The eponymous village of Motkan (today Mutki) in the county of the same name is at the foot of the Armenian Taurus (Armenian: Toros, Tr.: Toroslar), bordering Mush to the north, Bitlis to the east, Şirvan and Kharzan/Ğarzan to the south, and Sasun to the west.
Administration
Around 1800, Western Armenia and Kurdistan were subdivided into eight administrative units (pashalik), each governed by a pasha. Through the administrative reform of 1867 the kaza Motkan became part of the Vilâyet Erzurum. The administrative center was Rabat, which was replaced by the village of Açıkalan in 1883. The center was relocated a few more times until it finally became the village of Miritağ – today’s Mutki – in 1941.
Toponym
The term Motkan comes from the Iranian and means ‘fallow land’. Variants of the toponym are Motika, Modigan, Motikan, Modeki, Motki, Mutki, Motka, Mutka.
Population
In 1878, the Armenian folklorist Aristakes Tevkants (Ter-Sargsiants, 1844-1896) left information about 25 Armenian villages in the Motkan area. At the beginning of the 20th century, Motkan had more than 70 settlements, in which only Armenians lived or were mixed with the Kurds. According to the census of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, in 1914 there lived 5,469 Armenians in 27 settlements of the kaza Motkan, maintaining 26 churches, four monasteries, and one school with 14 children.(1)
According to a testimony dated 27 August 1916, captives from the Armenian villages of Motkan were kept in the village of Derik in the sancak of Mush. After Mush was captured by the Russians, the rescued Armenians moved to the Caucasus. It is possible that these captives later had the opportunity to relocate to the deserted Armenian villages of Motkan.[2]
History
At times the area of Motkan was part of historical Sasun.
The area was under the rule of various empires and dynasties. Motkan was Ottoman since 1514. The Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi visited the area in 1665 and reported that the Mutki tribe ruled the area, but they were subject to the Prince of Bitlis. The Mutki were said to be so powerful that they could provide the prince with 70,000 soldiers.
During World War I, Russian troops conquered the area and advanced as far as Bitlis. The Muslim inhabitants of Bitlis then fled to Mutki.
“Ground Between the Kurdish and the Turkish millstones” – Tributary Dependencies and Serfdom
After the stabilization of Ottoman rule in the eastern part of the Empire in the 19th century, the Armenians who lived east of Sivas were actually subjected to two rulers: the central government at Constantinople and the autonomous or semi-autonomous Kurdish tribal leaders. Garo Sasuni assessed the situation in the following way: “Thus the Armenians were ground between the Kurdish and the Turkish millstone and did not know to which side they should lean.”[3]
The British traveller and diplomat Sir John Macdonald Kinneir wrote on this subject in his travel report of 1813: “The Armenians are in part Turkish subjects and are ruled in part by Kurdish Beks, but they are oppressed by both equally.”[4]
The Armenians assumed the position of rayas, or protected ones according to Islamic legal traditions. This feudalistic promise of protection was usually not upheld. The Christian raya received his land from the government as a kind of fief and had to pay a ‘tithe’ on it:
“A yearly poll tax was collected from all male non-Muslim subjects between the ages of 15 and 75 years. Moreover, there was a house tax, dues (2% for Muslims, 3.5% for non-Muslims), special taxes (which were supposed to be collected for only one year theoretically, but were never again done away with! and later a tax in order to be exempt from military service, from which Christians were excluded on principle. After paying his taxes the farmer was only able to keep a third of his harvest. If he refused to pay, he lost his land and often his life.”[5]
In addition to this, the Kurdish tribal leader or landlord approached the Armenian farmer with arbitrarily fixed taxes which often surpassed the taxes collected by the government.[6] First of all, there was the khapir (also khafir, hafir, kiafir), to be paid yearly in natural produce (corn, wool, sheep, honey, milk products) or in handicraft products (carpets, blankets, coats) or metals as in Talvorik (Sasun), where they mined iron core and silver. Originally, khapir represented a kind of involuntary recompense for the patriarchal protection which the Kurdish feudal princes gave to the Armenians in the area they governed. This money for protection was still being collected, however, after the tribal system of the Kurds already collapsed and the Armenians were no longer offered any protection, however minimal it was in the first place.
In the border zones of the Armenian plateau, where the Kurdish population prevailed, the duty to pay tribute was transformed into direct serfdom, “an institution which is not unknown in the country”, as the British traveler, businessman, and liberal Member of Parliament H.F.B. Lynch wrote in 1901, “though its existence is softened over by the Turkish authorities. (…) The serfs, who are Armenians, are known as zerkurri, signifying bought with gold. In fact, they are bought and sold in much the same manner as sheep and cattle by the Kurdish beys and aghas. The only difference is that they cannot be disposed of individually; they are transferred with the lands which they cultivate. The chief appropriates as much as he wishes from their yearly earnings, capital or goods; and in return he provides them with protection against other Kurdish tribes(…).”[7]
A travel report from 21 June 1914 of the German Vice Consul of Erzurum, Edgar Anders, verifies the continuation of the serfdom of Armenian farmers in the kaza Motkan on the eve of World War One:
“(…) The archbishop described to me in detail the situation of the Armenian farmer in Modikan kaza. The relationship of bondage by the Derebeys [valley rulers] is extended to such a degree that they, as Gogol describes present serfdom in Russia, sell whole villages together with the slaves, whereby they pay 5-15 Turkish liras for one person on the average. Thus, the Shegoli, a branch of the Balikli race that owns 30 villages, have recently purchased the Armenian village of Pishenk from a Derebey. (…) The farmers must make certain deliveries to the Beys. Yet the poverty of the Armenian and Kurdish slaves is supposed to be terrible. There is only one Armenians school in the whole Modikan kaza which is situated in the village of Kishek. A school was supposed to open in Khinist with money from Boghos Nubar Pasha [a renowned Armenian politician working in Egypt]; however, the teachers fled after just a few days, due to threats from the Kurds.
It is peculiar the way in which the tax on sheep is collected. Shortly before the appearance of the Tahsildars [revenue officers], the Balikli Kurds drove three hundred sheep into the Armenian village of Khuit despite the protests of the inhabitants. [These sheep were included in the count of taxable property.] Since the farmers refused to pay the resulting increased tax of approximately 20 Turkish liras, their cows and oxen were then sold compulsorily. Such incidents of sheep theft and property flights led to animosity between Kurds and Armenians, but the bishop admitted that in the past months there had been fewer complaints with regard to the endangerment of life or family honor. Only recently four or five Armenians were killed by the Bedri Kurds (Musi tribe) in Sasun. (…)”[8]
In addition to the already mentioned khapir, the olam, a compulsory service given yearly to the Kurds, represented a status between the free farmers paying tribute for the patriarchal protective service and actual serfdom.
The Kurdish presence was also felt in other areas. When an Armenian girl married, her parents had to pay half of the dowry (the hala) to the appropriate Kurdish tribal leader. Also, the Armenian farmers were the only Christian people in the Ottoman Empire who were forced to furnish winter shelter (kishlak) to the half-nomadic Kurdish tribes for four to six months annually. In this period of Kurdish wintering, there were many encroachments on Armenian women and property in the villages; these often resulted in bloody disputes. Forms of tribute, like kishlak, evidently developed from former leases. For example, the Armenians in Sasun leased the summer pasturage to the Kurdish nomads in the pre-Ottoman era. Later, this leasing system may have been transformed into a common law, whereby the voluntary action of the Armenians became involuntary. The genuine leasing system apparently survived only in the cities.
Although in principle the Ottoman government demanded that the Kurds pay a yearly tax to the Armenians as a compensation for winter quartering, in reality this money flowed into the cash boxes of local authorities. In 1842, following the reform announcements of 1839 [Hatti-Sherif of Gülhane], the authorities tried to put an end to the kishlak nuisance. Colonization attempts, such as in the region of Mush, where Kurdish nomads were allocated villages of Armenian emigrants, should have abolished the need for winter quarters. Yet the Kurds, who referred to the kishlak as a hereditary right, did not stop their raids against the Armenians.
Destruction
Shortly before coming to Bitlis on 22 June 1915, the Motkan Kurds had destroyed the 27 Armenian villages in their kaza, massacring the 5,469 villagers where they found them.(9)
Islamized and Crypto-Armenians Today
“The Armenian villages are: Nitch, Arpi, Shenisd, Aghpntcher, and Kerho. Today, there are 9 Islamized Armenian families in Shenisd, relatively numerous, who (…) marry only among themselves. There are probably a few converted Armenian families in Aghpntcher.
As for Nitch, it’s been home to the largest Armenian population of Modgan both before and after the genocide. The number of Armenian families living here after the genocide is unclear, given that, due to various circumstances, the Christians of Nitch would often leave the village and then return later. The people of Nitch would also move to neighboring villages, most prominently Arpi. Today, one can find numerous Armenian families of Nitch and Arpi in Istanbul, who, upon reaching the city, converted to Christianity and reestablished their Armenian names. Currently, Nitch is home to one Christian home and several Islamized ones, while in Arpi, virtually all are Islamized (14 homes).
The main distinctive characteristic of the Armenians living in Modgan and particularly in these two villages is that, after the genocide, both the Christians and the converted ones preserved the Armenian language for 8 to 9 decades. While most of the Armenians in the villages of Modgan, besides Armenian, knew with equal fluency the Arabic, Kurdish, and Zaza languages, there were also Armenians who only knew how to speak Armenian. Furthermore, even their Arab and Kurdish neighbors would speak with them in Armenian.
The Armenians of the Kerho village were exiled in 1937. Only two Armenian families managed to return to the village after the exile to western Turkey; one of them converted to Islam and remained there, while the other, having failed to make a living in Kerho, first went to Sghert [Siirt] and then settled in Istanbul. After spending many years as covert Christians, upon reaching Istanbul, they officially converted to Christianity.”
Excerpted from: Hakobian, Sophia: Sassoun and the Armenians of Sassoun after the Genocide and up to this day – part II. “Horizon”, 26 July 2017. – https://horizonweekly.ca/en/sassoun-and-the-armenians-of-sassoun-after-the-genocide-and-up-to-this-day-part-ii/