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 30 September 1895, which ended in a shoot-out with the police, pogroms against Armenians began all over the city. Thousands of panicked Armenians took refuge in churches, refusing to leave without guarantees for their safety. Representatives of the Patriarchate and a number of foreign embassies managed to negotiate safe passage with the authorities.

A file of miscellaneous correspondence from 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 includes not only the names and surnames of the refugees, but also their district of residence in Constantinople, their occupation and their place of origin in Anatolia, it is of considerable value to students of Armenian and Ottoman socio-economic history and Armenian genealogy.

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

Another list of around 200 refugees in the Hasköy church is less interesting. In this list, no place of residence or occupation is given, and only occasionally a place of origin.