Armenian Fedayi: Guerrilla Fighters Before the Genocide

The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History · Apr 28, 2026 · 8m · transcript

Before the Armenian Genocide, a generation of Armenian guerrilla fighters known as fedayi took up arms to defend their villages in the Ottoman Empire's eastern provinces. This episode follows the story of the fedayi movement from the late 19th century through the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. We discuss key figures like Aghbiur Serob, Andranik Ozanian, and Kevork Chavush, and their battles at Holy Apostles Monastery and Sulukh. Lucas and Luna explore how these fighters emerged in response to Hamidian massacres and Kurdish raids, their tactics, their complex relationships with Ottoman…