Rasulain and the Arada Steppe During the Armenian Genocide, July 1915 – April 1916
Kaiser, Hilmar · 2025
Building on Raymond Kévorkian's work on the Syrian and Mesopotamian 'destination areas,' Kaiser reconstructs the deportation zone around Rasulain and the Arada Steppe. Officially the Ottoman government claimed it meant to resettle Armenian deportees in the Zor district; in practice deportees were starved, abandoned in the desert, or massacred. Drawing on official Ottoman documentation alongside rare first-hand evidence from the Chechen community of Rasulain, Kaiser shows that district governor Ali Suad Bey began limited relief and settlement projects which central authorities then undid. Local Chechens opposed Armenian settlement on economic grounds, denounced deportees as alleged revolutionaries, and ultimately took a leading part in the massacres.
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Kaiser, Hilmar 2025. Rasulain and the Arada Steppe During the Armenian Genocide, July 1915 – April 1916. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 5–39 (Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0061. https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0061
What this offers a reader
A close, document-based case study of how the deportations actually killed people: excellent for a research paper on the mechanics of the genocide.
Archive-grounded reconstruction using Ottoman state records plus rare local testimony; peer-reviewed in IJAGS.
Names the officials and local actors who carried out the killings in the Syrian desert, where so many of our families ended.
Shows what really happened to Armenians deported to the desert, from the government's own paperwork.
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