**Description**: Remains of the Armenian St Asdvadzadzin Church in Arabkir with title text from A.Poladian’s Պատմութիւն Հայոց Արաբկիրի overlayed
**Location**: Arabgir, Turkiye 2024
**Source**: Vahe Boghosian

Imagine leaving behind the place you know and love, the place you are indigenous to, the place that is your identity. Imagine leaving behind your homeland, losing loved ones on the way and setting up a new life in a distant and foreign land. Imagine doing all this in an age before the ability to look at photos of this place on your phone, to receive news about this place via the internet or to call loved ones who still lived there. Imagine - a homeland lost.

Many Sudanese-Armenians trace their origins to Arabkir, a town near Malatya in what was then the Ottoman Empire (today Arabgir is in Turkiye). Living in Sudan refracted the Armenian experience in a unique way, giving rise to Sudanahye life and identity. To fully understand the history of the community, we must first explore their Armenian roots, the homeland they lost, and the reasons they migrated to Sudan.

Dr George (Kevork) Djerdjian was one of the early Sudanese-Armenians. His photo collection has preserved rare glimpses of Armenian life in Arabkir at the turn of the century. His grandson, George Jerjian, published his grandfather’s photos in ‘Daylight After a Century - Dr George Djerdjian’s Collection of Photographs of pre-1915 Ottoman Life in Eastern Anatolia (2015)’ and wrote the context to understand the settings these photos capture in the book ‘Arabkir - Homage to an Armenian Community (2014)’ which was co-authored posthumously with Antranik Poladian who wrote ‘Պատմութիւն Հայոց Արաբկիրի (1969)’ (History of Armenian Arabkir). Another excellent source on Arabkir is the Houshamadyan project which has compiled the work of these books, records and accounts of Arabkir Armenians to create a comprehensive resource on the town.

These sources allow us to illuminate Arabkir’s Armenian past and understand how natives of Arabkir would become Sudanahye. In this blog post we will weave the stories of a few Armenian Arabkir natives with other accounts of Arabkir to trace an Armenian journey from the Ottoman Empire to Sudan.

Quatrain by Varsen Oruncakciel about Arabkir (from Son Arabgirli - The Last Remaining Arapgirsi):

Օդդ սիրուն, Ջուրդ սիրուն, Դուն սիրուն

Beautiful is your air, your water and you.

Պէս պէս գոյնով ծաղիկներով դալարում

With flowers of many colors, flourishing.

Չէս դադարեր աշխատեր ես օրն ի բուն

You never stop working day and night.

Օդդ սիրուն, Ջուրդ սիրուն, Դուն սիրուն

Beautiful is your air, your water and you

The Arabkir of George Djerdjian’s time:

**Description:** The Djerdjian family drinking coffee, probably in their home’s courtyard. Second from left: Dr George Djerdjian
**Location:** Arabkir, Ottoman Empire
**Source:** Daylight After a Century - Dr George Djerdjian’s Collection of Photographs of pre-1915 Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia (2015)

Dr George Djerdjian was born in Arabkir in 1870. Nestled away in green mountains and near the banks of the Euphrates, Arabkir was a “picturesque city”, with hills that were “coerced by thick green trees”. Arabkir was called Arabraces by the Byzantines and was a land exchanged to the last Armenian King Senekerim in 1021 by Emperor Basil II who pressured Senekerim to bequeath his Kingdom to the Byzantines and move to the more western territories than known as Lesser Armenia. Arabkir has houses made of stone lining a slope to resemble an amphitheatre.

**Description:** St. Asdvadzadzin Church
**Location:** Arabkir, Ottoman Empire after 1907
**Source:** National Archives of Armenia, Yerevan, courtesy of Dirk Roodzant

Poladian describe this picturesque town in detail, the cohabitation of it and its surrounding villages by Armenians, Turks and Kurds with the only way to ‘differentiate an Armenian from a Turk was on Fridays and Sundays, when each went to their place of worship’. He describes the ‘mixture of markets, stores, houses, factories, gardens, parks, brooks, trees and flowers’. He also describes the rich culture of Arabkir’s Armenians ranging from henna for weddings, to ashughs (travelling bards) singing love songs in Armenian and Turkish, to its culinary traditions of dried fruits and wine. The town was ‘extremely culturally advanced’ and had a prominent Armenian population who were skilled in crafts, trade and business.

**Description:** George and Bargesht Djerdjian with their children Arsen and Lilly (she dies, aged two)
**Location:** Omdurman, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1913
**Source:** Daylight After a Century - Dr George Djerdjian’s Collection of Photographs of pre-1915 Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia (2015)

The winters were harsh in these mountains, but the Arabkir residents had developed a way of life to manage the metre of snow they received (now the snows in Arabkir are no more than 30-50cm significantly impacting the environment and ecology). The development of this town towards the end of the 19th century saw the construction of schools, churches and markets, but this development was shattered by the Hamidian Massacres of 1895. This event in Arabkir started on November 20th and saw fires burning all night in the Armenian district followed by 20 days of massacres.

Following this, the active life of jewelry makers, silk and cotton weavers, shoemakers and other craftsmen in Arabkir was hindered, life was hard and the orphan population was large leading to an orphanage being opened in 1898 with a correspondent noting that “the poor are in such desperate need”. Protestant Missionaries who had made nearby Kharpert their centre to spread evangelical Christianity supported Arabkir’s residents to re-establish their manusa (fabric) production businesses. The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) opened a branch in Arabkir in 1912 to support its populace but ‘not much was achieved’ on account of the difficult economic status of the local population.

There was already a tradition of young men leaving behind their hometown either to do manual labour (‘bandukht’) or for more lucrative work as a merchant usually relocating to bigger cities or abroad to work and send remittances back home to their families. Following the massacres, those seeking a way out of the difficult and opressed life in the Armenian highlands increased and Dr George Djerdjian was one of them. He attended Sanasarian College in Erzerum (Garin) and than studied in Europe and before returning in 1900 to teach in the college for seven years while spending his summers in Arabkir. As a chemist, photography was a keen hobby of his, and he photographed life in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the century. His collection of photos were uncovered through an incredible journey which is explored in more depth in ‘Daylight After a Century’ and a documentary about the photos made by his grandson, George Jerjian.

“This small piece of history – these century-old glass plates are a testament to Ottoman life lost in the mists of time. More impressively, it is nothing short of a miracle that these glass plates survived the past 100 years in exile.”

— George Jerjian

**Description:** George Djerdjian with his son, Edward
**Location:** Khartoum, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1954
**Source:** Daylight After a Century - Dr George Djerdjian’s Collection of Photographs of pre-1915 Ottoman life in Eastern Anatolia (2015)

In 1907 Dr George Djerdjian travelled to Alexandria, Egypt as he was offered a position as manager of the Sudan business of the Kurkjian Brothers, fellow Armenians from Arabkir. This was not an unfamiliar trend, many Armenians from Arabkir had moved to Egypt already and with Sudan being ruled initially by the Egyptian monarchy as Turco-Egyptian Sudan (1820-1885) or later as Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Sudan (1895-1956) many Armenians were encouraged by friends and relative to move to Egypt and Sudan. For example, so many Arabkir natives worked at the Water Company of Cairo that it was jokingly called “The Arabkir Company”. Other Armenians from Arabkir took their talents with smithing, tailoring or textiles to work in the markets of Khan Al Khalili in Cairo. While established in Egypt, the native Armenians of Arabkir did not forget their homeland, and would invest in the development of Arabkir such as during the costly renovation of the Saint Asdvadzadzin Church which was financed by wealthy Arabkir Armenians in Egypt.

Dr Djerdjian married Bargesht Kurkjian, daughter of his employer, and they had three children. Later, he started his own businesses in 1924: Geo. Djerdjian & Sons and Birmingham Stores. His financial success allowed him to send his children to Victoria College in Alexandria, a famed English school for colonial elites and rich residents of the Middle East. He wrote frequently for Arev, an Armenian daily newspaper in Cairo, and served on the board of trustees for Alexandria’s Boghosian School. He was also an active member of the Sudanese-Armenian community and a founding member and first chairman of the Sudan chapter of the AGBU. He died in 1947 in Alexandria at the age of 77.

Karnig Yegavian and the Genocide in Arabkir:

Dr. Djerdjian and many other Arabkir natives escaped the culmination of the massacres that took place in the crumbling Ottoman Empire, the Armenian Genocide. Despite the massacres and migrations before the genocide in the 1914, the Ottoman Census recorded 34,286 residents of Arabkir, with 9204 Armenians, 666 Armenian Protestants, 221 Armenian Catholics and 1 Greek Orthodox.

One of the witnesses to the Genocide in Arabkir was Karnig Yegavian who was in a deportation caravan from Arabkir to Malatya where he witnessed Catholic and Protestant Armenians be separated and saved due to the mediation of Europeans. What Karnig Yegavian saw during those dark days deeply shook him for the rest of his life. Karnig was saved by Nuri Effendi and hid away in neighbouring villages where they had been sheltering until ‘one spring morning in 1923 we left our home’, joining the other Arabkir natives in Sudan. Of his descendents in Sudan, Zvart Yegavian worked with the US Embassy in Khartoum. Tragically she and her sister Arpi Yegavian, whom she cared for, died from hunger in their home after the outbreak of the catastrophic war in Sudan in April 2023. In the chaos of the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Sudan, their status was unknown but due to the efforts of the Sudanese-Armenian community and the Armenian Patriarchate in Cairo, their status was discovered and their bodies were buried.

A handful of Armenians also survived ‘because the Kurdish chiefs needed smiths, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters and teachers’. One of these was the Orucackiel family whose story is detailed in the book Son Arabgirli - The Last Armenian of Arabgir. In this oral history transcribed into book format, Varsen Oruncakciel tells of homes being raided, Armenians being told to convert to Islam or die, men being interned and Kurdish families moving into the homes of deported Armenians. She remembers her father’s story of escape from the caravan:“they are going to kill us anyway, so why don’t I run down the mountain, it would be better to be shot in the back and become food for the birds”. Her family similarly emerged from hiding as the Ottoman Empire transitioned into the Turkish Republic, their family lived amongst the small remaining Armenian population in Arabkir following the Genocide before they eventually migrated to Istanbul for safety from discrimination and for economic opportunities.

Finding the lost homeland:

**Description:** Arabgir’s last Armenians (left) with Vahe Boghosian (centre right) with local historian Mustafa (right)
**Location:** Arabgir, Turkiye 2024
**Source:** Vahe Boghosian

I had the privilege of travelling to Arabkir and finding my ancestral homeland. I could hear the smile on my grandmother’s face when I called her and told her I had finally made it to the town her father was from. It is a reminder that history and an ancestral homeland that may seem so distant, was still in living memory existing in the tales my grandmother had heard from her father. It now became a reality for me as well as it entered my memory and I became the first of my family to return since my great-grandfather, Sarkis Tarpinian, had left Arabkir more than a century before. After a stint in Kodok, he established himself in Malakal (both now in South Sudan) in 1914 opening a shop called ‘General Stores’. As was customary for many men in the diaspora following the Genocide, he married an Armenian orphan from an orphanage in Lebanon who moved to Malakal before the family moved to Omdurman and Khartoum to join the community of Sudanahyes there. My grandmother said Sarkis had lost most of his family and Arabkir conjured painful memories for him - he left the green mountains of Arabkir for the river Nile and rarely talked about his lost homeland.

My trip to Arabkir was deeply emotional and was made vivid by these sources that helped me reimagine my great-grandfather’s lost homeland. Working against against the tide of the degradation of Anatolia’s multi-cultural historic heritage, local historian Mustafa preserves the Armenian heritage of Arabkir. He showed us around old Armenian homes and an Armenian cemetery that has been constructed with the support of the Arabkir Armenians Union formed by Armenians who had migrated to Istanbul after the Genocide, like Varsen.

The books were right, Arabkir was a town tucked away in the mountains near Malatya, its fruits (particularly dried apricots) were sweet, its waters fresh, its people friendly and intrigued when we told them I was Armenian. The emotions weighed heavily when Mustafa introduced us to the (actual) last Armenians living in Arabkir and in particular when they greeted me with ‘agheg es’ - a greeting I had heard only from Sudanese-Armenians previously in my life. With that greeting, I was able to draw a line between Armenian homeland of Arabkir, and the Sudanese Armenian homeland in Khartoum, a line that was fleshed out by what people like Dr George Djerdjian or Sarkis Tarpinian had seen, a line that had become filled with emotion due to a century of exile, and because I had to accept that they, by virtue of having survived, were the fortunate ones.

**Description:** The ruins of St Asdvadzadzin Church
**Location:** Arabgir, Turkiye 2024
**Source:** Vahe Boghosian

The final remnant of Armenian Arabkir we were to be shown was the Saint Asdvadzadzin Church or the remains of it. This church had been damaged many times before and repaired (one of which was the repairs funded by Arabkir Armenians of Egypt), but it was finally destroyed with explosives in 1957. This church was reported to have previously been able to hold up to four thousand people and was built on a rocky hill on the left bank of the river. This church had been brought to life in my imagination due to Dr Djerdjian’s photos which showed it in all its glory (see photos earlier in this post). The rocky hill overlooking the river was still there, but beyond a few rocks from the foundation, there was nothing.

Mustafa called me over to show me something, there was indeed one thing remaining. Behind some branches, there was a rock from the church with legible Armenian script being used in the foundations of a nearby home. My heart shuddered as I read and comprehended this symbol of Genocide - I stood in a spot that my great-grandfather had spent his Sundays gathering with other Armenians. Many of these people had perished in the Genocide, many others like him and Dr. Djerdjian had setup a new life in the diaspora, traversing the Nile to find safety and a means to start a new life. The church was now unidentifiable as a relic of Arabkir’s rich Armenian history and would have been almost impossible to find if it wasn’t for the help of Mustafa.

**Description:** A St Asdvadzadzin Church brick with a cross from 1891 being used in foundations for a nearby building
**Location:** Arabgir, Turkiye 2024
**Source:** Vahe Boghosian

Remembering Armenian Arabkir:

Armenian Arabkir had its people scattered, its churches reduced to rubble, its history all but erased. It is unidentifiable now unless one really knows what they are looking for. Yet, its echoes persist: in the stones that remain, in the photos that survived, in the stories passed down through generations.

For those like me, descendants of its exiled natives, the journey back is not just travelling to a geography but of reclaiming something intangible—a connection to a homeland we never knew yet somehow always belonged to. Whether through conversations in the Armenian Club in Khartoum, the memories inherited from its exiled descendants, or in retracing its lost buildings, Arabkir endures. It is preserved via collective efforts and it lives on via a fusion of identities - in this case by fusing Arabkir’s rich Armenian traditions with Sudan’s rich tapestry of cultures to form a new identity - to be Sudanahye.

Notes:

For full collection of photos of Arabkir from Dr. Djerdjian from the ‘Daylight After a Century - Dr George Djerdjian’s Collection of Photographs of pre-1915 Ottoman Life in Eastern Anatolia’ (2015) see Houshamadyan and watch the documentary by George Jerjian on the story of the photos. A big thanks to George Jerjian for his support for the project including permission to use his Grandfather’s photos, supporting in the writing of this blog post and for being a wealth of knowledge on all things Sudanese-Armenian.

Son Arabgirli - The Last Remaining Arapgirsi was published by Birzamanlar Yayincilik - Birzamanlar Yayıncılık is a publishing house that publishes on specific topics, which emphasizes the multicultural identity of Turkey from that day to the present, reveals our coexistence culture, and reinforces the visual materials displayed in the books published by this mission. They also have a permanent exhibition at their gallery in Istanbul which I highly recommend if one is in Istanbul.

Houshamadyan is an excellent resource for learning about Ottoman Armenian life, you can find out more about the project in this interview between Project Director Vahe Taschjian and historian Khachig Mouradian. This article details the history of the St Asdvadzadzin Church including its renovations and pillaging.

For more on the Hamidian Massacres see Ronald Grigor Suny, "The Hamidian Massacres, 1894–1897: Disinterring a Buried History," Études arméniennes contemporaines 11 (2018): 125–134; Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi, The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019; Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006)

For more on the Armenian Genocide see Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. This short video by Umit Kurt on the Armenian Genocide summarises the history well.

Nubar Pasha and his son Boghos were central figures in The Water Company of Cairo - read more at Le “Sebile” Moderne

Sources:

George Jerjian, Arabkir: Homage to an Armenian Community (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2014)
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)
Antranig Poladian, Պատմութիւն Հայոց Արաբկիրի (1969)
Mayda Saris, Son Arapgirli: Varsen Oruncakciel: The Last Remaining Arapgirtsi (Istanbul: Birzamanlar Yayincilik, 2011)
Churches and Monasteries – Kaza of Arapgir, Houshamadyan
Anoushka Kurkjian, "History & Humanity: An Armenian Perspective of the Implications of Sudan’s Descent into Civil War," Songhai Advisory, August 7, 2023
Kaza Arapgir (Արաբկիր, Arabkir)," Virtual Genocide Memorial
sudanahye oral history and photo archive