In December 1895, Ottoman forces locked roughly 3,000 Armenian men, women, and children inside the cathedral at Urfa and...

In December 1895, Ottoman forces locked roughly 3,000 Armenian men, women, and children inside the cathedral at Urfa and set it on fire. Every one of them died. That single atrocity was part of a larger campaign that historians now call the Hamidian Massacres, named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who ordered the systematic killing of Armenians across the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1897. The massacres began in the Sasun region in 1894 and spread rapidly to cities across Anatolia, including Erzurum, Trebizond, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Harput, and Urfa. In Erzurum, Armenian homes and shops were looted and hundreds of Armenians were killed in October 1895 alone. By 1896, the killing had reached Constantinople itself. Assyrian Christians were also targeted and killed in large numbers throughout the campaign. Historians estimate the total death toll at between 100,000 and 300,000. Tens of thousands of children were left orphaned. The violence was carried out in large part by the Hamidian Cavalry, irregular units the Sultan created specifically for this purpose. The massacres drew outrage across Europe. British statesman William Gladstone publicly called Abdul Hamid "the Great Assassin." No European power intervened. Two decades later, the same empire carried out the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides of 1914 to 1923, killing millions more. Abdul Hamid II ruled from 1876 to 1909 and spent much of his reign pushing a pan-Islamic vision for the Ottoman state. The Hamidian Massacres were among the most documented mass killings of the 19th century, recorded by European diplomats, missionaries, and journalists who were present in the region at the time. #ArmenianHistory #HamidianMassacres #NeverForget