Cilicia 1909
The Massacre of Armenians

Hagop H. Terzian was an Ottoman-Armenian intellectual. He was born in Hadjin on 22 August 1879, where he received his primary education. He then went to Adana community and Jesuit schools. He came to Constantinople in 1879. Receiving his diploma in pharmacology in 1900, he ran pharmacies successively in Hadjin and Adana, at the same time sending articles to the newspapers in Constantinople. He barely escaped the Cilician massacre of 1909 and returned to Constantinople, where he opened the "Adana" pharmacy in Kum Kapu. He was the author of Arvest Lousangarchoutian (The Art of Photography), Adanayi Gyanku (Life in Adana) and Giligio Aghedu (The Cilician Catastrophy). The latter publication was confiscated by the Ottoman government. Like many other Armenian intellectuals, he was arrested in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, exiled and killed. Terzians Giligio Aghedu [The Cilician Calamity] was originally published in Constantinople in 1912. It was composed of the author's own account of atrocities he experienced in Adana 1909, as well as testimonies of others who saw outrages elsewhere in Cilicia, in Ottoman Turkey. All of these accounts were written in the voice of the Armenian victims and conveyed a powerful sense of pain, grief and outrage. The present publication is an abridged translation of Giligio Aghedu under a new title, Cilicia 1909: The Massacre of Armenians.