Serob Paşa

Serob Paşa (In Armenian: Սերոբ Փաշա) (1864 - November 1 , 1899) born Serob Vardanian (Սերոբ Վարդանյան) and also known as Serob Aghpyur (Սերոբ Աղբյուր) was a famed Armenian military commander who organized a guerrilla network that fought against the Turkish Ottoman Empire during the latter 1800s.

Life as a revolutionary

Around the age of twenty, he got into a fight with two Turks and ended up killing one of them. The murder forced him to flee to Constantinople. In 1892, he travelled to Romania and opened a coffee shop there with the intention to use it as a place to meet young revolutionaries. He eventually joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and returned to Ottoman Armenia, in the province of Paghesh, where he took up arms to defend the local Armenian population from Ottoman and Kurdish attackers. [Kurdoghlian, Mihran. "Badmoutioun Hayots (Armenian History)". Athens: 1996 p.67.]

Aghpur

It is around this time he gained his pseudonym "Aghpur", given to him by the Armenian population because he had the "heart of a lion" and was very courteous. The local Armenian population would often say "Veruh Asdvadz, Vahruh Serop" (literally "God is up there, Serop is down here") which figuratively means "If God is protecting us from the sky, Serop is protecting us from the ground." During his life as a general, Serop commanded famous "fedayees" such as Andranik Ozanian, Kevork Chavoush, Balabekh Garabed and others. [Kurdoghlian, Mihran. "Badmoutioun Hayots (Armenian History)". Athens: 1996 p.67.]

Death and vengeance

In 1899, while meeting with several other compatriots, Serob Vardanian had his pipe poisoned by a fellow Armenian who had been bribed by Kurdish brigands. The Kurdish brigands, led by Halil, surrounded the house with hundreds of fighters. A gunfight erupted between the Kurds and the Armenians, the latter having in its ranks twelve of Serob's personal guard, his wife Sose Mayrig and Serob's son Hagop. The Kurds managed to defeat the outnumbered Armenians, killing in the process Serob, his son, and twelve of his men including the town priest. Sose Mayrig who was wounded, was taken prisoner. Khalil severed Serob's head and placed it on a pike as a warning to all other Armenian freedom fighters. [Kurdoghlian, Mihran. "Badmoutioun Hayots (Armenian History)". Athens: 1996 p.68-69.]

A mission led by fellow Armenian guerrilla, Zoravor Andranik Ozanian, tracked down the Kurds to the Armenian's house. They killed both the organizers and most notably the traitor Armenian's family, stating that betrayal should be cut down at its roots. [Chalabian, Andranik. "General Andranik and the Armenian Revolutionary movement". Beirut: 1986. pp. 131-132.]

References

Trivia

* Two Armenian Revolutionary songs called "Serop Pashayi Yerkuh" and "Seropin Yev Soseyin Yerkuh" detail about Serop's and his wife Sose's life.

See also

*Armenian militia
*Armenian national movement
*List of Armenian national heroes