This is a pioneering historical investigation of the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syrian Christian minorities during World War I, who suffered the same fate as the Armenians. Ethnic cleansing and large-scale massacres occurred throughout northern Mesopotamia and parts of Ottoman-occupied Iran. Based on primary sources from official Russian, Turkish, and West European archives, as well as hitherto unused manuscript sources and oral histories published here for the first time, this book attempts to give a full picture of the events of 1915. The book concentrates on the Assyrians of Urmia and Hakkari and on the Syrians of Diyarbekir province, particularly in Tur Abdin.

David Gaunt is professor of history at Södertörn University College, Stockholm, Sweden. He is a social historian who has written widely on the history of minorities and everyday life. His most recent work is the edited volume Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Bern, 2004).