorite. Tavit carefully balanced himself, then jumped up and down in a frenzy, unleashing a hailstorm of pebbles toward the houses below. His mother, Markrid, and his grandmother Takouhi, placidly tending to their daily tasks of sweeping, spinning, chopping, and grinding, heard him at his chosen sport. They ran toward Tavit and let out a collective wail, convinced yet again that the whole mountain would soon come crashing down on them and their houses. “Aye, Tavit, Tavit,” they pleaded. “Come down! You’ll destroy our whole village yet!” Mouradchai faced west, toward the setting sun. Fragrant, pine-covered hills crowned with soaring limestone peaks enclosed the lofty village on three sides, shielding it from an outsider’s view. Down below the village, the Chirka Creek 15

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had eroded a cleft into the mountain rock and brought fresh water close to the settlement. The Chirka was a northern tributary of the five-hundred-mile-long Sakarya River, which snaked a path around western Anatolia before spilling into the Black Sea. Few maps recorded Mouradchai’s existence. Tavit’s ancestors had discovered this verdant, alpine spot at the end of the fifteenth century. They had traveled from the eastern reaches of the Ottoman Empire—historic Armenia— seeking refuge from marauding tribesmen and soldiers who had plundered their settlements.1 The migrants named the new colony after their former home on the banks of the Mourad River—the Mourad-Chai—whose waters flowed from Mount Ararat and formed the source of the mighty Euphrates River.2 Tavit’s father, Ohannes, narrated this history and many others as the family drew close around the hearth on frigid winter nights. Mouradchai villagers— all of them Armenian—taught their customs and stories to each generation of children—the time-honored rituals of ecclesiastic and family life that had stood them in good stead. At the same time, Tavit’s parents and grandparents didn’t shrink from recounting the family’s hardships and woes—the challenges they had borne and those they had overcome. After all, for nearly four hundred years now the Galenbajak family had persisted and flourished, sheltered high away on the Mourad Rock. Tavit’s family lived in a quarter called Galenbajak, after his clan. The large Mouradchai families gave their names to sectors of the village: District of the Family of Blacksmith Artin, District of Sons of the Deaf Man, District of the Son of the Shoemaker, District of the Horsedealer, District of the Son of Jewelers,3 and in the case of the Galenbajaks,4 District of the Thick Legged. The name signaled their prosperity. For centuries, the fertile land had nourished the family well. In fact, slenderness was not a desirable trait in the mountains, where unexpectedly long winters sometimes left food scarce. A plump brideto-be was prized. “Now there’s a girl,” the village men would say, admiringly. Twenty-one wood-frame and mud-brick houses of one or two stories crowded together in the Galenbajak district.5 Beyond the tight cluster of homes, chickens, sheep, and cows grazed among orchards dotted with fruit and nut trees—fig, apricot, olive, almond, cherry, walnut, and hazelnut. Wheat, alfalfa, and vegetables thrived in the rich soil. Silk cocoons and grapes formed the village’s largest exports. Mouradchai men and women were industrious farmers, planting rows of grapevines in the fertile fields

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within the town. But they also cultivated every arable patch of dirt, no matter how small, outside the ring of mountains, in the stony lands between the village and the Sakarya River.6 Like Tavit’s father, Ohannes, his grandmother Takouhi enchanted the family with her storytelling. On long brumal nights, she let her grandchildren choose which stories they wanted to hear. One of their favorites was the tale of how she came to Mouradchai as a girl. One summer, in the 1840s, her father, Haji Missak Geuzumian,7 a prosperous goldsmith who lived in the nearest metropolis, Eskishehir, arrived in the village with his wife and children, including his eldest daughter, Takouhi. Haji Missak rented a house for several months so that he could make and sell jewelry to order—bracelets, rings, crosses, and chains. With nearly three thousand inhabitants,8 Mouradchai provided a good demand for his services, including many orders to supply gold coins. All throughout the broad Anatolian peninsula, both foreign and local coins circulated freely. Paper banknotes had recently been issued for the first time but few used them outside of large cities and at any rate,9 in the provinces, Armenian families preferred to keep their riches in gold. Golden rings, crosses, belts, and, naturally, coins and gold nuggets could be hidden or transported easily. When a young girl married, she wore the better part of her dowry draped across her forehead or pinned to her bridal dress in the form of gold coins. Before too long, the Geuzumians, the parents of five daughters, noticed the Galenbajak’s son Hagop. Around the village, he was considered a very good catch. In Mouradchai, the rumor was that the great Galenbajak clan had so much gold it had to be measured by the bucket. And pretty Takouhi caught Hagop’s eye. The Geuzumians consulted a meechnort, a go-between, who made the initial approach. Both families felt it was a good match and quickly settled an engagement between Takouhi and Hagop. The first step of a betrothal was the khosk gab, or “tying of the word,” which celebrated the new relationship between the young couple and their kin. Then, a clergyman performed the ritual consecration called the nshan or “sign.” Hagop and Takouhi, her head draped with a veil, touched foreheads while holding lighted candles, as a Galenbajak uncle lifted a cross above their heads. Hagop’s parents presented a gold ring to Takouhi, to be worn on her right hand until the wedding day. After the nshan, the guests gave gifts to the bride and feasted on great mounds of sweets—rojig, walnuts

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tied together on a long string and dipped in grape syrup, bastekh, thin sheets of dried fruit juices, and trays of nut-filled pastries. Some village families betrothed their children from birth, others when a daughter reached the age of 9 or 10. But Takouhi was at the right age to marry— between 14 and 16—and Hagop was several years older, so they soon wed. The bride wore a colorful dress bedecked with gold coins and covered her face with a thick shawl as she rode to the church on horseback. Village men escorted the bridal party, playing ear-crashing fanfares on davul drums and zurnas, trumpetlike reed instruments. Young men and women danced all along the way to the church. Others fired celebratory gunshots into the air.10 In fact, the new life proved challenging for Takouhi, an obedient girl, but one accustomed to the very different ways of her native city. By tradition, a village bride moved to the home of her husband’s family and in a gesture of respect for her new mother-in-law, kept a period of silence that might last a year or possibly longer. The bride could speak to very young children or her own husband, but only when there weren’t other adults around. Mouradchai houses, two or three rooms in size, often sheltered three or four generations of a family and offered few opportunities for solitude—even on the wedding night. Not only did Takouhi lose the right to speak, she discovered, but she had also left behind Eskishehir’s convivial milieu—her many friends and dear siblings, lively parties, and after-church picnics—for a far more constrained existence in the village. As the newest bride in the household, Takouhi learned that it fell to her to scrub her father-in-law’s feet when he came in from the fields, clean his shoes, fetch water from a stream or rain catcher, wash clothes, and wait on the male members of her husband’s family. She was a strong-willed young woman and soon became restless. Her parents settled another daughter in Mouradchai to keep her company. Takouhi kept her commitment, but even after her son, Ohannes, was born and during the years she raised him, she often thought of the life she had once enjoyed down in the city. As Ohannes Galenbajak grew into an agile and athletic youth, his carefree disposition emerged. For the most part, daily life in the village encompassed long rounds of arduous chores, but by nature, Ohannes was not well suited to the quotidian tasks of farming. In his large household, he leaned on his father and uncles to sustain the heaviest burden of planting, harvesting, and

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providing for the family’s needs. He helped them, to the best of his abilities, but frequently pursued his favorite sports when he should have been cleaning the animal stalls or working in the fields. For example, in the winters, after a fresh snowfall, Ohannes and his friends took their horses for a ride, carrying along hunting rifles and some raw eggs. When they reached a spot away from the village, they hurled the eggs over an embankment. Ohannes, a good shot, would aim for a falling egg. The boys laughed as they watched the bright yellow yolks carve curling ribbons down the snowy hill. Ohannes enlivened every celebration he attended with his dramatic storytelling and antics. One of his favorite acrobatic tricks was to jump up onto the mouth of a massive wine jug and while standing on it, bend down and retrieve with his teeth a coin he had placed between his toes. If the jug was empty, he would knock it over, jump onto the side, and with fleet footwork, roll away from the scolding clucks of his aunties. As their high-spirited son approached the age of twenty, Hagop and Takouhi worried for his future. They hoped that a plain, sensible girl might persuade him to settle down and chose a bride for him, a Mouradchai girl called Markrid Jambazian. Soon the new couple produced a son, Hagop, named for the baby’s grandfather. A daughter, Marik, quickly followed. In 1884, another boy was born and given the name of his great-great-grandfather: Tavit. Each year, as summer melted into autumn, Mouradchai’s vines and branches drooped with the weight of their succulent loads. When the grapes were ready for harvest, priests led a procession of villagers through the vineyards and asked God’s protection. Young Tavit, his family, and the rest of the community then returned to the church, where clergy read from the Gospels and blessed piles of grapes freshly cropped from the vines. The congregation offered the first fruits of the harvest to the Lord. As the ceremony—the Feast of the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God—concluded, townspeople shared the consecrated grapes, and offered good wishes to each other. The five-year-old boy loved this ritual and the warmth he felt as his siblings and cousins sang hymns in full voice, standing close to one another in the crowded church. Throughout the growing season, Tavit’s sister tended a small patch of flowers and herbs next to their home, drying some of them to make teas, seasonings, and medicaments. Marik’s favorite pastime was to nurture seedlings in the sweet-smelling earth. The boy eagerly helped his older sister,

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who taught him all she knew about plants and how to recognize the edible herbs and weeds. After the grape harvest, men and women crushed the juicy fruits to make wine and raki, the biting alcoholic drink distilled from the remaining pulp, seeds, and skins. Young and old helped to dry the raisins and boil and strain grapes to make sweet molasses. In late September, Mouradchai men hauled their silk cocoons, raisins, and extra produce to the Eskishehir market.11 There, they sold or traded them for wheat and barley.12 Thirty-five miles separated Mouradchai from Eskishehir. The journey required a grueling two-day mule ride over steep and rocky trails, and one had to ford the Sakarya River to reach the city. When the weather turned colder, the Galenbajak uncles slaughtered and butchered much of their flock, then cured the meat. The women labored throughout the autumn, packing and burying large earthenware jars with grains, meats, nuts, oils, and the pickled vegetables, jams, dried fruits, and cheeses meant to sustain their families through the long winter and until the next harvests. Tavit’s aunties, grandmother, mother, and sister worked together. They sang songs, gossiped, and burst with predictions about all the nieces and nephews, keeping careful watch for the two traits that famously appeared throughout the generations of their clan. The first was damar, or a fathomless stubbornness. Once a person set his mind on something, it was impossible to persuade him otherwise. The second was a sort of strange and striking naïveté. Tavit’s mother, Markrid, a kindhearted woman, made certain to teach him to work hard and to study and learn. Under a mother’s loving guidance, stubbornness might transform to tenacity and naïveté could flower into grace. Each evening, after a long afternoon of chores and outdoor play, Tavit joined his family for supper. His brother and sister, father, grandparents, and great-grandparents sat on cushions around the low round table in the main room of the house. Everyone greeted Tavit warmly as he took his usual place beside his great-grandmother. Markrid placed a steaming bowl of cracked wheat stew in the middle of the table and sat down next to her youngest son. The whole family spooned mouthfuls of food from the platter. If Tavit reached across the dish toward a choice bit of meat, his mother whispered gently, “Jan, dear, leave that for your great-grandfather.” The Galenbajaks kept to their traditions; the best morsels were always saved for the oldest. Tearing off a piece from a freshly baked lavash, the hungry boy mopped up the last bits of sauce with the flatbread.

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After supper, Markrid pulled out the thick wool-stuffed comforters from the cupboards where they were put away every morning. Each person smoothed his blanket on the floor to serve as bedding. Ohannes, his mood sometimes bleak, might climb the ladder to the storage attic to drink a soothing ladleful of wine or raki before retiring. Tavit’s father had not gained expertise in any field. Most Mouradchai men and women were skilled artisans in addition to growing crops for their families’ needs. They enjoyed renown within the region as shoemakers and leatherworkers and also carved wood, hammered metalware, wove carpets, and baked earthenware.13 Over the centuries, some had left the village for the towns of Kutahya and Oushak, traveling many days south to learn the arts of glazed pottery and carpet making. Ohannes had learned just the basics of fabric dyeing, a craft his forefathers had practiced. His own grandfather, Khatchatur, was dubbed Basmaçioglu—son of the cloth printer.14 Ohannes didn’t inherit his ancestors’ dedication to this tradition. Too fond of leisure, he spent the last of his share of the Galenbajak clan’s fortune. But he loved his family dearly. His children adored and respected him in turn and took great pleasure in the hours he spent entertaining them with stories of their ancestors and the glorious high mountains in which they’d been born. Mouradchai was indeed isolated, but its fortunes rose and fell according to unpredictable trends in the outer world. Villagers raised silkworms on mulberry bushes and trees. Women softened the harvested cocoons in hot water and spun silk thread from the fibers. European companies, especially French ones, bought the cocoons and thread, then manufactured fine cloth for export. But fashions changed, and when voluminous draped silhouettes evolved into more fitted profiles requiring less fabric, the local trade felt a direct reverberation.15 In addition, the success of each silkworm grower’s venture relied on a fragile balance of sufficient water and moderate temperatures. Mouradchai summers were hot and often very dry. Getting enough water to the fields proved a challenge. Each year, a group of farmers and their families traveled to the water instead, setting up camps along the banks of the Sakarya River, six or seven miles south of the village.16 But sometimes, even that measure failed to counter the miseries caused by the heat. One year, five hundred acres of mulberry orchards planted near the river by Mouradchai residents and their neighbors from the Muslim villages of Inhisar and Akkoy, caught fire and burned to the ground in the scorching weather. Muslim and Christian

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farmers banded together and appealed to the new Ministry of Forests, Mines, and Agriculture for a loan to buy water pumps for irrigation.17 During another exceptionally hot summer in the village, an older Mouradchai widow noticed that her silkworms had started to die and descended into grief and madness as she watched her livelihood disappear before her eyes. She stomped the remaining worms to death, shouting, “You worms, instead of playing games upon my head, let me play games upon yours!” She destroyed what remained of her output and her hope for sustenance that season, but neighbors took pity on her and helped her survive the long winter. Every Sunday, the Galenbajaks attended Mouradchai’s Sourp Asdvadzadzin— Holy Mother of God—Armenian Orthodox Church. According to the lessons Tavit learned from the priests there, two of the original twelve apostles—Thaddeus and Bartholomew—introduced Christianity in historic Armenia and were martyred for their efforts. But in spite of these dire beginnings, Armenians were the first to accept Christianity as their national religion in 301 A.D.,18 under the influence of St. Gregory the Illuminator. They had clung to their faith ever since. In the mountain village, the liturgical calendar shaped the contour of the seasons as much as agriculture did. Easter—the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and the end of the long, dark period of winter—was the most important event in the year. Mouradchai families spent much of the Holy Easter week gathered together in worship. Tavit’s parents explained to him that their church was considered an architectural marvel. The stone structure had several domes, but no internal pillars to support the ceiling. Foreigners traveling in the region sometimes visited Mouradchai to study and admire it. Occasionally, other strangers would appear in the village as well, in search of leather shoes, silk cocoons, or to hire seasonal laborers for a farm or factory. The one-room coffee house in the central square was just the place to make inquiries. If the visitors spoke only Turkish, someone would run and fetch one of the handful of inhabitants who spoke both languages.19 Mouradchai’s coffee house was strictly the domain of men, who stopped in for a small cup of the aromatic drink and perhaps a few puffs of water-filtered tobacco through a narguile. On snowy winter afternoons, long rounds of tavloo or backgammon filled the hours when there was little field work for the older farmers. The younger ones would join them after tending to the animals or chopping wood. After hours in the bitter cold, tiny icicles dangled from their mustaches.

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When a Mouradchai farmer returned from a trip to sell his goods in the Eskishehir or Bilejik markets, he might carry back an Armenian newspaper to the coffee house,20 even if he couldn’t read it himself. The few men who could read would take turns declaiming the articles out loud. In this way, news of the world reached the ears of the mountain villagers. Another contact between the townsmen and outsiders came each year in the spring, when tax inspectors arrived to assess the tithes—one-tenth of the produce or the equivalent in coin. The crop tithes and head taxes on all non-Muslim men, which in Mouradchai meant all the men, yielded thousands of lira for the imperial government each year.21 The coffee house was often the first stop for another kind of foreigner— the roving American Protestant missionary. Fifty years earlier, in 1839, the Sublime Porte—the seat of the Ottoman government in the capital city of Constantinople—announced a series of reforms guaranteeing greater rights and protections, especially religious freedoms, an important concern for all Armenians. That decree was known as the Rose Chamber Edict and the reform movement was called Tanzimat. After this proclamation, scores of proselytizing men and women from Europe and the United States began to arrive in the Ottoman provinces. One of those American missionaries, Joseph K. Greene, had arrived in Smyrna in 1859, around the time Tavit’s father Ohannes was born. Three years later, Greene, aged 26, was assigned to the provincial capital of Brussa, which had many designated out-station villages. One of them, a hundred miles to the east, was Mouradchai. Leaving behind his wife and children in their Brussa home, Greene trekked by foot, mule, and horse all over western Anatolia for weeks at a time, stopping in cities and small villages. A serious young man with deep-set eyes and a prominent jaw, Greene would seek out the local coffee house, talk with the men, or perhaps even preach an impromptu sermon in Armenian or Turkish. A fervent orator, he roused his listeners with his exhortations against the dark forces of ignorance and superstition.22 Greene’s first visit to Mouradchai began with a nine-mile trip by horse. “Crossing the summit of the mountain and descending a little toward the West, we came to the village of Mooratchai. This is an Armenian town. . . . It has a fine position, being hidden in a nook facing the West with mountains on three sides. It contains 400 houses.”23 The pious minister believed he could save the souls of Mouradchai’s Orthodox Armenians by converting them from the practices of their Apostolic

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churches to a more modern Protestantism, with its sharp focus on Christ and the Gospel and its Western ideals of education—especially for girls. Greene rejected what he viewed as the dangerous rituals and beliefs—evil eye, sprinkling holy water on fields, and a deep reverence for the hearth fire—that infused Mouradchai’s traditions. “My object and desire were not to make them Protestants, but Christians . . . to give them the Bible in their spoken languages, that every man might read the infallible Word of God and judge all things by that standard.” “But, Oh!,” he lamented, “How slow and difficult a work to awaken minds totally unused to think for themselves.” In spite of his most impassioned efforts, the Galenbajak kin and their neighbors remained, for the most part, rooted in their own deeply ingrained Apostolic faith. When Protestants built a chapel in the village, the congregation numbered nine members. 24 Religious workers like Greene also sent reports home. Even small settlements like Mouradchai provided colorful and compelling stories for American readers, who eagerly followed the tallies of new converts to Protestantism in towns scattered across Anatolia. One of Mouradchai’s Orthodox priests and two of the village’s muhtars or headmen complained in turn to the Ottoman regional authorities that Protestants had infiltrated the village to evangelize the residents.25 Bit by bit, the natives of the Galenbajak family’s once-secluded hamlet came into the view of the larger world. Some Mouradchai families, wearied of farming’s toil, drifted from the village, seeking jobs in the cities. The Ottoman government’s first forays into railroad construction, starting in 1871, offered the chance of steady employment for laborers. The amount of arable land on the mountaintop remained unchanged, even as the size of individual clans increased. Around 1880, fifteen or twenty families left Mouradchai to create a new farming community—Nor Aslan-Beg—twenty miles northwest of the village.26 Others soon joined them there.27 And a new company, the Société du Chemins de Fer d’Anatolie, founded in 1888 by the powerful Deutsche Bank, was extending the rail line south from Izmit and planned to build a grand railway depot in Eskishehir, attracting workers from near and far. In 1890, six-year-old Tavit and his household suffered a shattering loss when Grandfather Hagop died. The widowed Takouhi assumed the role of matriarch and took charge of the family. For nearly his entire adult life, her son, Ohannes, had struggled to find enthusiasm for the tasks of farming and had

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relied on his father’s travail. Takouhi was also keenly aware of how limited the Armenian school in Mouradchai had remained in the decades since her arrival in the 1840s. The Adamian School,28 which Tavit’s older brother and father had attended, provided only a rudimentary education for the village boys. For years, the schoolmasters had been two local priests, untrained as teachers. The school’s few grammar, spelling, and psalm books were in grabar or Classical Armenian, rather than the familiar spoken language. The boys, who spent their days seated cross-legged on the floor, strained to make sense of what they were reading. Many gave up and worked in the fields or learned their fathers’ crafts instead. Although the town had constructed a large new school building, offering free tuition for two hundred boys, and the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople now funded two teachers’ salaries, the instruction remained limited.29 Takouhi made the decision: the six of them would move to Eskishehir. Above all, it was the city she had always yearned for and the place where three of her siblings still lived with their own families. There, her youngest grandchild, Tavit, a bright, energetic boy whom she wished to encourage, might stand a better chance of obtaining a proper education. Takouhi, Markrid, and Marik bundled up the household goods, and the family bade a solemn farewell to all their kin. Tavit journeyed down from the mountains with his family and their pack mules. Would he ever again see his cousins or feel the warm embrace of the family he had known from birth? They were his beloved gerdastan, his clan. When the Galenbajaks arrived in Eskishehir, they rented a single room in a khan. This square-shaped stone caravansary surrounded a dirt courtyard, where guests tethered their animals to wooden posts for the night. The only furnishings in the stark, small chamber were wood-slat bunks and some thin straw mattresses. Eskishehir had an Armenian Orthodox school, but in the year following the family’s arrival, Takouhi enrolled Tavit in the city’s newly opened Catholic Lycée, perhaps foreseeing the advantage in commerce that a mastery of French would give her young grandson. She accompanied him to his first day of class in the one-room school building. The Augustinian priests were famous for their strict teaching methods. The premises were clean and the students well behaved.

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As Tavit walked into his new classroom, the boys greeted him in French. “God’s blessings on you, our friend. How are you? Are you well?” they chanted in unison. The Master asked Tavit his name. “My name is Tavit Galenbajak.” “Tavit Thick Leg? That’s not a proper name!” He asked, “What is your father’s name?” The boy replied, “My father’s name is Ohannes.” The teacher quickly constructed the patronymic and decreed, “From now on, you will be known as Tavit Ohannessian.” Tavit had left behind his many relatives, the sweet, clear mountain air, blissful hours of outdoor play, four centuries of his family’s history, and now, his name. But the values young Tavit learned in the Armenian village—love of kin, fortitude, faith, and the primacy of preserving old traditions—these would remain with him.

c hap te r 2

Eskishehir Th e E n g a g e m e n t

In Eskishehir, Takouhi celebrated her release from the tedium of village life. Although the family’s room in the khan was cramped and bleak, Tavit’s grandmother never looked back. After more than forty years, she had returned to her native city. She quickly resumed rounds of visits to family and old friends, proudly introducing her grandchildren and eagerly attending nameday parties and picnic outings. Takouhi’s spirits lifted as she rediscovered the pleasures of a more sociable existence. As the child of a well-to-do goldsmith, Takouhi had spent her early years in Eskishehir’s Armenian neighborhood, the Khoshnudiye quarter, which nestled along the bank of the Porsuk River. This tributary of the Sakarya bisected the whole town, sustaining trees, powering mills, and swelling in the winter and spring.1 Eskishehir was a long-established municipality built on a high plain;2 the name meant “old city.” It was called Dorylaeum in the Phrygian era. Stone markers inscribed in ancient Greek and the ruins of old fortifications still littered the hills outside the city’s bounds. Two- and three-story plaster-washed homes with elegantly carved corbels and ornamental timber beams lined the edges of the well-swept streets. Lacedraped windows in projecting mashrabiya balconies added dimension to the façades and served a purpose: the narrow side openings drew refreshing gusts of air through stuffy rooms. Rows of houses, one upon the next, conveyed solidity and the promise of a comfortable life.

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Near the Armenian neighborhood and the adjoining Greek quarter, a bustling covered market displayed heaped masses of rose petals, coffee beans, sugar-dusted lokum, buxom eggplants, cured basturma slathered with cumin and paprika paste, crates of eggs, trays of sweet, oily sesame halvah, and hashasli choereg, the toothsome poppy seed rolls. Next to the bazaar was one of Eskishehir’s famed thermal baths.3 Hot springs hissed and bubbled their way up through the earth’s crust in this ancient volcanic terrain. Inhabitants of the region drank the cooled ferruginous water as a balm for stomach ailments.4 Arthritics and rheumatics cherished its healing powers. By the time Takouhi returned to Eskishehir, her own birth family had grown. One sister, who had moved to Mouradchai to keep her company, remained behind with the family she had started there. The next younger sister lived in Eskishehir and was married, with a son. Takouhi’s youngest sister, Marik, and her husband, Garabed Shahbazian, had two children close in age to Tavit—a daughter named Tefar and a son, Khatchig. Soon Tavit’s clan expanded still more. In the khan, Markrid gave birth to her fourth child, Karnig—Tavit’s new baby brother. Now, seven people jostled for space within the dimly lit stone walls of the narrow room. And in a gracious house in the Armenian quarter, Tavit’s great-aunt

Interior of a khan in Tarsus

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Marik gave birth to her third child, on June 21, 1890. Several months later, the family christened the little girl at Sourp Yerrortutyun—Holy Trinity Armenian Orthodox Church, naming her Victoria. They celebrated the occasion with a party in their home. There, Tavit first caught a glimpse of his baby cousin—whose fate would be twinned with his—swaddled in a gown of fine white lawn. Victoria’s father, Garabed Shahbazian, was unlike anyone else young Tavit had ever known. Born in 1847 in Chalgara, a mostly Armenian village northwest of Eskishehir,5 he had been orphaned at an early age. A wealthy Muslim couple from the town adopted him. His new mother grew to love the boy as though he were her own child and extraordinarily, she insisted that Garabed retain his Christian identity. Garabed’s mother gave him an Armeno-Turkish psalm book to read each night before bed. She even encouraged him to make the sign of the cross and kneel before saying his evening prayers. In turn, the grateful boy assumed his parents’ quiet sense of decorum in manners and speech. When the time came for Garabed to marry, he courted Marik Geuzumian, who was equally dignified and reserved in nature, unlike her excitable and extroverted older sister Takouhi. At home, Garabed was always courteous, deliberate, and fastidiously clean. Even on the rainiest days, after trudging through mud on unpaved streets, he never entered his house without already having scraped every particle of dirt from his shoes. But Tavit’s uncle had had his own share of exciting adventures, which he enjoyed narrating to all the children of the family. Garabed’s adoptive father, whom he called “the Man,” had made him an apprentice in his mercantile business. As a young lad, Garabed often accompanied his father on trips. After delivering goods to remote provinces, he and his father would return to Eskishehir with sacks of gold. One time, while riding their horses along a lonely country road, the pair was ambushed by brigands. The Man always carried a gun—but on that occasion, he used it. Each time Garabed told this story, he stopped at that point, shaking his head. His children pleaded with him to continue, their imaginations ablaze with possible outcomes. But Victoria’s father would say nothing more, preserving his air of mystery. As an adult, Garabed carved the iconic Eskishehir mineral, meerschaum. Also known as écume de mer, or lulé tâshé, the porous white stone resembled the froth of crashing waves.6 He supervised an atelier where he and his

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Eskishehir meerschaum workshop

workers shaped the stone into bangles, worry beads, and pipes in the shape of woolly-bearded heads and miniature ships—diminutive works of art prized by German, Austrian, and Hungarian smokers. Meerschaum veins were rare, but Eskishehir was unique in its rich supply of the soapy-white magnesium silicate.7 Eleven Eskishehir companies quarried, sculpted, and exported the mineral; Armenians owned five of them.8 Garabed Shahbazian painstakingly chiseled fanciful baubles, to the delight of his daughter Victoria. His artistry as well as his adroit management of the carvers and porters he supervised earned Tavit’s admiration and respect. In 1890, when Tavit’s family arrived, thirty-four thousand people, mostly Muslim, lived in Eskishehir. Armenians numbered eighteen hundred and Greeks about one thousand. A number of muhajirs, Muslim émigrés who had fled the European provinces, lived in Eskishehir’s center as well. Other Muslim migrants, known as Circassians, who had escaped Russian oppression in the north Caucasus region, scattered throughout the 150 small villages that ringed the city.9 Unlike in Mouradchai, where only Armenian was spoken, in the streets of Eskishehir Tavit heard Turkish, French, Greek, Armenian, and German, due in

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part to the presence of many German and Austrian engineers and technicians who had moved there with their families to build the new railway junction. In the center of town, international banking, insurance, and telegraph offices— many of them staffed by Armenians—served the needs of the city’s growing number of prosperous families. Each week, Tavit’s family attended the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church.10 One Sunday morning, the boy’s warm, tuneful singing voice attracted the notice of a priest, who began to invite him to participate in funeral rites, calling him out of school when needed. Tavit sang with pure expression, bringing comfort to the mourners, but secretly, he most looked forward to his reward: chunks of the sweet milk-white candy the bereaved family prepared as madagh, the offering made to bless the soul of the dear departed. During Tavit’s first years in the city, he observed that many of his cousins’ Armenian friends and fellow churchgoers managed successful workshops and commercial establishments. When he walked through the city, the boy saw Armenian names displayed on the shopfront hoardings of watchmakers, shoemakers, pharmacists, tailors, lawyers, and goldsmiths, as well as those of grain, wool, iron, and textile merchants.11 Some of Tavit’s classmates, whose parents worked for the railroad, told him that Armenians held skilled technical positions in the company and also served as station staff and guards.12 For a bright boy born in a remote mountain village, Eskishehir opened his eyes to new possibilities. The very richest Armenians from Eskishehir, Constantinople, and other Anatolian cities sent sons and occasionally a daughter to study in Europe. The graduates returned with new skills and exposure to prevailing movements and ideas. For other Armenian families, missionary colleges, now well established throughout Anatolia, offered advanced education for young women and men. Throughout the Ottoman capital and provinces in the 1890s, Armenians issued newspapers on an increasing number of Armenian-language printing presses. Writers published novels, essays, and poetry in everyday Armenian—rather than the Classical Armenian or grabar—reaching a much wider audience.13 In fact, as Tavit’s Uncle Garabed taught him, this flourishing of literary activity was something of a renaissance. Essayists compared it to the earlier Armenian Golden Age, after the sainted monk Mesrob Mashtots invented the Armenian alphabet in about 405 A.D. Using the new alphabet,

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Mashtots and a small group of scholars known as the “Holy Translators” had rendered the Bible into the Armenian language and also translated the Greek and Syriac philosophical and literary works that had survived into their day. Garabed explained to Tavit that those pioneering linguists of the fifth and sixth centuries had bequeathed to their people a whole body of literature translated into the Armenian language and had bound the idea of intellectual pursuit into the heart of Armenian culture. These lessons left a lasting impression on the young boy, who began to take a deeper interest in the history of his people. But Tavit’s family, stuck now for a fourth year in the same dismal room, was not lifted by these rising tides and trends. For his parents, the problem of subsistence remained paramount. And in 1893, the same journals that united the geographically dispersed members of the Armenian millet and published proud accounts of leading Armenian artists and thinkers also pointed to atrocities unfolding in the eastern provinces. By the year of Tavit’s birth, 1884, Armenians inhabited all the provinces of Ottoman Anatolia. In the western regions, they didn’t dominate any territory, although many settlements, such as Mouradchai, were entirely Armenian and some western cities, including Constantinople, Adabazar, and Smyrna, were home to large Armenian communities. Armenian writers, influential clergy, merchants, artists, wealthy notables, and aristocrats congregated in large cities throughout the empire. In central Anatolia, prosperous Armenians had long settled near the Taurus Mountains, the fertile plains of Adana, and the Mediterranean coastline that had once composed the last Armenian Kingdom, Cilicia, which had fallen to Mamluk conquerors in 1375. But the greatest density of Armenians—as many as two million—lived farther east, in the high rugged terrains they had cultivated for more than two thousand years,14 where Tavit’s ancestors had lived until the end of the fifteenth century. In these eastern regions, hundreds of thousands of Armenians eked out livelihoods as farmers and craftsmen. Others were merchants, landholders, shop owners, and traders. All of them inhabited a broad plateau encompassing the six Armenian provinces15—Bitlis, Van, Kharpert,16 Erzurum, Diyarbekir, and Sivas. However, these lands were not theirs alone. For centuries, Kurdish tribes—mostly Muslim—and Armenians had dwelled in the same eastern highlands. Nomadic Kurds, far removed from the capital, often evaded the grip of Ottoman rule and converged instead into

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wealthy and powerful dynasties, led by charismatic rulers. In these eastern provinces, Kurdish herders often grazed their flocks in the mountains while Armenian peasants cultivated the plains below. In some heavily Kurdish tribal regions, Armenians, who were generally not permitted to carry arms, lived under the thumb of nomadic chiefs who compelled them to provide winter shelter. In other seasons, tribesmen and their beasts trampled Armenian fields.17 Some Kurdish overlords inflicted the droit du seigneur on young Armenian brides.18 In many localities, heavily armed Kurds imposed “protection” tariffs on Armenian and Turkish peasants. And throughout the entire nineteenth century, encouraged by the central government, immense numbers of Muslim émigrés from Europe and the Russian Caucasus made their way to both the western and eastern provinces of Anatolia.19 Eastern Armenians with the means—wary of the growing threats to their families—left for Russia, Europe, and the United States. Those who remained in place looked toward Russian and other foreign allies, hoping for any sort of protection. Russians, like the Armenians, had been early adopters of Orthodox Christianity. The common religion forged a unique affinity between the two peoples. But in that kinship, Ottoman leaders also began to envisage the specter of Russian-Armenian conspiracies against the Islamic state and further territorial losses. Foreign envoys, missionaries, and journalists reported these continuing resentments, repressions, and calamities to the rest of the world, calling them the “Armenian Question.” Since the inception of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the fourteenth century, dynastic rulers had waged a nearly constant succession of battles. At the height of the empire’s reach, during the forty-six-year reign of Sultan Suleiman I, beginning in 1520, Ottoman dominion stretched through the Christian capitals of the Balkans and Europe up to the gates of Vienna, along the coast of North Africa, over much of the Near East, and through the Caucasus region. Suleiman the Magnificent had nearly doubled the landmass of the empire and reaped the bounty of its immense agricultural and artistic riches. After his death in 1566, the empire lost territories through conflict and secession. And by 1568, the Ottomans had entered into a long series of wars with the neighboring Russian Empire. Sovereignty over the eastern Armenian regions, which stood at the crossroads of the Ottoman, Russian, and Persian Empires, changed through the centuries. By 1828, authority over the historic Armenian realms fluctuated principally

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between the Ottomans and the Russians, but warring troops of both empires also destroyed Armenian settlements, commandeered their food and shelter, and plundered the inhabitants while passing through these borderlands. After the 1768–74 Russian-Turkish War, the defeated Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid I signed the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji20 and promised to “protect the Christian religion and its churches.”21 Indeed, the Orthodox Russian monarchy viewed itself as guardian of the Ottoman Christian population and used the Sublime Porte’s repeatedly broken promises of protection as justification for further conflicts. Russia maintained her posture of oversight toward Ottoman Christian affairs into the nineteenth century. On Good Friday, 1846, in the Ottoman territory of Jerusalem, the long-standing feud between Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests over respective rights in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre deteriorated into lethal savagery.22 The clash was an emblem of much larger competing desires that broadened into greater violence. European nations to the northwest, and Russia, to the north and east, each coveted control of the Black Sea, the fertile Crimean Peninsula, and the rich mineral resources of the Anatolian heartland. In July of 1853, Russia invaded the Ottoman-controlled territories of Moldavia and Wallachia. Three months later, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia. On March 28, 1854, Great Britain, France, and soon after, the Kingdom of Sardinia joined the conflict, forming a powerful military alliance with the Ottomans against the Russians. Over the next two years, in what came to be known as the Eastern or Crimean War, the Ottoman Empire and its allies waged a massively destructive form of combat against Russia, intensified by modern steamships, longrange cannons, and explosive shells that maimed and annihilated hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians. The new Ottoman telegraphic system, built by European companies, sped military communications and also permitted battlefield correspondents to quickly file reports in the foreign press.23 Over the course of the vast bloodshed, Russia lost nearly a half million soldiers and much of her access to the Black Sea. And in the process of building railway and telegraph networks and procuring the implements of war, the Sublime Porte, the seat of the Ottoman state, took on its first foreign loan in 1854 and soon accrued crushing debts to European lenders. In 1856, Russia conceded defeat. Afterwards, during negotiations for the Treaty of Paris, the Ottoman government agreed to reiterate the promises made

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in the most recent Tanzimat reform edict:24 equality among Ottoman subjects, regardless of religion or race. In the face of Muslim discontent with this new egalitarian order and the long history of broken Ottoman promises for protection and security, Armenians recognized a need for greater self-governance. By 1863, they had ratified their own constitution, establishing an Armenian National Assembly. Ottoman repayments on the massive European loans devoured an everlarger portion of government revenues.25 In October of 1875, the Ottoman grand vizier declared a sovereign default on the foreign debts. The following April, Bulgarians broke into revolt, seeking freedom from Ottoman rule and chafing at new taxes imposed as a result of the central government’s economic woes. Sultan Abdul Aziz sent troops and irregular fighters to this Balkan region to suppress the rebellion. These combatants massacred thousands of rebels and killed civilians indiscriminately. Ottoman soldiers beheaded and disemboweled men, burned villages, and destroyed monasteries and farms. Newspaper accounts of Christian Balkan babies impaled by Turkish bayonets on European soil spread swiftly. The British questioned their own long-standing Ottoman allegiance, characterizing the atrocities as “the Bulgarian Horrors.”26 On May 30, 1876, facing fierce condemnation from the west, Ottoman ministers deposed Abdul Aziz. Five days later, he was found dead in his prison cell, his wrists slashed. His nephew and successor, Sultan Murad V, reigned for three months before he too was deposed. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was enthroned in August of 1876 in an atmosphere of calamity. Faced with international outcry over failed reforms, brutalities against Christians in the east, the government’s default on its debts, and the violent response to the Balkan uprisings, the new sultan offered up a constitution drafted by members of the liberal Young Ottomans party. The document created a parliament along European lines. Armenians and other groups would gain representation; they hoped that the centuries-long inequalities might finally cease. Ottoman leaders looked for an end to the threats of foreign interference. But within two years, the sultan suspended the constitution and dismissed the elected parliament. Instead, Abdul Hamid II would attempt to halt deteriorating conditions by the use of force and the resumption of an iron-fisted central control.

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In 1877, Russia led an alliance of Balkan armies in a war of liberation from Ottoman dominion. Within months, tens of thousands of Ottoman Turkish soldiers were killed, as Russian forces pushed westward through the Balkan provinces and came within striking distance of Constantinople. Russia and the defeated Ottoman government signed the Treaty of San Stefano on March 3, 1878. The agreement codified a massive reordering in the Balkans, with an independent Montenegro, Serbia, and Rumania, and substantial reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bulgaria would become an autonomous principality. All the new Slavic Balkan states, freed of Ottoman rule, would now orbit the Russian sphere. Eastern Armenians feared the departure of their Russian protectors. Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian, who governed the Ottoman Armenian millet, met with the Russian commander and expressed his anxieties over the safety of his people. As a result, Article 16 of the San Stefano agreement tied the withdrawal of Russian troops to a promise to effect the “reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians.” Russian General Mikhail Loris-Melikov promised to remain with his troops in Erzurum to ensure compliance. Once again, Armenians nursed hopes of better times. But the Great Powers of Europe condemned the idea of a new BalkanRussian axis. Representatives of Great Britain, Germany and Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France thronged to Berlin and convened a congress on June 13, 1878. Ottoman Armenians also sent a delegation to plead yet again for structural reform and protection against the dangerous conditions in the east. “Universal anarchy and misgovernment appear to reign in these regions,” wrote Major Henry Trotter, British Consul for Kurdistan in Erzurum. In his report to the British Parliament, he detailed the tensions between local Muslim notables and Christians: At every step, the spirit of destruction and tyranny is seen at work . . . forced labor and heavy and unlawful exactions of many kinds, both in money and produce, contemptuous and insulting language, often accompanied by blows, to the males, and too often by violation of the honor of the females. It can easily be understood that in a country where no law exists, where the feudal chiefs are possessed of almost absolute power over a race of people whom they both dislike and despise, that the state of the subject race is truly miserable.27

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The Armenian contingent demanded the appointment of Christian governors, the right to local self-rule, civil courts, the opportunity to serve in mixed militias, voting rights, and the allocation of some of their taxes toward education. One month later in Berlin, the European powers promulgated a greatly modified treaty. The desperate concerns of Armenians had been brushed aside. Worst of all, the Berlin Treaty of 1878 removed some of the crucial security promises made earlier and called for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops. Article 61 of the new agreement acknowledged the dangers for Armenians but ended with a feeble assurance that the Sublime Porte would issue periodic reports on the condition of the eastern Christians. The fiery speeches of foreign statesmen decrying the treatment of the Armenians had amounted to nothing. After the war, the Ottoman government continued to settle huge numbers of Balkan Muslim refugees in densely Armenian regions. The western provinces of Anatolia, including the Brussa province, where Tavit’s family lived, received nearly one million of these émigrés in the 1880s and ‘90s.28 The migrants arrived impoverished, armed, and often with lingering fury against the Balkan Christians that had compelled their departure. Abdul Hamid II’s regime emphasized loyalty and obedience to the Ottoman state. Enraged that Armenians had appealed to foreign nations for support, leading Ottoman voices crafted bitter narratives of Armenians as “traitors” and “secessionists,” heinous accusations in the shrinking realm. Anti-Armenian propaganda stoked the flames. Across the empire’s span, Armenians turned to one another. European-educated Armenians supported ideas of self-determination and introduced the theories of Karl Marx and other political thinkers into local discourse. Anatolian Armenians analyzed the Balkan efforts to gain liberation from Ottoman rule. Russian-Armenian activists advanced proposals for armed self-defense. One of the first factions to emerge was the Armenakan, a political party founded in 1886, which advocated the sovereignty of the Armenian people and engaged in propaganda and military training.29 In 1887, seven RussianArmenian university students in Geneva founded the Hunchak Party. They envisioned the creation of an independent Armenian state, liberated from Ottoman, Russian, and Persian rule. But the party itself splintered along ideological lines. The Dashnagtsutyun Party, founded in 1890, would become the

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most enduring. The Dashnags supported dramatic reforms for Armenians, but within the framework of the empire. Some members dreamt of victory for the working classes over the ruling classes. Others envisioned a new nation. Alternately known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or ARF, the Dashnags also had been founded by Russian Armenians and advocated armed resistance for communities under siege in the anarchic eastern regions. For the most part though, Armenians—long called the “Loyal Millet”— viewed themselves as Ottomans. The greatest number looked for democratic and structural reforms while remaining under the Ottoman authority. Restoration of the 1876 constitution was a much-desired goal. In 1890, Sultan Abdul Hamid II began recruiting Muslim Kurdish tribes in the east to form irregular mounted units. Kurdish compliance with Ottoman taxation and army recruitment had been erratic. About sixty-five new armed and mounted regiments—dubbed the Hamidiye cavalry—offered a way to extend the reach of the sultan’s authority while addressing the vexation of ungovernable nomadic tribes. Among the unofficial benefits, the Kurdish forces would discover, was the right to plunder without recrimination.30 In August and September 1893, this new corps embarked on its first spate of violence against the Armenians of Sasun, a mountainous region in the Bitlis province where Armenians were permitted to carry firearms but remained subordinate to Kurdish chiefs and obliged to pay protection tariffs. Earlier in the year, a visiting Hunchak activist had taught the Sasun Armenians some lessons in self-defense and now they attempted to resist the oppressive Kurdish demands. Several thousand tribesmen were then sent to attack them. Hearing of the raids, the Bitlis governor-general arrived on the scene with Ottoman troops and demanded payment of government taxes. The Armenians refused, protesting that they could not afford a double taxation and decrying the complete lack of government protection. In the months following the first attacks, both Kurdish tribesmen and Ottoman soldiers in turn assaulted and looted Armenian villagers. Men, women, and children were ruthlessly slaughtered.31 The Hamidian forces did not stop in Sasun. Over the next two years, they terrorized Armenian communities throughout the eastern provinces, massacring as many as two hundred thousand, destroying homes, properties, businesses, and killing American Protestant missionaries as well.32 The attackers

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ravaged twenty-five hundred villages and devastated more than six hundred monasteries and churches. They murdered two hundred priests. Threatened with death, thirty thousand Armenians converted to Islam.33 In November 1895, an American journalist reported what he had witnessed in Erzurum: What I myself saw this Friday afternoon is forever engraven on my mind as the most horrible sight a man can see. . . . Along the wall on the north, in a row 20 ft. wide and 150 ft. long, lay 321 dead bodies of the massacred Armenians. Many were fearfully mangled and mutilated. I saw one with his face completely smashed in with a blow of some heavy weapon after he was killed. I saw some with their own necks almost severed by a sword cut. One I saw whose whole chest had been skinned, his forearms were cut off, while the upper arm was skinned of flesh.34

Missionaries and diplomats telegraphed accounts of the carnage to the capital and the rest of the world. On August 26, 1896, twenty-eight armed Dashnag Party revolutionaries seized the Imperial Ottoman Bank building in Constantinople, holding one hundred and fifty European employees hostage. The rebels were determined to attract foreign intervention against the massacres in the east. Ten people were killed during the fourteen-hour coup. European diplomats sympathetic to the Dashnag cause arranged a swift exile to Marseille for the surviving occupiers. An American in Constantinople described the wanton violence that followed: Crowds of porters and rough men thronged in the streets and killed with clubs not a few Armenians. Others broke open Armenian shops and stole the contents. . . . The work of plunder and robbery was carried forward with unrelenting fury. . . . What the mob could not carry off, they destroyed.35

Constantinople police and Ottoman soldiers stood by or participated as mobs clubbed and stoned civilians in the street, inflaming further violence and destruction. Rioters massacred more than five thousand Constantinople Armenians. European diplomats residing in the capital witnessed the barbaric acts. They and their governments loudly demanded a stop to the violence. The bloodshed abated.

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For Tavit ’ s family, however, distanced from both the capital and the eastern provinces and still struggling to buy food and pay rent for their room, the greatest troubles remained economic. Tavit’s father decided to try his hand as an itinerant fabric dyer. He strapped his cauldrons and sacks of pigments onto a mule and traveled to the Eskishehir district villages, hawking his coloring services to local women and urging them to throw a silver coin or two into the vat to get a “deep-dyed effect.” Ohannes was the head of his family, yet he had never mastered the role of provider. The playfulness that had been so much a part of his energetic youth had waned, but he continued to take great interest in his growing children. When Tavit turned 13, he entered a public mathematics competition sponsored by the French Catholic Schools of Eskishehir and open to all city students. Across the front of the assembly hall, Tavit stood in a line that included many older contestants. The schoolmaster, speaking French, posed increasingly difficult problems. Some boys hesitated too long, others blundered. One by one, they were dismissed from the stage, until only the last two remained standing. After the challenging final round, Tavit triumphed, capturing the first prize. His father proudly celebrated the victory. Occasionally, Takouhi and Markrid received visitors at the khan. One afternoon, several relatives stopped by and saw Ohannes resting on an inner bunk, his forearm covering his eyes. Mistakenly assuming he was asleep, they clucked, “Vakh, vakh! Is this what Ohannes of the great house of Galenbajak has come to?” Tavit’s father leapt up and cried, “Did you all come to visit or to bemoan my misfortunes?” In an indignant fury, he chased them out of the room. In spite of Ohannes’s troubles, Tavit’s family remained close with their relatives in the city, spending holy feast days and leisurely Sunday-afternoon picnics together on the banks of the Porsuk River. The lad also looked forward to seeing his Mouradchai uncles when they came to the city to sell their grapes and raisins. Tavit’s kin from the mountain village and other farmers brought a cornucopia of goods to Eskishehir’s summer markets and the Grand Market in September—tobacco, sesame, opium poppies, and linseed, cereal grains, tiftik— the silky goat mohair—wool, animal skins, wine, honey, poultry, and eggs.36 From time to time, Tavit was overwhelmed by a longing to revisit his family in Mouradchai and invented a strategy. During their visits, his uncles would

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take a room in the khan. Usually, they left Eskishehir before dawn. While his parents and grandmother slept, Tavit crept out of the room and hid under the pile of empty crates in his uncles’ cart, awaiting their departure. When the mule-drawn wagon passed what Tavit calculated as the point of no return, he sprang up and revealed himself, earning a reprieve from the confinement of the khan, some knowing chuckles from his uncles, and a few glorious summer weeks with his cousins playing among the high rocks and pine trees in the fresh mountain air. For Tavit, Mouradchai was a kind of paradise. Unlike Tavit’s parents, who kept to the rough woven tunics, headscarves, boots, and baggy shalvar pants of the village, Victoria’s parents, Garabed and Marik Shahbazian dressed in tailored, European-style clothes, as befitted a successful workshop manager and his wife. The Shahbazians enrolled Victoria in the Armenian primary school so that she could learn to read and write, but withdrew their gentle, honeyhaired daughter after a few years, fearing that she might encounter rough men while outside the home. Victoria learned to cook both traditional and continental dishes and preserve food for the cold months. Her mother instilled in her the value of thrift. Victoria taught herself to make dresses after glancing at an illustration or seeing an attractive item of clothing worn on the street. With her deft embroidery, she could conjure up leaping rabbits and flying birds. Years of Germans and Austrians in the city had exposed Eskishehir families to foreign customs and cuisines. Tavit’s school had been founded in 1891 partly at the request of the many Catholic European railroad administrators and employees,37 eager to educate their children in mathematics, history, and the French language and to expose them to rudiments of “gracious living” in their formative years. All the boys attending L’École des Pères Français Saint Augustine de l’Assomption learned formal modes of greeting, penmanship, and etiquette for conducting correspondence. The children enjoyed taking part in theatrical productions and concerts as well. Each school day at noon, Tavit’s sister, Marik, delivered a warm lunch, wrapped in a clean towel. He waited for her outside. When Tavit saw his sister’s small frame stepping round the corner to meet him, he called out, in their usual comedic ritual: “Is that hatzbrtoon?” He despised the fried slice of bread dipped in egg that was his family’s daily sustenance. Whenever she

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said yes, which was nearly always, he tossed pebbles after her in mock anger as she dashed away, her long brown braids flying out behind her. Occasionally, Tavit skipped classes to go fishing. Although his family managed to scrape together the tuition payments, they could not afford to buy the required books. Tavit was lively, practical, and a quick study. He devised a plan. He would borrow a text from a more affluent classmate, thoroughly absorb the information needed to excel in the final exams and in exchange, tutor the book’s owner. This approach worked well. He achieved a high academic ranking and won prizes for his competence in the French language. Tavit’s school had grown rapidly. When his grandmother enrolled him at the age of 7, there were twenty boys in one class. Three years on, eighty boys attended as well as seventy girls in the division run by the Oblate Sisters of the order.38 The school also gained prestige: the kaimakam—the county governor— pleased that the school had met new general requirements to add Turkishlanguage instruction to its curriculum,39 distributed the 1895 year-end prizes himself. Eskishehir’s Greek and Armenian schools roused themselves in competition with the new French Catholic institution.40 Marik, a quick learner with an inquisitive mind, yearned to attend school as well, but even with the help of relatives, the family could afford to send only her younger brother. At home, she helped care for Karnig, acting as a second mother to him. Like his older brothers, the sensitive little boy had a talent for music and was developing into a prodigious oud player, learning to improvise on the lute-like Armenian instrument. One day, an uncle brought an exciting message from the mountain village. A widower named Ohannes Avedian had asked for Marik’s hand in marriage. Tavit’s sister happily returned as a bride. She had missed the company of her large family and the yearly cycles of cultivating and harvesting plants in the fertile fields of her birthplace. She discovered that her new husband had a sweet temperament and a sense of humor. Marik kept with tradition, moving to her husband’s family home and maintaining the expected year of silence. Although the young bride described her mother-in-law as a good woman, she had one particularly annoying habit: if Marik took a broom and started to sweep the yard, her mother-in-law would call out in a strident tone, “Come Marik, pick up the broom and sweep the yard!” Whatever action Marik commenced would

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soon be followed by a sharp command to do that very thing. As a properly raised bride, though, she bit her tongue. Her husband teased her lovingly. “You never beat a woman,” he liked to say. “If you push her just a little, she might fall!” These seemingly nonsensical words always drew a blushing smile from his wife. Marik gave birth to Aram, Mariam, and Hagop, named after her older brother and grandfather. A fourth child—a daughter—died in infancy. Markrid did her best to keep things clean and orderly without Marik’s help, but the environs outside their room in the khan were impossible to control. Traveling farmers and merchants who set up temporary shops on the lower level carried illnesses with them, as did fleas and the occasional rat. Sometimes after a rainstorm, the water in the courtyard fountain grew murky. Pneumonia broke out, and Tavit’s father fell ill. After several weeks’ rest, he felt as though he was on the mend. It was Mardi Gras, the big night for celebration before the beginning of the Lenten fast. The whole family was invited to a party with their cousins. Still too weak to join them, Ohannes stayed at home and sent Markrid, Takouhi, Tavit, Karnig, and Hagop out to enjoy the festivities. Later that evening, they returned to a perfectly dark and silent room. Markrid quickly lit a lamp. The family grasped what had happened. The flickering light revealed their father lying ashen and still in his bunk. Over the next few days, the whole clan arrived to pay their final respects. Markrid and Takouhi washed Ohannes’s body, dressed him in his neatest clothes, and laid him out at home. This time it was the family’s turn to prepare madagh, the meats and sweet offerings for the repose of their dear departed one’s soul. After the funeral, the family observed the ritual forty days of prayer and mourning. A hokehankist—the requiem service for the soul of the departed— was held at church. Ohannes had disappointed his family in material ways, but above all things, the children grieved the loss of his warmth and companionship. Tavit realized that the time had come for him to take action. It was 1898. He was 14 years old. He withdrew from school and looked for work. He took a job as assistant to the largest egg merchant and exporter in Eskishehir. His facility with numbers, knowledge of written etiquette, and

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command of Armenian, Turkish, and French gave him strong qualifications. The business was based in Eskishehir, but soon his employer began to send him to different cities around the region and as far away as the busy port of Smyrna, on the western coast.41 Eggs were a big business and a staple of Tavit’s household’s diet. But when Tavit started his job, he learned that egg whites were also in demand for the production of light-sensitive glass plates and photographic paper. Albumen printing, which rendered images in a range of warm hues from russet brown to black, was the most common method for photographic reproduction.42 The huge popularity of the art led to mass production of the paper. In workrooms in Eskishehir and other cities, aproned women, their hair tucked under a cap, broke the eggs and separated whites and yolks. They whipped the whites into a froth and stored the albumen in glass jars for about a week, until it fermented. The acrid smell, which sometimes lingered on the finished product, was nearly unbearable. Workers floated paper in trays of the solution and then sensitized it, commonly with silver nitrate. Armenians had played a pivotal role in the growth of Ottoman photography. In 1839, Constantinople newspapers heralded the recent creation of Louis Daguerre’s art in France. By the 1850s, Ottoman Armenians and Greeks dominated the field and established studios throughout the empire. In 1863, Sultan Abdul Aziz appointed the Armenian Abdullah Frères—Viçen, Hovsep, and Kevork—as “Artists to His Imperial Majesty.” Photographers documented daily life, costumed Oriental “types,” Constantinople’s great mosques, monuments, and street views. Locally produced prints of antiquities and landscapes were a popular purchase. The Shahbazians, like other prosperous families, posed for studio portraits and sent copies to Marik and other kin in Mouradchai. Eskishehir’s Armenian photographers chronicled city scenes and the pleasures of family life—betrothal and wedding portraits, newly christened children. Tavit was spellbound by the art. With his first earnings as the egg merchant’s assistant, Tavit rented a house and moved his mother, grandmother, and two brothers out of the khan. He took great pride in providing for his family. The young man also enjoyed the small adventures that were a part of his new job, and his natural inclination to strike up a conversation was an asset as the geographic range of his duties increased. When the workday

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was over, he explored the world around him. One evening in Smyrna, he went for a walk along the quay, following the drift of music from waterside cafés. He saw a group of stylishly dressed Armenian young ladies, laughing and promenading arm in arm. Somewhat naïvely, he asked if they thought it was safe to stroll unescorted and gallantly offered his chaperonage. The girls chatted and giggled, exchanging pleasantries with him, but when he parted from them, they yelled after him: “Hey, kavaratzi! Country boy!” The young women poked fun at the earnest youth, dissolving in gales of hilarity at his expense.

In 1902, Garabed and Marik Shahbazian concluded engagement plans for their daughter, pledging her to an enterprising young Armenian merchant. Victoria had just turned 12, so the marriage was not expected to take place for a few years. Her parents threw a big party to celebrate the “giving of the word,” the khosk gab. Tavit, who was 17 at the time, attended with his family. When they returned home that evening, Tavit turned to his mother and exclaimed, “Let them betroth her to anyone they like, she’s mine! She’ll end up in my house!” This was a shocking statement. And when had he fallen in love? It was a Victoria Shahbazian, ca. 1905 mystery to Markrid. The Shahbazians had made a promise, and Victoria’s fiancé offered her the assurance of a comfortable life. Also, Tavit and Victoria were first cousins, one generation removed, and church canon stipulated “seven navels” of familial separation between engaged couples. But most of all, the giving of the word was a very serious commitment. Markrid turned to him sharply. “Hush, boy!” she said. “Don’t go talking like that about a girl already spoken for.” But it was too late. Victoria had already imprinted herself as his heart’s desire.

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Once more, Tavit conceived a plan. First, he spoke to Victoria’s older brother, Khatchig, and pleaded with him to intervene. It was not an easy case, as Tavit’s family was still dependent on their young son for support. Moreover, even if he could persuade her parents to break the engagement, the couple would still need dispensation from the Patriarchate to be allowed to marry. And Tavit had yet to find the one thing that would enable him to make his mark in the world. He decided to remove himself from the scene while he engineered his delicate machinations. He would go for a time to Constantinople, where he could continue to work in the egg business. Before he boarded the train from Eskishehir to the capital, Tavit paid a visit to Victoria’s parents. Dressed in his neatest suit of clothes and with all the poise he could muster, he begged them to consider his proposal for their daughter’s hand.

Chap te r 3

Constantinople and the Art of Kutahya

For a few months in 1902, Tavit immersed himself in the thrum and motion of Constantinople—clanging tram bells and clopping horses, clattering metal cups at drinking fountains. From minarets high above the piled domes of the great mosques, steely melismas poured down five times a day, pierced by the caw and cry of seagulls. Steamers and paddleboats churned the waters of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Mangy dogs slept in the streets, rousing themselves to feed on fetid piles of refuse and snarling at passersby. Genteel strollers toted silk parasols, now and again raising a gloved hand to cover an offended nose. Shop signs beckoned in Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and Roman characters. The million residents of the teeming city—as many as one-fifth of them Armenian1—dressed, labored, walked, and romanced according to their own national customs. Tavit continued to work for the Eskishehir egg merchant as an agent in the capital. He spent most of his days in Stamboul—the European peninsula of Constantinople south of the Golden Horn River and north of the Sea of Marmara. The commercial district where he made his daily rounds occupied many hilly streets and squares between the majestic Sultan Ahmet and Suleimanye Mosques, the old Topkapi Palace, and the converted Byzantine St. Sophia Cathedral. The Buyuk Charshi—the Grand Bazaar—a labyrinth of vaulted alleyways within adjoining pillared stone structures, housed thousands of stalls, eateries, and shops. Each day, eager tourists and local customers streamed through, but 47

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the hundred entryways were bolted shut at sunset. Whole passageways within the Grand Bazaar featured blanket shops, spice shops, tailors and fez makers, painted muslins, brocades, and carpets. Cries of Come and get it! emerged from the din as shopkeepers and buyers negotiated in a polyglot tangle. Near the Grand Bazaar stood the Tchohadji Han on the Rue Mahmoud Pasha.2 Inside the passageways and cubicles, practically all the shopkeepers and craftsmen were Armenian. Originally built as a broadcloth marketplace, the khan had evolved into a showplace for objects made with precious stones and metals. A few lodgings were offered to traveling merchants at little or no charge; only male tenants were allowed. Long-term residents, like Tavit, had to provide their own mattresses and cookware.3 In the scores of Stamboul khans, men from all over Anatolia rested after their daily labors in the capital. Closer to the river, the Balek Bazar Han—the Fish Market Building—sold some of the seventy varieties of fish caught daily in the Bosphorus.4 On the long Balek Bazar Street, which ran parallel to the water, wholesale produce vendors, mostly Greek and Armenian, had access to the port. A few steps to the east, the railway terminus connected merchants to the Balkan provinces, Europe, and beyond. Within this lively food market district, cheese, fish, olive, salt, halvah, honey, and flour vendors carried on a bustling trade. Along one stretch of Balek Bazar Street, thirty-five wholesale egg merchants sold their products to buyers from various shops and restaurants. Tavit received crates of eggs as they arrived from Eskishehir, Kutahya, and Adabazar by mule-drawn cart and freight train on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, and transported them to vendors on the European side, in Stamboul. This was not how he envisioned spending the rest of his life. He often thought of Victoria. He remembered seeing his young cousin fly to the door when she heard her father returning home; she would greet him by tenderly kissing his hand, in the custom of Armenian families. Tavit recalled the cadences of her voice, which quavered between high and low and often tumbled into a soft laugh. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. Once a week, he composed a letter to Victoria’s brother, Khatchig. In his compact Armenian script, Tavit asked after each member of the Shahbazian family and sent pointed compliments to his aunt and uncle. In each letter, he found new ways to express his yearning for Victoria’s hand. Khatchig and

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his mother were sympathetic and understood that Tavit was both sincere and determined in his campaign. Khatchig responded with his own news. He had decided to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and had apprenticed himself to a jeweler to learn the art of fashioning objects in gold. For both of these young men, Garabed Shahbazian—Khatchig and Victoria’s father—provided an inspiring model of a livelihood, managing a workshop, supervising meerschaum carvers, and building connections locally and abroad. Tavit weighed the possibility of a life in art. Textile printing and fabric dyeing, as his great-great-grandfather and father had done, did not appeal to him. But as a child in Mouradchai he had also learned that he was partly descended from faïence makers—artists who painted ceramics under glaze in the historic tile-making center of Kutahya. The art was called çini, after the exquisite Chinese blue-and-white porcelain so passionately collected by wealthy notables and sultans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. During Tavit’s years in Eskishehir, the city had no fewer than twelve pottery workshops;5 these firms provided the clay roof tiles, bricks, and food-storage vessels that were fixtures of every household. Constantinople, on the other hand, was filled with çini artifacts of an entirely different sort—many of them masterpieces from the ancient city known as Nicaea, now called Iznik, that for centuries fulfilled imperial orders for the delicately painted and glazed tiles and tableware. Directly behind the Fish Market Building was the Sultan Valide Mosque— also known as the Yeni Cami or New Mosque—with its two minarets and central dome resting on four smaller domes, built over a period of seven decades beginning in 1597. The grand mosque loomed above the port and its clusters of small boats loaded with fish, produce, and strapping oarsmen. As he walked past it, Tavit’s gaze was drawn upward, above the busy commerce of the street. Enticed by curiosity, the young man entered the mosque. Inside, he craned his neck to see the dizzying array of densely packed ornamentation covering the surfaces of the immense interior—the composite work of three or four different royal architects and countless artisans. Fields of arabesques filled the curved surfaces connecting the main dome to the four immense supporting pillars. Some designs resembled carpets, with medallions and rosettes set in fields of flowers or scrolling leaves enclosed by rectangular borders. At the entrance to the sultan’s private quarters, gleaming ranks of tiles pulsed with

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spiraling vines and blossoms in subdued shades of browns, blues, and greens. Intricately carved wooden doors set with mother-of-pearl guarded the royal family’s inner sanctum. Tavit surveyed the enormous edifice, one segment at a time. He was captivated by the way tiny motifs amassed into larger patterns and panels, and stems and leaves seemed to curl into infinity. He studied each wall intently, trying to memorize these stylized representations of the natural world, their muted tones fixed forever beneath the lustrous surface of the glaze. A short walk from the egg vendors’ stalls was another tiled mosque of great repute, built to memorialize Rustem Pasha, the wealthy and avaricious grand vizier of Sultan Suleiman, who had married the royal daughter, Mihrimah Sultan. This mosque was nearly hidden away above a row of basket maker’s shops. The small, arched entryway was easy to miss. Tavit walked through the doorway and climbed the narrow, covered staircase. He emerged into a rectangular courtyard, isolated from the hubbub of the market streets. Shaded by a portico, the mosque’s façade was sheathed with

Yeni Cami and Eminonu Bazaar, Constantinople, ca. 1890–1900

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vividly colored tile panels adorned with flowers and scrolling clouds. To the right of the building’s entrance, set in a field of intertwining saz leaves, was an unusual single tile: a painted map of the Kaaba in Mecca. On this outer wall, ranks of peonies hypnotized Tavit with their vibrant cobalt, turquoise, and cornflower blues, set off with bursts of blood red. And that white! He had never seen such a color. Lattices of tulips and carnations shimmered on a field of white, an immeasurable white that contained all the colors of the universe and yet none; a white so incandescent that all the flora inhabiting its surface sprang to life as though animated by the breath of God. Tavit found the interior of the mosque even more astonishing. The walls and pillars were entirely covered with brilliantly colored tiles. Geometric and plant forms burst forth in an intensity of hues that he had never before seen. And the placement of each decorative panel revealed a sense of intelligence and order. Inside the soaring structures of the Sultan Valide and Sultan Ahmet Mosques, Tavit’s eyes had been led heavenward, but here, in the more intimate Rustem Pasha Mosque, he looked straight ahead, enthralled by the beauty of the tiles. What could a young man—still a boy, really—who had spent the last decade dwelling within the bleak confines of four dreary walls have made of these paradisiacal visions? The grace and power of the colors and arrangements there would surely occupy his memory, imagination, and storytelling for the rest of his life. In some of his free hours, Tavit paid the toll to cross the New Bridge, a wooden pontoon structure leading to the Galata district. He would walk and explore for hours at a time, continuing north to Pera, where many of the capital’s Europeans lived. Here, he could satisfy his curiosity about new modes of life—elegant apartment blocks, newspaper offices, shops, theaters, and cinemas—so different from Stamboul’s byzantine warren of stalls where vendors plied their ancient trades. In the Galata and Pera districts, Tavit’s fluent French served him well. On the Grande Rue de Pera, a shopper might find foreign books and newspapers, patisseries, and the latest continental fashions. Armenians operated a wide variety of establishments—photo studios, hotels, pharmacies, and even hat-feather merchants—catering to foreign and local families. Tavit exchanged small pleasantries with proprietors as he got to know the streets and vendors. In the 1870s, fire had ravaged the district’s old wooden buildings. Afterward, stone construction dominated. Some structures affected a Parisian neoclassical style.

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Two of Tavit’s favorite shops, the atelier of photographers Jean Pascal Sébah and Policarpe Joaillier, and, just a few doors down, that of the Armenian Abdullah Frères, displayed albumen prints of the great Ottoman monuments. Whenever his funds allowed, Tavit purchased photos of the tiled walls of the Rustem Pasha and the Sultan Valide Mosques and added them to a small collection he had mounted into a plain cardboard album. The intricate patterns and juxtapositions of tile designs appealed to his mathematical mind. By his eighteenth birthday, Tavit had reached his full height of five feet six inches. His broad cheekbones, exaggerated by the leanness of youth, sculpted the contour of his oval face. He had a fair complexion, sandy brown hair, and eyes that slanted downward at the corners; his eyebrows traced a similar arc. A pleasing dimple punctuated his chin. He kept himself clean-shaven except for a modest mustache. Besides French and Armenian, Tavit spoke Turkish fluently, along with a smattering of Greek and a growing amount of Arabic. He was polite and respectful, as he had been raised, but also took enormous pleasure in spirited conversation and never hesitated to engage with those around him. Constantinople coffee houses attracted a mix of men, and the talk veered through a broader range of topics than in Eskishehir. Current affairs were the most popular subject, and Tavit quickly made friends. One of them, a Turkish bureaucrat destined to rise in government, discussed political trends with the youth. “There will be tough times ahead for Armenians,” the man warned. After several meetings, this fellow offered Tavit his details. “If you are ever in need of assistance, send me a telegram.” Tavit kept the card in a safe place. Another regular but more unsettling sight in Constantinople was the stream of Muslim migrants from the strife-ridden Balkan, north Caucasus, and Crimean regions. The government had taken the position that a larger population would strengthen the empire and invigorate its production and had issued a call: Anyone could settle A family of Balkan émigrés in Stamboul, ca. 1900 in Anatolia as long as they pledged

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their allegiance to the sultan.6 Thousands of immigrants and refugees poured into western Anatolia. Tavit watched as families, gaunt after their long journeys, their worldly possessions piled into ox- or buffalo-drawn carts, flowed into the capital. Other travelers to the city brought a variety of regional arts and crafts to sell. On certain market days in Stamboul, vendors would arrive from the provinces to set up open-air displays. One of those merchants was the Kutahya ceramics usta—master—Hafiz Mehmet Emin Efendi, who regularly sent a few of his apprentices to the city. The young men would assemble an attractive display of glazed vases and plates in one of the designated squares. Europeans tourists haggled over the colorful wares, determined to take home a souvenir of the East. Tavit saw that this art, which had also been practiced by some of his ancestors, was still very much alive. When the crowds thinned, Tavit chatted with the boys. He learned that a good number of Armenians continued to populate Kutahya and work in the ceramics trade. The young men explained the process of apprenticeship. They themselves had begun by performing the most menial labors—sweeping the studio, collecting firewood, hauling bags of stone, unloading wagons, and fetching water. These monotonous chores were brightened by the occasional excitement of traveling to the capital for the street markets or to Brussa to deliver a fresh supply of wares to Emin Efendi’s outlet, the Faïences de Kutahia, opposite the municipal building.7 But their most important task was to watch the elders carefully. In time, they would have the opportunity to try each step of the process. If they were diligent, they could learn to spin pots on a wheel, cut tiles, or prepare and paint glazes. Some might create the designs that were transferred onto ceramic surfaces with coal dust brushed through tiny pinholes in stenciled patterns. A very few, who also had a head for business, might master every aspect of the art and become ustas themselves. They could then establish their own studios and train the next generations of artisans. Kutahya had two important ceramics workshops in 1902. One belonged to Mehmet Emin Efendi and the other to the Minassian brothers, Harutyun and Garabed, who had learned the art from their father, Garabed Minas usta, a late nineteenth-century master. These studios produced decorative cups, plates, bowls, and vases with designs and colors that traced their descent from the old imperial palace ware, but were also producing tiles for the renovation of

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historic monuments. The masters were constantly experimenting, attempting to rediscover the secrets of the colors and glazes that had reached such a state of radiant perfection in the Rustem Pasha Mosque. Tavit was intrigued. He wrote to his family. His mother urged him to go to Kutahya, which was also much closer to Eskishehir. His sister, Marik, was now a happily married mother in Mouradchai and his younger brother, Karnig, made modest contributions to the household finances with his occasional carpentry assignments. Hagop pieced together a living with sundry jobs. Tavit’s daily wage as a beginner would be very low, but if he succeeded in mastering the art, his income would grow. Perhaps this trade, already a part of the family’s lineage, would offer him a way to fulfill his true potential, and he was deeply attracted to the art. He packed up his belongings and headed home to resign from the egg merchant’s job and see his family. In Eskishehir, good news greeted him. The months of Tavit’s letter-writing campaign had swayed Victoria’s parents. They had made the wrenching decision to dismantle their daughter’s previous engagement and accept his proposal. And although Victoria trusted her parents to make this choice on her behalf, she also realized that she had grown very fond of her tenacious suitor.

View of Kutahya, ca. 1900

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There were still obstacles ahead. Tavit would have to establish himself professionally and the cousins would need to obtain dispensation from the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople, when the time came for them to marry. But Victoria’s mother and father were also pleased that their determined and energetic future son-in-law had committed himself to learning a craft. After the families enjoyed a quiet celebration of the new betrothal, Tavit traveled to Kutahya, following in the footsteps of his ancestors and hoping to forge a place for himself in the world.

Kutahya was a dusty and quiet town. A ruined castle and its immense citadel stood above the city on a wide and barren crag—crumbling relics of a glorious past. From the base of the mountain, clusters of two-story wood-framed houses radiated out to form the modern city. The narrow, twisting streets sloped down toward two covered markets, the town squares, and municipal buildings. A few residences were empty—the abandoned homes of families that had left in search of work in Eskishehir, Brussa, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Vienna.8 Here and there, a slender minaret or lone steeple stretched up through the sea of clay-tiled rooftops. In the ancient Phrygian era, Kutahya was called Cotyaeum. Located strategically on the crossroads connecting eastern Anatolia with the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Marmara Seas, it became a great military base in the Dark Ages, and later, a frontier for Byzantium against her enemies. It fell to the Seljuks in 1182, and then fell again to the Turkoman Germiyan tribe, becoming the seat of their state around 1300. They built their capital on the lofty rock. Inside the fortress walls were markets, baths, cisterns, mosques, and gardens,9 and at the center, an elegant castle and storehouse of Germiyan treasure. More than seventy massive towers flanked the perimeter. Within their stout layers of mortared brick and rubble, fragments of Byzantine crosses, Roman sarcophagi, Corinthian capitals, and Phrygian lintels had been put to new use as construction materials.10 By the early decades of the fourteenth century, the Germiyanids had conquered seven hundred cities, enlarging their territories and greatly enriching

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the court. But later in the century, the beylik, or principality, was threatened by powerful enemies on two sides: the Karamanids, to the east, and the Ottomans, to the northwest. In 1381, to evade his tribe’s annihilation, Germiyan leader Suleyman Shah betrothed his daughter Devlet to Beyazid, son and heir of Ottoman Sultan Murad I. Kutahya, or Germiyan, as the capital was also called, was ceded to the Ottomans as part of Devlet’s dowry. Warring factions continued to battle over the beylik and its legendary riches. In 1402, the principality was seized by the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur— known also as Tamerlane—then by the Karamanids, and finally, from 1428 forward, Kutahya returned to Ottoman rule, briefly serving as capital for the entire province of Anadolu. In succeeding centuries, Kutahya’s castle endured attacks, revolts, devastating fires, and slow decay. Newly built roads bypassed the ancient settlement. By the early 1700s, European travelers wrote of its desolation and decrepitude.11 The once great fortress gradually lost all function and vitality, ending its relentless decline, finally, as an object of curiosity and distant antiquity.

Kutahya street scene

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Tavit found Kutahya to be a more insular town than he had expected. Both Eskishehir, and of course Constantinople, were exciting places with large foreign presences where the latest products and ideas circulated. Although Kutahya’s Alayunt train station, well east of the town’s center, had connected the city with the capital since 1893, Tavit observed townswomen wearing the rough woven veils and kaftans common to Mouradchai and other remote villages. But the young man had come for a reason and was eager to learn all he could. He joined the congregation of Sourp Toros Church, named for St. Theodoros. The building sat near the foot of the mountain and the congregation offered an anchor for the lonely new arrival. Sourp Toros’s archimandrite, Father Mgrditch Aghavuni, an accomplished historian and author, took the young man under his wing and nurtured his interest in the heritage of his adopted town. With all the stories he had heard in childhood and each new piece of Kutahya lore he encountered, Tavit grew to see himself more deeply as part of a long heritage that extended far into the past. He understood very well the distinction between fables and facts, but quickly learned both. For example, Tavit learned about the origin of Kutahya’s other Armenian church—Holy Mother of God, Sourp Asdvadzadzin. His favorite version of this story featured a powerful leader named Kara Osman, who ruled over 366 villages. Osman’s beloved young daughter was paralyzed. One day, the Mother of God, wearing a long cloak, appeared to the girl. The apparition removed her own slipper, rubbed it on the girl, and healed her. She handed the girl the slipper and instructed that her father’s hayloft was to be the site of a new church. The daughter, who could now walk, reported this to her father. Osman was filled with joy at the miraculous recovery of his child, and deeded the spot to the Armenians, who founded Sourp Asdvadzadzin on it. This story was preserved, not only in the collective memory of Kutahya’s Armenians but also in the municipal history: the church had been exempted from local taxation for centuries.12 Tavit asked a new acquaintance why Turkish was the only language he heard spoken in Kutahya, even within Greek and Armenian businesses and households. In hushed tones, the boy told him that in days long gone, those who attempted to speak their own languages had had their tongues cut out. This gruesome tale made a powerful impression and whether or not it was true, for a long time, no one in Kutahya dared utter any language in public

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but Turkish, except while singing hymns in church. After several generations, many inhabitants knew no other language or spoke Armenian only within the seclusion of their homes. Armenians had settled in the city perhaps as early as the Byzantine era, with more arriving during the age of the Seljuks.13 The first surviving record of Armenian presence, from 1391, mentioned an already established church.14 Two more churches were founded in the fifteenth century: Sourp Astvadzadzin and Sourp Sarkis. As the city’s Armenian population continued to grow, Sourp Toros Church was built in 1512.15 Over the centuries, fires consumed the various church buildings, but the sturdy congregations of Sourp Asdvadzadzin and Sourp Toros rebuilt each time. Kutahya’s twenty-eight thousand residents lived in its urban center and the surrounding hamlets and villages.16 More than three thousand Armenians— Orthodox and Catholic—lived within the city proper, primarily in two neighborhoods close to the foot of the mountain.17 Kutahya’s Armenians were acclaimed as ceramists, fine tailors, and rug weavers and also as shoemakers, goldsmiths, and blacksmiths.18 Farmers cultivated the fertile plains outside the town, where the Porsuk River and its tributaries supplied plentiful water, raising grains and opium plants, as well as wool for Kutahya’s carpet industry. In 1902, when Tavit arrived in the city, five Armenian-owned firms there manufactured and exported large quantities of the colorful knotted and woven rugs, shipping them from the port of Smyrna to English distributors.19 Mining was another important occupation. Chromium, antimony, copper, and magnesium silicate—meerschaum—were extracted from surrounding mountains. The high, broken terrain was rich with other minerals used in the city’s ceramics trade—quartz, manganese, borax, cobalt, lead, feldspar, red and yellow ochre—as well as kaolin—the “china” clay that had given the Rustem Pasha Mosque’s tiles their dazzling white background and had made such a deep impression on Tavit.20

From prehistoric times, Kutahya’s abundant clay deposits had given rise to pottery making. Armenians likely took part in this craft when they first arrived in the region. An early group of itinerant Persian ceramists, known as

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the “Masters of Tabriz,” had decorated the tomb of Yakub Bey II in Kutahya in 1429. The first recorded mention of Armenian ceramists appeared in a 1444–45 list of donors to Sourp Astvadzadzin Church. Early sixteenth-century Kutahya pieces bore Armenian dedications and signatures—a sure sign of their participation in the local art.21 In 1514, Ottoman Sultan Selim I, the father of Suleiman, captured the Persian Safavid capital of Tabriz, and relocated a reported several hundred tile workers to Constantinople and northwest Anatolia, marking a great expansion of the ceramic industry. Undoubtedly, there were Armenians among them;22 Safavid ceramic wares with Armenian lettering attested to their presence. Forms, colors, and motifs transfused from one region to the other. Plant, floral, and geometric forms began to appear on Kutahya wares in shades of blue, dark violet, turquoise, and brick red, set against a field of bright white.23 The Grand Vizier himself, Rustem Pasha, was said to have ordered Kutahya tiles for the decoration of the sublime Suleimanye Mosque—built between 1550 and 1557—and in 1561 established a workshop in Kutahya to produce tiles for his own commemorative mosque in Constantinople.24 In the mid-sixteenth century, as coffee drinking became the rage in Ottoman lands,25 Kutahya çini artists made and exported tens of thousands of delicate cups and saucers to meet the demand. Some of these vessels brandished the bold local array of colors and motifs, while others artfully imitated Meissen ware, which itself mimicked Chinese porcelain. Artistic influences continued to cross in all directions along the trade routes. The celebrated Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi, during a 1669–70 visit to his ancestral city of Kutahya, wrote of the township’s thirty-four quarters; three were Armenian and three were Greek. One of these “infidel” quarters was home to the çiniçis, or “china makers,” who produced luminous, vibrantly glazed pieces in a parade of forms—plates, vases, lemon squeezers, rose-water bottles, covered dishes, tobacco boxes, pierced work bowls, and candlesticks in a palette that now also included delicate blues, greens, yellows, and distinctive groups of red dots. Ecclesiastic and domestic commissions often bore Armenian inscriptions. Pilgrims to Jerusalem carried with them Kutahya ceramic incense boxes and egg-shaped pendants decorated with seraphim as votive offerings. By the early eighteenth century, production in Iznik—the former center for imperial ceramic production—had faded to near extinction. Instead, huge commissions arrived for the Kutahya ceramists: ten thousand tiles for Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate, ninety-five hundred tiles for the Constantinople palace

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of Fatma, the daughter of Sultan Ahmed III, and many thousands more for the decoration and restoration of palaces and mosques throughout provinces extending as far as Europe and Egypt. In 1764 and 1766, two Ottoman judges, Şerif Abdullah and Ahmed Effendi, negotiated collective agreements with Kutahya’s ceramists—governing prices and wages for the cup makers and listing the masters and journeymen of the day. Nearly all the names were Armenian;26 they dominated production and transported ceramics throughout their vast trade networks. In addition to the formal workshops, Armenian families also often maintained small kilns in their homes.27 But increased trade in the nineteenth century led to the wider distribution of ceramics from competing centers in Europe. Fixed prices, set in the old bargaining agreements, did not keep pace with rising costs. Ottoman wars depleted the royal coffers, and sultans no longer sent large orders to support the city’s trade. The workshops languished. In the seventeenth century, nearly three hundred kilns had operated in Kutahya. In 1795, the number had fallen to one hundred. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, government initiatives briefly infused a new energy into the Kutahya industry, but by the time Tavit arrived, in late 1902, only the major ateliers of Emin and the Minassians remained. Tavit went in search of the workshops and introduced himself to the masters. Emin Efendi was the eldest of the ceramic artists, born in Kutahya in 1872. He had become the master of his own workshop as a youth. Over time, he told Tavit the story of his own beginnings and those of his teacher. When Emin was a small boy, he lived near the ceramics workshop of Mehmet Hilmi usta. One day, he entered, curious to watch the men at work. He began to visit regularly and often positioned himself near the master to observe his movements carefully. Hilmi Efendi had originally practiced bookbinding in Constantinople but fell into legal troubles; a court order had banished him to Kutahya in 1864.28 He decided to try his hand in the city’s storied ceramics craft. When he arrived, though, he found the trade subdued. Four or five modest workshops produced tableware, vases, and decorative panels.29 From time to time the artisans were called upon to perform architectural-tile repairs in distant cities. Among those tile makers was Garabed Minas usta, the Armenian artist who would become Hilmi’s sometime partner.30 Many of the old secrets and formulas for creating

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translucent white bodies and radiant glaze colors had been forgotten. But Kutahya had retained its reputation for this historic art, and Hilmi decided to open a studio in the Pirler neighborhood.31 For years, he manufactured pottery and experimented with clay combinations and glaze formulas. In 1863, the year before Hilmi Efendi arrived in Kutahya, politically minded Armenians had formed their own National Constitution and Assembly. And in 1865, a new secret society in the capital—the Young Ottomans—considered how to preserve the empire yet introduce a constitutional, representative form of government. As new nation-states struggled into existence in Europe, Ottoman statesmen and artistic leaders in Constantinople eyed the European models of national artistic and architectural identities and deliberated how to enact them at home. For the Ottomans, one path toward that goal would be achieved by looking back to the religious monuments and traditional arts of the magnificent imperial past. During Hilmi’s first years in the city, two prominent authorities gave a new impetus to Kutahya’s nearly somnolent art. Osman Hamdi Bey, the French-educated Ottoman painter, archaeologist, and eventual director of Constantinople’s Imperial Museum,32 maintained that it was essential not to neglect the old crafts that had flourished in the era of the great court builders, such as the fifteenth-century Ali ibn Ilias Ali—Nakkaş Ali—decorator of Brussa’s Green Mosque and of course, Mimar Sinan, the greatest of all Ottoman architects, who had designed the Rustem Pasha, Suleimanye, and more than one hundred other mosques in the sixteenth century.33 Those architectural masterpieces were icons of the empire’s Islamic identity. As Mehmet Emin continued to tell Tavit the story of Kutahya’s revival in the second half of the nineteenth century, he explained that a devastating earthquake in Brussa in 1855 had marked an important juncture in the city’s ceramic trade. Brussa’s Green Mosque, Green Tomb, and the adjoining funerary monuments had been left with shattered tile work and gaping holes in their walls and domes. Osman Hamdi Bey, along with the powerful statesman Ahmed Vefik Pasha,34 advocated for the Kutahya artists to perform the tile restorations. Vefik and his collaborator, the French architect Léon Parvillée, enlisted Kutahya çiniçis to produce tiles for the monuments.35

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Although a ceramics workshop had reopened in the Eyup district of Constantinople around 1856, intended for the production of tiles needed to maintain royal buildings,36 Kutahya had retained enough distinction to merit encouragement from the capital. Hamdi Bey also persuaded the Ottoman organizing committee to include Kutahya ceramics among the displays for the 1867 Paris Éxposition universelle.37 Nine million international visitors attended the Paris fair,38 viewing and purchasing goods from nearly five thousand Ottoman merchants. Many of those customers had already fallen under the spell of Eastern aesthetics and “Turquerie,” incubated through evocative paintings and photographs, stereoscope cards, design pattern books, and panopticon displays that gave the illusion of being in an actual mosque, harem, or Alhambra court. Some well-heeled Eastern travelers approached impoverished villagers in Damascus or Jerusalem in quest of tiles, sparking further hunts for spoils.39 The 1852 founding of the South Kensington Museum in London (renamed for Queen Victoria and her consort, Albert, in 1899), devoted to the study of decorative arts, added fuel to the fire. The Paris fair afforded such an important stage for the Ottoman Empire to present its own arts and goods to a rapidly changing world that Sultan Abdul Aziz himself ventured beyond the empire’s bounds to attend.40 Six years later, Osman Hamdi Bey again promoted the Kutahya industry by including it among the Ottoman exhibits for the 1873 Vienna World Exposition.41 This time, Kutahya wares competed for attention with the increasingly popular European saz-leaf and flower-decorated tiles and lusterware produced by William De Morgan, Joseph-Théodore Deck, Edmond Lachenal, and the Minton, Cantagalli, and Zsolnay factories. Although visitors admired the Kutahya ceramics for their lush blues and greens, the craft had not yet entirely recaptured the vibrancy of the early eighteenth century, when hundreds of Armenian artisans fashioned elegant court-style wares and had also created several characteristic Kutahya styles, featuring bright hues and playful human figures. But in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Hamdi Bey and Vefik Pasha had drawn attention to Kutahya’s legacy—a source of national pride and international renown—and opened new pathways to export markets. For the Kutahya potters that preceded Tavit Ohannessian’s generation, another major consequence of the 1873 Vienna Exposition followed the publication of Usul-i Mimari-i Osmani or Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture, a book commissioned by Ibrahim Edhem Pasha—the Ottoman Minister of Public

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Works and Osman Hamdi Bey’s father—on the occasion of the fair. Written in the wake of British architect Owen Jones’s influential 1856 tome, The Grammar of Ornament, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s studies of French Gothic architecture, the massive volume illustrated the theory and techniques of Ottoman architecture, and was written in French, German, and Ottoman Turkish.42 The book marked a turning point in the way Ottomans thought about their architecture. While the European academies had long produced theoretical works concerning architectural design, Ottoman builders looked to historic structures themselves as models and had drawn practitioners from the ranks of the military and masons. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most elite Ottoman builders, the multi-generational Armenian Balyan family, traveled to Europe and back, studying at the various Écoles des Beaux-Arts and pollinating stylistic exchanges between the continents.43 But Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture marked the first time that Ottomans published a framework for their own architecture, rendering the most famous monuments of the dynastic past in graphic detail, making each element accessible to an international audience while also encouraging the rise of a national style.44 And page after page depicted the diversity and beauty of historic Ottoman tiles. As the nineteenth century drew to an end, European magnates or wealthy aristocrats who coveted the spectacular Islamic-inspired fantasies of Frederick, Lord Leighton’s 1877–79 Arab Hall, in his London house, or the Marquess of Bute’s 1880–81 Arab Room, in Cardiff Castle, could now commission a smoking or billiard room in the Anatolian style. Silk draperies or paisley shawls imported by Liberty of London, or coffee cups and vases purchased at a world’s fair, would complete the decor. Alluring plates or tiles made in Chanakkale, Jeddah, Baghdad,45 or Kutahya, harmonized with the new Islamic-inspired foliate wallpapers, textiles, books, and calendars produced by British designer William Morris. In response to this new wave of attention in the 1860s and ‘70s, the Kutahya ceramics workshops added workers46 and manufactured tiled tabletops and ceiling ornaments in designs recalling the embellished roundels of Brussa’s imperial shrines, panels adorned with scrolling arabesques, vases, candlesticks, and inscribed plaques to adorn Ottoman, European, and sometimes even American homes. The ceramicists traveled to Jerusalem and other distant cities to produce renovation tiles for important monuments. Kutahya’s thread

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of commerce widened. The artists labored to regain the refined techniques of their ancestors. One domestic observer, Mehmed Ziya, urged: “If there is anything that public spirited Ottoman people can do for their country, that is to demand Kutahya tiles.”47 The flare of trade waned. The practical difficulties of shipping products to other continents and the ready availability of European-produced ceramic ware created obstacles. But the publication of Fundamentals left an enduring mark. The text and plates—authored by an Ottoman mix of French, Italian-Levantine, Armenian architects and designers, and a Turkish bureaucrat48—would codify a national architectural identity in a splintering world. In 1888, Hilmi Efendi was pardoned. He returned to Constantinople, where he would spend the remaining years of his life, and left his Kutahya workshop to his sixteen-year-old acolyte, who had proven himself both capable and fiercely loyal. By then, Mehmet Emin had grasped the technical processes as well as the art of decorating. The young ceramist signed his works with an acknowledgment of his master: telamiz-i Mehmet Hilmi—disciple of Mehmet Hilmi. Mehmet Emin continued to operate his master’s former workshop, producing domestic ware. But in 1891, he began to experiment with tile manufacture, working with his small staff of six or seven men.49 Soon, the city itself would become one of Emin’s clients. Kutahya’s mutasarrifs, or district governors, were chosen by the central government, often for periods as short as one year. The long-serving, Cretan-born Kutahya District Governor Ahmed Fuad Pasha was a different case. Appointed in 1893, he maintained strong ties to the Hamidian regime in Constantinople and had ambitious development plans for the city and its industries. He also took a deep personal interest in building and design. Under Fuad’s administration, Kutahya’s mosques engaged in restoration programs. The city’s ceramists were asked to participate. In 1898–99, Emin created tiles for three of Kutahya’s mosques, modestly continuing to sign his works “Mehmet Emin, disciple of Mehmet Hilmi.”50 Garabed and Harutyun Minassian,51 trained by their tile-making father, Garabed Minas usta, had become experts in the art themselves and added the honorific “Haji” to their names after traveling to the Holy City of Jerusalem. The Minassians searched for ways to re-create the lustrous hues—especially the glowing white—of the sixteenth century. Normally, commissions for mosque opposite Tombeau de Sultan Suleiman, Constantinople,

from Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture (1873)

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Card of Çiniçi Mehmet Emin

restorations went to Kutahya’s leading Muslim ceramist, but as the demand for this kind of work increased, the ustas’ collaborations expanded the capacity to produce the labor-intensive tiles. The technical skills the Armenian artists acquired through their own individual experimentation were invaluable to the joint efforts. In 1899, Emin moved to larger quarters.52 He took on two important projects in Konya, a Seljuk-era capital city, two hundred miles southeast of Kutahya: restoration of the spectacular thirteenth-century tilework in the dome of the Karatay Madrassa and new tiles to embellish the window frames of the Konya Industrial School. His growing expertise was recognized in May 1901, when the vilayet of Konya awarded him the Medal of Industry, drawing wider attention to the reviving art of Kutahya.53 With the new workshop, he was able to increase production of domestic ware, which continued to feature designs inspired by the old imperial patterns. Emin’s outlet in Brussa and street sales in Constantinople brought his products to more heavily trafficked markets. Tavit began his apprenticeship in the studio of his fellow Armenians, the Minassian brothers, but when the need arose, he assisted Emin as well. Although he was new to the craft, he quickly made himself indispensable with

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his fluency in multiple languages and his bookkeeping skills, honed during his sojourn in the egg merchant trade. He also had tremendous private motivation; the faster he could progress, the sooner he could resume contributing to his family’s support and the more quickly he could marry Victoria. During his years of training, Tavit became familiar with all facets of ceramic making, as well as the sources and methods for processing local raw materials. Kutahya’s economy had waned in the late nineteenth century, but the number of visitors to the city increased with the completion of the Alayunt train spur in 1893. When tourists arrived, they inevitably visited one of the ceramics workshops. Tavit observed their surprise and fascination. At the entrance to each atelier a showroom filled with elaborately decorated wares adjoined a workroom of primitive simplicity. Inside the factory, a visitor could watch young men with well-muscled arms work at treadle wheels, caressing spinning lumps of clay and coaxing them into graceful forms.54 The craftsmen trimmed the finished objects, cleaving pots from the wheel with a piece of wire, and placing them onto a drying rack. One part of the room was reserved for the mud boys, who ground dried lumps of clay into a fine powder, then kneaded it with water and pushed the whole mixture through a series of sieves to filter out pebbles, roots, and leaf fragments. The clay would then be left to cure. In another corner, a man boiled a mixture of powdered flint and kaolin clay.55 A worker dipped clay objects in this solution—called slip—before glazing, to give them a white background and help minimize shrinkage. It took a steady hand to apply the coating evenly. When the time came to refresh the studio’s supplies, the ustas applied to the Ministry of Forests, Mines, and Agriculture for the permits required to gather clay from state lands. The young men would take a mule cart to Tavshanli, about thirty miles west of the city, or to the nearby mountain, Acem Dagh, or to the more distant village of Terlemez to fetch clays.56 Borax was abundant in Kirka,57 in Egrigoz,58 and in the Afyonkarahisar district, where the boys also gathered a muddy sediment known as çorak, a mineral residue from the local hot springs.59 The lads collected iron-rich red ochre from a stream near Kutahya,60 using it in place of the gorgeously transparent red-tinted Armenian bole glaze used in sixteenth-century Iznik tiles; the ceramists had not yet discovered a perfect substitute.

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On the floor above the workroom stood a large kiln with a spacious upper chamber lined with shelves. When the dried ware was ready for its first firing, the kiln stacker descended into this oven through the opening on top. His assistant handed him tiles and pottery to load onto the shelves. Only after long practice could the stacker load them efficiently. When the kiln was full, he climbed out and placed a round stone and then a heavy wooden cover over the aperture. The bottom section—the firing chamber—was nicknamed “the inferno.” A hole on the side allowed the kiln watcher to insert wood and to stoke the flames, and another opening in the roof of this lower chamber permitted the heat to rise.61 Containers suspended on the outer wall were used to melt glaze or perform other small tasks requiring high heat. The kiln watcher gauged the temperature—a critical job—by monitoring the color of the flames. He added and dispersed wood to control the blaze throughout the steps of the cycles.62 After the wares had cooled enough to be removed, the master would gently flick his fingernail against a pot. If the result was a sonorous ring, the first firing was deemed a success.63 In the second firing, plates, tiles, and vases painted with raw glaze mixtures entered the kiln in shades of mud and gray. After the day-long firing cycle, they were left to cool. Another day later they emerged, their now glossy surfaces gleaming with intense shades of blues, reds, and greens. But visitors were usually most interested in activities on the third floor, where women and girls sat cross-legged around a rough plank that served as a table, applying glazes with delicate movements of their donkey- or cat-hair brushes. European travelers would express astonishment that these centuriesold methods were still in use.64 Over the next three years, Tavit mastered not only the full range of technical and design skills necessary to produce ceramics but also the accounting and bureaucratic requirements of the trade. Mining and export licenses, tax rates and decrees, local politics, foreign correspondence: understanding all of these was as important as calculating the shrinkage rate when firing different clay combinations or pottery forms. He worked as many days as possible and saved what he could from his increasing earnings. As an artist, Tavit concentrated on painting designs, applying glazes with ever-greater refinement. The restoration projects within Kutahya continued, providing a trickle of work to the ateliers. Occasionally, Tavit traveled to the capital to sell wares in

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the street markets. He perfected his negotiating skills with the German tourists—the fiercest hagglers of them all. The secret, he learned, was to double the fair price, engage in heated patter, and then “relent,” incrementally reducing the asking price by half. He sent his buyers away laden with purchases and puffed with pride at their own remarkable bargaining prowess. Kutahya District Governor Fuad Pasha’s ambitious plans accelerated beyond mere repairs to the city’s historic mosques and fortification of the river banks against flooding. He conceived and executed completely new constructions. In 1905, he built the city’s Yeşil Mosque, taking credit as the architect.65 He also commissioned tiled fountains. But the grandest project was to be his new Government House, a broad, hip-roofed palace rising two stories above an elevated basement and overlooking the city and surrounding plains. It would replace the old wooden Konak, which had burned down repeatedly over the centuries. Remarkably, Fuad’s plan specified that much of the façade and all of the small mosque inside should be tiled. Did the seventy-two-year-old administrator envision the majestic new structure as a memorial to his own tenure? Or a monumental tribute to his city and its reviving historic art? In either case, it represented an enormous commission for the ceramists. Perhaps the thousands of tiles needed emboldened Tavit to choose that moment to assume the financial risk of establishing an independent workshop. He entered into a partnership with the Minassians and took on their overflow

Kutahya Government House, ca. 1910

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Ohannessian’s letterhead, Société Ottomane de Faïence

work from the façade commission. He would need to recruit and train apprentices as well. In 1907, the first year of the Government House construction, Tavit established his own atelier, which would come to be called the Société Ottomane de Faïence.66 He found a promising location in the upper Armenian neighborhood, not far from Sourp Toros Church and the foothills of the mountain. He acquired the necessary tools, set up a workroom, and built a kiln. He rented a house and invited his mother to come to Kutahya to live with him. Once his home was comfortably furnished and the new enterprise was on secure footing, he would be in a position to marry Victoria. He was twenty-three years old. He had mastered an art and learned the business. There were unimaginable challenges still to come, but he had already faced and overcome many. From now on, he would be addressed as a respected Armenian man: Baron Ohannessian.

Chap te r 4

Kutahya Princes, Sheikhs, and a Baronet

Ohannessian and the Minassians glazed thousands of opulent tiles to clad the Kutahya Government House’s broad façade as construction stretched on into 1908.1 District Governor Fuad Pasha also commissioned Mehmet Emin to embellish the small mosque in the palatial building.2 On the cream-colored tiled walls of this masjid, blossoms and curving stems in opaque blues and greens undulated between rust-red tulips and carnations. Calligraphic medallions garlanded the upper circumference of the chamber. The heart of the mosque was the qibla wall—oriented toward Mecca—where an elaborately tiled prayer niche stood. Honeycomb and hexagonal tiles in a deep sapphire blue dominated the center of the mihrab. From the lower right ascended the letters of the Bismallah, followed by the famous “verse of the throne,” a paean to Allah’s incomparable might.3 The graceful white inscriptions weaved through pale green arabesque vines.4 Molded border tiles with geometric and plant motifs in vivid shades of lapis and turquoise framed the entire niche. The building’s exterior mixed elements from diverse traditions—classical Ottoman tiles, ablaq masonry in alternating shades of stone, and a Europeanstyle raised first story with exposed stonework below. The masjid’s décor reflected different eras as well. Wall tiles patterned after those in Brussa’s sixteenth-century Shehzade Mustafa Tomb surrounded the ornate mihrab, itself modeled after the one made in 1432 for Ibrahim Bey’s charitable complex in Karaman.5 71

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The composite style of the Kutahya Government House was not unique. Other Ottoman buildings also mixed together Islamic, Moorish, and European architectural features. In Constantinople, the imperial dynasty commissioned successive generations of the Armenian Balyan family of architects to build some of the capital’s most distinctive monuments, including the Dolmabahçe, Beylerbeyi, and Çiragan Palaces.6 In them, intricate murals and sumptuous furnishings, Bohemian crystal, gold leaf, and Corinthian columns merged with cusped arches, muqarnas, and domed pavilions. Dolmabahçe Palace alone had consumed a reputed five million gold lira, financed largely through foreign loans. But these extravagant decors could not have been further removed from what the authors of Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture had identified in 1873 as the essential trait of an Ottoman national architecture and the very quality that had defined Mimar Sinan’s greatest works—a “noble severity.” And at the same moment that statesmen and artists were attempting to distill an Ottoman national identity in architecture, the debts incurred in the building of these lavish imperial palaces culminated, in part, in the 1875 sovereign bankruptcy. The 1877–78 Russian War imposed further huge expenditures and territorial losses. The empire succumbed to a closer embrace with its foreign lenders, and European influences filtered ever deeper into Ottoman commerce and culture. By the end of the century, architects of French, Italian, and German origin—Alexandre Vallaury, Raimondo D’Aronco, August Jasmund, Otto Ritter, and Helmuth Cuno—were designing the most prominent new constructions, including the new Haydarpasha Railway Terminal, the Ottoman Imperial Museum, the Deutsche-Orient Bank, and the Imperial Ottoman Bank headquarters. Against a growing cry for a more clearly defined national cultural identity, two distinct streams of building practice emerged. One was a continuation of the eclectic approach, with grand medleys of diverse embellishments. The other trend emphasized the use of the most archetypal components of the great Seljuk and Ottoman Islamic monuments—hemispheric domes, overhanging eaves, pointed arches, muqarnas, carved stone, and tiled façades. These elements composed a distinct vocabulary, by now well diffused through publications, including Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture and Leon Parvillée’s Architecture et décoration turques au XVe siécle.

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Throne Room, Dolmabahçe Palace, ca. 1875

This new “Ottoman revivalist” or “national architectural renaissance” style7 would soon engage the developing technical skills of Tavit Ohannessian and his tile-making partners and prominently feature their artistry. Two architect-engineers, both Muslim Turkish, gained prominence in the movement and provided the Kutahya artisans with conspicuous commissions for government and private constructions. The first of these

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architects, Mehmet Vedat Tek, was born in 1873 into an elite, artistic family with intimate ties to the imperial court.8 Vedat studied painting at the Académie Julien in Paris, trained at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, and won the Prix de Rome. Beginning in 1900, Vedat served as professor of architectural history at the School of Fine Arts, 9 where he helped synthesize an academic curriculum based on the French Beaux-Arts teaching methods.10 The other ascendant figure in the developing national style was Ahmet Kemalettin, whose modest origins distinguished him from the well-connected Vedat. Born in 1870 to a naval captain and his wife, Kemalettin attended the newly established School of Civil Engineering, graduating with honors in 1891. He pursued further studies in Berlin11 and returned to Constantinople in 1900, becoming a professor of architecture and later chief architect for the Ministry of War. The young architect published widely, his words suffused with patriotism and a deep reverence for his own Muslim heritage. He melded iconic Islamic architectural elements, often including tiled façades, into elegant modern buildings and influenced his many students, who returned to their far-flung cities after graduating and designed according to his principles. Architect Vedat Tek’s talent as well as his connections with the royal family won him some important early commissions. In 1901, he completed the first notable building in the revivalist style—the Government House in Kastamonu, in the Black Sea region. In 1905, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs appointed him to design a post office building in Constantinople’s busy Sirkeci commercial district. The project exploited Vedat’s diverse abilities in structural engineering, historical reference, and decoration and allowed a number of younger Turkish architects to gain practical knowledge while assisting him.12 The symmetrical façade of the Imperial Post Office ascended two stories with towering cupolas on either end. Wide eaves, ablaq arches, and many brilliant turquoise, green, and blue Kutahya tiles enlivened the exterior and adorned the interior court. The panoply of vibrant tiles in and around the new Post Office building advertised Kutahya’s renascent art. Ohannessian’s flourishing enterprise meant that in 1908, after six long years of betrothal, he and Victoria could finally marry. The families petitioned the

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Holy Trinity Armenian Church, Eskishehir, ca. 1900

Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople for permission. Although the church discouraged marriages between first cousins, these unions were not entirely uncommon in close-knit Armenian communities. Ohannessian traveled with his mother to Eskishehir, where his brothers Hagop and Karnig still lived. On the wedding day, family and friends gathered together and processed to Sourp Yerrortutyun, Holy Trinity Armenian Church. The long-awaited day of happiness had arrived. Tavit escorted Victoria to Kutahya and the comfortable two-story house he and his mother had furnished. The eighteen-year-old bride had not been idle during the six years of her engagement. She arrived with a trousseau of delicately embroidered sheets, nightclothes, ornate tablecloths, and napkins fit for an elegant household. Under the guidance of her motherin-law, she managed the kitchen and learned how to salt fresh meat and stock the pantry. In Kutahya, farmers led their goats and buffalo along the cobbled residential streets and milked them at the doorway of each household. Together, the women made yogurt and cheeses and shopped in city’s markets, stockpiling produce in the summer and autumn when it was plentiful and inexpensive.

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As the weeks passed, Victoria missed her family terribly, but she and her brother, Khatchig, exchanged frequent letters, writing to each other in Armenian. In his letters, Victoria’s brother shared tender stories about his own wife and little daughter and conveyed affectionate messages from their niece and nephew, Takouhi—fondly called Takoug—and Stepan Markarian. When Victoria’s older sister Tefar married several years earlier, she discovered that she had made an unfortunate match. Following custom, Tefar went to live in her new husband’s home. The dwelling was crowded, and her new in-laws lobbed cruel remarks at her daily. Tefar gave birth to two children— Takoug and Stepan—but was perpetually distressed. Bound by her upbringing, she restrained herself, never replying or speaking up on her own behalf. Still only in her early twenties, Tefar fell ill and thereafter remained a bedridden invalid. One day, she asked to be carried downstairs. She had had a premonition and sent word for her whole family to gather around her. First, she made her young sister Victoria promise always to keep a watchful eye over her children. Then Tefar turned to her in-laws and abandoning her usual modest gaze, looked directly into their eyes, and said: “May God grant that you receive the justice you deserve.” Soon afterward, she died. Months later, Victoria found her mother, crouched in the attic, weeping over Tefar’s old clothes. The death of their eldest sibling had forged an even stronger bond between Khatchig and Victoria—one that endured after Victoria moved to Kutahya. Khatchig tried to ease his sister’s longing for her parents by reporting everything that was new and intriguing in Eskishehir. When the first automobiles rolled along the streets, he wrote, “The vehicles look like walking frogs!” Victoria kept all her brother’s correspondence tied together with a ribbon. She read and reread his letters with an ache in her heart. The deeply devout young woman soon found her place within the congregation of Sourp Toros Church. Sunday services, feast days, and name-day celebrations set the rhythm of life for the Ohannessians. Kutahya’s Armenians—both Orthodox and Catholic—were resolute churchgoers.13 On Sunday afternoons, after services, families took long walks together along the Porsuk River. Young people scaled the steep hill to the ruined castle, where they enjoyed the fresh breezes and panoramic view of the great plain. On feast days, picnics up on the high hills stretched from the afternoon well into the night. Men and boys would dig a deep hole in the ground and build a fire at the bottom. Suspended

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above the flames, a cauldron filled with vegetables, herbs, and meat bubbled for hours. Mothers unrolled carpets and laid out plates of boeregs, pickled vegetables, olives, and slices of cured meats to sate hunger pangs while stews simmered to tender perfection. After supper, young and old danced, sang, or played oud and violin. Tuneful revelers on opposite sides of the mountain took turns singing the stanzas and joined together for the refrains.14 During the week, when Tavit returned from work, Victoria met him at the door and kissed his hand. Although custom might have dictated that Markrid would rule the household, she and her niece, now her daughter-in-law, lavished affection on one another. Markrid pampered the young woman, preparing her favorite dishes and helping her adapt to life in her new home. Victoria was a petite young woman with sparkling brown eyes and an engaging smile. The fair hair of her childhood had turned a deep shade of copper. She was naturally bashful, but soon after her marriage, a new resourcefulness surfaced. She cooked elaborate meals for her husband’s clients, family, and friends. Victoria’s graciousness and reserved nature complemented Tavit’s ravenous curiosity about the world and his penchant for wide-ranging, animated conversations with the stream of visitors he entertained at home and in the studio. Although Tavit and Victoria collaborated happily to support the needs of an increasingly successful trade, tensions smoldered around them. In Kutahya, Armenian men held few government positions, but they energized the commercial life of the city and held high administrative posts in local branches of the Régie des Tabacs, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and insurance companies.15 Armenian artisanal products attracted visitors and revenue. Kutahya’s businessmen and bureaucrats—Turkish, Greek, and Armenian—paid close attention to political headwinds, but balanced it with a concern for the city’s fragile economic renewal after the hardships of the last several decades. The year 1908 brought the Ohannessians joy in their new marriage, but it also delivered other changes for the young couple and their neighbors. The long reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, scarred by his tyrannical efforts to keep tight control over a fracturing domain, faced growing resistance within the empire. The brutalities he had inflicted—especially in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the 1890s—cast a pall over his accomplishments, which included a great expansion of imperial schools, a widening network of transportation, telegraphs, publications, and new building projects.

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Abdul Hamid had ascended the throne in 1876 and presided over the shortlived constitution and parliament. The mid-nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms had promised equality under the law but delivered instead ferocious wars, prodigal spending, crushing debts, spy networks, butcheries of Bulgarians as well as Armenians, and corrupt government patronage. The sultan demanded loyalty, but his leadership had left the empire vulnerable to foreign incursions. Another generation of political thinkers—who would inflict enormous consequences on the Ohannessians and all Ottoman Armenians—had emerged in the 1890s, rising from within the ranks of students at the recently founded colleges and military academies as well as Ottoman students studying abroad. This new educated class assumed the mantle of the Young Ottomans, their reformist predecessors from the 1860s and ‘70s. An early statement of purpose proclaimed: “The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, composed of all Ottoman women and men, is established with the purpose of warning our Muslim and Christian compatriots of the present government’s method of administration which violates human rights such as justice, equality, and liberty.”16 This rising generation of young intellectuals embraced the language of the French Revolution and coalesced under a series of leaders as they pondered the future of the empire and the caliphate, the place of Islam in a reconfigured Ottoman nation, and the use of violence and the military as agents of change. In the formative years of the Committee of Union and Progress, often called CUP or Unionists, Ottoman Armenians were also reminded, painfully, that the assurances for their rights and safety in the eastern provinces—promises made three decades earlier in the Berlin Treaty of 1878—had once again faded into oblivion. Each sect within the CUP movement held diverse goals. Members published essays, met discreetly, and established branches in towns throughout the Ottoman territories, including Kutahya. But the supporters concluded that a dramatic reform was imperative and believed it would best be achieved by a reinstatement of the Constitution and by rebelling against the authority of the sultan. Many CUP branches included Armenians, who were optimistic about their future under a more progressive administration. One rose-tinted CUP notice proclaimed, “For us, there are no ‘others,’ we are all Ottomans. The religious issue is a separate matter and does not concern the Fatherland. Dismantle your bands and join us, with the knowledge that our band has set

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out to gain liberty, equality, and justice for all.” But, the notification continued, “We warn you of the necessity of joining us. . . . After you have received this declaration, we will roam from town to town and village to village. In places where our instructions are not heeded we will arrest the responsible [ones] and destroy their villages.”17 Greeks, Armenians, Albanians, and other groups welcomed the prospect of new freedoms in a reformed Ottoman nation. But the primacy of the empire’s underlying Islamic tenets, the emphasis on Turkish language and culture, and desire for a homogenous Turkish homeland were also embedded in the new publications and statements. This way of thinking had a name: Turkism. And the young, educated, middle-class revolutionaries who sought to upend the doddering, profligate imperial dynasty and its retinue also had a name: the Young Turks. The pace of secret meetings and publications accelerated. New CUP leaders emerged from within the literate classes and especially the military. In December of 1907, diverse Ottoman factions held a second congress and agreed that the time had arrived to adopt violent methods, if need be, to restore the 1876 constitution and force the despotic Sultan Abdul Hamid II to abdicate the throne. The rebellion gained momentum in the European Ottoman territories, surging in early July of 1908. The Balkan province of Monastir was the first to fall under the command of Unionist officers, who subdued the government’s armed forces, seizing weapons and taking local officials into custody. Renegade forces in other European provinces quickly followed suit. One district after another fell. On July 23, the CUP’s victories reached a critical mass. Party leaders sent Sultan Abdul Hamid II an ultimatum by telegram: he would have forty-eight hours to reinstate the constitution.18 Later that night, the sultan consented to the demands. On July 24, Constantinople newspapers trumpeted the message: the constitution would be restored. As word traveled throughout Anatolia and the surrounding territories, citizens took to the streets to celebrate the promise of a new era. Brass bands played as crowds waved flags, fired cannons, and shouted Long live the nation! Even the Dashnags, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, allied with the new ruling party. Tavit and the other Kutahya artists created new plates in commemoration of these thrilling events—Armenian-inscribed ceramics proclaiming a new age of liberty, fraternity, and equality.

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Trouble persisted over the next few months. The CUP and the sultan wrangled over the selection of a new cabinet and elections. Unionist officials adopted an ominous and authoritarian tone toward the public as well, cautioning individuals not to act against Ottoman national interests and threatening punishment for anyone deemed a transgressor. Centuries-long practices of patronage and bribery proved difficult to dislodge. Common criminals were granted amnesty and released from prisons. Local CUP clubs purged bureaucrats and scribes connected with the old regime. An ambitious new and better-educated generation of young military men vied for their posts. In the waves of reaction, the new leaders swept all the provincial governors and sub-governors from their positions. Over the next twenty months, the Young Turks sacked all the empire’s ambassadors, most provincial school administrators, and regional telegraph office directors.19 In Kutahya, CUP members took to the streets, demanding the removal of longtime governor Fuad Pasha. He fled the city. The next two Kutahya district governors were dismissed one after another in 1909 and took flight as well.20 Although the sultan’s autocratic rule had grown intolerable, the new regime’s stifling approach also provoked dissent. On April 13, 1909,21 a coalition of Hamidian loyalists staged an uprising in Constantinople, briefly regaining control of the government. As news of this coup against the Young Turks spread to the Adana region of historic Cilicia, 330 miles southeast of Kutahya, anti-Armenian propaganda inflamed Muslim suspicion of potential “insurrection.” Between twenty thousand and thirty thousand ethnic Turks, Kurds, Circassians, and Cretan Muslims thronged to pillage and torch the Armenian quarter of Adana.22 The mob slaughtered more than twenty-five thousand Christians, who were herded into wooden buildings and burned alive, stabbed, shot, disemboweled, clubbed, or had their throats slit. In the aftermath, articles in the Young Turk press reframed the events and blamed Armenians for being the aggressors and “massacring defenseless Turks.”23 The anti-Armenian drumbeat grew louder. Adana’s devastation crushed the Armenian Dashnag Party’s hopes for a meaningful collaboration with the Young Turks. After the coup attempt, the CUP deposed Abdul Hamid II, exiling him to Salonica, and replaced him with his brother, Mehmed Reshad V, a more malleable figure. The Committee of Union and Progress wreaked radical changes in

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government, but the new regime also provoked initiatives in the field of architecture. Less than a month after the constitution was reinstated, a new Society of Ottoman Architects and Engineers convened. Of the twenty-one founding members, eleven were architects, although only three were Turks.24 Ahmet Kemalettin took a leading role. In 1909, he was appointed chief architect for the Ministry of Endowments’ Scientific Commission for Repairs and Construction, granting him the honor of restoring some of Islam’s holiest sites and tying him more closely to Ohannessian and the other Kutahya çiniçis, whom he would engage to fashion new tiles for these projects.

During this restless time, Victoria conceived a child but miscarried in the fifth month. Her mother arrived from Eskishehir to nurse the young woman and bound her abdomen tightly with cloth, in an effort to rid her of the “bad blood.” Together, her mother and mother-in-law constricted Victoria’s belly so forcefully that she feared she might never become pregnant again. The Ohannessians suffered other losses as well. Tavit’s adored grandmother Takouhi, who had joyfully spent her last years in Eskishehir and invested such high hopes in the education of her grandson, contracted a virulent case of cholera. On a fine summer afternoon, she joined in a picnic outing but felt unwell. Over the next few hours, she became violently ill and died the following morning. But she had spent her last day on earth doing what she loved best—enjoying life’s modest pleasures in the company of her family. In spite of the ongoing governmental upheavals, Kemalettin’s restoration program grew in scope. Across Ottoman lands, historic religious buildings, especially those with external tiling, required frequent refurbishment. Frigid winters, burning summers, earthquakes, and blizzards necessitated interventions. The architect traveled widely and studied the great Islamic monuments. After viewing the Great Mosque of Cordoba, he wrote: “Although the Turks, like the Arabs, have been blessed with the honor and distinction of Islam, they have had a totally different approach to architecture. . . . Considering strength and majesty in buildings, and taking Byzantine monuments as a model, they [the Turks] have developed and changed this style to create a strong and prominent architecture of their own.”25 In his essays, he advanced the comparative, analytic approach of

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the Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture, whose authors repeatedly characterized the great domed edifices as “Ottoman.” Kemalettin, on the other hand, called them “Turkish.” That shift mirrored the changing political tides. Working under Kemalettin’s command, Emin, the Minassians, and Ohannessian supplied new tiles for the Great Mosque of Mecca, Sultan Selim’s Mosque in Damascus, and the Green Mosque and royal shrines in Brussa, sometimes manufacturing and shipping tiles from Kutahya and at other times traveling with Emin and working at the sites.26 These commissions allowed Ohannessian the opportunity to scrutinize decorative elements from a wide range of work—colors and textures of tile bodies, methods of affixing external and interior tiles, and the effects of weather damage over time. Intimate contact with products of the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries allowed the Kutahya artists to analyze the brilliance and transparency of the old glazes and study the decorative motifs. In the process, the ustas compiled an ornamental repertoire to use in executing new commissions.27 Tavit experimented relentlessly to achieve greater vibrancy in his glaze hues, more stable clay combinations, and increased clarity in the painted designs. He sketched constantly, leaving behind penciled designs and calculations on any scrap of paper that happened to be at hand. The production of pottery and tableware for local and export markets, an ongoing source of revenue, gave the four ceramicists the chance to test formulas on a smaller scale.

Cuerda seca tiles lining the dome of the thirteenth-century Karatay Madrassa, Konya, ca. 1890

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After speaking with Ohannessian, one European visitor noted, “By painful process, without chemists or knowledge, these men set out to do what their ancestors had done. By slow degrees, they rediscovered colour after colour and process after process, until at last they were able to imitate, at first distantly, and then more closely, the work that had been done in the past.”28 Ohannessian and his colleagues installed new tiles on some historic monuments for the first time, but the city’s tradesmen had long-standing ties to other pious foundations and cities. Although Kutahya’s ceramics trade had waned by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had not ceased. Kutahya ceramists had traveled to Constantinople, Egypt, and the Hejaz, carrying needed materials with them when they were not locally available.29 They would perform renovations and return home. Armenian tile makers voyaged to Jerusalem to repair and create new tiles for the magnificent seventh-century Islamic monument, the Dome of the Rock.30 Kutahya’s artists also fulfilled commissions closer to home. In 1817, a committee of notables had trekked from Konya to Kutahya in search of çiniçis to replace exterior tiles on the conical Green Dome of the Mevlevihane. Konya’s extremes of weather and intermittent tremblors made small patchwork repairs obligatory every couple of years, with larger repairs every few decades. Kutahya tile makers completed another full renovation in 1834.31 In 1909, the Green Dome’s condition again demanded attention and the new sultan, Reshad V, provided funds for the renovation.32 Mehmet Emin and Ohannessian traveled to Konya to examine it. The cupola’s fluted rows of turquoise tiles, wreathed by a ribbon of calligraphy, cut a dramatic profile from afar—a gleaming sea-green jewel against the fawn-colored masonry of the Mevlevi complex. Beneath this pinnacle reposed the sarcophagus of Mevlana—the Master—the thirteenth-century poet and Sufi mystic, Jalal adDin Muhammad Rumi. The arced green tiles, cut into an array of geometric forms, presented technical challenges. The çiniçis’ first efforts failed.33 The glaze bubbled in the firing and peeled away from the tile body after being fixed onto the dome. The following year, the men returned with new tiles. In the course of Ohannessian’s trips to Konya between 1909 and 1911, he explored the imposing twelfth- and thirteenth-century carved Seljuk portals, thickset mosques, and soaring minarets inlaid with decorative brickwork; some had toppled into ruins during the city’s punishing 1889 earthquake. He gazed at the dazzling interior of the

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Karatay Madrassa—which Emin had restored at the turn of the century—and marveled at the radiant turquoise, black, and white cuerda seca tiled stars spanning the ceiling as though it were a heavenly sky. The young man also engaged in conversations with Sheikh Mehmet Bahaʾeddin Veled Çelebi, the newly installed leader of the Mevlevis and a descendant of Jalal ad-Din Rumi himself. Ohannessian was fascinated to learn that the Islamic Sufi order, founded in 1273 by Mevlana’s son, Sultan Walad, and other followers, had carried the Master’s teachings throughout European, Anatolian, and Arab territories, founding 114 tekkes, or lodges, including the one in Kutahya. Ohannessian witnessed Mevlevi prayer services that incorporated a mystical whirling ceremony called the sema, in which robed dervishes circled in dhikr—the remembrance of God—to the hypnotic beauty of devotional music performed by dhakirs, who sang and played frame and goblet drums, cymbals, wooden ney flutes, and plucked kanuns.34 As the two men deepened their acquaintance, Veled Çelebi shared stories of earlier Armenian ceramists and their restorations in Konya. The sheikh told Tavit that he had once unearthed an old handwritten record from Mevlevi archives in which he’d read the name of one “Hovhaness of Kutahya,” whose job it was to travel to Konya each year and for a fixed annual sum, renovate all the damaged tiles of the mosques and tombs. Veled Çelebi indicated that this tradition may have even begun in Seljuk times.35 He also told Ohannessian that whenever a work of art was signed with the name “Abdullah,” it might be the work of a Christian concealing his identity under a name equally applicable to men of all religions.36 Suddenly, Tavit understood how the Armenian Abdullah Frères photographers had come by their name. In addition to the European world’s fairs, trade fairs within Anatolia offered new outlets for Kutahya arts, crafts, and other local goods. In 1906, the Minassian brothers entered their pottery into competition at the annual Brussa Trade Fair. In 1909, Ohannessian submitted works with them; the joint entry of the two studios won a second-place medal and appeared in photographs in regional newspapers, bringing more recognition to the Armenian partners.37 Periodically, Ohannessian and his colleagues traveled to Brussa, as Kutahya artists had done since at least the 1860s. Brussa’s Green Mosque and Green Tomb of Sultan Mehmed I had been built between 1419 and 1424, during the time when the city served as capital of the Ottoman Empire. On his first visit opposite The Green Dome of the Mevlevihane, Konya, with its precarious tiles, ca. 1890

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to the Green Mosque, Tavit surveyed the interior, which glinted with turquoise, jade, and sapphire blues, gilded muqarnas, and calligraphic verses set on fields of cobalt blue. Golden snowflakes glimmered on hexagons of celadon and emerald green. At the start of the fifteenth century, the conqueror Timur had dispatched a Brussa native, Ali ibn-Ilias Ali, dubbed Nakkas Ali,38 to Samarkand in central Asia to learn the arts of calligraphy and book design. Ali returned with a troupe of carvers, painters, and tile makers—known as the “Masters of Tabriz”—who adorned the Green Mosque and Tomb with a stunning array of carved wood and stone, painted murals, molded, gilt, cuerda seca, and mosaic cut tiles.39 Within this single funerary complex in Brussa, the shrines of the various princes and royal women traced the passage of tile art from the work of those early fifteenth-century itinerant Persian Tabrizi artists to the mid-sixteenth-century Iznik-made hyacinths, tulips, peonies, carnations, and flowing vines that graced the walls of Shehzade Mustafa’s tomb. All of this tile art was deeply rooted in the riches of the Anatolian soil, transformed by the genius and labor of countless named and nameless Persian, Turkish, Armenian, and Greek artisans who, over the course of centuCeramics display by Minassian ries, recorded their resplendent visions and Ohannessian at 1909 Brussa Trade Fair on baked tablets of clay. Kemalettin’s methodical restorations required Ohannessian and his partners to create glazed tiles according to the varying techniques of different eras. Occasionally, they made replacement tiles for the great thirteenth-century cuerda seca tiled monuments of the Seljuk era; there were many in Konya. To make the cuerda seca tiles—an exceedingly difficult technique—the craftsmen painted glazes onto a tile biscuit but separated each color by applying a thin line of a waxy resistant substance to keep the hues from running together. After the firing, a matte gray border remained between the colors where the

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Annuaire Oriental Edition (1913), an Ottoman trade directory, listing the three Kutahya faïence workshops

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framing element had been. Sometimes, though, the artisans merely painted colors to mimic the effect of cuerda seca or the fifteenth-century mosaic cut tiles.40 The tile makers devised geometric motifs in opaque colors for new edifices in the Ottoman revivalist style. At other times, they juxtaposed solid and transparent glazes, which recalled the lively effect of the sixteenth-century Iznik tiles that had first inspired Ohannessian to pursue this art. Re-creating the brilliant white background of the classical tiles produced for the imperial court persisted as the greatest technical challenge. Mehmet Emin’s workshop secured many state assignments, and in 1910, he entered into a formal partnership with the Minassians and Ohannessian to subcontract some of the work to them.41 In a time of rising nationalism, the government awarded the new commissions to Kutahya’s only Turkish Muslim usta, who was also the senior artist of the four partners. But there was more than enough work for everyone. Ohannessian submitted his ceramics into competition in the 1910 Brussa Fair, this time solely on behalf of his own atelier. His entry won the Gold Medal. Kutahya’s ceramics industry was thriving. The Minassians and Ohannessian shipped crates full of sumptuously decorated vases and plates from Constantinople to European distributors. The central government lent further support to the industry by exempting exported ceramics from some taxes.42 Late in the summer of 1910, Victoria was overjoyed to discover that she was expecting again. Because of her previous miscarriage, she and Tavit decided to consult a respected local physician, Armenag Markarian, a dashing and charismatic man who was also popular in Armenian circles as a public speaker. As her pregnancy advanced, she felt some discomfort, but Dr. Markarian put her mind at ease and pronounced the mother-to-be in good condition. This was a first in the family. Previously, all pregnancies and births were attended only by midwives or female relatives.

That September, the Ohannessian family met a remarkable man, with a rising international reputation that brought honor and pride to the hearts of Kutahya’s Armenians. Gomidas Vartabed, priest, scholar, composer, choral

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director, and pianist, had been born in Kutahya in 1869 with the given name of Soghomon Soghomonian. His mother, a carpet weaver, and father, a shoemaker, attended Sourp Toros Church, where their exquisite singing voices stirred the congregation. But Soghomon’s mother died when he was only six months old, and his father perished a decade later. The frail, sensitive boy, wounded by grief and loss, was nurtured by his paternal relatives to the best of their ability in Kutahya’s straitened economy of the 1870s. Throughout his youth, Soghomon attended Sourp Toros Church, where he learned the Armenian liturgy and hymns. His pure, deeply affecting voice often left listeners in tears. At the age of twelve, his intelligence and extraordinary aptitude for music, as well as his status as an orphan, earned him the opportunity to study at the Kevorkian Seminary in Etchmiadzin—the seat of the Armenian Orthodox Church—in the Erivan province of the Russian Empire.43 Although as a Kutahyan, he spoke only Turkish, he quickly learned the Armenian language as well as musical notation at school. In those formative years, he also discovered his life’s guiding passion: to collect and study the traditional melodies of Armenian villagers as they worked at home or in the fields, and to share this expressive and distinctive music with the larger world. After his ordination in 1895, Soghomon took “Gomidas” as his religious name,44 in honor of a seventh-century hymn writer, and “Vartabed,” the honorific for a celibate priest. The Armenian Catholicos arranged a scholarship for him to further his training in Berlin. Gomidas performed and published Armenian folk-song arrangements, hymns, liturgical settings, and original compositions, as well as essays on music. By 1899, in cooperation with fellow seminarians, he had already amassed and transcribed 1200 songs.45 He analyzed sacred and secular music of the various regional ethnicities, searching for and removing traces of foreign influence—Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Turkish—from Armenian liturgical settings. But early on, the church hierarchy had begun to hound the young man with cutting remarks: Why was a monk in such close proximity to young women as he recorded their music? And why was he performing dance music on the piano and singing love songs? Despite the barbs, Gomidas persevered in his uncompromising quest to notate the music of his people. Beginning in 1907, Gomidas concertized throughout Europe, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, meticulously rehearsing his arrangements of folk and religious music with local choirs. His erudite lectures and magnetic personality evoked

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glowing responses from the press, audience, and other composers. Gomidas’s sense of humor and easy rapport with both adults and children made him the object of great affection. Within the ecclesiastical community though, his activities were deemed a distraction from the religious life. The artist’s already somewhat anxious temperament, forged in the hardships of his childhood, smarted under the barrage of conservative disapproval, in spite of the loving support of a large and devoted group of friends, students, and relatives. In the autumn of 1910, Gomidas quit the reproachful atmosphere of Etchmiadzin to resettle in Constantinople. Along the way, he stopped in Kutahya to visit his Soghomonian and Karakashian relatives—some of whom worked alongside Tavit in the city’s ceramic trade—and to present a choral concert to benefit his childhood church, Sourp Toros. More than a hundred young Armenian men and women assembled to rehearse Gomidas’s beautiful polyphonic settings of folk and liturgical music. One attendee remembered, “You would think the sweet melodies of angels were flowing.” After the last chord faded, no one wanted to leave.46 The community beseeched Gomidas to celebrate a mass, and on Sunday morning, all the congregations of Kutahya’s Armenian churches crowded into the sanctuary of Sourp Asdvadzadzin Church to hear him chant the service. He performed his own setting of the liturgy, wiped clean of the drawnout melismatic singing the people were accustomed to hearing.47 The whole Ohannessian family, like their neighbors, fell under the enchantment of this Vartabed, who had championed the music of the Armenian people. And by the end of the week, Tavit had committed to memory all the music he had learned. On March 4, 1911, Victoria gave birth at home to a healthy baby girl. Several days later, the Ohannessians christened their infant daughter at Sourp Toros Church. When the priest asked for the child’s given name during the service, her father replied, “Sirarpi.” Hagop stood as genka, or godfather, for the rite. In Eskishehir, Tavit’s younger brother, Karnig, continued to eke out a modest living as a carpenter and played the oud for pleasure but had inherited his father’s melancholic disposition. He had grown into a handsome if somewhat delicate young man. Markrid worried about his future, frightened that he might be recruited into the Turkish army and find himself unable to withstand the hardships. Ottoman equality under the law meant that Armenians could

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now be called up to serve in the military. She supposed his chances of avoiding conscription might improve if Karnig were married, so she set out to find a wife for him, turning to Tavit for help. The family made a match with Loussentak, a priest’s daughter, a hard-working young woman with strong hands. Tavit purchased the bride gift for his brother to present on the wedding night. Within a year, Loussentak gave birth to a son, whom his parents named Onnig. Tavit, Markrid, and Hagop hoped that the little boy would lift his father’s spirits. Markrid moved Sirarpi Ohannessian, August 20, 1912 back to Eskishehir to share a home with her two sons and help care for Karnig’s family. By 1911, the geographic reach of Ohannessian’s new tile installations and those of his partners extended beyond the boundaries of Anatolia. Kutahya ceramists had long been connected with Cairo, where their predecessors had decorated churches and established commerce in previous centuries. In 1901, the suave, Viennese-educated Prince Muhammed Ali Tewfik, son of Khedive Tewfik I of Egypt, had begun to design a palace complex to house his collections of art, antique furniture, medieval manuscripts, and botanical rarities. Together with master builder Mohamed Afifi, and the khedive’s court architect, Antonio Kasciac, the prince constructed five buildings and a garden on an inherited fifteen-acre plot on Roda Island in the Nile River.48 The lavish pavilions featured fretwork, mosaic floors, coffered ceilings, horseshoe arches, and stained glass. Cairene woodwork—laced with stars and mother-of-pearl—and intricately layered Damascene metalwork paid homage to the city’s Mamluk heritage. The prince patronized Cairo’s Ilhami School of Crafts,49 accomplishing two purposes at once: he supplied his builders’ needs and supported the city’s distinctive artisanal trades. A decade into the project, he turned to the Kutahya çiniçis. Emin, Ohannessian, and the Minassians produced vast fields of tiles for the entryway and central

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courtyard of the main palace as well as the mosque, favoring deep blues, greens, and Andalusian reddish browns in Damascus- and Tabrizi-inspired patterns. Strands of arabesque medallions, lozenges, spiraling flowers, and cypress trees sheathed the walls.50 The Manial Palace formed a bravura display of arts and crafts encompassing the heritage of Islamic, Andalusian, Gothic, and medieval architecture and art. A plaque mounted at the entrance declared the Prince’s intent: “to revive the Islamic arts and to honor them.”51 Other Cairo builders, including Garo Balyan, the youngest member of Constantinople’s imperial architectural dynasty, solicited tile designs from Ohannessian, channeling work directly to Kutahya’s Armenian ceramists. Boghos Ispenian, a wealthy Cairene antiques dealer, also ordered from Ohannessian a grand tiled fireplace in the Oriental style. Mehmet Emin’s tiled decorations for the façade of Cairo’s Missir train station added beguiling splashes of color to the pale stone exterior of the city’s main terminal.52

On September 29, 1911, Italian naval forces attacked the Ottoman Mediterranean port city of Tripoli, later also occupying Rhodes and other Dodecanese Islands, in the Aegean Sea. Casualties quickly climbed into the thousands, including the massacres of women and children. Ottoman forces launched a reciprocal ambush and slaughter of Italian soldiers, aided by recruits from local Arab and Bedouin tribes. Italian armored vehicles, planes, and airships bombarded the coast. Aircraft were introduced into warfare. Augmenting their forces with soldiers from Somaliland, the Italians outmanned the Ottoman forces and declared a suzerainty in November. A week after Italy’s attack, Mark Sykes, a British diplomat and the newly elected member of Parliament for Central Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, hastened to Constantinople. Sykes had spent much of his childhood traveling in Asia and North Africa with his father, Sir Tatton Sykes, the fifth Baronet of Sledmere. During and after his years at Cambridge University, Sykes continued his travels by mule, camel caravan, and rail and closely heeded events in the region. He was incensed by news of the strike and wanted to investigate whether the British could do something to help the Turks.53 The following month, he addressed Parliament for the first time, speaking ardently about British commercial and tactical interests in the Near East.

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Sykes had chronicled his previous journeys in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, publishing Through Five Turkish Provinces in 1900, when he was twenty-one, and Dar-ul-Islam: A Record of a Journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey four years later.54 Sykes’s circle of friends included other Oxbridge men who shared his affection for the East, for art, politics, and literature, and had entered the arena of military or public service. The Yorkshire baronet pursued his diverse interests with vigor and the devoted encouragement of his wife, Edith. During the eight days the Englishman spent in Constantinople and Anatolia in October of 1911, he collected information and drafted articles for the Yorkshire Post and Saturday Review.55 Sykes also had a private mission—engendered by the recent catastrophic destruction of his family home—a quest that would lead him to Kutahya and, as it happened, to Tavit Ohannessian. On May 23, 1911, at about noon, the Sykes family seat, Sledmere House—an elegant eighteenth-century Georgian manor on a property of about two hundred thousand acres in the East Riding of Yorkshire—caught fire. The blaze began in the kitchen and spread slowly across the house, spewing clouds of smoke. A watchman rang the great bell. Servants and villagers ran to the scene to toss buckets of water on the flames, attempting to slow the fire’s progress until the arrival of local fire brigades. Men teamed up to haul furniture, the grand family portraits, and sculptures outside. Women and children rescued smaller objects and placed them on the lawn before heading in again. A few villagers raced upstairs to the immense library and tossed books out the windows into waiting hands and blankets below. Their valiant efforts also saved the original eighteenth-century architectural drawings and watercolors. The fire consumed the entire interior. Most of the stone shell survived, but the leaded roof melted and collapsed. No one was injured and the estimated hundred thousand pounds’ worth of damage was more than covered by insurance. Mark Sykes threw his creative energies into rebuilding the family home. He hired architect Walter Brierley of York, an expert in historical restoration, who advocated for a complete demolition of the remains and a brand-new design. Sykes disagreed: “We will build a house that is as little typical of the second decade of the twentieth century as possible.” He wished to use the 1751 plans

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of architect Samuel Wyatt and his ancestor Sir Christopher Sykes as a basis for the reconstruction, but demanded a number of changes and additions.56 Brierley’s new client had a discerning eye and insisted on reviewing every feature. A battle of wills ensued. “I have to live in the house,” Sykes argued, “think how bad for you and me if I live to any age—that I should daily curse your name each time my eye was vexed by a detail my soul could not approve.”57 Sykes proposed a hamam in the basement level, eventually deciding on an elaborately tiled “cooling room” above it, complete with a spired fireplace in the Oriental style and Eastern furnishings. On a recent trip to Brussa, following the second Balkan War,58 he and Edith had seen çiniçis at work in the Green Mosque and learned about the new Ottoman Ministry of Endowments’ Scientific Commission for Repairs and Construction: “Owing to the inspiration and genius of Kemal-ed-din Bey, its chief architect, a series of restorations have been undertaken and carried out in the various mosques and tombs. . . . He has gone to the bazaars and native shops for his craftsmen. Whenever anything had to be done, he got the traditional man to do it, with the result that his restorations and his new buildings vibrate with life.”59 No doubt, Kemalettin informed Sykes that Kutahya had once again become Anatolia’s leading ceramics center. The rebuilding of Sledmere’s manor posed a tantalizing opportunity for Sykes to commemorate his affection for the East. Unlike Lord Leighton, who three decades earlier had built his own stylish “Arab Hall” around his collection of Damascus tiles augmented with new tiles by William De Morgan, Sykes envisioned an original room—a tiled garden of paradise—using the motifs and techniques of centuries past and made by the inheritors of the old Ottoman craft themselves. After investigating the Italian question in Constantinople, Sykes researched on his own behalf. “I find there is a tile factory at Kutahia where the most beautiful tiles are made,” he wrote to Brierley.60 “So to Kutahia, a town of mud and ruins” he recounted, “and now to-day squalor, dust and vermin. . . . There is nothing of note or interest in the place, save one little spark of life. Kutahia, for all time, has been famous for its clay and pottery. During the fourteenth century, there came to it Armenians from Persia, artists of cunning and taste, and there grew up a great industry, with the result that the mausoleums and mosques of Brusa and Constantinople still blaze with glorious glazed colours set in wonderful orders and designs. . . . Then came the lean years. The art

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faded away. The artists died with their secrets, and nothing remained save that men still made glazed pottery in Kutahia. Some sixty years ago certain Armenians and Turks began to think again of the old art. . . . To-day, amid the dust and dirt of Kutahia, there is rising up an artistic industry of which one dares to hope great things in the future.”61 In Kutahya, Sykes discovered Ohannessian’s atelier. Perhaps he found the primitive authenticity of the scene attractive. Or perhaps he intuited Ohannessian’s own fierce drive to perfect his work and felt at ease. The Englishman surveyed the workshop: “The Société Ottoman des Faïences de Kutahia is only modern in name. The kiln is a private cellar. The workmen squat about on shelves like bats.”62 But the ceramist’s fluent French gave the two men a common language. Each man’s inclination toward lively conversation formed another bond. Sykes explained what he had in mind and mentioned that he admired the royal family’s pavilion in the Yeni Cami in Constantinople.63 Ohannessian knew the mosque well and had collected photographs of the living quarters; he could use the cypress and flowering trees, amphoras, and scrolling vines depicted in the royal chambers as inspiration. Sykes took some Ohannessian tile samples back to England. Although the British aristocrat disparaged urban Kutahya, the Ohannessian family and their neighbors delighted in the region’s abundant natural charms— the towering pines of Chamliji, cool waters of Ak-Su and Deyirmenlir, and the sulfurous springs of Yonjali. Kutahyans favored the thermal baths of Ilija, a three- or four-hour journey by carriage. By long-standing tradition, Turkish Muslims inhabited Ilija’s campsites between May 15 and August 15, after which the Christians took their turn, through the month of September. The Ohannessians and other Armenian families hired horse-drawn phaetons in Kutahya to transport them to the site. They loaded their carriages with everything needed for a few weeks of camping—crates of flour, cracked wheat, coffee, oil, and cheese; cookware, bedding, bundles of clothing, bathing costumes, towels, and a cloth tent. Along the causeway to Eskishehir, the Ilija road forked off to the north and began a long ascent. An old khan sat at the hill’s summit, and just beyond, the vista revealed a wide valley, dotted with scores of conical white tents— bright against the rich green woodland of the opposite hill. A few hundred paces beyond the khan sat another old stone building. From here, a bather

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descended a dozen steps and passed through a doorway to enter the hamam’s courtyard. Unknown masons—legend had it that they were ancient Greeks or Romans—built a bath spanning about forty-five square meters, with a roof above. Large marble slabs paved the bath on three sides and the bottom. On the fourth side, an opening led outdoors, where some distance away, hot springs fed a natural rock pool more than twenty-five feet deep. Only the strongest swimmers ventured all the way there, carrying with them a watermelon to crack open and eat as they rested afterward on a boulder near a spot where steaming water gushed out of the earth. Many of Kutahya’s Armenians returned to Ilija each year. Even those families without much money could enjoy the natural beauty of the scene and the healing powers of the water.64 In one of the shallow open-air pools, parents taught their youngsters to swim. Toddlers, like Sirarpi, wore a pair of hollow dried gourds tied to their backs to help keep them afloat. In the evening after sunset, everyone withdrew to his own tent. Wisps of smoke curled skyward from hearths crackling with the dried twigs and aromatic pine cones that the small children had collected earlier in the day. Friends toasted one another with glasses of spirits and watched as the light faded, stars appeared, and lanterns illumined, one by one, across the field. Late in the summer of 1912, Gomidas Vartabed, too, repaired to Ilija for a short respite, accompanied by his close friend and housemate in Constantinople, the painter Panos Terlemezian. Gomidas relished the sweet-smelling air and solitude of the forest and camped in a tent high up on the hill. During those days, Terlemezian began a portrait of Gomidas in profile: The seated musician—his oud by his side—read peacefully, leaning against the gnarled trunk of a pine tree. In the background of the painting, shadows dappled a white canvas tent and a richly glazed Kutahya jug and goblet.65 After nightfall, Gomidas and Terlemezian would descend the slope, finding their way by lamplight to the large bath where they basked in Ilija’s soothing waters. On Sunday morning, in the upper reaches of the forest, Gomidas led a great open-air service. The Armenian youths sang under his direction. Those who attended his liturgy—celebrated amid the fragrant mugwort trees—and heard the plangent tones of Gomidas’s incomparable voice would long remember it.66 By October of 1912, architect Walter Brierley had progressed beyond initial sketches to the first elevations of Mark Sykes’s proposed cooling room for his

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new Turkish bath at Sledmere. Brierley sent the drawings to Kutahya, where Ohannessian’s assistant, Vahan, penned decorative motifs into the grids representing each wall.67 Against his architect’s advice, Sykes insisted on having the hamam in the basement: “The cellars are huge and useless,” he wrote to Brierley on October 5, “and no danger of either vapor or heat getting into the house.” Three days later, rebel forces in Montenegro attacked Ottoman soldiers in the city of Shkoder. Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbians—many of them Christian— joined the fighting, broadening the front in a Balkan war of independence. On October 22, Sykes wrote to Brierley again, mindful of the expanding battlefields in Europe: “I am very pleased with the designs. . . . Ohannessian agreed to line the staircase with tiles. The sooner I get the stuff the better as things are moving there & if Roumania chips in all communications will be cut off.”68 Ohannessian made the tiled fireplace first—closely modeled on the one in the Yeni Cami Sultan’s Chamber—while Sykes and his architect continued to wrangle over the design for the rest of the cooling room. Each time Brierley sent a new elevation, Sykes found flaws in it. Meanwhile, fighting in the Balkans raged on. War and famine sent masses of displaced Muslims hurtling toward Anatolia. Convoys of European and North African refugees, most of them impoverished, some badly injured, arrived by foot or boat, passing through the southern Balkans and Aegean Islands and arriving on the mainland at rates far beyond capacity of the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Refugees to house them.69 Against this growing tumult in the heartland and the war in Europe, Young Turk Party leaders plotted a raid in the capital—their goal, to overthrow the government and seize complete control of it. On January 23, 1913, the Young Turks stormed the Sublime Porte. During the night, they and their followers assassinated the minister of the navy and deposed the grand vizier. The coup d’état elevated a new ruling triumvirate, Ismail Enver, Mehmed Talaat, and Ahmed Djemal—soon to be known as the “Three Pashas.” The new leaders reshuffled the cabinet, filling it with CUP members, and in the process, quashed the opposing Liberal Union Party.

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In the same January weeks, Brierley sent a final version of the cooling room plans to Kutahya. He indicated the layout of borders and panels but left the organization of the motifs in Ohannessian’s hands. On the elevation, he instructed: “Here, a panel like M. Sykes saw in the apartments of Yeni Djami. You know what he wants. . . . You can decide the decorations of the stairs to the basement as you think best.”70 Ohannessian created a design scheme using details drawn from Yeni Cami, Topkapi Palace, the Rustem Pasha Mosque, Bursa’s Shehzade Mustafa tomb, and a trellised vine pattern. He repeated two panel designs from the Yeni Cami Sultan’s Pavilion—a graceful flowering tree and a cypress wreathed in scrolling vines. As the time drew nearer for Victoria to deliver her second child, Tavit took Sirarpi to Eskishehir to stay with her grandparents. A boy, Khatchig Vahé, was born on February 10, 1913. Like his sister, he was christened at Sourp Toros Church with his genka, Uncle Hagop, in attendance. Afterward, Tavit took the train to Eskishehir to fetch his daughter, carrying with him a brand-new coat that Victoria had made for her. When Sirarpi slipped her hand into the pocket, she found a delicious surprise—a packet of halva wafer cookies!

Tiled fireplace, Sultan’s Pavilion, Yeni Cami, Constantinople

Ohannessian completed the Sledmere wall tiles in June, and wrote to Sykes: “Permit us to add that your order has turned out very successfully. We assure you that it is the best result of our production, identical to that of Yéni-Djami.”71 The artist understood that creating such a large installation for a distinguished European client, and a Christian one, at that, was an important professional opportunity. He had no idea how momentous it would prove to be.

In Constantinople in August of 1913, Armenian clergy, intellectuals, writers, and artists mounted a huge celebration for the fifteen hundredth anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet. At the ceremony, two members of the

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Young Turk triumvirate gave speeches. Talaat Pasha—a former postal telegraph clerk and parliamentary deputy for Edirne, who had assumed the position of Interior Minister after the January Young Turk coup—was one of them. Djemal Pasha, the new Military Governor of Constantinople, gave voice to his government’s growing hostility toward the Armenians in a private meeting with American ambassador Henry Morgenthau: “They carried their audacity to the point of throwing confetti in the Armenian national colours about the streets. We bore all this with unshakeable patience, and took the necessary steps to prevent ugly incidents.”72 Did Gomidas’s joyous composition, “Oh Glorious My Language,” written for the occasion, strike the two Young Turk leaders as another sign of Armenian disloyalty to the Turkish homeland?73 Did they see the festivities as a portent of yet another nefarious scheme to collaborate with foreign powers to “dismember” Turkey? By the conclusion of the Balkan Wars, in mid-August of 1913, the empire had lost more than four-fifths of its European territories. Three hundred thousand more Balkan Muslims had taken flight toward Edirne, Constantinople, and Anatolia. The new European nation-states retained nearly 70 percent of their populations—those individuals, many of them Christian, would no longer enrich Ottoman tax coffers.74 The loss of so much land and citizenry in such a short period of time struck an immense blow to the Ottoman Empire’s integrity and status and had nearly vanquished its presence on the European continent. Yet the Kutahya trade continued to prosper. State commissions for new buildings and restorations signaled a proud affirmation of what was increasingly being called Turkish culture. Victoria, like most of her Armenian friends, retained her thrifty habits and saved gold coins whenever possible. The young mother sewed, embroidered, and knitted every article of household clothing. She and Tavit quietly helped relatives whenever the need arose and contributed funds to the church. Baron Ohannessian, now renowned for his contributions to Kutahya art, had repeatedly demonstrated his strengths in a variety of ways necessary to operate a successful artistic enterprise with a wide geographic reach. He frequently collaborated with architects—even at a distance—and could envision and execute large-scale tile designs for new installations. Over the course of his architectural renovations with Kemalettin and others, he had analyzed historic tile works and developed methods to simulate them. Tavit strove continuously

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to perfect his own skills and raise the standards of his studio. He took enormous pleasure in lively conversation and connected easily with clients from all walks of life. The employer of a productive group of artisans and laborers, he also assumed the role of patriarch and supporter for his extended family. At the age of twenty-nine, he had earned a respected place in his community. Victoria cuddled and doted on her children, singing songs, telling Bible stories, and playing games with them. She loved to hide small toys and treats and sent her children and their visiting cousins on treasure hunts that ended with squeals of delight. Tavit too, lavished his affection on his daughter and son, kissing Sirarpi and Vahé and hoisting them up into the air to make them laugh. Sometimes, though, Vahé wept inconsolably. Nothing his parents tried comforted him, and the sound of his sobs tore at their hearts. Once, Sirarpi remembered listening to her brother wail for hours on end. Suddenly, it stopped. Vahé had fainted. Victoria, desperate to find the cause of the continuing spells, consulted all the local doctors, without success. Finally, the Ohannessians took their little boy on a pilgrimage. An old woman at a holy site ordered the young mother to kneel and say forty “Our Fathers” for forty days. Victoria did so. She would attempt anything to cure her child. On August 31, 1913, the most recently appointed Kutahya district governor, Faik Ali Bey,75 a poet and graduate of the Imperial School of Civil Service, arrived to begin his term. He was to succeed Ahmed Mufit Bey and lead the city and surrounding villages through the growing turbulence in his corner of western Anatolia following the Balkan Wars.76 The urbane incoming thirtyseven-year-old administrator had just resigned his previous post as governor of the Pera district of Constantinople after a mere six weeks in office, due to what he described as “an executive and ideological conflict with the Interior Ministry.”77 Perhaps the central government felt Kutahya was sufficiently remote from the capital for Faik to avoid further trouble. The new mutasarrif’s father, Said Pasha, was governor of the Diyarbekir province; the family was of Kurdish origin. Faik’s lineage included several other literary figures who earned their livings as civil servants. His older brother, Suleyman Nazif, am eminent poet and sharp-tongued political essayist, had joined the Young Turk Party while living in Paris in 1897 and had risen through its ranks. The brothers shared literary interests, political viewpoints, and a sense of patriotic sorrow over the empire’s immense territorial losses.78 Both loved Constantinople. Faik lauded its beauties in many of his poems and called it “the

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country of my idea and the home of my soul.” Faik Ali Bey admired Kutahya’s elegant ceramics, rugs, and metalwork, and understood the vital contributions of the Christian artisans to the city’s reviving fortunes. By October of 1913, Sykes was back in Kutahya, eager to see the work he had commissioned. The entire Ohannessian family met him with a carriage at the Alayunt train station and welcomed him to their home for a meal. After Sykes visited the atelier and examined Ohannessian’s work, he wrote excitedly to Brierley: “The previous order, fireplace, etc., exceeded all my expectations—it seems that he accidentally discovered a way of making something very nearly approaching the old white, which is neither dead white nor cream, but has the bluish tinge of the white of a child’s eye.”79 Sykes arranged for his agent in Constantinople to dispatch the eighty crates containing twenty-six hundred tiles to Hull—the port nearest to Sledmere—by Wilson Liner cargo ship in November.80 Brierley had planned to use British tiles for the family’s water closets and bathrooms, but Sykes, enthused by what he had seen, had another idea. “If dairy and main bath rooms & lavatory were tiled by Ohannessian with Kutahya tiles I think we could get them for about the same price as decent English machine made ones.”81 Several days later he wrote again, “The whole of the W.C.s are [to be] in Turquoise! & the large lavatory & cloakroom in a special design taken from mosques—very elaborate—cypress trees, olives, etc., etc. From what I have seen of Ohannessian’s work, I really believe there ought to be an opening for this sort of thing in England, because they are not confined to any particular style & have made very great advances in color.”82 Sykes bargained with Ohannessian on prices and work to be done. “I have spent two very fatiguing days wrestling with Mssrs Ohannessian,” he reported to his architect. “They have arranged to do all the plans sent, the whole quantity for £248* [*starting price £360]—this works out about English prices—I will give you the detail when I get back. Ohannessian was very much amused at the English patterns I took him—it appears that he can make such things for about 17s. a metre delivered in England.”83 Sykes and Ohannessian agreed on the color schemes: hexagonal tiles in blueand-white patterns, solid turquoise, aubergine, and olive green. The dairy and some of the bathrooms would be decorated with cypress trees and panels in the Shehzade Mustafa patterns,84 with borders evoking Damascus tile designs— arabesque cloud medallions interlaced with saz leaves and peonies—edged

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in sky blue. Brierley and Sykes placed the order, which Ohannessian agreed to complete by August of 1914.85 Architects Kemalettin and Vedat Tek contracted Mehmet Emin and his partners to make tile revetments for new boat landings in Constantinople— Haydarpasha,86 Kadikoy, Bestikas, Moda, and Buyukada. 87 Other new constructions in the capital would boast Kutahya tiles: the Haydarpasha train station salon, the Vakif and Liman Hans, the Fatih and Kadikoy Government Houses, Vedat Tek’s and Prince Abdulmecid’s residences,88 the Galata Fish House, and the Land Registration Office.89 The three Kutahya ateliers employed a total of 150 workers, many of them remarkably accomplished, to keep pace with the flow of orders. Each person practiced a distinct set of skills in the well-ordered division of tasks. Ohannessian also collaborated with Emin on tiling for the Dar el Muallimin teacher training school and mosque.90 Kutahya’s Turkish and Armenian ceramicists imprinted their luminous signatures on the face of Constantinople and other important cities. Kemalettin received extraordinary acclaim for his new constructions and restorations and was awarded a high recognition from the royal family. In 1910, Sultan Mehmed Reshad V engaged the architect to plan his future shrine in the Eyup district of Constantinople. Kemalettin devised an elegant domed octagonal plan.91 The entire interior was to be tiled—another prestigious commission for the Kutahya çiniçis. During the monument’s construction in 1913–14, all three workshops created tile panels that incorporated motifs drawn from earlier Ottoman royal monuments92—medallions, rosettes, amphoras, hyacinths, cypress trees, almond blossoms, curving vines, and arabesques. In Yorkshire, Sykes’s building contractor pressed forward with the reconstruction of Sledmere House. Thirty masons laid brick and stonework93 and in the early months of 1914, supervised by Brierley and working from detailed layouts, installed Ohannessian’s tiles, which were numbered for ease of placement. Sir Mark temporarily put aside plans for his basement steam room, but the spectacular cooling room on the main level was taking form. In Sarajevo, in the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the morning of June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death by a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist. The couple had survived a grenade attack earlier in the day. News

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of the assassinations reverberated worldwide and prompted Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia—the first link in an explosive chain reaction igniting what would soon be known as the Great War. Ohannessian completed Sykes’s second order in early July, a month ahead of schedule. Apprentices packed the tiles into wooden crates, cushioning them with straw. Sykes’s agent, Albert Lofranco, received the load in Constantinople but by July 19 concluded that it would be impossible to transport the shipment to England. Freight companies wouldn’t extend credit for cargo, as they had done in the past. Communications dragged. International telegraph offices in the capital no longer accepted messages in any languages other than French or Turkish. Sir Mark, who was traveling at the time, wired the agent, warning him not to send the tiles until the end of the war, but their messages crossed. Lofranco had already stowed the crates in the Haydarpasha Railway Company depot in Constantinople, awaiting funds and instructions. He wrote to Sykes’s wife, Lady Edith, pleading for reimbursement of his out-of-pocket costs: “Please do not forget that there are 306 cases . . . 12 tons which required a lot of expenses, and everything now is double the price.” The one remaining French shipping company, Messageries Maritimes, ran two steamers a week to London, but “there are no men to carry baggage on account of the Government having taken them for soldiers,” and, Lofranco wrote, advance payment in full—more than £80—would be required. Three weeks later, Lady Edith sent him only £20.94 In Europe, there were much more pressing worries. Three hundred and six cases of superbly colored and painted glazed tiles, made at the peak of Kutahya’s artistic renaissance, would have to remain in storage at Haydarpasha to be retrieved after the war. Lofranco must have hoped that someone would remember to pay the £8 monthly storage fee. On August 2, the empire allied with the Central Powers of Germany and AustriaHungary, signing a treaty to train Turkish forces under the leadership of German officers. Two German warships were already moored in the Bosphorus Strait. The Ottoman government summoned all men below the age of 45 to serve in the army. In every city and town, posters heralded: General mobilization, all soldiers to arms! The first day of mobilization is Monday, August 3rd!95 Town criers roamed the streets, banging drums and calling out the message. In Eskishehir, Tavit’s mother’s worst fears were realized when her youngest son was conscripted. Karnig reported for his assignment with a heavy heart. His

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wife, Loussentak, was pregnant with their second child. He dreaded leaving his family behind to serve in some godforsaken place for a cause he did not fully understand. Karnig was given arms and a thin, shabby uniform, completely inadequate for the bitter cold months to come. Then, he waited to be mobilized with his unit. A day or two later, everyone had gone out to work or shop in the markets. Hagop returned home first. He found the lifeless, blood-spattered body of his youngest brother. Karnig had shot himself with his army-issued gun. Hagop found a suicide note and destroyed it. It was an unspeakable end for the young father, nearly impossible for the family to bear, much less comprehend. Weeks after Karnig’s death, Loussentak gave birth to a daughter, who died a short time later. Victoria delivered her third child, Ohannes—named in honor of his grandfather—on October 12, 1914. His parents christened him at Sourp Toros Church. Once again, Tavit’s elder brother, Hagop, stood as godfather. Local newspapers reported little but worrisome news, but the birth of a healthy boy was cause for gratitude to God in the midst of the family’s mourning and anguish. On October 29, the Ottoman Navy, under the supreme authority of Djemal Pasha, launched a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea. By November 4, the Triple Entente—the Great Powers of England, France, and Russia96—had declared war on the Ottoman Empire. On November 13, Sultan Reshad V, the Sheikh ul-Islam, in turn declared jihad.97 “Oh Moslems,” he proclaimed in a statement that raged across Ottoman lands like wildfire, “know ye that the state is at war with Russia, England, France, and their Allies, and that these are the enemies of Islam. The Chief of the believers, the Caliph, invites you all as Moslems to join in the Holy War.”98 The empire faced a battle to the death: It would combat foreign enemies and vanquish the “traitors” and “infidels” within. For the Ohannessians and their fellow Armenians, the horrors were only beginning.

Chap te r 5

Exile

Even before the Balkan Wars ended in August of 1913, wave upon wave of wounded and destitute Muslim immigrants made their way south into Thrace and western Anatolia. The Ottoman Interior Ministry drafted plans to scatter these muhajirs toward the fertile plains around Konya and Adana, often into densely Christian regions.1 But many of the new arrivals spurned their assigned plots of land, searching instead for ready jobs or familiar faces from their hometowns. Armed gangs of migrants terrorized Anatolian Christians, assaulting women, stealing food, and forcing residents to flee their homes. Petty thefts, stabbings, and abductions as well as a pernicious Muslim boycott of Greek and Armenian merchants, shook local communities. Tens of thousands of Christian villagers fled the interior, heading west toward the coastal cities.2 In Constantinople, the Armenian Patriarch, Hovhaness Arsharuni, learned of the growing violence in the western provinces and the failure of the central government to counter it. In May of 1913, he poured out his fears in a letter he circulated to Russian, British, and French ambassadors: Your Excellency is not unaware that the Armenians’ situation deteriorated suddenly in the aftermath of the Balkan War. The unfortunate outcome of this war added a thirst for revenge to a centuries-old hatred. From one end of Anatolia to the other, a threat of massacre gathered over their heads. They became hostages in the Muslims’ hands. If these massacres did not occur, it was due solely to the fact that the Armenians, albeit victims of the most 105

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reprehensible crimes, refrained even from demanding justice, for fear that their attitude might be interpreted as a provocation. To date, they have simply managed to avoid wholesale slaughter. The number of murders has not diminished but increased and, for some time now, these murders have been committed, significantly, with the manifest intention of sowing terror among the Armenians. . . . The Armenians cannot rely on protection from the state and do not even have the right to defend themselves. If they procure arms, they immediately find themselves accused of preparing a rebellion. . . . The government’s accusation, which is such as to suggest that the Armenians are always ready to take up arms, only whips up the hatred of the fanatical masses. . . . The Patriarchate, while it confidently awaits the forthcoming solution to the question of reforms in Armenia, begs Your Excellency to take the urgent measures that Your Excellency considers appropriate to avoid the danger of imminent massacres in Anatolia.3

For the Ohannessians as well as their Christian neighbors in the interior counties, the scope of daily life narrowed as word of these new rounds of violence reached them. Kutahya’s Armenians grew anxious. Victoria kept her children close to her, and Tavit went about his business as calmly as possible. Abdul Hamid’s atrocities in the 1890s and the more recent carnage in Adana had seared agonizing images in Armenian memory. But Young Turk leaders, still stunned by the epic scale of their Balkan losses, viewed Armenian pleas to foreign powers as yet another form of disloyalty—one they would use to amplify their portrayal of them as “ungrateful,” “treasonous,” and, increasingly, “non-nationals.” Many of the highest-ranking Young Turk military officers were of European Ottoman heritage and had been displaced by the Balkan Wars themselves.4 Enver Pasha had won distinction in the North African and Balkan battlefields and led the successful charge to recapture Edirne from Bulgaria in June of 1913, in the second Balkan War. For Enver and his colleagues, the loss of nearly four-fifths of the Ottoman European territories in a single year engendered a profound sense of humiliation and powered a drive to transfigure the remaining Ottoman lands through a decisive campaign of Turkish nationalism. As Enver mused: “How could a person forget the plains, the meadows, watered with the blood of our forefathers; abandon those places where Turkish raiders had hidden their steeds for a full four hundred years, with our mosques, our tombs, our dervish retreats, our bridges and our castles . . . to be driven out of

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Rumelia to Anatolia; this was beyond a person’s endurance. I am prepared to gladly sacrifice the remaining years of my life to take revenge on the Bulgarians, the Greeks, and the Montenegrans.”5 But Bulgarians and Montenegrans claimed homelands in Europe, and Greece had won its independence from the Ottomans in 1832. Enver, Talaat, and Djemal turned their appetite for vengeance toward another group. The presence of nearly two and a half million Christian Armenians,6 dispersed throughout all of Anatolia, stood as a clear impediment to the goal of a proud, fully Turkish Islamic nation. One popular essayist opined, “The Christian population of Turkey has been consistently progressing, partly by means of privileges too easily granted, and partly by their own initiative, and they are ousting the real owner of the country more and more from their heritage.”7 Two outspoken physicians in the Young Turk regime cast Armenians as “tubercular microbes” that were sickening the state. Others denigrated them as “vermin.”8 In Kutahya, Ohannessian and the other Armenian craftsmen and merchants kept a watchful eye on the growing threats to the west, including news of the ruinous boycotts. It appeared that the Armenians as well as their Greek neighbors, who had also built their own national schools and prosperous trades, faced a growing chorus of resentful critics. At the same time, new rules deprived Orthodox Christian men of the means to protect their families from possible marauders now that even their hunting rifles and large kitchen knives had been outlawed and confiscated. As crime spread in the western provinces, the Ottoman Interior Ministry and the Greek government contemplated a population exchange: Muslim refugees in Greek Thrace could trade places with Orthodox Greeks in Anatolia. Although each household would be required to agree to any move, plans for orderly transfers quickly collapsed into expulsion and plunder. In May of 1914, the governor of Smyrna outlined a scheme to place immigrant Muslim families into the homes of the fleeing Greeks. Two months later, Talaat Pasha toured western Anatolia and pronounced that the Greeks who had fled the violence were in fact traitorous Ottoman army deserters. On July 27, 1914, the Interior Ministry ordered homes left empty by Greeks to be given to Balkan or Circassian Muslims.9 These muhajirs would swiftly become “Turks,” and increase the presence of Muslims in each district where they settled.

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Ottoman sultans had always wielded a strong hand over the movements of their peoples. Like their Persian and Russian imperial counterparts, they often relocated populations—forcibly or otherwise—in the wake of conquests or to meet strategic objectives. Imperial leaders also commandeered groups possessing specialized artistic skills.10 When the conqueror Timur brought the Masters of Tabriz from Samarkand to Brussa at the beginning of the fifteenth century, he transplanted new arts into Anatolia. Two centuries later, in 1604, the Persian Shah Abbas I removed one hundred and fifty thousand of the most accomplished Armenians from the Caucasian city of Julfa to Isfahan in Persia, where they founded the colony of New Julfa. These Julfa Armenians carried with them their expertise in painting, architecture, manuscript illumination, metalwork, silk culture, stone cutting, and weaving. In New Julfa they built a prosperous community and added strong arteries to the Armenian trade networks. But another hundred thousand deported Armenian Julfa peasants fared less well. Sent in caravans to other Persian and Azerbaijani regions, thousands drowned in river crossings, starved, or succumbed to disease along their miserable wintertime journeys.11 And sometimes villagers uprooted themselves, as Tavit’s Galenbajak ancestors had done at the end of the fifteenth century, to escape attacks on their settlement on the bank of the Mourad River, south of Erzurum. In the aftermath of the Young Turk coup d’état in January of 1913, the Three Pashas conceived a radical approach. They would modernize the old imperial techniques of forced relocations with the use of census figures collected by the Population Registry Administration and German military officers in the eastern provinces.12 By these methods they would Turkify the empire’s Anatolian heartland.13 There would be an end, finally, to the exasperating discussions of equality and reform. The Young Turk leaders and their allies would solve the “Armenian Question,” but no contingent was entirely immune. Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds, and the Arab and Jewish populations of Syria, Palestine, and the Hejaz were also eyed and counted.14 In August of 1914, a town crier roamed Kutahya’s streets pounding a drum and shouting that all males between the ages of 15 and 60 must report for military duty. Men who could afford the hefty fifty-pound military exemption tax could

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delay enlistment, but this bedel was beyond the means of most. Others, serving in trades essential to the national economy, were also exempted. Conscripted Armenians reported for duty. Tavit’s workshop lost apprentices and other laborers, but despite the war, government commissions to tile new buildings continued to arrive. Emin, the Minassians, Ohannessian, and their remaining workers continued to produce ceramic revetments for new boat landings and executed elaborate tiling for Sultan Reshad’s future shrine. Architects in Constantinople were designing a new prison for the capital. Even this sprawling jail was to feature Kutahya tiles.15 Kutahya District Governor Faik Ali Bey and his brother, Suleyman Nazif, governor-general of the vast Baghdad province, understood that the confluence of Turkish nationalism and the swelling animosity against the empire’s nonMuslim populations pointed toward catastrophe. Newspaper essays and public lectures roiled an already feverish climate, hammering images of “blood,” “pain,” and a “blot on the honor of the nation” into popular discourse. Young Turk publications roused both a “national hatred” of Europe and a patriotic Turkish solidarity.16 Influential activists, including Mehmed Ziya Gökalp,17 promoted Turanism—a nostalgic, semi-mythological ideology that extolled the domination of Turkish language and culture in a fatherland that spanned several continents. For Gökalp, the fantasy of “uniting one hundred million Turks in a single nation is a source of great rapture.”18 Suleyman Nazif and some of his prominent Young Turk friends spoke out against pan-Turanism, calling it dangerous and imperialist—the opposite of the vaunted egalitarian ideals proclaimed after the 1908 revolution. Nazif argued for a more inclusive definition of Ottomanism.19 Privately, he wrote to his younger brother, warning him of what was to come and admonishing him not to “have even a passive participation in the barbarity to be executed and stain their family’s honor.”20 In Kutahya, Faik Ali Bey called a meeting of the CUP club leaders at the Government House and asked each one to speak his mind about the city’s Armenians, their contributions to the city’s commerce, and general comportment. The townsmen offered positive appraisals. Faik put their testimonies into writing and had each man sign his own account. He placed the documents in his desk drawer, having been warned by his brother of the possibility of disruptions.21 In

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addition to the district governor, some important Turkish families in Kutahya— the Germiyanzades, the Hodjazades,22 and others—had strong relations with the city’s Armenians.23 Faik took note of this as well. Tavit and other Armenian community leaders viewed their well-educated governor as an advanced and conscientious thinker who cultivated good relations with them and their neighbors. As the European hostilities crept southward, the Ottoman Interior Ministry’s Public Security Directorate issued cautions about Armenians. A circular published in September of 1914 promoted suspicion of their loyalty to the state: The attitudes and movements of those chiefs and committee heads of Armenian political parties, which for a long time have been pursuing political objectives and not abstaining from publishing malicious and damnable material against the Ottoman millet . . . should be followed and observed, and if need be, action should be taken on the basis of eventual instructions.”24

The government cut services to Armenian communities, closing foreignrun hospitals catering to Christians, impounding international telegraphic devices,25 and prohibiting official use of the Armenian language and publication of Armenian newspapers, except in the capital.26 Restrictive new laws limited travel for Armenians. In the Ohannessians’ neighborhood, the Armenian schools closed their doors. The Ottoman military, cash-strapped after years of unremitting warfare, commandeered mules, oxcarts, horses, and cattle from Armenian and Greek farmers.27 Soldiers demanded wheat, rice, sugar, and clothing from local tradesmen. These “war contributions” depleted the winter food stores of villagers and townspeople, ensuring hunger in the months ahead.28 Ottoman decrees advised troops on the eastern frontier that the goods and possessions of Armenians living in Russian and Persian territories were “a legitimate target for the soldiers of Islam.”29 With the Triple Entente’s and Ottoman declarations of war in early November of 1914, the empire faced enemies along widespread borders. War Minister Enver Pasha dispatched newly recruited infantry divisions toward the Caucasus.30 By the second week of November, the Russian army had already advanced west toward Erzurum. Turkish cavalry and infantry quickly repelled the Russian forces and held the border.31

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Emboldened by this early victory, Enver set his sights on an expansionist goal: Could he retake the borderlands lost after the 1877–78 war?32 He directed the massive Third Army eastward to confront the Russians. As Turkish units prepared to fight, the Chamber of Deputies issued an inciting message: That day of revenge, which has been awaited for centuries by the nation’s young and old, by its martyrs and its living, has finally arrived. You find yourself facing the Muscovites and their allies, the British and the French, the greatest enemies of the Ottoman Empire and of Islam. . . . Take revenge for the homes they have set ablaze, for the wounds they have inflicted, for the martyrs they have trampled underfoot.”33

This first major battle of the war, fought near the village of Sarikamish in the Kars region—ceded to the Russians in 1877—ended in disaster for the Ottomans. The defeat would bear grim repercussions for all the empire’s Armenians. In late December, despite the brutal conditions,34 Enver dismissed the advice of his field general and pressed forward with his Russian campaign. Meagerly clothed and ill-supplied, one hundred and twenty thousand Ottoman soldiers, including thousands of Armenian conscripts,35 tramped east from their base in Erzurum toward the icy Caucasus slopes. Some Armenian volunteers fought alongside the Russian troops, mainly descendants of families that had settled on the Russian side of the border following the 1877–78 war and now Russian citizens themselves.36 Acclimated to the region’s ferocious weather, they conducted reconnaissance, moving nimbly through the mountainous terrain. As the new year of 1915 commenced, Russian commanders called in reinforcements from outside the battle zone and encircled the Turkish troops, annihilating more than forty-five thousand Ottoman soldiers in a matter of days. Thousands more were injured.37 Tens of thousands of weary, famished Ottoman soldiers froze to death as a wind-whipped January blizzard heaped snow on the ground. Others deserted or surrendered. As the exhausted remnants of the Third Army retreated west, thousands more died from typhus and dysentery. Even before the Sarikamish battle had ended, the Ottoman Security Directorate, panicked that Russian Armenians would inspire their co-religionists across the border to revolt, sent orders to the eastern provincial

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capitals to fire all Armenian state employees suspected of being “evil” or “untrustworthy.”38 After the Sarikamish rout, ghastly photographs and newsreels surfaced showing frozen Turkish corpses stacked like logs. These images, like the news of the cataclysmic losses on the Ottoman side, were quickly suppressed. Enver left Erzurum for Constantinople on January 8, and in plain contradiction to the facts, proclaimed the action to have been an immense success.39 Warfare along the eastern fronts exposed Armenian communities to extreme depredations. Three hundred miles south of Sarikamish, in the heavily Christian Persian borderland of Urmia, Russian soldiers provided some protection for Armenian civilians. After the Russians left to reinforce the northern contingent, Turkish soldiers and Kurds overran the territory, plundering and massacring Orthodox Christians. Fleeing the terror, some Armenian villagers followed the Russian divisions. Others crossed the border into Russian territory. American Presbyterian missionaries in Urmia attempted to aid the twenty-five thousand fleeing Armenians and Nestorians, who gave gruesome accounts of massacres and forced conversions.40 One American reported that Turkish soldiers had even murdered refugees sheltering within the French mission and assassinated Armenian fellow soldiers serving in the Ottoman Army. Urmia missionaries counted “the murder of over one thousand people— men, women and children; the outraging of hundreds of women and girls of every age—from eight or nine years to old age. . . . Over two hundred girls and women were carried off into captivity, to be forced to embrace Islam and to accept Mohammedan husbands.”41 In the wake of the Third Army’s near annihilation, Enver issued a decree on February 25, 1915, disarming Armenian soldiers.42 Armenian infantry would be put to heavy labor instead—digging ditches, building bridges, and hauling backbreaking loads—all on starvation rations. When they had lived out their usefulness, the men were often taken to isolated locales and shot.43 The war minister deflected responsibility away from his own calamitous strategies, blaming the “treacherous Armenians” instead. Enver hardened his determination to solve the Armenian Question once and for all.44 During the Balkan Wars, CUP officers had empowered a secret network of irregular fighters to spy behind enemy lines and create havoc for residents of disputed territories.45 Early in 1915, the War Ministry reactivated these so-called

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Special Organization paramilitary units. After the Sarikamish disaster, they were given a new and far-reaching assignment: to massacre, loot, kidnap, and evict the state’s “internal enemies.”46 The operatives, called chetes, were recruited from Kurdish tribes, Turkish gangs, and convicts freed from prison. As foreign enemies threatened at the borders, the Young Turk government unleashed forces against Armenians within the heartland.47 On March 18, 1915, on the western front, British and French naval forces launched a campaign to breach the Dardanelles strait—the narrow waterway separating Europe from Asia—and enter the Sea of Marmara, aiming their warships for the capital and the Black Sea. The Allied armada suffered fierce bombardment. Three Allied battleships sank, one with more than six hundred men onboard. Three more ships were badly damaged. The British Fleet admiral48 called off the offensive. The Royal Navy regrouped, summoning Australian and New Zealand battalions from Egypt as well as Indian Army troops.49 When the reconstituted Allied fleet returned to menace the Aegean waters once again, the Ottoman War Ministry dispatched gendarmes into the interior to search Armenian homes and schools for hidden weapons and evidence of treachery. The smallest suspicion of disloyalty to the regime was cause for punishment. In late March, days after the Dardanelles attack, Turkish gendarmes began to raid Armenian homes and properties in the provincial capital of Brussa, where Ohannessian had recently spent time restoring the tiling of the Green Mosque. One Sunday at dawn, officers entered the city’s Armenian Orthodox church, smashing walls in a fruitless search for arms. The police arrested nearly two hundred and fifty Brussa Armenian intellectuals and business and religious leaders. Thirteen were hanged immediately, and the others were exiled to the interior, tortured, and shot.50 Afterward, chetes burned their bodies.51 In Constantinople, Young Turk leadership, fearful of foreign reprisals for the growing numbers of mass arrests and executions of Armenians throughout the provinces, set a powerful plan into motion. Secreted from the gaze of the capital’s large European community, members of the State Security Directorate and the police force’s Department of Political Affairs composed blacklists of the capital’s most influential, active, and accomplished Armenians. They were all to be exiled into the Anatolian interior. A spy network, directed by

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Constantinople’s police chief and his assistant, surveilled the subjects carefully, noting their daily movements. The committee hatched a scheme for hundreds of officers to mobilize and apprehend more than two hundred eminent Armenians in a single, grandly orchestrated strike. On Saturday evening, April 24, 1915, British and Anzac forces positioned themselves for an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. The same night, in Constantinople, the Young Turk government unfurled the monstrous plan. Throughout the late hours of the 24th and past dawn on the 25th, the capital’s police force arrested Armenian cultural, civic, and religious leaders— merchants, lawyers, teachers, architects, clergy, writers, doctors, government functionaries, pharmacists, and performers. The beloved musician Gomidas Vartabed was among the first to be rounded up. When he returned to his home in the Pangalti neighborhood early on Saturday evening, a plain clothes officer politely asked the priest to accompany him to the local police station, where, he promised, Gomidas would simply be asked for some information. “It won’t take more than five minutes, you will soon be back, nothing of importance,” the policeman prevaricated.52 Across the city, agents of the state accosted Armenians at their homes or offices.53 Peacefully, for the most part, and without being charged with any crime, sleepy and bewildered notables, some still wearing their nightshirts and slippers, climbed into military trucks. Gendarmes drove them to Mehterhane, Constantinople’s central, fortified prison. Still unsure of the grounds for their detention, the men waited in anxious silence. One of the jailed men, journalist Aram Andonian, noted: “What dumbfounded us most from the first moment was that there was no obvious direction or trend in the arrests. With the revolutionaries were also anti-revolutionaries. . . . There were liberals as well as conservatives. There were educated people with complete illiterates. There were the hot headed alongside the most cautious of people who were even scared of their own shadows. This attempt to mix water with fire worried us. Of course we did not know why we were arrested and what would be the outcome of this mishap. It was obvious that there was a serious and troublesome threat facing not only this or that faction of the Armenian people, but a threat that was looming over the whole [Armenian] nation.”54 Hearing of the arrests, two Armenian parliamentarians, Krikor Zohrab and Vartges Seringiulian, rushed to Talaat Pasha’s home in the early hours

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of April 25. The interior minister, whom they considered a friend, dodged any explanation. Later in the morning, Zohrab drafted a memorandum to present to authorities, imploring them to show clemency toward the arrested Armenians “out of respect for the memory of the thousands of Armenian soldiers who [had] died defending the Ottoman fatherland.”55 He and three other Armenian delegates called on the grand vizier, who icily informed them that hidden stores of arms and ammunition had been discovered in Van, dangerously close to the eastern front. In consequence, he stated, the government had decided to remove Armenian activists from the capital.56 The men then hurried to Talaat’s office, hoping for a more sympathetic answer. This time, the minister responded. “All those Armenians,” Talaat said, “who, by their speeches, writings or acts, have worked or may one day work toward the creation of an Armenia, have to be considered enemies of the state and, in the present circumstances, must be isolated.”57 On Sunday, as the incarcerated men in Mehterhane waited for news, they heard the dull boom of English and Russian naval cannons nearing Constantinople’s fortress gates.58 A short while later, hundreds of police armed with bayonets herded the prisoners back into the military trucks. In a grandiose display, the Turkish authorities conveyed the arrested luminaries to the Sirkeci port, where a steamship stood ready. One of the prisoners, Father Grigoris Balakian related, “Even the bravest were trembling, because we instinctively felt that we were headed for the grave.”59 Within two days, the number of Armenians seized in the capital rose by over two thousand.60 They too were sent into the interior. After removing most of the capital’s Armenian intelligentsia, the Young Turk cabinet drafted a temporary law on May 25 to sanction the general expulsion of any urban or rural residents suspected of disloyalty. War Minister Enver Pasha took charge of enforcement. Five days later, CUP lawmakers refined the legislation to include, specifically, Armenians who had “engaged in dangerous activities such as collaborating with the enemy, massacring innocent people and instigating rebellions.”61 This new May 30 legislation, the Temporary Law of Deportation, also contained a crucial provision: “Administrative instructions regarding movable and immovable property abandoned by Armenians deported as a result of the war and the

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unusual political circumstances.” As published in the newspapers and understood by foreigners in the capital, the law was meant to preserve, for the deportees, the cash value of properties left behind. Liquidation committees—“commissions for abandoned property”—auctioned and meted out orchards, factories, artisanal workshops, and stores. On June 10, the government published an even more comprehensive measure for the relocation of Armenians under war conditions. Bureaucrats and scribes produced sheaves of documents to record the vast quantities of goods, homes, shops, lands, orchards, and factories left behind. The government appropriated much of it, while maintaining the ruse of safely preserving it or liquidating it for the benefit of the true owners. Corrupt officials and inflamed mobs took their shares as well. The dismemberment of the Armenian community and redistribution of its wealth, schools, church buildings, and other properties were now enshrined in law. In late July, the Ministry of the Interior, under the direction of Talaat Pasha, ordered the creation of detailed maps with censuses of the various national groups. Non-Muslim and non-Turkish populations were to be limited to no more than 10, 5, or 2 percent of the total in each region.62 In August, towns and cities in the western Anatolian regions began widespread deportations of Armenians eastward toward the Syrian and Mesopotamian wastelands.

During Tavit ’ s youthful years in Eskishehir, his older sister, Marik, had returned to the family’s native village of Mouradchai to marry the widower Ohannes Avedian. There, she gave birth to four children. The Avedians’ daughter, Mariam, had married a Mouradchai native, Paragham Sarkissian. In time, Mariam had a son named Artin. In the following years, Marik’s husband Ohannes, her son Aram, and Mariam had died of pleurisy or other illnesses. By the summer of 1915, Marik kept house with her only surviving child—her son Hagop—her son-in-law, Paragham, and grandson, Artin. In Mouradchai, Marik found a deep contentment in the rituals of tilling, sowing, and nurturing green shoots as they emerged from the loamy soil. She loved the sweet, pine-scented air of the peaceful village. Near the family’s church, Sourp Asdvadzadzin, were the hallowed resting places of her husband, three of her children, and her ancestors—the generations of men and women who had lived and died in the embrace of the settlement.

Ewer, Kutahya, early eighteenth century

Plate, Kutahya, late eighteenth century

Kutahya biblical tiles, 1718–19, Etchmiadzin Chapel, St. James Cathedral

Previous Kutahya Government House Masjid, tiled mihrab

Classical tile patterns, from L’architecture ottomane (1873)

Kutahya window tiles, Constantinople Land Registry Office

Kutahya window tiles, Grand Post Office, Sirkeci

Kutahya façade tiles, Hobyar Masjid, Istanbul

Tomb of Sultan Mehmet Reshad V, Kutahya tiles, Eyüp, Istanbul

Bottle, stamped "Hilmi," Kutahya, late nineteenth century

Kutahya commemorative plate, 1908 Revolution

Walter Brierley plan of Turkish bath, cooling room, Sledmere House, January 1913

Opposite Sledmere House, “Turkish Room”

Ohannessian working sketch for architect Garo Balyan, Cairo, September 12, 1911

Previous Manial Palace entryway, Cairo

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In the first days of August, 1915, gendarmes from the county seat of Sogut arrived in Mouradchai to conduct house-to-house searches for contraband weapons. They pounded on doors, entered the church, the schools, and searched every home and animal shed. Officers tore apart bedding and pried into storage attics, cupboards, and trunks. On August 3, police arrested one of the village priests and a schoolteacher. While they were rifling through the two men’s belongings, they had found photographs of historic Armenian ruins as well as Armenian-language books and newspapers. These were proof, the police declared, that the two villagers were political agitators. The officers rode back to headquarters and telegraphed a report to the Ministry of War, denouncing the men. The Ministry volleyed back an order: Priest Kaspar Avedissian and Teacher Oseb Torossian who are from Muradja village are members of Armenian organizations which aim to establish an autonomous and independent Armenian state. . . . The sentence of their execution given by the Court Martial of Bandirma, according to the attachment of the fifty-fourth article and first paragraph of the Civil Penal Law is approved.63

In the middle of August, the gendarmes returned to Mouradchai, this time with a general order. The town crier walked up and down the village lanes shouting at the top of his lungs. Everyone gathered to hear the news: All Mouradchai residents had one day to pack up whatever they could carry and prepare to leave. They were ordered to vacate the village on a decree of temporary deportation and would be permitted to return when war conditions ended. The government exempted only one group, the orphaned children living under the care of the German citizen Maria Hofmann.64 Marik, Paragham, Hagop, and Artin looked at each other, stunned. It was late in the summer, and there was so much work yet to be done. Grapes were ripening on the vine. The men had just begun to bring in the crops. Marik and her family had scarcely started the long tasks of drying and preserving food for the winter. What would become of the harvests? Of the sheep and chickens? In each home, Mouradchai villagers made painful choices. What can I carry? How soon will we return? Marik packed up dried meats and grains, some family photos, and a few items of clothing. She would leave nearly all of her

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modest possessions behind. The next morning, the family walked out of their house, laden with bundles. They joined the stream of relatives and neighbors heading toward the square where a caravan was forming, all of them dazed by the shock and grief of leaving their beloved village. Prodded forward by mounted, armed police, the Armenians of Mouradchai began the rocky descent toward Eskishehir, trudging away from the high ground that had sheltered Tavit’s people for four hundred years. Within weeks, Balkan Muslim migrants—displaced farmers themselves—would settle into Marik’s and her neighbors’ homes.65 They would pluck ripened fruits from Mouradchai’s vineyards and orchards and feast on vegetables and nourishing grains, the blessed harvest of Armenian labor. Marik and her family’s path of exile led due east, toward the interior province of Angora. For the greater number of deportees from the western regions, the route followed the railway line beginning at Haydarpasha Station and heading east toward Izmit and from there, south toward Konya. Although Germans and Austrians had been building an Anatolian line since 1871, the progress had been slow. In central Anatolia, long gaps remained in the still unfinished Baghdad Railway project.66 Troops and materiel claimed priority on the extended stretches of single track.67 Many routes operated only once a week. Exiles were put off the trains whenever the railway was needed for military traffic. Those deportees wealthy enough to bribe a guard or gendarme to get onto a train at all squeezed into slat-sided stock cars—eighty or more persons to a carriage built for twelve cattle. Near each of the stations along the line, Armenian exiles concentrated in transit camps as they awaited the next available train or marching orders. Fathers and mothers tacked together low makeshift tents from blankets or bedsheets, propped up with branches and walking sticks.68 When newcomers arrived, questions flew: “Have you seen my father? What has happened in your village?” Hometown neighbors sought each other out and passed along scraps of news. In the weeks since widespread August deportations had begun in the western provinces, more than twelve thousand Armenians had congregated in the fields around the Eskishehir train station. The bedraggled exiles—including once-proud families of merchants, tradesmen, teachers, and industrialists—had formerly called Adrianople, Brussa, Adabazar, Izmit, or Bardezag home.

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Dr. Wilfred McIlvane Post, an American Protestant missionary, witnessed the wretched state of the encampments as he traveled back to his hospital post in Konya at the end of August. He wrote to the American Ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, on September 3, 1915: “The stationmaster, whom I have known as a reliable man for several years, told me that the people had been treated with every kind of brutality, the police ostensibly trying to prevent the Turks from molesting them by day, but aiding and abetting them by night. . . . Large groups of young women and girls were being kept separate from the rest. . . . [I] was told that in several instances, the police had allowed them to be outraged. . . . There was no provision made for feeding them and the people were quickly spending what little cash they had to buy provisions at exorbitant rates.”69 Kutahya’s stop on the trunk line of the Anatolian Railroad lay seven miles east of the city center in the village of Alayunt. There, more than five thousand Armenians crowded under tents in fields surrounding the train station.70 Once a week, officials distributed bread, each portion barely sufficient for a single day. The police beat and looted the deportees and extorted bribes whenever they found the opportunity. Kutahya’s chief of police, a migrant from the Caucasus himself, made no secret of the fact that he loathed Armenians. As the western Anatolian deportations gained momentum, Faik Ali Bey, too, received orders to exile the city’s Armenians. Like a small number of other governors, he resisted them. Instead, Faik quietly spread word among Kutahya’s Armenians that any resident who had “immediate relatives” among the deportees could help them register for the papers needed to remain in the city. The documents would be good for three months at a time.71 “Don’t depart from here,” Faik told one Adabazar exile who had found refuge in the city, “because further up is misery and death for the Armenians.”72 As soon as Tavit heard about Faik’s offer, he went to the Government House to request permission to travel to Alayunt and transport his “relatives” back to the city. He then set out for the train station, claimed a family, and brought them home. Many other Kutahya Armenians and a few Turkish families did the same. Soon it became unmistakably evident that hundreds of exiled Armenians were sheltering in the center city. Word reached the capital. The Interior Ministry sent Faik a reminder: “The Armenians who arrived in Kutahya should be sent to Aleppo.”73 In order to make their presence less obvious, the governor

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placed Armenian deportees with families in the rural villages surrounding the city. Farmers and tradesmen who took in refugees set them to work picking crops or working in artisan shops, so that the exiled families could contribute to their sustenance. As the weeks wore on, Tavit and Victoria claimed a total of forty-five more refugees. Victoria’s food supplies dwindled quickly, but so long as Faik’s policies remained firm, the Ohannessians and other Kutahya families would do whatever they could to care for and protect the exiles. Armenian guards and track workers at Alayunt conveyed word of new movements and arrivals to the camp.74 Each time Tavit obtained the necessary permit and ventured to Alayunt to bring a few more deportees back to the city, he saw a sea of faces pinched with hunger and despair. He and his neighbors heard stories of the abuse the exiles suffered at the hands of the police, who struck and cursed them, and often violated innocent girls. Kutahya’s Armenians—the more than three thousand local residents in place before the war and the displaced75—lived in a state of trepidation. By mid-September, fields surrounding all the stations along the rail lines overflowed with deportees waiting for the next train or simply trying to stay in place as long as possible. Two hundred miles southeast, in Konya, nearly fifty thousand Armenians, many robbed of all their possessions, camped near the railway station.76 Under Konya’s governor, Celal Bey, the number of encamped Armenians had ballooned as he stalled their transfer to the Syrian desert. Some members of the city’s Mevlevi community used their connections to Sultan Reshad—also Mevlevi—to spare some individuals from execution and take others into hiding.77 But misery and deprivation prevailed. Dr. Post reported to Ambassador Morgenthau that Armenians “are simply lying out in the open with no protection from the scorching sun by day or the dew and dampness by night. This state of affairs produces a vast number of cases of malaria and dysentery, and also of heat prostration. One cannot walk a few paces through the camp without seeing sick lying everywhere, especially children. There are, of course, no sanitary arrangements at all, and last night the stench that came from the camp was overpowering. Conditions are ripe for an epidemic.”78 The Konya missionary hospital overflowed with the exhausted and dying. Mothers desperate to shield young daughters from rape begged the hospital staff for asylum. Six deported women left their infants with Armenian families in Konya, hoping to give them a chance for survival. Local Young Turk

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authorities heard this news and seized the children, giving them to Muslim families instead. In a letter to the American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Dr. Post described a boy whose “leg had been cut off by a railway-truck” and a “young girl who has recently had her leg amputated for the same accident, and who to-day was crying and screaming because some friends had told her that her parents had suddenly been deported to Eregli without having been given a chance to see her. It is all horrible, horrible—no mere description can adequately portray the awful suffering of these unfortunate people whose only crime is that they are Armenians.”79 The doctor reported, “The [Armenian] nation is being systematically done to death by a cruel and crafty method, and their extermination is only a question of time.”80 Faik sought ways to reassure Kutahya’s Armenian community and allow some semblance of normal life. He ordered the reopening of the Mesrobian School. Within two days, boys and girls, local and exiled, filled the building to capacity. Some of the deported Armenians living in the city, teachers in their former lives, found fresh purpose in the city’s classrooms. The District Secretary Kemal Bey, Faik’s trusted second-in-command, taught Turkish language classes for the older children. For the first time, Kutahya also opened a Turkish kindergarten, directed by a respected Armenian schoolmistress from Adabazar and assisted by three local Turkish women. There, Turkish youngsters learned songs, performed recitations, and designed patterns with Froebel blocks.81 Not all Kutahyans felt sympathy for the Armenians’ plight. A few higher-ranking individuals in the CUP club learned that in other cities, Turkish families had suddenly acquired choice goods and properties for free or a pittance. For example, they learned that in August, an official in Constantinople had summoned Konya Governor Celal Bey to the capital on the pretext of a medical appointment. Local Unionist officials and notables, led by the city’s chief of police, jumped at the opportunity offered by his absence to deport thousands of Armenians from the transit camp. The police organized squadrons of mounted gendarmes and chetes. On August 21, hundreds of men armed with clubs and lashes suddenly descended on the deportee camp. They cracked their whips and shouted that an urgent order had come from the capital: “Everyone has to leave at once!” The refugees pleaded in vain for just one hour to gather up their meager belongings. Deportation gangs jeered: “You have no reason to keep anything since, at best, you

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have only a few more days to live.” Chetes bludgeoned terrified Armenians with clubs and forced them up onto their feet. Mounted gendarmes jabbed and shoved them away from the encampment toward the desert outside the city. Once the sudden and forced evacuation was under way, cooperating authorities in Constantinople delayed Celal Bey’s return day after day, until thousands of Armenians had been cleared.82 Police and townspeople mobbed the grounds after each departure, burrowing through mounds of debris in search of coins, valuables, and usable goods. When Celal Bey returned from the capital, he stayed the deportation of the remaining families. One month later, on October 3, he was removed from office.83 Beginning on October 9 and continuing for the next ten days, the new governor of Konya expelled thirty thousand more Armenians to the east, to follow the path of the railway. Across Anatolia, during the brief interval between the town crier’s shouting out the deportation order and a family’s departure, houses and farms sold for a fraction of their value. Unionists, local notables, police, and ordinary citizens reaped cash, household furnishings, homes, orchards, factories, and workshops. In September, high-ranking Kutahya CUP officials approached the district governor and demanded an immediate exile for the “treacherous Armenians” in their midst. Faik responded, “Is now when the Armenians of Kutahya become traitors, whose being decent citizens and faithful subjects of the state you yourselves affirmed a few months ago with your signatures?” He reminded them of the signed testimonies he had collected earlier. “If back then you tricked the government, you are culpable, and if now you are defaming the innocent, your deed is pure unscrupulousness.” Faik ushered the group out of his office.84 The delegation left, unsatisfied. They vowed to denounce Faik Ali Bey to the interior minister and sent a report to Talaat condemning the governor as an Armenophile and accusing him of working against the government. By now, everyone understood that the penalty for an ordinary person accused of aiding Armenians was execution.85 How could the district governor be permitted to succor thousands of them? In late November, Faik received a summons to appear before Talaat Pasha in Constantinople. He left Kemal Bey in charge and departed for the capital.

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Almost immediately, the chief of police seized on the district governor’s absence to order raids on the homes of some distinguished Armenians. One night, Tavit heard pounding at his door. Gendarmes stormed in and ransacked the house, emptying out drawers, toppling furniture, and pulling books off the shelves. A policeman found Victoria’s treasured bundle of letters from her brother, tied together with a ribbon. He tore open the binding and glanced at the Armenian script, unable to understand it. The officer immediately denounced Tavit as a traitorous provocateur, guilty of inciting revolt in the Armenian community. The penal code enacted by the War Tribunal asserted that this was a crime punishable by hanging and merited a summary sentence of death. The police arrested Ohannessian and carted him off to the city prison. The following hours were filled with terror for the young mother and her three children—a scene unfolding in countless other Armenian homes. Tavit spent the next days confined in the municipal jail, a two-story building adjacent to the Government House. Eventually, Victoria was permitted to see him. He asked her to get a message to the Turkish official he had met during his months living in Constantinople. Even in 1902, this man had warned him of hardships to come. The time had come to call upon his friend and pray that he could help. Within twenty-four hours, an order from the capital arrived with instructions to release Tavit. The guards removed him from the pen and put him out into the street, unattended. Still stunned and squinting in the sunlight, he walked guardedly, uncertain of his freedom as he turned the corner to his street. Was anyone following him? Ohannessian, an accomplished artist, widely recognized for his work and proud of his exacting standards, had come face to face with the prospect of death. A prominent figure in the city’s Armenian community and a devoted member of the Sourp Toros congregation, he carried a weight of responsibility for his family, his church, and the workers in his employ. Over the last few months, he had witnessed harrowing sights in the fields around Alayunt station. Until now, he had been able to keep his own cherished wife and children safe. But the days and nights in custody, powerless, cut off from his family and unable to care for or comfort them, had shaken him. In Faik’s absence, Kutahya’s police chief continued to harass the Armenian community. Next, Ohannessian and a dozen other Armenian men received

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messages instructing them to present themselves at the police station within twenty-four hours. Word seeped out that they were to be individually exiled, as suspicious and undesirable persons.86 These expulsions would be apart from the general deportation orders that still hung over the town, unfulfilled.87 The choice, as the men understood it, was to be banished or to convert to Islam. That night, they met secretly to discuss how best to safeguard their loved ones. The conditions were not yet clear. One by one they broached the painful subject of conversion. Although they were horrified by the prospect, they understood it to be a defense against exile. They contemplated the sacrifice—a surrender they now understood to have been exacted from thousands of others—as the price for remaining with their families. All but one agreed that this might be the surest course to follow. The dissenting man had already survived arrest and expulsion from Adabazar. He had received sanctuary from the district governor and was teaching in one of the newly reopened Armenian schools. He believed that even if he were to be exiled once again, it would be possible to break away from the caravan and escape, farther down the rail line, as he had done several months earlier. He felt secure that with Faik in charge they would remain unharmed.88 The rest of the group remained unmoved by these arguments and thought there was less risk for their families in doing as they had been ordered. The objector departed. Ohannessian and the others weighed their options. The following morning, Tavit reported to the gendarmerie. Once again, he faced the contemptuous police chief. Did the officer despise him most for evading his death sentence? For his successful trade? Or for sheltering Armenian deportees and treacherously impeding the fulfillment of a proud Turkish nation? Tavit expected to receive notice of exile. Instead, his tormentor hissed: “You will convert. You will accept Islam or we will kill your wife.” This was not the threat he had envisioned. This was an assault on the essence of his identity—Christian, father, husband, and protector of his gentle, beloved Victoria. Ohannessian had heard sickening accounts of the abduction of modest, sheltered Armenian girls, ravaged by thugs and police to the point of death or taken as slaves into Muslim households. More than a few of them committed suicide. The families that he and his neighbors had brought home from the encampment

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spoke of widespread assaults and mass conversions. They whispered of men, women, and children shoved over cliffs to their deaths, of newborn Armenian babies snatched from their mothers’ arms and thrown out of trains by soldiers. The Armenian railway staff in Alayunt informed their relatives in town that just seven miles east of Kutahya, hundreds of thousands of their people were being marched and exiled along the path of the railway line toward Eregli and Bozanti.89 Tavit himself had watched in powerless anguish as dignified families, beyond the reach of helping hands, had been plundered into destitution. This time, it was not his own life at risk. How could he condemn his wife to possible torture and certain death? What would become of his children? He had seen with his own eyes what had become of the Armenians in the train station camp. Tavit had no doubt that the chief of police was perfectly capable of the savagery he threatened. He wrote the application to convert. None of the other men gave any sign of having received a private threat, as Ohannessian had. But so many harrowing images were fixed in Tavit’s memory—the pitiless conditions of the transit camp, the recent nights locked in a prison cell, and the shock of his brother’s death the previous year. Was it not also his sacred duty to defend his wife? The other “invited” Armenians also filled out their conversion petitions and submitted them to the mufti. Kemal Bey expressed his chagrin. Didn’t they trust in his protection? Hadn’t he repeatedly expressed his conviction that the treatment of Armenians was criminal? The mufti evaluated the documents and accepted the applications. The next steps for the petitioners were to receive new names and to be circumcised. Faik Ali Bey returned from Constantinople and related to Kemal the substance of his meeting with Talaat Pasha, who had indeed confronted him on his refusal to carry out orders. Talaat had insisted that the Armenians of Kutahya, as everywhere else, must be deported to Mesopotamia. This was indisputable, he had said. Kutahya’s Armenians could not be an exception. Faik replied that he considered these acts to be against conscience and offered his immediate resignation. The minister cut him short and ordered Faik back to Kutahya to “sit with his Armenians.”

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Faik returned home in a jubilant frame of mind, thinking the matter resolved.90 When he arrived at his Government House office the next day, Kemal Bey informed him of what had transpired in his absence and told him about the Armenians’ applications to convert. The Unionists who had denounced Faik to Talaat also heard the outcome of the meeting in the capital and were infuriated. When they saw the district governor in the street, they shouted after him: “Gavur—Infidel!” Soon after Faik’s return, the twelve Armenian men gathered at the Government House. The governor noticed them but walked ahead into the meeting chamber of the District Council. Before the official proceedings commenced, Faik asked council members why the Armenians were waiting outside. The mufti replied, “By their own ready will they have submitted petitions to Islamize and their applications have been accepted.” Faik remarked that Armenians never voluntarily converted. They did so only under pressure. His anger rose. “As I have been informed, they have made the application under fear of exile,” he said. “Those petitions must be torn up before this very meeting.” The mufti agreed, as an insincere conversion was meaningless. Faik Ali Bey opened the door and called the men into the assembly. He was adamant; he wanted to protect them from a coerced conversion. He said, “We know what forced you to make your applications to Islamize. No one will have the heartlessness to exile you. Take your petitions and tear them up now.” All the men but one complied. The police chief’s words still thundered in Tavit’s ears. How could he possibly risk Victoria’s existence, when he had seen with his own eyes how cruelly Armenian lives were valued? It was no longer a question of preserving his workshop or the respected position he had achieved. His responsibility now was to save Victoria’s life. He made his calculation. He refused. The district governor was incensed. Just days ago, he had taken the risk of offering his resignation to Talaat and potentially ending his career. His brother had resigned his own governorship of the Baghdad province for similar reasons and moved to the capital in December, 91 only to spend his days in an office revising government war publications.92 Faik’s words to Ohannessian rang out in the room: “If you accept Islam, then as an example to others, you only, with your whole family, I will exile from Kutahya.”

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Several days later, Ohannessian appeared before the mufti to declare that he was converting with freedom of conscience and to recite the shahada—the Muslim profession of faith. He knew that despite these declarations he and his family would soon be exiled from everyone and everything that had defined their lives. He publicly renounced his Christian identity and even the integrity of his body in exchange for the hope of keeping his family together and, most important, keeping them alive. Tavit received a new name and with it, an enduring grief and shame. Ahmed Muhtar. Ahmed “Headman.” What sort of mind had thought to mock him with that name? Victoria immersed herself in preparations for the exile. Some of the family’s recent guests had described the stop-and-start movements of the trains and the utter lack of any comforts or provisions. She purchased dried grains at the market, packed up what remained of her winter lentils and salted meats, and unearthed the gold coins she had secreted about the house in preparation for a day she had prayed would never arrive. The young mother pieced together rough traveling garments for the whole family and stitched gold coins and small valuables into the seams and linings of Tavit’s and her clothes. In the wintry early days of 1916,93 Kutahya gendarmes escorted “Ahmed Muhtar,” his wife, his daughter, and two sons to the Alayunt station to meet a train heading south toward Konya. This was not to be the comfortable coach that Sirarpi enjoyed riding on visits to her grandparents in Eskishehir. With the payment of a bribe, the family secured the right to ride in a seatless, partly open stock car crammed with other deportees. Victoria had bundled up her children to protect them from the icy winds. Vahé was nearly three. Ohannes was still an infant, just sixteen months old. Victoria helped her almost five-year-old daughter scale a wooden plank propped against the opening of the cold, filthy carriage. The little girl clutched her favorite doll. Her parents, clasping their boys close and laden with as many bundles as they could carry, struggled up the ramp behind her.

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Chap te r 6

In the Mountains, Aleppo, and Meskene

The Ohannessians ’ train lumbered into the south-central Anatolian province of Adana. Six centuries earlier, the majestic peaks and fertile plains bordering the Mediterranean Sea had formed the last Armenian Kingdom—Cilicia. Now, in the early spring of 1916, in fields near stations and khans along the railroad’s path, tens of thousands of Armenians huddled against the cold in low makeshift tents—encampments that sometimes spread as far as the eye could see. Other deportees—gaunt, parched, and lacking the means to bribe their way onto a train—shuffled alongside the tracks, holding crying children in their arms.1 Heavily pregnant women, the sickly and elderly strained to keep pace. Gendarmes shoved them with their rifle butts and cracked whips as passing locomotives belched clouds of smoke. The train came to a halt in the village of Bozanti—the final stop on the Constantinople–Eskishehir–Konya line—set on rolling hills at the foot of the Taurus Mountains. In the bustling square near the railroad terminus, German officers in field caps and brass-buttoned coats barked orders as Ottoman soldiers and laborers loaded hundreds of open wooden oxcarts with crates of construction materials or armaments destined for Mesopotamia and Palestine. Mud-brick huts and bright white canvas tents, sleeping quarters for the Turkish troops, surrounded the teeming railway plaza. A half-hour’s walk from the station, in the valley leading to Tarsus, the Ohannessians and their fellow passengers joined thousands of encamped Armenians waiting for the next movement in their deportation toward the 129

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Syrian desert. To the east, the massive Taurus Mountains loomed, the next leg of the Ohannessian family’s banishment toward Syria. German titans of industry and government officials had long dreamt of an unbroken train line from Europe to the Persian Gulf.2 In 1903, a new enterprise called the Bagdadbahn—the Baghdad Railway—had broken ground on a rail line extending east from Konya. Funded by Deutsche Bank, the company held the Ottoman concession to build a railway across the Adana province and then southeast through Syria and Mesopotamia into the oil-rich region of Baghdad. But by November of 1914, three hundred miles of critical rail gaps remained in Anatolia, namely through the Taurus and Amanus ranges bounding the Adana province. The Turkish military urgently needed that trunk line to transport and provision troops, but completing the missing segments would require complex feats of engineering—boring and blasting through huge spans of solid Deported Armenian mother and rock and building viaducts to bridge the child, Taurus Mountains steep-pitched mountain valleys.3 Before 1915, the Bagdadbahn had employed nearly nine hundred highly skilled Armenian technicians and craftsmen—surveyors, engineers, machine operators, carpenters, and blacksmiths—as well as thousands of the Armenian laborers needed to execute the complex constructions. As the Armenian deportations swept the Anatolian heartland, German railway officials pleaded with the governor-general of Adana to allow these essential workers to remain in place. At first, the leadership relented, but local CUP leaders in eastern Adana stepped in to evict Armenian railroad workers from their homes and force them into deportation caravans.4 While the Bagdadbahn officials struggled to complete the rail line under the threat of Ottoman nationalization, Young Turk officials confronted another challenge: moving the hundreds of thousands of Armenians they had expelled,5 who, like the Ohannessians, were pouring into Bozanti from Izmit,

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Brussa, Eskishehir, Konya, and Tarsus. All of them had to be driven eastward, toward the wastelands of the Arab provinces.6 In the absence of a functioning line beyond Bozanti, Turkish deportation police marched the exiles along a winding route through the Taurus Mountains.7 In the Bozanti camp, armed guards assembled exiles into columns and headed east toward the mountains. The Ohannessians joined a caravan of deportees who had survived the trek from Konya by foot—mostly women and children. A few had husbands serving in the Ottoman Army; they had been exiled nonetheless. Most of the men were over fifty years old. Younger ones, like Tavit, had until now been left in place because of their specialized skills or because they had lived under the rare governor who had stalled deportation orders.8 Tavit hired an open muledrawn cart for the first part of the journey, paying an exorbitant fee.9 An American businessman traveling through the region noted, “There seems to be no end to the convoy that moves over the mountain range from Bozanti south. Throughout the day, from sunrise to sunset, the road as far as one can see is crowded with these exiles.”10 The Ohannessians’ caravan set out on the arduous, maze-like trail, nearly fifty miles long, through the Taurus chain.11 In spite of the frigid clime, some of their companions had wrapped their feet in rags, having lost or worn through their shoes along the way. “None of these people have any idea where they are going or why they are being exiled,” the American added. “I saw several old men carrying on their backs the tools of their trade, probably with the hope that they may someday settle down somewhere. The road over the Taurus Mountains is, in places, most difficult, and often the crude conveyances, drawn by buffaloes, oxen and milch cows, are unable to take the grades and are abandoned and overturned by the gendarmes into the ravine below; the animals are turned loose.”12 When there was dry brushwood for a fire and water for cooking, Victoria tried to make a hot soup for her family. Each evening when the gendarme halted the caravan, Tavit looked for a sleeping place that might offer the family any sort of shelter from the elements. During the first days of the forced march, while they had the hired cart, the children slept in it. Afterward, they made do with the side of a boulder or the canopy of a tree. And Tavit had already learned the necessity of giving the succession of guards a coin each day.

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Corpses in varying states of decay lined the route. Victoria, who had long since outgrown her sheltered upbringing, tried to ease the shock of the awful sights and odors by embracing her little ones and murmuring comforting words. As the Ohannessians walked, torrential spring rains lasting twelve or more hours a day brought much-needed water to streams and rivers, but left the footpaths muddy and punishing to traverse. The downpours also carried insects and disease and settled a penetrating damp on the encampment each night as the exiles tried to sleep. During the day, members of the convoy urged each other, as best they could, to keep moving in spite of fevers, nausea, diarrhea, and an incessant fatigue brought about by hunger. Mostly, the group trudged forward, some moaning in pain or exhaustion. Several of the frail elderly men and women were among the first to collapse and die. It felt heartbreaking and cruel to leave them behind in the open, but the gendarmes rarely permitted the caravan to stop long enough for burials or funeral rites. One day, during a break in the movement, Victoria took the family’s clothes to wash in a nearby stream. A woman called out to her softly in Armenian, “Sister, oy! My sister!” She warned that marauding thugs were about. They had violated her. She worried that Victoria would also be in danger. Following the woman’s instructions, Victoria spread mud over her face and from then on, wiped mud or dirt onto her children’s faces each day as well. The Young Turk expulsion of the Armenian Bagdadbahn workforce in late 1915 had provoked a serious shortage of workers and threatened to paralyze progress on the line. The Constantinople government warned they might rescind the railroad contract if the Germans could not push the project ahead. Railway officials in Berlin and field engineers at sites along the planned route were caught in an impossible position. Breaking Turkish rules against hiring Armenians, German functionaries searched among passing deportees and engaged engineers, accountants, carpenters, and craftsmen, assigning them false names and alternate nationalities. The Turkish government soon learned of the subterfuge, but in the interest of its own critical war needs, looked the other way.13 As the Ohannessians plied eastward across the Adana province and into the Amanus range in the spring of 1916, thousands of Armenians found jobs at construction centers along the planned course of the Baghdad line.14 At railway stations and transit camps along the route, word spread about possible places

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to find work. Some deportees bribed guards to look the other way or waited until nighttime to decamp toward the rumored work sites. The Baghche railroad station in the Amanus Mountains—near a planned sixteen-thousand-foot-long tunnel—became a hiring center for surveyors and draftsmen. In Ayran, at the northeastern end of the Amanus chain, the Baghdad Railway Company had built a machine production factory. Adjacent to it was a foundry as well as smaller workshops for metalwork and cabinetmaking. Thousands of Armenians found employment and delayed their movement east .15 In June of 1916, Armenian participation on the Amanus segments of the Bagdadbahn came to an abrupt end. Turkish authorities were no longer willing to ignore the presence of deportees in the railroad workforce; they had devised a different plan. The Turkish army had captured thousands of British and Indian soldiers and planned to place the prisoners of war into labor internment camps along the Bagdadbahn line. The remaining Armenians were immediately deported east.16 Squalid, disease-ridden transit camps lined the routes leading toward the province of Aleppo. Close to the border, officials of the Sub-Directorate for Deportees allowed enormous crowds of exiles to accumulate in encampments outside the towns of Osmaniye, Mamure, Intille, and Islahiye, the first concentration center inside Aleppo’s provincial border. 17 One Armenian priest described the scene: “The land stretching before us from Islahiye seemed like a battlefield, for the plain was covered with innumerable large and small mounds of earth. These were the graves of Armenians who had been buried fifty or a hundred at a time, and though winter had passed, the mounds of earth had kept their convex shape.” He continued, “Out of the thousands reaching Islahiye, only a few hundred were put on the road each day, with the excuse that there was no transportation or not enough police soldiers to guard them; as a result, the number of daily deaths from starvation and dysentery increased to incredible proportions.”18 A German missionary, arriving at the Islahiye camp, recounted, “Many women had their feet frost-bitten; they were quite black and in a state for amputation. The wailing and groaning was horrible . . . the saddest thing I have ever seen.”19 Occasionally, relief workers—among them, Armenian Protestant, American, Swiss, and German missionaries—entered the sites with wagonloads of bread and clothing,20 but the supplies could never begin to meet the demand. Kurdish and Arab vendors appeared from time to time, hawking food and water at

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inflated prices. In the camps, deportation officials padded their pockets with bribes, stalling further expulsions in exchange for a handful of coins. As they marched southeast through the Amanus range, Tavit and Victoria watched in terror as gangs of mounted highlanders in flowing headgear galloped toward their caravan and snatched children away. Mothers and fathers tore after the captors, shouting offers of gold coins for ransom. Other infants were lost, their mothers inconsolable in the aftermath. Although Tavit could on occasion purchase bread, cheese, or vegetables when the caravan passed near a village, he and Victoria, like all their companions, kept a constant watch for food. Like others who were fortunate enough to have started their journeys of exile with some money, the Ohannessians faced daunting choices each day. Hire a mule when one was available or reserve coins to buy food for the children? Continue to give the guards protection money? This seemed a must. But the gold liras stitched into their clothes would not last forever. And no one seemed to know how or when this journey might end. Wherever they could, Victoria and Tavit foraged edible weeds. Victoria learned to use grasses to fend off hunger pangs: pluck the blades and boil them into a broth, squeeze out all the fluid to drink, then chew on a ball of the crushed leaves. As they approached the Arab provinces, clean water became harder to find. Illness felled more of their companions and made misery for those who persisted. One day, Tavit began to feel feverish and nauseated. His gait grew wobbly. The family had to keep moving—resting during breaks and advancing when ordered to do so. After several grueling days, struggling to walk and propped up by his wife, his fever spiked. Victoria had no choice, she had to keep him and the children in motion. Tavit tried to give away coins and some of the family’s small store of food. Victoria braced herself and helped drag him forward until the caravan was permitted to pause for the night. The next day, Tavit stopped even trying to walk. He pointed to a puddle on the ground. “What do you say,” he asked her, “shall I dive in and drown myself?” Victoria had seen others die of typhus. Delirium usually preceded death. She prayed for strength. She vowed to God that if Tavit and her children somehow survived this trial, they would make a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. It was preposterous, in that desolate moment, to imagine a world in which such

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journey could take place. But in spite of all her family had endured, Victoria had not lost her faith in the Lord. Thirty miles north of Aleppo, outside the town of Katma, one caravan after the next deposited thousands of Armenians in a vast holding field covered with tattered, sagging tents and human excrement. Starvation, cholera, typhus, and diarrhea exacted a daily toll. Corpses piled up faster than it was possible for camp workers to cremate or dig burial ditches for them. Bodies decomposed in place. Almost daily, hordes of armed policemen and irregular soldiers rounded up small groups of the camp residents—many of them weakened by hunger and illness—and ordered them out of the camp onto the southbound Aleppo road. A Bagdadbahn official wrote to the German Chancellor in Berlin: “The concentration camp in Katma is an indescribable sight.”21 The number of internees had grown so rapidly that officials of the Sub-Directorate for Deportees opened a new site in Azaz, an hour’s walk to the east. One refugee reported that “with the naked eye, it was impossible to see from one end to the other of this gigantic tent camp.” Several witnesses believed that that the strategy of the deportation authorities was to leave camp residents to die of starvation or epidemic disease.22

Armenian deportees in a tent camp

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From Katma and Azaz, it was a ten-hour march along the stony roads leading to Aleppo, a challenging journey for Tavit, still weak from typhus. Gendarmes on the outskirts of the city sorted the newcomers, who arrived by foot, donkey, or oxcart. Here, as elsewhere along this ghastly route, one’s fate was often governed by the ability to pay a bribe. For thousands of years, Aleppo and its universities, palaces, and markets had flourished—the city was a major crossing point on ancient trade routes connecting Europe with the Persian Gulf and India, Anatolia, and Armenia with northern Africa. Before the Great War, the city of Aleppo—the administrative seat of the eponymous province—had been home to foreign consulates, international banks, insurance and mercantile companies. The region was rich in oil and copper, famed for its pastel-colored marbles, spices, and silk brocades shot through with precious threads. Farmers raised bountiful crops of fruits and nuts. Local villagers loomed cloth, and nomadic tribes crafted bold carpets. Aleppo’s wares were exported through the Mediterranean harbor of Alexandretta and along the region’s hundreds of miles of roads. A massive, gorgeously carved stone citadel overlooked neatly paved streets and spacious homes with elegant mashrabiya windows. Khans catering to traveling merchants lined the main roads. Labyrinthine souks, tiled mosques, Roman ruins, churches, and synagogues attested to the diversity of the city’s quarter of a million inhabitants. In the summer of 1915, the ten thousand members of Aleppo’s Armenian community had been shocked by the sight of threadbare, cadaverous exiles stumbling across the city limits.23 Aleppo—poised between Anatolia and Mesopotamia—became the great waystation for those who had survived displacement, assault, sickness, and massacre by the Turks. From the bounds of the city, deportees were dispatched to their final destinations. Most were lined up and marched east. Others found ways to enter and remain in the metropolis itself. As the Anatolian deportations gained momentum, Aleppo’s streets filled with haggard, moribund exiles. Periodically, deportation police rounded them up and drove them, en masse, onto the road heading toward Deir Zor, in the Syrian desert. In and around Aleppo, Armenian clergy organized aid networks to distribute food and medical care to the survivors. They rescued young people and sent

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them on covert missions to gather information and convey relief funds.24 But the immense tide of arriving refugees—thousands at a time—threatened to overwhelm the city. Under the eyes of their guard, Tavit, Victoria, the children, and the rest of their caravan approached this ancient seat of culture, trade, and learning. On that scorching day in the late summer of 1916, the road had become a chaotic scene. Too few gendarmes were stationed at the city’s outskirts to process the arriving masses of exhausted exiles. In the helter-skelter of the moment, Tavit and Victoria spied an opportunity to break away from their group and slip ahead into a crowd that had passed the checkpoint. Holding the children tightly, they made themselves as inconspicuous as possible and entered the city, unmolested. Tens of thousands of Armenian exiles continued to occupy the streets of Aleppo in the late summer and autumn of 1916 despite a forced expulsion of fifteen thousand to Deir Zor in early August. Some, like the Ohannessians, sought the shelter of khans. Numberless orphans and women slept unprotected in the open.

Armenian refugees, AGBU camp, Aleppo

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Everywhere they turned, the Ohannessians saw exiles—hungry, emaciated, ill, and dying in the streets. Tavit soon observed that several days a week, the regular municipal garbage porters diverted from their customary duties and collected bodies in mule-drawn carts. One day a rumor flew through Tavit and Victoria’s enclave—someone had bought a bowl of soup in the market and found a human finger in it. Like his compatriots, Tavit searched desperately for any news of his family or old neighbors. Already, Aleppo’s Armenian churches had helped establish a Council for Refugees to provide relief and a network for inquiries about lost relatives or possibilities for informal work. Deportees sought out others from their native towns to share information and offer aid, whenever possible. But without the protection of official settlement papers, exiles were forced to offer bribes, present false documents, or engage in other types of subterfuge to avoid attention from the police. Women who could find needles and thread embroidered piecework, sewed soldier’s uniforms, or labored in the fields outside the city. Others begged or turned to prostitution in order to survive. Tavit’s lingering symptoms had left him exhausted. As she attempted to care for her husband and children in their rough quarters, Victoria soon devised a plan to earn some money. She and Tavit searched the markets for dried fruits and flour—still in short supply due to the war and the previous year’s locust infestation. They purchased stores of the items with a portion of the family’s remaining funds. Victoria rose while it was still dark to bake small breads stuffed with dried apricots, using a communal oven. Tavit took baskets of the fragrant, still-warm loaves to the bazaar and sold them to passersby. This small daily income made it possible for the family to buy food and pay rent for a room. Before very long, Victoria located the nearest Armenian Orthodox church and the family resumed attending services. Tavit, still haunted by memories of his forced conversion, attended every mass but abstained from communion. For the Ohannessians, it seemed that God’s beneficence had granted their survival, tenuous as it remained in Aleppo’s refugee community, but shame and sorrow had also engraved indelible marks on them. In the following weeks, Victoria began another custom. Each Saturday afternoon, the family walked to their new church, where Victoria would donate a bowlful of flour to the priest. He accepted it gratefully and used it to make mas, the blessed unleavened bread distributed to the faithful after Sunday church services.

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As 1916 drew to an end, the family recuperated from the hardships of the forced march and adapted to their new circumstances. Tavit enlarged his Arabic vocabulary and began to contemplate, with growing urgency, how he might return to his life’s work. The Great War had dampened Aleppo’s historic trades in printing, gold leaf, marble and stone carving, tanning and furs, inlaid mother-of-pearl, and hammered copper. Small workshops that had once woven fine silk and cotton fabrics turned to the production of cloth for military use. In the nineteenth century, the Hamidian program of Ottoman imperial schools had extended as far as the Arab vilayet of Aleppo and the government had built elementary, military, and professional schools there. And while the craft guilds of past centuries had largely vanished, Aleppo, like several other provincial capitals, had also opened its own School of Industry. Some preferred the appellation École des Arts et Métiers,25 to evoke the prestige of the French Écoles des Beaux-Arts. These institutions, particularly after 1911, when they were incorporated into the Ministry of Trade and Public Works,26 were intended to encourage the revival of storied Ottoman arts and crafts and produce Islamic-inspired architectural materials for the renovation of historical structures. Through these schools, the nation could produce the new generations of skilled carvers, metal workers, weavers, and tile makers also needed to create decorative elements for new buildings in the Ottoman revivalist style—the same types of constructions that had provided the Kutahya çiniçis with so many commissions prior to the Great War.27 Competitive prizes conferred recognition on those students whose works attained the highest levels of beauty and technical accomplishment.”28 In contrast to the elite imperial Schools of Fine Arts, the Industrial Schools trained youths of modest backgrounds.29 While discreetly investigating possibilities to recommence his tradition, Tavit learned of Aleppo’s Industrial School. He went to see it and introduced himself to the director. The school lacked a ceramics department and Tavit proposed creating one. Even under wartime conditions, there was still a need to train artisans for the future and perhaps even provide tiles for public works and the regional railway stations currently under construction. But Ohannessian also understood that before he could join the faculty, he would need to obtain official permission to remain in the city.

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On February 12, 1917, Tavit presented himself at the Aleppo Gendarmerie to request a settlement permit. After the family’s year-long ordeal and narrowly evading death from typhus himself, Ohannessian yearned to return to the art that he loved—enough to risk entering a police station once again. The prospect of training young people also attracted him. Perhaps in the future, he could even build a new atelier and enroll his students in the trade. He explained his project and requested the documents needed to settle in Aleppo. Seeking support for his petition, he also sent a telegram to an old acquaintance in Constantinople, a professor of Islamic art and the director of the nationalist Turkish Hearths cultural organization:30 “In order to be appointed to the Çini School which the Directorate of the Aleppo School of Industry wishes to establish, I ask for my settlement in Aleppo with my family, which is also beneficial for the national industry.” Tavit signed it, “Çiniçi Ahmed Muhtar from Kutahya, Via the Gendarmerie of Aleppo.”31 He left the police station without imagining the torrent of communications that would follow—messages that would reach the highest levels of the Young Turk government—and what that might mean for the future of his family. His gamble soon brought about the worst possible outcome. Aleppo’s Public Security Office sent a message on February 15 to the provincial administration to inquire if there were any reasons why Ahmed Muhtar and his family should not be permitted to settle.32 The responses doomed the Ohannessians. Ten days later, the whole family was placed under arrest. They were informed that they were to be deported to Deir Zor, by way of Meskene.33 Before the war, Meskene had been a sleepy village sixty miles southeast of Aleppo, toward the vast expanse of Syrian desert known as Deir Zor. The town’s distinguishing features—an old citadel, a tall brick tower, a market, and a police station with a jail—occupied some dusty streets near a sweeping bend of the Euphrates River. At the time of the first deportations, in mid-1915, it was designated as a military post and transit internment site. Meskene was the first in the chain of the camps leading downstream along the Euphrates River. From 1915 through the following year, more than one hundred and ten thousand Armenian deportees had stopped there. Of these, nearly eighty

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thousand starved to death, perished of illness, or had been murdered. Tens of thousands of corpses were buried in mass graves around the site of the encampment.34 Thousands more men, women, and children had been tied together in bundles and rolled into the Euphrates. By the autumn of 1916, nearly three hundred thousand Armenians had been massacred in the Syrian desert camps—sixty thousand in August and September alone—in one of the deadliest phases of the Young Turk campaign of annihilation. German missionaries reported that the Euphrates had become clogged with corpses.35 By late February of 1917, when the Ohannessian family arrived, human remains and traces of the huge open latrines were still visible. Although the volume of arriving exiles had diminished greatly, re-deported Armenians—like the Ohannessians—continued to trickle in, while a few others attempted to escape back to Aleppo. Tavit, Victoria, Sirarpi, Vahé, and Ohannes joined the fifteen hundred or so Armenians encamped by the river, about an hour’s walk from the center of the village.36 Many of the exiled men volunteered for road-building work; their goal was to delay as long as possible being sent down the river, where the prospects for survival narrowed. Others found employment as laborers on the Euphrates military supply line. Several Armenians had ensconced themselves in the village as bakers or grocers, diverting a portion of their earnings to the baksheesh that allowed them to remain. At least in the Meskene camp on the river, in the early months of 1917, if one had any funds at all, it was possible to bribe guards in order to be left in peace and to obtain bread and milk from neighboring Arab villagers. At night, Tavit, Victoria and the children nestled together for warmth in a dried hollow in the riverbank. From time to time, bones washed up along the water’s edge. “They are dancing bones,” Victoria shushed, spinning fantastical stories to divert her frightened children. As the weeks of the Ohannessians’ internment in Meskene dragged on, officials in Aleppo and elsewhere relayed more dispatches concerning Ahmed Muhtar. The governor of the Aleppo province, Mustafa Abdulhalik, who was also the brother-in-law of the Interior Minister and newly elevated Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha,37 had been informed of the entire matter by his Public Security Office. On March 15, Abdulhalik wrote to Talaat’s office, explaining that Ahmed Muhtar had been deported to Deir Zor. But the Aleppo governor wished to have him returned to teach at the Industrial School.

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Nine days later, on March 24, Talaat’s deputy secretary cabled Kutahya’s Government House to learn the reasons for Ahmed Muhtar’s deportation a year earlier. Faik Ali Bey was no longer in office. Shortly after exiling Tavit and his family, he had been removed as the district governor of the county.38 He had been replaced by Ahmed Mufit, who was much less benevolent toward Kutahya’s Armenians than Faik had been. On April 3, Mufit replied to Talaat’s office with a harsh denunciation: To the Supreme Ministry of I n t e r i or Statement of Your Humble Servant, Reply to the decree of the Directorate of Public Security dated 25 March 1917 and numbered as 12. As reported by the Chief of Police Commissariat, converted Ahmed Muhtar is the leader of the Kutahya branch of Dashnagtsutyun Organization and is famous for his speeches about Armenian cause and ideology. Moreover, his conversion is not sincere at any rate. Recently, he was engaged in collecting financial support for the Dashnagsutyun Organization and was involved in provoking the Armenian community, therefore he and his friends were expelled from Kutahya. He is very respected and also very influential among Armenians, so he is harmful. As you wish your grace. 3 April 1917 Mutasarrıf of Kutahya Ahmed Mufit39

For the past two years, Armenian artists, writers, businessmen, priests, teachers, and notables of all varieties had been accused, in nearly identical language, of similar crimes against the state, even when, like Tavit, the only struggle in which they had been engaged was that of survival. Governor Abdulhalik prevailed, persuading his brother-in-law that Ahmed Muhtar could serve a valuable purpose in his city. On the same day Talaat Pasha received Mufit’s scathing indictment of Tavit, the Interior Minister drafted a command to the District Governor of Zor ordering that Ahmed Muhtar be returned to Aleppo.

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Three weeks later, on April 26, Talaat’s office received a message reporting that converted çiniçi Ahmed Muhtar of Kutahya, with his wife, his two sons, and his daughter had just been sent back to Aleppo.40 The Ohannessian family was saved. Tavit returned to Aleppo chastened of any desire to attract attention and resolved to live as quietly as possible. He used his new settlement permit to secure a job with the railway. Meanwhile, in England, Sir Mark Sykes, his colleagues at the War Cabinet, and the British public were keeping a close watch on the progress of the British army in the Mesopotamian campaign. On March 11, 1917, as the Ohannessians endured Meskene’s winter chill, Baghdad fell. In the years since Sykes had commissioned Ohannessian to create the tiled fireplace and Turkish bath cooling room for Sledmere House, the Yorkshire MP had become an Assistant Secretary in Great Britain’s War Cabinet and was increasingly involved in planning for the aftermath of the hostilities. He had earned esteem as a Near East specialist, drawing on his personal knowledge of Anatolia and Mesopotamia and speaking in Parliament about the region and its future. France and Great Britain, weighing the likelihood that the Young Turk regime would collapse and the empire be dismembered, schemed for control of the Ottoman Arab territories after an eventual armistice. In early 1916, Sykes collaborated with a French diplomat, François Georges-Picot, and drafted a secret pact to divide the Arab territories and ports into districts of British, French, and Allied influence and control, and to secure for Britain valuable railway concessions in Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula. Sykes’s and Picot’s Asia Minor Agreement was ratified on May 16. In the ensuing months, the British government continued to forge a variety of policies—often in direct contradiction with one another—in order to win the support of Zionists, Armenian representatives, and perhaps most crucially, the military cooperation of Arab tribes to wrest sovereignty of the Arabic-speaking territories away from the Turks. On October 31, 1917, the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces of the British army—led by General Edmund Allenby, Commander-in-Chief of the Sinai and Palestine campaign—drove out the Turkish army from Beersheba, and secured the port of Jaffa on November 16. Finally, on December 9, the British occupied Jerusalem.

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The Holy City—an ancient town of less than one square kilometer, girdled by Sultan Suleiman’s crenellated stone wall—held a towering place in Great Britain’s, and indeed the whole world’s, romantic and spiritual imaginations. “Jerusalem the Golden” was never far from the minds of England’s churchgoing public. The British press lauded the capture of Jerusalem as an immense prize and boost to the empire’s collective morale after more than three years of death, destruction, and deprivation. In mid-December, a British reporter, writing for the Observer, interviewed Mark Sykes, describing him as “a worldfamous authority on all Eastern questions.” Sykes shared his view of Jerusalem, now governed by Britain under martial law, “as a new Light of the World, shining out upon all men and all nations, and bidding them, when the war is over and peace once more restored, take up their lives again with hope reawakened and faith renewed.”41 In September of 1918, General Allenby and his newly reinforced units, abetted by an Arab army led by Sharif Husayn ibn Ali, mounted a successful northward advance against the Turkish army in the Ottoman Syrian provinces. Damascus fell on October 1, 1918. Talaat Pasha, consulting with German commanders, concluded that victory was implausible and abdicated his office on October 14. Turkish and German troops in Homs surrendered two days later. After the fall of Aleppo, on October 25, the Turkish side conceded defeat, signing the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, which marked the Ottoman surrender of its Arab territories. On November 3, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha fled Constantinople in a German submarine, seeking refuge in Berlin. Aleppo’s Armenian exiles greeted the entry of the British with an enormous sense of hope and relief. While the Mudros Treaty was in negotiation, Mark Sykes proposed to the War Cabinet’s Eastern Committee that he embark on a three-month Special Mission in Palestine and Syria, reporting to General Allenby. He would observe conditions in the former enemy territories, meet with Arab leaders, investigate the state of Armenian survivors and the possibilities for their repatriation, and recommend administrative reforms for Palestine and Syria—now under Allied occupation. The mission would be based in Aleppo; he would compile commentaries to present at the upcoming Peace Conference in Paris.

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Sykes and his aides left London on October 30, stopping in Paris, Rome, and Port Said, Egypt. After visiting the Armenian refugee camp on the east bank of the Suez Canal, Sykes traveled to the British base camp in Kantara, where he met with General Allenby. On the twelfth of November, one day after Armistice was declared, the delegation proceeded to Jerusalem. There, Sykes billeted with his close friend and fellow Cambridge man, Ronald Storrs, now the Military Governor of the city. Over the course of a week in Palestine, the two men walked through Jerusalem and discussed the condition and future custody of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holy places—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Wailing Wall, and Al-Aqsa Mosque with the Dome of the Rock.42 Both men—each devoutly religious—expressed apprehension over the challenges of governing the spiritual and pilgrimage center of three great religions. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain’s new dominion over some of the formerly Ottoman Arab lands, England would now rule over a vastly larger Muslim population. The Dome of the Rock—held to be the site where the Prophet Muhammad had made his mystical Night Journey to Heaven—formed the most distinctive profile in the landscape of Jerusalem. Equally remarkable was the gleaming array of tiles cladding its surfaces, their luminous effect heightened in contrast with the structure’s marble base and the elevated limestone platform on which it rested. Even after the war and the severe weather of the last year, it had retained its spectacular countenance, but some of the elements needed urgent attention. Beneath the noble lead-covered dome, water seeped through in several places and worms grubbed into the supporting timbers.43 And on closer inspection, the resplendent surfaces of the octagon and drum revealed themselves to be a patchwork of fragile, and in many cases, broken or missing, turquoise, cyan, black, and yellow glaze painted, cuerda seca, and mosaic cut tiles. The Military Governor had read Classics at Cambridge, studying art history and archeology, and shared a fervor with Sykes for the decorative and fine arts. In spite of the thousands of missing and mismatched tiles, both men found the Dome of the Rock to be astonishingly beautiful. Storrs had stayed at Sledmere House on several occasions after Ohannessian’s tiles were installed in early 1914. Other British officials remembered the tiles as well. Sir William Ormsby-Gore, like Sykes, an Assistant Secretary in the War Cabinet, added a handwritten note to a circulating copy of a Foreign Office

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report on the condition of the Dome of the Rock, or the Mosque of Omar, as the British often referred to it: As to the new tiles which are required, Sir Mark Sykes got an Armenian to make him a tiled room at his Yorkshire place of modern tiles imitating the old Damascus tiles very successfully. If he has not been massacred in the interval he might provide the necessary tiles.”44

After Sykes’s stay in Jerusalem, his party pressed north through Damascus, driving on roads his adjutant described as “strewn with the wreckage of Turkish war material, dead horses, broken limbers, and ammunition wagons, motor lorries and ambulances, Circassian carts and all the appurtenances of the recent flight of the Turkish Army.”45 When the motorcade arrived in Aleppo, the diplomat and his contingent took up residence in a large rented house that would serve as headquarters for the provisional British administration. In the first days of December,46 Sykes met with large numbers of Armenian refugees. He and his secretary opened the doors to them from early morning through the middle of the night. None were turned away. Over many grim hours, Sykes heard accounts of a deportation caravan that began with eighteen thousand marchers and ended with thirty.47 He took the sworn testimony of a girl who watched thirty-five children thrown into the Khabur River by gendarmes, who threw back the strong swimmers until they drowned;48 recorded an eyewitness account of a Turkish soldier present at massacres in Roumia, Diman, Shinoa, Van, Bitlis, Zagart, and Akhlat; and heard from a witness who reported that four thousand Armenians—including two thousand invalid women—had been doused with kerosene and burned alive in Jurjab.49 Other refugees presented Sykes with detailed accounts of their own deportations, painstakingly handwritten in English or French. On December 4, the President and Secretary of the Union Armenienne des Déportés submitted to Sykes a typewritten list of formal requests and pressed for Allied proclamation of an independent Armenia. The two officials signed the letter on behalf of the fifty thousand refugees currently in Aleppo and “in the name of one and a half million massacred Armenians.”50 Sykes received a committee of six Armenian women who had themselves been abused and violated. They pleaded with him to

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find a way to liberate the thousands of young Armenian girls, women, and children who, they related, were being kept as slaves, servants, wives, and concubines, even in Aleppo at that very moment.51 Sykes’s scribbled notes distilled the horrors of the narratives: Burnt children. Little girl. 15,000. Gold teeth. Disemboweled and entrails examined for gold. Crucified men.52

During those harrowing days, amid the stream of Armenian survivors, Sykes encountered Tavit. Both men were strikingly leaner and more careworn than they once had been. The Englishman told Ohannessian about his conversations with Jerusalem Governor Storrs, the condition of the Dome of the Rock, and the pressing need for new tiles. Sykes wrote to Storrs and received a reply that concluded: “Thank you for your tile researches, from which I hope to profit in the near future.”53 Sir Mark suggested that Tavit travel to Jerusalem54 to assess the needed renovations and meet with Ernest T. Richmond, the consulting architect whom Storrs had brought to Jerusalem. Sykes provided Tavit with the introduction and arranged the necessary transit documents. Victoria strongly supported the family’s move. While Tavit savored the unexpected promise of resuming his work as an expert in historical restoration and the possibility of reviving his art in Jerusalem, Victoria intended to make the journey as a pilgrim. She would fulfill her vow to travel to the Holy City and give thanks to God for her family’s survival.

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Chap te r 7

Jerusalem I Th e H a v e n

For the first time in Victoria’s life, every face she saw in the street looked Armenian, including the guards—it was a sweet and intoxicating sensation. She crossed herself as the family passed through the arched stone entryway guarding the Armenian Convent of St. James—Sourp Hagop. Shielded by the massive fortress walls surrounding the convent, the Ohannessians had reached a sanctuary of Christendom. Victoria’s eyes lit on the beautifully carved stone cross on the Sourp Hagop Cathedral wall. For her, this khatchkar signaled an end to the sufferings of the last three years. The Patriarchate’s hierarchy and Brothers of St. James resided inside the walls of the monastic compound, or vank. The complex also contained scores of rooms built over centuries to accommodate Armenian pilgrims. When crowds of destitute survivors began to appear in Jerusalem in early November of 1915, the clergy opened these cells to be occupied rent free by the refugee zuwaar, or guests, as the Arabic-speaking Armenians of Jerusalem called them.1 A warden assigned the Ohannessians a chamber near the entrance, across from the cathedral. Two heavy, bolt-studded wooden doors opened into the compact room, whose walls were laid with chiseled blocks of golden limestone. Jagged rocks, artfully mortared into the corners, window and door frames, arched upward to form the vaulted ceiling. On the family’s first night in the vank, Victoria gathered her children close against the chill, comforted by the room’s meter-thick walls and the knowledge that the convent’s huge iron gate had been bolted shut. The room’s 149

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high rectangular window admitted a soft glow from colorful lanterns that burned through the evening in celebration of Advent. A small metal brazier offered the only source of heat; it fell to the occupants to purchase kindling from vendors just outside the convent walls. Across the courtyard and up a steep flight of stairs, communal flush toilets provided an alternative to the chamber pot, but on an icy December night, who would forsake the warmth of his bed? The newcomers shared the grounds with the hundreds of boys who lived and attended classes in the Araradian Orphanage of Sourp Hagop.2 Some of their number had recently departed for the newly independent Republic of Armenia. In their first weeks in Jerusalem, the Ohannessians joined the Araradian boys and other refugees at meal time, eating soup prepared in massive copper cauldrons and served at long wooden tables in the courtyard or the refectory. The Armenian General Benevolent Union and the American Committee for Relief in the Near East helped provide food and fresh clothing for the newcomers.3 Outside the Old City walls, the Red Crescent and Cross screened new arrivals for disease and operated disinfectant and delousing stations. St. James Convent cared for the ill in its own clinic.4

Armenian refugees outside Convent of St. James, ca. April 1918

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As newspapers resumed publication, exiles placed classified notices to search for missing family members. Tavit still didn’t know his sister’s or brother’s whereabouts or even if they were still alive. With a new fixed residence and the resumption of mail services in Jerusalem, the Ohannessians wrote to relatives, made inquiries through refugee-aid networks, and waited anxiously for news. As the family adjusted to their new life in the vank, Tavit’s curiosity about history resurfaced. He learned that the Armenian presence in Palestine stretched as far back as the Assyrian and Babylonian eras.5 Even before Christianity was adopted as the national faith at the beginning of the fourth century, Armenians had journeyed to the region’s sacred places. After the Persian siege of Jerusalem in 614 A.D., Armenians helped rebuild the Holy Sites, enhancing their own position in the district. Tradition held that the seventh-century Abraham, the first Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, traveled to Mecca to secure from the Prophet Muhammad a promise of protection for his flock. Later in the same century, Jerusalem’s ruling caliph, Omar ibn el Khattab, issued his own decree granting the Armenians, Greeks, and Latins of Jerusalem enduring freedom of worship and rights over the Christian Holy Places. Pious Armenians continued their pilgrimages during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties and through the following Crusader, Fatimid, Ayubid, and Mamluk eras.6 They built monastic waystations near Palestine’s holy sites and settled in Jerusalem in increasing numbers. Bountiful donations in the twelfth century provided the means to procure additional property, rebuild the cathedral, and expand the complex beyond the original fifth-century structure that marked the spot where, according to tradition, St. James the Greater had been martyred in 44 A.D.7 The Patriarchate acquired three more churches in Jerusalem: St. Theodore, Holy Archangel, and the Church of the Holy Saviour. Each year, pilgrims brought precious offerings, including gems, weavings, manuscripts, and illuminations by Armenian masters from far-flung regions. In 1517, the Ottomans, led by Sultan Selim I, conquered Jerusalem. Over the next two centuries, the Patriarchate fell into heavy debt. A forceful new leader, Gregory, elected in 1715, raised funds by standing in front of Constantinople’s Sourp Asdvazdazdin Church for three years, draped in heavy chains. In 1721, Gregory “the Chainbearer” returned to Jerusalem and

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discharged the Patriarchate’s obligations. He fortified the wall around the convent, restored Armenian monasteries and churches throughout the Holy Land, and built lodgings for pilgrims. During this era, Kutahya artisans clothed the walls and pillars of the St. James Cathedral with delicate blue and white tiles. Another series of Kutahya tiles, commissioned for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and crafted in 1718–19, found a home instead in the cathedral’s Etchmiadzin Chapel.8 Even two hundred years later, when Tavit would see them for the first time, the brightly colored pictorial tiles captured his heart with their poignant biblical narratives and their distinctive dots of crimson red Kutahya glaze.9 On the Ohannessians’ first Sunday in the vank, a thumping sound at the crack of dawn startled Victoria and Tavit out of a sound slumber. A moment later, a man’s deep voice rang out in Armenian. “Oh, good Christians,” he intoned, “come to the holy church!” The chanter moved deeper into the compound, banging his cane against the courtyard stones. Deacons struck wooden gongs suspended outside the cathedral in a joyful cacophony that summoned the whole community for the sunrise service. Sirarpi, Vahé, and even four-year-old Ohannes soon learned the words to the hymn “Morning of Light.” For Tavit and Victoria, the cathedral’s interior evoked a precious sense of spiritual calm. Shafts of light streaming into the vaulted dome glinted against hundreds of filigreed silver and golden lamps, crystal chandeliers, glazed ceramic eggs, and gem-encrusted chalices. Everywhere they glanced, the Ohannessians saw reverential objects of beauty created by Armenian artists— icons cradled in silver and gold, thrones inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and wide spans of cobalt, white, pale green, and yellow Kutahya tiles. Each Sunday, Tavit settled the family next to one of the rear tile-covered piers. In that spot, he could touch and remember the Kutahya tradition he had inherited—the art that had led him to this sacred place. One year before the Ohannessians arrived, the British Egyptian Expeditionary Forces under the leadership of General Edmund Allenby had captured Jerusalem, driving away the Turkish armies and German commanders in fierce skirmishes during the last rain-deluged days of the campaign. On December 9, 1917, the Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein al-Husayni, surrendered the city. Two days later, General Allenby dismounted his horse outside the walls and opposite Interior of St. James Armenian Cathedral

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entered the Jaffa Gate on foot, ceremonially marking the end of four centuries of Ottoman rule. He declared the city to be under martial law, but added: Furthermore, since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore, do I make it known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer of whatsoever form of the three religions will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they are sacred.10

Allenby’s entry was cheered by crowds representing all of Jerusalem’s faiths as well as officials of the Allied governments. One Arab Jerusalemite recalled, “This fortunate moment saw the end of Ottoman rule and of the tyranny and despotism that had prevailed. . . . We began to breathe relief and praised the Almighty for this blessing.”11 However, many Palestinians had yet to learn that a month prior to the British conquest of the city, Lord Arthur Balfour—the British Foreign Secretary—had published a letter expressing his government’s support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The proclamation was greeted warmly by Jewish communities throughout the world. But Arab armies had played a crucial role in the British defeat of the Ottoman Turks, and Balfour’s declaration was received as a betrayal of the 1915–16 British pledges to Mecca’s Sharif Hussein to recognize the Arab provinces’ independence after the war.12 As the 60,000 surviving residents of the district of Jerusalem13—ravaged throughout the previous years by malaria, cholera, typhus,14 conscription, destitution, locust plagues, and famine—learned of these and other conflicting messages, they grew distrustful of the new British regime. The city of Jerusalem possessed a Jewish plurality, but among Palestine’s total population of nearly 700,000, roughly 90 percent were Arab.15 Balfour wrote that it was “clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,”16 but Muslim and Christian Arabs, Armenians, and Greeks wondered what, exactly, he meant. When Ronald Storrs, the new Military Governor of Jerusalem, assumed his post on December 28, 1917,17 he faced competing emergencies. The retreating Turkish army had torn up the Jaffa–Jerusalem rail line and blasted

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munitions depots, cratering roads and choking off deliveries of desperately needed drugs and disinfectants. Grain and flour remained in severely short supply. Famished Armenian deportees continued to seek refuge in a city benumbed by heavy rains, snow, and intense cold. Palestine’s tangle of currencies fluctuated wildly in value, but “the need of food was paramount, more urgent than money,” Storrs wrote. “One morning in early January, I became aware of a crying and screaming beneath my office window. I looked out on a crowd of veiled Arab women, some of whom tore their garments apart to reveal the bones almost piercing their skin.”18 “The city has been on starvation rations for three years,” Storrs realized, and the municipality’s income—previously derived from taxes, crop tithes, rents,19 and importantly, pilgrim and tourist traffic—had plummeted. General Allenby designated Jerusalem and its environs as an Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, or OETA, and the Military Governor hastened to address the most urgent concerns: food, water, and sanitation. But as Storrs roamed the Holy City’s alleyways and peered into its blighted souks, tombs, and monuments, he perceived an equally critical need, one that would come into focus through the lens of his classical education and his deep attachment to history, art, and archeology: the rebuilding of the physical city. Before his appointment to Jerusalem, Storrs had served as Oriental Secretary in Cairo and acted as advisor to the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, a branch of the city’s Awqaf, the Ministries of Pious Endowments. Even in his first months as Jerusalem’s Military Governor, he pondered the Cairo Comité’s model of assembling local notables and foreign experts to collaborate toward the city’s restoration.20 In Palestine, as in all the other formerly Ottoman regions, it had been the purview of the Wakf to supervise repairs of local Islamic holy sites. Allenby’s preservation of the status quo ante bellum implied that this should remain the case,21 even though the regime was now British and removed from the reach of Constantinople’s Awqaf, which had previously provided technical advice and resources for the most important mosque restorations. Before the Great War, the Turkish nationalist architect Ahmet Kemalettin—who had frequently collaborated with Ohannessian and the other Kutahya çiniçis—had come from Constantinople and inspected AlAqsa, “the farthest mosque,” and all the sacred buildings on the broad limestone platform, including the Dome of the Rock. In 1912, he had published an article detailing the history of the monument, noting the damage wrought by

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“savage destruction and treasonous repairs” and lauding the “blissful calm” and “ethereal silence” of the compound,22 nearly thirty-four acres in area,23 known as the Haram ash-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.24 Storrs and other officials throughout the British Empire, especially those with deep connections to Muslim territories under colonial rule, weighed in on plans for the restorations of the Aqsa buildings, particularly the sublime Dome of the Rock. Intrigued officers and politicians scribbled comments pertaining to tiles and other antiquities on the covers of Foreign and War Office reports. Many top OETA administrators were products of England’s elite universities, fluent in ancient Greek and Latin and drawn to archeology as a result.25 They were enthralled by the extraordinary beauty of the Umayyad site. Governor Storrs wrote that the “severe winter of 1917–18 had a deplorable effect upon the wind-racked northwest façade of that utmost fulfilment of colour, rhythm, and geometry, the Dome of the Rock. The brilliant tiles were constantly falling from the walls, and frequently to be found for sale in the City.”26 The Dome of the Rock—indeed all of the Aqsa Mosque—held a revered place in Islam. But the exquisite tiled monument also wielded an irresistible attraction for Jerusalem’s erudite new military rulers, who were determined to find a way to restore the monument’s dazzling exterior. Inquiries filtered throughout British networks, from Cairo to London to the Hejaz and India. But apart from the aesthetic pull, there was also a gnawing anxiety: what if these treasured sacred monuments were to suffer even greater deterioration under British watch? Or worse yet, what if they were repaired badly? With the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, Britain would hold dominion over more than half the world’s Muslim population—a fearsome responsibility. With Allenby’s conquest, Christians ruled the Holy City once again, for the first time since the Crusades. An error of judgment, the officers worried, in a British-led restoration of this holy Islamic site might just provoke a conflagration. On March 8, Allenby’s General Headquarters in Egypt dispatched a secret message to the War Office in London: The Mosque Al Aksa and the Mosque Omar in Jerusalem are both in urgent need of repair which if deferred may give rise to a dangerous condition. . . . Before going further expert advice is necessary and I would like the services of Mr. Ernest Richmond . . . who is now in the service of the War Office to examine [and] report on condition of these mosques and to suggest the best

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means of preserving them. Mr. Richmond has had great experience in superintending the preservation and repair of mosques in Cairo and his qualifications for this work are unique.27

Mark Sykes, who had drafted Allenby’s December 11th proclamation and understood the potential hazards of British high officers appearing to take charge of a hallowed place in Islam,28 counseled caution: “This is dangerous ground.” He noted that “Europeans employed should be employed by the authorities of [the] Mosque and we should have no responsibility.”29 Another officer suggested an even more indirect approach: “If the Governor of Jerusalem intimated to the Moslem authorities in charge of the Mosque that if they approached the General Officer Commanding with a formal request for his sanction of such repairs, and for the loan of a British expert, who could doubtless, in theory at least, be placed under their own supervision, such a request would be favorably received.”30 Storrs extended an official invitation to Richmond.31 British architects, designers, and planners streamed into Jerusalem, eager to lend their expertise to the renewal of the Holy City. With the approval of the Grand Mufti, architect Ernest T. Richmond arrived from Egypt to “examine and report upon the structural condition of the Moslem shrines in the Haram ash-Sharif in Jerusalem,” giving special attention to the Dome of the Rock.32 Richmond and Storrs knew each other well from their years as flatmates in Cairo. General Allenby also invited William McLean, then serving as Alexandria’s City Engineer and a leading figure in the field of town planning, to draw up proposals for the Old City and the further development of the New Town—the neighborhoods outside the city walls.33 Storrs hired hundreds of refugee laborers—men, women, and children—to clear away the huge mounds of rubble from collapsed buildings, putrefying animal carcasses, and the heaps of rusted ration tins left behind by the Turkish army. Before and during the war, the Citadel fosse had become a dumping ground. Guard houses were used as public latrines. The elegant vaulted fourteenth-century Mamluk Cotton Market building was piled high with ordure and debris.34 In April of 1918, at McLean’s suggestion, Governor Storrs issued the first of two decrees intended to regulate the appearance of the city: “No person shall demolish, erect, alter, or repair the structure of any building in the city of Jerusalem or its environs within a radius of 2,500 metres from the Damascus

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Gate (Bab al Amud) until he has obtained a written permit from the Military Governor.” A second order prohibited advertising billboards or the use of stucco or corrugated iron within the city walls,35 effectively limiting building materials to Jerusalem’s golden limestone. McLean presented his town plan in the summer of 1918, emphasizing that it was “designed to preserve the medieval aspect of the Old City and surround it by a belt of land which should remain in its natural state as far as practical at the time.”36 The scenic greenbelt scheme threatened to disrupt the long-standing sheep and cattle markets outside Herod’s and St. Stephen’s Gates as well as the many small shops and even the leper colony that ringed Sultan Suleiman’s walls. Storrs invited another advisor: “Hearing of the presence in Egypt of the architect Mr. C. R. Ashbee, a friend and disciple of William Morris, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and of the National Trust and well known for his skill and enthusiasm for civic development with its kindred Arts and Crafts. I wrote to him requesting him to visit Jerusalem and write a report on its possibilities in this respect.”37 Charles Ashbee had spent much of his career championing craft professions and their integration into urban life. While reading history at Cambridge, he had cultivated an idealized view of the pre-industrial age and the ennobling status of craft work. As a fledgling architect in 1888, he founded the Guild and School of Handicraft in East London—an attempt to re-create the ethos of medieval British and Italian Renaissance craft guilds. Apprentices of modest origins studied metalwork, decorative painting, printing, and wood carving while working alongside masters, much as Ohannessian had done in Kutahya. Ashbee’s School failed to secure a solid financial footing, but the Guild prospered for some years. In 1902, its seventy38 printers, enamellers, smiths, carvers, weavers, and cabinet makers39 abandoned London’s sulfurous grime for the rustic charms of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, where Ashbee’s career as an architect and designer blossomed. Two years after the move, he considered expanding the Guild’s offerings to include pottery and corresponded with ceramicist William De Morgan. Ultimately, the inquiries came to naught. The cost of building a kiln and purchasing supplies would have required £1,000— too great a sum for the cash-strapped Guild.40 Along the way, though, Ashbee became acquainted with the challenges of ceramics manufacture.

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During the Great War, Ashbee’s commissions faded. Pressed to earn an income, he accepted a teaching position at the Sultania Training College in Cairo. In his free hours, he wandered through the city and ventured into its poorest neighborhoods. There, he discovered scores of carvers, engravers, mother-ofpearl inlayers, musical instrument makers, and other craftsmen continuing to practice and teach their venerable arts.41 Storrs, too, found the arts of the Arabic-speaking world alluring. And during his thirteen years in Cairo, he assembled a collection of silks, icons, gemstones, and Bukhara carpets. The perfumes and scents of the Khan el-Khalili and Hamzawi bazaars enchanted him, and he viewed fierce rounds of haggling as sport fit for a gentleman.42 Storrs visited Prince Muhammed Ali Tewfik in his Manial Palace, where he admired the “revived Oriental splendors” of the traditional Egyptian crafts and the Kutahya tiles made by Ohannessian and his partners gracing the buildings.43 At the Military Governor’s invitation, Ashbee spent the summer of 1918 surveying Jerusalem’s alleyways, markets, monuments, and surrounding villages. He appraised the myriad local crafts with mounting enthusiasm and came upon skilled stonemasons, who, he believed, could be engaged to rebuild the city’s dilapidated walls. He spied “wonderful Arab embroideresses” and imagined them teaching their colorful stitchery to Jerusalem’s throngs of refugee women.44 Ashbee envisioned the Holy City as a thriving center for the arts and crafts, and he brimmed with exciting schemes. Within the framework of a military occupation, however, there were, as yet, few ways to enact them. In September, Governor Storrs convened a new “Pro-Jerusalem Society,” a mixed council intended to address the needs of the city that fell outside the regular scope of a military administration. The group would seek funding through subscriptions and private donations, independent of the government. The mayor of Jerusalem, dignitaries from the three religious communities, archeologists, distinguished local scholars, British administrators, and the invited consultants—including Ashbee, Richmond, and McLean—hammered out the Society’s aims and methods. They vowed to protect and preserve the antiquities of the district; encourage arts and handicrafts; plan parks, gardens, and open spaces; and establish museums, galleries, and performing arts centers for the benefit of the public. The heterogeneous nature of the Pro-Jerusalem Society offered Storrs a means by which to navigate the politically freighted

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concerns of restoring the Holy City and its religious monuments. Nine months into his term, almost every quotidian function of the governor’s job was tinged with intercommunal tensions, but the aims of this Society continued to represent his deepest personal and aesthetic interests. Few of the British officers— Storrs being a notable exception—could speak Jerusalem’s Arabic vernacular. Meetings were conducted in French, with occasional outbursts in English, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, or Armenian.45 By the end of his survey, Ashbee had counted nearly fifty “native crafts” and offered recommendations “as to the best way to grapple, without distinction of race or creed with the problem of preserving, encouraging, and if necessary creating suitable arts and crafts for the City, and if possible, placing them upon an economically working basis.”46 His “Report on the Arts and Crafts of Jerusalem and Its Districts. 1918” suggested ways to enact McClean’s Town Plan and Richmond’s proposals for the Haram buildings.47 It incorporated crafts into every facet of the city’s life. Ashbee was named Secretary and Civic Advisor to the Pro-Jerusalem Society; his recommendations now carried weight. The establishment of a Central Civic School, along the lines of his School of Handicraft, was paramount to Ashbee’s vision. There was no shortage of available labor among Jerusalem’s impoverished refugees, many of whom had been craftsmen in their prewar lives. The operations, Ashbee noted, “might be started frankly as relief work.”48 As 1918 drew to an end, he fixed on three industries: weaving, glassblowing, and tile making, the last an art immediately necessary for the planned restoration of the Dome of the Rock. He had noted the absence of any trade in Jerusalem in painted and glazed tiles and remarked that it might be necessary to send for a skilled potter from Baghdad, Damascus, or Kashan to launch the profession.49 Diverse British officers plunged into the increasingly widespread quest to find new sources of tiles for the Dome of the Rock and posted notes on their findings. One reported: “Lt. Col. T. E. Lawrence recently told me that Damascus still produced tiles almost equal to its 16th century fabric, but, after some research there last week, I failed to find any but very inferior specimens.”50 Ashbee emphasized, “Mr. Richmond and I have already shown if the Dome of the Rock is to be saved, a working pottery is an absolute essential. That pottery will be the school center for baked and painted tile work, and while we are repairing the dome we should thus at the same time be

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establishing one of the departments of our school.”51 He added, “We shall need many thousands of such tiles, hanging painted tiles, glazed bricks, and window lattice tiles.”52 In November, Ashbee left Jerusalem to spend Christmas in England, wind down the last affairs of the Guild of Handicraft, and prepare his wife and daughters for their move to Palestine. Little did he foresee that when he returned in March of 1919, Ashbee would find a master of the celebrated Kutahya tile tradition, with knowledge of precisely the age-old methods he revered, already settled in the Holy City. In the last days of 1918, Ohannessian—still very thin, with close-cropped hair, and worn but clean clothes—reported to Jerusalem’s designated Government House, the German-built Augustus Victoria hospice, to receive an introduction to Ernest Richmond. Tavit recognized that this encounter might well alter his fate: he would have the chance to study the magnificent Dome of the Rock at close range, meet the architect charged with its evaluation, and argue for a chance to participate in its renewal. Fortunately for Ohannessian, Richmond spoke both French and Arabic fluently and was a genial conversationalist. Ten years older than Tavit, the patrician architect was the third son of renowned British painter, sculptor, and mosaicist, Sir William Blake Richmond, and had received his training at the Royal Academy’s School of Architecture. In 1895, Richmond left England for Cairo, and was soon appointed assistant architect for the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe. During the years he spent effecting restorations in Egypt,53 Richmond gained first-hand knowledge of historic Islamic structures. His close ties and good reputation with Cairo’s mufti and other Muslim leaders preceded him to the Holy City.54 On his arrival in Jerusalem in the spring of 1918, the Muslim guardians granted him complete access to the buildings on the Haram ash-Sharif.55 The architect spent months poring over every tile, column, and stained-glass window of the Dome of the Rock, plotting large-scale drawings of each façade, testing the supporting timbers for worms, probing the stability of the interior mosaics, and climbing onto scaffolding to copy the inscriptions crowning the octagon and drum. Richmond excavated tiles from the mud floor of one of the storerooms in the Haram and extracted further examples from piles of debris. But he did

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not think that these retrieved tiles “(some splendid, others wholly execrable), of different dates, designs, and workmanship . . . [would] prove to be suitable or numerous enough to fill the empty spaces. New tiles will certainly be needed.”56 Unlike some of his British colleagues who favored turning to Europe for replacements, Richmond hoped that inquiries in the East might “bring to light the continued existence of knowledge and traditions upon which may be based at least a hope for reviving this art.”57 The architect estimated that the cost to repair the Dome of the Rock would total approximately £E80,000. Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti issued an eloquent worldwide appeal for funds, published in Arabic-language newspapers on December 4 and 5, 1918, and translated into English for concurrent publication in the Times of London. In the vaulted room on the northern end of the Haram that served as Richmond and Ashbee’s shared office, Ohannessian related his own history—his workshop in Kutahya and many past tile commissions, his once-flourishing pottery trade, and the providential event of Mark Sykes finding him in Aleppo. Tavit detailed the restorations he had performed under the Ottoman Ministry of Endowments’ Scientific Commission for Repairs and Construction and his work with Mimar Kemalettin. He presented a summary of the Kutahya tile art and its recent revival.58 Richmond grasped the depth of Ohannessian’s technical knowledge and came to view him as a “useful ally.”59 He arranged for Ohannessian to examine the buildings on the Haram ashSharif. The serene majesty of the Dome of the Rock and its glistening turquoise, cobalt, azure, and saffron colored tiles and delicately shaded marble base surpassed in beauty almost any externally tiled building Tavit had seen or restored. Only Constantinople’s Rustem Pasha Mosque’s superb tiled revetments could hold a comparable place in his imagination. Richmond called Tavit’s attention to the structure’s significant features and showed him the storerooms. Ohannessian looked into the Haram Museum that was being organized in the Mugharba Mosque.60 He saw the Najâra—the stone building, likely dating to the twelfth century—facing the Aqsa Mosque, which contained mosaics, tiles, and marble slabs removed in previous restorations,61 as well as the ruins of some old furnaces and one from the 1870s.62 He measured and sketched that kiln; if it was to be used again, he would need to calculate how much fuel it might consume.

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Under Richmond’s tutelage, Ohannessian learned that the great Dome of the Rock—in Arabic, the Qubbat al-Sakhra—had been built at the command of Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan around 691 A.D., elevating Jerusalem as a place of Islamic devotion. Some years after the original construction, the octagonal exterior had been covered with mosaic work that, Richmond speculated, may have been taken from the ruins of Jerusalem’s Byzantine churches, destroyed in Persian invasions. Over time, the parapet wall had been pierced with arched openings, wings added, and hollows carved out beneath the structure. The sheathing of the dome—the material covering the converging timber ribs beneath— changed through conquests and earthquakes, alternating copper, gilt, and lead.63 In the sixteenth century, perhaps owing to the difficulty of finding craftsmen to repair the Dome of the Rock’s outer mosaics or from Suleiman’s desire as caliph to place his imprint on the monument,64 the Ohannessian’s 1919 sketch sultan reclad the cylindrical drum of the Haram kiln and the upper portion of the octagonal faces with tiles. Jerusalem attracted Muslim pilgrims—after Mecca and Medina, it was the third holiest place in Islam—but the modestly sized city was removed from major trade routes and artistic centers. Between 1545 and 1552, Sultan Suleiman I imported designers and tile masters, originally from Tabriz, who created cuerda seca, glazed, and cut mosaic tiles, and colored bricks in vivid shades of cobalt, turquoise, jade, yellow, and black. “The color-effect is strong, almost violent,” Richmond noted of these earliest Kashani floral and geometric patterned tiles. “The panel designs of this period are based upon two motives, a cross and a leaf-and-flower pattern.”65 Rows of tiles on the octagon’s uppermost span composed an inscription—the great “Ya Sin,” the thirty-sixth chapter of the Koran. Richmond estimated that the Dome of the Rock’s original tiled revetments contained approximately forty-five thousand tiles.66

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Artists and restorers left behind signatures, dates, and other clues to their identities. On the southeast façade, Tavit spotted one inscription: “Written by the Sayyid Muhammed Shafîk. May God pardon him.” Calligraphy on the north portico read, “Abdullah at Tabrizi.” Ohannessian disclosed to Richmond what he had learned years earlier from Sheikh Veled Çelebi in Konya—that the name Abdullah might equally be used by men of all religions and could possibly veil a Christian identity.67 Both men recognized that Jerusalem’s scalding summers, biting winters, blizzards, and earthquakes would have taken a severe toll on the surfaces. The Dome of the Rock, like all other exteriorly tiled monuments, required ongoing refurbishment. After his months of close examination, Richmond perceived the extent to which tiles had been replaced since the original sixteenth-century installation. He compared the glaze techniques, draftsmanship, colors, patterns, depth, and methods of affixing used for the replacement tiles. Some dated tiles, along with Ohannessian’s critiques and suggestions,68 helped inform his conclusion that the tiles could be grouped into six main stylistic and chronological periods. Within each of these, smaller intermittent repairs might be distinguished by gradations of color, material, and the tile makers’ varying levels of technical achievement.69 Richmond believed that the restoration materials and workers had been, for the most part, foreign—often, even Christian. “Jerusalem, perched as it is in the Judaean hills . . . is not situated favorably for the long maintenance of any workers capable of supplying the occasional and exceptional needs of so elaborately decorated a building. Consequently, repair without foreign help has always been difficult, and it would seem that, just as the shrine was largely decorated with foreign materials and by foreign workers, so, for any serious work of repair, foreigners—Greeks, Armenians, or Persians—have always been imported and employed.”70 In the nineteenth century alone, there had been at least four major repairs, the first in about 1818.71 Priests at the Armenian Patriarchate recalled two subsequent ones—from 1853 and 1874, under Sultans Abdulmejid and Abdul Aziz. Large numbers of Armenian craftsmen had come to Jerusalem to carry out the work. Each project lasted several years and incorporated tens of thousands of new tiles.72 The 1898 visit of Kaiser Wilhelm to Jerusalem prompted another round of repairs. The guardians of the shrine recalled that these had been “carried out in a very great hurry.”73 Workmen fitted imported Kutahya table tiles

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into the gaps. Other bare spots were disguised with paint or tin and, as the architect recounted, “some indescribably hideous tiles of European manufacture.”74 For Richmond, these generations of retilings told their own story and signified that the Dome of the Rock was alive—“almost in the same sense,” he opined, “that a man is alive. It changes its tissues and renews its structure in order to maintain power to enshrine the soul that is in it. It is much more than a place of archeological or ‘artistic’ interest. It is, of a living Faith, the living symbol, striving, by the strength of the Faith it represents, to survive in the face of many and great difficulties.”75 As a çiniçi in Kutahya, Ohannessian had studied the ceramic techniques of Seljuk, Tabrizi, Damascus, Iznik, and Kutahya masters, but here, on one single astonishing monument, he saw the products of tile makers spanning diverse lands and three and a half centuries. Even the many tiles that had been chiseled or broken offered instruction in the history of the craft, exposing the depth of the tile and the glaze, the dimensions of drill holes and metals used for the joining pins and frames, and the types of clay that formed the body.76 For Tavit, historically minded by nature, the building itself was an incomparable chronicle of the art that was his own life’s work. In late February of 1919, Ohannessian received tragic news. Mark Sykes, who had been in Paris for the Peace Conference, had died there at the age of 39. After his exhausting mission in Syria, he had traveled to France to meet his wife, who was shocked by his haggard appearance. Both he and Edith contracted the influenza that was raging across Europe. On February 16, Sykes succumbed to it. Ohannessian was stunned. What would his fate have been had he not reencountered Sykes in Aleppo ten weeks earlier? Both he and Storrs mourned the death of this vivacious, artistic, and iconoclastic man, who left behind an adored wife and six children. When Ashbee returned to Jerusalem in March, he, Richmond, and Ohannessian attempted some small-scale experiments to see if the nineteenth-century kiln on the Haram could be reused. The first challenge was to find suitable materials. Not only would Tavit need varied clays, flint, borax, and the other minerals required to match the palette of the Dome’s tiles, but he also had to test the available woods to find the combinations necessary for a successful firing. In Anatolia, around Kutahya and the Black Sea region, clay—specifically the pure kaolin clay that had given Tavit’s and his predecessors’ tiles

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Dome of the Rock tiling, detail

their brilliant white background—was abundant. The tile traditions of Iznik and Kutahya had evolved from substances indigenous to the rivers, lakes, and springs of northwest Anatolia. So far, in Jerusalem, Tavit had not been able to find anything comparable. Palestine’s parched landscape presented a great unknown. The test firings proved unsuccessful. The woods didn’t yield the expected temperatures, and colors ran. Also, pottery made from the sandy native clay occasionally disintegrated after firing at high temperatures. Ohannessian’s patrons grew doubtful. Ashbee considered the efforts a dismal failure and was

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concerned about the costs already advanced—a total of £230.77 But to replicate or even surpass the quality of tiles he had produced in his Kutahya workshop, Tavit needed proper materials and a team of workers. Ceramics making, in the Anatolian tradition, was not a solitary endeavor. Richmond, his report complete, left Palestine in April of 1919 and Ohannessian lost an important supporter. But having come this far, Tavit would not be deterred. He made a bold proposition to Governor Storrs and the Pro-Jerusalem Society. He wished to return to Kutahya to gather supplies and recruit at least part of the workforce the project required.78 In exchange

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for Pro-Jerusalem’s support, he would assume a share of the financial risk and would guarantee to operate a school and atelier, using the intact nineteenthcentury kiln and rooms in the Haram. The Society agreed to the plan. In spite of his doubts, Ashbee was eager to support every possible chance for the success of a tile workshop in Jerusalem. Richmond had also made compelling arguments on Ohannessian’s behalf: “It is hardly conceivable that every effort should not be made to revive the tile industry. . . . For it is not here alone that there is a demand for tiles. In Constantinople, in Brousa, at Medina, at Konia,79 and in many other places tiles are needed and have been in demand at least for the last fifteen years or more, not only for the repair of old buildings, but also for the decoration of new ones. So great has been, and is, the need, that enterprise has been found to fulfil it. The initiative has come, as so often in such matters, from the Armenian people. . . . An Armenian tile-maker from Kutahia is now in Jerusalem. He intends to attempt the establishment of the industry in the city. . . . ” Richmond continued, “If a school of workers could be established in Jerusalem, it might not only prove of advantage to the Dome of the Rock, but also form a centre for the revival of activity in many other parts of the Near and Middle East.”80 On July 21, at the Military Administration’s request, General Wyndham Deedes, the British head of public security in Cairo, cabled the Interior Ministry in Constantinople requesting a safe-transit document for Ohannessian. Tavit received it and a second directive intended for the district governor of Kutahya, with instructions to aid Ohannessian in obtaining the materials needed for the repair of the Dome of the Rock.81 New conflicts roiled the provinces of western Anatolia. Allied troops had occupied Constantinople in November of 1918 and set up a provisional government shortly thereafter. The following May, Greek forces, sanctioned by the Allies, had landed in Smyrna and were holding the city, preparing to advance into the interior. Turkish troops and irregulars mobilized against the encroachment. Foreign observers published reports of violence, torture, and bloodshed as the Hellenic Army pressed east in the summer months. In early August, the Ohannessians boarded a train heading north from Jerusalem. Victoria, who was pregnant once again, and the children would

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stop in Eskishehir to see her family, while Tavit returned to Kutahya. They journeyed north through Palestine and Syria into Anatolia and across the newly completed Amanus and Taurus viaducts and tunnels. City by city, mountain by mountain, they reversed the path of their deportation march, traveling through places that held unspeakable memories for them. They rode past fields and railroad stations—the sites of barbarous cruelties—where even now countless Armenian bodies lay in unmarked mass graves. “Architect Ohannessian,” as his new papers identified him, resolved to do whatever was necessary to resurrect his art in Palestine and build a new life, not only for his own family, but also for any other Kutahya Armenians who might choose to return with him. This time, the five Ohannessians traveled the entire rail route in passenger cars, safeguarded by documents issued to the British Military Administration by the Turkish Directorate of Public Security.82 Although many of Kutahya’s Armenians had remained in place during the war, some had been exiled. A few attempted to return after the cease-fire. Luckily for Tavit, he would not have to confront Ahmed Mufit, who had vilified him when he was living in Aleppo. The district governor had been dismissed from office in April of 1919.83 Ohannessian sought out the clergy of Sourp Toros—his former church in Kutahya—his fellow çiniçis, and some old friends, who were very surprised to see him there again. They briefed Tavit on the news of their community and the moribund state of the ceramics trade. At the end of 1917, Mehmet Emin had petitioned the Turkish government for financial assistance, describing the collapse of his industry. Of the one hundred and fifty ceramics workers employed prior to the war, Emin wrote, fewer than forty remained, and the numbers continued to fall.84 In 1918, Tavit’s former partner, Harutyun Minassian, had been deported to central Anatolia. After the ceasefire, he had made his way to Greece.85 His brother, Garabed, and the rest of Minassian family, faced with the possibility of new skirmishes as well as flagging revenues, were preparing to join Harutyun in Athens. Other Greek and Armenian ceramic makers planned to follow them. With the defeat of the Young Turk government, Mimar Kemalettin no longer had the authority to commission tiles for new buildings or restorations.86 The Kutahya çiniçis continued to produce domestic pottery in the fading hope that the export market would someday revive.87 Mehmet Emin signed up to serve in the Turkish army.

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In Eskishehir, Victoria and the children, reunited with her family, found both joy and sorrow. The Shahbazians had been among the few Armenians spared deportation from Eskishehir during the war. Victoria’s mother had suffered a heart attack and died a few years earlier, and her brother had contracted tuberculosis but survived. Victoria was elated to see her beloved sibling once again. During the weeks of her visit, Victoria’s father, Garabed, developed a severe case of diarrhea and died at the age of 72. Heartbroken, the women of the family gently washed Victoria’s dear father, who had possessed such quiet dignity in life. They dressed him in his best suit and laid him out for burial. In spite of the shadow cast by Grandfather Garabed’s illness and death, the Ohannessian children were overjoyed to see their older cousins Takouhi and Stepan Markarian after such a long time apart. Victoria’s orphaned niece and nephew were equally happy to spend time with Sirarpi, Vahé, and Ohannes. After all they had endured, the youngsters threw themselves into boisterous play, and the adults indulged them. One afternoon, as the family was preparing for the funeral, Victoria and her brother heard giggles wafting down from the floor above. Sirarpi, now eight years old, Takoug, and Stepan had sneaked into their grandfather’s room and were laughing uncontrollably. They had just discovered that if they gave a good push to the soles of their grandfather’s feet, his whole body shook! Finally, the time came to say good-bye. Victoria and her brother left open the possibility of visiting or even moving with Takouhi and Stepan to Jerusalem, assuming the new ceramics business succeeded. In Kutahya, Ohannessian conferred with the remaining Armenian çiniçis and invited them to accompany him back to Jerusalem to take on the challenge of making new tiles for the Dome of the Rock. Eight artisans—each a specialist in different facets of the craft—and their families accepted. Nishan Balian, a virtuoso of the potter’s wheel; Mgrditch Karakashian, a refined master of black brush drawing and painting of traditional designs; Nishan’s betrothed, Takouhi, who painted colors into patterns; and several other accomplished potters, painters, and glazers—men and women—made the wrenching decision to leave their native town. Another talented potter, Sarkis Nourijanian, and his wife, Takouhitza, agreed to travel to Jerusalem later.88 Minas Avramidis and Makarios Vardaxis would head for Greece, the land of their forefathers.

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There were other reasons to leave. Kutahya still harbored an active CUP club. One notorious member and his brother remained dangerously at large after perpetrating atrocities on the city’s Christian population during the war.89 Hostilities loomed from the west. Kutahya’s Greeks and Armenians remembered all too well the military appropriations and conscriptions of the last few years—the money, labor, provisions, and animals that had been demanded from them. And perhaps, the çiniçis hoped, by replanting themselves in Jerusalem, they might also resume the natural progression—suppressed by war—of forming new firms and partnerships and training succeeding generations of apprentices who might do the same. Tavit was able to retrieve only a few of his possessions—several books, a picture of Sirarpi as a baby, his old photo album of historic Ottoman tiled monuments, some designs, drawings, and tools. He arranged to obtain the necessary clays and other minerals and have them crated for shipment. It was not yet clear whether the Judaean hills and streams would ultimately yield the required materials, but with these supplies, the artists could at least begin to work. With the enrollment of Mehmet Emin in the Turkish army90 and the departure of the Minassians, Ohannessian, and others for Athens, Jerusalem, and Salonica,91 the Kutahya tile tradition—so painstakingly revived before the war and so deeply rooted in the Anatolian soil—scattered to the winds.92

When the Ohannessians returned to Jerusalem in the autumn of 1919, they took up residence again in the vank, along with the other Kutahya families. Shortly after their arrival, Takouhi and Nishan Balian married.93 Victoria entered Sirarpi in the convent elementary school, St. Gayantiants. There, she made a friend named Annig—the girls became inseparable. In the compound, Victoria met a young, recently married woman nicknamed “Hars,” the Armenian word for bride, and the two quickly became best friends. After years of speaking Turkish in Kutahya and some Arabic in Aleppo, Victoria, like other Turkish-speaking Armenians in the convent, resolved to speak Armenian exclusively, despite the need to refresh her vocabulary and syntax. Tavit bought his own English grammar book and studied a new language and alphabet. When he met British administrators, he introduced himself as David Ohannessian.

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Daily life within the convent walls remained well ordered, but as refugees regained physical strength, coped with grievous losses, and pursued or abandoned dreams of repatriating their towns and villages, colorful personalities emerged. Hagop, the peanut vendor, made his rounds of the courtyards—muttering nonsense under his breath and thrusting bags of hot peanuts at unsuspecting passersby. The residents accepted his eccentricities—after all, the poor man had a wife and several children to support. Older women, intent on teaching young girls the values of honor and modesty, felt free to discipline them. Walking two by two to church or their classes, school girls crossed the big courtyard to the sound of reedy chides: “Keep your eyes on the floor! Don’t look all around!” Survivors sought out friends from their native regions and organized social clubs, sports teams, and musical bands named for their towns of origin. The mostly Arabic-speaking native Armenians of Palestine—the kaghagatsi—slowly warmed to the newcomers and helped them integrate, just at the moment many were awakening to the painful realization that they would never be able to reclaim their lost homes.94 Several of the kaghagatsi families adopted orphans or took them permanently into their households as helpers. Ohannessian hired some young Armenian and Arab men, and the Near East Relief—the American philanthropy engaged in fund-raising and heroic rescue efforts on behalf of Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian survivors—assigned some boys to help him ready the materials and learn the trade. The young men crushed the dried blocks of Kutahya clay, soaked the powder in barrels of water, pushed it through sieves, and ground other minerals—the most basic yet physically strenuous tasks of preparation. Ohannessian demanded that these steps be executed with the greatest care. His intense concentration and perfectionism had not abated. Ashbee, Richmond, Storrs, Pro-Jerusalem, and Wakf leaders were anxious to see if the ceramicist could make his enterprise on the Haram succeed. In the midst of Tavit’s frenetic activity, Victoria, aided by a midwife, gave birth at home to a little girl on December 10, 1919. Before the priest bathed the child in the water of the cathedral’s marble baptismal font and anointed her with holy oil, he asked what name the parents would give their child. Tavit and Victoria replied as one: Mary. Ohannessian immersed himself in long days of trial and error, taking detailed notes and training several young apprentices in facets of production. He and

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the other Kutahya çiniçis experimented in the Haram kiln with the clays and glaze materials imported from Anatolia. After spending the autumn and early winter months compounding glazes and clays and firing test batches of tiles, they had attained an attractive standard of work. In Ashbee’s opinion, the tiles “compared very favorably with some of the early tile-work on the Dome, and certainly exceeded in beauty and skill the later European factory production with which for the last fifty years the Dome has been repaired.”95 The Director of Wakfs and Governor Storrs agreed, and signed a contract with Ohannessian on January 30, 1920. Richmond had estimated that the project would require approximately twenty-six thousand new tiles at a cost of about £E8,000.96 At this point, the mufti indicated that he didn’t want a commercial enterprise, even on the outskirts of the Haram.97 Instead, the contract gave Tavit the use of a different building. The Wakf also advanced him the sum of £E700 and reimbursed Pro-Jerusalem its initial £E230 outlay. Additionally, Ohannessian was given all the tools and equipment for the manufacture of tiles that were kept in the storerooms near the Aqsa Mosque.98 The new location for the workshop was on the Via Dolorosa, near the third station of the cross. The building’s ten rooms boasted thick walls, vaulted ceilings, and faced an inner courtyard with a cistern. A large terrace on the upper level would be ideal for sun-drying pottery before firing, and an adjoining chamber could be used to display the studio’s wares. Tavit fitted the rooms with shelves, work tables, clay mixing troughs, and treadle wheels. He drafted designs for a large kiln. The Near East Relief placed fourteen orphans under Tavit’s supervision in 1920, in what Ashbee called Pro-Jerusalem’s “School of Ceramics.” Ohannessian divided the workshop’s output, as he had also done in Kutahya, creating painted, glazed tiles for the restoration of the Dome and pottery for sale to tourists and pilgrims. Ohannessian designed deep blue-green tiles with the Dome of the Rock’s characteristic leaf-and-flower motif and tiles inscribed with “Yeshua,” the name of Jesus in Aramaic, as mementos for visitors to the Holy City. The young apprentices quickly acquired the knack of forming and decorating mugs, plates, vases, bowls, and ceramic boxes. Several of the young men and women proved to be refined black brush drafters and painters. Some boys showed a special talent for shaping pots and vases on the treadle wheel.

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The workshop used the materials imported from Kutahya to make tiles for the monument. For the pottery, Ohannessian and the other çiniçis experimented with locally available materials and formulated different types of slip to coat the region’s sandy, iron-rich clay. As he had done in Kutahya, Tavit gave his Jerusalem workshop a name: Dome of the Rock Tiles. The artists manufactured new tiles to fill barren surfaces of the Dome’s façades, further imperiled by January’s blizYoung men drying pottery on the zard, which had toppled two hunterrace of the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, Via Dolorosa dred buildings around the city. 99 Ohannessian also painted Arabicinscribed tiles to fill in missing sections of the Ya Sin inscription, which had previously been almost entirely replaced in the 1874 restoration. Wakf administrators visited the workshop to inspect Ohannessian’s progress and were pleased with the results. They advanced him another £200.100 Still, Tavit faced financial pressures. If the new business was to continue on a permanent basis, with more than twenty people now under his supervision, he needed to create revenue to ensure an ample supply of materials and a consistent remuneration for his professional staff. Ashbee demonstrated tremendous support for Ohannessian’s efforts, allotting Pro-Jerusalem Society funds to help sustain the School of Ceramics and devising commissions for the workshop. At the same time, Pro-Jerusalem’s Civic Advisor executed scores of other projects to rebuild the city in his romantic vision of its medieval aspect, which he believed would otherwise be destroyed in the coming decades by modern industrialism.101 He designed public parks and playgrounds and laid out shrubbery and trees to cool and beautify open spaces. He restored several of the city gates, gatehouses, and the ramparts—the old sentinel’s walk—fashioning an elevated two-and-a-half-mile path overlooking the Old City.102 Ashbee initiated programs of technical instruction in

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gardening and planting and created an indentured apprenticeship in weaving at the Jerusalem Looms, housed in the newly restored Cotton Market.103 His crews removed tons of accumulated debris from the dry moat surrounding the old fortress. As a start to his planned Jerusalem Park System, he landscaped a Citadel Garden, ordering from Ohannessian four large tile panels for a new garden bench. Two panel designs—each one duplicated—twined almond blossoms and grapevines around medallions and cypress trees. On April 4, 1920, the Ohannessians attended the Palm Sunday Divine Liturgy in St. James Cathedral. The mass marked the beginning of Holy Week, culminating in Easter Sunday—the most important time for Orthodox Armenians and the climax of the pilgrimage season for both Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem. The same day, near the Jaffa Gate, crowds of all faiths gathered to celebrate an annual Muslim festival in honor of the Prophet Moses—Nebi Musa. Jerusalem Mayor al-Husayni rode on horseback, directly behind the holy flag of the Prophet. Members of the Yorkshire Regiment’s brass band, local bands, and all sorts of drums, cymbals, and cannons enlivened the festivities. But patriotic hymns and fervent nationalistic speeches, in the wake of rising Jewish immigration and the Balfour Declaration’s enigmatic promise of “a Jewish National Home,” roused tensions among the Arabs lining the route. The crowd’s agitation spiraled into deadly violence: four Muslims and five Jews were killed, and hundreds more were wounded. Even after calm was restored,104 several days later, it was clear that the time had come for the Military Administration to re-examine its role in local Arab affairs. Three months later, in July of 1920, the Military Administration ceded its governance to a civil authority. Eight armored cars escorted the new High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, to his residence in Government House. Although Jewish himself, Samuel understood the Arab apprehensions and believed the British needed to take “active measures” to allay Arab animosity toward colonial rule.105 Storrs remained in the role of governor, now on a civilian basis. Ashbee’s title changed to Civic Advisor to the City of Jerusalem, and he was also named Secretary of the newly independent Jerusalem Town Planning Commission. With the end of the military authority, the departments of Town Planning, Antiquities, and Technical Education—which helped support Ohannessian’s

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Citadel Gardens bench, Ohannessian tile panel

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pottery school and works—branched off from the Pro-Jerusalem Society into independent bureaus. Storrs appointed Ernest Richmond, who had completed his survey of the Dome of the Rock, as Assistant Civil Secretary with responsibility for Arab affairs. His role was to act as liaison between the government and the Muslim community.106 Herbert Samuel, an art collector himself, threw his support behind ProJerusalem’s projects. The multi-religious nature of the Council’s endeavors appealed to him. In January of 1921,107 he commissioned Ashbee to decorate and furnish his residence in Government House. The rooms were to be a proud showplace for local artists and would be seen by visiting notables. Jerusalem masons, carvers, carpenters, upholsterers, seamstresses—and, of course Ohannessian and his artisans—were engaged to execute Ashbee’s designs. In the dining room, Tavit’s rich blue, turquoise, and green dado tiles, inspired by the Dome of the Rock tiling, added bursts of color against the whitewashed walls. Glazed tiles adorned a carved and gilded Indian wood sideboard designed by Ashbee and constructed in the carpentry workshop of Schneller’s Syrian Orphanage.108 Ashbee had taken a special interest in the Muslim glassblowers of Hebron and was “most anxious to save this exquisite craft from extinction.”109 The artisans built a small furnace in Ohannessian’s Via Dolorosa workshop to melt their raw materials. They produced tiers of blue glass beads and shades in the form of tiny mosque lamps for the electric chandelier in Government House’s dining room.110 Ashbee took great pride in the diverse nature of his workers—a flowering of his lifelong ideal of social unity through craft work. He had “Moslems, Christians, Jews; English, French, German; Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Poles, and Russians, with no common language, and who, when the machine-guns of the mandatory Power patrol the streets are ready to be at each other’s throats, were working, jesting, and in the end, banqueting harmoniously together.”111 Ohannessian nurtured relationships with companies that could distribute his wares abroad. The American Colony in Jerusalem, a utopian Christian and philanthropic collective founded in 1881, had built an international trade for its photography division’s evocative images of the Holy Land, which were reproduced for stereoscopes, lantern slides, and postcards. “Fr. Vester & Co., The American Colony Store, Dealers in Oriental Articles and Curios,” just inside the Jaffa Gate, attracted an English-speaking clientele and soon added Jerusalem pottery to its stock of ethnographic and archeological photos, Bethlehem embroidery, vials of Jordan water, mother-of-pearl, and carved olivewood crucifixes.

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Hebron blown glass, made in the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop, early 1920s

Under Ashbee, the Pro-Jerusalem Society launched a number of projects intended to unify, or at least give equal consideration to, the three religious groups. One was a campaign to formalize street names. At the High Commissioner’s suggestion, the council recruited representatives of the three major religions to thrash out official versions of the street names as they should read in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. For this project, Ashbee wrangled a commission for the Dome of the Rock Tiles. The workshop was to create nine hundred glazed tiles—twelve for each trilingual panel—for the forty-six named streets in the Old City,112 an order worth £E300. Ohannessian’s tiles inscribed black lettering on a white background, framed with the rich turquoise and cobalt blues identified with the Dome of the Rock. In this way, he broadcast a glimmer of the monument’s palette throughout the Old City’s stone-walled streets. The British administration’s efforts to nurture rapprochement fell short. In Jaffa, new rounds of intercommunal protests exploded in May of 1921, even bloodier than the Nebi Musa uprising of the previous year. This time, fortyeight Arabs and forty-seven Jews died. In October, Herbert Samuel conferred

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Dome of the Rock Tiles card, 1920s

with British, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish representatives to address the violence and growing tensions and devise ways in which each group might each gain a larger degree of self-governance. Meanwhile, in Anatolia, the Greek army had advanced inland as far as Kutahya, Eskishehir, and the Sakarya River. The Near East Relief evacuated Christian refugees from those war-torn regions and from the Caucasus. Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate admitted new waves of refugees—hundreds at a time. The Ohannessians were consumed with worry about Victoria’s family in Eskishehir and Tavit’s sister and brother. They had still not heard any news at all of their families’ whereabouts, in spite of repeated searches through the Red Cross and other channels. The newly independent Republic of Armenia—established on May 28, 1918—had also received hundreds of thousands of survivors and faced conflicts with the neighboring republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as the prospect of widespread famine. Turkish nationalist forces invaded Armenia in September of 1920, seeking to reclaim lands granted to the new nation by

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the Treaty of Sèvres, signed one month earlier. Attacked on multiple fronts, the young Armenian Republic acceded to Soviet Russia’s promises of protection, surrendered its autonomous status, and joined the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics on December 2, 1920. The Ohannessians left the vank at the end of 1921. After three years of living securely within the convent’s fortified walls, Tavit rented a small apartment in the Christian quarter of the Old City and the family vacated its room, to be occupied by a new generation of refugees. Victoria had loved living in the convent, so near to the cathedral and her friends, but she and Tavit were also driven by the urge to rebuild—not only the pottery works, but also an orderly, dignified life for their family. The Ohannessians and other refugees coped with bitter memories in varying ways. Some could not sleep without lights, others remained mute on the subject of their ordeals. Most survivors occupied themselves with finding work and getting enough food to nourish their children. Large numbers of women dressed in black; they had been widowed in the aghed, or catastrophe, as some were beginning to call it. For Jerusalem’s exiled guests—the zuwaar— life itself was a form of mourning. No one could ever forget what he had suffered, and for many, the cry, “we are poor and burning” served as a kind of litany. But the refugees possessed no words large enough to encompass the murder of a parent or a husband, the loss of an ancestral farm, or the theft of the future a family had imagined for itself. The central task before them all, difficult enough, was simply to live—to rebuild homes in new places, to marry and have children, and to remain tied to their community—although even that was unbearable for some. The church remained at the center of the refugees’ existence. Religious services, the consolations of community and ritual, and the liturgical calendar—all of these gave shape and hope to shattered lives. As Tavit wrote in a letter to the Patriarch, the Armenian church was “the sole institution still remaining alive from the glorious heritage of our past.”113 In Jerusalem, Ohannessian would harness every whit of his ingenuity, the full scope of his technical knowledge, and his relentless drive to keep the historic Anatolian Armenian ceramics tradition alive as well. Palestine’s violent disturbances—at the Nebi Musa festival in 1920 and in Jaffa in 1921—reinforced the urgency for the British to demonstrate in concrete terms

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their stated principle of “non-interference.” The civil administration—mostly Christian—whose Foreign Office had plainly stated its support for establishment of a Jewish national home, governed over an increasingly restive Arab population. The High Commissioner encouraged the formation of a Supreme Muslim Council that would function as a new authority over Islamic affairs in all of Palestine.114 That Council was founded on December 20, 1921, under the leadership of Jerusalem’s new Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. It would oversee the Wakfs and their revenues, the Sharia Court and its magistrates, and it would make appointments that were formerly the responsibility of the central Islamic authority in Constantinople—the Sheikh ul-Islam.115 What the Council could not do, however, was address the national concerns of Palestine’s religiously mixed Arab majority, whose bitter resentment of the British festered. Many Arab shop owners draped black banners over their storefronts each year on the anniversary of Balfour’s Declaration. The Supreme Muslim Council would also collaborate with the British administration over the restoration of the buildings on the Haram. Richmond was now preparing his report for publication. Ohannessian’s new tiles staved off further damage for the moment, but a full-scale tile restoration would have

Young men drawing designs on pottery, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, ca. 1921

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Ohannessian (left) supervising apprentice painters placed with him by the Near East Relief, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, ca. 1921

to wait until after the even more serious structural deterioration of the Aqsa Mosque had been addressed and adequate funds had been raised. By early 1922, pilgrims and other visitors were returning to Jerusalem in greater numbers. Commerce improved slowly, in spite of intermittent boycotts of Arab and Jewish businesses. Ohannessian’s agreements with the American Colony’s business arm opened access to new markets in the United States. The Near East Relief promoted products made by orphans under Tavit’s charge, placing order forms in the philanthropy’s American publications. Governor Storrs helped position the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop as a landmark for visitors. He often brought distinguished foreign guests and entered the shop, calling out in his operatic baritone, “Baron Ohannessian!” Sirarpi, who helped out in the studio after school, came to recognize the sound of his voice. Tavit enjoyed showing visitors around the works and practicing his English. Sometimes, he took special requests, painting names on plates or vases himself, charming his customers, who would return to collect them after they had been fired. Ashbee conceived new ways to feature Ohannessian’s artistry. When Princess Mary, daughter of King George V, married in Westminster Abbey in

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February of 1922, a group of Palestinian Muslims wished to present her with a gift in honor of the occasion. Governor Storrs commissioned a miniature faïence model of the Dome of the Rock on a ceramic platform on their behalf, which Ashbee designed and Ohannessian executed in rich shades of turquoise, moss green, cobalt blue, and ochre. With the resurgence of tourism, the economic climate for Jerusalem’s artisanal trades improved. One afternoon, Nishan Balian and Mgrditch Karakashian approached Ohannessian. They had decided that they did not wish to remain Ronald Storrs with Ohanas employees in his workshop and left imme- nessian’s Dome of the Rock diately to embark on their own partnership. ceramic model, ca. 1922 Takouhi Balian and another woman worker joined them. The two men rented a building on the Nablus road, outside the Old City, where they took on apprentices and later in 1922, founded Jerusalem’s second Armenian ceramics atelier. They named it the Palestine Pottery.116 Tavit trained others to replace them, drawing from the large pool of orphans and other refugees who had demonstrated aptitude for the work. Each of the young men and women placed with Ohannessian by the Near East Relief had endured devastating losses. Some had been old enough to have retained clear memories of their deportations. In quiet conversations, Tavit listened to their stories and shared with them that he, too, was a survivor. One boy, Krikor Zatikyan, was 7 or 8 years old when his family was attacked and exiled from Zeytun. He was the only remaining member of his clan. Slowly, he made his way east, eventually landing in the deportee settlement in Mosul, where he remained for a full year.117 The Near East Relief took control of the Mosul and Nahr Omar refugee camps in late 1921 and transferred hundreds of Armenian orphans and their adult caretakers from Mesopotamia to Jerusalem. In February of 1922, a caravan including eight hundred and sixteen orphans arrived at the Armenian convent, ragged and spent. Patriarch Yeghishe Tourian embraced the skeletal children, engaging every available resource on their behalf. For the priest and his community, these precious youngsters represented the

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Apprentices in Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, Krikor Zatikyan (front left) and Ohannessian (rear right), 1922

future of a reconstituted Armenian people. They were bathed, scrubbed, and fed, examined by doctors, and lodged in a number of facilities, including shelters outside the city. The Vasbouragan Orphanage, located in the Greek Orthodox monastery in the Valley of the Holy Cross and supported by the Armenian General Benevolent Union, became home to two hundred and fifty of the girls.118 Some of the orphans were adopted or taken permanently into local Armenian households. Most entered vocational training arranged by the Near East Relief. By March of 1922, Ohannessian had twenty apprentices indentured under his charge. Eventually, Krikor was housed and enrolled in classes at the Araradian Orphanage and had entered an apprenticeship at the Dome of the Rock Tiles. In his spare time, the music-loving young man also took up the tenor horn, joining his orphanage’s forty-piece brass band. In the summer of 1922, the structure of Palestine’s government transformed once again. The League of Nations drafted a Mandate, formalizing Great Britain’s sovereignty over Palestine and defining the terms of government and the judiciary, the rights of the religious communities, and the responsibilities “in connection with the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites in Palestine.” The Mandate included extensive provisions for the protection of

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Araradian band, Krikor Zatikyan (standing second row from the top, fifth from right), Jerusalem, 1922

antiquities and a reaffirmation of Lord Balfour’s declaration. The Council of the League of Nations confirmed the text on July 24.119 The Supreme Muslim Council had probed Richmond’s interest in serving as supervising architect for the restoration of the Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.120 After the previous years’ violent uprisings and swirling new rumors of Jewish plots to take over the Haram and tear down its monuments,121 Richmond declined, suggesting the Council hire a Muslim architect instead.122 In August, the Council invited Ahmet Kemalettin to come from Constantinople, assess the condition of the Haram buildings, and oversee the restoration. Kemalettin met with Ohannessian in Jerusalem. The two men discussed the various types of tile work needed, during a conference with the Director of Wakfs. The architect explained that he had known Ohannessian well in Constantinople and that the çiniçi had manufactured tiles for the repair of various mosques in his workshop in Kutahya. Kemalettin declared Ohannessian “competent to carry out the work and unequalled in his industry except by one in the whole world, and expressed his approval of the Agreement made between the Armenian and the Wakf.”123 Several months later, Kemalettin submitted his report to the Supreme Muslim Council. The powerfully worded statement stressed his reverence for

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Islam and his wonderment at the sacred structures on the Haram, particularly the Dome of the Rock. “Oh God, how incredible is the beauty with which You have endowed these holy premises and how great is the power of creativity You have inspired in the masterbuilders of Islam.”124 With the fall of the Young Turks and the Allied occupation of Constantinople, Kemalettin had lost both his position as the chief architect vested with the renovation of the great mosques as well as the Ottoman government commissions to create buildings in the revivalist style that he and Vedat Tek had pioneered. But the demise of these lofty roles had not diminished his nationalist and religious fervor in the least. In his report to the Council, he proclaimed, “Thank God the Islamic sanctity of the Haram has been protected from the multi-religious superstitions of Jerusalem by its surrounding walls.” He mused on the sixteenth-century recladding of the Dome of the Rock. “When the art of Islamic architecture and decoration reached its peak during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the care and restoration of the worn-out building were entrusted to Turkish artisans who, with great faith and skill, reestablished its decorative vocabulary along lines more suitable to the spirit of Islam.” Kemalettin expressed his disdain for previous restorations of the Dome of the Rock—the “wrong interventions in the past, which have brutally destroyed this magnificent Islamic attire of the Holy Temple.”125 Upon reflection, how could he possibly allow a Christian Armenian tile maker to reclothe this most sacred Islamic monument? Kemalettin asserted that the tiles should be manufactured by Turkish artisans in Kutahya and then transported to Jerusalem. The Mamur of Wakfs and the Chief Accountant of the Supreme Muslim Council were somewhat bewildered to hear the architect reverse himself so radically. Did Kemalettin not recognize that at present there was no tile industry in Kutahya, Constantinople, or Angora? Why not encourage and develop this useful trade in Palestine, where it would surely be needed in the future? And what of those tiles already made and paid for? The Council did not challenge the opinion of its esteemed architect, but significantly, it also did not disparage the tiles that Tavit and his artisans had already made.126 In any case, the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop had effected only a partial restoration and was removed from the huge project—a serious setback. Ashbee had returned to England in September of 1922, exasperated by politics and the waning influence of the Pro-Jerusalem Society. Richmond was serving

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as Assistant Civil Secretary to the new Mandatory Government, which, more than ever, needed to tread lightly around the sensitive question of the Aqsa Mosque renovations. But with the strong backing he had already received from Ashbee, Richmond, and Storrs, Ohannessian had built a capacious new kiln, established his firm on the Via Dolorosa, and by the end of 1922, filled it with gifted young potters, painters, and tile makers. Jerusalem’s Armenian ceramic art would soon burst into radiant bloom.

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Chap te r 8

Jerusalem II Th e F e a s t

On the sunny terrace behind 19 Via Dolorosa, Ohannessian, apron clad and mud spattered, crouched over wooden molds, tamping clay in preparation for a new series of tile panels. In 1923, the American Colony commissioned Tavit to embellish the entryway and garden of the commune’s estate in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, north of the Damascus Gate. Built by Rabba Hussayni Effendi, a patriarch of Jerusalem’s prominent dynasty, the lavish property had been acquired by the Christian sect’s leaders at the end of the nineteenth century.1 The grand mansion featured many bedrooms and an ornate reception chamber. Decades after the founding members’ messianic vision evanesced, the American Colony persisted in its utopian philanthropic work and nurtured commercial enterprises. As the group made no attempts to convert others to their unique strain of piety and had cared for wounded soldiers and the indigent during the Great War, the members had earned wide affection and respect in the city. The American Colony rented rooms to visitors and hosted parties for Jerusalem’s crème de la crème, attended by members of the influential Nashashibi and Hussayni families, High Commissioner Samuel and his wife, Governor Storrs, General Allenby, and Jewish and Arab luminaries. Charles Ashbee and his wife, Janet, had also been frequent guests before departing Jerusalem for England. Two members of the sect, Jacob Spafford and John D. Whiting, an accomplished photographer himself, served on the Pro-Jerusalem Society council. 189

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Whiting and Frederick Vester, another member of the commune, had recently taken over the shop near the Jaffa Gate and opened a New York City outlet that distributed Dome of the Rock Tiles products. For this, his first private commission in Jerusalem, Tavit designed panels with flowering vines and cypresses in shades of cobalt, turquoise, and green. Each of the sect’s members and distinguished guests would see Ohannessian’s tiles as they passed into the courtyard garden. He proudly added an Armenian inscription to one of the American Colony’s garden panels: “Made in Jerusalem in the year 1923 of Jesus Christ, Tavit Ohannessian.” Under the British Mandate’s guidelines, all new construction in Jerusalem was to be faced with the local limestone, to harmonize with the city's golden stone walls, domes, and whitewashed vaultings. As the government commissioned new buildings and affluent clients erected villas in the expanding neighborhoods outside the Old City’s bounds, Ohannessian’s vivid artistry set, in Governor Storrs’s words, “blue and green tiles glittering against the sober texture of her walls like chrysoprase and lapis lazuli.”2

American Colony entryway, Ohannessian tile panel

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Since the Ohannessians’ arrival in Jerusalem at the end of 1918, Tavit had approached every refugee-aid network for help in finding his sister and brother. Finally, one of Tavit’s inquiries reached Marik. In early 1923, she arrived in Jerusalem from Greece, having endured terrible ordeals along the way. After Marik’s exile from Mouradchai in August of 1915, she, her son, Hagop, and son-in-law, Paragham, had subsisted as laborers in central Anatolia, supporting her young grandson, Artin. When Paragham learned that an independent Republic of Armenia had been declared in 1918, he left the family to help build the new nation—as he had promised his wife on her deathbed. Paragham entrusted Artin’s care to Marik, who changed the boy’s last name to hers. Following Armistice, the climate for Greeks and Armenians who had remained in Anatolia deteriorated again, especially after the March 15, 1921, assassination of Talaat Pasha in Berlin by a young Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian.3 The Turkish military sought vengeance for the death of the deposed Young Turk leader. Under the command of Mustafa Kemal,4 the army commenced new rounds of deportations. Once again, gendarmes marched caravans of Greeks and Armenians toward the eastern wastelands.5 After Marik established correspondence with Tavit, she and Hagop, with little Artin, decided to make their way toward the port of Smyrna. From there, they could board a boat to Jaffa. In the summer of 1922, the three of them trekked west. On August 26, 1922, Kemal launched a full-bore attack on the Greek army, slaughtering five divisions and taking fifty thousand prisoners. Acknowledging defeat, the battered vestiges of the Greek forces retreated toward the Aegean coast. Hundreds of thousands of Christian refugees scrambled westward in their wake. As Marik and her family approached Smyrna in early September, panic swept the roads. Turkish soldiers and chetes assaulted and killed Greeks and Armenians and flagrantly violated young girls. In the city itself, looters smashed shop windows, pillaging goods. Tens of thousands of refugees—wealthy families of Orthodox Christian and Levantine merchants as well as impoverished villagers fleeing the interior—shared a single thought: to push through the crowds, reach the waterfront, and board any kind of steamship or fishing boat to get away. The entire quay and adjoining beaches were packed with people. Refugees abandoned their bundles and suitcases to better squeeze ahead. As they fought their way nearer the waterfront, Marik held Artin tightly. Hagop

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trailed behind. Bodies pressed against them from all directions. Shouting above the noise of the throng, they decided to aim for a Greek ship directly in front of them. Suddenly, as they approached the vessel, Marik felt her feet leave the ground. She was lifted on a wave of the densely packed crowd, all of them trying desperately to escape. Galvanized by alarm, she maneuvered her way toward the gangplank and climbed aboard, still gripping Artin. But when she looked back, her son was nowhere to be seen. As she recounted the events of that terrible day to Tavit and Victoria in the safety of their apartment, she wept. In the chaotic scene on the dock, Hagop, the last surviving one of her four children, must have been crushed to death or pushed into the water and drowned. From that time forward, Marik wore only black. The Greek ship deposited Marik and Artin in Athens—the two of them had managed to escape Smyrna before the Armenian and Greek quarters were consumed by flames. Nearly one hundred thousand refugees and Greek soldiers died in the catastrophe and perhaps as many again were beaten back into the interior, where they met cruel ends.6 In Athens, the Red Cross set up a medical center and information bureau in the former palace of King George I. There, refugees were given identification books enabling them to receive relief and could also peruse registers for information about missing relatives.7 Each day, long lines of seekers and new arrivals queued around the building, hoping to discover news of family members. Eventually, Marik learned the whereabouts of her older brother, Hagop, the namesake of her son. She also learned that Victoria’s niece and nephew, Takouhi and Stepan Markarian, had been swept from Eskishehir in the aftermath of the Greek withdrawal. Marik searched every refugee encampment in Athens, refusing to leave Greece until she had found them. Tavit sent money to pay for their fares to Jerusalem. As soon as the Ohannessians learned of the impending arrival of Marik, Artin, Hagop, Takouhi, and Stepan, they moved into a spacious, light-filled apartment with a veranda, on the second floor of a house on the Bethlehem road in Jerusalem’s New City suburb of Baqaʾa. They would be eleven altogether and Victoria was expecting again. A priest at Sourp Hagop introduced them to Hnazant, an orphaned fifteen-year-old girl who came to live with them and help with chores. Stepan Markarian joined the staff of the workshop. Tavit trained him as a wheel potter. Soon, he was able to rent his own apartment.

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Through the aid networks, Tavit also found his brother Karnig’s widow and son, who had resettled in Constantinople after leaving Eskishehir. He began to send them money regularly and paid school fees for his nephew, Onnig. Other Armenian families who had arrived at the same time and were successfully reviving their former trades also left the convent and rented apartments or built houses outside the Old City. In the Ohannessians’ new, mostly Arab neighborhood, fruit and vegetable sellers roved from door to door, balancing on their heads large flat baskets of beans, tomatoes, eggplants, grapes, and figs. Villagers brought cows and goats around in the early morning to supply households with milk. The Ohannessians kept chickens in the backyard, which also held a shed that a local butcher used to slaughter animals for the family’s needs. After the Jerusalem Electric Company established a Baqaʾa substation along the Bethlehem road, the Ohannessians purchased a refrigerator. Over time, Armenian and other New City families filled their parlors with upholstered furniture, family portraits, and pianos for their daughters’ music lessons. Ladies designated monthly “receiving days” and graciously served lemonade, cake, and chocolates on china plates with organdy napkins. Victoria always gave her children a bite to eat before visiting so they would never appear to be hungry. She was a deeply affectionate mother, a strict but gentle disciplinarian. She insisted that her sons and daughters always appear spotlessly tidy and well behaved in public. At the first hint of restlessness, a single raised eyebrow was enough to stop them in their tracks. The Ohannessians yearned to reconstitute a purposeful existence that might bridge the cataclysmic rupture of the recent past. The workshop’s Via Dolorosa location proved fortuitous. The studio stood on the holy way where Christ had carried his cross—a path every Christian pilgrim visited—near both the busy Damascus Gate and the Haram ash-Sharif. When visitors entered the building from the street, a vaulted passageway led to the small inner courtyard of the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, where the most accomplished wheel potters demonstrated their skills. With the simple movement of an index finger, one of these men might suddenly raise a vase into breathtaking form, seemingly by magic. Visitors delighted in watching this clay—the earth dug from the streambanks of the Holy Land itself—spring to life. On the left, a door opened into the main show room, where shoppers selected items from wooden shelves groaning with tightly packed stock.8

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Ohannessian family, Jerusalem, 1923 (left to right): Victoria, Mary, Ohannes, Sirarpi (holding a Bible), Vahé, Tavit

In a large room behind the street-level courtyard, the younger apprentices practiced creating perfectly symmetrical shapes from whirling lumps of clay, their quiet focus broken only by the hypnotic creak of the tread. For these boys, repetition led to mastery as well as powerful arm muscles. Next to the potting studio, a small room served as the packing center, stocked with straw, old newspapers, and a supply of wood for the shop’s carpenter to fashion into crates. Another workroom on the ground floor held the drawing tables—where artists sketched designs to be transferred onto tiles and pottery. From the ground-floor courtyard, a rickety staircase led to the upper-level showroom, where young women sat in rapt concentration, dipping the tips of their donkey-hair brushes into bowls of glaze mixture and filling in colors between the drawn black lines.9 Ohannessian’s most experienced designers and painters sometimes glazed an ochre initial on the back or bottom of the pottery. Ohannessian himself sometimes added a group of red glazed dots to the undersides of pieces—in reminiscence of the red dots that embellished the eighteenth-century biblical Kutahya tiles in Sourp Hagop Cathedral.

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Outdoors, on the upper terrace, apprentices pounded and punched the wet clay, preparing it for use. In the floor nearby, a round shaft gave entry into the immense kiln, lined with shelves. Tavit moved from one room to the next, observing, offering suggestions, corrections, and encouragement. Rising on the balls of his feet and gesturing with his hands, he exuded a taut energy. The Pro-Jerusalem Society had granted him £E500 to cover stipends for the advanced students and meals and supplies for all the apprentices.10 Tavit often painted and glazed tiles himself and almost always oversaw the whole process of firing, calculating just the right mix of olive and pine woods. Governor Storrs and his guests often asked Tavit to explain the secret of his craft. He replied that there was none. It was simply that each step had to be executed with the most meticulous care and attention.

Stencil pattern, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio

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Entranced by the sight of the artists at work, tourists ended their visits in the upstairs showroom, where they made their purchases of plates, tiles, mugs, pin boxes, and teapots. Tavit and his designers continuously expanded the line, drawing inspiration from historic forms and designs—apothecary jars, fluted Rakka ware, Persian planters, Sassanid horsemen, Crusader saints,11 and Armenian manuscript illuminations. One exceptionally popular motif adapted the design of a fifth- or sixth-century Armenian floor mosaic in a funerary chapel north of the Damascus Gate, rediscovered during an archeological excavation in 1894. The mosaic depicted a tree with forty birds, circled by vines emanating from an amphora, and in the center, a caged bird. An Armenian inscription crowned this image, one that was deeply meaningful for Tavit: “For the memory and salvation of all those Armenians whose names the Lord knows.” Finding fresh supplies of the potting clays and other materials needed to produce Ohannessian’s characteristic concentrated hues remained the critical challenge in 1923. Ashbee had suggested importing kaolin from Cornwall, but Ohannessian preferred to keep searching for it locally. However, it was easy to overfire Palestine’s indigenous raw materials, resulting in colors that ran. In Anatolia, Tavit’s most characteristic tile panels had boasted milky-white backgrounds. But the oldest tiles Richmond had identified on the Dome of the Rock—the products of Tabrizi artists—featured cuerda seca tiles with deep blue and turquoise backgrounds, citron yellow outlines, and arabesques. Apart from the yellow glazes, using antimony, for which Tavit had not yet found a good source, intense blue or green backgrounds on white-washed pottery posed a possible solution to the challenge of the local iron-infused clay.12 But even with a thick coating of slip, ruddy tones often seeped through white backgrounds, rendering them pink or ochre instead. A year earlier, the Mandatory Government’s Department of Technical Education had hired geologist George Stanfield Blake to survey Palestine’s natural resources, searching for groundwater, aquifers, as well as stone to supply the Public Works Department’s vision for expansive construction.13 The renewal of the Holy City combined with the rapid rise Dome of the Rock Tiles ceramics

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in eastern European immigration necessitated the construction of many new homes, schools, and municipal buildings .14 For a colonial administration hungry for resources, Blake’s expertise was much in demand. Ohannessian wedged himself into the queue for the Geologic Advisor’s attention and presented his list of needed minerals. So far, in Palestine, he had not found suitable replacements for the nearly exhausted supplies from Kutahya. The Pro-Jerusalem Society was planning to display the studio’s work in the upcoming British Empire Exhibition. Although Tavit was not to attend himself, he hoped to forge connections with potential European distributors. The studio could add workers and increase production, if only if he could procure suitable materials. Blake visited the Dome of the Rock and the Haram Museum with Richmond and the Mufti in January of 1924, and sent white and blue glaze and tile body samples to England for microscopic analyses.15 Although Ohannessian was no longer involved in the Dome’s restoration, he followed the scientific investigation closely, hoping to discover technical secrets of the historic tiles and glazes. Two more British architects arrived in Jerusalem in 1922, Austen St. Barbe Harrison and Clifford Holliday. Each would incorporate Ohannessian’s tiles into his works. Harrison—the new chief architect of the Mandatory Public Works Department—studied the classic Beaux Arts tradition during his training in Montreal and London. But in the two years before his arrival, he had worked in Greece, reconstructing sites damaged in the Balkan Wars.16 There, the young designer fell in love with the sunlit landscape and the iconic domed cubes of Mediterranean architectural style. He adopted the philosophy that structures must harmonize with their physical environments, employ local methods of construction, and, whenever possible, use native materials.17 Harrison’s aesthetic sense was also shaped by his research into Byzantine and Islamic architecture and his familiarity with the decorative arts and iconography of Islam’s medieval golden age. He stayed abreast of the latest archeological digs and traveled throughout the Levant to scrutinize and sketch historic structures.18 One of Harrison’s first Public Works Department assignments was the design of the Palestine and Cyprus Pavilion for the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley, a London suburb. The architect’s plan for the hall, a block-like structure with arched window frames and two domes resting on octagonal drums, alternated dark and light horizontal stone courses. Bold lettering on all

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sides proclaimed: “Palestine—Mandated Territory.” The Pro-Jerusalem Society planned to feature Ohannessian’s ceramics at the exhibition. Clifford Holliday, a twenty-five-year-old architect, succeeded Ashbee as Civic Advisor to the Pro-Jerusalem Society and continued restorations of the Old City walls, gates, and citadel. Governor Storrs praised Holliday for maintaining “the architectural style of the Old City by preserving flat roofs, vaults, domes, street arches, abutments and buttresses, and by prohibiting asbestos sheets, Marseilles tiles, and corrugated iron.”19 Like Ashbee and Harrison, Holliday sought to preserve the Holy City in an idealized image of its past. Ohannessian’s tile art, perfected during the brief flowering of architectural revivalism before the Great War and itself an embodiment of the storied Ottoman legacy, harmonized perfectly with this vision.

On January 25, 1924, Victoria gave birth to her fifth child. Tavit and Victoria named their daughter Hermine and christened her at St. James Cathedral, with Tavit’s brother Hagop standing as godfather. While Victoria recuperated, Hnazant helped care for the other children, taking them out to play in nearby fields. The children jumped rope and made paper kites with young friends from the neighborhood—one pair of sisters spoke only Spanish, other friends taught them words in Arabic and learned Armenian in exchange. Marik missed having a proper garden but had lined the veranda with pots and old kerosene tins and raised flowers and tangy herbs, much as she had done in Mouradchai. Tavit’s sister was a small woman, made sturdy by a lifetime of farming. The children took note of her heavy stride, severe black dresses, and straight, dark, center-parted hair pulled tightly into a bun. At first, they didn’t know how to interpret her stern appearance, but soon recognized that she was exceedingly kind. From time to time, Marik consulted one of Jerusalem’s many fortune-tellers, hoping to learn what had become of her son on that terrible day in Smyrna. On occasion, Horkour, as the Ohannessian children affectionately called their father’s sister,20 would invite one of her nieces or nephews into her room. She would pull out the small box she stored under her high frame bed, unlocking it to extract a worn envelope of faded photos. She recounted the life and occupation of each person. Sometimes after telling these stories, she fell silent. The children knew it was then time to leave her in peace. They had come to

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recognize this state because occasionally, such clouds of sadness fell over their father as well. Only rarely, and most often solely in the company of other survivors, did he and the other adults speak of these things. Then, the children might catch the words chart, massacre, or aghed, the catastrophe. Marik did not speak of these things to her nieces and nephews, but enchanted them instead with colorful accounts of the old country, the escapades of their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and many cousins, and tales of the hard work of growing fruit, harvesting crops, and preserving food for the cold winter months. Horkour made her village—their father’s birthplace—come alive for her nieces and nephews, who grew to love her dearly. Tourists and pilgrims returned to Jerusalem in even greater numbers in 1924, as did diplomats and heads of state. Immigration burgeoned as well. In addition to the thousands of Jewish settlers fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe or answering the Zionist call, the Armenian Patriarchate received new surges of refugees in the wake of the Turkish nationalist war. Twenty thousand Armenian exiles had reached Palestine during the war years.21 Some ultimately resettled in America or Europe. Others planted themselves permanently in the Holy Land. In the years following the Great War, thousands of Armenians, including orphans, left the Patriarchate for the refugee settlement in Port Said, Egypt. From there, they dispersed throughout the world, following relatives or seeking jobs in cities with established Armenian communities. The Armenian Patriarch, Yeghishe Tourian, sought permanent homes and positions for as many of the orphans as possible. Years of caring for huge numbers of impoverished survivors had depleted the convent’s coffers. Sometimes, though, unexpected opportunities arose. In April of 1924, Ras Tafari Makonnen, Regent of Ethiopia,22 embarked on a diplomatic grand tour of Europe and the Levant.23 As Easter approached, the Crown Prince stopped in Jerusalem. Many Ethiopians, like Armenians, had adopted Christianity in the fourth century and had established a permanent presence in the Holy City as early as the twelfth century. Armenians had settled in Ethiopia as well—Addis Ababa, the capital, was home to about a thousand of them. Sourp Hagop stood on Ras Tafari’s route of the Holy Places. The Araradian band stood in wait for him inside the convent gate. When the Crown Prince entered, the boys burst into a royal fanfare, playing horns, clarinets, trumpets, and drums. One witness recalled that Ras Tafari approached the cathedral in pious humility, moving slowly on his knees. He greeted the orphans with tears and

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kisses.24 Later, when the Patriarch explained more fully the plight of the young musicians, the Crown Prince was so moved that he negotiated an agreement to bring the forty boys—between 12 and 18 years old—and their director, Kevork Nalbandian, to Addis Ababa, where they would serve as the imperial brass band. In Ethiopia, both the band and the new settlement they were to occupy would be called Arba-Lijoc—“Forty Children” in Amharic. In August, Tavit’s apprentice, Krikor Zatikyan, a hornist in the band, chose to depart with the group. He bade his fellow potters farewell and took with him a plate he had painted, inscribed in Armenian, “Remembrance of Jerusalem 1924.”25 After two years of planning, the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley—a sprawling array of national pavilions, cinemas, amusement rides, and restaurants, acclaimed by the British press as the largest and most significant exposition since 1851—opened on April 23, 1924.26 Touted by King George V as a gathering of the Empire’s “family of nations,” the fair attracted nearly seventeen million visitors the first season. Eight million more attended when the fair resumed in 1925.27 After a slow start, the Palestine Pavilion drew large crowds, and Pro-Jerusalem’s booth, near the entrance, placed Ohannessian’s wares within sight of all visitors. Jaffa oranges, Bethlehem mother-of-pearl, and Jerusalem ceramics sold briskly. Ohannessian’s apprentices packed several hundred pieces of pottery and tiles for the initial display but needed to replenish the stock with dramatically larger quantities in subsequent months. The Dome of the Rock Tiles pottery gained the distinction of a Gold Medal, and Pro-Jerusalem representatives in Wembley helped secure distribution throughout the United Kingdom. Austen Harrison’s second architectural commission through the Mandatory Works Department incorporated Ohannessian’s tiles. Transjordan, the region east of the Jordan River, came under British Mandatory supervision in 1920 and was recognized in 1923 by the League of Nations. Lord Herbert Plumer, who succeeded Herbert Samuel as High Commissioner in 1925, commissioned Harrison to design a residence for the British Representative in the city of Amman. Harrison used the opportunity to experiment in traditional building methods, including stone vaulting and iwans—domed structures open on one side—following a plan reminiscent of the Çinili Kiosk, the fifteenth-century Ottoman pavilion in the Topkapi Palace.28 Ohannessian created tiles to line the deep window recesses in the Residence. Ohannessian’s pottery gained further international exposure in 1925, when his ceramics were exhibited in Paris at the Exposition internationale des arts

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décoratifs et industriels modernes. The fair, emphasizing architecture and the decorative arts, ran from April through October of 1925, and attracted sixteen million attendees. The Pro-Jerusalem Society featured Ohannessian’s ceramics as part of the Palestine crafts display in the British Empire Pavilion. The fair’s profusion of paintings, furnishings, sculpture, graphic design, ceramics, and jewelry shared an emphasis on ornamentation, and gave rise to a new term, “Art Déco.”29 Ohannessian’s rhythmic, geometric adaptations of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century plant motifs harmonized with the reigning European modernist tastes and sold well. The Paris exposition led to Ohannessian’s first European private commission since arriving in Jerusalem. Maurice Blotière, a textile industrialist from the northern French city of Corbie, and his elegant young wife avidly collected art

Ohannessian at work, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, ca. 1930s

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from the Far East. They had recently remodeled their home, creating a new hall, and wished to line it with tile panels. Tavit executed fifteen large dado panels using designs drawn from the Rustem Pasha Mosque and Topkapi Palace. Palestine’s unforgiving environment posed constant challenges for the ceramic makers. After an exceptionally dry winter, a catastrophic drought afflicted the city in the spring and summer of 1925 and threatened agricultural production, building construction, and Ohannessian’s studio, which normally consumed large quantities of water. Governor Storrs instituted rationing, importing trainloads of water pumped from surrounding Arab farming villages.30 Ohannessian’s increasingly critical search for materials continued through the water famine. The Geological Advisor submitted samples of the local quartz to the Imperial Institute in London for chemical analysis. The results came back in January of 1926: the silica content registered at 95.9 percent of the sample. “It will be seen that the percentage of silica is lower, and the percentages of ferric oxide and lime are higher, than is usually considered desirable in glass sands of first-class quality. . . . The most important impurity in this quartz is ferric oxide.”31 The result confirmed what the ceramicists had already concluded—Palestinian quartz contained too much iron to make a perfectly colorless glaze. Blake needed more time to survey the other needed materials, but it was clear that Tavit needed to look abroad for supplies. Austen St. Barbe Harrison often visited the Via Dolorosa workshop to chat with Ohannessian and watch the potters at work. The architect sketched stencil patterns incorporating romantic imagery drawn from Islamic, Crusader, and Indian lore. Harrison had spent two memorable months in New Delhi before arriving in Palestine.32 Tavit helped translate the architect’s schemes onto tiles and vases and experimented along the same lines himself, using characteristic figures from Armenian illuminated manuscripts and religious history. Ohannessian also nurtured relations with a variety of local domestic architects, some of whose careers were reviving in the aftermath of the war. New opportunities appeared as building projects boomed in the mid-1920s. Architect Spyro G. Houris had moved to Palestine from Egypt around 1910. Born in 1883 in Alexandria,33 and of the Greek Orthodox faith, he was almost exactly Tavit’s age

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and like him had reached professional maturity in the Ottoman milieu. Houris, a high-ranking Freemason in the Grand Lodge of Palestine, cultivated bonds with some of Jerusalem’s most affluent businessmen. In 1924, he completed an imposing, three-story porticoed villa in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for the renowned writer and educator Issaf Nashashibi.34 The architect capped the porches, windows, and gateposts with Ohannessian’s tiles. The following year, a wealthy Arab quarry owner, Hajj Mahmud, commissioned Houris to design an apartment building on the Jaffa road. The resulting three-story structure featured a mix of Eastern and Western architectural elements. Ohannessian underlined the upper-story windows with rows of tiled Koranic inscriptions and inset ceramic roundels glazed with rumis and arabesques—designs the Kutahya artists had used frequently for Constantinople boat landings and the Sirkeci Post Office interior court. Across the upper façade of the apartment house, the architect installed broad spans of Ohannessian’s repeating blue and white tiles, featuring the same split lotus design that characterized much of the Dome of the Rock tiling. In 1926, Elias Thomas Gelat, scion of a distinguished Arab Catholic family, and Hajj Mahmud’s partner in a prosperous crushed-stone and road-building company, commissioned Houris to build a palatial villa in the New City neighborhood of Talbiyeh. Houris employed characteristic features of Mamluk construction—zigzag parapet crenellations, ablaq quoins, pierced stone balustrades, and arched window frames in alternating rose and white stone. The Villa Gelat featured rows of Ohannessian’s rich blue and green tiles, and inset square, diamond, and medallion tiles in the same bright colors. A small turret, reaching upward into hexagonal white stone capitals, crowned the entire house. All four sides of this topmost structure were entirely covered with tiles in shades of cobalt, turquoise, green, and ochre—the Dome of the Rock’s lotus flower and leaf motifs, interlaced with palmettes. Elias Gelat, like Ohannessian, had endured dire hardships during the Great War; he had been conscripted by the Turkish army into a labor battalion and had lost a brother to typhus. But eight years after the war ended, Gelat had transformed himself into one of Jerusalem’s most successful entrepreneurs. Ohannessian collaborated with another domestic architect in 1926, Maurice Gisler, a Swiss clergyman who was also an archeologist. Father Gisler planned a spacious three-story home, also in Talbiyeh, for his longtime friend, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat, the European-educated son of a prominent Jerusalem family

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and an expert in agricultural engineering. The stone mansion, Villa Harun arRashid, would accommodate multiple generations of the Bisharat clan, which had rebounded from a penury inflicted by the war.35 Inscribed tiles announced the name of the house in both Arabic and English. Other clients soon followed, especially among those who were commissioning Houris and his brother-in-law, architect Nikephoros Petassis.36 Several more ceramic-embellished homes rose in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Talbiyeh, where fields of olive trees were giving way to new houses. In spite of the demands of the workshop, Tavit took enormous pleasure in his growing family. He rose early every morning and brought his wife a cup of tea in bed. The tinkling sound of Victoria’s spoon stirring sugar into her glass teacup signaled the start of the day for the youngest children, who slept in the bedroom next to their parents’. Tavit then went back to the kitchen and helped organize breakfast, while the children washed and dressed for school—St. George’s Anglican School for the boys and St. Gayantiants in the convent for the girls. At each seat along the dining table, Victoria and Hnazant placed a plate with a thick slice of buttered bread cut into squares, topped with chunks of Victoria and Hermine Ohannessian, white cheese. Horkour laid out her fruit 1925 preserves. As Tavit hefted a tray loaded with brimming cups of tea and set one down near each plate, he called out loudly enough to be heard throughout the roomy apartment, “The teas are ready!” and the family gathered for the first meal of the day. If a child was feverish, Tavit would not leave for work until he had squeezed a glass of orange juice for him, soothed a hot brow with damp towels, and bundled up his son or daughter in woolens, to sweat out the illness. The children adored their “Baba.” Although Victoria insisted that her family behave with utmost propriety while away from home, life inside the Ohannessian household was boisterous and playful. Victoria called Tavit “Baba” as well, but if the booming volume of every other family member drowned out her very soft voice,

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she would turn to the nearest person and say, “Tell Baba to . . . ” That person would yell, “Baba! Mama is talking to you!” whereupon Tavit would walk over to learn what Victoria wanted. Tavit affectionately called his wife “Mama” or “Mayrig,” and on those rare occasions when Victoria went out on her own, he paced the floor, repeatedly looking at his pocket watch and asking, “Where in the world is this woman?” Weekends were filled with extended family dinners at home or large group picnics. Tavit relished time spent with his family in Palestine’s sunshine and fresh air and among the scenic mountains and springs outside Jerusalem. The household eagerly awaited St. Vartan’s and other saints’ feast days. The family would attend services in the vank, and afterward the whole community gathered in nearby woods or fields to cook harissa—grain stews with meat—in giant cauldrons. Men brought out zurnas and drums, and the whole crowd ate and danced and sang together for hours on end, as many of them had once done in their native Anatolian towns. Tavit’s clients often asked how many children he had. In his typically preoccupied and good-humored way, he’d reply, “Er—Sirarpi, Vahé, Ohannes, Mary, Hermine—that makes five!”

Ohannessian family, Jerusalem, 1925 (left to right): Vahé, Mary, Hermine, Tavit, Ohannes, Sirarpi

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On May 26, 1926, attended at home by the same woman doctor who had delivered Hermine, Victoria gave birth to a little girl, her sixth child, whom she and Tavit named Alice. One month later, they presented their daughter to be christened at St. James Cathedral. Father Israelian asked what name they would give the child. Tavit hesitated for a moment, looked down, then replied boldly, “Fimi.” “Alice” had completely slipped his mind! Tavit and Victoria’s sixth child would be known as Fimi Alice Ohannessian. Later that summer, the British Foreign Office proposed and Ronald Storrs accepted the position of Governor of Cyprus. After a brief sojourn in England, he returned to Palestine to prepare for his departure. “I had always dreaded the day when I should have to leave Jerusalem, but the reality was sharper than I had ever dreamed.” On November 24, 1926, five days before boarding a boat in Jaffa, Storrs presided over the very last Pro-Jerusalem Society meeting and reviewed its accomplishments. The Governor took a special pride in the success of the ceramics industry and had commissioned tiles from Ohannessian for the chapel in St. George’s Anglican Cathedral to commemorate his family.37 As he disbanded the Pro-Jerusalem Society, Storrs recounted, “The experimental work in dyeing and weaving was wound up, but the ceramic factory was gradually put on a firm financial footing, the Government grant was withdrawn, more workers were employed, the output was increased and Jerusalem pottery was exported to England and America, where it has permanent agencies, and to France. During the last six months over one thousand pounds’ worth of pottery has been sold, and inquiries have reportedly been received from America for an order amounting to £E10,000. The number of persons employed is thirty and the factory is fitted with mechanical flint crushing and clay mixing machinery, a good kiln, and has ten rooms.” Storrs reported that “All the streets both in the Old and New City have been named. Suitable ceramic plates made by the Bezalel School of Arts have been erected in the New City, and a complete set for the Old City made in the Society’s ceramic factory, some of which are already in position.38 The Governor concluded his final Pro-Jerusalem report by specifying how the Society’s remaining properties would be distributed. “The ceramic factory will be controlled entirely by the present manager, Mr. D. Ohannessian, and the Society will cancel all sums paid for machinery, fittings, fixtures, and rent.”39

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Storrs felt a wrenching sense of loss as he left Jerusalem after nearly nine years. “For me, Jerusalem stood and stands alone among the cities of the world. There are many positions of greater authority and renown within and without the British Empire, but in a sense I cannot explain, there is no promotion after Jerusalem.”40 The Pro-Jerusalem Society had given Ohannessian invaluable support in his first years in the city, allowing him time to experiment and adapt, providing funds for the sustenance of the orphans put under his charge, and marketing his wares at the Society’s exhibitions in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and internationally. But the commercial acumen, professional cordiality, technical expertise, and artistic sensibility that Ohannessian refined in his years of owning a successful workshop in Kutahya had been integral to his success as well. Tourists recommended the Via Dolorosa shop to their friends. Memoirists and travel writers lauded the pottery works in their publications. Antique- or curiosity-shop owners on pilgrimages, surprised to discover this distinctive Jerusalem art, placed large orders to be sent after them by freighter.

Neither Victoria nor Tavit had recovered entirely from the physical toll and illnesses of 1916 and 1917. Victoria was especially vulnerable to exhaustion or pneumonia in the coldest months. In the winter, Tavit rented rooms for her in towns that were at sea level or below and thus more temperate than Jerusalem. He and the children joined her on most weekends. In Ramleh, the family took rooms at the Armenian Convent, and in Jericho, the Ohannessians stayed in the farmhouse of some White Russians who owned an orange orchard. Friends from Jerusalem often visited and the families would hike together to the Mount of Temptation. At the New Year, Tavit sent large baskets of oranges freshly plucked from the orchard to his architect patrons and friends. In the mid-1920s, Tavit inaugurated a new summer tradition. Together with two other families, he hired a bus for moonlight drives to the Dead Sea. Tavit had taught his children all the songs he knew, especially those he had learned from Father Gomidas in Kutahya, and the journeys were filled with singing. When the families arrived, the youngsters would race into the water, where, they discovered, it was impossible to sink. Emerging from the water, the swimmers found themselves caked with a layer of bitter-tasting white salt

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and ravenous for the feast of meats, breads, olives, cheeses, halvah, dates, and grapes that Victoria and the other mothers laid out on blankets. Everyone ate to his heart’s content and eventually fell asleep on the beach, returning home early the next morning. On July 11, 1927, a violent tremor lasting seven seconds rocked Palestine and Transjordan. International headlines pronounced, “1,000 Dead in Quake; Ruin Widespread in Palestine Area.” The shocks radiated westward from Jericho, toppling hundreds of buildings in Jerusalem and ravaging the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. “The Dome of the Rock,” the New York Times reported on July 14, “was badly shaken and the many repairs of recent years were rendered useless.”41 Masonry dislodged from the tower of the Augustus Victoria Government House. The falling stones crushed one servant and the whole building was declared unsafe. Thousands of families slept in the open afterward, some fearing further shocks and others because they had been left homeless.42 The Ohannessians were fortunate—neither home nor studio was seriously damaged. After the disaster, the need for major new structures gave the Mandate’s British architects opportunities to enlarge their aesthetic imprint in Palestine. The resulting buildings blended the domes and vaulting of indigenous building practices with Beaux Arts or Modernist elements. Austen St. Barbe Harrison, who had been in talks with the Mandatory Administration and the British Foreign Office about designing a new High Commissioner’s Residence before the quake, received final approval for his Government House plan in August of 1928. He sited the grand, fortress-like stone edifice on a hill south of the Old City that commanded sweeping views of Jerusalem and the Judaean Desert. At the far end of the imposing ballroom and receiving chamber, Ohannessian’s majestic tiled fireplace blended motifs from the Rustem Pasha and Yeni Valide Mosques in fresh configurations of lush blues and greens. On the lower right, he added a signature tile in Armenian script: “Made by the hand of T. Ohannessian in the calendar of Christmastime 1930 in Jerusalem.” Clifford Holliday, who had established a private architecture practice upon the dissolution of the Pro-Jerusalem Society in 1926, incorporated Ohannessian’s tile work into three private commissions. The British and Foreign Bible Society

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purchased a plot of land across from the municipality building and engaged Holliday to design new headquarters. As construction of the five-story building neared completion in 1927,43 Ohannessian created a wide band of tiles to line the arched entryway in purely geometric designs, reminiscent of Andalusian mosaic tile work. Not since the designs created by Kutahya çiniçis to adorn the exterior of the Sirkeci Post Office and restore tiled Seljuk buildings in Konya had Ohannessian produced solely geometric surface tiling.44 In May of 1927, Holliday was hired to perform repairs and design a new wing for the khan of St. John Ophthalmic Hospital. The Turkish army had used it as an ammunition dump and had blown it up just before its retreat in late 1917. Holliday decorated the courtyard iwan with three tiled walls and a mosaic ceiling in the form of the eight-pointed Maltese cross. Ohannessian covered the curving surface of the rear wall with aqua-colored tiles. To the left and right, elaborate tiled triptychs featured a central cypress tree laced by vines and bunches of grapes in cobalt and rust. On either side, saz leaves and feathery palmettes emerged from an amphora, wreathed with blue tulips— motifs drawn from the Yeni Valide Mosque. Ohannessian inscribed the initials of the project’s patron, Lady Hunter-Watson.45 On the opposite side of the Hebron road, Holliday planned a much larger project—St. Andrew’s Scottish Memorial Church—commissioned to honor soldiers lost in the Great War. The new chapel and guest house would sit high on a hill overlooking the Mount of Olives and the Judaean Desert. Holliday commissioned Ohannessian to create two works—a pair of benches and a tiled fountain. Tavit designed a fountain, on the far side of a terrace, in the form of a mihrab with inset molded muqarnas tiles in solid turquoise. Bands of border tiles arched around the central panel of this fountain niche, the outer rows in a lapis blue with a repeating pattern that alternated quatrefoils and blossoms in shades of green and aqua, a pattern Tavit had observed in some of the oldest tiles on the Dome of the Rock. For the path leading to the guest house, Holliday designed a pair of facing benches with a tiled niche, each set under a stone arch.46 In 1928—the tenth anniversary of his arrival in Jerusalem—Ohannessian deepened his ties to the city. Upon the termination of the Pro-Jerusalem Society, he had been granted complete control of his studio. Thereafter, he entered negotiations to purchase the building, agreeing to a price of two thousand gold pounds for the property at 19 Via Dolorosa.47 He and Victoria had continued

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their frugal ways in Jerusalem, and so in spite of the considerable financial support Tavit provided for his extended family, he had saved enough to pay eleven hundred and fifty pounds in cash. Barclay’s Bank mortgaged the remainder of his purchase. A secretary at the Jerusalem Land Registry inscribed Ohannessian’s name and entered the purchase of the twenty-four shares allotted to the property into Volume 24, Folio 59, of the records—a moment of tremendous pride for the whole family. In the same year, he designed and executed a tiled altar in the courtyard of the Armenian Church of St. Saviour,48 just outside the Zion Gate, as a donation to his community. Ohannessian conceived it as a personal statement, expressed by means of an inscribed dedication tile as well as the patterns, forms, and motifs he chose to employ. Nestled under a vaulted portico on a raised stone platform, a broad ceramic arch surrounded the carved marble holy table. Perpendicular wings, covered with tiles, projected from the rear wall. Ohannessian covered the face of the arch with repeating cloud-shaped medallions, bouquets of tulips, and sprays of almond blossoms in a sumptuous array of cobalt, turquoise, viridian, and sky blue on a luminous white background. The scalloped inner edge of the arch gently echoed the form of the many mihrabs Tavit had tiled during his years in Kutahya. The wings featured panels in diverse designs. Ohannessian employed the cusped roundels with which the Kutahya çiniçis had covered broad surfaces in Prince Muhammed Ali Tewfik’s Manial Palace in Cairo. He covered another panel with a repeating pattern of tulips, hyacinths, peonies, pomegranate blossoms, and carnations inspired by the tiled walls of Shezade Mustafa’s Tomb in Brussa. Ohannessian, the Minassians, and Mehmet Emin had used this arrangement frequently in Kutahya—inside the Government House and for Mark Sykes’s Turkish bath cooling room. Other motifs recalled the tiling of the Rustem Pasha Mosque, which continued to inhabit Tavit’s memory and imagination. The arch projected from the wall against which the altar had been built; tiles lined the perpendicular inner surface. On the right side, Ohannessian painted an elaborate inscription in Classical Armenian: David Ohannessian of Kutahya, in the year of the Lord 1919, established the art of ceramics in Jerusalem, and in his workshop prepared the tiles of this holy altar, dedicated at the gate of St. Saviour Monastery in memory of his parents and all the deceased, in the year of the Lord 1928, during the patriarchate of Archbishop Yeghishe Tourian.

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Tavit covered the tiled inner surface of the arch with the same deep blue flowering arabesque motif that covered much of the Dome of the Rock—the monument that had led him to Jerusalem. Each Sunday, he also saw a variation of this pattern in the thousands of Kutahya tiles that lined the walls of St. James Cathedral, with one important difference—those tiles incorporated small quatrefoil crosses in the same cobalt blue as the floral design. But on this altar, donated in memory of his parents and all the others lost, Tavit painted the crosses in the funereal black of mourning. Around the city and its suburbs, Armenian families thrived. On February 2, 1929, in the French hospital, Victoria delivered her seventh child—a boy named Garbis, in tribute to her father, Garabed. By now, many former refugees had rebuilt their trades in Palestine. Patriarch Yeghishe Tourian inaugurated ambitious construction projects within the convent—a library named for benefactor Calouste Gulbenkian and a new building for Holy Translators, or Sourp Tarkmanchats, the successor school to St. Gayianants. Tourian revitalized the Armenian printing

Archbishop Mesrop Neshanian before Ohannessian’s tiled Memorial Altar, St. Saviour, Jerusalem

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press—originally established in 1833—and resumed publication of a monthly journal called Sion.49 Tavit involved himself in the life of the convent, contributing to fund-raising campaigns and maintaining friendly relations with the clergy. He followed the progress of the Gulbenkian Library and offered the archbishop critical advice regarding construction budgets and contracts. The younger Ohannessian girls attended Holy Translators School, where they studied modern and Classical Armenian, Armenian history, English, world history, science, and mathematics.50 Sirarpi, now eighteen years old and recognized as a gifted student, matriculated at Jerusalem Girls’ College. Victoria’s niece, Takouhi, left the family home to marry Krikor Vartanian, who had been orphaned in the massacres and had become a master draftsman in Ohannessian’s workshop. Horkour’s grandson, Artin, boarded at Schneller’s School, studying to become an electrician. Tavit’s older brother, Hagop, had moved to Cairo, where he opened a small shop, selling cigarettes, pipes, and matches. In August of 1929, new rounds of riots escalated into lethal brutality over access to the Wailing Wall, the latest manifestation of tensions over increasing Zionist immigration and the most violent to date. The disturbances spread from the Haram throughout the Old City and to other cities in Palestine. In the course of a week more than two hundred and fifty people were killed and six hundred seriously injured. British police quelled the rioters, wounding scores of Arab protesters in the process. Businesses shuttered and families barricaded themselves in their homes.51 The widespread violence in the Old City terrified the Ohannessians, for whom each outbreak of brutality rekindled painful memories and triggered a powerful impulse to shield their children from the terrifying scenes.

In early 1931, the Mandate’s Geological Adviser, George Blake, finally provided some answers to the ceramists’ inquiries about materials. And Blake’s survey shed light on the reasons why a glazed tile art like the one Ohannessian had practiced in Kutahya may have failed to take root in Palestine in previous centuries.52 The geologist detailed his findings: he had found neither chromium nor antimony in Palestine, nor had he found red and yellow ochres of the type Ohannessian required. 53 Blake had found a bed of quartz pure enough to be used for glaze, but it was too hard to be crushed readily.

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However, one sentence in the report dealt a severe blow to Tavit’s hopes of someday finding in Palestine the precious white china clay that had given Anatolian ceramics their inimitable glow: “There is no kaolin known in Palestine and although white clay exists it is usually calcareous and is not free from iron.”54 Twelve years after his first experiments in Jerusalem, Ohannessian had adapted to Palestine’s available materials, augmented with imports, but Blake’s report confirmed that Tavit could never achieve the standards he sought using purely local supply. And so, as the demand for pottery and new commissions from private clients continued to surge, Tavit pored over regional trade journals until he found a suitable agent in Istanbul—as Constantinople was now called— to act on his behalf and procure the materials he needed. Kapriel Kellicyan traveled to localities around Kutahya and the Black Sea region to prospect for clay samples and send them to Jerusalem. When Tavit deemed the quality acceptable, he ordered several tons at a time, to be shipped by freighter from Haydarpasha Terminal to Jaffa. For Ohannessian, major international fairs represented a chance to sell large volumes of goods and to meet foreign distributors and patrons. For visitors, they offered tactile encounters with exotic cultures and artifacts. The Mandatory Authority planned to build a Palestine Pavilion at the Paris Colonial Exhibition of 1931. This time, Tavit would attend, paying his own way. Before he left for Europe, Tavit met with Archbishop Kushakdjian, who asked him to conduct a private mission: to visit Gomidas Vartabed, who had resided in the Villejuif Psychiatric Hospital since August of 192255 and gauge whether the much-loved priest might wish to move to Jerusalem to spend his final years among his own people. Tavit accepted this solemn task as he prepared for his departure. The Archbishop detailed for Ohannessian the fate of Father Gomidas. After his April 24, 1915, exile from and eventual return to Constantinople— high officials had intervened on his behalf—his composure had been shattered.56 Many of the priest’s closest friends had been murdered during the early months of the massacres. Villages where he had once spent fruitful days transcribing songs lay in ruin. He was consumed with the memory of “our hundreds of mothers, sisters, brothers, innocent children . . . martyred

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there in the deserts.”57 After his reprieve from exile, he returned to a metropolis largely emptied of its Armenian intellectual and cultural leaders. The great musician with the ethereally beautiful voice fell silent. Penniless in the aftermath of his deportation, Gomidas lost his home in the Pangalti district of Constantinople. In late 1916, his friends, deeply concerned for his well-being, sought psychiatric treatment for his despair, agitation, and shock. During his first hospitalization, many of his original compositions and hundreds of the songs he had patiently transcribed, boxed for storage in his absence, vanished without a trace—another devastating loss for the composer.58 After his admission to a series of institutions in Turkey, and then France, in 1919, he was transferred to the Villejuif Asylum in 1922, where he remained. Over the six months of the Paris exposition, millions of visitors roamed the fairground’s richly ornamented buildings representing current and former French colonies and other nations. A reconstituted Angkor Wat, a fortified French West African palace, a copy of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Tunisian markets, and thatch-roofed African huts complete with their indigenous inhabitants lined a course through the Bois de Vincennes. Hundreds of foreign artisans, including Tavit, demonstrated their skills in their respective national pavilions. Georges Wybo, the French architect who designed the Palestine Pavilion, modeled it after Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem. Wybo retained the arched entryway of the original, but rather than using pale stone, as in the rest of his plan, he covered the façade with a dazzling field of Ohannessian’s rich turquoise tiles, which caught the attention of passersby and French architectural reviewers.59 The building occupied an unassuming position on the periphery of the grounds, but it adjoined one of the fair’s most popular attractions—a zoological garden featuring live zebras, giraffes, lions, and elephants that inhabited a park specially constructed for them.60 Ohannessian greeted visitors to his display, speaking French, English, and Arabic, and presided over sales of his wares in the Pavilion Annex. Nishan Balian and Mgrditch Karakashian exhibited at the fair as well. Tavit penned evocative articles in French about the history of the art for publication in trade journals. A festival jury bestowed a Grand Prix d’Honneur on the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio.

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During his weeks in Paris, Tavit reserved a day to visit Gomidas. He made his way to Villejuif, just south of the city, and was permitted to enter the clinic. Although he knew that Gomidas was ill, he had cherished the prospect of being in the beloved musician’s presence once again. His memories of the master’s music were among his most deeply affecting associations with Kutahya, and in Jerusalem, he and his children sang the songs he had learned from the Vartabed nearly every day. As soon as Gomidas caught sight of Tavit, the priest, with an angry expression, hoisted a chair as if to throw it at him. The visit ended abruptly—a grave disappointment to Tavit, but clear evidence of the master’s fragile state. On Ohannessian’s return to Palestine, he found that the pottery works had run smoothly under the care of his three eldest children, who were spending considerable time in the workshop. The two adult relatives who worked for him full time—Stepan Markarian and Krikor Vartanian—also aided in the administration. Several of the orphans who had started with him in the early years had assimilated Tavit’s perfectionist standards and had become master artisans themselves. Sirarpi, who had graduated from Jerusalem Girls’ College and matriculated into their teacher training program, helped in the office during her free hours. The two older boys had graduated from St. George’s Anglican School when each reached the age of 16, but continued their studies independently and also participated in the family business. In the workshop, Vahé perfected his wheel technique. Often, Tavit entrusted him with responsibility for the whole firing cycle—procuring the wood, loading the kiln, stoking the flames, and keeping vigil overnight to ensure that the temperature remained absolutely under control. Ohannes too showed a strong aptitude for all aspects of the trade. Victoria assisted Tavit wherever possible—she possessed an artistic sensibility of her own as well as a facility for numbers. She continued to manage her large household, plan meals, and make all the family’s clothes as well as costumes for her daughters’ folk-dance recitals and plays. Early each school day, Victoria and Hnazant packed a cooked lunch for the younger girls and put them in the charge of an Armenian taxi driver, who transported them to and from the convent. Artin completed his qualifying exams at Schneller’s and took a job with the Jerusalem Electric Company. He rented a tidy house on the Bethlehem

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road near his workplace and proudly gave Horkour a home and garden of her own. The Ohannessian children often stopped by on their way home from school. Hermine and Fimi begged her to tell them the stories of the old country, and Horkour happily obliged as she fried them fresh eggs with scallions. Although she had never forgotten her dear relatives from Mouradchai and carried their memories in her heart, she left the well-worn photos tucked away in a drawer.

Fimi (right) and friend in folk-dance costumes, ca. 1932

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In the early 1930s, Spyro Houris commissioned Ohannessian to make façade tiles for more new villas and apartment houses. Tourism remained strong. Many Jerusalem hotels had added private bathrooms, electricity, and central heating and could now offer a more comfortable standard of lodging. Thomas Cooke’s and Lloyd’s agencies promoted package tours to the Holy Land. Armenian pottery occupied a proud place on the sideboards of many Jerusalem homes. Visitors to the Holy City bought plates, vases, and candy dishes, and ordered tile panels from both Armenian ceramics studios. The Great Depression dampened Tavit’s commerce, but he redoubled his promotional efforts, printing color pamphlets in English, French, Italian, and German and placing full-page ads in trade journals. In 1932, an architect offered Ohannessian a major tile commission in Beirut. The Dabbagh Mosque had suffered severe damage during the French Mandate and the Wakf planned to build a new mosque over the ruins of the old one. Ohannessian created broad fields of paneling to cover the entire interior, as well as a nearly fifteen-foot-tall mihrab, representing months of work for the studio. At the same time, Ohannessian was about to venture into an even more complex and ambitious project in his third architectural collaboration with Austen St. Barbe Harrison. In 1927, James Henry Breasted, the archeologist, Egyptologist, and founder of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, had convinced American industrialist John D. Rockefeller to donate two million dollars to build and endow a new museum to contain the Holy Land’s antiquities. A small display of ancient rarities in the Jerusalem Government Museum, organized under Ottoman aegis, occupied a few rooms in an old school building.61 Breasted convinced Rockefeller of the need for a grand purpose-built structure, and the Mandatory Government engaged Austen Harrison, Chief Architect for the Department of Public Works, to help choose the site and design a home for galleries and the research center.62 Harrison embarked on a tour of Europe to study museums, many of which were designed in the Beaux Arts style in which he had been trained. On his return, he examined structures in the Old City, adding to his ongoing survey of Near Eastern architecture. In 1930, the Mandatory Government purchased a plot of land in Karm el-Sheikh, a five-minute walk from the Damascus Gate, for the construction of the museum.63

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Harrison’s imposing and romantic design for the museum evoked a medieval castle and melded elements of both European and Eastern styles, with soaring arches, coffered ceilings, vaultings, and cloisters. The building’s wings were to enclose a courtyard with a tower at one end, a tiled iwan containing a fountain at the other. In between, a reflecting pool recalled that of Alhambra’s Court of the Myrtles. The cornerstone was laid in June of 1930, but construction soon halted when laborers discovered a labyrinth of ancient tombs beneath the site.64 While the archeologists excavated, Ohannessian began to research and plot the intricate tile design. All through 1932, trade publications buzzed with news of an immense international exposition in Chicago, due to open in April of the following year. “A Century of Progress” was to occupy miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan and seemed poised to attract huge crowds, with exhibits of the latest automobiles, advances in architecture, and the always-popular ethnic villages. After weighing the finances, Tavit signed a rental contract for Booth 43 in the Oriental Village. This time, the risk would be his alone—the Mandatory Government would not participate. Traveling to the United States with crates of pottery was an expensive and time-consuming proposition, but the Vester family, members of Jerusalem’s American Colony, helped Tavit make the daunting travel and import arrangements. Ohannessian’s eldest son would come along to serve as an assistant. For Vahé, a deeply intelligent twenty-year-old with a piercing curiosity about the world, the trip promised to be the adventure of a lifetime. He had matured into a six-foot-tall, athletic young man, whose blue eyes, chiseled features, and charisma charmed his many friends. Father and son would travel from Jaffa to Cherbourg in August, and from there sail to New York City on the White Star Line’s R.M.S. Majestic, the largest steamer in the world. Tavit planned to spend four months away from Jerusalem, three of them in the “Windy City.” By the time the Ohannessians reached Chicago in September, the fair was already in full swing and had welcomed tens of millions of visitors. The Oriental Village, a gaudy confection of stripes, domes, and arches, promised to bring “all the glamour and romance of the Near East to the Midway of the Fair,” with “native magicians, dancing girls, vendors, [and] horsemen.”65 Near Ohannessian’s display, a band costumed in flowing white robes and turbans played zurna, ney, and drums, intoning sinuous melodies under the shadow of a Goodyear blimp. opposite Ohannessian tiled mihrab in “Dabbagh” Mosque, Beirut, 1932

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A Century of Progress International Exposition looked squarely at the future of science and technology but furnished plenty of tantalizing entertainment as well. The burlesque fan dancer Sally Rand drew crowds every night, as did the Andrews Sisters’ and Judy Garland’s night club acts. Tavit and Vahé drank in the dizzying scope of American culture. Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the Gorilla Villa, Midget Village, and a giant roller coaster stood alongside the Tunisian, Spanish, and Vahé Ohannessian, Chicago Oriental Villages and the fair’s many beer World’s Fair ID, 1933 gardens. The Infant Incubator Company exhibited scores of live premature babies, tethered to the latest medical equipment.66 Tavit sold great quantities of his pottery and reaped orders for tiled fountains from clients in Chicago as well as one for the Hollywood mansion of producer Louis B. Mayer before heading home at the end of the year. Vahé, on the other hand, succumbed to the lure of the New World and set off on his own after the fair. He rode the rails for four months and returned for eight more months the following year. He manned the studio’s display for several months in 1934, then headed off to see more of America, picking up casual labor when his funds ran low and amassing enough adventures as a hobo to fuel a lifetime of storytelling. In Jerusalem, the team of archeologists under the watch of Ernest T. Richmond, who now served as the Mandate’s Director of Antiquities, continued to excavate the tombs under the Palestine Archeological Museum site. While they explored, Tavit spent months in 1932 and 1933 conceptualizing, drawing, and refining designs for Austen Harrison’s tiled fountain niche. At night, after supper, he spread tracing paper over the long dining table and sketched out motifs and the distribution of colors, each one coded with a letter or number. Both he and Victoria worked on the calculations necessary for the square tiles to form composite designs and for patterns to join where surfaces met. By the time construction recommenced, Harrison had sourced the limestone from Nablus and Jericho67 and in the spring of 1934, Tavit began to execute the complex tile scheme.68 opposite Vahé Ohannessian inside the kiln, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, 1937

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Not only had Ohannessian decided to work in the technically difficult medium of cuerda seca, but he had also had to devise a strategy to cover the domed ceiling. In keeping with the medieval allusions in Harrison’s design, Tavit chose four purely geometric schemes for the interior of the fountain niche. He used the palette of aqua, turquoise, cobalt blue, black, and white similar to the one he had come to know in Konya’s many thirteenth-century tiled Seljuk monuments and in the fifteenth-century mosaic tiles on the Tiled Kiosk of the Imperial Museum at Topkapi Palace. In addition, for the curved dome and drum, Ohannessian would employ the star and cruciform shapes so frequently used in Persian tile making during the Seljuk and Ilkhanid dynasties. The interior of Harrison’s twenty-four-foot-high niche was a dome that capped a four-sided structure. Directly beneath the dome, chamfered arched bays crowned by spandrels gave the appearance of an octagonal drum. The interior of the iwan featured pointed arches tracing the same outline as the arched stone entryway, and small recessed windows. At the center, a marble fountain burbled. Ohannessian ran narrow horizontal tiles adorned with rumis in shades of blue, bordered in black to delineate the sections. Square cuerda seca tiles—with twelve-fold rosettes encircling a star—formed repeating patterns and covered the entire span of the walls. Tavit trimmed seams and corners with molded tiles in shades of aqua. At the top of each wall, a border of colored mosaic squares formed a zigzag pattern.69 For the drum, Ohannessian inlaid molded tiles—crosses in shades of aqua and turquoise and stars in darker blues and white and circled the base of the cupola with another row of blue rumis. He arrayed the dome with mosaic tiles in the forms of eight-pointed rosettes, stars, and crosses. On this curved ceiling, however, he altered the color scheme, glazing the crosses in white and stars in shades of blue. Ohannessian, working with Harrison, drew inspiration from thirteenth-, fourteenth-, and fifteenth-century Islamic designs and united the facets of the interior with a range of intense cobalt and turquoise blues in opaque and transparent variants—the colors of water and the sky. British aristocrats, emissaries, and pilgrims continued to patronize Ohannessian’s studio in the 1930s. Armenian pottery had become popularly associated with the Holy City. The colorful glazed tiles in St. Andrew’s Scottish

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Memorial Church, at the American Colony Hostel, and on street signs and façades around the city attracted admiring attention. Edith Vane-TempestStewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, a spellbinding figure in British high society, commissioned a series of tile panels for her estate, Mount Stewart House, near Newtonards, in County Down, Northern Ireland. On a visit to Ohannessian’s Via Dolorosa studio at the end of 1933, she chose the Armenian bird motif. Tavit produced some of his most striking examples of this design for her, each brilliantly colored panel outlined with a graceful guilloche border. The tiles were exhibited at the 1934 British Industries Fair in Olympia, London, before being mounted in the casita of the Spanish Garden that Lady Edith had designed for the grounds of Mount Stewart.70 A close friend of Lady Edith, Ramsey MacDonald, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, also placed an order with Ohannessian, for a small tiled fireplace for his home in Frognal, in the Hampstead borough of London. The rise of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party’s virulent anti-Semitism prompted huge increases in European Jewish migration to Palestine. Between 1933 and 1936, more than one hundred and thirty thousand immigrants and refugees arrived, further tilting the balance of Arab-Jewish populations and exacerbating Arab anger at both the British encouragement of Jewish immigration and failure to support an independent Arab state. The British attempted to stanch the inflow, even in the face of increasing anti-Semitic violence in Europe, and placed restrictions on the transfer or sale of Arab properties to Jews. Arab protests commenced with civil and political action—a general strike was declared in the Arab quarters of the city on April 21, 1936. The Mandatory Government instituted strict curfews. Ohannessian closed his workshop for six months. Public transport shut down as well. The younger girls, Hermine and Fimi, witnessed regular outbursts of violence, despite Tavit and Victoria’s efforts to protect them by keeping them close to home. In Jerusalem, both Arab and Jewish paramilitaries planted bombs in buses and produce markets and lobbed them into cafés, regularly wounding and killing patrons. Hermine developed severe, debilitating migraines. Victoria shuttered the windows against the brilliant daylight and placed cooling compresses on her daughter’s forehead. The whole family tiptoed and suppressed their voices to a whisper. Victoria suffered sudden pains and palpitations, symptoms, her doctor diagnosed, of heart disease. Fimi, only ten years old and an avid

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reader, began to contemplate her own mortality. Ohannes had taken a job at the Barclay’s Bank but steadfastly cared for and protected his younger siblings, escorting them to classmates’ parties, helping with their studies, and taking them on occasional outings to the cinema during pauses in the turmoil. The diminutive Shirley Temple, the girls’ favorite star, took the youngsters’ minds off the troubles surrounding them. The Mandatory Government called for armed reinforcements and a commission of inquiry into the Arab rebellion. Fifty thousand British soldiers arrived between 1936 and 1939 and violently suppressed the uprisings, inflicting thousands of casualties. Mandate forces levied crushing fines on Arab villagers, disarmed them, imposed collective punishments on whole settlements, and demanded billeting of British soldiers without compensation. Illegal possession of arms was subject to a summary sentence of hanging. In Palestine, more than five thousand Arabs and three hundred Jews were killed, and both groups endured countless daily harassment, searches, and assaults. A Jewish paramilitary force emerged, called the Haganah, as well as a Zionist offshoot, the Irgun. Thousands of Palestinian homes were pillaged and destroyed, and the British crippled the port of Jaffa, demolishing parts of its Old City. British authorities deported four leaders of the Arab Higher Committee to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. Ohannessian was compelled to shut the workshop periodically over the next two years. The city’s commercial activity suffered. In Arab quarters, it ground to a standstill. One day, during a harrowing succession of street bombings, Tavit received a letter from Vienna, signed by several of the “relatives” he had rescued from the Alayunt train station in 1915. They wrote to express their gratitude: Tavit had saved their lives at that time and they wished to repay the favor. They had prospered in Austria and offered to sponsor the Ohannessian family to move to Europe. Tavit thanked them but declined the offer—he and Victoria were by now deeply rooted in Palestine, despite the growing troubles. Also, he felt responsible for the workers and relatives in his employ. He could not abandon them. During a respite in the hostilities, Tavit made a broad tiled altar for the chapel of the Armenian Convent of St. Nicholas in Jaffa. He inscribed a tile in the lower right corner in Classical Armenian: “This tiled altar made by the hand of Tavit Ohannessian for the recovery of his wife, Victoria. 1937.”

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The British sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill had traveled to Jerusalem in 1934 to carve trilingual lettering into the stone walls of the Archeological Museum.71 He also sculpted bas-relief panels for the central courtyard, each representing a different group present in the history of the Holy Land. Ohannessian also created a tiled inscription to circle the dome of the museum’s Round Meeting Room. The white tiles, with Greek lettering in black, quoted Plato—the first known instance of the word “arkhaiologia” in writing. Construction of the museum and the tiled fountain alcove concluded in 1935. Department of Antiquities employees moved in and opened parts of the collection to scholars but would require another two years to furnish the galleries, hire and train staff. The Palestine Archaeological Museum opened to the general public for the first time on January 13, 1938. A planned ceremony that was to have taken place two days earlier was postponed due to the murder of British archeologist James L. Starkey, who was shot to death by Arab militants while traveling from a dig in Tel Lachish to attend the inaugural festivities.72 The building won glowing reviews in international architecture journals and newspapers even before the official opening. In late 1935, a correspondent for the New York Times wrote, “By the pool, the eye is led to the gem of the court, the fountain alcove of finest mosaic faience, its tiles entirely blue but of many shades—turquoise, zircon, azure, sapphire. The Armenian ceramist, Ohannessian of Jerusalem, whose work was seen at the Chicago fair and has found place in churches and homes throughout the world, considers the alcove his masterpiece.”73 At the age of 51, Ohannessian had completed one of his most original and technically demanding works. He remained equally a devoted father, lavishing affection and care, especially on his daughters. In the summer of 1937, Mary, Hermine, and Fimi ate lettuce from the garden behind their apartment but neglected to wash it adequately. All three contracted serious cases of typhoid, with spiking fevers. The girls drifted in and out of consciousness. The family physician, Dr. Sayeed, visited them at home and guaranteed to the health authorities that the Ohannessian household was hygienic enough for the girls to convalesce there. Tavit kept vigil at night, placing cold compresses on his daughters’ burning foreheads and reading softly to them from Armenian

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translations of popular books. Throughout the weeks of their recovery, he remained dedicated to his daughters’ comfort and good cheer. With the outbreak of war in Europe, at the end of 1939, rioting and violence in Palestine diminished. Mandate authorities instituted blackouts, curfews, and food rationing and placed German nationals into British prisoner-of-war camps. Jerusalem filled with soldiers from all corners of the British Empire, as well as refugees from Hitler’s Europe. Ohannessian’s British distributors urged him to create more utilitarian crockery. But in an interview in the Palestine Post in January of 1944, he said that “neither he nor his family had done such a thing in the past 500 years and he did not intend to begin now.”74 Tavit maintained that this type of mass production would demean his craft and hurt the artistic reputation of his wares. In the studio, he continued to paint pottery himself and supervise all the work. If Tavit perceived shortcomings due to a lack of care, he vented his irritation without reserve. The Post article celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of Armenian pottery in Jerusalem, and characterized Ohannessian as “an artist of the old type, worthy of the tradition he has carried over to our days. Not a single bowl, vase or tile is allowed to leave his factory

Tavit Ohannessian painting pottery, ca. 1940

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which has not been completely made by hand and whose colour and glaze have not been mixed under his own eyes.” Tavit continued to train interested young people, including his twenty-yearold daughter Hermine, who worked as a designer while continuing her studies. Neighborhood youngsters frequented the shop and asked for instruction.75 The Dome of the Rock Tiles’ products were now distributed not only in America and Great Britain, but also in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Egypt, France, Holland, Lebanon, and Syria. Throughout the war, sales remained surprisingly strong. In fact, demand grew for Jerusalem’s exquisitely colored plates and vases. At nearly ten feet in height and diameter, the kiln could accommodate two thousand pieces. Dealers clamored for stock, traveling from other cities to have first choice when the still-warm wares were unloaded.76 Ohannessian maintained the age-old methods of firing with olive and pine wood, using kerosene only to power the mechanized stone crusher. But the enormous effort of overseeing the business, crafting pottery himself, providing for his extended family, participating in the life of his church, as well as his already compromised health, eventually caught up with him. One day, in May of 1944, Tavit felt faint and collapsed. The family doctor, called to the scene, diagnosed a stroke and hospitalized him. He was weak, sick, and nearly sixty years old, but his physicians expected him to survive. Although Ohannessian did not yet know it, with the Second World War’s impending end, both he and his adoptive country had entered a long and inexorable decline.

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Arabic-inscribed tile “The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom,” Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, ca. 1930s. Bequeathed to author by Sirarpi Ohannessian.

Portrait of David Ohannessian, Jerusalem, 1920s

Ohannessian tiled Via Dolorosa street sign, ca. 1921

Ohannessian Dome of the Rock ceramic model for wedding of Princess Mary, 1922

Tiled panel by David Ohannessian, American Colony

Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, 1920s–1930s

Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, 1920s–1930s

Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, 1920s–1930s

Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, 1920s–1930s

Dome of the Rock Tiles studio pottery, 1920s–1930s

Opposite Ohannessian tiled fountain, St. Andrew’s Church, ca. 1930

Stencil pattern, Austen St. Barbe Harrison, 1925 (detail above)

Elephant tile, David Ohannessian, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio, ca. 1925

Ohannessian architectural tiling, Villa Harun al-Rashid

Ohannessian architectural tiling, Araj Apartment House

Opposite Ohannessian tiled wall for khan of St. John Ophthalmic Hospital, ca. 1927

Ohannessian architectural tiling, Villa Gelat

Opposite Tiled fireplace for Government House, Jerusalem, 1930

Ohannessian’s inscription tile, Altar of St. Saviour, 1928

Detail of tiled entryway for British and Foreign Bible Society, 1928

Opposite Ohannessian tiled fountain niche for

Palestine Archaeological Museum, 1934

Ruin of an Armenian House, Mouradchai, Turkey, 2014

Ruin of Sourp Asdvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God), Armenian Orthodox Church, Mouradchai, Turkey, 2014

Previous Detail of Ohannessian tiled fountain niche for Palestine Archaeological Museum, 1934

Chap te r 9

The Scattering

Tavit’s doctors ordered a long leave of absence from the workshop. Ohannes resigned from his job at Barclay’s Bank to join Vahé in managing the day-today operations. Ohannes assumed the lion’s share of responsibility for the studio—a heavy task for a bright young man with keen interests, a wide circle of friends, and an eagerness to stretch his own wings. With an unaccustomed amount of time at home in 1944, Tavit conversed about life and art with his youngest daughter after she returned each day from school. He narrated the stories from the old country that she loved so well. And in the warmth of her father’s company, Fimi’s own impish nature emerged. She frequently reduced the two of them to tears of laughter by retelling some of her own favorite stories, among them, the tale of her first day at Jerusalem Girls’ College in Rehavia:1 A posh British teacher had asked her name. When she replied, “Fimi,” the woman sniffed in horror. “That’s not a proper name for a girl. That’s a name for a dog!” Even cooped up at home, Tavit remained preoccupied with his craft. He planned new experiments, writing out glaze formulas for Ohannes to try and cramming small spiral-bound notebooks with diagrams and observations. His letters to family members always displayed a loving concern for the health and happiness of the recipient, but accounts of possible future commissions and ongoing professional concerns filled the greater part of the pages. Although still frail and banished from the studio, he had not lost his obsessive drive.2 229

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Sirarpi had left home for Alexandria to teach in the prestigious English Girls’ College there. Hermine, who had already graduated, worked as a secretary at Jerusalem’s YMCA and was studying to become a social worker. Garo, aged fifteen, attended St. George’s Anglican School. Fimi loved to read and dreamt of making a life in letters. Two years earlier, on a whim, the demure, copper-haired girl had mailed a letter to the Cairo offices of the illustrious Armenian poet and journalist Vahan Tekeyan, editor of the Armenian-language newspaper Arev. In her January 1942 letter, the fifteenyear-old had introduced herself to him as a “slightly crazy” young person. As they corresponded in Armenian over the next two years, Fimi described the closeness of her loving family of nine, bringing each one to life on the page. Tekeyan, who had escaped the fate of so many of his contemporaries because he had been away from his native Constantinople in 1915, had been charmed by the teenage girl, on the cusp of discovering her life’s purpose. In failing health himself, he responded, encouraging her to read widely and to devote herself to her aspirations: It seems to me, that when one has a gift, and especially feels a calling, one must be wound up and prepared to develop the first and especially, to attain the second, and subordinate to all these all of one’s other desires and impulses, so that one can be oneself above all other things, and do something that will simultaneously be one’s supreme pleasure and debt.3

Fimi was thrilled to receive the writer’s guidance. But she had also been deeply shaken in the last years by the outbursts of violence and death around her. By her eighteenth birthday, in May of 1944, dread shadowed her. Often, she could not sleep or eat. Appalling accounts of the Jewish death convoys and concentration camps, slowly filtering out of Europe, provoked nightmares as well. Palestine’s uprisings and the Armenian community’s alarm over the devastating world war disrupted the pace of courtships and marriages as well. The four Ohannessian daughters, all of them attractive, remained single. However, Mary’s status was about to change. Yervant Markarian, a tall, dapper, thirty-five-year-old doctor who lived in Damascus was visiting friends in Jerusalem over the winter holidays. The previous year, his sister Gladys had traveled to the Holy City and stopped at the Via Dolorosa workshop, where she renewed her acquaintance with the

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Ohannessians. The Markarian family had lived in Kutahya between 1907 and 1912, and Yervant’s father, Armenag, also a doctor, had cared for Victoria during her pregnancy with Sirarpi. Always keen-eyed on behalf of her unmarried younger brother, Gladys took note of Tavit’s four very eligible daughters, each one spirited and intelligent. On New Year’s Day, 1945, Yervant attended mass at St. James Cathedral, where, his friends told him, he was certain to see the beautiful Ohannessian girls. Tavit and the family arrived a few minutes after the start of the service, causing a slight commotion as they made their way toward the rear tiled pier where they usually stood. Yervant caught a glimpse of Mary’s silken, wavy hair slipping out from under her large felt hat. When she looked up, revealing her high, sculpted cheekbones and radiant eyes, he was instantly smitten. At a reception following the holiday service, Yervant nervously approached Tavit and introduced himself as Armenag Markarian’s son. Ohannessian embraced him warmly and invited him to lunch later in the week. The doctor’s courtly manners and handsome, open demeanor charmed Mary. After a second visit with the family, Yervant seized the moment and asked Tavit for his daughter’s hand. The couple celebrated their marriage on December 31 in the Armenian chapel of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Tavit escorting Mary, followed by Hermine (left) and Fimi, December 31, 1945

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After a brief honeymoon at Lake Tiberias and the Mediterranean coast, Mary bade her family farewell and moved with Yervant to Damascus.4 As Tavit regained his strength after the stroke, he began to visit the workshop once a week. Victoria accompanied him to make sure he didn’t exhaust himself. She spoke with each of the apprentices, who thought her elegant and kind.5 Tavit recognized that Vahé and Ohannes were succeeding in preserving his standards, but the young men also felt the weight of their father’s relentless judgments. With the conclusion of World War II, the lull in hostilities between Palestine’s Jews and Arabs ended. Each side asserted the right to an independent state. By population, Arabs remained in the majority, but in the aftermath of the holocaust, the flow of European Jews to Palestine increased. Nazi atrocities evoked international sympathy for Zionism and a Jewish State, yet the British turned away tens of thousands of Jewish displaced persons and near-starving survivors, many of whom arrived on ramshackle, overcrowded boats. The Mandatory Government interned them in tent camps on Cyprus instead. Any residual goodwill Palestine’s Jewish community might have felt toward the British for their initial support of a National Home— goodwill already deeply strained on account of restrictive immigration quotas imposed over the course of the Mandate—evaporated. Fimi’s apprehension about the growing spate of car and café bombings left her gaunt and ashen. In mid-June, the family heard on the wireless that the Haganah had destroyed ten of the eleven major road and rail bridges connecting Palestine with Transjordan and Syria.6 With the widely reported abduction or execution of British officials in Jerusalem, even the city’s cinemas, where Fimi and her siblings had once spent merry hours, were now far too dangerous to attend. On July 22, 1946 members of the Irgun smuggled milk tins filled with explosives into the basement of the King David Hotel. The south wing of the building housed the British army headquarters—the nerve center of British military and intelligence operations. The ensuing blasts killed ninety-one people—Britons, Arabs, Jews, and Armenians—and stunned the whole city. Fimi, on the veranda at the moment of the blast, felt the shock from a mile away. For days, the dead moldered under huge blocks of rubble.

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In upper Baqaʾa, the Ohannessians frequently heard the grim percussion of machine-gun fire and explosions in the streets. On October 30, disguised Irgun fighters carried luggage containing explosives into Jerusalem’s main railway station, less than a half mile up the Bethlehem road from the family’s home. The detonation killed one Arab policeman and a British bomb-disposal officer.7 Armor-plated public buses on the route to the Old City became commonplace. Drivers peered through narrow slits to see the road ahead. Fimi begged her parents to allow her to move to Damascus to live with her sister and Yervant. Tavit and Victoria agreed, also reassured to know that she would be living in the household of a doctor. At the age of 20, Fimi withdrew from her baccalaureate studies—already almost entirely disrupted—at Jerusalem Girls’ College and departed her beloved native city. Beginning on January 31, 1947, Palestine wireless stations notified dependents of British nationals as well as other British civilians to report for evacuation within forty-eight hours. At an emergency meeting the next day at the Jaffa Club, the District Administration and police leadership outlined the threats Jewish extremists had made to abduct and execute British nationals in retaliation for the recent execution of several Jewish youths caught with contraband weapons.8 The four-day plan, code-named “Operation Polly,” began with women and children, who were transferred to a military camp near the Suez Canal to await repatriation to England.9 In London, on February 18, 1947 in the House of Commons, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin admitted that “the Mandate has proved to be unworkable in practice, and the obligations to the two communities in Palestine has been shown to be irreconcilable.”10 On March 1, Jewish terrorists bombed Jerusalem’s Goldsmith Officers’ Club, killing twelve British officers and eight other British personnel. The next day, British Mandate Governor Alan Cunningham declared martial law in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.11 In April, during the Assembly session of the newly founded United Nations, a Special Committee on Palestine convened at the request of the United Kingdom. By August, a majority of the eleven-member committee reached a consensus that Palestine should be partitioned into two separate states—one Arab and one Jewish—and that Jerusalem receive a special international status under the administration of the UN.12

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The once mighty British Empire, shattered by a catastrophic Second World War, searched for an exit from the seemingly intractable problem of Palestine. Like his father, Ohannes studied Armenian history and politics and had followed the progress of the Soviet State. Some Armenians had been sent from Yerevan to Jerusalem to extol their country’s values of equality, friendship, and brotherhood and to enlist Armenians, especially men of working age, in the “Great Repatriation.” Riding a wave of idealism, Ohannes and about fifteen hundred other Palestinian Armenians responded to Joseph Stalin’s call to repopulate the Armenian Motherland.13 Literate young men possessed a high value for the landlocked Armenian State, which faced huge economic challenges and the loss of tens of thousands of its own soldiers during World War II. On a more personal level, Ohannes had recently suffered the pain of a broken heart after a serious love affair ended. He longed to create a new life for himself, apart from the demands of the business and beyond the reach of his father’s exacting temperament. He contemplated emigration. Vahé was settling down; he had recently become engaged to Mary Burns—a statuesque, auburn-haired young Englishwoman who taught fitness classes at the YWCA. And Tavit had resumed management of the workshop after two years’ absence. Ohannes loved his family dearly, but the time seemed ripe to strike out on his own. He didn’t know what kind of life or career he might find in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia but turned bravely toward patriotism and the unknown. He arranged to travel to Yerevan with another Jerusalem family, also native Kutahyans. In preparation for his move, he conferred with his father and transcribed a detailed guide to every step of pottery making as the Ohannessians had practiced it in Jerusalem. Perhaps, he thought, this booklet might serve as the basis for a new industry in Yerevan. On October 6, 1947, the eve of his departure for Armenia, Ohannes formally renounced any future inheritance he might receive from his father and assigned his claim instead to his mother. Two of his sisters witnessed the declaration. He had no idea when he might see his family again. The United Nations debated plans for a territorial division of Mandatory Palestine throughout the autumn of 1947. The General Assembly’s vote on November 29 yielded thirty-three nations in favor of partition, thirteen

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opposed, and ten abstentions, including Great Britain. After the ballot, Arab representatives walked out of the chamber in protest. Around the world, Arabs and Muslims protested the proposal to create a Zionist state in Palestine, contending that the imposition of an international vote contravened the stated United Nations platform of self-determination.14 On December 8, 1947, Britain, confronting its own failure to find a resolution to the growing crisis between Palestine’s Arabs and Jews, recommended to the United Nations the termination of the Mandate and the creation of two independent states. The withdrawal of the British was set to take place on May 14, 1948. At the close of 1947, Hermine won a scholarship from the Young Women’s Christian Association of Palestine. She chose to complete her social-welfare training in England. As a British subject, she had the right to study in the United Kingdom, subject to a Palestinian quota. It was a great relief for her parents to know that she would be safe, for the time being, from the ever-more-frequent grenade attacks and street fighting in Baqaʾa and elsewhere in Jerusalem. Hermine left on January 25 and arrived at the Port of Hull on February 11, 1948. She took up residence at the YWCA hostel in Sheffield to begin her Vahé Ohannessian and Mary Burns on their wedding day, course work, in a program administered by 1948 London University, and planned to return home at the end of her training. On January 5, while Hermine was at sea, Jewish paramilitaries—operating under the false belief that the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem’s fashionable, primarily Arab, Katamon district, harbored terrorists—planted a bomb there. It went off just after one o’clock in the morning. The hotel was one mile from the Ohannessian apartment. That night, Tavit, Victoria, and their neighbors heard an ominous rumble and boom. Twenty-six guests and members of the owners’ family, including elderly women, a child, and the Spanish consul died in the explosion. Arab residents of Katamon and the surrounding neighborhoods cleared out in the following weeks, fearing further violence.

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In a report to the United Nations dated January 16, the Mandatory Government estimated that two thousand people had been killed or wounded in the preceding six weeks. British police, having suffered numerous casualties during attacks of the last year, abandoned their posts in several cities.15 Newspaper and wireless reports continued to pound out the May 14 date for the planned British withdrawal, keeping it at the forefront of public attention. The pace of raids and bombings accelerated, destroying villages in the Haifa, Nazareth, Gaza, and Tiberias districts, and killing Palestinian Arabs as well as Jews.16 The car bombing of the Palestine Post building on February 1 killed three and seriously wounded twenty Jewish civilians and left the Jerusalem press in ruins.17 Three weeks later, Arab militants disguised in British uniforms planted explosives on Ben Yehuda Street, demolishing four buildings, killing fifty-seven Jewish civilians and injuring nearly one hundred others.18 Tavit, Victoria, Vahé, and Garo heard explosions, shelling, and the constant whine of sirens from their apartment, where Vahé’s fiancée Mary had also come to live with them. Snipers’ bullets pierced their doors and windows. One of their neighbors had been shot to death through the walls of his home.19 Another neighbor, an elderly woman, was killed by sniper fire when she misunderstood curfew hours and stepped outside one morning. The Ohannessians learned to keep as far away from windows as possible. Four days after Hermine arrived in England, on the 11th of February, 1948, military leader David Ben-Gurion gave orders to the Haganah to seize control of the entire city of Jerusalem and its suburbs.20 Tavit boarded up his workshop, leaving the stone mill, treadle wheels, raw materials, and a substantial inventory of pottery in place.21 As security deteriorated in Jerusalem, he had continued to pay stipends to his employees on a regular basis, drawing down his own cash reserves.22 Sirarpi, who had been teaching English in Beirut, returned to Baqaʾa to assist her parents during the crisis. Ohannes, Hermine, and Fimi were among the two hundred and fifty thousand Christian and Muslim Palestinians who had left the country by April of 1948. Most sought safety in Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon, staying with relatives, friends, or renting accommodations.23 Those Palestinians

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who could take their most valuable personal possessions with them did so, although the scarcity of petrol for cars, destruction of some rail lines, and presence of snipers along bus routes rendered travel perilous. Thousands of others, including farmers and villagers forced or terrified into exile from their homes, took shelter in miserable tent camps elsewhere in Palestine, Egypt, and Transjordan. In the pre-dawn hours of April 9, about four miles west of the Ohannessian apartment, fighters from the extremist Irgun Zvai Leumi infiltrated the Arab village of Deir Yassin ;24 they mounted a deadly attack, killing more than a hundred people.25 For residents of the Jerusalem suburbs, the daylight killings represented a new kind of threat: the combat had now escalated from grenade attacks, planted explosives, and looting to the massacre of civilians. Hearing the disastrous news, further waves of Arab inhabitants in the surrounding towns and villages fled the region, fearing for their lives. In the following days, John Melkon Rose, a friend of the Ohannessian family, witnessed some Deir Yassin survivors who had reached the Greek Colony wandering about dazed and in a state of shock.26 Four days later, in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Arab fighters intercepted a medical convoy heading toward the Hadassah Hospital, killing nearly eighty Jewish doctors, nurses, students, patients, and soldiers in the process—one of several violent reprisals for the Deir Yassin attack. Panicked Armenians, carting their belongings in suitcases or bundles, flocked to the Convent of St. James. Nearly five thousand Armenians from all over Palestine sought safety within the vank,27 including hundreds of Armenian families forced from their homes and businesses in the western suburbs of Jerusalem.28 Refugees young and old crowded every corner of the compound. Some pitched tents in the courtyards.29 For many of the zuwaar—the Armenian survivors of the Turkish massacres who had rebuilt their lives in Jerusalem— the violence around them awakened horrific memories of the past. The Mandatory police force did little to protect Jerusalemites under siege. The remaining British government employees received orders to leave the country by April 15. Later in the month, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, which had returned to Palestine in March at the request of the Mandatory Authority, set up medical stations around the city. One of them occupied the

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ground floor of a private residence in upper Baqaʾa, very near the Ohannessians’ apartment. The staff raised the Red Cross flag on the roof of the house. Milk deliveries had long since ceased. Regional mail service stopped in mid-April, and airmail was suspended later in the month. Shopkeepers sealed up their storefronts.30 Word spread around upper Baqaʾa that in some parts of the city, Jewish forces were breaking into empty homes to loot valuables and seize pantry stores. Some of the Ohannessians’ neighbors sought shelter in the Convent of Clarice, across the Hebron road, trusting that monasteries would be spared from armed conflict. Tavit had kept his family at home as long as he could. With his savings depleted and anarchy in the streets, he borrowed four hundred Palestinian pounds from Sirarpi on April 22 and saw the family off to Damascus. He then departed for Cairo, having earlier obtained a visa through the auspices of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik, whose Manial Palace he had helped decorate with tiles in 1911. Tavit planned to investigate possibilities for work in the field of ceramics. After safely escorting her mother and younger brother to Syria, Sirarpi headed back to Beirut to resume her teaching position. As soon as Tavit arrived in the Egyptian capital, the prince’s agent provided a letter to the Directorate of Passports and Nationalities requesting that Ohannessian be allowed to stay to make needed restorations in His Excellency’s palaces in Cairo and Alexandria. Because Egypt lacked specialists who could make Kashani tiles, the agent elaborated, he requested that authorities grant Ohannessian a visa for however long he needed to complete the work—at least one year.31 Vahé and Mary elected to stay behind in Baqaʾa.32 The Ohannessians, like many of their neighbors, believed that the fighting would subside in a few weeks or months, at the most. Tavit and Victoria would return at that time. Some British security officers remained in the neighborhood to guard the Jerusalem Electric Company’s Baqaʾa station—where Horkour’s grandson Artin worked—as well as the nearby petrol depot, bestowing a small degree of security on the area. On May 13, those police vanished without saying a word to the remaining residents.33 At 8 a.m. on May 14, British High Commissioner Alan Cunningham left the Government House under heavy guard. As he and the military cortege drove to St. George’s Cathedral to store the British coat of arms, the Union Jack

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came down and a Red Cross flag was raised in its place, signaling the end of the British Mandate. One international correspondent dryly noted that Arabs and Jews agreed on one thing: the “British had failed in the function to which they devoted their greatest energy for twenty-eight years—that of police power.” The journalist added that during the last five and a half months of the Mandatory administration, about “3,000 Jews, Arabs and Britons have been killed and 5,000 injured.”34 At 4 p.m. the same afternoon, an enormous crowd gathered outside Tel Aviv’s Museum of Art and strained to get a better view as a short man with an unruly shock of white hair emerged from a car. Once inside the museum’s auditorium, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency, made a brief statement to the rapt audience. His remarks concluded with the words: “We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel.” The spectators burst into applause, many of them moved to tears. Later that evening, Vahé and Mary’s lamps dimmed and went dark as electricity was cut off in Baqaʾa. Around the neighborhood, the tap water provided by the municipality sputtered and ran dry. Fortunately, most properties had cisterns. But without power to operate a wireless, the Ohannessians and their neighbors were cut off from news. Only machine-gun tattoos, the thud of exploding shells, and sirens emanating from the northerly direction of the Old City remained to inform them of the progress of the war. In Mary Markarian’s apartment, Victoria listened anxiously to Radio Damascus while waiting for the next edition of the newspapers. Fighters from surrounding countries were pouring into Palestine to join with the Arab volunteer army. One day after the new state was announced, international headlines declared: “Jews Gain in Jerusalem.” The London Times reported, “As soon as the British Army left North Jerusalem, firing started and increased steadily. The Jews began to take the central zone of the city. . . . They also hoisted the Zionist flag on the tower of the old Italian hospital and the city is now cut in two along the road from Damascus Gate to Princess Mary Avenue.”35 On May 16, Jewish fighters entered Baqaʾa, occupying key buildings in the nearly deserted neighborhood. Before the abrupt exodus of residents over the

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last year, the suburb had been home to several thousand people. Now, only about one hundred and fifty remained, namely Armenians, Greeks, and a few Arab families. A number of those Arabs, some of whom were members of the Anglican Church, had taken refuge in the German Hospice.36 In the Ohannessians’ neighbors’ homes, half-eaten meals, abandoned in a rush of terror, putrefied on kitchen tables. Scrawny cats and dogs, left behind by fleeing owners, emerged in the evenings, howling with hunger. From time to time, a sniper’s bullet silenced them. Within the Convent of St. James, Armenian men and women organized themselves for survival. Over the centuries of its existence, workmen had constructed hiding places in and below the cathedral for priests and seminarians to shelter during Jerusalem’s many invasions. Now, ten intrepid youths cleared out a large vaulted underground chamber to use as an infirmary, exterminating worms, rats, and reptiles and disinfecting the entire space with lime. Men and women helped carry beds, tables, and chairs into the makeshift clinic. Young girls, working under the guidance of older women who had served as nurses in the Great War, pinned up their hair and donned clean aprons. Even before the first doctors arrived, the women removed embedded shrapnel, cleaned blood and sand from wounds, and sutured the worst lacerations.37 A medical technician and a bacteriologist—among the refugees in the convent—helped supervise the care and gripped the hands of the injured while they endured painful procedures without anesthesia. Members of the Armenian Youth Union kept alert during the evenings, listening for pauses in the shooting or the sounds of exploding bombs nearby and subsequent cries for help. On the group leader’s order, they charged out of the convent gates to search for casualties and bear them back on stretchers, often running through gunfire. Other young people ventured outside the quarter in quest of bandages and medicine to treat the large numbers of incoming wounded. Many of the Armenians seeking shelter in the vank had bolted from their homes while under attack, carrying nothing with them. The clergy took collections from those who still had money, in order to procure food. In the convent’s kitchen, the huge old copper cauldrons, from which the Ohannessians had received their first meals in Jerusalem, were restored to use. Long lines formed throughout the day, beginning with schoolchildren in the early mornings.

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Refugees received tickets entitling them to one or two buckets of drinking water per day from the convent’s cisterns, depending on family size. One group of volunteers washed clothing and bedding communally to conserve water. Others scrubbed the infirmary each day. Two men helped form and direct a civil guard to protect residents from the Haganah bombardment of the Old City and the shelling of the convent.38 More than forty Armenians died during the hostilities.39 In Baqaʾa, families dragged mattresses into basements and slept underground.

Ohannessian realized that he would not be returning home from Cairo anytime soon. He sent out scores of letters, frantic for news of his son in Jerusalem. Later in May, Tavit also met with historian Arshag Alboyadjian, who was composing a memory book—a houshamadyan—about Kutahya’s Armenian community. The two men had previously corresponded at length. Now, in person, Ohannessian filled in many more details about Armenian participation in Kutahya’s ceramics trade and the life of the city.40 He also shared with the author an account of his deportation, in the interest of documenting the full weight of the Armenian experience in those excruciatingly painful years. The war threatened to devour Jerusalem, but even in Damascus, Victoria, Garo, and Fimi had not left strife entirely behind. Egypt and Syria, too, had joined the coalition of Arab states at war with Israel, which launched air strikes against the Syrian capital. Israeli bombs fell on the Old City of Damascus, hitting streets perilously close to the Markarians’ house. All of the Ohannessians struggled to keep their fears in check. The remaining residents of Baqaʾa breathed a small sigh of relief when the United Nations called a one-month truce on June 11, 1948. Armenian communities in Egypt and Lebanon took advantage of the cease-fire to get food and medical supplies through blockades to St. James. The Armenian pharmacists of Cairo pooled their resources and sent a one-ton truck to the convent, loaded with barrels of medications.41

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Although Vahé and Mary were still not permitted to move freely, Jewish residents of the western Jerusalem suburbs weren’t subjected to the same restrictions. During the pause in fighting, a wholesale looting and destruction of the district’s Arab homes commenced. At first, members of the Haganah broke into houses looking for usable equipment. Soon after, civilians from outside the neighborhood came in search of food, but took small valuables at the same time. One of the Ohannessians’ neighbors along the Bethlehem road—a half-Armenian, half-British native Jerusalemite and family friend—recalled the plundering: “From our veranda we saw horse-drawn carts as well as pick-up trucks laden with pianos, refrigerators, radios, paintings, ornaments and furniture, some wrapped in valuable Persian carpets. . . . Safes with money and jewelry were prised open and emptied. The loot was transported for private use or for sale in West Jerusalem. To us, this was most upsetting. Our friends’ houses were being ransacked and we were powerless to intervene. In fact, there was a vacuum, there was no law and order and chaos prevailed. This state of affairs continued for months.”42 Those who remained in their homes, like Vahé and Mary, coaxed food out of backyard gardens and tried to keep their chickens alive to produce eggs. Slowly, they depleted their larders, emptying the sacks of flour, sugar, lentils, tinned goods, and poultry feed laid in before the hostilities escalated. Around the neighborhood, looters continued their pillage, stripping ceramic bathroom tiles, “electric switches and wiring, kitchen gadgets, water-pipes and fittings. Nothing escaped: lofts and cellars were broken into, doors and windows hacked down, floor tiles removed in search of hidden treasures.”43 In Damascus on June 28, 1948, Mary Markarian gave birth to a son. She and her husband named the little boy Armenag, in honor of Yervant’s father, who had been brutally executed in Konia in 1920 by the Turkish Nationalist Army. Two months after Armen’s birth, Yervant accepted a position as physician for the AGBU clinic in Beirut. Victoria treasured the days she spent with her sweet-tempered grandson before Tavit called for her, Fimi, and Garo to leave Damascus and join him and Hagop in the Egyptian capital. Tavit, Victoria, Fimi, and Garo, among the seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians dislocated by the hostilities,44 were now stateless. With little cash remaining from Sirarpi’s loan, and tight quarters in Hagop’s Cairo bachelor apartment, Fimi and Garo began to look for work, competing

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for positions with Egyptian citizens. Ohannessian fatigued easily and was consumed with worry about the fate of his son and daughter-in-law in Jerusalem, but thanks to the prince, he had gained some time to consolidate a plan. After one of the heaviest and most terrifying weeks of bombardment in Jerusalem, a second United Nations–negotiated truce went into effect in on July 17, although a strict curfew remained in effect. Soon after, Israeli authorities granted limited permission for Christians in the western suburbs to attend church on Sundays. Baqaʾa dwellers who wished to go to services received passes permitting them to walk along the abandoned railway line to St. Andrew’s Church, under the escort of armed guards. In August, military authorities appointed a headman, George Georgian, to represent the Baqaʾa neighborhood and convey requests or grievances to the two Military Governors—Joshua Simon and Maurice Bassam—appointed to oversee the district.45 Mukhtar Georgian obtained permission to open a small food store in the garage of the German Hospice, as the remaining Armenians, Greeks, and Arabs were unable to reach any central markets and the villagers who had previously supplied their daily needs had disappeared. Bread, margarine, and a few staples were sold by ration, when they were available at all.46 Vahé and Mary could walk to the store during the two morning hours when the curfew was lifted. As residents of the western outskirts, the Ohannessians were now cut off from the Old City, including the Armenian convent and the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop. Although food remained scarce, the new cease-fire endured, for the most part, and gave cause for hope. In late May, the United Nations had appointed Count Folke Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family and the former President of the Swedish Red Cross, as the chief mediator. The Count proposed a number of provisions, including the right for refugees wishing to return to their homes to be able to do so. He also suggested that compensation be paid for the property of those choosing not to return.47 On September 17, Jewish extremists ambushed and killed Bernadotte. In the same week, Israeli authorities erected a tall barbed- and razor-wire fence in Baqaʾa, enclosing an area of about half a square mile. This barrier bordered the Bethlehem road and ran as far north as the German Hospice. Soldiers stood guard around the perimeter. The remaining Armenian and Arab families who lived outside this nominal security zone were compelled to leave

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their homes and move into the area contained by the fencing. Unfortunately for the Ohannessians, the family’s apartment was on the eastern side of the Bethlehem road, outside the enclosure. They were ordered to leave and move into an empty house across the street. The military authorities provided the use of a small truck, allowing Vahé, Mary, and four other families to cart their furniture and other belongings. Neighbors helped them transport a tile-covered sideboard, a wardrobe, some books, clothes, photo albums, and boxes of pottery—the most cherished objects accumulated during twenty-five years in the Ohannessian family home—behind the fence. During daylight hours, Mary, Vahé, and the other inhabitants could walk outdoors, staying within the bounds of the enclosure. The Ohannessians’ small supply of cash, which enabled them to purchase rations when food was available, would not last indefinitely. Without the freedom to move, the couple lacked the possibility of earning any more. In early October, military officials conducted a census of Jerusalem’s nonJewish population. The following week, the internees received temporary identification cards, issued by Military Governor Bassam. The cards, printed in French, designated them as “inhabitants of the Baqaʾa zone” and were valid until the end of the year, renewable for an additional three months.48 Looking out from behind barbed wire to the other side of the Bethlehem road, Vahé, now 35, could see the house where he had lived since he was 10 years old. One of Tavit’s former clients in Cairo arranged an interview with an Egyptian art magazine, El-Estudyo. In the June 15, 1949, article “The Only Artist,” Ohannessian related that some of his ancestors as well as other Armenians had been brought to Kutahya by Seljuk sultans to engage in the ceramic trade. Over the centuries, these Armenians had turned the city into a center of pottery, Persian-style Kashani tiles, and mosaic tile work. He recounted his many commissioned works in the Near East, Europe, and the United States. He speculated that Sultan Selim I had harmed Egypt’s native ceramics tradition when he conquered the Mamluks and carried off artists, scientists, and craftsmen to Constantinople. Egypt had produced the very earliest glazed ceramics, Tavit asserted, but the country’s prevailing machine-made, Western-style production wasted the traditional knowledge of local craftsmen and represented an

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Wedding portrait of Mara and Ohannes Ohannessian, 1949

abandonment of Egyptian culture. He wished to reinvigorate Egypt’s painted glazed tile tradition. The interviewer observed that Ohannessian “carried in his trembling hands the heritage of a six-century-old art.” In Yerevan, Ohannes found little appetite for ceramic products and had taken an accounting position in a factory. He yearned for the comforting presence of his family and friends but found companionship with a dark-haired beauty of Hungarian-Jewish descent, Margit Palti, whom he fondly called Mara. They married on August 6, 1949. In the face of growing hunger in Baqaʾa, Mary, Vahé, and their neighbors within the fenced-in, increasingly close-knit community used their wits to scavenge sustenance. Sometimes friends came by and threw items of food over the fence. A few men made clandestine forays outside the zone and risked sniper fire in order to harvest the olives ripening in untended groves near the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

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Another family living within the barbed-wire perimeter, the Andréses, received permission from Military Governor Bassam to leave the zone to check on their house, located close to the no-man’s-land near the Greek convent of Mar Elias. One day in September of 1949, the father, Joseph, and three of his young daughters set out to walk the two and a half miles south through open fields toward their home. From within the enclosure, the Ohannessians and their neighbors heard a shuddering blast. One of the girls had stepped on a landmine, killing her and one of her sisters. Joseph and his surviving daughter Denise returned to the pen, devastated by grief, which settled like a shadow over the entire community.49 In November, military authorities demolished the fence. After thirteen months’ confinement, the Ohannessians were permitted to move more freely, but as holders of new Israeli identity cards, they still had no access to the workshop in the Old City. They were prohibited from crossing over to the eastern—now Jordanian-held—part of the city. And upon their release, they discovered that their apartment across the Bethlehem road had been appropriated under the regime of the new Office of the Custodian of Enemy Property.50 For the second time in his life, Vahé had become homeless. A substantial number of Armenians had settled in Cairo after the First World War—a community recently enlarged by others fleeing Palestine. As she searched for work, Fimi endured several nerve-wracking months of rejection. She learned that as a Palestinian refugee she was considered, at best, second choice.51 Finally, she found a position as an assistant in the British Council Library. Along with contributions from Sirarpi and Garo, Fimi’s new job gave her the means to lease and furnish a compact flat on Salah el-Din Street in Cairo’s modern suburb of Heliopolis.52 The planned city—founded in 1905 by Belgian industrialist Éduard Empain and Armenian statesman and AGBU founder Boghos Nubar—was far enough away from downtown to be affordable but also lively and attractive. Grand palm-lined boulevards boasted cafés and cinemas. Luxurious apartment blocks and imposing villas displayed polished granite pillars, whimsical pharaonic busts, red and white ablaq masonry, and ranks of carved stone arches.53 Even on the Ohannessians’ unpretentious side street, the low-rise concrete-fronted apartment houses featured some adornment, most often iron fretwork gates featuring Art Déco–style depictions of the sun.

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Across the Avenue des Palais,54 the main thoroughfare that separated the Ohannessians’ neighborhood from the more lavish parts of town, the carved bas-reliefs and fantastical towers of Baron Empain’s palace conjured the Hindu temple of Angkor Wat. The tram concession, providing a quick connection with downtown, had stimulated rapid growth in what Heliopolis planners dubbed “The Oasis of Cairo.” Around the block from the Ohannessians’ new home, the Armenian Catholic Church of St. Therèse emulated the profiles and carved reliefs of medieval Armenian churches. But Victoria and the family rode the tram weekly to St. Gregory the Illuminator Apostolic Church, near the train station that Mehmet Emin had once decorated with Kutahya tiles. To their great relief, Tavit and Victoria learned that Vahé and Mary had survived the dire months of internment without injury. Afterward, the Jerusalem Patriarchate offered the couple the wardenship of a cottage adjacent to a small Armenian church in the German Colony. They would take responsibility for maintaining the grounds and preparing the building for clergy to give occasional services and, in exchange, could live there rent-free. Vahé created a patio between the two buildings, planted a garden, and moved the furniture he and his wife had taken from the family’s Bethlehem road apartment into their new home. Most of the pottery they had tried to save had broken during the moves. Eventually, Mary found a secretarial job at the Anglican International School. Hermine, stranded in England with an obsolete Palestinian passport, applied for British citizenship in 1950. The idealistic young social-work student hadn’t realized that upon the termination of the British Mandate, new rules required her to register with the police as an alien. Her omission triggered a comprehensive MI5 investigation. Over a period of months, the Metropolitan Police interviewed co-workers and friends, collected testimonials, probed her employment and banking records, and concluded: “So far as can be ascertained, she has never been associated with any subversive or foreign political organization, and there is no reason to doubt her loyalty to this country.”55 Sirarpi accepted a position teaching English at The College in Bromley, Kent, and simultaneously matriculated into a diploma program in education at the University of London. She strictly followed the new immigration

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procedures promulgated under the British Nationality Act of 1948 and petitioned for naturalization as soon as she qualified. The application form queried her current nationality and that of her parents. In response, she wrote: “Of no nationality.”56 Fimi’s new workplace in Cairo, the six-room British Council Library, within the British Institute building at 32 Abdel Khalak Tharwat Pasha Street, overlooked a derelict alleyway in an otherwise busy commercial neighborhood. Although her pay was modest, she enjoyed browsing the many smart shops in the commercial district—“Paris along the Nile”—as some of her new acquaintances called it. She also found the sight of so many British institutions downtown—the Consulate, officers’ clubs, Barclay’s Bank, Thomas Cook’s— comfortingly familiar. Around the corner, on Soliman Pasha Street, the stylish Art Déco Miami and Metro cinema theaters featured the romantic American films she loved. Down Adly Pasha Street from the Institute building, the exclusive Turf Club, where Cairo’s British elite met for drinks, meals, and the odd game of snooker, held an air of mystery for the aspiring young writer. In between the grand Royal Opera House and the Council Library, Groppi’s chic mosaic-adorned tearoom and garden drew a well-coiffed crowd, eager to be seen. Farther west, beyond the old military barracks, stretched the lush green islands and bluegray waters of the Nile. On occasion, Fimi spent an evening at one of Cairo’s many open-air cinemas or cafés in the company of friends. At Groppi’s less intimidating Heliopolis branch, feather-light profiteroles yielded blooms of cream under the first imprint of her fork. She adored equally the layered gateau glazed with marzipan and the dense, sweet marrons glacés. But her financial responsibility for her parents, even with Sirarpi’s and Garo’s contributions, weighed on her, as did her loneliness and the sense that she didn’t really belong. To the British in Cairo, she was a Palestinian refugee. For Egyptians, she was khawagat—a foreigner. For Fimi, Jerusalem remained her longed-for home. She kept nostalgic snapshots of the group of friends with whom she, her siblings, and cousins had once enjoyed alfresco lunches and hikes in the Palestinian countryside, during interludes of peace. As much as she appreciated Cairo’s many cosmopolitan charms, her statelessness and

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the consequent vulnerability of her position distressed her. The city’s superb pastries offered a rare, small recompense. At the Council Library, surrounded by an abundance of books, Miss Eff, as the British staff called Fimi, discovered her professional calling. Her senior associates treated her kindly, especially Johanne Maxwell, who taught her the cataloguing system, how to type up the blue index cards, and answer questions from the library’s nearly twelve hundred registered users, both European and Egyptian. Seeing Fimi’s aptitude for the work, Miss Maxwell advised her that the British Library Association in London offered a correspondence course leading to the status of Chartered Librarian. The young woman enrolled in the evening study Fimi Ohannessian in the Palestinian program, eager to resume her intercountryside rupted education. The Cairo library held nearly seventeen thousand works in English—fiction and non-fiction, an entire room full of reference volumes and periodicals, and children’s books, as well as circulating collections of gramophone recordings, sheet music, films, and books in Braille. The Institute offered English classes and presented concerts, theatrical events, and lectures in accord with its mission of disseminating British culture in Egypt.57 The Institute also collaborated with the Department of Education and helped train Egyptian teachers of English.58 Mr. Charles F. Jones, who had hired Fimi, served as administrator for the British Council, with oversight for the library. British nationals maintained high-ranking positions throughout the Egyptian government and commercial agencies and could be seen hobnobbing throughout downtown Cairo59—sipping gin on the porches of Shepheard’s Hotel or entering the Turf Club’s fabled bar for a pre-dinner drink. They flocked to cricket and polo matches at the Gezira Island Sporting Club, a favored British haunt distinctly unwelcoming to Egyptians, no matter how wealthy.60 All these establishments proudly flew the Union Jack—increasingly seen as a symbol of colonial oppression by the burgeoning numbers of Egyptian nationalists. Among the English, a whiff of assumed superiority lingered in daily

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interactions. Even some of the helpful and well-meaning Council Library staff harbored demeaning opinions of the intellectual capacity of Muslims.61 Fimi borrowed plenty of books herself, reading widely from nineteenth- and twentieth-century British novels as well as the Middle English literature she had just begun to explore before withdrawing from Jerusalem Girls’ College. She brought home applied art volumes for her father, who filled notebooks with lists of glaze ingredients, firing temperatures, and the minutiae of techniques used in a variety of international ceramic traditions. Tavit’s attempts to establish a workshop in Cairo showed no promise of success. He frequently met with commercial attachés from various foreign embassies to discuss export channels. And every six months he was obliged to detail his continuing efforts to the Egyptian Directorate of Passports as a condition for renewing the family’s residency permits. At home, he complained that he couldn’t get needed assistance from the Egyptian Department of Commerce and Industry. The government’s rebuffs, the painful dispersal of his family, his nebulous legal status, and concern over his Via Dolorosa property deflated his hopes. He turned to another possibility: constructing a new, much larger workshop in Jerusalem, one that might employ some of the many displaced Palestinian refugees. Together with Egyptian architect Hassan Bey Fathy, Tavit began to draft plans for a studio with multiple kilns, envisioning an enterprise that might ultimately sustain four hundred workers.62 On October 15, 1951, the Egyptian Parliament issued decrees annulling the AngloEgyptian Treaty. That 1936 agreement had granted the British the right to station as many as ten thousand troops in the Suez Canal Zone and maintain the roads and bridges in the area.63 However, since the end of the Second World War, Britain had consolidated more than thirty-eight thousand soldiers within the zone’s sprawling military complex and employed forty thousand Egyptians there as well. In announcing the abrogation, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Nahhas declared that the British had failed to understand Egypt’s national aspirations. Egyptians demanded independence and freedom from foreign occupation. The following day, nationalist demonstrations burst into violence. Crowds burned cars and torched the British PX store in Ismailia, on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The local Egyptian auxiliary police did little to stop them. Determined to resist expulsion, the British army and Royal Air Force mounted a display of tank and air power

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intended to discourage any further protests. The British ambassador expressed his concern to the Foreign Office that British subjects in Cairo, only eighty miles to the west, might well be at risk for violent reprisals. Demonstrators shelled the Alexandria branch of the British Council Library on December 5, 1951. The building suffered minimal damage, although the news was frightening for Fimi and her colleagues. Later the same night in the Suez Zone, an insurgent hurled a bomb into the British army’s water filtration plant, rupturing water supplies. Three days later, in the course of building a new road to the water plant, British troops demolished fifty houses in the village of Kafr el Amdou. The following day, the Egyptian Council of Ministers summarily dismissed all one hundred and sixty-eight British nationals under Egyptian government employment.64 Destructive and lethal attacks on British soldiers, military trains, and the RAF wireless tower in the Canal Zone signaled a surging intolerance toward the continuing British presence.65 On January 20, British troops occupied the town of Ismailia, ordered the inhabitants to vacate their homes, and arrested forty-one Egyptians they suspected of terrorism.66 In response to this and other outrages, Egyptian nationalists mounted demonstrations and organized boycotts of British products.67 For the Ohannessians, the increasing signs of revolt seemed all too familiar and energized Tavit’s efforts to move the family back to Jerusalem. The United Nations had established a Relief and Works Agency headquartered in Amman, for the benefit of displaced Palestinians. In early January, with transit assistance from the Red Cross,68 Ohannessian traveled to Vahé’s new home in Jerusalem’s German Colony. He had not seen his son and daughterin-law since they’d married in 1948, and Mary was now expecting. With the assistance of the Arab Chamber of Commerce in Jerusalem, Ohannessian applied to the Relief and Works Agency and the Development Bank of Jordan for funds to build a new workshop. The bank scrutinized his plans for the business and demanded a guarantor, as Tavit no longer had any income and the only property he owned was the building on the Via Dolorosa. An old friend, Mohammad Taner Daoudi, owner of a prosperous import-export firm, generously agreed to guarantee the loan. On January 25, 1952, Anglo-Egyptian tensions flared again when the British authorities in Ismailia—after having discovered a large cache of weapons and

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explosives—ordered Egyptian auxiliary policemen to disarm and leave the Canal Zone. The officers refused. After three hours’ combat, British troops seized Ismailia’s two main police buildings, killing at least forty Egyptian police and arresting nearly eight hundred men. Later in the day, the District Governor of Ismailia declared that he held the British responsible for “all that they had done against the town, its inhabitants, and the police.”69 Thousands of university students and workers met overnight to plan a demonstration for the next day; they would call out for vengeance against the British.70 The following morning, Fimi arrived early at the British Council Library to prepare for the Saturday 9:30 a.m. half-day opening. A tall Egyptian man, wearing a long flowing galabiya, blocked the door of the Institute building. She had never seen him before. Fimi asked in Arabic if he would kindly step aside to allow her to enter. “No, mademoiselle,” he replied, avoiding eye contact with her. She asked again, explaining that she urgently needed to get inside to her job at the library. Again, he refused to move. “No, mademoiselle. There is no work for you today.” She turned away, startled. Unsure of what else to do, she headed back toward the tram. In the street, men were talking excitedly about some kind of uprising in the Muski district. Sensing unrest, she hurried home. On days when disturbances threatened the peace, Egyptian police chiefs usually stationed as many as fifty officers in the streets around the Turf Club and British Consulate. This morning, in spite of the previous day’s incidents in the town of Ismailia, there were few police to be seen.71 As the morning progressed, Fimi later learned, throngs of Egyptian nationalists made their way around the neighborhood, shattering windows, setting offices on fire, and pillaging British and other foreign shops and establishments.72 Enraged rioters heaped looted furniture, clothing, and other goods in the street and threw flaming petrol-soaked rags on them. By 1 p.m., the Royal Opera House was ablaze. Just north of Opera Square, a gang of about two dozen burst into Shepheard’s Hotel, piled up furniture and carpets, and set them alight. The blaze engulfed the structure within twenty minutes. Members of the Italian Opera Company, boarding at the hotel during their Cairo production, sprinted from the inferno, losing all their belongings. One witness, looking down on Adly Pasha and Soliman Streets from his third-floor apartment, heard shouting and “saw a large crowd emerge from in front of the Miami Cinema. The Cinema was immediately attacked, I could

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see dense smoke and flames arising from both sides of the street.”73 Soon after, a mob attacked the Turf Club. The members had barricaded themselves inside, but rioters used a lamp post as a battering ram and broke through the door. Minutes later, the ground floor was ablaze. As the conflagration enveloped the second floor, horrified onlookers saw Englishmen appear at the upper windows. Some jumped or fell, breaking bones, and were thrown back into the flames by the crowd amassed around the building. An observer recounted that “the four policemen at the Turf Club made no attempt to restrain the mob.”74 Mr. Charles Jones, Fimi’s boss and a club member, trapped inside, tied together curtains and tried to climb down them. As he fell the last few feet onto the street, rioters kicked and beat him with iron bars. Finally, one of them slit his throat. He, too, had been burned by the fire, but could be identified.75 Three of the ten murdered Turf Club victims were charred and mangled beyond recognition.76 Fimi trembled when she realized what might have become of her had she not been blocked from entering the library that morning. The Egyptian stranger had likely saved her life. The Cairo fires of January 26, 1952, left more than twenty-five dead, five hundred wounded,77 and twelve thousand homeless. The cataclysm wrecked seven hundred offices, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, luxury shops, and auto showrooms—four hundred buildings in total.78 Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.79 Prime Minister al-Nahhas Pasha declared martial law in Egypt.80 Several days later, Fimi reported back to the Institute building. All around it, British and other Western-linked establishments lay in scorched ruin. Cairo’s commercial district reeked of smoldering wood and burnt tires, clothing, and furniture. Abject figures stood mute before the hulks of their blighted homes. Others crouched in the street, searching for their possessions among piles of collapsed masonry. Porters with horse-drawn carts cleared the detritus. The fire brigade had reached the library—one of the first structures to be torched—and doused water on the burning building, but whole walls of books had been entirely incinerated. After the catastrophe, the staff confronted thousands of “partly sodden, wholly sodden, semi-charred or charred and soaked volumes,” as Fimi’s colleague Cora Pollack described them.81 Miss Eff and other staff carried piles of foul-smelling, waterlogged volumes onto the roof, hoping to dry them in the sun. After Mr. Jones’ Requiem Mass on February 5,

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Fimi and the other librarians, aided by half a dozen porters, continued the grim, noxious task of clearing, cleaning, sorting, and discarding the blackened remains of books and furniture, working amid piles of brick dust and still-falling plaster debris.82 The wooden floors in several rooms had caught fire, leaving yawning holes; desks and chairs had crashed through. Although a handful of patrons returned to the premises in early February, carrying with them some of the five hundred books checked out at the time of the fire, the library and most of its holdings had been destroyed. The Ohannessians, terrified of further eruptions of violence, were anxious to leave Cairo as quickly as possible. Two weeks after the fire, Victoria received a message from Tavit, who was still in Jerusalem. He would head to Beirut, he wrote, and return to them from there. He needed the Markarians’ help to get the family out of Egypt; their neighbor was the sister of the Lebanese Consul General in Cairo. Mary’s friend Mounira cajoled her brother: Could he expedite residency visas for the Ohannessians? In spite of the intervention, without passports the family’s interviews and applications took more than two months—tense weeks of waiting and watching as the first trials of the rioters commenced and demonstrations continued. The library discharged Fimi from her position; it had closed and would have to be entirely rebuilt in a new location. In May, with their Lebanese papers finally in hand, the Ohannessian family departed Cairo. In the meantime, Tavit remained in correspondence with the Development Bank of Jordan, crafting polite excuses for the long gaps between his letters. The bank, complaining of the “considerable delay in supplying us with relevant information,” turned down his loan request.83 The Ohannessians lived with the Markarians during their first months in Beirut. Tavit wrote to Hermine in England and asked her to rejoin the family in Lebanon. Upon her arrival, she found a good position at the American University in Beirut, as secretary-receptionist for President Stephen Penrose, who had shown a particular sensitivity to the plight of displaced Palestinians. Fimi found a job in the university library and also recommenced her baccalaureate studies in English literature. Sirarpi left England for Beirut and entered a master’s degree program in education at the American University. She also began to spend time with her father, interviewing him on the legacy of his art and documenting his career and major installations. The family rented an apartment in the Abidjian

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Building on Rue Maʾamari near the campus. Although the rooms were small and bitterly cold during the winter months, Tavit and Victoria shared a deep contentment in having more of the family nearby. The university environs offered the family other pleasures—regular gallery exhibitions of important modern artists, an excellent library, public lectures, films, and concerts. Garo’s interest in journalism firmed, and he made contacts in the field, leading to an assistant editor position at An-Nida journal—the “Herald of the East,” and a similar position at Al-Kulliyah, a publication of the American University. He took up the writerly habit of pipe smoking. Victoria loved to stroll along the seaside with Tavit or one of her children and bask in the sunshine and Mediterranean breezes. The whole family took great pride in Yervant Markarian’s accomplishments. Aside from his clinical work, he devoted time to philanthropic projects—especially on behalf of Armenian schoolchildren. He instituted a large-scale inoculation program against typhoid fever and solicited milk and cod liver oil for the city’s poorer children from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. Yervant advanced his training at the American University’s School of Public Health. In Dr. Penrose’s office, Hermine’s desk sat behind a glass door, allowing her a view of the daily flow of faculty, students, and other employees in the administration building. The clear panes also allowed passersby a good view of the petite young woman, whose shapely figure and alluring dark eyes, set in the graceful oval of her face, attracted more than a few men. Hovhannes Donabedian, an urbane young architect with a rakish goatee and a highly developed artistic sensibility, had arrived in Beirut in 1949 to matriculate into the graduate architectural program at the university. Born in Palestine, he had trained as an engineer and had held a responsible position in the office of Nablus’s District Commissioner. However, his father—who as a third-year medical student in Beirut had been conscripted into the Turkish army during World War I84—sought to remove him from harm’s way during the Arab-Israeli fighting and sent him abroad. After completing his studies, Hovhaness had risen to the position of supervising contract engineer for the university’s rapidly expanding building program. Although he often passed the President’s office and found himself enchanted by Hermine’s appearance, he—like most youthful Armenians—was far too reserved to simply walk in and introduce himself. Finally, a mutual friend interceded

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and arranged a formal introduction. As Hovhannes entered Hermine’s office one summer day, intending to invite her out for a long-anticipated date, he reached forward to shake her hand. The instant their fingers touched, the building went dark. The electrical system had blacked out. The two married three months later, on October 27, 1952.85 Toward the end of 1953, Ohannessian received an inquiry from the art department at the American University. Would he be interested in offering a studio course in ceramic making? Tavit was delighted by the prospect. The art department announced a workshop session intended to attract potential enrollees.86 On Monday, December 14, Ohannessian was preparing to leave for the university. A driver, sent by the school, waited outside. Victoria, alarmed by a loud racket coming from the stairwell, rushed to the entrance of the secondstory apartment to investigate the clatter. It was her husband, galloping down the stairs. She called out to him. He stopped, turned around, and looked up. “What are you doing,” she asked in her gentle singsong, “dashing down like some crazy youth? You scared me!” Tavit smiled at her. “I’ll be going to Mary’s,” she continued. “I might even stay overnight.” “As you like,” he said amiably. Later that morning, Tavit met with prospective students in the art department. Partway into his demonstration of the treadle wheel, he froze and collapsed onto the floor. The secretary rang for an ambulance and summoned Fimi and Garo from their respective offices. Tavit was transported to the American University Hospital. The admitting doctors examined him, but it was already clear that he had suffered a massive stroke. He remained unresponsive. The doctors tried to prepare Victoria and her children for the inevitable outcome. Garo kept vigil that night by his father’s side. In the morning, he went home, changed, and returned to work, bleary-eyed, but fighting desperately to maintain some semblance of normalcy. Hermine and her husband, who lived a five-minute walk from the hospital, and Victoria, Fimi, Mary, and Yervant, took turns sitting with Tavit. Garo remained at his father’s side each night and then reported to work. For one week, he never went to bed. Ohannessian did not regain consciousness. On December 22, in the afternoon, Hovhaness sat next to his father-in-law’s bed, listening as his respirations grew shallower. Suddenly, Tavit drew a sharp gasping breath, then fell silent. opposite Tavit Ohannessian with cat, Beirut, ca. 1952

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In the hours after her husband’s death, Victoria, held steady by her children, purchased a burial plot in the cemetery of St. Nishan’s Armenian Orthodox Church for the funeral the next day. Garo called his close friend and mentor, Robert “Chick” Squire, editor of the Beirut Daily Star to convey the news. The following morning, December 23, 1953, a front-page headline in the paper announced, “Renowned Ceramist Dies of Cerebral Hemorrhage.” A marble cross marked Tavit’s final resting place. Victoria, grief stricken, ordered a stone panel to cover his grave, inscribed in Classical Armenian: “Rest him in the church, Lord. Here lies David Ohannessian, born in Eskishehir in 188[4], porcelain-maker in Kutahya and Jerusalem, deceased in Beirut in 1953.”87 The Ohannessians gave the mason two tiles—in lustrous shades of blue and green—to be mounted on either side of the memorial.

Stencil pattern, Dome of the Rock Tiles studio

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In the years following Tavit’s death, Vahé and Mary remained in Israel, as citizens of the new nation. There, they had three children—Ardavast, Anahid, and Sona. In Yerevan, Ohannes rose to the position of chief accountant for his factory. He endured hunger and other deprivations under the Soviet regime as well as a searing sense of isolation from his kin, assuaged only by the frequent exchange of long, affectionate letters. He and Mara raised two daughters—Alice and Donara. After Ohannes’s departure from Jerusalem in 1947, it would be twenty-nine years before he laid eyes on any of his siblings again. Garo stayed in Beirut and pursued his literary ambitions at An Nida. He tumbled headlong into love with a willowy, soft-spoken young American woman, Griselda Jackson, who had already earned a master’s degree in music from Columbia University. She was traveling the world as nanny for the Winthrop family of New York. The party arrived in Lebanon on November 1, 1954, and extended their stay to accommodate the quickly blossoming romance. The young sweethearts married on May 15, 1955. In June of 1956, with help from Nathaniel Winthrop, Garo and Griselda Ohannessian resettled in New York City, where they would, in the next years, raise three girls—Ani, Lucy, and Mary—and distinguish themselves in the fields of magazine and book publishing. On October 18, 1956, Hovhaness and Hermine Donabedian and their infant daughter, Aline—fortunate recipients of special “Displaced Persons” visas from the American Embassy in Beirut—landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Ten weeks later, Victoria Ohannessian boarded an airplane for the first time in her life and departed Lebanon to join them. The Donabedians would have two more children, David and Margaret, and achieve rewarding careers in architecture and real estate sales. Sirarpi Ohannessian moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to enroll in a master’s degree program in linguistics at Harvard University, arriving in Boston on July 1, 1958. She carried with her a case crammed full of Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop records, stencil patterns, glaze formulas, letters, legal documents, and photographs of her father’s work—the precious archive she had managed to safeguard through every displacement. Sirarpi spent the balance of her professional life working at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C., advancing

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to the position of senior researcher and gaining recognition as an expert in problems connected with teaching English as a second language. In the final week of March, 1959, Mary and Yervant Markarian, and their three young sons, Armen, Ara, and Vatche, boarded the MS Giulio Cesare in the Port of Beirut and embarked on a two-week journey to Fresno, California, via New York City. The Markarians left behind a nascent civil war between Lebanese Christian Maronite and Muslim factions. Machine-gun fire and rioting had threatened to overwhelm Yervant’s AGBU clinic, where a steady stream of injured soldiers arrived for treatment. Sometimes, insurgents blindfolded the doctor and drove him to covert locations to care for the wounded. In Fresno, Yervant would begin a previously arranged position as Administrator of the Armenian Home for the Aged. With that job in hand, fluency in multiple languages, and the sponsorship of his uncle and aunt, the family secured U.S. residency visas under the prevailing quota system. Although in time Dr. Markarian would become a renowned clinical toxicologist, he would never practice medicine again. Fimi met Arto Moughalian of Alexandria while attending a wedding in Cairo and married him in Beirut a few months later, on January 29, 1956. They would become the parents of two children—Sato and David—the first, born in Egypt and the second, after immigrating to the United States. In her failed first application for a “Refugee-Escapee” visa, Fimi appealed to the American Vice-Consul in Cairo: “Both my husband and I are very eager to settle in the United States, where individuals may work and think and pray and live freely.” Afterwards, through her broad American network, Griselda secured for Arto a job as a metallurgical engineer, thus qualifying them for U.S. entry. Griselda and Garo welcomed the Moughalians into their tiny one-bedroom apartment in New York City’s East Village during the family’s bewildering first months in the New World. Like ashes in the wind, the Ohannessian grandchildren dispersed to Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco; Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Jersey; Jerusalem, the Isle of Wight, and Düsseldorf. Most of them raised highly accomplished children of their own. None of Tavit Ohannessian’s living descendants has ever seen his grave.

P ostlude

The Return

None of us have seen Mouradchai, the small Anatolian village in which our father Tavit and his sister, our horkour Marik were born: yet we all seem to have vivid memories of it. Pheme Alice Ohannessian Moughalian, 1992

On a sunbaked June afternoon in 1988, my uncle Garo Ohannessian stepped outside Manhattan’s St. Luke’s Hospital following his dialysis session and collapsed in the street. He had suffered a massive stroke. Three days later, at age 59, he died. Some weeks afterward, our cousin Sona sent a letter expressing regret that she hadn’t had a chance to know her uncle better. Her own father, Vahé, had died in 1972, also at 59. Sona feared that the histories of our ancestors might soon be lost and asked my mother if she’d be willing to write down all she knew about them. My mother, who by then had re-transliterated her name from the Armenian Ֆիմի, or “Fimi,” to the worldlier “Pheme,” accepted the assignment gladly. Wheelchair bound with rheumatoid arthritis, her face moon shaped from a daily cocktail of methotrexate and prednisone, Pheme retook her place at the same dining room table where she, two decades earlier, had completed the coursework for her American degrees. Throughout her life, my mother had derived enormous satisfaction from the written word. Like Sirarpi, the academic linguist, and Garo, the journalist, she had forged a vocation around it, joyfully teaching 261

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poetry and literature at Highland Park High School. Illness had derailed my mother’s career, but Sona’s request renewed her sense of purpose. Over the next three years, Pheme spent nostalgic hours on the phone with her sisters, gathering up the fragments of Tavit and Victoria Ohannessian’s stories. Gripping a pen in her gnarled right hand, she wrote inquiries to old acquaintances and distant cousins and waited for replies. Her sister Mary, Pheme discovered, retained the clearest memories of their childhood home on Bethlehem Road, the workshop, and the myriad characters that had populated the Ohannessian constellation. Hermine had transcribed many of the stories passed down by Horkour Marik. Sirarpi possessed a wealth of documents from the Jerusalem workshop and had compiled, mainly from interviews with her father in Beirut in 1952, lists of his outstanding installations, restorations, and awards. As the eldest of the seven siblings and matriarch of the family since her mother’s death in 1970, Sirarpi had taken primary responsibility for commemorating her father’s artistic legacy, commissioning identifying plaques, corresponding with interested historians, and penning gently corrective letters to journalists who had erred in their accounts of the establishment of Jerusalem pottery. She also steered the litigation the Ohannessian family pursued in Israeli courts to reclaim possession of the workshop on the Via Dolorosa after squatters broke in around 1959 and appropriated the premises and all its contents. Shut-in and often in pain, my mother shared wistful anecdotes with me and my brother, David. She continued to record every television special about Suleiman the Magnificent and insisted I watch them with her when I visited. She brightened at any glimpse of tile, which evoked for her the memory of her father, who had described the Rustem Pasha Mosque so frequently and warmly that in the family chronicles, it too had achieved the status of a close relative. Intent on her task, my mother patiently collated accounts. One event—her father’s forced conversion—was still too painful to acknowledge. This she could not assimilate into her text. In 1995, three years after proudly distributing a bound copy of “The Families of Tavit and Victoria Ohannessian” to every living member of her family, she faced the need to honor her father’s terrible sacrifice. In the last months of Pheme’s life, she consigned this anguish instead into the memory of her loving son, David, who embraced and comforted her as her testimony unfolded haltingly, between wracking sobs. Finally, she had given voice to a previously unutterable chapter of our family’s legacy and had entrusted the knowledge of it to the next generation.

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Thanks to my mother’s colorful descriptions, my brother, cousins, and I read about the majestic peaks of our ancestors’ native village in far-off western Turkey. But in the 1990s, Mouradchai seemed distanced not only by miles and the fact that none of us knew exactly where it was, but also by the demands of raising families and establishing professional lives of our own. While my mother immersed herself in her act of remembrance, I embraced the challenge of carving out a place for myself in New York City’s busy arts scene. Ten years into my professional life, I was still refining my goals. I’d long ago recognized the powerful desire to be heard—a yearning that musicians share. But beyond the sound of my flute, I coveted a larger platform, a place where I could knit together the various threads of my experiences and views. I longed to understand more deeply how art and its creators interacted with the world around them. In 1993, together with the music director at Columbia University’s St. Paul’s Chapel, I developed a concept for a series called Perspectives in Music and Art and presented the first program, “Symbolists and Symbolism.” Over the next years, I experimented with ways of integrating an understanding of cultural influences into the performances themselves. I wanted a chance to hear the raw sweep, traditional bowings, and ornamentations of the Transylvanian village bands that Béla Bartók had so admired while I learned his music. And what of the great composers whom history had somehow overlooked? They too deserved attention and contextualization. I did not yet recognize that my compulsion to connect culture and environment, burrow in libraries, and attempt to redress omissions had already begun to lead me in another direction entirely. Somewhere below the stratum of everyday life, a much larger but still inchoate research project churned and finally surfaced: I wanted to make sense of my grandfather’s art. Finding his installations struck me as a reasonable place to begin. My aunt Sirarpi’s list held important clues, but many of the place-names had changed in the intervening years. I decided to start with the most widely documented of Ohannessian’s architectural tile works, the so-called Turkish Room in Sir Mark Sykes’s family estate, Sledmere House, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. On a trip to England in 2007, I booked a stay in York to coincide with one of the manor’s public visiting days. From central York, a couple of local buses took me to the stately, rebuilt Georgian house with its ornamental,

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sculpted gardens. I’d looked forward to this visit as a kind of art-historical pilgrimage and a link to my family’s surviving heritage. What I hadn’t anticipated, though, from the few pixelated images available online and the black-and-white photos in the art history books I’d studied in advance, was the gut-punch effect of standing in the stupendously decorated chamber, its dazzling tiles, floor to ceiling, meticulously glazed spired fireplace, painted in sumptuous shades of cobalt and turquoise, with bursts of red and radiant white. Since childhood, I’d lived with and loved the few vases, tiles, and plates my mother had brought to America, some made by our grandfather himself. The more loosely painted examples, I’d learned, were the creations and economic lifelines of scores of youngsters, orphaned in the Armenian Genocide, who had matured into the craft under Ohannessian’s guidance. But as our aunt Sirarpi had repeatedly tried to convey to us, it was the monumental tile installations that her father considered to be his masterworks. This was my first encounter with one of them. After the initial jolt, I felt a euphoric, oceanic sense of connection with him. Alone in the room, I reached over the cordons and ran my hand along the gently textured surface of the tiles—the evidence of my grandfather in the world. I didn’t ever want to leave. Over the next few years, I collected relevant books and visited libraries and archives more and more frequently, reading all I could find that pertained to Kütahya or Jerusalem ceramics. I emailed everyone whose name was associated in any way with these writings or my grandfather’s work—art and architectural historians, journalists, auction house and museum curators. I recorded interviews with my relatives and others who had known my grandparents, mining their memories. The trip to Sledmere had sparked an insatiable urge to know more. Several experts showed a generous forbearance—I was the granddaughter, after all, yearning to understand her ancestor’s art. My status as a professional musician also seemed to lend me some credibility. The art historian Dickran Kouymjian, whose lucid prose I had long admired and who had written an excellent article on the role of Armenians in the Kütahya ceramics trade, replied to all my inquiries. In early 2013, he asked if I would contribute a biographical chapter on David Ohannessian for a French anthology on Armenian Jerusalem. I hesitated then agreed, realizing that I would need to travel to the Holy Land almost immediately to meet his deadline.

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I secluded myself and wrote. Dickran kindly made recommendations to improve the essay. In the end, he suggested that I consider writing a book, an idea that struck me as absurd. Composing thirty-five hundred words had stretched me to my limits. But I wondered. If I didn’t take this on, would the possibility of centralizing all the documents, photographs, and records—the work begun in my mother’s generation—be lost? Was I capable of writing a richer and more accurate account of my grandfather’s legacy and tracing his path from Kütahya to Jerusalem? I didn’t know how to begin. A month later, in August of 2013, while on tour with the Imani Winds in Los Angeles, I had a newsy, catch-up dinner with an old school friend, Michael Jacobs, and mentioned my project. The next day, he sent an email, copying me, to another Highland Park mate, Samuel Freedman, the renowned journalist and professor. Sam replied and graciously invited me to audit his famous Book Seminar at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The offer seemed providential. As the intensive, semester-long class progressed, I began to formulate a strategy. I thought I should try to build on the narrative my mother had so painstakingly assembled and visit the places significant in the life of her father. The trips would include time for research in local archives. However, this scheme would necessitate travel to Turkey, something I’d always considered too emotionally daunting. I had come to understand my mother’s immense sense of longing for her childhood home and way of life in Jerusalem and had loved my time there, reconnecting with cousins and seeing the Ohannessian tile installations that had become such a distinctive feature of the city. But I didn’t know how to prepare myself to visit the land whose predecessor regime had expelled and caused the deaths of members of my clan and whose current government resisted coming to terms with this genocidal history. Did anything remain of our family’s presence there? What would it feel like to walk in my grandfather’s footsteps knowing the events that had followed? I planned to visit Istanbul, Konya, Kütahya, and Eskişehir in the summer of 2014 and began soliciting recommendations for a research assistant fluent in Ottoman Turkish. In each city, I had a well-defined task: to look at tiles, learn more about the Kütahya trade, and investigate any surviving materials pertaining to Ohannessian or other ancestors. I would leave Mouradchai for the

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end of the trip, that is, if I could find it at all. My mother’s narrative included a single clue to its whereabouts: it was a two-day mule ride from Eskişehir. “Mouradchai” appeared online in several digitized nineteenth-century American Protestant bulletins. I found more hints in missionary Joseph Greene’s 1916 memoir, Leavening the Levant. Greene indicated that Mouradchai lay one hundred miles east of Bursa and was the central village in a group of five Armenian settlements whose populations totaled twenty thousand in the 1860s.1 Greene had traveled annually to Mouradchai, one of his missionary out-stations. In his handwritten diaries,2 he had recorded page after page of demographic, linguistic, and topographic data, along with the wedding and agricultural customs in each town he visited. Another Protestant missionary, Charles A. S. Dwight, journeying the same circuit of western Anatolian Armenian towns and villages in 1890, chronicled the terrain: “My road took me through some wild scenery along the narrow and tortuous Sakaria River valley, and then over a steep rise of ground to Hunjilar. . . . On my way from Mouradchai to Bilijik I passed a night in Geul Dagh, also situated on a hilltop. Many of these places are inaccessible for wagons, and it is about all a mule wants to do to climb up to them over steep paths, studded with sharp stones.”3 An authority from the American Mule Museum in Bishop, California, estimated that a muleteer could travel between fifteen and twenty miles a day in that sort of landscape. In Columbia University’s Lehman Library Map Collection room, I spent hours trying to locate Mouradchai by searching for the surrounding villages recorded by Joseph Greene—Dermidash, Arslan Bey, Geul Dagh, and finally Chalgara. Lehman’s map specialist pointed me to the David Rumsey Map Collection website.4 Between those online scanned maps and the printed ones in the library, I pored over 150 images. But there was no sign of my grandfather’s birth village on any of them. I found several mentions in alternative spellings—Mouradja, Mouratca, Mourradaja, Muraca—in Armenian history books, but I found no trace of those either on any historical map. One essential Armenian volume depicted Mouradja as a splotch of black on a tiny schematic map, confirming the general vicinity but lacking enough coordinates to determine the exact place. In the same week, my ongoing correspondence with the New York Public Library’s Map Division produced a result. The librarian who’d been replying to my emails sent a link to a highly detailed 1907 German map of the Bursa province.5 She also revealed her name: Nancy Kandoian—she was Armenian!6

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I found Eskishehir on the map and plotted a radius of forty miles. About thirty-five miles northwest of the city lay a village called Muradja, up in the mountains and near some of the other ethnically Armenian hamlets mentioned by Joseph Greene. My friend Eli, who had studied archeology, overlaid the digitized German map onto Google Earth and discovered what appeared to be the remnants of the town, today called Muratça. In my grandfather’s lifetime, the settlement had sustained more than twenty-five hundred residents. The 2010 Turkish census recorded a population of fourteen. I’d been reporting the progress of my various searches on Facebook and announced the discovery. Now I needed to find a way to reach this remote mountainous spot during my upcoming three-week trip to Turkey. Within minutes of my post, a New York friend, Ayda Erbal, an Armenian-American political scientist born in Ankara, responded: “Hang on, I have friends in Eskişehir.” An hour later, she had recruited two people willing to drive me to the mountain village.

Istanbul’s hills, minarets, and the wide waters of the Bosphorus proved to be as heartbreakingly beautiful as I’d always read. During my first days in Turkey, I headed straight for the Ottoman Archives, eager to dive into research. Libraries have always felt like home to me, but in this case, the familiar and orderly environment also helped ward off feelings of dread at the prospect of revisiting the places from which my family had been deported. With the help of an accomplished History PhD candidate from Boğaziçi University, I found many documents relevant to varied aspects of my grandfather’s life. The archive even held the nineteenth-century cizye or non-Muslim subjects’ tax records listing the names of male residents in the Kalinbaçak-Galenbajak District of Mouradchai. We could see that my great-grandfather and greatgreat-grandfather had lived in “Household No. 2.” In other hours, I visited the famous imperial mosques and palaces and tracked down First National Style buildings. Early twentieth-century Kütahya tiles created by Mehmet Emin, Tavit Ohannessian, and the Minassians graced buildings all around Istanbul, although few people seemed to know their origins. I also wandered the streets of old Stamboul, where my youthful grandfather had once plied his egg trade.

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After a week, I flew to Konya and explored the noble Seljuk mosques, some in ruins, others still filled with turquoise, black, and white mosaic-tiled mihrabs and domes ringed with angular Kufic inscriptions. Among the most elaborately decorated and preserved was the thirteenth-century Karatay Madrassa.7 The façades of the old Konya Industrial School and the 1911 Amber Reis Mosque and its mihrab were embellished with colorful Kütahya tiles.8 Here, in Konya, I strode precisely the same streets that my grandfather had. Although I had seen all the Ohannessian tile work in Jerusalem and the exteriors of his workshop and the family home in Baqaʾa, this was different. Somehow, I felt his presence behind me as I traced his course in this religiously conservative city, the site of enormous Armenian suffering ninety-nine years earlier. I’d been in correspondence with a remarkable woman, Esin Çelebi Bayru, the twenty-second-generation descendant of Mevlana—Jalal ad-Din Rumi— and the vice-chairperson of the International Mevlana Foundation. She was also the great-granddaughter of Sheikh Mehmet Bahaʾeddin Veled Çelebi, who had befriended my grandfather a century ago. We’d met several months before in New York City, and she had promised the assistance of two scholars who researched on my behalf in the archives of Selçuk University and the Mevlana Museum. It was Ramadan, dry and hot. Most everyone in Konya seemed to be fasting during the day and moved slowly. I walked toward our scheduled meeting at the Mevlana Museum, admiring the resplendent beauty of the famous Green Dome as it came into sight. We gathered in an office in the museum complex, where Dr. Naci Bakırcı and Dr. Nuri Şimşekler presented the fruits of their investigations—a thick folder of documents, articles, and book chapters on Mevlana’s thirteenth-century mausoleum as well as historic records of the retilings of the Green Dome. They laid out a number of old green tiles on a desk; the museum had preserved examples from the failed 1909 retiling and the subsequent, more successful effort. Afterwards, Esin led me into her ancestor’s memorial, where my grandfather and her great-grandfather had also once walked. For the first time in Turkey, in the peace of that sacred resting place, the protective shell I had tightened around myself—the guard that made it possible for me to bear to be there at all—softened. The following night, we went together to Konya’s vast modern Semahane and witnessed the musicians and “swirling dervishes,” as my grandfather had called them, offer up their devotion to God.

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Two days later, in Kütahya, Nida Olçar, a celebrated ceramicist and the daughter of the revered late çini master Sitki Olçar, had organized a press conference for my arrival in the city. Two journalists, a television cameraman, and a translator greeted me in my hotel lobby. Nida presented me with a beautifully glazed azure and black ceramic bird, one of her creations. After the interview, the whole entourage walked to the city’s Government House and entered the tiled masjid, where she and I were photographed in front of the mihrab. The next day, local newspaper headlines read “In Pursuit of Her 400-Year Past, She Came to Kütahya,” and “Famous Flutist Moughalian Traces Her Grandfather in Kütahya.”9 However, no one broached the subject of why my family had not remained in the city. In the following days, I couldn’t reach any of the people with whom I’d corresponded before arriving. I walked the city, circling the winding cobbled streets. In the century since the Ohannessians left, Kütahya’s population had grown ten times in size and evidently ceramics had become a much larger and more commercialized enterprise. But the town still seemed off the beaten path, as my grandfather had described it. My thirty words of Turkish were insufficient for much communication. None of the shopkeepers I approached, not even the person manning the tourist information booth, spoke any English or French. I felt entirely alien. The city celebrated its artistic heritage with a giant water-spouting ceramic “vaso” in the center of town, several newly tiled fountains, and a lovely Museum of Ceramics in what had once been a hamam. Along the main square, near the now completely retiled Government House, ceramics shops lined the streets. The windows displayed a panoply of colorful and intricately painted vases, figurines, and coffee pots. On and around the beautifully restored Germiyan Street, several working çini studios left their doors wide open to welcome passersby. On my third day in Kütahya, I had planned to visit the Alayunt train station. It would have been a short taxi ride, but I couldn’t get myself out of my room. The thought of visiting the site of so much desolation, where thousands of deported Armenians had clung to life in tattered encampments, felt intolerable. And judging from the photos I had seen online, there were no historical markers or any other indications of what had transpired there in 1915. Instead, I hiked up to the citadel. A circular, glass-walled restaurant sat atop the hill. Standing between stone towers, I saw the Great Plain of Kut and the Porsuk River, glistening in the late-afternoon light—the expansive view

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Armenian families had enjoyed during festive picnics at that site. I walked back down and found the old covered markets where my grandmother and great-grandmother had once shopped. I bought a bag of plums and devoured them in my hotel room, not from any real appetite but in a futile attempt to relieve my profound sense of emptiness and anomie. On my last evening in Kütahya, the local historian with whom I’d been exchanging emails over the prior year showed up and gave me a whirlwind tour of the city’s old Armenian quarters. He drove me up to the quiet street overlooking the city where he thought my grandfather’s workshop had probably been. We visited a kaolin depot nearby, where workers scooped up and sifted piles of the dried white powder with a gargantuan hydraulic shovel. Next, my guide showed me the ruined Armenian elementary school, where my aunt Sirarpi had attended her first classes. Rows of decrepit buildings lined the old Armenian parts of town. I wondered why they hadn’t been torn down, since most appeared on the verge of collapse. These tottering hulks were all that endured of our formerly robust presence in this town; there was no other indication that Armenians had once lived here. Around 1934, our family’s church, Sourp Toros, had been converted into a pornographic cinema. A cache of photos I’d been given by a Kütahya resident, taken during the interior demolition, depicted workmen knocking down the delicately painted arches. Today, the building stands in yet another incarnation, as a mirror-trimmed, plastic-chandeliered wedding salon. When I returned to my room after this instructive but unsettling excursion, the front desk called. A dozen people were waiting for me in the lobby. I went downstairs; they introduced themselves as descendants of Mehmet Emin. They’d read the newspaper articles and had brought three generations of their family. We greeted each other with a rush of warmth and empathy. Although we didn’t possess much common vocabulary, we shared a longing to know more of our ancestors’ heritage. The older family members knew of their distinguished grandfather’s artistic achievements and told me about his torture and death at the hands of Greek soldiers in 1922. Like me, my visitors were eager to learn more about the history of the art. We agreed to remain in touch. The next day, I left for Eskişehir. Without realizing it, I had reserved a hotel opposite Detail of 1849 cizye tax record, Kalinbajak/Galenbajak District, Mouradja

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Ruin of the Armenian school, Kutahya, 2014

room in the Hoşnudiye neighborhood, the old Armenian quarter of the city. Ayda’s friend Ozan had arranged to meet me on my arrival and took me on a walking tour of the city, a place made lively by the tens of thousands of students who attended Eskişehir’s two major universities. We strolled along the river, through some busy shopping streets, and visited a handsomely renovated khan, now an artisanal center. Was this the place my family had once inhabited when they descended from the mountains to live in the city? There was no way to know. At the turn of the twentieth century, Eskişehir had boasted twenty-five khans. In the years since, some had been renovated and others destroyed. In the center of town, we saw the Zübeyde Hanım Cultural Center. The elegant neoclassical Holy Trinity Armenian Orthodox Church, where my grandparents had married in 1908, had been repurposed after the Great War, first as another pornographic cinema and then as this arts center, named for the mother of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. We asked the guard for permission to enter, as the theater was closed. The modern auditorium featured bright red upholstered seats and a full array of theatrical lighting, very much like the hundreds of regional theaters in which I have performed. Part of the original apse remained

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exposed, evidence that the hall had once been a Christian place of worship. On the street in front of the theater, a glass case displayed a historic photo of the former Armenian church. In the comparatively urbane environment of Eskişehir, one could, it seemed, more freely acknowledge the past. Ozan took me to the Lületaşı Museum, where we saw the city’s iconic meerschaum objects and figurines like those my great-grandfather had once carved. The region still holds some of the world’s richest deposits of this mineral. Later that evening, I thought again about how every Ottoman history book I’d read underlined Armenian participation in artisanal trades, for example, Oushak’s subtly hued carpets, Mouradchai’s shoemakers and fabric printers, and of course, Kütahya’s hammered copper, rugs, and ceramics. These arts were integral to our identities: names of Armenian firms, artisans, and tradesmen figured prominently across the pages of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman trade journals.10 Yet so many of these crafted objects had been engendered from native, often rare substances—Eskişehir’s magnesium silicate or the white china clay abundant in the Kütahya and Black Sea regions. The genocide had not only torn us from the lands that had nourished us but in many cases had also deprived us of the indigenous materials from which we had forged our distinctive wares. I felt an even deeper sense of love and respect for my grandfather’s unwavering devotion to his tradition and the way in which he had re-created his art in a geological environment that lacked almost every material essential to it. Early the next morning, Ozan and his friend Yakup met me at my hotel for the drive to Muratça. More than two weeks into my trip, after having repeatedly seen Armenian buildings usurped or left to ruin, I was finding it difficult to keep my spirits buoyant. Intellectually, I understood what genocide and the subsequent absence of an Armenian community signified.11 But these purposeful erasures of our traces, our monuments and churches, especially in smaller cities like Kütahya where our presence had perhaps been even more evident, were proving to be more painful to witness than I had anticipated. I’d also very recently discovered a letter written by Mouradchai natives in the immediate aftermath of the war, published in the Armenian newspaper, Zhogovourt. Dated December 16, 1918, the dispatch was titled “A Heart-Rending Cry for Help”:

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Mr. Editor-in-Chief: We spent three long years in exile and unequalled suffering. Many of us died on the way or in exile. With great difficulties, we returned to our birthplace, Mouradja. We had hope that our troubles would reach their end and we would be comforted with our houses and homes, fields and vineyards. We are now 200 people, mostly women, elderly, and children. Many of our homes are destroyed and in ruins. All the new or habitation-suitable homes are occupied by as many as 100 Turkish refugees. We and our children are naked, we freeze from the cold, we get sick, hunger draws us near the grave. We applied, beseeched, and supplicated in the name of the law in accordance with the government’s order, nobody listens to us. They don’t hand over our houses, our fields and vineyards; what is to become of us? How are we to live and shelter in this cold season? As many as 200 new Armenian exiles are still on the way and will shortly arrive. What will become of them? Let them carry out the law, let them return our homes and fields, and we will live, we will make it through the winter. We have no bread, we have no clothes, we have no home. We have many sick and have no medicine or doctors. When will justice be carried out, who will come to our aid, who will think of a way for our salvation? Hagop Tarakjian, Dirajan Tarakjian, Hayrabed Arabian, Haji Gh. Hayrabedian, Hagop Kalinbajakian12

The last signer, Hagop Kalinbajakian—Hagop, son of Kalinbajak—was clearly a member of my extended family, a cousin. What had been his fate? And what would have happened to Horkour Marik had she not been reunited with Tavit in Jerusalem? A few of these Mouradja returnees found their way to Marseille, where their descendants continue to live. Six photos of “Muratsha” natives, gaunt, stateless, and seeking refuge upon their arrival in France between 1922 and 1926, appeared in an exhibition at the Musée d’Histoire de

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Marseille.13 What had become of the others and my own family’s people in that chaotic sweep of time? I felt the weight of this journey to the place my mother and her siblings had kept alive in their hearts and had, throughout their lives, longed to see. Could I, as a bearer of my ancestors’ memories, close this circle of exile and find some serenity on their behalf? Over the years, I had watched my mother grieve the losses of her home in Jerusalem and her father’s native village, a place that had come to occupy a near-mythic status in all our imaginations. As the years passed, she raised children, forged a new career, and coped with her failing health; her hopes for travel dimmed. Would it accomplish anything—so many years after my mother’s death—to honor her desire to return to a place she had never been? The skies were clear and beautiful on this July Sunday. I was grateful to have good company for the trip, but felt a rising foam of panic that I tried to suppress. As we drove out of Eskişehir, Yakup offered a steady narration from behind the wheel, pointing out the rapidly changing topography, an indication of the tectonic complexity of the region. A few miles north of the city limits, all signs of human habitation vanished. We had entered an arid, sandy region. Fifteen minutes later, trees and wild flora reappeared as we approached and crossed the Sakarya River. Yakup drove deliberately so that I could take in the dramatic views of pine-covered cliffs as the road began to ascend. Sheer stone bluffs emerged as we climbed and blue-ridged mountains edged the entire horizon before us. Forty-five minutes into the drive, we saw a shepherd grazing his flock along the side of the road. I blurted out: “Please, could we stop the car?” We stepped out into the bright sunlight and heard an ethereal, shimmering music. Each animal wore a hammered brass bell tied to its neck; they jangled softly. Thirty or forty sheep munched grass under the shade of some olive trees, forming as they did a hypnotic veil of sound. The men chatted. I fought back tears; without the telephone lines above and our vehicle, it could well have been 1914. After we’d climbed back into the car, Yakup told me that the shepherd had asked where we were heading. On hearing Muratça, the man had replied, “Oh, you mean the Armenian village.”

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The road continued to rise and we passed some abandoned homes—elegant Ottoman structures with overhanging upper levels and carved wooden corbels and simple one-room mud-brick cottages. My guides pointed out the sour cherry and other fruit trees. I kept asking them to slow down. Was I trying to savor the mountain vistas? Or afraid of what I might feel? Soon, we would be on the very ground from which my great-aunt Marik and our large clan had been forcibly marched on a single August day in 1915. A few minutes later, we saw a sign in the stony roadway: “Muratça 1 km.” My stomach clenched. I asked Yakup to drive as slowly as he could, but my anxieties were testing his patience. Suddenly, we crested a hill and a new panorama stretched before us: a U-shaped curve of massive high crags, buff colored above the tree line, enclosing a broad basin of land that extended as far as we could see. We had reached the remains of my grandfather’s birth village. In a place where as many as three thousand industrious souls had once lived, we could see five or six houses, some ripening crops, trees, and vineyards. We drove partway down the unpaved switchback road, and Yakup stopped the car again. Ozan suggested I get out and walk around for a while. They would wait for me; we could meet up again in an hour. The sun’s rays scorched. I ambled without direction but soon quickened my pace, trying to cover as much terrain as I could in the little time I had. Below the bluffs, pine trees, bushes, and outcroppings of ancient rock dotted the steep parched inclines that joined the hills to the central plain. In the distance, I saw an immense ledge jutting out from the side of a cliff. Sheep clustered under its shadow. Was that the spot where my grandfather had played as a child, teasing his mother to distraction? Did we once live in that house over there? I walked faster still across the sloping fields, soaking in the sunshine and heavens, the beauty of the massive precipices that sheltered this place, careening about like a child imitating an airplane. Sharp thistles pierced my jeans and stuck in my legs. The tears started to fall. Soon I was overcome by heaving sobs. I felt ashamed and turned around to make sure the guys hadn’t been watching me weeping and running up and down the greens. Thankfully, I couldn’t see them at all. But when I stopped moving, I looked down at the ground.

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Half-hidden beneath the low weeds and dried, broken grasses that covered this part of the field, I saw the rounded ends of stone slabs, an Armenian letter or two still visible. All my mother’s patient efforts, the hours I’d spent squinting over maps, the earnest emailed inquiries, Facebook posts answered, digitized German maps, Armenian librarians, Google Earth—all of those had led me to this lonely plain. The world around me—past and present—collapsed into this one place and one moment. And with that, I lost the last vestige of any emotional restraint. I was standing on the graves of my ancestors. Ozan and Yakup waited patiently by the parked car. I’d completely lost track of time. If they noticed my puffy eyes and swollen face, they were too polite to comment. We drove toward the center of the plateau, getting out of the car to look at a huge stone mortar that was once used to grind grain. Yakup pointed out almond, apricot, and fig trees, as well as stalks of wild wheat that sprouted from the ground. A plump, gap-toothed older woman sunned herself in front of a low-slung house, keeping an eye on her cattle. A solar panel and water tank perched on her clay-tiled roof. Ozan asked her some questions in Turkish, and she pointed across the road. That way lay the ruins of the Armenian church, she told them. The three of us followed her directions, walking past a ramshackle house and looking for an opening in the thick brush. Through the gap, some neglected-looking rosebushes bloomed in what must have been the churchyard. We could just make out the footprint of the structure my grandfather had long ago described as an architectural marvel. The earth remained firmly packed where the building had once stood, but a blanket of blossoming thistles and wildflowers covered the ground. All that survived of the church was a broad wall about fourteen feet high and curved in three arcs, a beautiful assemblage of mortared pebbles draped with wild vines. Later, we learned that from the 1930s on, vandals had gradually stripped the hardware and iron gates, pried off the decorative elements, and dismantled the rest of the structure, stone by stone. A compact, white-bearded man in a knit skullcap came out of his house to talk with us. He led us across a field to what he called, in his expressively inflected voice, the “English church.” We surmised he meant the

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1865 American Protestant chapel, the one that Joseph Greene had written was already beginning to disintegrate in 1894.14 All that was left was a large mound of rubble, atop a bed of sand. A few chunks of smooth marble jutted out of the pile. This dignified eighty-three-year-old gentleman informed us that some decades ago, the state had built the road that bisected the upper fields of the village—the same route we had taken into Muratça—bringing in bulldozers and backhoes. Workers excavated the planned course, which traversed an old Armenian cemetery. In the process, the equipment unearthed bones and whole skeletons, which were crushed as the machines’ heavy metal tracks passed over them and then reburied haphazardly. The man’s father, who had witnessed these events, had been horrified. Our interlocutor explained that he was the third generation of a Balkan Muslim farming clan that had fled fighting and persecution in Europe and had been given homes in Muratça by the Turkish government around the time of the First World War. He and the other dozen or so elderly inhabitants were all that remained of these families that had repopulated what they still called “the Armenian village.” His parents had passed down to him stories of their own parents’ early years there. They’d related that some Armenians had returned after the war, trying to reclaim their homes but left again after about six months. He asked Ozan to tell me that he respected the fact that I was honoring my ancestors by returning to the place where they had once lived and where their bones now rested. He told us that the upper field—the place where I had walked earlier—was one of the village’s two cemeteries and showed us the other as well. In his barn, he stored the only gravestone that had survived more or less intact. Ozan, Yakup, and I stayed in Muratça until late afternoon, interviewing the few people we could find, all of whom were in their seventies and eighties. At someone’s suggestion, we also drove to the neighboring village—Harmanköy15—at the opposite end of the high mountain basin. As we entered that town, about a mile and half to the west, we spied several men sitting on the porch of a mosque. Yakup parked the car, and we struck up a conversation. The imam, a man in his sixties, speaking Turkish, told us what he remembered of Muratça’s Armenians from his own father’s and grandfathers’ accounts and explained

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that all the younger generations of both villages had long since left for urban centers. In Muratça, the remaining few people—descendants of the Balkan refugees who had moved there after 1915—still farmed the land. Most families in the historically Muslim village of Harmanköy had remained in place during the First World War. Many of their descendants had kept and modernized their ancestral homes to use as weekend retreats from busy professional lives in Eskişehir and other cities.16 The imam offered us hospitality, brewing a demlik—a two-part kettle—of delicious tea. He too communicated his admiration that I had sought out the place where my family had once lived and had paid my respects. He told Ozan to tell me that he thought it was very brave. He left us for a few moments and returned with a small feast of local cheese, butter, cured black olives, spicy green peppers, tomatoes, berry jam, and sliced fresh bread. He didn’t join us as he was fasting for Ramadan. We didn’t realize how famished we were until we tucked into the food. We drove back to Eskişehir in the dark, restored but subdued. I expressed my deep gratitude to these two strangers, now friends, who had enabled my return. After the trip to Turkey, I spent time trying to make sense of these experiences. With the insights I’d gained from the most recent group of archival documents and the past several years of research and reading, I’d come to understand that had Tavit Ohannessian not already made an international mark during his years in Kütahya, had he not been deported and subsequently recognized by Mark Sykes in Aleppo, he might never have founded the brilliant Armenian art that today enlivens the city of Jerusalem. Out of the many grievous losses endured by my grandparents and their children and through my grandfather’s unquenchable drive, a new ceramics tradition had been born. I also learned that current scholarly consensus estimates as many as three hundred thousand Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam during the First World War era.17 Some, like my grandfather, converted to save the life of loved ones. Others, including many women and children, were abducted and Islamized.18 One day in 1915, a young mother, Maritza Donabedian of Kharpert—a member of my extended family—walked outside her house with her two small daughters. Her husband Samuel was away, conscripted into the Ottoman Army medical corps. She set down her girls for a moment of rest.

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Suddenly, they were seized and carried away, never to be seen again.19 Were they Islamized? Very likely, although that grief was dwarfed by the catastrophic loss of her two darling infants. After the fall of the Ottomans, Armenian survivors, aided by the Near East Relief, Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Red Cross, and Allied forces, rescued abducted Armenian women and children and restored many of them into their community in a National Reconstitution, as the movement was called.20 Some descendants of the kidnapped converts remained Muslim, perhaps unaware of their origins. Others, remembering who they were, submerged their identities and lived as crypto-Armenians to ensure their survival in a postwar nation hostile to them. After the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, many other converts immediately reclaimed their Christian identities.21 For my grandfather, conversion was a sacrifice he made readily to keep Victoria alive, yet it cast a long shadow over the remainder of his life. He suffered from periods of crippling depression, as did my mother and several of her siblings. In a family that took such delight in books and oral narration, words often failed them when it came to describing the events of 1915 and beyond. Within the Ohannessians’ close circle of friends, when those who had endured the forced marches and other brutalities could bear to speak of them at all, they used the terms Medz Yeghern or Aghed,22 the “Great Crime,” or “Catastrophe,” “holocaust,” or later, tseghasbanutiun, translated as “race murder.”23 Even after Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the word “genocide” in 1944, as a powerful and singular legal term that came to encapsulate the mass violence, expulsions, and other atrocities enacted against Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians by the Ottoman Turks, the Nazi extermination of Jews and Roma, and other such historical and state-organized crimes against humanity, the term entered our family’s parlance very slowly. Throughout my mother’s life, she continued to use the phrases “exile,” “abductions,” “forced marches,” “chart,” or “massacres,” perhaps binding herself to her father’s language. But she had no words to describe the public abandonment of the essence of one’s Armenian identity—the forced conversion. Looking back on my childhood, I see that that knowledge, the grief of that memory, dark gray and leaden, unnamed and unspoken, freighted the air in our home. For my mother and our family, as for many other descendants of Armenian survivors who converted under threat or duress, whose identities were erased or mutilated, the traumas around this subject have remained a lasting source of pain, sorrow, and silences.

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Other questions remained. More than anything, I wanted to know which of my grandfather’s works had survived in the world. The Internet and social media platforms offered powerful ways of connecting and benefiting from collective knowledge, tools that had not existed in my mother’s generation. Each discovery brought joy, not only to me and my family but also, it seemed, to the far-flung people who generously contributed their time and expertise. The box my cousin Armen had unearthed in his Los Angeles garage in 2013 held a wealth of fresh clues. Once again, I studied the list of Ohannessian works and began to hunt for some of the installations our family had not yet found. England A summer house for the Marchioness of Londonderry, in Londonderry. (Exhibited at the British Industrial Fair at Olympia, London.)

A typed envelope in the box held the answer.

A search brought up the website for Mount Stewart House, now part of the UK National Trust. I wrote to the administrators, who informed me that the Public Records Office in Northern Ireland held relevant correspondence. Two of the National Trust curators sent me photographs of the extensive tile work in the “Casita” of the Spanish Garden, designed by Lady Londonderry. Later,

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I was introduced to a family member, Peter Lauritzen, a renowned art and architectural historian, who provided much more detailed information. Two other commissions proved more challenging to find. I reached out into the world, using social media to obtain help. The first—tiling for a mosque in Beirut—had been included among the works Ohannessian made during his years in Jerusalem: Lebanon 1. The Mosque “Dabbagh” in Beirut.

I’d posted some photos of my grandfather’s work on Instagram, including a tile adorned with Arabic calligraphy. Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, a cultural historian from Ramallah, left a comment and translated the adage for me. Soon we began to correspond regularly and when she passed through New York City two years later, we met. Adila empathized with my lack of progress in finding this mosque and searched some Arabic-language websites on my behalf. She learned that the mosque was now called Abu Bakr Al Siddiq and explained that “Dabbagh,” as my grandfather had called it, meant “tanner.” The mosque sat in an old quarter of Beirut, near the port, where tradesmen had once processed animal skins. She had also discovered a Facebook site dedicated to the subject of Lebanese mosques. The page administrator, Suheil Mneimneh, a devout man and a pharmacist by profession, lived in Beirut and possessed broad knowledge of the city’s Islamic religious structures. He replied cordially to my message and related that the original Dabbagh Mosque dated back to 1294. It had suffered damage under the French Mandate and had been rebuilt in 1932. That iteration of the mosque was also badly damaged during the Lebanese civil war. The surrounding streets had been a “no-man’s zone” during the civil war years, and the structure had thus remained unguarded and subject to pillage. Mr. Mneimneh tracked down the architect who eventually rebuilt the mosque; he recalled that the building had remained a burnt-out ruin as late as September of 1995. During his time in Jerusalem, my grandfather kept photographic records of most of his completed commissions—in part, a product of his lifelong fascination with the art of photography—and Sirarpi had preserved them. I found a picture of what appeared to be an Ohannessian tiled mihrab, stamped on

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the back: M. Saadé, Photographe Officiel de la Republique Libanaise, with a penciled Arabic inscription. Adila translated it as “ceramic works of the Dabbagha Mosque.” One day, I pulled out the mihrab photo again. The paper seemed sturdier than some of the other photos in the same collection, and when I looked closely, I realized that a second photo was stuck to the back. That image depicted a tiled wall, also from the mosque. The entire lower half was covered with a repeating floral pattern I recognized from the fountain of St. Andrew’s Scottish Memorial Church in Jerusalem. But the upper half of the wall tiling contained six distinct designs. I remembered a similar group of tile panels in a 2008 Christie’s Islamic Art auction; the online auction catalogue showed six lots bearing the exact same designs illustrated in the Dabbagh Mosque photo! The provenance indicated that all the lots had come from a single collection in Lebanon. What were the chances that this was pure coincidence? Had someone “rescued” the tiles before the building was demolished? But what had become of the monumental tiled mihrab? My contact in Beirut investigated further and found a letter dated November 27, 1976, stating that the mihrab had been destroyed by cannon shells. But had it? How had the surrounding tiles remained intact? I could only hope that the mihrab had somehow survived and was safe in another mosque or museum somewhere. A second mysterious entry on Sirarpi’s list of her father’s Jerusalem works described what promised to be a substantial commission: France A large hall decorated [for] M. Blotière in Corbie (Somme), Manufacturer, after the tiles of the famous “Rustem Pasha” mosque in Istambul, with some table tiles.

An Internet search for Monsieur Blotière revealed little, so I wrote to the Archives Départementales de la Somme. To my delight, the director, Olivier de Solan, soon replied. He had ascertained that the person in question was named Maurice Blotière, born on July 7, 1880, in Corbie and was the proprietor of an old family firm that manufactured knitted goods and hosiery. The director explained further that he had found this information in a dossier of buildings that were bombed or shelled in World War I. Because a claim had been filed for damage to the Blotière factory, the home address had entered

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public records as well: 6 Place de la Republique in Corbie. Olivier de Solan referred me to the Association des Amis du Vieux Corbie. I wrote immediately. The following day I received a friendly response from Marie-Christine and Michel Damagnez, retired professors of mathematics and physics and knowledgeable local historians. Evidently, Maurice Blotière himself had been the first chairman when the Amis du Vieux Corbie was founded in 1962. The Damagnezes had met him at that time and described him as a successful and sophisticated textile industrialist who had traveled around the world with his beautiful wife. The couple went to the address to investigate but learned from neighbors that the owners were out of town. In the meantime, they found records indicating that Maurice Blotière had commissioned a huge ornate cast-bronze bell—one of the set of three created in Corbie’s foundry and exhibited at the 1925 Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Blotière had attended and met Ohannessian there. When the current owners of the property returned to Corbie, they sent photos of the room they knew as the “Salon Marocain,” containing Ohannessian’s tiled panels. Today, the beautifully maintained Blotière property has been transformed into a luxurious inn called Le Macassar. A few months later, while on a concert tour in northern France, I had the opportunity to stay overnight and bask in the beauty of this extraordinary residence. In the course of my research and travels, I also encountered some of the families and individuals who have continued to advance ceramic art in both of the cities where Ohannessian lived and worked. In Kütahya, after the First World War, the trade nearly perished with the dispersal of the Minassians and Ohannessian and the death of Mehmet Emin. But in the penultimate year of Emin’s life, 1921, a young ceramist, Ahmed Şahin, had apprenticed with him and later partnered with Emin’s older son, Hakki Çiniçioğlu,24 preserving knowledge of old traditions. However, in the early years of the Turkish Republic, after 1923, the ceramics trade suffered in the general economic malaise. In 1927, the vice-governor of Kütahya invited Tavit Ohannessian to return and recommence his work there—he declined the offer.25 Later, with German help, a çini cooperative was formed in Kütahya to share knowledge of the craft and provide materials and equipment. Several Kütahya

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çiniçis traveled to Europe to study ceramics making there and returned to teach what they had learned.26 A number of outstanding artists emerged in this generation, including Ahmed Şahin, Sitki Olçar, Ihsan Erdeyer, Mehmet Çini, and Hakki Çiniçioğlu. In the mid-1960s, members of the Çiniçioğlu dynasty and their partners executed a massive commission in Kütahya to entirely retile the Dome of the Rock—those tiles are still in place today.27 These masters and their descendants formed, dissolved, and re-formed partnerships with each other. Mehmet Gürsoy and Nida Olçar are among the most-lauded current artists. Today in Jerusalem, descendants of the two families Tavit Ohannessian brought back to the Holy City from Kütahya in the autumn of 1919—the Balians and the Karakashians—manage two separate thriving ceramics enterprises—respectively, Balian Armenian Ceramics on Nablus Road, and Karakashian Jerusalem Pottery on Greek Orthodox Patriarch Street. Each firm sells pottery locally and abroad and designs and executes splendid custom tile installations for properties all over the world. The late Marie Balian28—the daughter-in-law of Nishan Balian—who trained as a painter in her native Lyon, France, introduced a new decorative vocabulary to the Armenian Jerusalem art. In 1992, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., honored her with a solo exhibition: Views of Paradise: Tile Painting by Marie Balian. Other Armenian families, notably the Sandrouni brothers—Garo, George, and Harry—Vic Lepejian and Hagop Antreassian maintain historic patterns and colors and have also incorporated creative new elements into their distinctive lines. The drive to form, color, and bake clay endures; perhaps it is an essential component of the human condition. Today, this luminous Armenian art, in all its forms, is a distinctive feature of Jerusalem. Sirarpi’s list of her father’s installations provided a crucial documentation of the Ohannessian legacy. But in spite of her generally meticulous nature, some entries contained very little information. One last item had confounded me for years: United States of America 1. The Altar of the Episcopal Methodist Church, in Brooklyn, New York.

I had researched the description and found listings for forty-nine Episcopal Methodist churches in Brooklyn, but most seemed to date from the middle of the nineteenth century. I tried changing the word order or substituting terms,

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to no avail. It was very frustrating, considering that this Ohannessian creation was supposed to be in the city where I lived. Finally, at a loss, I posted on Facebook: “I am turning to crowd sourcing to come up with some ideas of how to find this church in Brooklyn.” One person pointed out that the Episcopal Methodist Church had become the United Methodist Church. Another friend posted the URL of the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church. I emailed the site and was soon introduced to Beth Patkus, archivist of the New York Annual Conference, who searched through her files to see if any Methodist churches had been built or rebuilt around the 1930s. A couple of days later, she wrote again: “I do wonder whether the church in question might have been Central or Hanson Place Central, now Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church in Brooklyn.” She continued, “I have a computer listing of Methodist churches (both past and present) in Brooklyn. . . . That list notes that Central Church was created in 1927 by the merger of several smaller churches and was then forced to leave its building due to unsafe conditions caused by subway construction. At that point, a large and expensive new church was built (the listing . . . seems to indicate that the entire church was finished in 1931). . . . In 1937 the church corporation was dissolved and a new church named Hanson Place Central was established in its place (that church is still open.). . . . There were certainly a number of other Methodist churches in Brooklyn in the 1930s, so the altar may have been in another church entirely—but this seems a reasonable place to start. I will be back in touch soon!”29 It occurred to me that the Brooklyn Public Library website might have a relevant digital archive. “Church altar” brought up 132 hits. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper had routinely published photos of new churches in Brooklyn as well as their altars. Almost immediately, I found a familiar image and knew that with the help of many others, I’d found the answer. The photo was labeled “Hanson Place Central Methodist Church, Ft. Greene, Brooklyn” and dated December 24, 1931. I forwarded the scan to Beth Patkus, who found a church brochure that described the altar as part of the “Bethlehem Chapel,” also known as the “Children’s Chapel.” Evidently, the pastor of the church during the time of its construction, the Reverend J. Lane Miller, and his wife, Madeleine S. Miller, were considered authorities on Palestinian lore and culture. The couple had served on several cruises to the Holy Land as chaplain and lecturer for the Italian Line,30 and they discovered the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop during

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Altar, Bethlehem Chapel, Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church, Brooklyn, New York

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one of those voyages. In Jerusalem, the Millers commissioned Ohannessian to create tiles for the Children’s Chapel, and the Brooklyn Boy Scout Troop No. 32 raised funds to pay for and ship them to New York.31 According to the church brochure, the chapel was decorated in “exquisite Palestinian style. . . . Among its treasures are a stone manger from Bethlehem, a Cross made in Jerusalem of olive wood, wall tiles bearing the name of Jesus as He would have written it in Aramaic, and a mosaic reredos of the Tree of Life.” In her 1936 memoir, Footprints in Palestine, Sweeney Miller wrote: The most important pottery of Palestine to-day is Ohanessian’s [sic] ornamental glazed tile, made near the Via Dolorosa, after an ancient formula which gave medieval mosques their gleaming beauty.”32 After a week of futile attempts, I finally reached a receptionist who told me that if I visited the church on a Sunday morning, an usher could lead me to the chapel. I arranged to go with friends the following weekend. The church was easily accessible, sitting atop a major transportation hub—the Atlantic Terminal—where numerous subway and railroad lines intersected. I was thrilled at the prospect of seeing my grandfather’s Jerusalem tile work in a place so close to home. When I emerged from the No. 2 subway—a train I didn’t often ride, I recognized the surroundings—the massive brick and terracotta edifice with a canopied coffee shop built into the side. I’d been in that neighborhood many times before. Normally, though, I took a different line to Fort Greene, one that deposited me several blocks to the east. We entered the Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church. The ushers embraced my friends and me and led us through the soaring nave to a nearly hidden opening in a rear corner. There, we bowed our heads to pass through a low “Doorway of Humility” and on the other side, entered the serene Bethlehem Chapel with its high opalescent stained-glass window and the tiled altar, arrayed in lustrous shades of blue and green—the colors I knew so well. I felt the same sense of peace and connectedness I always have when encountering my grandfather’s work. The church, it turned out, was on the very same block as the stage door of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I had walked past it hundreds of times, without ever having stepped inside. Unwittingly, or perhaps blindly obedient to impulses I did not yet understand, I’d spent decades of my artistic career sharpening the skills I would need

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to seek out and understand the life and work of my grandfather, to follow the trail he left behind. Through it all, my brother reminded me repeatedly of the precarious miracle of our existence: had our grandparents chosen one different road or missed one random connection, we would most likely not have been born. I had traveled across the globe to satisfy a hunger I thought could never be appeased. And at the end of all my searching, I had arrived where I’d started and had known it for the first time.33

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Acknowledgments

Feast of Ashes, the biography of David Ohannessian, would not have come to fruition without the love, diligence, and extraordinary generosity of my extended family—the Ohannessian gerdastan. Our aunt Sirarpi Ohannessian acted as a second mother to her nieces and nephews and instilled in us her love for her father and a profound respect for his resilience, intelligence, and exacting standards. Through her, we came to know him as a person possessing enormous drive and agency, not merely a “humble craftsman,” as he was sometimes recorded in history books, but rather an artist, by his self-conception, who helped form the built environment of Constantinople-Istanbul between 1907 and 1915 and left his distinctive aesthetic imprint on the Jerusalem cityscape in the 1920s and ‘30s. Sirarpi’s younger brother Vahé Ohannessian retained rich recollections of the family’s early years in Jerusalem as well as memories of the forced march and the Meskene deportee camp on the Euphrates River. A masterful narrator, Vahé passed these accounts on to his children, Arda Ohannessian, Sona Ohannessian Klimowicz, and especially, Anahid Ohannessian, who patiently and repeatedly shared them with me. Sona, a mental health counselor, also contributed valuable perspectives on the multiple traumas the family endured and their lingering inheritances. Ohannes Ohannessian mastered the art of ceramic making himself and managed the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio for two crucial years in the 1940s. He shared many stories with his daughters Alice and Donna, both of whom were born in Yerevan. Alice tirelessly answered scores of questions and also painted a vivid portrait of her youth in Armenia and the devastating effects of the 1988 Gyumri earthquake on her family. A chemist by profession, Alice maintains the most detailed knowledge of Ohannessian ceramic techniques, having interviewed her father at length on the subject. Her sons, Arsen and David, share a passion for their great-grandfather’s work. 291

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My cousin Armen Markarian—the eldest of Mary Markarian’s three sons— and his wife, Jean, graciously entrusted their precious archive of our grandfather’s documents with me for the long stretch required to write this book and readily carried out innumerable practical tasks. Ara Markarian, an enthusiastic collector of Ohannessian ceramics, imparted his practical knowledge of our grandfather’s art and its markings, with an eye sharpened by decades of hunting for it at auction. Vatche Markarian and his daughter Mary safeguarded their large collection of stencil patterns and unusual examples of Jerusalem ware. Hovhannes Donabedian, Hermine’s husband, provided a living link with David and Victoria Ohannessian, especially with his anecdotes from the Beirut years. I’m grateful for his detailed descriptions—of his father-in-law’s energy and demeanor, conversational style, and interests—and equally for his brave recounting of the abduction of his two sisters during the Armenian Genocide, some years before he was born. Aline Donabedian, his eldest child, provided spirited encouragement. David Aram Donabedian, a poet, painter, college librarian, and library science researcher, wielded his formidable skills on my behalf, hunting down obscure articles in the United States and Armenia and providing critical material, emotional, and research assistance for the decade of this project. Meg Donabedian, also an artist and a librarian, unearthed narratives written by her mother as well as rare early family photographs and documents. Garo Ohannessian’s three daughters lent constant cheer. Ani Ohannessian Odjakjian executed research assignments, Mary Ohannessian Stonor Saunders forged professional contacts, and Lucy Ohannessian supplied a wealth of stories, documents, and photographs. My brother, David, a faithful repository of our mother’s storytelling, read every chapter as it was written, gave thoughtful critiques and reminders, and with unyielding patience provided the love and comforting reassurances I needed to enlarge my life enough to accommodate this undertaking. I’m enormously thankful to the scholars who graciously contributed their time and hard-earned knowledge to a flutist venturing outside musical waters. The first thanks go to revered Armenian art historian Dickran Kouymjian. Bedross Der Matossian met with me by Skype on numerous occasions and often pinpointed important sources, giving far more time than I had any right to ask. Similarly, Daniel Bertrand Monk of Colgate University; Deniz Beyazit,

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associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Guy Burak of New York University were extraordinarily giving of their time and sources and provided valuable pushback to some of my preconceptions. Garo Kürkman and Osman Köker furnished bountiful materials and guidance. George Hintlian shared rare books and engaged me in important conversations regarding Jerusalem. Nirit Shalev-Khalifa has worked tirelessly to document the history of Armenian ceramics in Jerusalem. Other scholars and specialists generously shared their expertise, directed me to materials, or enabled opportunities to present my work, for which I am deeply grateful: Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular, Belgin Demirsar Arlı, Hakan Arlı, Hülya Bilgi, John Carswell, Zeynep Çelik, Ayda Erbal, Chris Gratien, Fawzi Ibrahim, Meliné Karakashian, Nairi Khatchadourian, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, George Manginis, Amir Mohtashemi, Mina Moraitou, Khatchig Mouradian, Emily Neumeier, Irvin Cemil Schick, Nancy Sinkoff, and Seçil Yilmaz. I benefited from the specialized knowledge of Boris Adjemian, Melissa Bilal, Hayk Demoyan, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, the Very Reverend Fr. Daniel Findikyan, Eli Geminder, Michael Goshgarian, Gohar Khanumian, Marc Mamigonian, Mihran Minassian, Mehmet Polatel, Raquel Rapaport, Erhan Sakallioğlu, Ara Sanjian, Ara Sarafian, Sherene Seikaly, Nefertiti Takla, Taline Voskeritchian, and Rachel Ward. Through the gracious introduction of Esin Çelebi Bayru, historians Naci Bakırcı and Nuri Şimşekler researched on my behalf and met with me in Konya. Several especially generous souls guided me in Turkey as I retraced my grandfather’s footsteps: Ozan Devrim Yay, Yakup Karakurt, and Dr. M. Hamdi Okatan. Adina Hoffman, Alexandra Ivanoff, and Ara G. Hovanessian offered important inspiration, as did Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the longserving primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. Others kindly extended themselves in the quest to trace David Ohannessian: Marie-Christine and Michel Damagnez, Ian Nelmes and Miguel de Lemos; Michael Jacobs, Dr. Ibrahim Garard, Suheil Mnemieh, Peter Lauritzen, George Bisharat, and Sani Meo. It was a great pleasure to communicate with a number of leading ceramic artists in Jerusalem and their families—Neshan Balian and Setrag Balian Jr., Hagop Karakashian, his late father, Stepan Karakashian, and Tzoghig Aintablian Karakashian, Garo Sandrouni, and Vic Lepejian—and in Kütahya, Nida Olçar and Riza Can Özmutaf, a descendant of Mehmet Emin.

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It would have been impossible to work in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul without the stellar research assistance and translations of Yener Koç. Alp Eren Topal also provided translations from Ottoman Turkish. Gül Cevikoğlu, Hüsam Süleymangil, Seçil Yilmaz, Matthew Ghazarian, and Okan Doğan translated from modern Turkish. Gahmk Markarian provided meticulous translations from Western, Eastern, and Classical Armenian. Gerald Papasian and Sosy Mishoyan Dabbaghian translated from Armenian and miraculously managed to decipher my grandfather’s handwritten script in a mélange of Armenian, Turkish, and Arabic. Afaf Alkhashman translated from Arabic, as did Adila Laïdi-Hanieh on innumerable occasions, always with her customary graciousness. This book would have remained a gleam in my eye were it not for the wisdom and benevolence of Samuel G. Freedman. Dan Menaker read every chapter during the long drafting process; undoubtedly, I would have given up but for his steady encouragement. Marie Brown, Betty Caroli, Nick Smith, Minal Hajratwala, and Judy Padow provided helpful early readings and suggestions, and Jenisha Watts kept writerly company with me the whole way. Whatever virtues my narrative might have, I owe to them. The shortcomings are, of course, all my own. I’m deeply grateful to Kate Wahl for grasping my aims immediately, for her patience and ongoing editorial oversight. It’s been a joy and privilege to work with her, production editor Gigi Mark, editorial assistants Micah Siegel and Leah Pennywark at Stanford University Press, and the anonymous readers. The New York Public Library’s Manhattan Research Library Initiative (MaRLI) provided five years of unfettered access to collections held by three of the city’s great research institutions—Columbia and New York Universities and NYPL’s own Research Division. No less valuable was the connection to those institutions’ librarians, many of whom met with me repeatedly: Peter Magierski of Lehman Library, Betty C. Bolden of Burke Library, Kitty Chibnik of Avery Library, Guy Burak of Bobst Library, and Nancy Kandoian of the NYPL Map Division. I’m equally grateful to Simon P. Wilson, Verity Webster, and Martin Taylor of the Hull History Centre; Rachel Lev of the American Colony Archives, Jerusalem; Cathy Costain of the British Council Library, Cairo; Nancy Adgent of the Rockefeller Archives, Tarrytown, New York; Andrea Crowley and Molly Sullivan of the Near East Foundation Archive, Syracuse, New York; Gohar Khanumian of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan;

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

295

Boris Adjemian of the AGBU Nubar Library, Paris; Patricia McGuire of King’s College Archive, Cambridge; and Frances Bailey of Mount Stewart House. Warm thanks to Silvina Der Meguerditchian for her care in preparing many of the vintage photos for publication; to photographers Olympia Shannon in Brooklyn, Orhan Kolukısa, Aras Selim Bankoğlu, Hadiye Cangökçe in Istanbul, and Mohamed Nour Al Din in Cairo. I’m grateful to the Borthwick Institute at the University of York, SALT Research, the AGBU Nubar Library, the American Colony Archives, Sir Tatton Sykes, Bt, Garo Kürkman, Dr. M. Hamdi Okatan, Osman Köker, Sandringham Estate, Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, the Near East Relief Historical Society, Wallstein Verlag, King’s College Library of Cambridge University, Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, Sadberk Hanim Museum, and the Brooklyn Public Library for permission to publish images in their collections. Travel, translations, photography, and research assistance were generously supported by a number of individuals and foundations—my deep gratitude goes to them. David Donabedian, Gordon Harris, Suzanne Larson, Victoria Newhouse, and Nardo Poy each made aspects of the process possible. I’m grateful to the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their award of the Danièle Doctorow Prize, to the Hegardt Foundation, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Material in this book was presented to the University Seminar: Ottoman and Turkish Studies. New York City classical musicians are not only an incredibly accomplished group of people, but they form an energetic and empathetic community, encouraging one another and striving for excellence in a variety of creative fields. I’m grateful for them every day. My colleagues in Perspectives Ensemble have long contributed their soulful artistry and intelligence to many beautiful and gratifying projects that ultimately led to this work. Four fantastic musicians, also great friends, opened paths to the genesis of this book, and I must thank them here by name—Jung Lin, Susan Rotholz, Valerie Coleman-Page, and Danièle Doctorow. Other dear persons were present from the beginning, listening, prompting, encouraging, cooking, and generally making it possible to face the challenge of continuing a life in music while simultaneously researching and writing: Suzanne Larson, Yves Abel, Hester Diamond, Victoria Newhouse, Judy Padow, Jane and Arthur Maisel, Gordon Harris, Nina Hovnanian, Kevork Mourad, Jon

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and Meg Dwyer, Livio and Betty Caroli, David and Tania Colmant Donabedian, Miki Poy, and Nardo Poy, who also taught me so much about the meaning of family. It would undoubtedly have been among my mother’s fondest wishes to have lived to see the publication of a book incorporating so many of the family narratives she successfully committed to writing. In all the years that I knew her, she lived a divided life—at once a vibrant presence in our household, which was filled with her warmth, energy, and the aromas of her exceptional cooking, and simultaneously occupying an omnipresent, almost visceral memory trace in the company of her beloved parents and her longed-for native city of Jerusalem. Most of all, this book is for her.

A p p e ndix A

Buildings Decorated with Kütahya Tiles

Most of the contracts for works listed below were commissioned to Mehmet Emin, who formed partnerships with Harutyun and Garabed Minassian and David Ohannessian to provide tiles for some of them. Ohannessian produced tiles and pottery until he was deported from Kütahya in early 1916. Harutyun Minassian was deported in 1918; in the same year, Mehmet Emin dissolved his company. Kütahya tile making subsequently ceased until after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. An asterisk (*) indicates works with Mehmet Emin’s signature; a double asterisk (**) indicates works that include tiles made by David Ohannessian or were principally commissioned to him. The architect is listed, where known, in square brackets.

Sources for the attributions include: Hakan Arlı, “Master Mehmet Emin of Kütahya and the Style of His Work” (master’s thesis, Istanbul University, 1989) [in Turkish]. Sirarpi Ohannessian, “Outstanding Works by David Ohannessian Manufactured in Kütahya Prior to 1915, compiled from records left by David Ohannessian” (Washington D.C., 1980) 1907–1908 Suadiye Mosque, Istanbul*: Extensive interior tiling Government House, Kütahya [Ahmed Fuad]: Façade tiles; tiled masjid and mihrab—after the 1432 mihrab, Ibrahim Bey Imaret, Karaman, reinstalled in the Çinili Kösk of the Imperial Ottoman Museum during the expansion of 1907** Liman Han, Sirkeci, Istanbul [Mehmet Vedat Tek]: Façade tiles

299

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APPENDIX A

1908–1909 Grand Post Office, Sirkeci, Istanbul [Mehmet Vedat Tek]: Façade tiles; interior court, ornamental tiles** Haydarpasha Train Station [Helmut Cuno and Otto Ritter]: Ornamental tiling, Dining salon* 1910–1911 Hobyar Masjid (1437, rebuilt 1910), behind Sirkeci Grand Post Office [Mehmed Vedat Tek] Land Registry and Cadastre Office, Sultanahmet Square, Istanbul [Mehmet Vedat Tek]: Façade tiles* Anber Reis Mosque, Konya: Façade and interior tiles; tiled mihrab, after 1432 Karaman model Manial Palace, Roda Island, Cairo, Egypt [Antonio Kasciac]: Entryway and mosque tiling** Residence of Boghos Ispenian, Cairo, Egypt: Large tiled fireplace** 1912–1913 Imperial Prince Abdülmecid Efendi Pavilion, Yeniköy, Istanbul: Extensive interior tiling added after restoration of the building in 1912–13* Sledmere House, East Riding of Yorkshire, England [Walter Brierley]: Turkish bath cooling room** Grand Mosque, Iskilip, Çorum, Turkey: Tiled mihrab, after 1432 Karaman model 1913–1914 Çapa Girls’ Teacher Training School, Fatih, Istanbul: Ornamental façade tiling; tiled masjid with mihrab, after 1432 Karaman model*, ** Mausoleum of Sultan Mehmed Reşad V, Eyüp, Istanbul [Ahmed Kemalettin]: Interior walls, door and window casings entirely tiled** Residence of Mimar Vedat Tek, Harbiye, Istanbul: Façade and extensive interior tiling Beşiktaş Boat Landing, Istanbul: Façade tiling Kuzguncuk Boat Landing, Istanbul: Façade tiling

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301

“Çinili Hamam,” Pera, Istanbul: Interior tiling** 1915–1918 Büyükada Boat Landing, Istanbul: Façade and interior tiling* Muradiye Han, Karaköy, Istanbul [Mehmet Vedat Tek]: Façade tiling Hovagimyan Han, Karaköy, Istanbul [Levon Nafilyan]: Façade tiling Vakıf Hans No. 1, 2 (Sultanhamam) and 4 (Bahcekapı) Istanbul [Ahmet Kemalettin]: Façade tiling Bostancı Boat Landing, Istanbul: Façade tiling* Governorate of Fatih District, Istanbul [Yetvart Terzian]: Façade tiling Governorate of Kadiköy District, Istanbul [Yetvart Terzian]: Façade tiling Sultanahmet Prison, Istanbul: Extensive façade and interior tiling; tiled masjid*

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A p p e ndix B

Architectural Tile Works from the Dome of the Rock Tiles Studio

All locations are in Jerusalem unless otherwise noted. Comments in parentheses indicate current status. If the present-day names of a site and address are indicated, the installation is accessible to public view.

1919–1922 Dome of the Rock, Haram ash-Sharif: Renovation tiles (replaced) 1920–1921 Old City: Street-name tile panels (replaced after 1948) 1921 Augusta Victoria Hospice: High Commissioner Herbert Samuel’s residence, dining room wall tiles and tile-inlaid furniture (status unknown) Citadel Garden: Bench tile panels (dismantled) 1923 American Colony, Sheikh Jarrah: Entryway and garden tile panels (American Colony Hotel, 1 Louis Vincent Street) 1924 Villa Nashashibi, Sheikh Jarrah: Façade tiles (largely replaced) 1925–1926 Hajj Mahmud Apartment House: Façade tiles (222 Jaffa Road) Residence of Maurice Blotière: Tiled chamber (Le Macassar Hotel, 8 Place de la Republique, Corbie, France)

303

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APPENDIX B

Residency of the Chief British Representative in Transjordan: Window recess tiles (residence of His Royal Highness, Prince el-Hasan, Royal Palace Complex, Amman, Jordan) Villa Gelat, Talbiyeh: Façade tiles Villa Harun ar-Rashid, Talbiyeh: Façade tiles 1927 Khan of the Ophthalmic Hospital, Order of St. John: Tiled iwan (Jerusalem House of Quality, 12 Hebron Road) 1928 British and Foreign Bible Society: Tiled arched entryway (Building No. 8, Safra Municipal Plaza) Armenian Church of St. Saviour, Mount Zion: Tiled memorial altar, courtyard 1928–1930 St. Andrew’s Scottish Memorial Church: Tiled fountain (sebil) and benches (St. Andrew’s Scots Guest House, 1 David Remez Street) 1920s Bath room for H.R.H. Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (status unknown) Residence of Ramsey MacDonald, Frognal, London, England: Tiled fireplace (private residence) Residence of Major John S. Courtauld, MP, Chichester, England: Tiled bath room (status unknown) 1930 British High Commissioner’s residence, Jabbel Muqqabar: Monumental fireplace in the ballroom (United Nations Treaty Supervision Organization, HQ) 1931 Episcopal Methodist Church, Bethlehem Chapel, Brooklyn, New York (dedicated

APPENDIX B

305

1932): Tiled altar (Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church, Children’s Chapel, 144 St. Felix Street, Brooklyn, New York) Palestine Pavilion, Colonial Exposition, Paris, France: Façade tiles (demolished) 1932 “Dabbagh” Mosque—Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Mosque, Beirut, Lebanon: Interior wall tiles and monumental tiled mihrab (building demolished, status of tiles uncertain) 1933 Residence of Louis B. Meyer, Hollywood, California: Tiled fountain (status unknown) 1933–1934 Palestine Archaeological Museum (dedicated 1938), Karm el-Sheikh: Tiled fountain alcove (iwan); Greek inscription tile, Round Conference Room (Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, 27 Sultan Suleiman Street) 1934 Mount Stewart, residence of Edith, Lady Londonderry, Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland: Ornamental tiles for the “Casita” of the Spanish Garden (Mount Stewart, UK National Trust, Portaferry Road, Newtownards, County Down) 1937 Armenian Church of St. Nicholas, Jaffa: Tiled altar (destroyed) 1930s El Araj Apartment House: Façade tiles (3 Queen Helena Street) Shukri Dib Residence, Baqaʾa: Façade tiles French Residency, Beirut, Lebanon: Tiled “Salle de Glace” (status unknown) Residence of Dr. Bardati, Ras Beirut, Lebanon: Fireplace “Bliss House,” American University of Beirut, Lebanon: Three tiled fireplaces Pater Noster Convent, Mount of Olives: Several tile panels inscribed with “Pater Noster” in various languages

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A p p e ndix C

Correspondence and Reports of the Geological Adviser to the Mandatory Government of Palestine George Stanfield Blake (1876–1940), a British mineralogist and mining geologist, was engaged by the Mandatory Administration as Geological Adviser from 1922 until 1939 to map and survey Palestine for water, limestone, and other natural resources. Results of his research for the government were published in Jerusalem by the Print and Stationery Office as Geology and Water Resources of Palestine (1928) and The Stratigraphy of Palestine and Its Building Stones (1936). In addition to Blake’s investigations into water and materials for road and building construction and potential export, he facilitated analyses of extant tiles from the Dome of the Rock. He later surveyed Palestine for materials required to produce Jerusalem pottery, cooperating with the requests of David Ohannessian, Mgrditch Karakashian, and Nishan Balian beginning in 1924 and culminating in his report of 1931. The documents transcribed here were preserved among David Ohannessian’s papers.

I. Report on Visit to the Mosque of Omar for Inspection of Tiles On Thursday, the 25th January [1923], at the Offices of the Moslem Supreme Council, I met the Grand Mufti, Mr. Richmond and Mr. Kelley. Together we visited the Museum containing the tiles used in various epocks [sic] for facing the Octagon and Dome of the Rock. Those of the 13th Century were,1 as Mr. Richmond reported, in wonderfully good condition. Both colour and surface of the glaze were excellent in spite of the long exposure. The workmanship also was remarkable in this respect that unlike all glazes of modern times in which a pattern is painted on and the article dipped, in these the glaze itself contains the colour and has been fused on to the biscuit or fired body to give the most perfect pattern and results. The glaze itself appeared to be unusually hard and something like porcelain. In fact, if a method were known in which a porcelain could be attached to a biscuit, the 13th Century tiles could

307

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be duplicated. The biscuit is unusual, being almost white and fritted but not sufficient to obliterate the techture revealing the original constituents. The colours mostly used are cobalt blue, copper green, black (Manganese?) and white opaline. It might not be a difficult task to repeat in one colour but to get the fine lines and the sharp clear division between the colours, the discovery of this would give the secret to the manufacture of a tile or glazed bodies for decorative purposes which might start a new and important industry. The evolution of the art is shown in the tiles used prior to the tiles referred to in which a thin glaze has been made, cut to design and attached to plaster. It may be that this was an improvement on the Mosaic of a still earlier period in order to produce a clearer and more defined colour and contrast in the design, and the consummation of the art in the 13th Century’s tiles was an accomplishment of high merit. One might compare the method of application of the glazes to inlaid work in metal or wood at it is quite possible the previously prepared glazes were applied to the fired body in the form of a thick adhesive or plastic paste with a work of infusible, immiscible substance on the boundaries of the glaze to prevent them running into one another.2 The solution of this and other problems would require chemical and microscopical examination and to this end I chose fragments of tiles sufficient to carry out the complete investigation. I may add that these tiles are guarded and rightly so with jealous care, so much so, that even portions of tiles are impossible to obtain without permission of the Supreme Council of Moslems. It may be that if having laid bare the secret of manufacture they would prefer to keep it for their own use. So far as I am concerned there is no reason why this should not be so, provided the art is developed by them. In that case I would prepare samples of glazes and body before forwarding them for analysis. The microscopic examination I can carry out here as I understand the Treasury have agreed to provide me with an instrument. Sgd. G. S. Blake GEOLOGICAL ADVISER

APPENDIX C

309

II. 25th April, 1923 [To:] Government Analyst In addition to specimens A. white glaze B. blue glaze handed to you personally, I now forward three samples of tile body in three fractions. C. coarse fraction D. 10 seconds fraction E. 10 minutes fraction Please estimate SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, MgO, K2O, Na2O, in all samples and Sn in A, Co in B. The samples are ready prepared for the estimation. Sgd. G. S. Blake GEOLOGICAL ADVISER Analysis of Tiles from the Mosque in 1924 Samples submitted by the Geological Adviser Blue Glaze ‘B’

Tile Body ‘C’

Tile Body ‘D’

Silica (SiO2)

69.0

84.0

71.2

Iron & Alumina (Fe2O3 + Al2O3)

7.0

4.6

3.8

Lime (Ca)

5.0

5.1

10.7

Magnesia (MgO)

1.6

4.3

1.9

Sodium & Potassium (Na2O + K2O)

10.8

1.5

2.1

Cobalt

1.2

—

—

Lead (PbO)

3.8

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APPENDIX C

N o t e : Qualitative texts indicated that phosphorus and carbonates were present in Body C & D. A separation of sodium and potassium was not performed but by calculation from the mixed chlorides, the blue glaze gave Na2O4 .8% and K2O 6%. Sgd. G. S. Blake GEOLOGICAL ADVISER III. Government of Palestine Public Works Department Jerusalem 10th February, 1931 Mr. W. A. Stewart Supervisor of Technical Education Department of Education Jerusalem Dear Mr. Stewart, Subject: Materials required for Jerusalem pottery. Reference: Your T/E of 20-1-31. In reply to your above mentioned letter, I submit the following information in respect of your enquiries: 1. Chromium Chromium ore is unknown in Palestine but the green gypseous calcitic mineral which occurs near the Inn of the Good Samaritan and elsewhere contains about 11/2 percent of chromium oxide. 2. Antimony Antimony ore is unknown in Palestine. 3. Quartz Beds of quartz occur in many parts of the country as irregular lens-shaped beds usually associated with dolomitic limestones. From a quarry which was opened on the railway near Malha, several thousands of tons of quartz were

APPENDIX C

311

extracted. The most convenient occurrence is in the cutting at Kilometre 19–20 on the Nablus Road, soon after passing Bireh. An analysis of this material was made at the Imperial Institute. The remark that it might be suitable for grindstones is borne out by the great difficulty experienced quarrying and crushing. There is of course an abundance of flint or chert in the country which has the same mineral composition as quartz. 4. Manganese Manganese ores have recently been discovered in Southern Palestine in large quantities, among which a powdery black pyrolusite is very abundant. At present the ores are being prospected under licences but in due course leases will be granted. Possibly your requirements could be satisfied, but this would depend also upon the state in which you are prepared to accept the manganese ores. 5. Kaolin There is no kaolin known in Palestine and although white clay exists it is usually calcareous and is not free from iron. A small sample from a locality near Beersheba where a licence was granted is forwarded to you. I should imagine however, that the price of good pottery clay in England is now so low that provided transport is not too heavy, it would be more satisfactory to obtain it from there. Marl beds containing a considerable portion of clay are also common in and around Jerusalem and are used for sealing the flat roofs of the Arab houses. Plastic clay occurs at the base of the Upper Cenomanian limestones and is being worked around Kolonia; it contains a considerable amount of iron and is used for making red roofing tiles. 6. Yellow and Red Ochre Although ochreous materials occur at the Inn of the Good Samaritan and other places and iron ore occurs in Transjordan, it can hardly be said that ochre of the type you require definitely exists. I gather from your letter that you are investigating the production of pottery in Palestine, consequently, you may be interested to know the results of an examination that was made years ago on the tiles of the Dome of the Rock [see II]. A note that that was originally forwarded to the Chief Secretary and also

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analyses made by the Government Analyst [Imperial Institute] on the blue glaze and also a description of how the specimens were obtained are attached. Hand examination of the biscuit or fired body indicates the entire absence of colouring matter such as iron oxide and the grains of quartz are also colourless. The quartz may have been obtained from sand as many of the grains are rounded. If from pure quartz, it would not appear to correspond with the Malha quartz. From the analyses given the mineral constitution would be the case of ‘C’—kaolin silicate 12%, calcium carbonate CaCO3—9%. The origin of the magnesia which is 4.3% is not easily explained unless dolomite has been used, but the ‘D’ analysis does not show the same relation. There is, however, apparently nearly 75% of free quartz in this portion. In ‘D’ the kaolin silicate is 10%, calcium oxide as silicate is 5% and calcium carbonate is 13%. There is therefore in this probably not more than 65% free quartz. In both fractions, there is alkaline present which was probably intentionally introduced in order to frit the body. This also may account for its porosity and toughness. Under the microscope the material is mostly quartz (about 50%), in a matrix which is partly glassy and partly microcrystalline. The quartz is partly rounded and partly angular and there are also numerous cavities. The glaze is essentially a glass and there appears to be considerable resemblance between it and the coarser fraction ‘C’ of the body. The principal alteration in the composition is the addition of more alkali in order to make a fusible silicate, but borax is probably absent, as the analyses show over 99%, therefore it is evidently note an ordinary glaze but a hard glass to which pigment has been added. From some of the specimens it looks as though the glaze has two layers and there is some indication of how the colouring matter has been applied. Yours sincerely, Sgd. G. S. Blake GEOLOGICAL ADVISER

Notes

A bbr eviations for Archives and Sources Annuaire Oriental [Ottoman trade journal] 1891

Annuaire Oriental du commerce, de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature. Créé par Raphaël C. Cervati (Constantinople: Cervati Frères et Cie, 1891).

1894

Annuaire Oriental du commerce, de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature. Créé par R.C. Cervati, etc. (Constantinople: J. Pallamary, 1894).

1902

Annuaire Oriental du commerce de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature. Ed. Raphaël Cesar Cervati (Constantinople: E. Pallamary et Cie, 1902).

1908

Annuaire Oriental du commerce de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature. Ed. Raphaël Cesar Cervati (Constantinople: E. Pallamary et Cie, 1908).

1909

Annuaire Oriental & Printing Company Société Anonyme (Constantinople: Annuaire Oriental, 1909).

1912

Annuaire Oriental du commerce, industrie, administration, magistrature de l’Empire de Ottoman (Constantinople: Francaise L. Mourkides, 1912).

1914

Annuaire Oriental du commerce, industrie, administration, magistrature (Constantinople: Annuaire Oriental Ltd, 1914)

BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (PMOA, Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives), Istanbul A.MKT.MVL

Sadâret Mektûbî Kalemi, Meclis-i Vâlâ (Papers of the Office of the Grand Vizier, Council of Ministers)

DH

Dahiliye Nezareti (Interior Ministry)

DH.EUM

Dahiliye Nezareti Emniyet-i Umûniye Müdiriyeti (Ministry of the Interior, Security Directorate)

DH.EUM.SSM

Dahiliye Nezareti Emniyet-i Umûniye Müdüriyeti, Seyrüsefer Kalemi (Ministry of the Interior, Security Directorate, Office of Travel)

313

314

NOTES

DH.MKT

Dahiliye Nezareti Mektûbî Kalemi (Papers of the Ministry of the Interior)

DH.SAID

Dahiliye Nezareti Sicill-i Ahvâl Idâre-i Umûmiyesi (Ministry of the Interior, Public Administration Personnel Records)

DH.ŞFR

Dahiliye Nezareti Şifre Kalemi (Cipher Office of the Interior Ministry)

İ.DUÏT

İrade, Dosya Usulü (Decrees, Filed by Dossier)

İ.HB

İrade-i Harbiye (Decrees, Ministry of War)

İ.TAL

İrade-i Taltifat (Decrees of Honors)

ML

Maliye Nezareti (Ministry of Finance)

ML.VRD.CMH

Maliye Nezareti Vâridât Muhasebesi Cizye Kalemi (Ministry of Finance, Department of Accounting, Cizye Office)

ŞD

Şura-yı Devlet (Council of the State)

Additional Archives DDSY2

Mark Sykes Papers, Hull History Centre, Hull, United Kingdom

FO

Foreign Office, National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom

HO

Home Office, National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom

ISA

Israel State Archives

MRL

Missionary Research Library Archives, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York

YAS MS 729

Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society, Leeds, The Letters of Mark Sykes Relating to the Rebuilding of Sledmere Hall

N O T E S T O P relu d e A N D C H A P T E R 1

315

P r e l ude

1.  The experiences of Professor Hans Fisher were detailed in Joseph J. Preil, Holocaust Testimonies: European Survivors and American Liberators in New Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 9–10. 2.  The first major publication was the beautifully produced catalogue of an exhibition in Tel Aviv, curated and authored by Yael Olenik, The Armenian Pottery of Jerusalem (Tel Aviv: Haaretz Museum, 1986). 3.  Nearly every published account of Ohannessian’s life distorts the fact of his deportation from Kütahya and the circumstances of his arrival in Jerusalem. 4.  Arnold Toynbee and James Bryce, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916).

C h ap t e r 1

1.  This family anecdote, like those that follow, is drawn from Pheme Alice Ohannessian Moughalian’s unpublished 1992 work, “The Families of Tavit and Victoria Ohannessian,” oral histories collected by Moughalian and her sisters Sirarpi, Mary, and Hermine in the 1980s and 1990s, and from other family documents, memoirs, and testimonies, as well as numerous interviews with Ohannessian family members between 2013 and 2018. 2. “Muratchai,” Tsaghik Amsatʾertʾ [Tsaghik: National, Literary and Political Half-Monthly Review], Constantinople, October 31, 1898, 131. Today, the Mourad-Chai (Mourad River) is called the Murat Nehri, or Eastern Euphrates. 3.  As recorded in the 1849 Muradja cizye register (the listing of non-Muslim residents), BOA, ML.VRD.CMH.d 1053, (1265.1.3) H. 25.01.1849. 4.  Transliterated as Kalinbaçak from Ottoman Turkish; Galenbajak, per Ohannessian family records. 5.  BOA, ML.VRD.CMH.d 1053 (1265.1.3) H. 25.01.1849. Per David Ohannessian, the entire population of the village was Armenian Christian, principally Apostolic. 6.  Joseph K. Greene Diaries, August 15, 1861, MRL 2, Near/Middle East: Joseph Kingsbury Greene Papers, series 1, box 1, folder 2, vol. 3. 7.  Among Armenian Christians the honorific “haji” indicated that someone had made a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. 8.  BOA, ML.VRD.CMH.d 1053 (1265.1.3) H. 25.01.1849. The cizye document records the male residents, who occupy just over 500 homes. Joseph K. Greene estimates the 1861 population at fewer than 3000. The Tsaghik Amsatʾertʾ article places the number at 3500 in 600 homes in October of 1898. Raymond Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian estimate the 1914 population at 2600. See Les Arméniens dans l’Empire ottoman à la veille du génocide (Paris: Editions d’art et d’histoire, 1992), 150. 9. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 91–92. 10.  Takouhi’s wedding is described in family records. Similar Armenian traditions and regional variants are recounted in Susie Hoogasian Villa and Mary Al-

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lerton Kilbourne Matossian, Armenian Village Life before 1914 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1982). 11.  Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, géographie administrative: Statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894), 4:214. Regional farmers assembled in Eskishehir to sell produce and animal products on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the growing season. In 1890, an imperial decree established an annual grand market, commencing September 21 and lasting 15 days. This bazaar attracted merchants and wholesalers to the city and boosted commerce, especially after Eskishehir’s rail connection to the capital was completed in 1892. 12. “Muratchai,” 131. 13.  Interviews in Muratça and Harmanköy, July 6, 2014. 14.  Basmaçi created dyes from indigo, madder, chrome, and other plants and minerals and used them to color cloth and print designs on textiles. 15.  Joseph K. Greene Diaries, October 3, 1859, series 1, box 1, folder 1, vol. 1. 16. “Muratchai,” 131. 17.  BOA, DH.MKT 2272/139, dated 27 Teşrin-i evvel 315 (November 8, 1899). Petition for a loan from the Ottoman Ministry of Forests, Mines, and Agriculture (established in 1893). 18.  Throughout, I use the word “national” as it was used in the Ottoman context to describe Armenians or Greeks, who defined themselves by their origins, language, customs, and religion. 19. On a visit to Mouradchai, American Protestant missionary Joseph K. Greene observed: “Their common language is neither Armenian nor Turkish, but a mix of both together with many words to be found in neither, and known only to the villagers themselves. It is an ungrammatical, almost barbarous dialect.” Joseph K. Greene Diaries, August 15, 1861, series 1, box 1, folder 2, vol. 3. 20. Between 1855 and 1876, one hundred Armenian or Armeno-Turkish (Turkish language written in the Armenian alphabet) newspapers were published in Constantinople alone. Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 11. 21. After 1840, the government required that tithes be paid in cash rather than in kind. Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 90. After the 1856 Tanzimat reforms, the former cizye or poll taxes imposed on all adult Christian or other non-Muslim members of the millets—official, semi-autonomous subgroups distinguished by religion and largely governed by their own respective religious authorities—transformed into a “military substitution” tax. The 1861 tax revenue from the village (aside from tithes) totaled 10,000 liras, per Joseph K. Greene Diaries, November 14, 1862, series 1, box 1, folder 3, vol. 4. 22.  Amerikan Bord Heyeti (American Board), Istanbul, “Memorial Records for Joseph K. Greene,” American Research Institute in Turkey, Istanbul Center Library, Digital Library for International Research Archive, Item #16937, accessed June 25, 2018, http://www.dlir.org/archive/items/show/16937. 23.  Joseph K. Greene Diaries, August 15, 1861, series 1, box 1, folder 2, vol. 3.

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24.  Joseph K. Greene, Leavening the Levant (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1916), 299– 300. Greene describes the 1865 chapel. 25.  Joseph K. Greene Diaries, January 28, 1862, series 1, box 1, folder 2, vol. 3. 26.  Charles A. S. Dwight quoted in [n.a.], “Letters from the Missions. Report Western Turkey Mission,” Missionary Herald 86 (October 1890): 410–11. Dwight indicates that Arslan Beg is next to Kara Agatch, which was twenty miles northwest of Mouradchai. 27. “Muratchai,” 131. 28.  The name of the school is recorded in Osman Köker and Orlando Carlo Calumeno, Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago: With the Postcards from the Collection of Orlando Carlo Calumeno (Istanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 2005), 33. 29. “Muratchai, 131.”

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1.  Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, géographie administrative: Statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894), 4:209. The Porsuk is now dammed on either side of the city, and the flow pattern has changed as a result. 2.  The city is 2600 feet above sea level. 3. Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 4:208. 4. Ibid., 41. 5.  Raymond H. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 563. Joseph Greene described Chalgara as a “small Armenian village of about 200 houses . . . somewhat over 1000 men, women and children.” Joseph K. Greene Diaries, August [illegible], 1862, MRL 2, Near/Middle East: Joseph Kingsbury Greene Papers, series 1, box 1, folder 3, vol. 3. 6.  An alternative theory for the derivation of the name is that chunks of it were sometimes seen floating on the Black Sea. 7.  For the extent of the region’s deposits, see “Turkish Meerschaum,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 50 (July 1902): 739. 8.  As listed in Annuaire Oriental (1894). The Armenian firms were Agop Garabed, Karnig Agopian, Ohannes Margossian, and Setrak Papazian. Tovmas Chukurian’s firm manufactured and exported only meerschaum pipes. 9. Cuinet, La Turquie d’ Asie, 4:208–9. Five thousand more Armenians and eleven thousand Greeks lived among the one hundred and fifty small villages in the outer reaches of the district. According to the Annuaire Oriental (1902), surrounding villages in the Eskishehir caza had a total population of thirty-six thousand, approximately half of which were Christian. 10.  Ibid. Cuinet records a second Armenian church, this one Catholic, in EskiChèhr (Eskişehir). 11.  Armenian professions detailed from the Eski-Chéhir entries in the Annuaire Oriental editions of 1902 and 1908. 12.  The Eskishehir and Aleppo railroads loomed large in the Ohannessian oral legacy. See also Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 78–79.

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13. Although Armenian and other presses flourished, the government subjected the output to close scrutiny and censorship. See Ipek K. Yosmaoğlu, “Chasing the Printed Word: Press Censorship in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1913,” Turkish Studies Association Journal 27, no. 1/2 (2003): 15–29. 14.  “According to the statistics attached to this project [the plan and demands set forth by Mrkrtich Khrimian on behalf of the Armenians], the number of Armenians living in the vilayets of Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, and Harput was 1,330,000, or 64.5 percent of the total population. Elsewhere, the number of Armenians of Sivas and Kayseri was given as 670,000. The Patriarchate gave its estimation on the distribution of the ethnic composition of official data based on the official Ottoman almanac (Salname) of 1876.” Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 12–13. 15.  Sixty thousand square miles in area, according to Ronald Grigor Suny. See “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 31–32. Louise Nalbandian gives 120,000 square miles as a figure: “On the north, the region is bounded by the Pontus and is separated from the Caucasus by the Kur and Rioni rivers. On the south, Armenia extends to the plain of northwestern Mesopotamia. On the west, the region is bounded by Asia Minor and on the east by the plateau of Azerbaijan and the southern extension of the Caspian Sea.” See The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties through the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 2. 16.  Also called Harput or Mamuretül-Aziz. 17.  Mehmet Polatel and Uğur Ümit Üngör, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Continuum, 2011), 20. 18.  Stephan H. Astourian, “The Silence of the Land,” in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55–81. 19.  Yucel Terzibašoğlu puts the number of Muslims seeking refuge in Anatolia at five million between the years 1783 and 1914. See “Land Disputes and EthnoPolitics: North-Western Anatolia, 1877–1912,” in Land Rights, Ethno-nationality, and Sovereignty in History, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Jacob Metzer (London: Routledge, 2004), 153–80. 20.  Spelled Küçük Kaynarca in modern Turkish. 21.  Translation from Albert Sorel and Frederick Charles Bramwell, The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century: The Partition of Poland and the Treaty of Kainardji (London: Methuen, 1898), 248. 22.  Orlando Figes, The Crimean War: A History (New York: Picador, 2012), 12. In 1846, the Orthodox and Latin Easter fell on the same calendar day. A fight broke out over the order of access to the Altar of Cavalry in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 23. Ibid., 305. 24. The 1856 Tanzimat Reform Edict, called Islâhat Hatt-ı Hümâyûnu in Ottoman Turkish.

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25. “By 1875, most loans went toward servicing the debt, absorbing up to 80 percent of the yearly state revenue. The bulk of what remained went toward the purchase of modern weapons or the financing of wars, leaving very little for public expenditures.” Nader Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 37. 26.  W. E. Gladstone, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson, 1876). 27.  Quoted in Julia Ward Howe et al., eds., New Armenia, vol. 2, no. 10 (New York: New Armenia Publishing, 1906), 9–10. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ pt?id=hvd.hnzngz;view=1up;seq=41. 28. Terzibaşoğlu, “Land Disputes and Ethno-Politics,” 159–60. 29.  Ten years later, most of the Armenakan members were killed in the defense of Van. Hrachʾ Tasnapetean, History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Dashnaktsutiun, 1890–1924 (Milan, Italy: Oemme Edizioni, 1990), 23–26. The largely underground organization was revitalized in 1921 as the Ramgavar Party. 30.  Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 23–35. 31. Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else,” 109–10. 32.  Joseph K. Greene Diaries, series 1, box 5, folder 7, vol. 34. In the entries of November 18, 1895, Greene reports that eight of twelve Protestant missionary buildings were burned and American missionaries were killed (55). On November 26, 1895, he reports the Protestant building in Marash was “burned and others were plundered. Many Armenians killed” (62). On November 30, he reported, “Hell let loose alone describes the situation. 1200 slain in Sivas! 800 buried in one trench!” (64). 33.  Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 156. Dadrian reports figures compiled by J. Lepsius and published in 1897. 34.  Gia Aivazian, “The W. L. Sachtleben Papers on Erzerum in the 1890s,” in Armenian Karin/Erzerum, UCLA Armenian History and Culture Series: Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces, vol. 4, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2003), 246–47. 35.  Joseph K. Green Diaries, August 26–29, 1896, series 1, box 5, folder 8. 36.  Annuaire Oriental (1902), 1296. 37.  Christiane Babot, La mission des Augustins de l’Assomption à Eski-Chéhir, 1891–1924 (Istanbul-Strasbourg: Les Éditions Isis, 1996), 58–59. 38. Ibid., 73. 39.  Edwin Munsell Bliss and Cyrus Hamlin, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities (Fresno, CA: Meshag, 1982), 356–57. Bliss reports that in 1894 the Sublime Porte issued a decree requiring all Christian schools to give “substantial instruction in Turkish.” 40. Babot, La mission des Augustins, 75. 41. Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 4:328–29. Also, Adabazar, located between Eskishehir and Constantinople, was a regional distribution center, sending one hundred thousand chickens and twenty-five million eggs annually to feed the million residents of Constantinople.

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42.  Albumen paper was used especially between 1855 and 1895 but continued to be used into the twentieth century.

C h ap t e r 3

1.  “At the beginning of the [nineteenth] century, the population of the city included about 150,00 Armenians. In 1844 the number reached approximately 222,000. During the second half of the century, the number rose to between 250,000 and 300,000.” Bedross Der Matossian, “Armenian Commercial Houses and Merchant Networks in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire,” Turcica: Revue d’études turques—peuples, langues, cultures, États 39 (2007): 148–49, http://digitalcommons .unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=historyfacpub. 2.  The formerly Armenian Tchohadji Han still exists—now called the Çuhacı Han. The 1902 Annuaire Oriental building directory shows that all but four of the jewelers, diamond cutters, engravers, shawl sellers, money changers, and jewelry box dealers in the building were Armenian (919). 3.  Demetrios Coufopoulos, A Guide to Constantinople (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902), 48. 4.  Annuaire Oriental (1891), 467. 5.  Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’ Asie, géographie administrative: Statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894), 4:210. 6.  Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 62. 7.  Annuaire Oriental (1891), 800. 8. Arshak Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru (Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961), 91–101. 9.  Clive Foss, Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia/ I: Kütahya, International Series 261, Monograph no. 7 (Oxford: BAR, 1985), 14. Foss credits the fourteenthcentury Egyptian writer Qalqashandi for the description. 10. Ibid., 161–76. 11. Ibid., 19. Foss credits Sieur Paul Lucas, writing in 1701, for these details. 12. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 31. Of the several versions of this story recounted in this book, I have included the version credited to David Ohannessian. 13. Ibid., 28–30. 14.  Dickran Kouymjian, “The Role of Armenian Potters of Kutahia in the Ottoman Ceramic Industry,” in Armenian Communities of Asia Minor, ed. Richard Hovannisian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 2014), 108. 15. Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Arméniens dans l’Empire ottoman a la veille du génocide (Paris: Editions d’art et d’histoire ARHIS, 1992), 151. 16.  The number of residents is listed in Annuaire Oriental (1902), 1294. 17. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 26. 18. Ibid., 68–69. 19.  According to Annuaire Oriental (1902), 1295, they were A. Sallacahian, C. R. Calustyan, A. Boyadjian, M. Dermathéossian, and C. Osmansian. Alpoyachean

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(Alboyadjian) states that by 1914, the Armenian Kutahya carpet firms had annual exports worth sixty thousand Ottoman liras. See Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 91. 20.  This list derives in part from Ohannessian’s correspondence of 1926–31 with W. A. Stewart, Mandate Supervisor of Technical Education, in which he listed the materials he had used to make ceramics in Kutahya. See Appendix C. 21.  An elaborately decorated blue-and-white ceramic ewer, dated 1510 and today in the collection of the British Museum, was inscribed in Armenian to “Abraham of Kutahya,” and after years of controversy over its origin, it is today more frequently attributed to Kutahya. See Kouymjian, “The Role of Armenian Potters of Kutahia,” 110–11. 22. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 14. 23. Ibid., 57. 24.  Kouymjian, “The Role of Armenian Potters of Kutahia,” 112. 25.  The first coffee house in Constantinople opened in 1554, and the trend caught on quickly. Markman Ellis, The Coffee House: A Cultural History (London: Phoenix, 2005), chap. 2. 26.  Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters (Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006), 109–15. 27.  John Carswell and C. J. F. Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery from the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, Jerusalem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 2:4–6. 28. Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire, 183. 29. Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 4:100. 30.  Rifat Çini, Solmaz Turunç, and Aydın Turunç, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making (Istanbul: Uycan Yayinlari, 1991), 19. 31.  Carswell and Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery, 2:8. 32.  Osman Hamdi Bey served as director of the Museum of Antiquities in Constantinople from 1881 until 1910. 33.  Marie de Launay, L’Architecture Ottomane–Die Ottomanische Baukunst (Istanbul: Imprimerie et Lithographie Centrale, 1873), 27. 34. Ahmet Vefik Pasha served as Regional Inspector of the Western Anatolian Provinces in 1863–64. Beatrice St. Laurent, “From Bursa to Jerusalem: From Yeşil Türbe to the Dome of the Rock,” in History from Below: A Tribute in Memory of Donald Quataert, ed. Selim Karahasanoğiu and Deniz Cenk Demir (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2014), 338. 35.  For a discussion of the mid-nineteenth-century restoration of the Brussa monuments and the concurrent efforts to increase the number of ceramics studios, see Ahmet Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire (London: Routledge, 2016), 102–7. 36.  Salaheddin Bey, La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867: Ouvrage publié par les soins et sous la direction de S. Exc. Salaheddin Bey (Paris: Hachette, 1867), 131–32. Salaheddin noted that the new workshop in Eyup, led by Hafiz Sadyk, was fabricating product worth about seventy thousand francs per year (in 1867) and used a range of qualities of clay mined from Roumelia and the shores of the Black Sea. The workshop was intended to produce all the tiles and ceramics needed for the entire city of Constantinople, and according to him, its output

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was replacing that of England and Austria on an increasing basis. But the author also criticized the products of the Eyup workshop as having vulgar designs and being heavy and ungainly. 37. Cuinet, La Turquie d’ Asie, 4:99–101. 38. Marc Gaillard, Paris: Les expositions universelles de 1855 à 1937 (Paris: Presses franciliennes, 2003), 22. 39.  Arthur Millner, Damascus Tiles: Mamluk and Ottoman Architectural Ceramics from Syria (Munich: Prestel, 2015), 220–22. 40.  Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 32. 41. Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 4:99–100. Further, Ahmet Ersoy reports that a “part of this display . . . was donated to the Museum für Kunst und Industrie in Vienna. See Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary, 254n. 42.  For a richly detailed account of the search for and consolidation of an Ottoman national architectural style from the fifteenth century on, particularly at the end of the Ottoman era, see Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary. 43. Alyson Wharton, “Armenian Architects and ‘Other’ Revivalism,” in Revival: Memories, Identities, Utopias, ed. Ayla Lepine (London: Courtauld Books Online, 2015), 156. For a comprehensive discussion of the Balyan architectural dynasty and its legacy, see Alyson Wharton, The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople: The Balyan Family and the History of Ottoman Architecture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). See also Gülsüm Nalbantoğlu, “The Birth of an Aesthetic Discourse in Ottoman Architecture,” METU: Journal of the Faculty of Architecture 8, no. 2 (1988): 115–22. 44. Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary, 93–97. 45.  For a description of the pottery displays, see Salaheddin, La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, 129–33. 46. Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, 4:100. Cuinet reports that under the encouragement of Vefik Pasha, the faïence workshops, which had fallen in number to 5, with each one employing 30 workers, rose in number to 15, employing a total of 600 workers. 47. Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire, 120, quoting Mehmed Ziya, Bursaʾdan Konyaʾya seyahat. 48. Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary, 96. The text of Usul was written by Victor Marie de Launay. Montani Effendi created the technical documents. Artists Eugène Maillard and Boghos Şaşiyan, along with Montani, created most of the plates, and Mehmed Şevki wrote the introduction. 49. Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire, 183. 50. Emin inscribed a tile cartouche for the Balikli Mosque’s prayer niche, another for the Saadettin Mosque, and new tiles for the mihrab of the Takvacilar Mosque. See V. Belgin Demirsar Arlı. “Architecture and Tile Usage in City Planning of Kutahya from Tanzimat to Republic,” paper presented at the First International Conference on Architecture and Urban Design, Epoka University Proceedings, April 19–21, 2012, http://dspace.epoka.edu.al/handle/1/218. 51.  Minassian was a patronymic: “son of Minas.”

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52. Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire, 183. 53.  Announcement of award from Konya Minister of Trade and Public Works, May 21, 1901, BOA, İ.TAL.257.65 (1319.R.20). 54. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 91–92. 55.  Mihaliççik, per Çini, Turunç, and Turunç, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making, 57. 56.  Letter of Kapriel Kaprielian to David Ohannessian, 1931. Ohannessian Family Collection. 57.  Kirka is in the Afyonkarahisar sanjak (county). 58.  Now called Emet. 59.  Nurhan Atasoy, Julian Raby, and Yanni Petsopoulos, Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey (London: Laurence King, 1994), 52. 60.  Çini, Turunç, and Turunç, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making, 57. 61. Ibid. 62. Descriptive names like “kiln stacker” and individual functions of the workers come from Ohannessian’s notes. 63.  Ohannessian stressed sonority as a test. 64.  This description is adapted from Ohannessian’s notes and from Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 91–101, for which Ohannessian himself was a source. 65.  Arlı, “Architecture and Tile Usage in City Planning of Kütahya.” 66.  Ohannessian family records indicate that there were three separate ateliers in Kutahya. Other than the name Société Ottomane de Faïence, which appears on Ohannessian’s letterhead, the workshop names were somewhat fluid. Emin’s firm was variously called Fabrique de Faïence de Kutahia (on his calling card); Faïences de Kutahia Kutahiali Hadji Mehmed (Emin’s outlet in Brussa, as listed in Annuaire Oriental [1891], 798); Osmanli Tchinidjislis Chirketi (Emin’s firm as listed in Annuaire Oriental [1912, 1914]). In some years, Emin appeared in the Ottoman trade directory under his own name, without a business name, or with the phrase “le premier fondateur de fabriques de ce genre.” In contrast, in Jerusalem, Ohannessian chose a name for his workshop and used it unvaryingly during his nearly three decades in the Holy City. Arshag Alboyadjian writes: “At the end of the [nineteenth] century only two [Kütahya ceramics] employers remained. . . . In 1914 there were three porcelain workshops there [in Kütahya], whose products’ chief buyers were London and Paris.” See Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 91.

C h ap t e r 4

1.  The exterior tiling of the Kutahya Government House has been entirely replaced, but the masjid retains most of the original tilework. 2.  Riza Bey, an artist who had also been commissioned by Fuad three years earlier to paint the ornate interior of Kutahya’s Yeşil Cami, was engaged again to collaborate with Emin on the designs for the masjid. V. Belgin Demirar Arlı, “Kutahya Çiniçiligi,” in Anadoluʾda Türk devri çini ve seramik sanatı, ed. Gönül Öney and Zehra Çobanlı (Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı yayınları, 2007), 329. 3. Koran 3:37. 4.  In the upper panel of the mihrab, the artists inscribed the famous verse in

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which Mary and Zechariah meet in a “mihrab”—a place of prayer—where provisions miraculously appear (2:255). 5. A mihrab had been removed from the 1432 Ibrahim Bey Imaret in Karaman at the end of the nineteenth century under the order of Halil Edhem Bey and was reinstalled in the Çinili Kösk of the Imperial Ottoman Museum during the expansion of 1907, which was directed by Osman Hamdi Bey. http://www .istanbularkeoloji.gov.tr/yazdir?0B69E5E495D789AB282E954FB8CAF60E (October 10, 2018). Although the Kutahya mihrab bore a very strong resemblance to the Karaman mihrab, it differed in a number of important respects: The Karaman mihrab was fabricated with cuerda seca tiles, while the Kutahya model was composed of polychrome underglaze tiles; other than verse 255, which appeared on all four twentieth-century mihrabs, the Karaman framing inscriptions differed and were painted on molded curved tiles, and the Kutahya inscriptions were on flat, rectangular tiles; the Karaman border tiles were molded with raised plant forms in relief, and the Kutahya border tiles were molded, but the plant forms were painted in a manner that resembled the Karaman reliefs; the Karaman tiles contain a yellow, characteristic of Persian tiles, that was not present in the Kutahya mihrab; the tiles were cut differently for each mihrab (with thanks to Deniz Beyazit [meeting, July 20, 2016]). 6.  See Alyson Wharton, The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople: The Balyan Family and the History of Ottoman Architecture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). 7.  This style is now known as the “First National Architectural style.” 8.  Vedat’s mother, the composer Leyla Saz, was a childhood friend of the younger son of Sultan Abdulmejid, who in 1909 would become Sultan Mehmed Reshad V. Vedat's father served as governor-general of the Baghdad province and was a poet. 9.  The School (Academy) of Fine Arts was founded by Osman Hamdi Bey in 1882 and comprised four major divisions: painting, sculpture, calligraphy, and architecture. This architecture program replaced the one formerly offered by the dissolved Office of Royal Architects. Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 28. 10. Ibid., 29–31. 11.  At the Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule. 12.  Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, 28. 13.  Arshak Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru (Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961), 147. 14.  Some details of the picnic are taken from Jiryar [sic] Zorthian’s February 15, 1991, interview in the University of Southern Californian Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, from the collection of the Armenian Film Foundation. Zorthian was related to the Markarian branch of the Ohannessian family. See “Jiryar Zorthian,” U.S.C Shoah Foundation, accessed June 26, 2018, http://vhaonline. usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=56543&returnIndex=0. 15.  According to the Annuaire Oriental (1908 and 1909), Kutahya Armenians occupied high administrative positions in the local branches of the Régie des Tabacs, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and unspecified insurance companies.

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16.  Translated and quoted in Nader Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 54. 17.  From a July 1908 CUP declaration issued in Bulgarian for distribution in Bulgarian Christian villages. For the translation and editing of the original declaration, see ibid., 112–13. 18. Ibid., 116–25. 19.  Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 58. 20.  The two district governors (mutasarrifs) were Haci Osman Pasha and Husnu Bey. See Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism, 218–19. 21.  This countercoup is referred to as the “March 31 incident,” based on the Rumi calendar, which corresponds to April 13 on the Gregorian calendar. 22. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 85. For another detailed discussion of the circumstances leading to the massacres, see Bedross Der Matossian, “From Bloodless Revolution to Bloody Counterrevolution: The Adana Massacres of 1909,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 6, no. 2 (2011), http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol6/iss2/6. 23. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 89. 24.  Renata Holod and Ahmet Evin, Modern Turkish Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 12. 25.  Translated and quoted in Yildirim Yavus, “The Restoration Project of the Masjid Al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin (1922–26),” Muqarnas 13 (1996): 161. 26.  From Ohannessian’s records of his major tile restoration works. 27.  Although the newly commissioned tileworks were sometimes created in collaboration with a designer in Constantinople (some of whom were also Armenian), on other occasions, they were designed within the çini ateliers by the ustas themselves. 28.  Mark Sykes, The Caliphs’ Last Heritage: A Short History of the Turkish Empire (London: Macmillan, 1915), 519. 29.  BOA, A.MKT.MVL, 35/19 M1267 (23 Kasim 1850), as recorded in Atilla Batur, Cevdet Dadaş, and Zekai Mete, eds., Osmanlı arşiv belgelerinde Kütahyaʾda sosyal hayat. III,1 (Kutahya: Kütahya Belediyesi Kütahya Kültür ve Tarihini Araştırma Merkezi, 2002), 55. 30.  Ernest Tatham Richmond, The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: A Description of Its Structure and Decoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). Richmond states that in the nineteenth century, Armenian ceramists were known to have been employed in the repair of the Dome of the Rock (39) and that a significant repair was executed in 1874 (45), with tiles made on-site using a kiln found “in the building known as the ‘Najâra’ . . . to the east of the portico to the Aqsa Mosque” (45). It is likely Garabed Minas usta, who was active from about 1864 to 1894, was among the Kutahya tile makers who traveled to Jerusalem in 1874, adopting the honorific “haji” after that or a similar occasion. 31. See Konya Halkevi Güzel Sanatlar Komitesi Yayinlari: Seri 1, No. 2.: 158, for a list of the major restorations. 32. Ibid. Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar writes that one of Sultan Reşad’s first acts on succeeding Abdul Hamid in 1909 was to visit Konya’s Mevlevihane and donate

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funds to help restore some of its buildings. See “A Cultural Agent against the Forces of Culture: Hasan-Ali Yücel,” in Agents of Translation, ed. John Milton and Paul F. Bandia (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009), 168. 33.  The Konya Mevlevi Museum retains samples from many retilings of the Green Dome. 34.  Walter Feldman, “Music of the Ottoman Sufi Orders,” in Sufism and Sufis in Ottoman Society: Sources, Doctrine, Rituals, Turuq, Architecture, Literature and Fine Arts, Modernism, ed. Ahmet Yaşar Ocak (Ankara: Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, 2005), 478–82. 35. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 29fn. 36. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, 39. 37.  Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters (Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006), 198. 38. Naḳḳaş Ali. 39.  Ahmet Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire (London: Routledge, 2016), 145–46; Gülru Necipoğlu, “From International Timurid to Ottoman: A Change of Taste in Sixteenth-Century Ceramic Tiles,” Muqarnas 7 (1990): 136–37. 40.  The molded border tiles of the Kutahya Government House mihrab are a good example—they were painted to resemble the cut mosaic tile borders of the Karamanid mihrab that was their inspiration. 41.  Rifat Çini, Solmaz Turunç, and Aydın Turunç, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making (Istanbul: Uycan Yayinlari, 1991), 73. 42. BOA, ŞD. NF.MRF.ML 546/2 (1328.9.10) [October 14, 1910] indicates that the government exempted exported Kutahya ceramics from the proportional tax. 43.  The capital of the former province of Erivan is today called Yerevan. 44.  Soghomon Soghomonian, having learned to read and write the Eastern dialect of Armenian in Etchmiadzin, most frequently used the Eastern spelling when transliterating his religious name into the Roman alphabet: Komitas. He generally used this spelling through the rest of his life, and today, the Eastern Armenian version of his name, Komitas Vartabed, is internationally more widely employed in scholarly writings. However, Armenians of western descent, such as Ohannessian and his descendants, still most frequently call him by the Western Armenian version of his name: Gomidas. 45. Komitas Vartabed, Armenian Sacred and Folk Music, trans. Edward Gulbekian, introduction Vrej Nersessian (Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon Press, 1998), 17. 46. Arnag (Hampartsum Zorthyan), [untitled article], in Bagin: Amsagir grakanu-tʾean ew aruesti 1962– (Beirut, Lebanon: A. Kazandjian, 1969), 18. 47. Ibid. 48.  Shirley Johnston and Sharīf Sunbul, Egyptian Palaces and Villas: Pashas, Khedives, and Kings (New York: Abrams, 2006), 119. 49. Ibid. 50.  As in Sykes’s Sledmere commission, the cypress tree panels derive directly from the Hünkar Kasri or Royal Pavilion in the Yeni Cami in Istanbul. 51.  Barry Iverson, Garo Balian, and Nihal Tamraz Iverson, Garo Balian: An Ot-

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toman Court Architect in Modern Egypt: An Exhibition of Photographs of the Works of the Architect, 23 February–24 March, 1994, the Sony Gallery, Adham Center, the American University in Cairo (Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1994), 5. 52.  Now called Ramses Railway Station. 53.  Roger Adelson, Mark Sykes: Portrait of an Amateur (London: Cape, 1975), 145–46. 54.  Ultimately, Sykes also published The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire (1908), Five Mansions of the House of Othman (1909), and The Caliphs’ Last Heritage (1915). 55. Adelson, Mark Sykes, 146. 56.  Christopher Simon Sykes, The Big House: The Story of a Country House and Its Family (London: HarperCollins, 2005), 282–83. 57.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, July 8, 1914, YAS MS 729/63, excerpted in C. Sykes, The Big House, 296. 58. Adelson, Mark Sykes, 159. 59.  M. Sykes, The Caliphs’ Last Heritage, 513. 60.  Letter from M. Sykes to Brierley, YAS MS 729/4, October 18, 1911. 61.  M. Sykes, The Caliphs’ Last Heritage, 519. 62. Ibid. 63.  Called the Hünkar Kasrı in Turkish, the Sultan’s Pavilion was designed by court architect Mustafa Aga and built in the mid-1660s. 64.  Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, géographie administrative: Statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894), 4:266. 65.  The following year, Terlemezian would be one of five painters representing the Ottoman Empire at the International Munich exhibition, sending three paintings. In the exhibition catalogue, the portrait was titled An Armenian Priest. See Gizem Tongo, “Artist and Revolutionary: Panos Terlemezian as an Ottoman Armenian Painter,” Études Arméniennes contemporaines 6 (2015): 111–53, http:// journals.openedition.org/eac/893. 66.  Some details of the journey and Ilija campsite are drawn from Sarkis Garabedian’s account of Ilija in Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 147–55. 67.  Letter of Walter Brierley to Mark Sykes, January 19, 1914. 68.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Brierley, YAS MS729/19, October 22, 1912. 69.  Ryan Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 95. 70.  Walter Brierley, “Cooling Room of the Turkish Bath: Drawing of WallTiling January, 1913,” 7/1b, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York. 71.  Letter from David Ohannessian to Mark Sykes, Kutahya, YAS MS 729/35, June 15, 1913. 72.  Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–19 (London: Hutchinson, 1922), 265. 73.  Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian, Archeology of Madness: Komitas, Portrait of an Armenian Icon (London: Taderon Press by arrangement with the Gomidas Institute, 2010), 102–3. 74.  Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010), 44.

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75. DH.SAID 00112/208 lists the date of Faik Ali’s appointment as mutasarrif to Kutahya as August 31, 1913, but his Mülkiye biography lists it as after December 31. 76. Ahmed Mufid Saner left Kutahya to become the vice-governor (vali vekilligi) of Brussa but retained his connection with Kutahya. 77. Mücellidoğlu Ali Çankaya, Son Asır Türk Tarihinin Önemli Olayları ile Bilrilkte Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler (Mülkiye Şeref Kitabı), III Cilt [Volume 3], 1860 (1276 R.)–1908 (1324 R.) (Atik) Mekteb-i Fünun-ı Mülkiye—Mekteb-i Müliyye-i Şahane Meʾzunları (Ankara: Mars Matbaası, 1968–1969), 880–90. 78.  Syed Tanvir Wasti, “Süleyman Nazif,” Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 3 (2014): 493–95. 79.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, “In the Train between Kutahya & Eskishehir,” [October 1913], YAS MS 729/37. 80. Ibid. 81.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, YAS MS 729/75, [n.d.]. 82.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, YAS MS 729/76, [n.d.]. 83.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, YAS MS 729/37, [n.d.]. 84.  The original elevations for the bathrooms are in the Sykes Family Archives MS729 at the Hull History Centre, Hull, United Kingdom, and indicate the Shehzade Mustafa Tomb design. 85.  Letter from Mark Sykes to Walter Brierley, YAS MS 729/37 (October 1, 1913); and Brierley’s drawings for the W.C. No. 5 and bathroom, with Vahan’s design additions. Sykes Family Archives, Hull History Centre. 86.  See Appendix A for a partial list of architectural tile works made in Kutahya in the years before the First World War. 87. Çini, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making, 31. 88.  Prince Abdulmecid, the son of Sultan Abdul Aziz, would become the last sultan after the death of Mehmet Reshad V in 1918. His mansion was restored in 1912–13, at which time large quantities of tile embellishments were added. Lavinia Davies, “The Turkish Room at Sledmere House: Mark Sykes and the Early 20th-Century Tile-Makers of Kutahya,” in Islamic Art VI 2009: Studies on the Art and Culture of the Muslim World, ed. Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims (Genoa: Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art, 2009), 159–76, 166. 89.  See Appendix A. 90.  Now the Çapa Anadolu Öğretmen Lisesi. The Kutahya ceramists created two additional variations of this tiled prayer niche: one for the Grand Mosque in Iskilip and another in Konya for District Governor Arif Pasha’s 1911 Anber Reis Mosque. 91.  Afife Batur, Gül Cephanecigil, Meryem Fındıklıgil Doğuoğlu, and Aras Neftçi, Mimar Kemaleddin: Proje kataloğu (Ankara: TMMOB Mimarlar Odası, 2009), 37–48. 92.  Ohannessian recorded this installation in his list of works. The Minassians’ participation was recorded in the notebook of Mehmet Çini. See Çini, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making, 77. 93.  Letter of J. H. Pennington to Mark Sykes, October, 13, 1913.

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94. Letter from Albert Lofranco to Lady Edith Sykes, September 17, 1914, DDSY2/1/28/79. 95.  Erowand Ôtean and Ara Stepan Melkonian, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919 (London: Gomidas Institute, 2009), 2. 96.  Among the triumvirate, Russia responded first, declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on November 1, 1914. 97. Dündar, The Crime of Numbers, 67. 98.  Henry Morgenthau and Ara Sarafian, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (London: Gomidas Institute, 2016), 138.

C h ap t e r 5

1.  Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010), 74. 2.  “Like those implicated in attacks associated with the boycott, provincial CUP club members were suspected of organizing the gangs.” Ryan Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 96–98. 3.  Letter from Patriarch Arsharuni to the Russian, British, and French ambassadors, May 14, 1913, Archives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Patriarchate’s Constantinople Information Bureau, Է 336–37, file no. 5, translated by and quoted in Raymond H. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 146–47. 4. Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate, 96. 5.  Enver Pasha’s speech, as recounted by Hüsamettin Ertürk, in Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 115. 6. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 278. 7.  Munis Tekinalp (Moise Cohen), translated and quoted in Mehmet Polatel and Uğur Ümit Üngör, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Continuum, 2011), 34. 8.  Drs. Mehmed Nazim and Behaeddin Shakir, quoted in Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 401. 9. Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate, 161–63. 10.  John Carswell, Iznik Pottery (London: British Museum, 2012), 14. 11.  John Carswell, New Julfa: The Armenian Churches and Other Buildings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 3–4. 12. Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 48. 13. Ibid., 48–49. 14. Ibid., 45. 15.  The prison featured tiles from Emin’s workshop. Today it is the Four Seasons Sultanahmet Hotel. 16.  Erol Köroğlu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey during World War I (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), 48. 17.  Mehmed Ziya adopted the pen name “Gökalp,” or “Sky Hero,” which he used increasingly after 1911.

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18. Ziya Gökalp and Robert Devereaux, The Principles of Turkism (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1968), 19–20. 19.  Hilmi Ozan Özavcı, Intellectual Origins of the Republic: Ahmet Aaolu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2015), 114–15. 20.  Recounted to historian Arshag Alboyadjian by Stepan Stepanian of Adabazar, who received sanctuary in Kutahya in mid-1915. Kemal Bey, the district secretary and Faik Ali’s second-in-command, related to Stepanian the communication between Faik Ali and his brother, Suleyman Nazif. Arshak Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru (Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961), 224. 21. Ibid. 22. Burçin Gerçek, Taner Akçam, and Ömer Türkoğlu, Turkish Rescuers: Report on Turks Who Reached-Out to Armenians in 1915: An Unchartered Territory Waiting to Be Discovered, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation 2017, 64, http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/wp-content/files_mf/1 435335304ReportTurkishrescuerscomplete.pdf. See also Burçin Gerçek, Akıntıya karşı: Ermeni soykırımında emirlere karşı gelenler, kurtaranlar, direnenler (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2016). 23. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 94. 24.  BOA, DH.ŞFR 44.200, September 6, 1914, quoted in Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 69. 25. Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 70. 26.  BOA, DH.ŞFR 54/261, Talaat to provinces [decree], July 1, 1915, in Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Orphans, Convicts, Prostitutes,” War in History 19, no. 2 (2012): 174. 27. Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate, 111. 28. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 179–80. 29.  From proclamation issued in Tabriz on January 25, 1915, by Ibrahim Fuzi, “commander of the Ottoman troops and the Muslim muhajid sent from Mosul,” AMAE (Archives du ministère des affaire étrangères), Perse, n.s., volume 18, folio 142, quoted in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 225–26. 30.  Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 51. 31. Ibid., 54. 32. Ibid., 53. 33.  Chamber of Deputies message from Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, vol. 3, pt. 1 (Ankara: Türk tarih kurumu basımevi, 1991), 427, quoted in Akçam, A Shameful Act, 116–17. 34. Erickson, Ordered to Die, 57. 35. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 240–41. 36. Ibid., 221. “Although most of these were Russian citizens, there were also a few Ottoman citizens among them.” See also Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 70. 37.  Ronald Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 242. 38. Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 71, 128. 39. Erickson, Ordered to Die, 59. 40.  Statement by the Rev. William A. Shedd, D.D., of the American (Presbyte-

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rian) Mission Station at Urmia (n.d.), in James Bryce, Arnold Toynbee, and Ara Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden by Viscount Bryce (Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute, 2000), Document 27, 137–38. 41. Ibid., 138–39. 42.  This decree was not universally implemented; Armenians remained in the armed forces, notably fighting in the Ottoman Army during the Battle of Gallipoli. Whenever there was a choice, they were given the harshest assignments, amele taburis—maintaining roads, digging ditches, porting loads. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 241–42. 43. Ibid., 240–42. 44. Ibid., 241. 45. Ibid., 180, 182. 46. Ibid., 183–85. 47.  Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 207–9. 48.  British Fleet Admiral John de Robeck. 49. Erickson, Ordered to Die, 79. 50.  Sebuh Akuni, The Crime of the Ages: A Chronicle of Turkey’s Genocide of the Armenians (Toluca Lake, CA: H. and K. Manjikian Publishing, 2010), 33–34. 51. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 558. 52.  Aram Andonian, quoted in Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian, The Survivor: Biography of Aram Andonian (London: Taderon Press, 2010), 4. 53. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 252. Grigoris Balakian reported, “Weeks earlier Bedri, the chief of police in Constantinople, had sent official sealed orders to all the guardhouses, with the instruction that they not be opened until the designated day and that they then be carried out with precision and in secrecy.” Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915– 1918, trans. Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 56. Taner Akçam presents new documentation of the authenticity of Talaat Pasha’s orders in 1915. See Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 54.  Quoted in Kuyumjian, The Survivor, 12. 55. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 252. 56. Henry Morgenthau and Ara Sarafian, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (London: Gomidas Institute, 2016), 249. According to Ambassador Morgenthau, after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the area around Van, the governor of Van, who was the brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, allowed the Turkish army to “turn their rifles, machine guns, and other weapons upon the Armenian women, children, and old men in the villages of Van. Following their usual custom, they distributed the most beautiful Armenian women among the Moslems, sacked and burned the Armenian villages for days. On April 15, about 500 young Armenian men of Akantz were mustered to hear an order of the Sultan; at sunset they were marched outside the town and every man shot in cold blood. This procedure was repeated in about eighty Armenian villages in the

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district north of Lake Van, and in three days, 24,000 Armenians were murdered in this atrocious fashion.” 57. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 252–53. 58. Balakian, Armenian Golgotha, 58. 59. Ibid., 59. 60. Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 74. 61.  BOA, Meclis-i Vükelâ Mazbatasi 198/163, as translated and quoted in Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 44. 62. Dündar, Crime of Numbers, 45. 63. Imperial order for the decision of execution given by the Court Martial of Bandirma under Article 54, para. 1, Civil Penal Law, BOA, I.HB 172/56 (1333.N.23). 64.  The cipher order exempts from deportation the children under the care of Maria Hoffman, a German citizen, and likely a missionary. BOA, DH.ŞFR 55/49 (1333.6.6), Ağustos 4, 1331 [August 17, 1915]. 65.  In interviews with author in Mouradchai/Muratça on July 6, 2014. 66. Erickson, Ordered to Die, 16, referring to Ahmed Emin Yalman, Turkey in the World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930), 85. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire had 5,759 kilometers of railway to cover 2,410,000 square kilometers. 67. Köroğlu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity, 20–21. 68.  Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 436. 69. Ibid., 441. Letter from Dr. Wilfred M. Post to Ambassador Morgenthau, September 3, 1915, Konia, in a communication from Ambassador Morgenthau to Secretary of State, September 15, 1915, AN/RG59/867.4016/188, Document 110. 70.  Ibid., Communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. 71.  See “Jiryar Zorthian,” U.S.C. Shoah Foundation, accessed June 26, 2018, http://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=56543&returnIndex=0. 72. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 217. 73.  BOA, DH.ŞFR. 55/106, 08/L/1333, in Gerçek, Turkish Rescuers, 62. 74. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 218. 75. Raymond H. Kévorkian and Paul B. Paboudjian, Les Arméniens dans l’Empire ottoman: À la veille du génocide (Paris: Editions d’Art et d’Histoire, 1992), 151. 76. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 581. 77. Gerçek, Turkish Rescuers, 10–17. 78.  Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 443. 79. Ibid., 444. Prior to the start of the deportations, Dr. Post noted, the average mortality rate from all causes at his hospital had been about 4 percent. “The mortality among Armenians—exiles—who have been admitted to our wards has been over thirty percent,” even though there were no epidemics raging. 80. Ibid., 446. 81. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 223–24.

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82.  Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 438. Letter from Post to Morgenthau. 83.  Celal Bey was “a member of the Ottoman royal family, because he was the grandson of one of the daughters of Abdulhamid. It is perhaps due to this status that the government would simply remove him from office and he would be spared being murdered, which was the fate of some other officials who opposed the orders in 1915.” Gerçek, Turkish Rescuers, 10. Celal Bey was removed from office on October 3, 1915. 84. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 224–25. 85.  “The Third Army was instructed that ‘any Muslim who protected an Armenian [be] hanged in front of his house, the burning of his house, his removal from office, and his appearance before a court-martial.’ ” Translated from Takvimi Vekayi, no. 3540, and quoted in Uğur Ümit Üngör “Conversion and Rescue,” in Richard G. Hovanissian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 7. 86. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 220. 87.  The June 1915 Tehcir (Deportation) Law officially extended only to February 8, 1916. 88. Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru, 217. 89. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 580. Kévorkian estimates that as many as four hundred thousand Armenians were deported along the Constantinople to Bozanti line between August and October 1915. 90.  On March 12, 1916, Faik was removed from his Kutahya office by the Ministry of Interior in a position exchange with the mutasarrif of Gelibolu (Gallipoli), a post Faik ultimately refused. BOA, I.DUİT 42/23, March 12, 1916. 91.  Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark, A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 352n52. 92. Köroğlu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity, 147. 93.  The Ohannessians were deported sometime between mid-January 1916 and March 12, 1916, when Faik Ali Bey was transferred out of office.

C h ap t e r 6

1.  Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 580. 2.  Early schemes also included a rail line south through Africa to the Cape of Good Hope, according to S. F. Newcombe and J. P. S. Grieg, “The Baghdad Railway,” Geographical Journal 46, no. 6 (1914): 577–80. 3. Ibid. 4. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 577–78. 5.  James Bryce, Arnold Joseph Toynbee, and Ara Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, uncensored ed. (Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute, 2005), 449. Dr. Wilfred Post reported, “From the statements of railway officials and others I should think that not less than 500,000 people must have passed through Bozanti.” Kévork-

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ian estimates that “the number of deportees who took this route in August, September, and October might be put around 400,000.” See The Armenian Genocide, 580. 6.  Kévorkian refers to Post’s report: “According to statistics gathered by Bagdadbahn officials, 500,000 deportees passed by way of Bozanti. If, to the 400,000 Armenians deported from the west, we add the convoys from the north . . . Dodd’s figure seems reasonable.” See The Armenian Genocide, 582. 7. Ibid., 559. 8.  A number of archival reports of those who stalled or resisted administering deportation orders are consolidated in Burçin Gerçek, Taner Akçam, and Ömer Türkoğlu, Turkish Rescuers: Report on Turks Who Reached-Out to Armenians in 1915: An Unchartered Territory Waiting to Be Discovered, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, 2017, http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/wp-content/files_mf/1435 335304ReportTurkishrescuerscomplete.pdf, 64. 9.  Edward I. Nathan, U.S. consul at Mersina, reported the cart rental prices along this route: “carriages, which for from two to four day’s journey cost from £6 to £20 sterling.” Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 464. 10.  Report of Walter M. Geddes, in ibid., 475. 11.  Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 253. 12.  Report of Geddes, in Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 475. 13. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 578. 14.  Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1918, trans. Peter Balakian and Aris Sevag (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 272–74. It is very likely, from the Ohannessian records, that Tavit also worked temporarily in the Amanus Bagdadbahn workshops. For certain, he would work for the railway in Aleppo. 15.  Balakian records that “the total number of Armenians deported from the region of the Amanos railway construction [in June 1916] exceeded eleven thousand five hundred.” See Armenian Golgotha, 289. 16. Ibid., 284–87. 17. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 625. In Aleppo, the Sub-Directorate for Deportees was created in the fall of 1915, under the authority of the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Emigrants, a department that reported to the Ministry of the Interior. 18. Ibid., 242, 241–42. 19.  Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 471. 20.  The United States, which did not enter the Great War until April 6, 1917, was still considered a neutral party. Although many American eyewitness documents record the needs of the exiles as nearly unsurmountable, American and other missionaries and volunteers continued to try to provide aid to the thousands of refugees they encountered. 21. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 634.

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22. Ibid., 634. 23.  Information on the Armenian population of Aleppo from Khatchig Mouradian, e-mail correspondence, June 19, 2017; Hilmar Kaiser, Nancy Eskijian, and Luther Eskijian, At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute, 2002), 40. 24. Ibid., 40–50. 25.  Annuaire Oriental (1914), 1334. 26.  Mehmet Ali Yildirim, “Meşrutiyet Devrinde Vilayet Sanayi Mekteplerini Yeniden Yapılandırma Girişimleri: Vilâyât Sanayi Mektepleri Tertibatı,” Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, C.XXXI, S.52, Ankara Eylül, 2012, s.135–170. 27.  Ahmet Ersoy, “Crafts, Ornament, and the Discourse of Cultural Survival in the Late Ottoman Empire,” in “Turkey,” special issue, Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 28 (December 2016): 44–63. These institutions also offered courses in craft production for European-style buildings. 28. Ibid., 55–56. 29. Ibid., 59–60. 30.  Ohannessian’s acquaintance was named Hamdullah Suphi, who later took the surname Tanrıöver. 31.  BOA, DH.EUM 2.ŞB 37/10 (1335.B.17), Doc. 63644. 32.  BOA, DH.EUM 2.ŞB 37/10 (1335.B.17). 33.  BOA, DH.ŞFR 75/43 (1335.B.4). 34.  For a detailed account of the Meskene camp, see Khatchig Mouradian, “The Meskene Concentration Camp, 1915–1917: A Case Study of Power, Collaboration, and Humanitarian Resistance during the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 24 (2015): 44–55. 35.  Bryce, Toynbee, and Sarafian, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 66–69, quoted from Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, November 1915. 36.  Correspondence relating to Armenian refugees (November 29, 1918–January 9, 1919), DDSY2/4/193; and notes and evidence taken on the Armenian massacres in 1915, sworn testimonies made to Mark Sykes, DDSY2/4/194. 37.  Although Talaat Pasha assumed the office of grand vizier on January 22, 1917, the telegrams concerning Ahmed Muhtar are addressed to and from Talaat Pasha in the Interior Ministry. 38.  By the end of Faik’s tenure in March 1916, he had been hounded by the most virulently nationalist of the local CUP club members, who shouted at him in the street and continued to denounce him as a disloyal Armenophile. Although Faik was offered a transfer to an equivalent post as district governor of the warravaged county of Gelibolu, he declined the exchange and left Kutahya to join his brother in Constantinople, where he eventually accepted a directorship at the Interior Ministry’s Board of Inspection. See Mücellidoğlu Ali Çankaya, Son Asır Türk Tarihinin Önemli Olayları ile Bilrilkte Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler (Mülkiye Şeref Kitabı), volume 3 (1860 [1276 R.]–1908 [1324 R.]) (Atik) Mekteb-i Fünun-ı Mülkiye–Mekteb-i Müliyye-i Şahane Meʾzunları (Ankara: Mars Matbaası, 1968– 1969), 880–90. 39.  BOA, DH.EUM 2.ŞB 37/10 (1335.B.17). 40.  BOA, DH.EUM 2.ŞB 37/10 (1335.B.17), Cipher 19, April 26, 1917.

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41.  Quoted in Roger Adelson, Mark Sykes: Portrait of an Amateur (London: J. Cape, 1975), 246. 42.  The question of custody of the Holy Places formed a large part of Sykes’s “Appreciation of the situation in Syria, Palestine, and lesser Armenia.” January 27, 1919, FO 608/105. 43.  Ernest T. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: A Description of Its Structure and Decoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 20; Yildirim Yavuz, “The Restoration Project of the Masjid Al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin (1922–26),” Muqarnas 13 (1996): 160. 44. FO 608/82/2. 45.  Report of Major Ronald Gladstone, DDSY 2/4/188, Hull History Centre. 46.  Sykes continued to meet with Armenians, among other refugees, in the month of December. DDSY2/4/190–98. 47.  Testimony of Aghavni Boghozian of Kharpert, DDSY2/4/194. 48.  Testimony of Behiye Mattosian (possibly of Kharpert), DDSY2/4/194. 49.  From accounts taken under oath by Colonel Sir Mark Sykes in Aleppo, December 3, 1918, Hull University Archives, DDSY2/4/194. In an email dated July 7, 2018, Raymond Kévorkian posits that “Jurjab” may have been Sykes’s or his secretary’s mistranscription of “Gergerdağ,” a waystation on the path of deportation that went from Malatia, southeast toward the Euphrates River—a course followed by about 500,000 Armenian deportees. 50.  Ibid. Letter from Père Aroutioun Yessayan and Docteur Boghossian, Président and Sécretaire, of the Union Armenienne des Déportés [in French] to Mark Sykes, dated Alep, December 4, 1918. 51.  Ibid., Letter from six Armenian women to Mark Sykes, Dec. 1, 1918. 52.  Ibid., Note of Mark Sykes [no date, no title, handwritten note with sketches inserted into folder] DDSY2/4/190–98. 53.  Letter from Ronald Storrs to Mark Sykes, December 4, 1918, in Middle East Politics and Diplomacy, 1904–1950: The Papers of Sir Ronald Storrs (1881–1956) from Pembroke College, Cambridge (Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK: Adam Matthew Publications, 1999), microfilm. 54.  E. T. Richmond, “Liber Maiorum,” unpublished memoir, 77, courtesy of the Richmond family.

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1.  Bedross Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine 1918–48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 29. 2.  Named for Mount Ararat, i.e., Araratian. 3.  American Committee for Relief in the Near East was renamed Near East Relief in 1919 after the grant of a charter by the U.S. Congress. 4.  John Holland Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993), 5. 5.  For further reading on this subject, see Kevork Hintlian, History of the Armenians in the Holy Land, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Armenian Patriarchate Printing Press, 1989).

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6. Ibid., 1–3. 7.  John Carswell and Charles J. F. Dowsett, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery from the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, Jerusalem, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1–2. 8.  Several other pictorial tiles from the same group are scattered throughout the St. James complex. 9.  Ohannessian marked some of his Jerusalem pottery with groups of red glaze dots on the base, in the apparent manner of the dots on a number of the biblical Kutahya tiles in St. James Cathedral. 10.  Great Britain and General Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby. 1917. Proclamation of Martial Law in Jerusalem. Proclamation de la loi martiale à Jérusalem. Proclamazione di legge marziale in Gerusalemme. Eng., Fr. & Ital. By [General Allenby, Commander-in-Chief, Egyptian Expeditionary Force]. Jerusalem, 1917, 1 sheet. 11. Wāṣif al-Ğauharīya, Salīm Tamārī, Issam Nassar, and Nada Elzeer, The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Musician Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904–1948 (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014), 99. 12. The 1915–16 correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein bin Ali. Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Miscellaneous No. 3 (1939). Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., K.C.I.E., C.S.I. His Majesty’s High Commissioner at Cairo and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915—March 1916 (with map). Cambridge: Proquest, 2007, 1–20. 13.  Roberto Mazza, Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 38–41. 14.  E. Dolev, Allenby’s Military Medicine: Life and Death in World War I Palestine (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 101–3. 15. The 1922 British census recorded the number of persons in Palestine as 765,718, divided as follows: Muslims, 590,890; Jews, 83,794; Christians, 73,024; various, 9,474. I Pevsner, ed., Palestine Directory & Handbook (Tel Aviv: Trade and Industry Publishing and Exhibition, 1926), 15. 16.  Arthur James Balfour, Letter from Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, communicating “The Balfour declaration” on Palestine (November 2, 1917). 17.  Ronald Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs (New York: Putnam, 1937), 299. 18. Ibid., 301. 19. In 1903, the British consul to Jerusalem counted six sources of revenue for the operations of the local municipality: taxes and tolls; rent of buildings; the municipal slaughterhouse; sales of horses, mules, and other animals; warehouses of petroleum; and a row of shops at the municipal garden. Johann Büssow, “Ottoman Reform and Urban Government in the District of Jerusalem, 1867–1917,” in Urban Governance under the Ottomans, eds. Ulrike Frietag and Nora Lafi. (Milton Park, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014), 112–14. 20.  Nirit Shalev-Khalifa, ed., The First Governor: Sir Ronald Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem 1918–1926 (Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2010), 23e.

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21.  Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 47. 22.  See Ahmet Kemalettin’s two-part series, “Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock/Qubbat as-Sakhrah,” [translated from Ottoman Turkish] Genç Mühendisler 51 (Nisan 1328 [April 1912]), 3–5; and “The Holy Building of the Dome of the Rock,” [translated from Ottoman Turkish] Genç Mühendisler 52 (Mayıs 1328 [May 1912]), 1–5. 23.  Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2010), 21. 24.  Yildirim Yavuz, “The Restoration Project of the Masjid Al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin (1922–26),” in “An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World,” ed. Gülru Necipoğlu, special issue, Muqarnas 13 (1996): 149. 25.  Until after World War I, the study of ancient Greek and Latin was compulsory for all undergraduates (including Ronald Storrs and Mark Sykes) at Oxford, Cambridge, and other top British universities, where classics and the associated studies of art and archaeology were treated as “semi-sacred knowledge—a powerful resource which can be drawn on to identify and interpret the world.” Christopher Stray, Classics Transformed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 71. 26. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 329. 27. General Allenby, message to War Office, London, March 18, 1918, FO 372/3402/46325. 28. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 311. 29. FO 372/3402/46325. Mark Sykes’s handwritten minute on “Repairs to Mosques in Jerusalem,” March 13, 1918. 30. Ibid. 31.  Ernest Tatham Richmond, The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: A Description of Its Structure and Decoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 1. 32.  Daniel Bertrand Monk, An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 48. 33. Wāṣif al-Ğauharīya, The Storyteller of Jerusalem, 43. 34.  Pro-Jerusalem Society and C. R. Ashbee, eds., Jerusalem, 1918–1920: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council (London: J. Murray, 1921), 1–2. 35.  Ibid., v. 36.  Robert Home, “British Colonial Town Planning in the Middle East: The Work of W. H. McLean,” Planning History: Bulletin of Planning History Group 12, no. 1 (1990): 6. 37.  Ronald Storrs, “Preface,” in Pro-Jerusalem Society and Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920, vi. 38.  Alan Crawford, C.R. Ashbee Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 145. 39.  Fiona MacCarthy, The Simple Life: C.R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds (London: Faber and Faber, 2014), 14. 40.  C. R. Ashbee. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee on the Arts and Crafts of Jerusalem and District, 1918, 21–22, accessed July 2, 2018, http://primo.getty.edu/ GRI:GETTY_ALMA21124622180001551. 41. MacCarthy, The Simple Life, 15.

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42. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 28. 43. Ibid., 113. 44.  Felicity Ashbee and Alan Crawford, Janet Ashbee: Love, Marriage, and the Arts and Crafts Movement (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 159. 45. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 354. 46.  Pro-Jerusalem Society, Jerusalem 1918–1920, 2. 47. Ashbee, Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee. 48. Ashbee, Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 68. 49.  Ashbee notes a pottery workshop at Schneller’s Syrian Orphanage, run by a German potter, “Ludwig,” and subsequently taken over by the Red Cross, as well as a commercial tile factory. However, he distinguished these products from tiles with “pattern and color,” and the pierced tiles needed for the restoration of the Dome of the Rock. See ibid., 22. 50.  Minute of D. O. Hogarth, December 20, 1919, FO 608/82. 51. Ashbee, Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 68 52. Ibid., 21. 53.  Christopher J. Walker, “E. T. Richmond, Armenians, and the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem,” Ararat (Winter 1992): 53–55. Walker, the grand-nephew of E. T. Richmond, writes that most of his relative’s life work involved “the restoration of the great buildings of the Levant.” 54.  Ernest T. Richmond, “Liber Maiorum,” unpublished memoir, 77, courtesy of the Richmond family. 55. Ibid. 56.  Ernest Richmond, “Restoration of Tiling on Dome of the Rock,” December 3, 1918, FO 608/82/2. 57. Ibid. 58.  Richmond lists the major restoration works Ohannessian had participated in during his Kutahya years with a review of the revival of the Kutahya tile art. Richmond refers to Ohannessian on these pages, and it appears that the Kutahya ceramicist was the source for this information, which appears in very similar form in Alpoyachean, for which Ohannessian was a named source. See The Dome of the Rock, 72–73. 59.  Richmond, “Liber Maiorum,” 77. 60. Ibid., 34. 61. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock, 20. 62. Ibid., 45. 63. Ibid., 1–4. 64.  Beatrice St. Laurent writes, “The skin of tiles on the exterior of the Dome of the Rock and on other monuments in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were the stamp of Ottoman imperial identity.” See “The Dome of the Rock: Restorations and Significance 1540–1918,” in Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City: 1517– 1917, ed. Sylvia Auld, Robert Hillenbrand, and Yūsuf Saʿiīd Natshah (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), pt. 1, 419. 65. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock, 26. 66. Ibid., 47. 67. Ibid., 39.

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68.  In Richmond’s preface to The Dome of the Rock, the author acknowledges the “valuable help given . . . [mentions two other figures] by Mr. Ohanessian [sic], a ceramic artist in Jerusalem, in criticizing the detailed analysis of the tile decoration and in making useful suggestions” (v). 69. Ibid., 24. 70. Ibid., 2–3. 71. Ernest T. Richmond, “Further Report on the Dome of the Rock,” FO 371/4203, December 3, 1918. 72.  In November of 1850, the kaimakam of Kutahya received an inquiry regarding new tiles for the Dome of the Rock. The document specified that 20,654 tiles were needed, including some new calligraphic tiles that needed to match the ones remaining on the monument. This document posed the questions: Would it would be preferable to send a calligrapher to Jerusalem to copy the verses and bring the tile designs to Kutahya to manufacture them there, or should the artisans and materials be sent to Jerusalem to execute all the tiles on-site? Could the Kutahya çiniçis specify the number of needed workers and their travel expenses, “the amount of material needed, and the place and method for the production of ceramics, and the cost of them beforehand?” The document makes clear that the materials would need to be provided from Kutahya. BOA, A.MKT.MVL, 35/19, 19M 1267 (November 23, 1850). 73. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock, 46. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 4–5. 76.  See Appendix C for chemical analyses of tiles found on the Dome of the Rock. 77.  Pro-Jerusalem Society and Ashbee, Jerusalem 1918–1920, 31–32. 78.  Ashbee affirms that the return to Kutahya was on Ohannessian’s initiative: “Mr. David Ohanessian [sic] then came forward with the offer of partly capitalizing the industry, provided he were allowed the use of the old furnaces and given facilities to go to his home in Kutahia and bring back at his own charges his workpeople, plant, and materials.” Pro-Jerusalem Society and Ashbee, Jerusalem 1918–1920, 32. 79.  Here Richmond lists the restoration projects on which Ohannessian himself had worked. 80. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock, 72n. In a footnote, Richmond notes that these comments were written in June 1919, which was one month before Ohannessian received the necessary documents permitting him to return to Kutahya. See ibid., 74. 81.  BOA, DH.EUM.SSM 37.84. Safe-transit document [in Ottoman Turkish] for “Mimar” Ohannessyan Efendi, dated July 21, 1919. The second document, addressed to the mutasarrif of Kutahya, was dated July 31, 1919. 82. Ibid. 83.  Mülkiye report of Ahmed Müfit Saner. See note 77 in Chapter 4. 84.  Summary of the memorandum of master tile maker Hafiz Mehmet Emin, December 27, 1917, reprinted and translated in Rifat Çini, Solmaz Turunç, and Aydın Turunç, Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making (Istanbul: Uycan Yayınları, 1991), 76.

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85.  Arshak Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru (Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961), 95. 86. Yavuz, “The Restoration Project of the Masjid al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin,” 162. 87.  Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters (Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006), 195. Postcard of Minassian to Stepan Vartanian. 88.  Their death certificates, registered at the mukhtar’s office in Jerusalem, indicate that they arrived in Jerusalem in 1922. 89.  “Situation at Kutuya [sic],” May 30, 1919, FO 3497. 90.  According to an interview with his descendants in Kutahya, July 4, 2014, Mehmet Emin was tortured and killed by members of the Hellenic Army in 1922. 91.  In addition to Garabed and Harutyun Minassian, who joined a Greek workshop in Pireus, Makarios Vardaxis and Minas Avramidis, both Kutahya natives, established a new workshop in Thessaloniki in 1922, where their descendants continue to produce pottery. Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire, 182. 92.  Following the War of Independence and with German assistance, some of the remaining Turkish Kutahya potters revived the industry, using new types of materials and techniques. But by 1922, the three major prewar workshops— Emin, Minassian, and Ohannessian—that had resurrected the old techniques and participated in the first wave of Ottoman Revivalist/First Nationalist architecture had disbanded and dispersed. According to a 1944 interview with Ohannessian in the Palestine Post, the Kutahya government attempted to recruit him to return in 1927. 93.  Sirarpi Ohannessian, letter to the editor, Jerusalem Post, July 15, 1975. 94.  Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine,” 31. 95.  Pro-Jerusalem Society and Ashbee, Jerusalem 1918–20, 32. 96. Richmond, The Dome of the Rock, 75. 97. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 330. 98.  Report of Abdullah Mukhlis and Yaʾqub Abu al-Huda to Herbert Samuel, November 5, 1923, 18 (trans.), ISA/CS/189. 99.  Charles Robert Ashbee, A Palestine Notebook 1918–1923 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1923), 229–30. 100.  Mukhlis and al-Huda to Samuel, 18. 101. Ashbee, Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 44. 102. Crawford, C. R. Ashbee, 182. 103. Ibid., 181. 104. Wāṣif al-Ğauharīya, The Storyteller of Jerusalem, 136. 105. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 86. 106.  Richmond, quoted in Monk, An Aesthetic Occupation, 52. 107.  The date is on Ashbee’s drawing in Jerusalem Collection, box 4, portfolio 5, Government House, Ashbee Archive, King’s College, Cambridge. 108.  Raquel Rapaport, “The City of the Great Singer,” Architectural History 50 (2007): 171–210. 109.  C. R. Ashbee, A Palestine Notebook, 1918–1923 (London: William Heinemann, 1923), 156.

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110. Crawford, C. R. Ashbee, 189. 111.  Pro-Jerusalem Society and Ashbee, Jerusalem 1920–1922, 61. 112.  In regard to street naming, Storrs’s final report for the Pro-Jerusalem Society states that “suitable ceramic plates made by the Bezalel School of Arts have been erected in the New City.” “Final Report of the Pro-Jerusalem Society,” November 24, 1926, box III, folder 4 (microfilm reel 9), in Middle East Politics and Diplomacy, 1904–1950: The Papers of Sir Ronald Storrs (1881–1956) from Pembroke College, Cambridge (Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK: Adam Matthew Publications, 1999). In 1921, Boris Schatz, founder of the Hebrew Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts, “sent his student, Yaakov Eisenberg, to study the art of ceramics in Vienna. Upon his return . . . at the end of 1922, Eisenberg founded the ceramics workshop at Bezalel.” Nirit Shalev-Khalifa, ed., The First Governor: Ronald Storrs Governor of Jerusalem 1918–1926 (Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2011), 37e. 113.  Letter from Ohannessian to Archbishop Torkom Kushakdjian, December 2, 1931, Ohannessian Family Collection. 114.  Uri M. Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam under the British Mandate for Palestine (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1987), 18–19. The Committee for Moslem Religious Affairs met on December 18, 1921, and adopted the name Supreme Moslem Sharia Council. “Sharia” was eventually omitted from the name to prevent the erroneous perception that this group was a court or legal body. High Commissioner Herbert Samuel signed the order of establishment on December 20, and on January 1, 1922, the announcement of the council was published in the Official Gazette. 115.  Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 111. 116.  John Holland Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993), 84. 117.  Author interview with Vatche Zatikyan, Krikor’s son, in Yerevan, Armenia, April 26, 2017. 118.  Nefissa Naguib, “A Nation of Widows and Orphans: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem,” in Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East, ed. Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug (Boston: Brill, 2008), 41–42. 119.  The Mandate did not come into force until September 29, 1923, after the Treaty of Lausanne went into effect. 120.  Monk refers to Richmond’s unpublished diary, which records that he had first been approached to serve as the chief architect and had declined. See An Aesthetic Occupation, 168n59. 121. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 109. 122. Monk, An Aesthetic Occupation, 168n59. 123.  Mukhlis and al-Huda to Samuel, 18. 124.  Kemalettin’s report, translated in Yavuz, “The Restoration Project of the Masjid al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin (1922–26),” Muqarnas, Volume 13: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu (Leiden: E. J. Bril,l 1996): 159. 125. Ibid.

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126.  Per the report from Mukhlis and al-Huda to Samuel, 18–19, the Wakf could have pursued a restitution of the monies advanced by denouncing the quality of Ohannessian’s work. Significantly, it chose not to do so. Per the letters of Eunice Holliday, tiles produced by the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop were being affixed to the Dome of the Rock as late as September of 1922. See Eunice Holliday and John C. Holliday, Letters from Jerusalem: During the Palestine Mandate (London: Radcliffe Press, 1997), 8.

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1.  Today, this property, modernized and enlarged, is the luxurious American Colony Hotel, 1 Louis Vincent Street. Ohannessian’s original 1923 tiles remain in the lobby, along with signed panels installed in the courtyard garden. 2.  Ronald Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs (New York: Putnam Press, 1937), 331. 3.  Although Ohannessian and others in his generation perceived Tehlirian as an ardent nationalist, he has more recently been recognized to have participated in a covert plan of the Dashnagtsutyun. See Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot to Avenge the Armenian Genocide (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). 4.  Later known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, leader of the Turkish nationalist movement and the first president of the Republic of Turkey after its founding in 1923. 5.  Marjorie Housepian Dobkin and C. M. Woodhouse, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 95–96. 6.  David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 588. 7.  See the Red Cross archival photo, Library of Congress, 1922, https://www. loc.gov/resource/anrc.15029/. 8.  This description is drawn from Ohannessian’s detailed floor plans of the shop and “The Man in the Furnace,” Palestine Post, July 28, 1944, http://www. jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=PLS%2F1944% 2F07%2F28&id=Ar00408&sk=240D86CD. 9. In the 1940s, Ohannes Ohannessian recorded a complete set of instructions for producing ceramics as practiced in the Dome of the Rock Tiles studio in Jerusalem. These are his instructions for making brushes from donkey manes: “Goose or turkey feather is the holder and the hair is tied say 1" from the tip and inserted through the wide end and pull and push through till stiff with 3/4" protruding. Trim to shapes.” Ohannessian Family Collection. 10.  Pro-Jerusalem Society and C. R. Ashbee, eds., Jerusalem, 1918–1920: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council during the Period of the British Military Administration (London: Murray, 1921), 75. 11.  “The Man in the Furnace.” 12.  Additionally, Ohannes Ohannessian recorded the following colorants: “For blue, use oxide of cobalt; green, use green oxide of chrome; light green, use oxide of copper; yellow, antimony; brown-violet, manganese oxide; red—Armenian Bol—is used with say 5% of flint and nothing else. If you want coloured glaze

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mix 6 to 10% paint in glaze. For opaque turquoise blue in the material being cooked for glaze add 20% tin oxide and 1/2–1% cobalt oxide.” 13.  George S. Blake, Geology and Water Resources of Palestine (Jerusalem: HM Stationery Office, 1928). 14.  Herbert Samuel reports: “Since the ports of Palestine were opened to immigration, with certain restrictions, in August, 1920, slightly over 10,000 immigrants have arrived in the country. These were almost all Jewish; only 315 non-Jewish immigrants were registered.” Herbert Samuel, An Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine, during the Period 1st July, 1920–30th June, 1921: Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, August 1921 (Jerusalem: HM Stationery Office, 1921), 18. 15.  See Appendix C for the full text of the report. 16.  Ron Fuchs and Gilbert Herbert, “Representing Mandatory Palestine: Austen St. Barbe Harrison and the Representational Buildings of the British Mandate in Palestine, 1922–37,” Architectural History 43 (2000): 287. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 514–15. 20.  “Horkour” is the Armenian term for a paternal aunt;“Morkour” is the maternal version of this appellation. 21.  Robert Mazza, Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 43. 22.  Ras Tafari Makonnen was enthroned as Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930. 23.  Antoinette Iadarola, “Ethiopia’s Admission into the League of Nations,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, no. 4 (1975): 601–22. 24.  Interview with Rehan Markarian, wife of one of the band members, in Noric Dilanchian, “Musical Cousins: Armenia, Ethiopia, and Jamaica,” Ararat Magazine, Summer 1993, 58. 25.  Author interview with Vatche Zatikyan, Krikor Zatikyan’s son, in Yerevan, Armenia, April 27, 2017. For a detailed account of the Araradian band and its transfer to Ethiopia, see also Boris Adjemian, “La fanfare arménienne du négus,” in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, 119 (Juillet-Septembre 2013), 85–97. 26. Anne Clendinning, “On The British Empire Exhibition, 1924–25,” in BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, accessed June 23, 2018, http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=anne-clendinning-on -the-british-empire-exhibition-1924-25. 27. Ibid. 28.  Fuchs and Herbert, “Representing Mandatory Palestine,” 291. 29.  Jared Goss, “French Art Deco,” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–), June 2010, http://www.metmuseum .org/toah/hd/frdc/hd_frdc.htm. 30.  Vincent Lemire, “The Awakening of Palestinian Hydropolitical Consciousness: The Artas-Jerusalem Water Conflict of 1925,” Jerusalem Quarterly 48 (2011): 31–53.

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31.  “Quartz from Palestine,” David Ohannessian’s papers, Ohannessian Family Collection, January 11, 1926, Imperial Institute London. 32.  Fuchs and Herbert, “Representing Mandatory Palestine,” 287. 33.  Adina Hoffman, Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), 286. 34.  “Muhammad Issaf Nashashibi 1885–1948,” This Week in Palestine, no. 60, April, 2003, updated July 9, 2007, http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=145&ed=23&edid=23. 35.  For a detailed account of the house, see George Bisharat, “Talbiyeh Days: At Villa Harun ar-Rashid,” Jerusalem Quarterly 30 (2007): 88–98. 36. Hoffman, Till We Have Built Jerusalem, 288. 37.  Although these tiles are no longer in place in the chapel, a wall plaque from the same period remains. Also, see Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 331. 38.  Ronald Storrs, “Final Report of the Pro-Jerusalem Society,” November 24, 1926, para. 5, 8, box III, folder 4 (microfilm reel 9), Middle East Politics and Diplomacy, 1904–1950: The Papers of Sir Ronald Storrs (1881–1956) from Pembroke College, Cambridge (Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK: Adam Matthew Publications, 1999). Both Ashbee and Storrs often referred to the Dome of the Rock Tiles workshop as the “Society’s ceramic factory or workshop.” 39.  Ibid., para. 16. 40. Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, 465. 41. “$1,250,000 Damage in Palestine Quake,” New York Times, July 14, 1927. However, a smaller report published the same day notes that a “leading Moslem architect, who has inspected the temple area, estimates that the total damage by the earthquake there at less £1,000. He denies the report . . . says that a slight crack visible in the mosaic work is probably due to earlier deterioration.” “Hopeful for Temple Area,” New York Times, July 14, 1927, 5. 42.  “Thousands of Homeless Sleep in the Open in Fear of a Recurrence of Tremors,” New York Times, July 12, 1927. 43.  Eunice Holliday and John C. Holliday, Letters from Jerusalem: During the Palestine Mandate (London: Radcliffe Press, 1997), 75, 78. In July, construction was nearly complete; the building was ready for occupancy in October. 44.  The geometric tile panels on the façade of the Sirkeci Post Office appear themselves to have been inspired by the Timurid tiles on the entryway of the fifteenth-century Çinili Kösk (Tiled Kiosk) in Istanbul. 45. Nirit Shalev Khalifa, “David Ohannessian—Founder of the Armenian Ceramics in Jerusalem,” in The Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem: Three Generations, 1919–2003, ed. Nurith Kenaan Kedar (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2003), 37. 46.  Ohannessian’s fee for the entire commission amounted to £165. Walter T. Dunlop, Faith Rewarded: The Story of St Andrew’s Scots Memorial, Jerusalem (Peterborough, UK: FastPrint Publishing, 2014), 212. 47.  Although in theory, the British sovereign gold pound had been replaced by the Palestinian pound in 1927, the British pound continued in use into the 1930s. 48. Sourp Prgeech, as it is called in Armenian.

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49.  Bedross Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine 1918–48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 31. 50. Ibid., 34. 51.  Alex Winder, “The ‘Western Wall’ Riots of 1929: Religious Boundaries and Communal Violence,” Journal of Palestine Studies 42, no. 1 (2012): 6–23. 52.  Report by G. S. Blake, geological adviser to the Government of Palestine Public Works Department, to Mr. W. A. Stewart, supervisor of technical education, February 10, 1931, copy in Ohannessian’s files. See Appendix C for report on ceramics materials in Palestine. 53.  See Appendix C for report on ceramics materials in Palestine. 54. Ibid. 55.  Meliné Karakashian, Komitas (1869–1935): Victim of the Great Crime, 3rd ed. (Yerevan: Zangdak Publishing House, ebook, 2014), “1922–1935, Patient at Villejuif Psychiatric Asylum.” 56.  Among those who intervened on Gomidas’s behalf was Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. See Sylvia Angelique Alajaji, Music and the Armenian Diaspora (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), 26. 57.  Agavni Mesrobian, Gomidas’s student, quoting him in ibid. 58.  Rita Soulahian Kuyumjian, Archeology of Madness (London: Taderon Press by arrangement with the Gomidas Institute, 2010), 151–52. Kuyumjian reports that Komitas’s papers and valuables were placed in boxes sent to the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople for safekeeping. However, the boxes were left unsealed. The remainder of his possessions were sold to pay for the costs of his hospitalization. 59.  “Exposition Coloniale Internationale,” L’Architecture 44, no. 9 (1931): 327. 60.  Le Journal de l’Exposition Coloniale (Paris), June 1931, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb327977261/date#resultat-id-1. 61.  Beatrice St. Laurent and Himmet Taskömür, “The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890–1930: An Alternative Narrative,” Art Faculty Publications, Paper 7 (2013): 18, http://vc.bridgew.edu/art_fac/7. 62.  Fawzi Ibrahim, West Meets East: The Story of the Rockefeller Museum (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2006), 12. 63. Ibid., 9. 64. Ibid., 8. 65.  “Oriental Village, Chicago World’s Fair,” accessed July 1, 2018, http:// libimages.wolfsonian.org/86.19.12.44.000.jpg. 66.  Cheryl Ganz, The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair: A Century of Progress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 150. 67. Ibrahim, West Meets East, 11. 68.  An Ohannessian notebook dates the “Museum” glaze formulas and alphabetic color codes as April 1934. 69.  These geometric bands also recall designs gracing the façades of the Grand Post Office in Sirkeci and the Tiled Kiosk in Istanbul. 70.  Peter Lauritzen, e-mail to author, August 31, 2017.

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71.  Fiona McCarthy, Eric Gill: Life and Times (London: Faber, 1988), 263. Gill made a second visit to Jerusalem in 1937. 72.  For a brief account of Starkey’s life and death, see “James Leslie Starkey, F.S.A., 1895–1938,” Palestine Exploration Fund, accessed June 23, 2018, http:// www.pef.org.uk/profiles/james-leslie-starkey-1895-1938. 73.  Madeline S. Miller, “Ancient Palestine Relives in a Museum,” New York Times, December 22, 1935. 74. “25 Years of Jerusalem Pottery,” Palestine Post, January 11, 1944. 75.  Berjouhi Kafity, an apprentice in the 1940s, telephone interview, July 13, 2015. 76. Ibid.

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1.  The three younger Ohannessian girls enrolled in Jerusalem Girls’ College when they reached the age of fourteen. 2.  Ohannessian left technical notes with dated entries throughout 1944–45 and maintained correspondence with and about prospective clients. 3.  Letter of from Vahé Tekeyan to Fimi Ohannessian, Cairo, February 26, 1944 (trans. Gahmk Markarian). 4.  Armen Markarian, “The Story of My Father,” unpublished family history, December 1991. 5.  Telephone interview with Berjouhi Kafity, an apprentice in the workshop during 1944–45, July 13, 2015. 6.  Michael J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 83. 7.  Walter T. Dunlop, Faith Rewarded: The Story of St Andrew’s Scots Memorial, Jerusalem (Peterborough, England: FastPrint Publishing, 2014), 166. 8. Ibid., 168. 9.  Madge Lindsay, “Madge Lindsay’s Experience of Operation Polly—February 1947,” in Palestine Police Old Comrades’ Association News Letter, no. 109 (December 1977), http://www.britishforcesinpalestine.org/extracts/polly.html. 10.  British House of Commons Debate, February 18, 1947, vol. 433, cc. 985–94. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/feb/18/palestineconference-government-policy#S5CV0433P0_19470218_HOC_314 (accessed October 17, 2018). 11. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 238–39. 12.  United Nations, “The Plan of Partition and End of the British Mandate,” in The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem, 1977–1988 (1990), chap. 2, 2, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/palestine/ch2.pdf. 13.  Bedross Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine 1918–48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 31. 14.  United Nations, “The Plan of Partition,” 1. 15.  Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2010), 315. 16. Ibid., 316.

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17.  “Palestine Post Press and Offices Destroyed,” Palestine Post, February 2, 1948. 18. Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, 316. 19.  Letter from Fimi Ohannessian Moughalian to American vice-consul William DePree, Cairo, November 15, 1957. Ohannessian Family Collection. 20. Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, 316. 21.  The ceramics left behind included thirty-two sets of Old City replacement street signs, only one of which was recovered after squatters broke into the property around 1959. 22.  Author interview via Skype with Anahid Ohannessian, October 30, 2017. 23.  P. J. Vatikiotis, “The Siege of the Walled City of Jerusalem, 14 May–15 December 1948,” Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 1 (1995): 141. 24.  John H. Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993),185. 25.  Melkon Rose gives the figure killed at 240, the number concurrently reported by the BBC (ibid.). Israeli historian Yoav Gelber calls the Palestinian account “highly contested” and gives estimates of fatalities closer to 100. At any rate, the attack was a terrifying and deciding factor in the Ohannessians’ departure from Jerusalem. See Yoav Gelber, Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), 307–18. 26.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 185. 27. Harutiun Mushian, Erusaghem Aghetyal [Jerusalem hit by catastrophe] (Buenos Aires: Ararat Press, 1952), 74. 28.  Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine,” 40. 29. Mushian, Erusaghem Aghetyal, 74. 30.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 186. 31.  Letter from agent from the Department of His Royal Highness Mohammed Ali to the Egyptian director of passports and nationality, May 8, 1948, Ohannessian Family Collection. 32.  My account of Vahé Ohannessian’s experience during the Arab-Jewish conflict and war, 1947–49, is drawn from several interviews with his children. I met with Anahid Ohannessian in person in June 2013 and with Anahid and Ardavast Ohannessian by Skype throughout 2017–18. I correlated dates with the published 1993 memoir of John H. Melkon Rose, a friend of the Ohannessian family, who was interned with Vahé and Mary Ohannessian between October of 1948 and November of 1949. 33.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 193. 34.  Dana Adams Schmidt, “Union Jack Is Taken Down, New York Times, May 15, 1948. 35.  “Jews Gain in Jerusalem,” Dispatch of The Times, London, published in New York Times, May 15, 1948. 36.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 194–95. 37. Mushian, Erusaghem Aghetyal, 66–67. 38.  Bedross Der Matossian, “Armenians of Palestine,” 39. 39. Ibid.

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40.  Arshak Alpoyachean, Hushamatean kutinahayeru (Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961), 29–31. 41. Mushian, Erusaghem Aghetyal, 68–69. 42.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 200. 43. Ibid. 44.  United Nations, “The Plan of Partition,” 2. 45.  Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 205. 46. Ibid. 47.  “Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator,” December 11, 1949, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), clause 11, https://unispal .un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/C758572B78D1CD0085256BCF0077E51A. 48.  The cards, issued on October 12, 1948, read: “Ce document est simplement une carte d’identité et n’accord aucun droit de circulation au titulaire.” Melkon Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 207. 49. Ibid., 216. 50.  Interview with Anahid Ohannessian, March 20, 2017. 51.  Letter from Fimi Ohannessian Moughalian to DePree. 52.  Since the early 1950s, when the Ohannessians lived in Heliopolis, the city has been absorbed into metropolitan Cairo. 53.  Agnieszka Dobrowolska and Jarosław Dobrowolski, Heliopolis: Rebirth of the City of the Sun (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006). 54.  Now El-Orouba Street. 55. HO 405/40702. 56. Naturalization Certificate: Sirarpi Ohannessian, July 6, 1953, HO 334/369/27218. 57.  From the unpublished extracts from 1951–52 annual report of the British Council in Cairo, BW 29_46. 58. Ibid. 59. In 1946, members of the British military were restricted to a narrow swath of downtown Cairo (unless traveling by vehicle) and tended to congregate in public and private establishments there, making their presence even more concentrated and visible. “Bounds Map of Cairo,” Online Gallery, 1946, http://www.bl .uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/maps/africa/zoomify136595.html. 60.  Claire Anderson, “The Turf Club Murders: Black Saturday for the British in Cairo 26 January 1952” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1996), 23. 61.  Although it seems clear from the British Council Library’s annual reports that the employees had the education and advancement of the people they served at heart, on the very first page of the 1950–51 report, sentences such as, “Intellectually it would appear that the other races and faiths are superior to the pure Muslim. In our Institute classes the proportion of Muslims decreases very markedly in the advanced classes.” Overtly biased statements such as these are sprinkled throughout the annual reports. The British Council Egypt Representative’s Annual Report 1950–51, April 20, 1951. 62.  Copy of Ohannessian’s submitted application to the director of UNRWA, January 29, 1952, and surviving architectural plans. Ohannessian Family Collection.

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63.  Treaty of Alliance between His Majesty, in Respect of the United Kingdom, and His Majesty the King of Egypt, August 26, 1936 (London: HMSO, 1937), 7–8. 64.  “Egypt (Compensation for British Subjects),” British House of Commons debate, July 5, 1961, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1961/ jul/05/egypt-compensation-for-british-subjects#column_1609. 65. “Chronology, 5 December 1951–18 December 1951,” Chronology of International Events and Documents 7, no. 24 (1951): 728–33, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40535443. 66. “Chronology, 17 January 1952–6 February 1952,” Chronology of International Events and Documents 8, no. 3 (1952): 70–71, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40545339. 67.  Anne-Claire Kerbœuf, “The Cairo Fire of 26 January 1952 and the Interpretations of History,” in Re-envisioning Egypt, 1919–1952, ed. Arthur Eduard Goldschmidt, Amy J. Johnson, and Barak A. Salmoni (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 197. 68.  According to an interview with Anahid Ohannessian, November 9, 2017, the International Red Cross facilitated family reunification visits during this period. 69. “Chronology, 17 January 1952–6 February 1952,” 72. 70. Ibid. 71.  Harold Hindle James, “Personal Report on Riots in Cairo, 26 Jan 1952,” transcribed and annotated by John Barnard, May 2009, 2, http://www.johnbarnard .me.uk/docs/HHJ_Docs/HHJ-18-1%20Cairo%20Riots%201952%20Transcript. pdf. Later, it emerged that King Farouk, “kept 800 police and army chiefs in his palace during the riot for a banquet to celebrate the birth of his son. This banquet was organized for lunch when it was usually for dinner and was maintained despite the circumstances.” See Kerbœuf, “The Cairo Fire of 26 January 1952,” 207. 72. Although to this day, the identity of the perpetrators remains unclear, Ohannessian Moughalian always referred to them as Egyptian nationalists. 73.  James, “Personal Report on Riots in Cairo,” 2. 74.  Ibid., quoting the account related by his Egyptian servant. 75.  The account of Charles Jones’s death is drawn from Pheme Ohannessian Moughalian’s accounts, as told to her children, and “Report on the Enquiry Held by the Egyptian Parquet upon the Attack on the Turk Club on the 26th January, 1952,” FO 371/96875; paraphrased and quoted in Anderson, “The Turf Club Murders,” 139. 76.  Anderson, “The Turf Club Murders,” 8, referencing the contemporaneous report written by W. R. Fanner, a British lawyer in Cairo. 77.  Nancy Y. Reynolds, A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 188. 78. Ibid., 192, 189. 79. Ibid., 189. 80. Kerbœuf, “The Cairo Fire of 26 January 1952,” 199. 81.  The Cairo Library: Extracts from a personal letter from Miss Cora Pollack, librarian, to director, Books Department, BW29_41, 3.2.52 (internal filing number;

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one of a group of uncatalogued archival documents provided by Cathy Costain, British Council Librarian, Cairo, in November 2017). 82. Ibid., 2. 83.  Letter from general manager [name illegible], Development Bank of Jordan Limited, to D. Ohannessian, May 23, 1952, Ohannessian Family Collection. 84.  Kharpert was also known as Harput; today, it is called Elaziğ. 85.  Telephone interview with Hovhaness Donabedian, November 27, 2017. 86. Ibid. 87.  The inscription, shown in a 1955 photograph, incorrectly indicates 1886 as Ohannessian’s birth year.

P os t l ude

1.  Joseph K. Greene, Leavening the Levant (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1916), 299. 2.  Joseph Kingsbury Greene Papers, MRL, Section 2. 3.  Charles A. S. Dwight quoted in [n.a.], “Letters from the Missions. Report Western Turkey Mission,” Missionary Herald 86 (October 1890): 411. 4.  More than 85,000 scanned historic maps are viewable at the David Rumsey Map Collection, accessed July 1, 2018, davidrumsey.com. 5.  The Brussa map came from Richard Kiepert’s Karte von Kleinasien, which divided Asia Minor into twenty-four segments and included thousands of smaller villages and indications of geologic features. Dr. Richard Kiepert, Karte von Kleinasien in 24 Blatt, Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed February 13, 2018, http://digitalcollections .nypl.org/items/95d1a99c-80d6-c2f1-e040-e00a18064f41. 6.  On April 23, 2015, New York Public Library map librarian Nancy Kandoian published a post on the library’s genealogical resources for Armenians. Many of the links are accessible remotely and are also useful to non-Armenians. See “Remembering Our Ancestors: Maps and Genealogy Resources for Armenian-Americans,” New York Public Library, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/23/ armenian-maps-genealogy. 7. In 1955, the madrassa, dating from 1251 A.D., had been transformed into a ceramics museum. 8.  The Amber Reis Mosque mihrab is one of three subsequent variants of the Kutahya Government House mihrab, itself modeled after the 1432 mihrab from the Ibrahim Bey Imaret in Karaman, made by the Masters of Tabriz and installed in Topkapi Palace’s Tiled Kiosk in 1907 under the direction of Osman Hamdi Bey. 9. Kutahya Gamete Ekspres, July 2014; and Kutahya Objektif, July 7, 2014. 10.  Multiple editions of the Ottoman trade publication Annuaire Oriental, digitized by SALT Research, Istanbul, are available at Genealogy Indexer, http:// genealogyindexer.org/directories. 11.  “In the twelve years from 1912 to 1924, the non-Muslim population in Ottoman Asia Minor fell from roughly 20 percent to 2 percent.” Ronald Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 209. 12.  Translation from the original Armenian by Gahmk Markarian. 13.  The portrait images can be viewed at “99 Portraits of Exile: Photos of

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Survivors of the Genocide of Armenians,” REPAIR: Armeno-Turkish Platform, accessed June 23, 2018, http://www.repairfuture.net/index.php/en/ pictures/118-web-exhibition-99-portraits-of-exile. 14. Greene, Leavening the Levant, 299–300. 15.  Formerly Harmanlar. 16. From 2017 Turkish census figures, Harmanköy’s population is 228 and Muratça’s is 11. See Turkish Rural Population website, accessed June 23, 2018, http://www.nufusune.com/5764-bilecik-inhisar-muratca-koy-nufusu. 17.  The approximate figure three hundred thousand is based on e-mail communication with Selim Deringil (February 10, 2018) and conversation with Khatchig Mouradian (February 9, 2018). Ronald Suny reports that “hundreds of thousands more would be forcibly converted to Islam, losing their original identity as Christians.” See “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else,” 209. Also see Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 287–98; and Ugur Ümit Üngör, “Conversion and Rescue: Survival Strategies in the Armenian Genocide,” in Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, ed. Jacques Semelin, Claire Andrieu, and Sarah Gensburger (Oxford Scholarship Online, 2014), DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199333493.003.0013. 18. Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-genocide Turkey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 4, 167n. Ekmekçioğlu bases her estimate on a number of sources—Turkish, American, and Armenian published reports from the 1920s. 19. Author telephone interview with Hovhaness Donabedian, February 20, 2018. 20. Ekmekcioğlu, Recovering Armenia, 17, 22. 21.  For a detailed discussion of the reconstitution of the Armenian national community and particularly the role of women in that revival after the fall of the Ottomans in 1918, see ibid. 22. Also transliterated Aghet among speakers of Eastern Armenian. These terms came to be capitalized in the decades following their introduction. 23.  For a detailed discussion of the etymology of Armenian-language terms relating to the Armenian Genocide, see Vartan Matiossian’s 2012–13 articles in the Armenian Weekly, for example, “What Our Words Mean: Towards the Vindication of ‘Medz Yeghern,’” August 2, 2013, https://armenianweekly.com/2013/08/02/ what-our-words-mean-towards-the-vindication-of-medz-yeghern. 24.  After the introduction of the 1934 Turkish Law of Surnames, the family took the name Çınıçıoğlu, per electronic correspondence with a descendant, Riza Can Özmutaf, February 13–16, 2018. 25.  Interview with Ohannessian, published in El-Estudyo magazine, June 21, 1951. 26.  Henry H. Glassie, Turkish Traditional Art Today (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 456. Rifat Çini, Solmaz Turunç, and Aydın Turunç also cite Hungarian help in the early years of the Turkish Republic. See Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making (Istanbul: Uycan Yayınları, 1991), 19. 27.  See John Carswell, “The Deconstruction of the Dome of the Rock,” in Ot-

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toman Jerusalem: The Living City, 1517–1917, ed. Sylvia Auld, Robert Hillenbrand, and Yusuf Natsheh (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000). Carswell reports that in 1966 all the historic tiles were removed and the new tiles, manufactured in Kutahya, were installed in their place. 28.  Marie Balian (1925–2017). 29.  E-mail from Beth Patkus to author, February 20, 2013. 30.  Letter from J. Lane Miller to Mr. John D. Rockefeller, April 27, 1935, Rockefeller Archive Center, Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller Records, Cultural Interests, Series E, 1888–1962, Jerusalem Museum, 1926–1948, box 25, folder 263. 31.  Per the plaque in the chapel. 32.  Madeleine S. Miller, Footprints in Palestine: Where the East Begins (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1936), 33. 33.  With credit to T. S. Eliot for my adaptation of his line from Four Quartets, Quartet No. 4: “Little Gidding.”

A p p e n di x C

1.  Evidently, Blake did not realize that the Dome of the Rock was covered with tiles under the reign of Sultan Suleyman I in the mid-sixteenth century. 2.  Blake is describing cuerda seca technique. 3. Other mineral analysis reports in this cache originate from the Imperial Institute (Great Britain). This report is marked “Copy” and does not have a letterhead. The institute’s Mineral Resources Bureau published yearly statistical summaries of “The Mineral Industry of the British Empire and Foreign Countries.”

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Selected Readings

This list is a sampling of sources on ceramics and the contexts in which they were used and produced in Ottoman Kütahya and in Jerusalem, especially under the British Mandate. K ütah ya Akalın, Şebnem, and Hülya Yılmaz Bilgi. Delights of Kütahya: Kütahya Tiles and Pottery in the Suna and Inan Kıraç Collection. Istanbul: Vehbi Koç Vakfı, 1997. Atasoy, Nurhan, Julian Raby, and Yanni Petsopoulos. Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey. London: Laurence King, 2008. Batur, Afife. Bir usta bir dünya: Mimar Vedat Tek. Master and His World: The Architect Vedat Tek. Turk & Eng. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 1999. Bilgi, Hülya. Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation Collection. Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, Pera Museum, 2006. Bilgi, Hülya, and Idil Zanbak Vermeersch. Sadberk Hanim Museum Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection. Istanbul: Sadberk Hanim Museum, 2018. Carswell, John. Iznik Pottery. London: British Museum, 2012. ———. “Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics.” In Turkish Tiles and Ceramics by Ara Altun, John Carswell, Gönül Öney, 49–102. Istanbul: Sadberk Hanim Museum, 1991. Carswell, John, and C. J. F. Dowsett. Kütahya Tiles and Pottery from the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, Jerusalem. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Çini, Rifat, Solmaz Turunç, and Aydın Turunç. Kütahya in Turkish Tile Making. Istanbul: Uycan Yayınları, 1991. Crowe, Yolande. “Kütahya Ceramics and International Armenian Trade Networks.” V&A Online Journal, no. 3 (Spring 2011). http://www.vam. ac.uk/content/journals/research-journal/issue-03/kutahya-ceramicsand-international-armenian-trade-networks/. 355

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SELECTED READINGS

———. “Kütahya Patterns: Out of the Blue?” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 71 (2006–7): 45–52. Davies, Lavinia. “The Turkish Room at Sledmere House: Mark Sykes and the Early 20th-Century Tile-Makers of Kütahya.” In Islamic Art VI 2009: Studies on the Art and Culture of the Muslim World, edited by Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims, 159–76. Genoa: Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art, 2009. Demirsar Arlı, Belgin. “Architecture and Tile Usage in City Planning of Kütahya from Tanzimat to Republic.” Paper presented at the First International Conference on Urban Architecture and Design, Epoka University Proceedings, April 19–21, 2012, Epoka University. http://dspace.epoka. edu.al/handle/1/218. Demirsar Arlı, Belgin, and Ara Altun. Tiles: Treasures of Anatolian Soil: Ottoman Period. Istanbul: Kale Group Cultural Publications, 2008. Denny, Walter B. Iznik: The Artistry of Ottoman Ceramics. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015. Ersoy, Ahmet. Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire. London: Routledge, 2016. ———. “Crafts, Ornament, and the Discourse of Cultural Survival in the Late Ottoman Empire.” In “Turkey,” special issue, Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 28 (December 2016): 45–63. Glassie, Henry H. Turkish Traditional Art Today. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Kadir, Selahattin, Hande Erman, and Hülya Erkoyun. “Mineralogical and Geochemical Characteristics and Genesis of Hydrothermal Kaolinite Deposits within Neogene Volcanites, Kütahya (Western Anatolia), Turkey.” Clays and Clay Minerals 59, no. 3 (2011): 250–76. Khatchadourian, Nairi, ed. Armenian Ceramic Art of Kütahya. Yerevan: Komitas Museum-Institute, 2016. Kouymjian, Dickran. “The Role of Armenian Potters of Kutahia in the Ottoman Ceramic Industry.” In Armenian Communities of Asia Minor, vol. 13, edited by Richard Hovannisian, 107–30. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 2014. Kürkman, Garo. Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters. Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006.

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Moughalian, Sato. “The Life and Art of Ceramicist David Ohannessian.” Ottoman History Podcast, July 31, 2016. http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast. com/2016/07/armenian-ceramics.html. Necipoğlu, Gülru. “From International Timurid to Ottoman: A Change of Taste in Sixteenth-Century Ceramic Tiles.” In Muqarnas: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture, vol. 7, edited by Oleg Grabar, 136–70. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1990. St. Laurent, Beatrice. “Léon Parvillée: His Role as Restorer of Bursa’s Monuments after the 1855 Earthquake and His Contribution to the Exposition Universelle of 1867.” In L’Empire Ottoman: La République de Turquie et de la France, edited by H. Batu and J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, 247–82. Istanbul: CNRS [Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique], 1986. Wharton, Alyson. “Armenian Architects and ‘Other’ Revivalism.” In Revival: Memories Identities, Utopias, edited by Ayla Lepine, Matt Lodder, and Rosalind McKever, 150–68. London: Courtauld Online Books, 2015. Wharton-Durgaryan, Alyson. “Mark Sykes and Armenians.” December 1, 2016. http://caia.org.uk/mark-sykes-and-armenians-by-alyson-wharton -durgaryan/ J e rusal e m Ashbee, Charles R. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee on the Arts and Crafts of Jerusalem and District, 1918. Getty Research Institute. Accessed June 21, 2018. http://primo.getty.edu/GRI:GETTY_ALMA21124622180001551. Carswell, John. “The Deconstruction of the Dome of the Rock.” In Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City, 1517–1917, edited by Sylvia Auld, Robert Hillenbrand, and Yusuf Natsheh, 425–29. London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000. Crawford, Alan. C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Fuchs, Ron, and Gilbert Herbert. “Representing Mandatory Palestine: Austen St. Barbe Harrison and the Representational Buildings of the British Mandate in Palestine, 1922–37.” Architectural History 43 (2000): 281–333. Hintlian, Kevork. History of the Armenians in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Armenian Patriarchate Printing Press, 1989. Hoffman, Adina. Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

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Ibrahim, Fawzi. West Meets East: The Story of the Rockefeller Museum. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2006. Kenaan-Kedar, Nurith. The Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem: Three Generations, 1919–2003. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2003. Kenaan-Kedar, Nurith, Gania Doron Dolev, Donna Bossin, and Marie Balian. Birds of Paradise: Marie Balian and the Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2000. Monk, Daniel Bertrand. An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Necipoğlu, Gülru. “The Dome of the Rock as Palimpsest: ʿAbd al-Malik’s Grand Narrative and Sultan Suleyman’s Glosses.” In Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, vol. 25, edited by G. Necipoğlu and J. Bailey, 17–105. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 2008. Olenik, Yael. The Armenian Pottery of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv: Haaretz Museum, 1986. Pro-Jerusalem Society, C. R. Ashbee, and K. A. C. Creswell. Jerusalem: Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council, 1918–1922. London: J. Murray, 1921. Rapaport, Raquel. “The City of the Great Singer: C. R. Ashbee’s Jerusalem.” Architectural History 50 (2007): 171–210. Richmond, Ernest Tatham. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: A Description of Its Structure and Decoration. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. Sandrouni, Garo. Armenians in Jerusalem. (Jerusalem: n.p., 2000). Shalev-Khalifa, Nirit. “David Ohannessian—the Founder of Armenian Pottery in Jerusalem.” In Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem: Three Generations, 1919–2003, ed. Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, 29–46. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak BenZvi and the Eretz Israel Museum, 2003. ———. “David Ohannessian, Master of The Dome of the Rock Tiles Workshop 1918-1948.” Assaph—Studies in Art History 7 (2002): 139–56. ———, ed. The First Governor, Ronald Storrs Governor of Jerusalem 1918–1926. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2011. St. Laurent, Beatrice, and Andras Riedelmayer. “Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and Their Political Significance, 1537–1928.” In Muqarnas: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture, vol. 10, edited by Sheila S. Blair et al., 76–84. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1992. Storrs, Ronald. The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs. New York: AMS Press, 1973. Yavuz, Yildirim. “The Restoration Project of the Masjid al-Aqsa by Mimar Kemalettin (1922–26).” In Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the

SELECTED READINGS

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Islamic World, vol. 13, edited by Gülru Necipoğlu, 149–64. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996. n on - E n g l i s h s o u rces Alpoyachean, Arshak. Hushamatean kutinahayeru. Pēyrutʿ: Tp. Tōnikean, 1961. Arlı, Hakan. “Kütahyali Mehmed Emin Usta ve Eserlerinin Üslubu.” Master’s thesis, Istanbul Üniversitesi, 1989. Batur, Afife, Gül Cephanecigil, Meryem Fındıklıgil Doğuoğlu, and Aras Neftçi. Mimar Kemaleddin: Proje kataloğu. Ankara: TMMOB Mimarlar Odası, 2009. Cengizkan, Ali, and N. Müge Cengizkan. Mimar Kemalettin ve Cağı: Mimarlık, Toplumsal Yaşşam, Politika. Ankara: TMMOB Mimarlar Odası, 2009. Cuinet, Vital. La Turquie d’Asie, géographie administrative: Statistique, descriptive et raisonnée de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure. Vol. 4. Paris: E. Leroux, 1894. Demirsar Arlı, Belgin, and Hakkan Arlı. “Osmanli Döneminde Kudüs: Kent Dokusu, Mimarli Ve Çini Sanatina Ilişkin Bir Araştirmanin Ilk Sonuçları.” Papers Submitted to International Symposium Ottoman Heritage in the Middle East (October 2000), Vol. 2, 531–41, 786–88. Launay, Marie de. L’architecture ottomane - Die Ottomanische Baukunst. Istanbul: Imprimerie et Lithographie Centrale, 1873. Moughalian, Sato. “Kütahyaʾdan kudüsʾe: Kudüsʾte Ermeni Seramik Ticaretinin Doğuşu.” Toplumsal Tarih (January 2016): 50–57. Parvillée, Léon. Architecture et décoration turques au XVe siècle. Paris: Morel, 1874.

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Photo Credits

Black-and-White

page 28 page 30

page 45 page 50

Author’s collection. Courtesy of Osman Köker. Reprinted from Osman Köker and Orlando Carlo Calumeno, Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago with the Postcards from the Collection of Orlando Carlo Calumeno (Istanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 2005). H. Izmirlian, Ohannessian family collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

page page page page

52 54 56 65

Author’s collection.

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66 69 70 73

Courtesy of Dr. M. Hamdi Okatan.

Author’s collection. Courtesy of Garo Kürkman. Courtesy of Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. Author’s collection. Author’s collection. Vassilaki Kargopoulo, Pierre de Gigord Collection, digital image courtesy of Getty Research Institute Open Content Program.

page 75 page 82

Author’s collection.

page 84

Garabed K. Solakian, Pierre de Gigord Collection, digital image courtesy of Getty Research Institute Open Content Program.

page 86

Photo reproduced from Teotig, Amenun Daretsuytse 13 (1923): 226.

Garabed K. Solakian, Pierre de Gigord Collection, digital image courtesy of Getty Research Institute Open Content Program.

361

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PHOTO CREDITS

87 91 98 130

Courtesy of SALT Research. H. Izmirlian, Ohannessian family collection. Courtesy of SALT Research, Ali Saim Ülgen Archive. Armin T. Wegner, from Die Austreibung des armenischen Volkes in die Wüste. Ein Lichtbildvortrag. Hg. Von Andreas Meier. Mit einem Nachtwort von Wolfgang Gust © Wallstein Verlag.

page 135

Armin T. Wegner, from Die Austreibung des armenischen Volkes in die Wüste. Ein Lichtbildvortrag. Hg. Von Andreas Meier. Mit einem Nachtwort von Wolfgang Gust. © Wallstein Verlag.

page 137 page 150

AGBU Nubar Library, Paris.

page 153

American Colony, Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

page 163 page 166

Ohannessian family collection.

page 174

American Colony, Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

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Ohannessian family collection.

176 178 179 181

American National Red Cross Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

American Colony Photo Department, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. American Colony Photo Department, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

page 182

Courtesy of the Near East Relief Historical Society, Near East Foundation Collection, Rockefeller Archive Center.

page 183

Courtesy of King’s College Library, Cambridge. CRA/1/47/043—Storrs Archive Centre.

page 184

G. Terunian, © Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan.

page 185

G. Terunian, © Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan.

PHOTO CREDITS

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page 190

American Colony Photography Department, scan from the original glass negative, courtesy American Colony Archive Collections, the American Colony Hotel, Jerusalem.

page page page page page page page page page page page page page page page page page page page

Ohannessian family collection.

194 195 196 201 204 205 211 216 218 220 221 226 231 235 245 249 256 258 270

Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Ohannessian family collection. Courtesy of Prime Minister Ottoman Archives, Istanbul, BOA, ML.VRD.CMH.d 1053, (1265.1.3) H. 25.01.1849, p. 11.

page 272 Author. page 281 Ohannessian family collection. page 287 Brooklyn Eagle Photographs—Brooklyn Public Library— Brooklyn Collection. C ol or p l at e s Kütahya

plate 1

Aras Selim Bankoğlu, courtesy of VKV Sadberk Hanim Museum Archives.

plate 2a

Hadiye Cangökçe, courtesy of VKV Sadberk Hanim Museum Archives.

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PHOTO CREDITS

plate 2b plate 2c plate 3

plate plate plate plate

4a 4b 4c 5

Hadiye Cangökçe, courtesy of VKV Sadberk Hanim Museum Archives. Orhan Kolukısa. From Marie de Launay, L'architecture ottoman, 1873. Imprimerie et Lithographie Centrale, Planche III, Istanbul. Courtesy of Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. Orhan Kolukısa. Orhan Kolukısa. Orhan Kolukısa. Aras Selim Bankoğlu, Courtesy of VKV Sadberk Hanim Museum Archives.

plate 6

Reproduced from Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters (Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006), with permission of the author.

plate 7

Reproduced from Garo Kürkman, Magic of Clay and Fire: A History of Kütahya Pottery and Potters (Istanbul: Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, 2006), with permission of the author.

plate 8 plates 9 plates 10–11 plate 12

Borthwick Institute, University of York ATKB/7/1b. By kind permission of Sir Tatton Sykes, Bt. Mohamed Nour Al Din of Forma Photos, Cairo. Ohannessian family collection.

Jerusalem

plate 1 plate 2 plate 3a plate 3b plate 4 plates 5–8 plate 9 plate 10 plate 11

Olympia Shannon. Ohannessian family collection. Olympia Shannon. Courtesy of Sandringham Estate. Orhan Kolukısa. Olympia Shannon. Ohannessian family collection. Orhan Kolukısa. Ohannessian family collection. Olympia Shannon. Ohannessian family collection.

PHOTO CREDITS

plate 12 Orhan Kolukısa. plates 13–14 Orhan Kolukısa. plate 15 Orhan Kolukısa. plate 16 Orhan Kolukısa. plate 17 Orhan Kolukısa. plates 18–19 Orhan Kolukısa. plate 20 Author.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations. “D.O.” refers to David Ohannessian. Familial relations to David Ohannessian follow in parentheses. Treaties and wars are disambiguated with dates where necessary. Abbas I, Shah, 108 ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, 163 Abdul Aziz, Sultan, 35, 44, 62, 164 Abdulhalik, Mustafa, 141–42 Abdul Hamid I, Sultan, 34 Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 35, 325n32, 333n83: accomplishments of, 77, 139; Armenian massacres (1894–96) under, 37–39, 77, 106; Hamidiye cavalry of, 38; Young Turk revolution and, 78–80 Abdullah Frères (Viçen, Hovsep, Kevork), 44, 52, 85 Abdulmecid: as Prince, 102, 328n88; as Sultan, 164 Abraham (first Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem), 151 Académie Julien, Paris, 73 Acem Dagh, 67 Adamian School, Mouradchai, 25 Adabazar, 32: Armenians deportees from, 118, 119, 121, 124; egg trade in, 48, 319n41 Adana: Armenian massacres (1909) in, 80; in route of Armenian deportations, 129–32 Afifi, Mohamed, 91 Afyonkarahisar, 67 Aghavuni, Mgrditch, 57 Aghed (Catastrophe), 180, 198, 280, 352n22, 352n23. See also Armenian Genocide Alboyadjian, Arshag, 241, 320n19, 323n66, 330n20

Albumen printing, in early photography, 44, 52, 320n42 Aleppo, 135–43: Armenian population of, 136; Armenian refugees in, 136–38; artisanal trades in, 136, 139–40, 146; British provisional administration in, 144, 146–47; as center of Ottoman genocidal network, 119, 133–34, 136; deportee camps in region of, 133–39, 140–41; D.O. reencounters Sykes in, 147, 279; fall of, 144 Aleppo Industrial School, 139–40 Alexandria, Egypt, 1–2, 5, 230, 238 Ali ibn Ilias Ali (Nakkaş Ali), 61, 86 Al-Kulliyah (journal), 255 Allenby, Edmund, 189: in occupation of Jerusalem, 152–57, 337n10; in Ottoman Syrian campaign,143–44; Amanus Mountains: Armenian forced marches in, 132–34; Ottoman railroad construction in, 130, 132–34, 169, 334n14 Amber Reis Mosque, Konya, 268, 351n8 American Colony, Jerusalem: as distributors for D.O.’s ceramics, 177, 182, 219; D.O. commissioned by, 189–90, 190, 223, 343n1; founding of, 177, 189; American Committee for Relief in the Near East. See Near East Relief American Protestant missionaries. See Missionaries: American Protestant American University of Beirut, 254–55, 257 Andonian, Aram, 114

367

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INDEX

Andrews Sisters, 220 Anglican International School, Jerusalem, 247 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1936), 250 An-Nida (journal), 255, 259 Annig (friend of Sirarpi Ohannessian), 171 Annuaire Oriental (1913), Kutahya trades listed in, 87 Anti-Semitism, 199, 223 Antreassian, Hagop, 285 Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, 162, 173: British political concerns and, 145, 156–57, 187; restoration plans for, 155–57, 182, 185 Arab general strikes (1936–39), 223–24 Arab Higher Committee, 224 Arab provinces, 108, 139: Armenian deportations to, 131, 134; Mudros Armistice and, 144; Sykes-Picot Agreement and, 143. See also Aleppo Arabs: aid to British military and, 143–44; Balfour Declaration and, 154, 175, 181; drought (1925) and, 202; in ItaloTurkish War (1911), 92; Jaffa uprising and, 178; Jewish migration and, 223–24, 232–33; as majority in Palestine, 154, 232; Nebi Musa uprising and, 175, 178; as targets of Young Turks, 108; UN Palestine partition plan and, 233–36; Wailing Wall riots and, 212; war in Palestine and, 232–44, 245–46 Araradian Orphanage of Sourp Hagop, 150, 184: brass band of, 184, 185, 199, 344n25 Architectural style: in Aleppo, 136; in Heliopolis, 246; in Mandatory Jerusalem, 203–4, 208–9, 217–18, 225; Ottoman revivalist, 62–64, 72–74, 80–81, 88, 139, 186, 198; in Pera district, Constantinople, 51; Seljuk, 72, 83, 86, 209 Armenakan party, 37, 319n29 Armenia: Great Repatriation of, 234; historic highlands of, 32–34, 318n15; Republic (1918–20) of, 150, 179, 180, 191; six provinces of, 32–33, 38, 78; Soviet Socialist Republic of, 234, 245 Armenian bole, 67 Armenian General Benevolent Union

(AGBU), 246: in Armenian National Reconstitution, 280; Armenian refugees aided by, 137, 150; 184; Beirut clinic of, 242, 260 Armenian Genocide: anti-Armenian propaganda and, 37, 80, 99, 106–7, 109–10, 111–14, 119; April 24 arrests in, 114–15, 213; Armenian property confiscated in, 115–16, 121–22, 271, 272; Armenian terminology for, 180, 198, 280, 352n22, 352n23; author’s first knowledge of, 4, 6, 10, 11; Euphrates River as central site of, 140–41; first actions in, 113–16; forced Islamizations in, 23–24, 39, 124–27, 262, 279–80; forced labor in, 112; illness and starvation as strategy in, 133, 141; mass deportations in, 113– 38, 140, 146–47, 273–74331n53, 333n5, 333n89, 334n6; mass executions in, 141, 146–47, 331n56; Ottoman bureaucracy for, 133, 135; precedents to, 38–40, 80, 106; railways used in, 118–20, 121, 125, 129–31, 132; resistance to, 109–10, 120, 136–37 (see also Faik Ali Bey; Celal Bey); sexual violence in, 11, 38, 105, 119, 120, 146–47, 191; Temporary Laws of Deportation in, 115–16, 333n87; women and children abducted in, 124, 134, 279–280; Young Turk preparations for, 108, 110, 113, 116 Armenian Golden Age, 31–32 Armenian language: alphabet invented for, 31–32; in Mouradchai, 22, 316n19; newspapers in, 23, 230, 273–74, 316n20; Ottoman prohibitions against, 57, 110; readopted in postwar Jerusalem, 171 Armenian National Constitution and Assembly, 35, 61 Armenian Orthodox (Apostolic) Church, 22, 151: in Aleppo, 138; in appeal for Armenian reforms, 105–6; Armenian schools and, 25; D.O.’s marriage dispensation and, 46, 55, 75; in Eskishehir, 29, 31; grape harvest traditions in, 19– 20; in Jerusalem (see St. James Convent and Cathedral); Komitas’s papers and, 346n58; in Kutahya, 57, 58; marriage

INDEX

rules of, 45; in Mouradchai, 22; Ottoman role of, 54, 316n21 Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 151– 179, 199, 247: Armenian refugees sheltered by, 150, 151–52, 183–84, 199–200; construction projects of, 211–12; history of, 151–52; Kutahya tiles and, 59, 152; monthly journal of, 212; vank as seat of, 149 “Armenian Question,” 33, 108, 112 Armenian renaissance, 31–32 Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). See Dashnagtsutyun Party Armenians: in Aleppo, 136–40; antiArmenian propaganda and, 37, 80, 99, 106–7, 109–10, 111–14, 119; Berlin Treaty and, 37; in Constantinople, 47, 48, 51, 320n2; deportation laws targeting, 110, 112, 115–16; deportations of, 108, 115–27, 333n89; distribution of, in Ottoman Empire, 32–34; emigration of, 33; in Eskishehir, 30–31; in Ethiopia, 199–200; forced Islamizations of, 39, 112, 124–27, 262, 279–80; higher education for, 31, 37; in Jerusalem, 151, 155, 172, 179, 240–41, 243–46; Kurdish oppression of, 33, 38–39; in Kutahya, 58, 76–77, 119–27, 169, 271–72, 324n15; literary production of, 9, 23, 31–32, 273, 316n20; military conscription of, 103–4, 108–9, 111; in Mouradchai, 15–26; Muslim migration and, 37–39, 80, 105–7; National Constitution and Assembly of, 35, 61; Ottoman censorship of, 57, 110; in Ottoman Empire, 15–26, 32–33, 35–39, 61, 77–79, 105–27; in Persia, 108; in photography, 44, 52; political parties of, 37–38 (see also Dashnagtsutyun); Protestant missionaries and, 23–24; Republic (1918–20) absorbed by Soviet Union, 234; Russia as protector of, 33, 37–38, 111–12; trade networks of, 60, 108; violence against, 4, 6–7, 33, 38–39, 77, 78, 80, 105, 105–6, 112–13, 116, 119–22, 124–25, 141, 146– 47, 191–92, 331n56. See also Armenian Genocide

369

Armenian schools: Adamian School, 25; Mesrobian School, 121 Armenian Youth Union, Jerusalem, 240 Arsharuni, Hovhaness, 105–6 Art Déco, 201, 246, 248 Artists, forced relocations of, 59, 108, 163, 273: Minassians and; 169, 171. See also Ohannessian, David—Life: deportations of Ashbee, Charles, 189: in British Arts and Crafts movement, 158–59; in establishment of Jerusalem ceramics tradition, 160–61, 165–68, 172–74, 175–78, 182–83, 196; Jerusalem town planning and, 174–75, 177–78; in Pro-Jerusalem Society, 159–60, 177–78, 186 Ashbee, Janet, 189 Asia Minor (Sykes-Picot) Agreement, 143 Association des Amis du Vieux Corbie, 284 Assyrians, 108, 172 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal. See Kemal, Mustafa Australia: Anzac battalions of, 113, 114; D.O. ceramics distributed to, 227 Austria-Hungary, 36: in Great War, 102–3 Avedian, Aram (nephew), 116 Avedian, Hagop (nephew), 116–18: in Smyrna catastrophe, 191–92 Avedian, Marik “Horkour” (née Galenbajak), 344n20: betrothal and marriage of, 42–43; deportation of, 116–18, 199, 274, 276; in Eskishehir, 41–42; as family historian, 198, 216, 262; in Jerusalem, 198–99, 204, 212; in Mouradchai, 19–20, 25, 54; physical appearance of, 198; in Smyrna catastrophe, 191–192 Avedian, Ohannes (brother-in-law), 42, 116 Avedian, Artin Sarkissian, 238: deportation of 116–18; education of, 212, 215–16; Horkour as mother to, 116, 191, 216; in Smyrna catastrophe, 191–92 Avedissian, Kaspar, 117 Avramidis, Minas, 170 Awqaf. See Wakfs Azaz deportee camp, 135–36 Azerbaijan, Republic of, 179

370

INDEX

Baghdad ceramics, 63, 160 Bagdadbahn (Baghdad Railway), 135: Armenian workers in, 130, 132–33, 334n15; planning of, 130; prisoner-of-war laborers in, 133; and struggles to complete, 118, 130 Bakvırcı, Naci, 269 Balakian, Grigoris, 115 Balek Bazar Han, 48 Balfour Declaration, 154, 175, 181, 185 Balian, Marie, 285 Balian, Nishan, 170–71, 183, 214, 285 Balian, Takouhi, 170–71, 183 Balian Armenian Ceramics, 285 Balkan migrants: in Constantinople, 52–53, 52; in Eskishehir, 30; in Mouradchai, 118, 278–79; in western Anatolia, 37, 105–7 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 100, 112, 197: anti-Armenian violence and, 105–6; territorial losses in, 97, 99 106 Balkans, 48: mass exodus from, 52–53, 105–6; Ottoman atrocities in, 35; Russian–Ottoman War (1877–78) and 36–37; under Sultan Suleyman, 33; Young Turk revolution and, 79 Balyan, Garo, 92 Balyan family (Ottoman architects), 63, 72, 92, 322n43 Baqa’a, Jerusalem, 233–45: Ohannessians’ move to, 192–93, 233–45; residents flee from, 238–41; Vahé and Mary Ohannessian interned in, 243–44, 245–46; war in Palestine and, 233, 235–39, 241–42 Barclay’s Bank, 210, 224, 229, 248 Bartholomew (apostle), 22 Bartók, Béla, 263 Bassam, Maurice, 243–44, 246 Bayru, Esin Çelebi, 268–69 Beglarian, Eve, 11–12 Beirut, 12, 236, 238: AGBU clinic in, 242, 260; American University in, 254–55, 257; Dabbagh Mosque commission in, 217, 218; Ohannessians resettle in, 254–58, 259 Ben-Gurion, David, 236, 239 Berlin Congress and Treaty (1878), 36–37

Bernadotte, Folke, 243 Betrothal customs, Armenian, 17–18, 45 Bevin, Ernest, 233 Beyazid (Ottoman Prince), 56 Beylerbeyi Palace, 72 Bezalel School of Arts, Jerusalem, 206, 342n112 Bisharat, Hanna Ibrahim, 203–4 Blake, George Stanfield, 196–97, 202, 212–13, 307–12 Blotière, Maurice, 201–2, 283–84 Boat landings, Kutahya tiles for, 102, 109, 203 Bole, Armenian, 67 Borax, 67 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 36, 102 Bozanti, 129–31 Breasted, James Henry, 217 Brierley, Walter, 93–94, 96–98, 101–2 Britain: Balfour Declaration and 154, 175, 181, 185; Berlin Congress and, 36–37; British Empire Exhibition (1924) and, 197–98; Crimean War and, 34–35; Egypt nationalism and, 249–53; in Great War Palestine campaign, 104, 113, 143–44; Jewish migration to Palestine and, 223, 232; League of Nations and, 184–85; Mandatory Jerusalem and, 177–87, 189– 90; Mandatory Palestine and, 180–81, 184–85, 187, 223–26, 232–39; in Mandatory Transjordan 200; Military Administration of Jerusalem and, 152–58, 159–60, 162, 168, 175; Ottoman Empire and, 34, 35, 92, 143, 145, 156; in withdrawal from Palestine, 235, 236, 238–39; UN Partition Plan and, 234–35 British and Foreign Bible Society, 208–9 British Council Library: in Alexandria, 251; in Cairo, 246, 248–50, 252–54 British Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924– 25), 196, 197, 200 British Industries Fair (London, 1934), 223 British Institute, Cairo, 248–49 British Library Association, 249 British Nationality Act (1948), 248 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (newspaper), 286 Brussa, 55, 118, 351n5: American Protestant missionaries in, 23; Armenian leaders

INDEX

arrested in, 113; Balkan Muslim migrants in, 37; Emin’s ceramics outlet in, 323n66; Kutahya ceramics revival and, 53, 61–62, 63, 71, 82, 85, 86, 86, 88, 94, 321n35; Masters of Tabriz in, 86, 108; See also Green Mosque and royal shrines Brussa Trade Fair, 85, 86, 86, 88 Bulgaria, 36, 107: in Balkan wars, 97; Enver Pasha and, 106; in revolt against Ottoman rule, 35–36 Bulgarian Horrors, 35, 78 Burns, Mary. See Ohannessian, Mary Burns Bute, Marquess of, 63 Cairo: Armenian community in, 246–47; craft traditions preserved in, 159, 244–45; D.O.’s planned workshop in, 238, 250; D.O. seeks refuge in, 238, 241, 242–46; Kutahya ceramics in, 91, 92, 159, 247; Manial Palace in, 91–92; nationalist violence in, 250–53; Storrs’s career in, 155, 157, 159 Cairo fires (1952), 252–54 Cantagalli factory, 62 Cardiff Castle Arab Room, 63 Carpet weaving, 21, 58, 136, 273, 321n19 Celal Bey (Konya Governor), 120–22, 333n83 Çelebi, Evliya, 59 Center for Applied Linguistics, 259 Century of Progress International Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair, 1933–34), 219–20 Ceramics—techniques: Chalgara, 29, 317n5; firing, 68, 165, 173, 215, 227; in Kutahya workshops, 53, 67 Chetes (paramilitary operatives), 113, 121–22, 191 Children, mistreatment and killing of, in Armenian Genocide, 120–21, 134, 137, 146, 279–80 Çuhaçı (Tchohadji) Han, 48, 320n2 Church of the Holy Saviour, Jerusalem, 151 Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 34, 208 Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, 231 Cilicia, 32, 129: Armenian massacres in, 80

371

Çini, Mehmet, 285 Çiniçoğlu, Hakki, 284–85 Çinili Kösk (Tiled Kiosk), Imperial Museum, Topkapi Palace, 200, 222, 324n5, 345n44, 351n8 Çiragan Palace, 72 Circassians: in Adana massacres, 80; as Anatolian migrants, 30, 107; Citadel Gardens bench, 175, 176; as threats to Armenians, 36; Cizye tax records, 267, 270, 316n21 Clay, 67, 165–67, 171–73, 174, 196–97, 202, 212–13, 307–12, Coffee, Kutahya vessels for 59, 271 Coffee houses, 22–23, 52, 321n25 The College, Bromley, Kent, 247 Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, Cairo, 155, 161 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; Unionists): Abdul Hamid II deposed by, 80; anti-Armenian legislation and, 115–16; anti-Armenian sentiment fomented by, 80; 112, 115; Armenian deportations and, 122, 126, 130–31; Armenian property expropriated by, 121–22; Balkan Wars and, 112; founding of, 78–79; in Kutahya, 80, 109–10, 121, 126, 171, 335n38; Ottoman architecture and, 81; Three Pashas ascend in, 97; Young Turk revolution and, 79–80, 106–7, 109 Constantinople: architecture in, 47–51, 65, 72–74, 267; Armenian population in, 32, 47, 51; Balkan migrants in, 52–53, 52, 97, 105; D.O. in, 47–52; European influences in, 51–52; Kutahya tiles in, 102, 267; Constitution: Armenian (1863), 35, 61; Ottoman (1876), 35, 38, 78; (Ottoman 1908), 79 Convent of Clarice, Jerusalem, 238 Convent of St. James. See St. James Convent and Cathedral, Jerusalem Conversions: forced Islamizations, 39, 124–27, 262, 279–80, 352n17; Protestant missionaries and, 23–24 Çorak (mineral residue), 67 Crimean War, 34–35

372

INDEX

Cuerda seca tiles, 82, 85, 222: on the Dome of the Rock, 145, 163, 196; in the Palestine Archaeological Museum, 222; technique for, 86–88 Cunningham, Alan, 233, 238 Cuno, Helmuth, 72 CUP. See Committee of Union and Progress Cyprus, 206: Jewish refugees interned in, 232 Dabbagh Mosque, Beirut, 217, 218, 282–83 Daguerre, Louis, 44 Daily Star (Beirut newspaper), 258 Damagnez, Marie-Christine and Michel, 284 Damascus: fall of, 144, 146; Ohannessians seek refuge in, 233, 238, 241 Damascus tiles, 160: D.O. designs inspired by, 101, 146; European collectors and, 62, 94, 160; Kemalettin restorations of, 82 Daoudi, Mohammad Taner, 251 D’Aronco, Raimondo, 72 Dashnagtsutyun (Dashnag) Party 343n3: Adana massacres and, 80; D.O. accused of membership in, 142; founding of, 37–38; Ottoman Bank occupied by, 39; Young Turk revolution and, 79 Dead Sea, 207 Deck, Joseph-Théodore, 62 Deedes, Wyndham, 168 Deir Yassin massacre, 237 Deir Zor (Syrian desert), 7, 120, 130, 136, 137, 140, 141 De Morgan, William, 62, 94, 158 Department of Technical Education (Jerusalem), 175–77, 196 Deportations and killings of Armenians, 108, 115–47, 191, 280: aid to refugees in, 133, 136–37, 138, 149–50, 179, 183–84; 334n20; Aleppo as center for, 136–40, 137; bribes and, 118, 119, 127, 129, 131, 134, 136, 138, 141; children in, 120–21, 134; death and dying during, 132, 133, 135, 138, 141; disease in, 120, 132–35; Eskishehir and, 118; forced marches in, 118, 131–33, 136; Gomidas and, 114,

213–14; harassment and expulsions in, 117–18, 121–24, 127, 140, 142; hunger in, 119, 131, 133, 134, 138; Kutahya and, 119–27; mass violence and, 119, 120–22, 132, 141, 146–47; Mouradchai and, 116–18; plunder in, 115–16, 122; railroads and transit camps in, 118, 120, 127, 129–131, 133, 135, 137; resistance and, 119–26; survival strategies and, 121, 124–27, 132–33, 138, 141; Deutsche Bank, 24, 130 Deutsche-Orient Bank, 72 Development Bank of Jordan, 251, 254 Devlet (daughter of Germiyan leader, Suleyman Shah), 56 Djemal Pasha, 97, 99, 104, 107–8 Dolmabahçe Palace, 72, 73 Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem: D.O.’s ceramic model of, 183, 183; earthquake (1927) and, 208; historic restorations of, 83, 163–65, 325n30; as Jerusalem design inspiration, 178, 203, 209, 211; Kemalettin’s report (1912) on, 155–56; precarious condition of, 10, 145–46, 147, 156, 166–67; restoration (1960s) of, 285; significance of, in Islam, 145, 156, 157 Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem—planned British restoration (1918–22), 155–57, 197: Allenby and, 155–57; Ashbee and, 158–61, 173–75; costs estimated for, 173; D.O. removed from, 186; D.O.’s return to Kutahya and, 167–71; D.O. as tile maker for, 145–47, 161–68, 173, 181–82, 185–87, 208; Dome of the Rock tiles studio and, 173–74; Haram kiln and, 162– 63; Kemalettin as architect for, 185–86; materials sought for, 165–67, 168; political anxieties about, 145–46, 147, 155–57, 160, 175, 180–81, 186–87; Pro-Jerusalem Society and, 159–60, 173–74; Richmond as architect for, 147, 157, 160–65, 177; Storrs and, 145–46, 155–57; Supreme Muslim Council and, 181–82, 185–87; Sykes and, 145–46, 147, 157; tile experiments for, 165–68, 172–73; tile maker sought for, 146, 156, 160–62; Wakf’s role in, 155, 172–74, 185, 186

INDEX

Dome of the Rock Tiles (Jerusalem workshop), 173–75, 174, 179, 181, 182, 184, 190–98: Armenian orphans apprenticed in, 172–74, 182, 182–84, 184, 187, 207, 215; Ashbee’s support for, 160–61, 165–68, 172–78, 182–83, 187; black brush drafters in, 170, 173–74, 181; description of, 193–95; D.O.’s family members employed in, 182, 192, 215, 229, 230, 232; establishment of, 173–75, 323n66; Hebron glassblowers and 177, 178; international recognition for, 200–202, 206, 214, 220, 227; kiln in, 173, 195, 206, 215, 221, 227; Kutahya artists recruited for, 170–71; promotional materials for, 179, 196, 214, 217; stencil patterns and, 171–87, 189–227, 195, 229, 234, 236, 262; Storrs and, 168, 172, 173, 182; tourist visits to, 173, 195–96, 207; Wakf and, 172–73, 174, 185–86, 343n126; wheel potters in, 170, 173, 194–94 Donabedian, Aline, 259 Donabedian, David, 12, 259 Donabedian, Hermine. See Ohannessian Donabedian, Hermine Donabedian, Hovhannes, 255, 257, 259 Donabedian, Margaret, 259 Donabedian, Maritza, 279–80 Donabedian, Samuel, 279 Dwight, Charles A. S., 266 Earthquakes, 81: in Brussa, 61; in Konya, 83; in Palestine, 163, 164, 208, 345n41 Écoles des Beaux-Arts, 139: as models for Vedat’s teaching, 74; Ottoman architects trained at, 63, 74 École des Pères Français Saint Augustine de l’Assomption, Eskishehir, 25, 41–42 Edhem, Ibrahim, 62–63 Education, 25–26, 31, 40–42, 121 Egg trade, Anatolian, 43–44, 47–48, 50, 54 Egrigoz, 67 Egypt, 249–53; nationalism in 1–2 Egyptian Expeditionary Forces (Britain), 143, 152 El-Estudyo (magazine), 244

373

Emin, Mehmet, 71, 82–83, 210, 299–301: apprenticeship of, 60–61, 64; awards and recognition of, 66; Cairo works of, 91–92, 247; ceramics marketing by, 53, 66, 323n66; Constantinople works of, 74, 102, 109, 267; death of, 341n90; descendants of, 271, 284; Great War and, 169, 171, 284; Kemalettin and, 82, 102, 109; Konya works of, 66, 83, 85; Kutahya works of, 64–66, 69, 71; nationalism and, 73–74, 88, 109; in partnership with D.O., 88, 102; workshop of, 53–54, 60, 64 Eminonu Bazaar, Constantinople, 50 Empain, Éduard, 246–47 England. See Britain English Girls’ College, Alexandria, 230 Enver Pasha, 97, 106–8, 110–12, 115, 144 Episcopal Methodist Church altar, Brooklyn, 285–86, 287, 288 Erbal, Ayda, 266 Erdeyer, Ihsan, 285 Eskishehir, 20, 24–32, 40–46: Armenian quarter in 27–28, 272, 317n9; Armenian refugees in, 118; author’s visit to, 272–73; European influences in, 30–31, 41; history of, 27; markets in, 20, 23, 316n11; meerschaum trade in, 29–30, 317n7, 317n8; Ohannessians’ return to, 170; population of, 30–31; pottery workshops in, 49; railroad in, 24, 31; schools in, 25, 40, 42; as Takouhi’s birthplace, 17, 18, 25; thermal baths in, 28; Etchmiadzin Chapel, St. James Cathedral, 152 Ethiopia, 199–200 Euphrates River: as Galenbajak ancestral homeland, 16, 315n2; mass violence on, 141; and Ohannessians’ Meskene internment, 140–41; Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (Paris, 1925), 200–201, 284 Éxposition universelle (Paris, 1867), 62 Eyup, Constantinople, ceramics workshop, 62

374

INDEX

Faïences de Kutahia, 53, 323n66. See also Emin, Mehmet Faik Ali Bey: appointment of, 100, 328n75; D.O. exiled by, 126–27; family and background of, 100–101; Kutahya Armenians protected by, 109–10, 119–20, 121–22, 125–26, 330n20; removal of, 142, 333n90, 335n38 Fathy, Hassan Bey, 250 Fatima (daughter of Sultan Ahmed III), 60 Firing, of ceramics, 68, 165, 173, 215, 227 First Nationalist architecture. See Ottoman revivalist architecture; Kemalettin, Ahmet; Vedat Tek, Mehmet First World War. See Great War France: and Berlin Congress (1876), 36: in the Great War, 104, 113; and Ottoman Empire, 34, 143 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 102 Freedman, Samuel G., 265 French Revolution, Young Turk revolution and, 78 Fuad Pasha, Ahmed, 64, 69, 71, 80 Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture (L’architecture ottomane; Usul-i Mimari-i Osmani), 62–64, 65, 72, 82, 322n48 Galenbajak, Hagop (brother), 19, 43, 54, 75: in Cairo, 212, 242; as godfather, 90, 98, 198; Karnig’s suicide and, 104 Galenbajak, Hagop (grandfather), 17–19, 24 Galenbajak, Karnig (brother), 28, 42, 54, 75: Ottoman conscription of, 90–91, 103; suicide of, 104 Galenbajak, Khatchatur (great-grandfather), 21 Galenbajak, Loussentak (sister-in-law), 91, 104, 193 Galenbajak, Marik (sister). See Avedian, Marik Galenbajak, Markrid (née Jambazian) (mother), 25, 28, 40, 43, 70: betrothal of, 19; maternal influence of, 20, 45, 54, 75, 77, 90; Mouradchai village life and, 15, 19–21, 25

Galenbajak, Ohannes (father), 16, 24–25: death of 43; as fabric dyer, 40; personality of, 18–19, 21 Galenbajak, Onnig (nephew), 91, 193 Galenbajak, Takouhi (née Geuzumian) (grandmother), 15, 27–28, 40, 43: betrothal and wedding of, 17–19; death of, 81; as matriarch, 24–25 Galenbajak, Tavit. See Ohannessian, David (Tavit) Gelat, Elias Thomas, 203 George V, King, 182, 200 Georges-Picot, François, 143 Georgia, Republic of, 179 Georgian, George, 243 Germany: and Berlin Congress, 36; in the Great War, 103, 129–30, 144; Ottoman railroad construction and, 118, 129–30, 133 Germiyanids, 55–56 Germiyanzad family, 109 Geuzumian, Missak (great-grandfather), 17 Gill, Eric, 225 Gisler, Maurice, 203–4 Glassblowers, Hebron, 177, 178 Gökalp, Mehmed Ziya, 109, 329n17 Goldsmith Officers’ Club, Jerusalem, 233 Gomidas Vartabed, 99, 207; as Armenian emblem, 9–10; deportation of, 114, 213–14; in Ilija, 96; in Villejuif Psychiatric Hospital, 213–15, 326n44, 346n56, 346n58; youth and education of, 88–90 Gorky, Arshile, 9 Government House, Jerusalem, 161, 177, 208 Government House, Kastamonu, 74 Government House, Kutahya, 69–72, 69, 323n1, 351n8 Grabar (Classical Armenian), 25, 31, 212: D.O.’s use of, 210 Grand Bazaar (Buyuk Charshi), Constantinople, 47–48 Grape harvest traditions, Armenian, 19–20 Great Depression, 217 Great Mosque of Mecca, 82 Great War, 110–14, 129–47: Armenians

INDEX

conscripted in, 103, 108–9, Armenian soldiers disarmed in, 110; first battles in, 110, 129–47, 152; jihad declared in, 104; Ottoman alliances and enemies in, 103–4 Greece and Greeks, 107: in Eskishehir, 30; in Hellenic-Turkish War, 168, 179, 191–92; in Jerusalem, 151; in Kutahya, 59; in photography, 44; prejudice and violence against, 105, 107–8 Green Dome (Mevlevihane), Konya, 83–85 84, 269, 325n31, 326n33, 325n32 Green Mosque and royal shrines, Brussa, 61, 85–86: as inspiration for tile designs, 71, 98, 101, 210; restoration of, 61, 82, 85–86, 321n35 Greene, Joseph K.: Anatolian towns documented by, 266–67, 278, 315n8, 316n19; Mouradchai visit of, 23–24, 266 Gregory the Chainbearer (Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem), 151–52 Gregory the Illuminator, Saint, 22 Guild and School of Handicraft, East London, 158, 161 Gulbenkian, Calouste, 211–12 Gürsoy, Mehmet, 285 Haganah, 224, 232, 236, 241, 242 Hagop (Jerusalem peanut vendor), 172 Hamdi Bey, Osman, 61–63, 321n32, 324n5, 351n8 Hamidian massacres (1894–96), 38–39 Hamidiye cavalry, 38 Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church, Brooklyn, 285–86, 287, 288 Haram ash-Sharif, Jerusalem, 172–73, 181, 185–86: Ashbee’s report and, 160; D.O.’s workshop in, 162, 163, 165–68, 172–73; harmful rumors about, 185; Kemalettin and, 155–56; kiln in, 162, 163, 165, 168, 173; museum in, 197; Richmond and, 157, 160–65, 161; storerooms in, 161–62. See also Aqsa Mosque; Dome of the Rock Harrison, Austen St. Barbe, 197–98, 200, 202, 208, 217, 219, 220, 222 Haydarpasha Railway Terminal, 72, 102, 103, 118, 213

375

Hejaz, 108 Heliopolis, Egypt, 246–47, 349n52 Highland Park, NJ, 1, 3–4 Hilmi, Mehmet, 60–61, 64 Hitler, Adolf, 223, 226 Hnazant (orphan adopted into Ohannessian household), 192, 198, 204, 215 Hodjazad family, 109 Hofmann, Maria, 117, 332n64 Holliday, Clifford, 197–98, 208–9 Holocaust, 4–6, 230, 232: Armenian use of term, 280 Holy Archangel Church, Jerusalem, 151 Holy Translators, Armenian, 32 Holy Translators (Sourp Tarkmanchats) School, Jerusalem, 211–12 Holy Trinity Armenian Orthodox Church. See Sourp Yerrortutyun Armenian Orthodox Church Houris, Spyro G., 202–4, 217 Hunchak Party, 37, 38 Hunter-Watson, Grace, 209 Husayn ibn ‘Ali (Sharif of Mecca), 144, 154, 337n12 Husayni, Hussein (Mayor of Jerusalem), 152, 175 Hussayni, Rabba, 189 Husseini, Hajj Amin (Jerusalem Grand Mufti), 181 Ibrahim Bey Imaret, Karaman, 71, 324n5, 351n8 Ilhami School of Crafts, Cairo, 91 Ilija, thermal baths of, 95–96 Imperial Ottoman Bank, 72, 77: Dashnag occupation of, 39 Industrial Schools, Ottoman, 139: in Aleppo, 139–40, 141; in Konya, 66, 83, 268 Interior Ministry. See Ministry of the Interior, Ottoman Irgun, 224, 232–33, 237 Islahiye deportee camp, 133 Islam: forced conversions to, 23–24, 39, 124–27, 262, 279–80; role of, in Ottoman government, 79, 104. See also Muslims

376

INDEX

Ismailia, 251–52 Ispenian, Boghos, 92 Israel, Ben-Gurion’s Declaration of, 239 Israelian, Guregh, 206 Italo-Turkish War (1911), 92 Iznik ceramics, 49; decline of, 59, 166

Jones, Charles F., 249, 253, 350n75 Jones, Owen, 63 Jordan: Development Bank of, 251, 254; Jerusalem Old City governed by, 246; Mandatory Transjordan, 200, 208, 232 Julfa, 108

Jacobs, Michael, 265 Jaffa: British attacks on, 224; riots in, 178–79, 180 Jasmund, August, 72 Jericho, 207 Jerusalem, 7, 34, 154–87, 189–227: Arabs in, 154; Armenian refugees in, 149–50, 155, 172, 179–80, 183–84, 199, 237, 240–41; British occupation of, 143–46, 152, 154–87, 189–90; ceramics workshops, 206, 285; D.O. in, 147, 149–87, 189–227; earthquake in, 208; historic Armenian presence in, 151–52, 243–46; historic conquests of, 151; looting in, 242; pilgrimage to, 134, 147, 163, 182; rebuilding of, 155–68, 174, 190, 196; refugees in, 149–51; street names and tiles, 178, 206; symbolic significance of, 144; tile industry in, 168; UN administration of, 233; war in Palestine and, 175, 212, 223–24, 232–41 Jerusalem Electric Company, 193, 215, 238 Jerusalem Girls’ College, Rehavia, 212, 215, 229, 233 Jerusalem Looms, 175 Jerusalem Town Planning Commission, 175–77: McLean’s town plans and, 158, 160 Jews: Ashbee’s idealism and, 177; Balfour Declaration and, 154, 175, 181, 185; British Mandate restrictions on, 223; in flight from European anti-Semitism, 199, 223, 232; Herbert Samuel and, 178–79; Jaffa riots and, 178–79; Jerusalem holy sites for, 145; M.S. St. Louis and, 6; Nebi Musa uprising and, 175; and unrest in Palestine, 223–24, 232–41; Young Turks and, 108. See also Holocaust; Israel; Zionism Joaillier, Policarpe, 52

Kaghagatsi (native Armenians of Palestine), 172 Kalinbajakian, Hagop, 274 Kandoian, Nancy, 266 Kaolin clay, 58, 165–66, 196, 213, 271 Karakashian, Mgrditch, 170, 183, 214 Karakashian Jerusalem Pottery, 285 Karamanids, 56 Karatay Madrassa, Konya, 66, 82, 85, 268 Kasciac, Antonio, 91 Katma deportee camp, 135–36 Kellicyan, Kapriel, 213 Kemal, Mustafa, 191, 272, 343n4 Kemal Bey (Kutahya District Secretary), 121, 122, 125–26, 330n20 Kemalettin, Mimar, 74, 94, 169: Dome of the Rock and, 155–56, 162, 185–86; as foil to D.O. in Jerusalem, 185–86; Kutahya ceramics used by, 72–74, 81–82, 86, 94, 99, 102, 155, 162, 299–301; Ottoman revivalist architecture and, 72–74, 102, restorations executed by, 81–82, 86, 99, 162 Khans (Hans), 25, 28 Khoshnudiye quarter in Eskishehir, 27–28, 272, 317n9 Khosk gab (“giving of the word”), 17, 45 King David Hotel bombing, 232 Kirka, 67 Komitas Vartabed. See Gomidas Vartabed Konya, 84, 222: Armenian deportees in, 118, 120–22, 129, 131; author’s trip to, 265, 268–69; Balkan immigrants in 105; D.O.’s trips to, 83–86; 164; Emin’s Medal of Industry and, 66; Karatay Madrassa tile work in, 66, 82, Kutahya çiniçis’ restorations in, 83–84, 209 Konya Industrial School, 66, 83, 268 Kouymjian, Dickran, 264–65 Kurds: Adana massacres and, 80; in Amanus range, 133; Armenian repression

INDEX

under, 32–33, 36, 38–39; as chetes, 113; Faik Ali Bey and, 100; in Great War, 112; in Hamidiye cavalry, 38, 113; Young Turks and, 108 Kushakdjian, Torkom, 213 Kutahya: Armenian deportees in, 119–27; Armenian population in, 58; Armenian school in, 268, 271; Armenian trades in, 58, 76–77, 119–27, 169, 271–72, 324n15; author’s visit to, 269, 271; carpet trade in, 58; cityscape of, 56; D.O.’s early years in, 57; D.O.’s return to, 169–71; history of, 55–60, 61; mosque restoration projects in, 85–86, 88; physical environment of, 54, 55, 95; political events in, 80; Turkish language in, 57–58 Kutahya ceramics: Armenian dominance in, 60; clays and other minerals used in, 58, 165–66; coffee cups and, 59; collective labor agreements in, 60; decline of, 60, 171; Emin’s position in, 53; European competition for, 60, 63–64; forms used in, 59; geographic reach of, 60, 83; Iznik’s decline and, 59–60; in Jerusalem, 59, 63, 83, 152, 325n29; nineteenth-century revival of, 61–64; rise of, 58–60; Savafid Persian influence in, 59–60; in St. James Cathedral, Jerusalem, 59–60, 152; techniques used in, 53, 67, 68; trade directory listing of, 87; workshops, 53–54, 58–61, 63–64, 66–68, 88, 102, 169, 171, 284–85, 322n46, 323n66, 341n92. See also Emin, Mehmet; Minassian brothers; Société Ottomane de Faïence Lachenal, Edmond, 62 Laïdi-Hanieh, Adila, 282–83 Languages: Armenian, 31–32, 110, 171; Classical Armenian (grabar), 25, 31; D.O.’s knowledge of, 42, 51, 52, 67, 95, 139, 171, 182, 214; French, 41–42; in Kutahya, 57–58; in Mouradchai, 316n19; Turkish, 42, 57–58, 109, 121 Launay, Victor Marie de, 322n48 Lauritzen, Peter, 282

377

Lawrence, T. E., 160 League of Nations, 184–85, 200 Leighton, Frederick, Lord, 63, 94 Lemkin, Raphael, 280 Lepejian, Vic, 285 Liberal Union Party, 97 Liberty of London, 63 Lloyd’s travel agency, 217 Lofranco, Albert, 103 Londonderry, Edith Vane-TempestStewart, Marchioness of, 223, 281 Loris-Melikov, Mikhail, 36 Le Macassar, Corbie, France, 284 MacDonald, Ramsey, 223 Mahmud, Hajj, 203 Maillard, Eugène, 322n48 Mamluks, 32, 151: design legacy of, 91, 157, 203, 244 Mandatory Palestine, 10, 13, 184–85, 187, 190, 200, 223–26, 232–39 Manial Palace, Cairo, 92, 159, 210, 238 Markarian, Ara, 260 Markarian, Armenag (Armen) (son of Yervant), 12–13, 242, 260 Markarian, Armenag (father of Yervant), 88, 231 Markarian, Gladys, 230–31 Markarian, Jean, 12–13 Markarian, Mary. See Ohannessian Markarian, Mary Markarian, Stepan, 76, 170, 192, 215 Markarian Vartanian, Takouhi (niece), 76, 170, 192, 212 Markarian, Tefar (née Shahbazian), 28, 76 Markarian, Vatche, 260 Markarian, Yervant, American immigration of, 260: in Beirut, 254–55, 257; courtship and marriage of, 230–33; medical career of, 254, 255, 260 Marx, Karl, 37 Mary, Princess, 182–83 Mashtots, Mesrob, 9, 31–32 Masters of Tabriz, 59, 86, 108, 351n8 Maxwell, Johanne, 249 Mayer, Louis B., 220 McLean, William, 157–60 Medz Yeghern (Great Crime), 280, 352n23;

378

INDEX

See also Armenian Genocide: Armenian terminology for Meerschaum, 29–30, 30, 58, 273, 317n8 Meissen ware, 59 Meskene: Armenian deaths in, 140–41, 335n34; Ohannessians’ deportation to, 141–43 Mesrobian School, Kutahya, 121 Mevlevihane, Konya, Green Dome of, 83–85 84, 269, 325n31, 326n33, 325n32 Mevlevis: history of, 85; sema ceremony of, 85, 268; Sultan Mehmet V Reshad as, 120, 325n32 Migrations, of Muslims, 52–53, 52, 97, 105 Mihrimah Sultan, 50 Military Administration, Jerusalem, 152– 58, 159–60, 168, 175 Miller, J. Lane and Madeleine S., 286–88 Minas, Garabed, 60, 64, 325n30: studio and production of, 53–54, 267 Minassian brothers (Harutyun and Garabed), 64, 66, 91: Athens relocation of, 169, 171; Kemalettin and, 82; in partnership with D.O., 69–70, 71, 85, 86, 87, 88, 210; studio and production of, 53–54, 60 Ministry of Endowments’ Scientific Commission for Repairs and Construction, 81, 94, 162 Ministry of Forests, Mines, and Agriculture, 22, 67 Ministry of the Interior, Ottoman, 100; census maps and, 116; Kutahya deportations and, 119; Mufit’s denuciate of D.O. to, 142; muhajirs and, 105; population exchange scheme of, 107; Security Directorate of, 100, 110, 113; Talaat Pasha and, 99, 114, 116, 122, 141, 142–43 Ministry of Trade and Public Works, Ottoman, 139, 323n53 Ministry of War, Ottoman, 112–13 Minton factory, 62 Missionaries: American Protestant, 23–24, 38, 133–34, 266–67, 278; as eyewitnesses and victims of Ottoman atrocities, 11, 33, 38–39, 112, 119, 120–21, 133, 141, 319n32, 334n6, 334n20, 336n3; French

Augustinian, 25–26, 41; German, 11, 117, 133, 141, 332n64 Mneimneh, Suheil, 282 Montani, Pietro, 322n48 Montenegro, 36, 97 Morgenthau, Henry, 99, 119–21, 331n56, 346n56 Morris, William, 63, 158 Moughalian, Arto, 1–6, 260 Moughalian, David, 260, 262, 289 Moughalian, Pheme (née Ohannessian). See Ohannessian Moughalian, Fimi Moughalian, Sato, American immigration of, 1, 260 Mount Stewart House, County Down, Northern Ireland, 223, 281–82 Mouradchai (Muratça), 15–26: agriculture and sericulture in, 16–17, 19–22, 116–18, 316n11; alternate names for, 266; Armenian dialect in, 316n19; artisanal trades in, 21, 22; author’s trip to, 263, 265–67, 273–78; districts in 16, 267, 270; D.O.’s attachment to, 40–41, 275; education and literacy in, 23–25; exiles’ attempted return to, 273–75; general deportation from, 117–19; Ottoman government and, 22–23, 24, 117, 316n17; population of, 267, 270, 315n5, 315n8, 352n16; religious life in, 19, 22; social life of, 22–23; Mudros Armistice (1918), 144, 280 Mufit, Ahmed, 100, 169, 328n76: D.O.’s denunciation by, 142 Muhammad, Prophet, 145, 151 Muhtar, Ahmet. See Ohannessian, David— life: forced conversion and aftermath of Murad I, Sultan, 56 Murad V, Sultan, 35 Muratça. See Mouradchai. Muslims: in Anatolia, 33; in Armenia, 37–39, 80; Christians’ relations with, 36, 105, 107; in the Great War, 104; in migration to Constantinople, 52–53, 52, 97, 105; in Palestine, 181; settlement of, 105, 107, 118. See also Islam al-Nahhas, Mustafa, 250, 253 Nalbandian, Kevork, 200

INDEX

Nashashibi, Issaf, 203 Nashashibi family, 189 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 1 National Constitution and Assembly, Armenian, 35, 61 Nationalism: and anti-Christian sentiment, 107, 109; and artistic culture, 88; Egyptian, 1, 252. See also Arab nationalism; Architecture: Ottoman revivalist; Armenian nationalism, Turkism, National Reconstitution, Armenian, 280, 352n21 National Socialist Party (Nazi), 223, 232, 280 Nazif, Suleyman, 100, 109, 330n20, 335n38 Near East Relief, 336n3: Armenian refugees aided by, 150, 179, 280; ceramics marketed by, 182; orphan apprentices placed with D.O. by, 172, 173, 182–84, 182; refugees evacuated by, 179, 183 Nebi Musa uprising, 175, 178 Nestorians, 112 New Julfa, 108 New Zealand, Anzac battalions of, 113, 114 Nicaea, 49. See also Iznik Night and Fog (film), 4 Nourijanian, Sarkis, 170 Nourijanian, Takouhitza, 170 Nubar, Boghos, 246 Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), 155–56. See also Military Administration, Jerusalem Ohannessian, Alice, 259 Ohannessian, Anahid, 259 Ohannessian, Ani, 259 Ohannessian, Ardavast, 259 Ohannessian, David (Tavit)—architectural tile installations, 299–305: American Colony, 189, 190; Blotière residence, 201–2, 283–84; boat landings, Constantinople, 102, 109, 203; British and Foreign Bible Society building, 209; Cairo projects, 91–92; as characteristic features of Constantinople and Jerusalem, 190, 267; Citadel Gardens bench, 175, 176; cuerda seca technique in, 86, 88, 222; Dabbagh

379

Mosque, Beirut, 217, 218, 282–83; Dar el Muallimin School and Mosque, Constantinople, 102; Dome of the Rock, 147, 161–68, 172–73, 181–82, 185–87, 208; Episcopal Methodist Church altar, 285–86, 287, 288; expertise gained in, 82–83; geographic range of, 12, 82, 85–86, 91, 299–305; Government House, Jerusalem, 208; Government House, Kutahya, 69–72; Great Mosque, Mecca, 82; Green Dome, Konya, 83; Green Mosque and royal shrines, Brussa, 82, 85–86; with Kemalettin, 81–82, 94, 99, 102, 104, 155, 185–86; Manial Palace, 91– 92, 210; Mount Stewart House Spanish Gardens, 223, 281–82; Old City street name tiles, Jerusalem, 178; and Ottoman revivalist (First National) style, 73–74, 88, 267; Palestine (Rockefeller) Archaeological Museum, 220, 222, 225; Palestine Pavilion, Paris Colonial Exhibition (1931), 213–14; Post Office, Sirkeci, 74, 203, 209, 345n44; Sledmere House, 95, 97–98, 101–3, 145, 263–64; St. Andrew’s Scottish Memorial Church, 209; St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, 206; St. John Ophthalmic Hospital, 209; St. Nicholas Convent, Jaffa, 224; St. Saviour Church, Jerusalem, 210–11, 211; Sultan Mehmet V Reshad Shrine, 102, 109; Sultan Selim’s Mosque, Damascus, 82; Turkish nationalism and, 81–82; with Vedat Tek, 74, 102; Villa Gelat, 203; Villa Harun ar-Rashid, 203–4 Ohannessian, David (Tavit)—ceramic art and technique, 182, 184, 196, 201, 226: Anatolian clays and other minerals and, 58, 61, 67, 68, 82, 165–66; archived documentation of, 12–13, 259; Armenian orphans trained in, 172–74, 182, 182–84, 184, 187, 207, 215; author’s first encounters with, 2, 11, 263–64; D.O.’s first exposures to, 49–51; D.O.’s perfectionism in, 82–83, 95, 99–100, 180, 202, 215, 226, 232; in Kutahya tradition, 53– 55, 60, 66–69; restorations and expertise gained in, 81–83, 85–86, 88, 99–100,

380

INDEX

146–47, 162, 165; stencil patterns and, 53, 195, 202, 258, 259 ; and struggle to establish Jerusalem ceramic art, 165–67, 171–73, 174, 196–97, 213, 307–12; Young Turk revolution and, 79 Ohannessian, David (Tavit)—workshops and commerce: apprentices in, 172–74, 182, 183, 184, 194–95, 200, 232; contracts and fees for, 101, 173, 345n46; D.O.’s professional strengths and, 69, 99–100; Great Depression and, 217; in Haram ash-Sharif, 162, 163, 165–68, 172–73; international distribution of, 190, 200, 217, 220, 222–23, 226–27, 326n42; Jerusalem Via Dolorosa workshop of (see Dome of the Rock Tiles); Kutahya letterhead of, 70; Kutahya workshop of (see Société Ottomane de Faïence); planned Cairo workshop of, 238, 250; planned second Jerusalem workshop of, 250, 251, 254; promotional materials for, 179, 196, 214, 217 Ohannessian, David (Tavit)—life, 194, 205, 231, 256: in Aleppo, 136–39, 143, 147; Armenian refugees sheltered by, 119–20, 224; arrests and death sentence of, 123 140, 142; author’s research on, 263–89; in Beirut, 254–58; in Cairo, 91–92, 238, 241, 242–45, 247; childhood and youth of, 15, 19–21, 24–26, 32, 40–46; Christianity of, 19, 22, 57, 138; in Constantinople, 47–54; death of, 257–58; deportations of, 126–47, 280, 333n93, 334n14; domestic life of, 75, 77, 99, 100, 104, 204–5, 207–8; education of, 25–26, 40–42; in egg trade, 43–45, 47–48; as father, 81, 88, 90, 104, 172, 198, 206, 211; flaws in writings about, 10, 315n3; forced conversion and aftermath of 124–27, 138, 142, 262, 279–80; as head of family, 44, 91, 193; illnesses of, 134, 136, 138, 207, 227, 229, 232; in Jerusalem, 147, 149–87, 189–227; languages spoken by, 42, 51, 52, 67, 95, 139, 171, 182, 214; love of music and, 10, 31, 90, 207; in Meskene, 140–43; name changes of, 15, 26, 127, 142, 171; paternal style of, 98,

100, 204–6, 225–26, 232; personality of, 42, 44–45, 52, 77, 140, 225; photography and, 44, 52; physical appearance of, 52; as railroad worker, 143, 334n14; stateless status of, 248, 254; Sykes’s intervention and, 147; Victoria courted by, 45–46, 48–49, 54–55, 67, 70; wedding of, 75–76 Ohannessian, David (Tavit)—International expositions and trade fairs: British Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924–25), 196, 197, 200; Brussa Trade Fair (1909, 1910) 85, 86, 88; Century of Progress International Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair, 1933), 219–20, 220; Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925), 200–201, 284; Paris Colonial Exhibition (1931), 213–14 Ohannessian, Donara (Donna), 259 Ohannessian, Garo (Garbis): birth of, 211; death of, 261; D.O.’s death and, 257–58; education of, 230; as journalist, 255, marriage and immigration of, 259, 260; as refugee in Cairo, 242, 246, 248; as refugee in Damascus, 238, 242; war in Palestine and, 236, 242 Ohannessian, Griselda (née Jackson), 259, 260 Ohannessian, Lucy, 259 Ohannessian, Margit (Mara) (née Palti), 245, 245, 259 Ohannessian, Mary (daughter of Garo), 259 Ohannessian, Mary (née Burns): engagement and wedding of, 234, 235; postwar years of, 247, 251, 259; during war in Palestine, 236, 238–39, 242–47; Ohannessian, Ohannes: birth and childhood of, 104, 170, 194, 205; deportations of, 127–37, 140–43; education of, 215; as manager of D.O.’s studio, 215, 229, 232; marriage of; 245, 245; as protector of younger siblings, 224; “repatriation” to Armenia of, 234, 259 Ohannessian, Sirarpi, 170, 231, 238, 246, 248: American immigration of, 259–60;

INDEX

birth and Kutahya childhood of, 90, 91, 96, 98, 100, 271; career of 230, 236, 238, 247–48, 259–60, 261; deportations of, 127–37, 140–43; in D.O.’s studio, 182, 215; formal education of, 171, 212, 215, 254, 259; as historian of D.O., 12, 254– 55, 259, 262, 263–64, 282, 285; Jerusalem girlhood of, 152, 181, 194, 205; stateless status of, 250, 254, 259, war in Palestine and, 236, 238, 242 Ohannessian, Sona, 259, 261 Ohannessian, Vahé (Khatchig Vahé), 152, 170, 194, 205: birth of, 98; ceramics expertise of, 215, 221; at Chicago World’s Fair, 219–20, 220; childhood spells of, 100; death of, 261; deportations of, 127–37, 140–43; engagement and wedding of, 234, 235; as manager of D.O.’s studio, 215, 229, 232; postwar years of, 247, 251, 259; during war in Palestine, 236, 238–39, 242–47, 348n32 Ohannessian, Victoria (née Shahbazian), 74, 194, 204: American immigration of, 259; Armenian language readopted by 171; Armenian refugees sheltered by, 119–20; artistic skills of, 41, 220; as assistant in D.O’s trade, 77, 215, 220; in Beirut, 254–58; birth and childhood of, 29, 41, 45; childbirths of, 90, 98, 104, 172, 198, 206, 211; death of, 262; deportations of, 127–47,140–43, 280, 333n93; devout Christianity of, 76, 100, 134–35, 138, 147, 149; D.O.’s arrest and, 123; domestic life of, 193, 204–5, 215, 255, 257–58; education of, 41; first betrothal of, 45–46, 54; in flight from Palestine, 238–39, 242; as household manager, 41, 75, 99, 193, 204, 215; miscarriage of, 81, 88; murder threat against, 124, 126; physical appearance of, 77; relationship with D.O. and, 45–46, 54–55, 67, 70, 75–76, 257–58; in return to Eskishehir, 170; sister’s death and, 76, 170; stateless status of, 248, 254; vulnerable health of, 207, 223 Ohannessian Donabedian, Hermine, 231: American immigration of, 259; in Bei-

381

rut, 254–55; birth and childhood of, 198, 204, 205, 216; courtship and marriage of, 255, 257; as designer in D.O.’s studio, 227; education of, 230, 235; as family historian, 262; illnesses of, 223, 225–26; MI5 investigation of, 247; stateless status of, 247, 259 Ohannessian Markarian, Mary: American immigration of, 260; in Beirut, 242, 254, 257; birth and childhood of, 172, 194, 205; courtship and marriage of, 230–32, 231; in Damascus, 239, 242; as family historian, 262; typhoid and, 225–26 Ohannessian Moughalian, Fimi (Pheme), 1–11, 216, 231, 249: American immigration of, 1–2, 260; author’s knowledge of D.O. and, 2–3,9–10, 262–63; birth of, 206; at British Council Library, Cairo, 248–5, 253–54; Cairo fires and, 252–54; D.O.’s death and, 257–58; education of, 229, 249, 250, 254; as family historian and, 216, 229, 261–63; illnesses of, 225–26, 261–62; as Palestinian refugee, 236–37, 241–43, 246, 248; physical appearance of, 5, 230, 261; stateless status of, 242, 254; Tekeyan’s correspondence with, 230; violence in Jerusalem and, 223–24, 232–33 Olçar, Nida, 269, 285 Olçar, Sitki, 269, 285 Omar ibn el Khattab (Caliph of Jerusalem), 151 Operation Polly, 233 Orientalism in design, 62–64, 94 Ormsby-Gore, William, 145–46 Orphans, Armenian: adopted by Jerusalem families, 172, 184; in Aleppo, 137; in apprenticeships with D.O., 173, 182, 182–84, 184; Garabed Shahbazian as, 29; Gomidas as, 89; in Jerusalem, 150, 173, 184, 184, 199, 215, 264; Mouradchai deportation and, 117, 332n64; in Ohannessian household, 170, 192, 198, 204, 215; Schneller’s Syrian Orphanage and School, 177, 212, 215, 339n49. See also Araradian Orphanage of Sourp Hagop; Near East Relief

382

INDEX

Orthodox Christianity, early adopters of, 33 Osman, Kara, 57 Ottoman Bank, 72, 77: Dashnag occupation of, 39 Ottoman Empire, 32–39: Armenians in, 15– 26, 32–33, 35–39, 61, 78, 105–27; artistic culture of, 61–63, 99; dissolution of, 99, 106–7; foreign debt of, 34–35, 72; in the Great War, 103–4, 110–13; immigration encouraged by, 52–53; Kutahya in, 56; loyalty valued by, 37–38, 78; rebellions in, 77–81, 97 Ottoman revivalist (First Nationalist) architecture, 139, 186: emergence of, 62–64, 73–74, 81, 82; Kutahya tiles used in, 73–74, 88; role of Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture in, 63. See also Kemalettin, Ahmet; Vedat Tek, Mehmet Ottoman Imperial Museum, 72 Oushak carpets, 21, 273 Palestine, 108: Arab-Jewish violence and, 175, 180–81, 212; Armenian refugees in, 199; Balfour Declaration and 154, 175, 181, 185; under British administration, 180–81, 184–85, 187, 223–26, 232–39; earthquake (1927) in, 208; historic Armenian presence in, 151; indigenous architectural style in, 196; Jewish migration to, 223, 232; natural resources of, 196; partition of, 233–35; refugees from, 236–37; in Second World War, 226; in War (1947–49), 175, 178–79, 181, 212, 223–24, 232–41; Palestine Archaeological Museum, 217, 219, 220, 222, 225 Palestine Post (newspaper), 226–27, 236 Palestine Pottery workshop, 183 Pan-Turanism, 109 Paris Colonial Exhibition (1931), 213–14 Parliament, 35, 78 Parvillée, Léon, 61, 72 Patkus, Beth, 286 Penrose, Stephen, 254

Pera district, Constantinople, 51–52 Perspectives in Music and Art (performance series), 263 Petassis, Nikephoros, 204 Photography, Ottoman, 44, 52, 112, 117; Armenian role in, 44 Picnics, 76–77, 81, 205 Plumer, Herbert, 200 Police, 113–14, 119–20, 123–24, 131, 133, 135, 136, 138, 140, 142 Pollack, Cora, 253 Port Said, 199 Post, Wilfred McIlvane, 119–21 Post Office, Sirkeci, 74, 203, 209, 345n44 Pro-Jerusalem Society, 172–74, 179, 186–87, 189, 201: Ashbee’s initiatives for, 160–61, 177–78; disbandment of, 206–7; D.O.’s proposal to, 167–68, 340n78; mission of, 159–60; new departments separated from, 175–77; School of Ceramics of, 160–61, 168, 173, 174, 195; Storrs and, 159–60, 206–7 Prussia, 36 Public Works Department (Mandatory Palestine), 196–97, 217 Qubbat al-Sakhra, 163. See also Dome of the Rock Railroads: in Armenian deportations, 127, 129–31; Armenian workers in, 132–33; construction of 24, 31, 41, 118, 129–30, 317n12. See also Bagdadbahn Ramleh, 207 Rand, Sally, 220 Ras Tafari Makonnen, Crown Prince (later Haile Selassie), 199, 344n22 Red Cross and Red Crescent, 150, 179, 192, 237–39, 251, 280 Régie des Tabacs, 77 Republic of Armenia (1918–20), 150, 179– 80, 191. See also Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia Reshad, Sultan Mehmed V, 80, 83, 104, 324n8, 328n88: as Mevlevi, 120, 325n32; shrine of, 102, 109

INDEX

Richmond, Ernest T., 147, 157, 159–68, 172–73, 177, 181, 185–87, 196–97, 220 Richmond, William Blake, 161 Ritter, Otto, 72 Rockefeller, John D., 217. See also Palestine Archaeological Museum. Rose, John Melkon, 237, 348n32 Rose Chamber Edict (1839), 23 Rumania, 36 Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad (Mevlana), 83–85, 268 Russian Empire: Armenian Republic and, 180; Armenians and, 33, 37–38, 111–12; in the Great War, 104, 110–11; Orthodox church in, 34; and Ottoman Empire, 33–34, 36; as protector of Armenians. See also Soviet Union Russian Orthodox Church, Russian monarchy and, 34 Russian–Turkish War (1768–74), 34 Russian–Turkish War (1877–78), 36, 72 Rustem Pasha, 50, 59 Rustem Pasha Mosque, 50–52, 59: as artistic influence on D.O., 51, 54, 98, 162, 202, 208, 210, 262; Mimar Sinan and, 61; tilework in, 51–52 Şahin, Ahmed, 284, 285 Said Pasha (Governor of Diyarbekir), 100 Saşiyan, Boghos, 322n48 Şevki, Mehmed, 322n48 Samuel, Herbert, 175, 178–79, 189, 200 Sandrouni brothers (Garo, George, and Harry), 285 Sardinia, Crimean War and, 34 Sarikamish battle, 111–12 Sarkissian, Artin. See Avedian, Artin Sarkissian Sarkissian, Mariam (née Avedian), 116 Sarkissian, Paragham, 116–18, 191 Saroyan, William, 9 Sasun, Hamidian massacres in, 38–39 Sayeed, Dr. Salibah, 225 Schneller’s Syrian Orphanage and School, 177, 212, 215, 339n49 School of Ceramics, Pro-Jerusalem Society, 160–61, 168, 173, 174, 195

383

Schools of Fine Arts, Ottoman Imperial, 74: as elite institutions, 139; Osman Hamdi Bey and, 324n9 Sébah, Jean Pascal, 52 Second World War. See World War II Selim I, Sultan, 59, 151, 244 Seljuk architecture, Konya, 66, 209, 222 Seljuks, 55, 58 Semiramis Hotel, Jerusalem, 235 Serbia, 36, 97, 102–3 Seringiulian, Vartges, 114 Shahbazian, Garabed, 28–32, 211: as adopted orphan, 29; death of, 170; in meerschaum trade, 29–30, 49; as mentor to D.O., 30, 31–32, 41, 49; Victoria’s betrothals and, 45–46, 54–55; Victoria’s upbringing and, 41, 48 Shahbazian, Khatchig, 28, 46, 48–49, 77 Shahbazian, Marik (née Geuzumian), 28–29, 41, 45–46, 170; as midwife to Victoria, 81 Shahbazian, Tefar. See Markarian, Tefar Shahbazian, Victoria. See Ohannessian, Victoria Shehzade Mustafa Tomb, 71, 98, 101, 210. See also Green Mosque and royal shrines Sheikh ul-Islam, 181: Sultan Mehmet V Reshad as, 104 Shnorhali, Nerses, 9 Silkworms and sericulture, 16, 20, 21–22, 108, 139 Simon, Joshua, 243 Şimşekler, Nuri, 269 Sinan, Mimar, 61, 72 Sion (journal), 212 Sirkeci Post Office, 74, 203, 209, 345n44 Sledmere House, 93–98, 101–3: author’s visit to, 263–64; British officers see D.O.’s tiles in, 145 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 285 Smyrna, 23, 32, 55, 58, 168: catastrophe in, 191–92; D.O.’s egg trade and, 44–45 Société du Chemins de Fer d’Anatolie, 24 Société Ottomane de Faïence (D.O.’s Kuta-

384

INDEX

hya workshop), 109, 271: ceramic technique advanced in, 82–84, 99, 100; establishment of, 69–70; Kemalettin and, 81–82, 99, 102; letterhead of, 70; Manial Palace and, 91–92; restorations executed by, 82–88; Sykes’s Sledmere commission and, 91–95, 96–98, 101–3; tourist visits to, 67–68 Society of Ottoman Architects and Engineers, 81 Soghomonian, Soghomon. See Gomidas Vartabed Solan, Olivier de, 283–84 Sourp Asdvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God) Church, Constantinople, 151–52 Sourp Asdvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God) Church, Kutahya, 57–59, 90 Sourp Asdvadzadzin (Holy Mother of God) Church, Mouradchai, 22, 116 Sourp Hagop Convent and Cathedral. See St. James Convent and Cathedral, Jerusalem; Araradian Orphanage Sourp Sarkis Church, Kutahya, 58 Sourp Tarkmanchats School, Jerusalem, 211–12 Sourp Toros Church, Kutahya, 57, 58, 70, 76, 89, 90, 98, 104, 169, 272 Sourp Yerrortutyun (Holy Trinity) Church, Eskishehir, 29, 31, 75, 75, 272 South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum), 62 Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, 234 Soviet Union, 234. See also Russian Empire Spafford, Jacob, 189 Special Organization paramilitary units, 112–13 Squire, Robert “Chick,” 258 Stalin, Joseph, 234 Stamboul district, Constantinople, 47–48, 51, 52, 53, 267 St. Andrew’s Scottish Memorial Church, Jerusalem, 209, 243, 283 Starkey, James L., 225 State Security Directorate, Interior Ministry, 113 Stencil patterns, 195, 258: Harrison and, 202; technique for use of, 53

St. Gayantiants School, Jerusalem, 204, 211 St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, Jerusalem, 206 St. George’s Anglican School, Jerusalem, 204, 215, 230 St. Gregory the Illuminator Apostolic Church, Cairo, 247 St. James (Sourp Hagop) Convent and Cathedral, Jerusalem, 149–52, 150, 153, 180, 192, 198, 199, 206, 211, 231, 237, 240: Kutahya tiles in, 59–60, 152 St. John Ophthalmic Hospital, Jerusalem, 209 St. Nicholas Convent, Jaffa, 224 St. Nishan Church, Beirut, 258 St. Saviour, Jerusalem, 210–11, 211 St. Theodore Church, Jerusalem, 151 St. Therèse Church, Cairo, 247 Storrs, Ronald, 145, 147, 154–60, 165, 167, 172–73, 175, 177, 182–83, 189, 190, 195, 197–98, 202, 206–7 Sub-Directorate for Deportees, 133, 135, 334n17 Sublime Porte, 23, 34, 37, 97 Suleiman I (the Magnificent), Sultan, 33, 163, 186, 262: Rustem Pasha and, 50 Suleimanye Mosque, 59, 61 Sultan Selim Mosque, Damascus, 82 Sultan Suleiman Tomb, Constantinople, 65 Sultan Valide Mosque (Yeni Cami; New Mosque), 50: as artistic inspiration for D.O., 95, 97, 208, 209; tiles in, 49–52, 98; Supreme Muslim Council, Jerusalem, 181, 185, 342n114 Sykes, Christopher, 94 Sykes, Edith, 93, 94, 103, 165 Sykes, Mark, 92–98, 101–3, 143–47: in Aleppo reencounter with D.O., 147, 162: as British diplomat and MP, 92, 143–47; death of, 165; D.O. commissioned by, 95, 97–98, 101–3; Dome of the Rock restoration and, 145–46, 147, 157; Sledmere House and, 93–95, 96–97, 102, 210, 263–64 Sykes, Tatton, 92 Sykes-Picot Agreement, 143 Syria, 108 Syrian desert. See Deir Zor, 232

INDEX

Tabrizi tiles: on Dome of the Rock, 163–65, 196; Masters of Tabriz and, 59, 86, 108, 351n8; tile designs inspired by, 92; Talaat Pasha: anti-Armenian initiatives and, 107–8, 114–15; Armenian deportations and, 115–16, 122, 125; assassination of, 191; D.O.’s deportation and, 141–44; political rise of, 97, 99, 141 Tanrıöver, Hamdullah Suphi, 335n30: Turkish Hearths cultural association and, 140 Tanzimat reforms: failures of, 78; principles espoused in 23, 35 Tarsus, 28, 129, 131 Taurus Mountains: in Armenian Cilicia, 32, Armenian forced marches in, 129–32, 169 Tavshanli, 67 Taxes, Ottoman, 23, 99, 155, 316n21: cizye, 267, 271; crop tithes and, 23; Bulgarian revolt and, 35; Kutahya ceramics and, 88; military exemption (bedel), 108–9; Sasun massacres and, 38 Tchohadji (Çuhaçı) Han, 48, 320n2 Tehlirian, Soghomon, 191, 343n3 Tekeyan, Vahan, 230 Temporary Law of Deportation, 115–16 Terlemez, 67 Terlemezian, Panos, 96, 327n65 Tewfik, Muhammed Ali, 91–92, 159, 210, 238 Thaddeus (apostle), 22 Theodoros, Saint, 57 Thermal baths: of Eskishehir, 28; of Ilija, 95–96 Thomas Cooke travel agency, 217 Three Pashas, 97, 108. See also Djemal, Ahmed; Enver, Ismail; Talaat, Mehmed Tiled Kiosk (Çinili Kösk), Imperial Museum, Topkapi Palace, 200, 222, 324n5, 345n44, 351n8 Timur (Tamerlane), 56, 86, 108 Topkapi Palace, 200, 222, 324n5, 345n44, 351n8: D.O. tile designs inspired by, 98, 202 Torossian, Oseb, 117 Tourian, Yeghishe (Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem), 183, 199, 211–12

385

Tourism: in Constantinople, 47, 53, 69; in Jerusalem, 155, 173, 183, 195, 199, 207, 217; in Kutahya, 68; Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics, 180 Transjordan, Mandatory, 200, 208, 232: Palestinian refugees in, 236–37 The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 10–11 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji (1874), 34 Treaty of Paris (1856), 34–35 Treaty of San Stefano (1878), 36 Treaty of Sèvres (1920), 180 Trotter, Henry, 36 Turanism, 109 Turkish Hearths cultural association, 140 Turkish language, government requirements for, 42, 57–58, 109: in Kutahya, 57–58, 121 Turkism, 79, 82 Typhoid, 225 Typhus: in Great War, 111, 154, 203; D.O. struck by, 134, 136 Unionists. See Committee of Union and Progress United Nations (UN): International Children’s Emergency Fund of, 255; Palestine partition plan and, 233, 234–35; Relief and Works Agency of, 251; war in Palestine and 233–37, 241, 243 United States, relief efforts of, 150, 172, 173, 334n20. See also Near East Relief Usul-i Mimari-i Osmani. See Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture Vahan (D.O.’s assistant), 97 Vallaury, Alexandre, 72 Vank, Armenian. See St. James Convent and Cathedral, Jerusalem Vardaxis, Makarios, 170 Varjabedian, Nerses, 36 Vartanian, Krikor, 212, 215 Vasbouragan Orphanage, 184 Vedat Tek, Mehmet, 73–74, 186: family background of, 74, 324n8; Kutahya ceramics used by, 74, 102, 299–301; Ottoman revivalist style pioneered by, 74

386

INDEX

Vefik Pasha, Ahmed, 61–62 Veled Çelebi, Mehmet Baha’eddin (Mevlevi sheikh), 85, 164, 268 Vester, Frederick, 190 Vester family, 219 Victoria and Albert Museum, 62 Views of Paradise (Marie Balian exhibition), 285 Villa Gelat, Jerusalem, 203 Villa Harun ar-Rashid, Jerusalem, 203–4 Villejuif Psychiatric Hospital, 213–15 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 63 Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, 145: riots (1929) at, 212 Wakfs (Islamic Pious Endowments), 155: in Beirut, 217; in Cairo, 155; D.O.’s Dome of the Rock restoration and, 172–74, 185, 186, 343n126; in Palestine, 181; purview of, 155, 181 War Ministry. See Ministry of War, Ottoman Whiting, John D., 189–90 Wilhelm, Kaiser, 164 Winthrop, Nathaniel, 259 Women, Armenian: domestic traditions of, 15, 18, 42–43, 76, 77; occupations of, 20–21, 40, 44, 68, 75; sexual assaults and violence against, 11, 92, 112, 119–20, 124–25, 132, 146–47, 191, 279–80, 331n56 World Exposition (Vienna, 1873), 62 World’s Fair (Chicago, 1933–34). See Century of Progress International Exposition World War I. See Great War

World War II, 226, 230: Zionism after, 232 Wyatt, Samuel, 94 Wybo, Georges, 214 Yakub Bey II, 59 Yeni Cami. See Sultan Valide Mosque Yeşil (Green)Mosque, Kutahya, 69 Young Ottomans, 35, 61, 78 Young Turks, 169: anti-Armenian sentiments/actions of, 99, 106–9, 113–16, 120–21, 130–32, 140–41; fall of, 186; ideology of, 79; nationalism of, 79, 106, 109; Nazif and, 100, 109; political/governing actions of, 80, 97, 108, 113; revolution (1908) of, 78–81 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 234, 235 Zatikyan, Krikor, 183–84, 184, 185, 200 Zhogovourt (Armenian newspaper), 273–74 Zionism, 232, 239: Arab-Jewish violence and, 175, 180–81, 212; Balfour Declaration and, 154, 175, 181, 185; British government and, 143, 180–81, 232; Great War and, 143; immigration to Palestine and, 199, 212, 232; Irgun and, 224; United Nations and, 235 Ziya, Mehmet, 64 Zohrab, Krikor, 114–15 Zsolnay ceramics factory, 62 Zuwaar (Armenian refugee “guests” in Palestine), 149, 180, 237