page_title: Musa Dagh
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Musa Dagh / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Freedom fighters of Musa Dagh
context_page_description: Musa Dagh 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.
context_section_description: The deportation orders of the Armenian population of current Turkey, issued by the Ottoman government, in July 1915 reached the six Armenian villages of the Musa Dagh region: Kabusia (Kaboussieh), Yoghunoluk, Bitias, Vakef, Kheter Bey (Khodr Bey) and Haji Habibli. As Ottoman Turkish forces converged upon the town, the populace, aware of the impending danger, refused deportation and fell back upon Musa mountain, thwarting assaults for fifty-three days, from July to September 1915. 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, just as ammunition and food provisions were running out. French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh to safety in Port Said. Starting in 1918, when the Sanjak of Alexandretta came under French control, the population of the six Armenian villages returned to their homes. In 1932 a monument was erected at the top of the mountain to commemorate the event.
  The mountain was in Aleppo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire until after World War I, when the French took possession and put it in Sanjak of Alexandretta, Mandate of Syria.
  On 29 June 1939, following an agreement between France and Turkey, the province was given to Turkey. Afterwards Armenians from six of the villages emigrated from Hatay Province, while some of the residents of Vakıflı village chose to stay. Vakıflı is the only remaining ethnic Armenian village in Turkey, with a population only 140 Turkish-Armenians. Most who left Hatay in 1939 emigrated to Lebanon where they resettled in the town of Anjar. Today, the town of Anjar is divided into six districts, each commemorating one of the villages of Musa Dagh.
  As the French squads came to the rescue of the survivors, the chief priest is quoted as having said, "The evil only happened … to enable God to show us His goodness." This event was depicted in the 2016 movie The Promise.
caption: Armenian combatants in Musa Dagh
exif: {}