The Mountain of Moses (2)

Musa Dagh is an interesting story.

Short version: During the Armenian Genocide, several Armenian villages in southeastern Turkey retired up a mountain and dug in for a siege. The Turks sent a large force after them; the Armenians held them off. The siege lasted for 53 days. Then Allied warships evacuated most of the Armenians except for a rear guard.

In the face of the complete decimation of the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire, Musa Dagh became a symbol of the Armenian will to survive. Of the three other sites where Armenians defied the deportation orders, Shabin Karahissar, Urfa, and Van, only the Armenians of Van were rescued when the siege of their city was lifted by an advancing Russian army. The Armenians of Urfa and Shabin Karahissar were either massacred or deported. Musa Dagh stood as the sole instance where the Western Allies at war with the Ottomans averted the death of a community during the Armenian Genocide.

Eighteen years later, an Austrian author named Franz Werfel wrote a book about it: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The book was a bestseller, and has been in print ever since.

It's a hell of a story, and the Armenians are understandably proud of it. But it does raise some questions...

There are two museums in Musa Ler village. One is inside the monument itself, and it's a museum of the siege. The other is in a small building about a hundred meters away, and it's a museum of the villages... how they lived and worked in the years before 1915. Tools, furniture, old letters and photographs. Both museums are small, but both are well worth a visit.

Jacob and I had been walking around for some minutes when the three women approached us. "Muzei?" said the oldest one. Even I know that means "museum". So I followed her as she unlocked first one and then the other. I assume she was the keeper, curator, what have you. I don't know what the other two women were. (They didn't have any English, and my Armenian still hasn't reached the hundred-word mark.) I guess they live in the village but keep an eye on the monument, and stroll up the hill when someone shows up. Which, I must add, doesn't seem to happen too often -- the museums didn't look like they were getting a lot of custom.

But it was interesting. The museums were small, a couple of rooms each, but they'd obviously been set up with a lot of care even if they didn't get many visitors. The three ladies quickly relieved me of Jacob, and cooed and fussed over him while I peered at hundred-year-old sewing machines and inkwells in one room, rifles and maps and telegrams in the other. By the time we were done he had fallen asleep in their arms. (Jacob is a very trusting little boy.)

The survivors of Musa Dagh ended up in various places, and their descendants live all over the world. The two biggest groups are in Lebanon -- there's an all-Armenian village in the Bekaa valley -- and in the village under the monument: Musa Ler, just a few miles outside Yerevan. They can all stay in touch online, of course.

...questions. Okay, this touches a delicate topic. The Armenian Genocide is a big deal here. Well, the Turks wiped out roughly a third of all the world's Armenians. It's understandable that the Armenians are still upset.

But the presentation of it tends to be pretty one-sided, and it raises some questions.

For instance: how were the Armenians able to hold off several times their number of Turks, well supplied and equipped with artillery, for nearly two months? Mountain fortress, okay; fight-to-the-death desperation, sure. Still... one is left with the feeling of something missing.

Similarly, the rescue of the Armenians makes you go "hm". A French cruiser just happened to be passing by, near to shore, and saw the red cross and the sign they'd put up (in English!). That's not impossible, sure, but again...

Here's the thing. The Turks claim that the Armenians were rebels, guerrillas and saboteurs, rising up in concert with the advancing Allied armies in an attempt to kneecap the Ottoman war effort. The Armenians vehemently deny this. The Armenians were peaceful villagers; most were massacred outright, a few rose up in desperate self-defense.

I have the impression that the truth is closer to the Armenian version. (Though I'm still learning about this.) But it seems possible that the Armenians of Musa Dagh might have made preparations in advance. It also seems possible that the Allies might have been aware of the situation, and that the French ship's arrival might not have been an accident. I don't think either of these things, if true, would detract from the heroism of the defenders.

I've googled briefly for more about Musa Dagh, but the only scholarly article I found was this one from 2005. (Not available for free, alas.) That seems odd, and probably reflects my weak google-fu.

Anyway. It was a very interesting place to spend an hour on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

-- I took sleepy Jacob down the stone stairs to the car. After much nodding and "thank yous" in three or four languages, the three women sat on the top of the stairs and watched us go down the hill. I put Jacob in his car seat, then started to get in the driver's seat. Then I heard shouting. Looked up the hill: the three women were waving wildly at me! It took me a moment to figure out why -- Jacob had kicked a shoe off.

I picked it up, put it on him, then turned and bowed deeply to them. They laughed and waved. I got in the car and we continued on our way.

Comments

[Syd Webb]

Thank you, Doug.

[Doug (not Muir)]

IIRC, 40 Days is the novel that Werfel promised that he would write as thanks for his deliverance from the Nazis. Unless that's The Song of Bernadette. Hm.

In answer to the last post, one of the reasons nobody was noticing rising nationalism in the USSR is that it didn't fit with any of the paradigms at the time. Certainly didn't fit with the militaristic bent of the Team B people, and it probably fell between the cracks of CIA-type observers. I was but a college-age stripling when the Monument Too Ugly for Google Images was built, and even in a class on comparative communist systems (now sold to the history department, I am told) we looked mainly to Moscow center. Certainly there was a lot to take in with perestroika and glasnost and all of that. It makes me wonder what important periphery is being ignored today...

[Carlos]

I remember reading alarmist tracts on the rise of Islamoradistas in Soviet central Asia, which would somehow cause the whole rotten structure to come crashing down, as in Iran. Shame I purged my library of bizarro futurology, but I needed room to sleep. Though I should probably pick up a copy of Kahn's The Year 2000 again at some point.

Of course, it wasn't the Central Asian republics which did for the Soviets.

[RWE]

The Armenians are not so much upset about the Genocide itself as by the fact that modern Turkey (and its apologists) continues to deny that it occurred so vehemently. One of the interesting things about Musa Dagh (Musa Ler in Armenian) is that it is located in Cilicia on the Mediterranean Sea far from eastern Anatolia which is where Turkey claims the Armenians revolted.

Armenians had been subjected to pogroms under Sultan Abdul Hamid in the 1890s (200,000 killed) and in Adana in 1907 (30,000 killed) so it would not be surprising that weapons had been hidden.

As far as the warships, several attempts had been made to contact Allied forces prior to the rescue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_Dagh

Perhaps you could ask the former U.s. Ambassador to Armenia, John Marshall Evans, about it as he was fired by the State Department for actually calling it a genocide.

http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=John_Evans

[Mike R.]

> It makes me wonder what important periphery is being ignored today...

[Randy McDonald]

The Rise of Christianity in China. There has been a huge rise there, and while it very well may level out, it might not and if so you and I could live to see a China that is 1/3rd Christian. Big change that.

Something like South Korea, then? Speaking entirely off the cuff, there do seem to be some common threads in their religious histories, with the discrediting/undermining of traditional religions preceding the two countries' opening to the West.

What else? The growing scale of Latin American immigration to Europe, maybe, or large population movements from poor to rich areas in East Asia (foreign-born mothers apparently produce a double-digit percentage of births in South Korea and Taiwan), or the impending population crash in the Middle East.

[Mike R.]

>Something like South Korea, then? What else? The growing scale of Latin American immigration to Europe, or the impending population crash in the Middle East.

[Mike R.]

>Something like South Korea, then? What else? The growing scale of Latin American immigration to Europe, or the impending population crash in the Middle East.

[Randy McDonald]

Mike:

"Yep, I think that's a possibility, and it wouldn't surprise me if I see a Christian-majority South Korea within the next generation too."

Or perhaps a simple Christian-majority Korea? A news report a while back claimed that Christianity, with its talk of forgiveness and mercy, appealed to many North Koreans tired of bloodthirsty rhetoric. That's one news report, but still, one wonders.

"Speaking of LA, the rise of Protestantism in Latin America isn't getting noticed much either, but that's another big change too."

Less prevalent in the Southern Cone than elsewhere, it seems. Fernandez-Armesto wrote once about the religious convergence of the two Americas. He might well be right.

> or the impending population crash in the Middle East.

"Given how much talk is going on about the Middle East it's surprising how this doesn't get mentioned enough."

Birth rates are high enough and death rates low enough that actual population decline won't be in the cards for a good long while, while in the Maghreb at least immigration from sub-Saharan Africa might well be a growing feature in decades to come. Even so, the combination of constrained standards of living along with highly conservative mores seems ready-made to produce some sort of fertility crash.

[Mike R.]

"Or perhaps a simple Christian-majority Korea?"

I think that's a bit much. I've no doubt that Kim would crush any growth of Christianity in the North with much bloodshed, so I doubt there are very many of them right now. When the collapse comes (and at this point I'm pesimistic enough to think it could be decades away), Christians will likely have a lot of successes in the North but converting an entire country doesn't happen overnight, even in the best of circumstances.

Say NK collapses in 2020 (rough simple pop of 25M non-C, 0M C), at which point SK is 45% Christian (rough simple pop of 27.5 non-C, 22.5 C). That means that united Korea is now only 30% C. So we have to convert 15M more Koreans (assume stable population) before United Korea is majority Christian. Have all the "easy" conversions been done in the South? I don't know, but I can't see North Korea converting at a rate more than 2x as fast as it took SK to turn Christian in the 1945 - 2007 period. So say fNK becomes 30% Christian in only 30 years after the collapse of 2020. That would give us 7.5 of the 15M we needed so we'd need another 7.5M SK conversions in the 2020 - 2050 period. Will non-Christian South Koreans begin resisting conversion better over the the next 40 years than they have over the previous 40? Historically sometimes conversion rates just keep increasing until they are a super-majority, and other times the would-be-converts figure out an effective "defense" against conversion and what once appeared to be an unstopable trend is . . . stopped. You'd really have to look at the specifics of how non-Christians in SK are resisting conversion right now, and even then the future of it is contingent as hell.

[Mike R.]

"Birth rates are high enough and death rates low enough that actual population decline won't be in the cards for a good long while,"

True, but you don't need total population decline to get significant social effects from falling birthrates. For one thing, quite a few nations are set to enter the "golden period" when they have a higher worker-to-dependent ratio (not many young people to support and plenty of working age folks) than they had in the past or will have in the future. Economic take-offs are easier in that phase, and while I hope they make the best of it, I also kind of doubt it.

[Randy McDonald]

Mike:

I think that's a bit much. I've no doubt that Kim would crush any growth of Christianity in the North with much bloodshed, so I doubt there are very many of them right now. When the collapse comes (and at this point I'm pesimistic enough to think it could be decades away), Christians will likely have a lot of successes in the North but converting an entire country doesn't happen overnight, even in the best of circumstances.

True. One factor specific to the case of North Korea might be the resiliency of other Korean spiritual traditions in the north. I can't begin to claim any relevant knowledge on this topic, and so ...

True, but you don't need total population decline to get significant social effects from falling birthrates. For one thing, quite a few nations are set to enter the "golden period" when they have a higher worker-to-dependent ratio (not many young people to support and plenty of working age folks) than they had in the past or will have in the future. Economic take-offs are easier in that phase, and while I hope they make the best of it, I also kind of doubt it.

Tunisia and Turkey seem to be making it so far, but yes, the overall picture isn't encouraging. What's worse is that emigration as a safety valve doesn't seem to exist--the fact that Maghrebin immigrants in Italy and Spain are so badly outnumbered by counterparts from elsewhere speaks volumes about the success of the EU in limiting migration from the southern Mediterranean.

Hmm. A quieting of political turmoil in MENA, maybe, as the relevant age cohorts shrink?

[Mike R.]

>One factor specific to the case of North Korea might be the resiliency of other Korean spiritual traditions in the north. I can't begin to claim any relevant knowledge on this topic, and so ... Tunisia and Turkey seem to be making it so far,

I have decent hopes for Turkey. There was a Simpsons episode once that had a Gay Republicans meeting have the slogan of "A Gay Republican President by 2048" and the GR response to this puzzeled looks being, "Eh, we're realistic."

In a similar vein I propose, "Turkey, in the EU by 2038!"

> Hmm. A quieting of political turmoil in MENA, maybe, as the relevant age cohorts shrink?

[Randy McDonald]

Mike:

"I have decent hopes for Turkey. There was a Simpsons episode once that had a Gay Republicans meeting have the slogan of "A Gay Republican President by 2048" and the GR response to this puzzeled looks being, "Eh, we're realistic."

In a similar vein I propose, "Turkey, in the EU by 2038!""

This makes sense. Turkey, for all of its progress, is economically in a rather weaker position relative to the EU-15 than (say) Poland in the late 1980s to say nothing of the rather unsettled frontiers of the Turkish nation and the Turkish state. (The idea of a Polish Republic of Eastern Lithuania is a non-starter, and Poland lost the Galician Ukrainians and their rebel armies back in '39.)

If we're optimistic, perhaps we can look forward to a Black Sea expansion of the European Union in the 2020s, taking in both Turkey and Ukraine and assorted smaller states in the region.

[Carlos]

Gentlemen, I think you've hit the is-ought problem.

Going back to Doug Not-Muir's question -- and understanding it as not asking about future demographics, Mike -- I'd say sub-Saharan (but not southern) Africa and central Asia, simply because these areas have miserable news coverage in the world press, which is a prerequisite for being overlooked, I think.