In the 1880s, the deteriorating situation of the Ottoman Empire during
the reign of Abdul Hamid and the rise of political awareness in the
Armenian provinces had created the urge for self-defense against the
violence and exploitation exerted by Turks and Kurds. The legend of the
Armenian fedayees (the freedom fighters) would be born at this
time. On September 3, 1901, Tumanski, Russian deputy consul of Van,
would write to the Russian ambassador in Constantinople: “The fedayees are really people who have lost their patience. They have sworn to take revenge, somehow, from their oppressors.”
Serop
was a hunter. In 1885 he married seventeen-year-old Sose, one of the
beautiful girls of the village. One day he engaged in a fight with two
Kurds who tried to take his gun. Serop killed one of his attackers and
made the other flee. His uncle helped him escape the vengeance of the
Kurds. He went to Constantinople to live with another uncle. There he
entered the ranks of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. The police
of the capital was informed that he was a wanted person in Khlat and
Serop was forced to escape to Romania in 1892. He settled in the city
of Sulina and opened a coffee shop; however, in 1893 a cholera epidemic
compelled him to go out of business and move to the Caucasus. For the
next two years, he lived in between the Caucasus and Western Armenia.
After the beginning of the massacres of 1895, he returned to Khlat
heading a group of 27 fighters and organized the self-defense of the
Armenian villages. The
people baptized Serop with the nickname aghpiur (“source”),
meaning “the one who gives life.” His military actions had actually
instilled new spirit in the population and taught the importance of
armed defense against injustice.
Many fedayees who
fought in his group, such as Mushegh of Bitlis, Balabekh Garabed and
others, later became battalion commanders. The future General Antranig
also became a member of his group.
In 1896 he organized new groups of self-defense and distributed them
in the villages; he also obtained weapons from the Caucasus. He fought
throughout the province of Bitlis in 1897. He wrote one of the heroic
pages of the history of the fedayee movement on October 20,
1898. During the combat of Babshen, which lasted until late night,
Serop’s group of 17 inflicted heavy losses to an entire Turkish
battalion.
The Ottoman government put a price to the life of Serop. He left Khlat
and found refuge in the mountains of Sassoun. His wife Sose and his
two sons, age 12 and 2, joined him. On November 1, 1899, Serop and his
comrades were surrounded in the village of Gelieguzan. An Armenian
traitor poisoned Serop, and despite a desperate fight, most of the
Armenian fedayees were killed. Serop, paralyzed and unable to
fight, was beheaded by the Turks. Two of his brothers and his elder son
Hagop were killed in the fight, while his little brother Samson was
saved by Serop’s sister-in-law.
Serop’s head was paraded by the Turks around the city of Bitlis, and
afterwards it was delivered to the Armenians, who buried it in the
church of Surp Garmrak. His wife Sose had fought until she was taken
prisoner. However, Turkish commander Ali, who admired her bravery, had
her grave injuries cured and was later liberated. The Armenian traitor,
Ave, was killed by the fedayees a few months later.
Sose, called Mayrig (“little mother”) by the people, moved to Van
after the revolt of Sassoun in 1904 and later to the Caucasus. She
finally settled in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1920, where she passed away in
1953. Her remains were moved to Yerevan in 1998 and reburied in the
military cemetery of Yerablur.
Aghpiur Serop had become a living legend. Many songs and poems were
written about him and his wife. Avetik Isahakian, then a 24-year-old
young poet, in 1899 wrote his poem “To the memory of Serop,” whose
first stanza says:
Mount Nemrut has a thousand sources,
All of them go down the plain of Moush,
Only the source of Serop’s heart
Goes into the heart of the poor people.
