Musa Dagh Resistance

Musa Dagh defense
Part of the Armenian Genocide
Map of the Musa Dagh Armenian Self-Defense.
Date 1915 Location Ottoman Empire Result Successful resistance, eventual rescue by the French navy
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire	Armenian civilians
Commanders and leaders
Unknown	Yesayi Yakhubian, Yesayi Aprahamian, Nerses Kazandjian, Movses Ter-Kalutsian and others
Strength
around 20,000 by the end	250 4,000 Armenian Civilians
Casualties and losses
heavy	unknown

Musa Dagh (Turkish: Musa Dağı; Armenian: Մուսա լեռ, Musa leṛ;Arabic: جبل موسى‎‎ Jebel Musa; meaning "Moses Mountain") is a mountain in the Hatay province of Turkey. In 1915 it was the location of a successful Armenian resistance to the Armenian Genocide, an event that inspired Franz Werfel to write the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.

The denizens of that region had been given an official order from the Turkish government to perform violent expulsions of six Armenian villages: Kabusia (Kaboussieh), Yoghunoluk, Bitias, Vakef, Kheter Bey (Khodr Bey) and Haji Habibli. This was a fragment of a wider operation conducted by the Ottomans since 1915. As Ottoman Turkish forces converged upon the town, the populace, aware of the impending danger, fell back upon Musa mountain and thwarted assaults for fifty-three days. One of the leaders of the revolt was Movses Der Kalousdian, whose Armenian first name was the same as that of the mountain. Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean under command of Louis Dartige du Fournet, sighted the survivors, as Werfel was told, just as ammunition and food provisions were running out. The warships then transported them to safety in Port Said, Egypt. French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh.

Nearly 250 men took part in the defense, fighting off Turkish armies in June 1915. The Armenians had refused deportation and fled to the highest mountain in the town, and from July to September 1915 they defended themselves until French ships rescued them. Starting in 1918, when Sanjak of Alexandretta came under French control, six Armenian villages returned to their homes.

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Wikipedia