Lists of Armenian church refugees, 1895

Following the demonstration of activists of the Armenian Revolutionary Huntchak Party in front of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople/İstanbul on September 30, 1895, that resulted in a shooting with the police, all over the city pogroms against Armenians started. Thousands of panic stricken Armenians sought refuge in churches, and refused to leave them without guarantees for their safety. Representatives of the Patriarchate and a number of foreign embassies managed to negotiate a safe passage with the authorities.

A file with miscellaneous correspondence of the British Embassy in London (British National Archives, FO195-1907) contains a list of all 1.009 Armenians (including 25 minors) who sought refuge in the Armenian Church of the Holy Trinity in Pera (now Beyoğlu). As the list does not only give the names and surnames of the refugees, but also their neighbourhood of residence in Constantinople, their occupation and place of origin in Anatolia it is of considerable value for students of Armenian and Ottoman social-economic history and Armenian genealogy.

I used this document for an analysis of migration of Armenians to Constantinople, presented on the conference " A Civilization Destroyed: The Wealth of Non-Muslims in the Late Ottoman Period and the Early Republic Era " (organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation, İstanbul, 20-21 November 2015).

Another list, of some 200 refugees in the Hasköy church, is less interesting. In this list no place of residence and profession is given and only occassionally a place of origin.