Birth of Nikol Duman (January 12, 1867)

Nikol Duman was one of the protagonists of the Armenian national movement of liberation from its early days until his death, from the expedition of Khanasor until the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. As national hero General Antranig once wrote, “Duman could rule over everyone and give orders, and everyone would know where to be and what to do.”

He was born Nikoghayos Ter-Hovhannisian in the village of Kishlak (nowadays Tzaghkashat) of the district of Askeran (Mountainous Gharabagh). His father, a priest, sent him to the Diocesan School of Shushi in 1876, from where he graduated in 1887. For the next four years, after a short stint at the Ecclesiastical Council of Shushi, he worked as a teacher at the Armenian schools of the Northern Caucasus.

The revolutionary movement had started among the Armenians of the Caucasus with the foundation of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (Geneva, 1887) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Tiflis, 1890). Education was the way to sow the seeds of the future and to attract the sympathy of the people. In 1891 Ter-Hovhannisian’s former schoolmate Hovnan Davtian was appointed principal of one of the Armenian schools of Tabriz, in Iranian Azerbaijan, and invited him as a teacher. Tabriz was a hub of revolutionary activities. In 1892 Ter-Hovhannisian participated in the first general assembly of the A.R.F. and, after Davtian’s departure to Geneva as newly-appointed editor of the party organ Droshak, he took a new teaching position in the nearby city of Salmast in 1894. A year later, he went to the nearby monastery of Derek, a center of revolutionary activity, and participated in the victorious self-defense fights against Turks and Kurds.

The tall, black-bearded fighter was one of the leaders in the combats of Saray-Boghazkiasan a few months later. The defeated Kurds, deeply impressed by his bravery, called him Duman (“storm”) in their songs. Nikoghayos Ter-Hovhannisian, whose first name was already shortened to Nikol, became Nikol Duman.

In the same year, Duman went to Van with a group of fifty fedayees (freedom fighters). In 1896 he came up with the idea of avenging the death of the young Armenians who had defended Van during the Hamidian massacres and who had perished in an ambush by the Kurdish Mazrik tribe during their retreat to Persia. The outcome was the expedition of Khanasor (July 1897), in which Duman was one of its leaders. He later went back to the Caucasus and settled in Baku. In 1904 he attempted to cross into Western Armenia to help the rebellion of Sassoun with a group of fedayees, but he engaged in combat with Kurdish gangs near the Turkish-Persian border and could not reach his aim.

Nikol Duman led the Armenian self-defense forces in the province of Yerevan and the plain of Ararat during the Armeno-Tatar inter-ethnic conflict of 1905-1906. Later, he left the Caucasus and went to Europe to avoid the persecution of the Czarist police. One of the “intellectual fedayees,” he stated his opposition to the “Caucasian Project” approved in the crucial 4th General Assembly of the A.R.F. (Vienna, 1907), which allowed the party to enter in an alliance with Russian revolutionaries. He also published a booklet, Project of Popular Self-Defense (Geneva, 1907), which became one of the mainstays of the strategic literature of the Armenian liberation movement.

In 1910 he was one of the representatives of the A.R.F. in the congress of the Second International held in Copenhagen (Denmark). A year later, he participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, where the party had been active since 1908, and led the victorious defense of Tabriz against the counter-revolutionary forces in September 1911. When the Russian intervention turned the tide against the revolution, in late 1911 Nikol Duman gathered his group of fedayees and went to Western Armenia, where he stayed until 1913. Finally, he returned to the Caucasus.

At the beginning of World War I, Duman was opposed to the organization of the Armenian volunteer battalions in the Caucasus, since the 8th General Assembly (Erzerum, 1914) had not approved it. He was a natural candidate to lead one of them. However, his wandering and active life had taken its toll on his health. After his arthritic pains, he had got infected with tuberculosis. He could not stay in the hospital, waiting patiently for death while his comrades were in the battlefields. He had only one solution: on September 27, 1914 he committed suicide. He was buried in the cemetery of Khojivank, in Tiflis, near Simon Zavarian, one of the founders of the A.R.F.

The Expedition of Khanasor (July 25, 1897)

The Armenian massacres of 1895-1896 ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II were executed with the active participation of Kurdish tribes. This extended also to the aftermath of the self-defense of Van in early June 1896, organized by the three Armenian parties (Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Armenakan, and Hunchakian). The fight ended after a truce brokered by the British consul, Major W. H. Williams, who guaranteed the safe passage to Persia of some 1,000 people who had participated in the self-defense. However, the retreating group, badly armed, was attacked by the Kurdish Mazrik tribe. More than 300 young people, headed by Bedo (A.R.F.), Mgrdich Avedisian (Armenakan), and Mardik (Hunchakian) on their way to Persia, were killed by the Kurdish bandits.

Less than ten days after the massacre, on June 18, 1896, a regional assembly of the A.R.F. decided to take punitive measures against the Kurdish groups that had become a tool in the hands of the Turkish government, and particularly against the Mazrik tribe.

There were discrepancies about the feasibility of such a strike. However, these were overcome after the fall of 1896, when a regional assembly of Tiflis passed a resolution that approved the expedition. Afterwards, Nigol Tuman, one of the A.R.F. military chiefs and a main proponent of the attack, went to Baku and secured the necessary financial means.

The group was composed of 235 foot combatants and 40 horsemen. The expedition group was commanded by Sarkis Mehrabian (he would be later known as Vartan of Khanasor), with Hovsep Arghutian and Nigol Tuman as his assistants.

The Mazrik tribe settled in the plain of Khanasor, surrounded by hills. The group crossed the Persian-Turkish border near Salmast on the night of July 24, 1897, passed through the Araul mountain and surrounded the plain from all sides.

Some 250 tents were spread in the plain. The attack started at daybreak. The Kurdish tribe practically lost most of its male members; some estimates claim between 1,200 and 1,500 casualties. Women and children, however, were spared, following the directives of Nigol Tuman. Sharaf Bek, the Kurdish chief, took advantage of the circumstance and escaped, wearing female clothing.

The Armenian force suffered 19 casualties, including Aristakes Zorian (Garo), the brother of Rostom (Stepan Zorian), one of the founders of the A.R.F.

Neighbor Kurds and Turkish regular forces came over. In order to avoid being surrounded, the military council of the expedition decided to leave the plain and to fall back to the mountain. The enemy was unable to stop the organized retreat of the Armenian fedayees, who fought the whole day in the mountain and in the night, when the Kurds stopped the attack, crossed the border back to Persia, and later returned to the Caucasus.

The expedition of Khanasor, besides its military success, was also a moral success, as it showed that Armenians had the necessary spirit to fight back against the Kurds and stop their attacks. The song composed by one of its participants, Dervish Toros (Kalust Aloyan), summarized that spirit in its first stanza:

Hail fell over the plain of Khanasor / The fedayees of the A.R.F. took revenge in the valley...

Death of Yeprem Khan - May 6, 1912

Armenians participated simultaneously in the Ottoman constitutional revolution of 1908 headed by the Young Turks and in the Iranian Constitutional Movement of 1905-1911. In both cases, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (A.R.F.) had a leading role and in Iran, its actions were led by a young but veteran militant, Yeprem Davtian.

Known simply as Yeprem, and later as Yeprem Khan, he was born in 1868 in the village of Barsum (in the province fedayees (freedom fighters) in the late 1880s. He participated in the ill-fated expedition of Sargis Kukunian in 1890, which failed to cross the Russian-Ottoman border, as it was simultaneously attacked by the gendarmerie of both countries. Yeprem was arrested by Russian Cossacks among the surviving participants, exiled to Siberia (1892) and then to the island of Sakhalin, in the Russian Far East. He escaped from exile in 1896 to Tabriz, in the north of Iran. He participated in the punitive expedition of Khanasor in July 1897 against the Kurdish Mazrik tribe that had executed a massacre of Armenians. He married Anahid Davtian in 1902.

Yeprem was one of the main organizers of the A.R.F. branches in the Iranian towns of Rasht and Enzeli. The activities of the party in the country were primarily directed against the Ottoman regime. He convinced the party to participate in the revolutionary movement that exploded in Iran in 1905 and brought the ailing shah Muzaffer-ed-Din to sign a Constitution in late 1906. The A.R.F. officially entered the movement in February 1907. Yeprem had an active participation in the resistance to the counterrevolutionary movement led by Muzaffer’s son, Mohammed-Ali Shah (1907-1909). He occupied Rasht and Enzeli in February-March 1909. In July of the same year he was among the leaders of the occupation of Tehran, which ended with the dethronement of the shah in favor of his son. He was designated police chief of Tehran by the second Iranian Parliament in 1909 and police chief of the country in 1910. He reorganized the police force and formed a gendarmerie, introducing European uniforms and training. He led a series of successful military campaigns against opponents of the constitutional regime between November 1909 and April 1910.    

He had a crucial role in the defeat of another counterrevolutionary movement in September 1911. He was rewarded by the government with a gem-studded sword, a pension, and the title of sardar (military commander). Six months later, Yeprem directed a second expedition against the forces of the ex-shah Mohammed-Ali, but he was killed during a successful battle on May 6, 1912, while trying to rescue the body of a comrade. He was interred in the courtyard of the Armenian Haigazian (now Davtian) school in Tehran.