Üsküdar · Paris · Adana · Yerevan · Siberia Armenian writer & intellectual — 1878–1943
Զ Zabel YesayanԶապել Եսայան · 1878–1943
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Armenian writer · public intellectual · feminist

Zabel
YesayanԶապել Եսայան

1878  —  1943

The only woman on the Ottoman list of Armenian intellectuals condemned on 24 April 1915 — the writer who escaped, and spent the rest of her life testifying in ink.

Read her life → Her works
1878Born in Üsküdar
17First poem published
1Only woman on the list
1943Died in exile
Portrait of Zabel Yesayan as a young woman, circa 1900
Zabel Yesayan in her youth

The night of the arrests

One woman was on the list.

On the night of 24 April 1915, Ottoman authorities began arresting several hundred Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople — poets, lawyers, teachers, editors, priests — the cultural leadership of a people, marked for deportation and death. Zabel Yesayan, novelist and advocate of women's rights, was the only woman on that list. Warned in advance, she slipped across the Bulgarian border a step ahead of the police. Most of the others were never seen again.

Follow the escape →

A life in six movements

From the gardens of Üsküdar
to the exile of Siberia

Full biography →
1878

Born in Üsküdar

Born 4 February 1878 in Scutari, on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, into a prosperous Armenian family. Her beloved uncle Khachik — a Zorba-like free spirit — would become the hero of her unfinished magnum opus.

1895

Published at seventeen

In 1895, the magazine Tsaghik prints her first prose poem, «Ode to the Night», when she is seventeen. She goes on to write for the Mercure de France and for Armenian journals across the diaspora.

1895–1908

The Sorbonne

She moves to Paris — among the first women from Istanbul to study abroad — and reads literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, working her way through as a proofreader and contributor.

1909

Into the ruins of Adana

After the 1909 Adana massacres, the Armenian Patriarchate sends her to Cilicia to deliver relief. What she sees — burned churches, orphans, empty villages — becomes «In the Ruins».

1915

The escape

Warned that she is on the April 24 deportation list — the only woman on it — she flees to Bulgaria, then the Caucasus, where she organises relief for refugees and orphans.

1933–1943

Yerevan, then the gulag

She leaves Paris for Soviet Armenia in 1933 to build a national literature. In 1937 the Great Purge arrests her. In 1943 she dies in exile — pen and paper forbidden.

Zabel Yesayan in later life

Featured work · Testimony

Աւերակներուն մէջ

Averakneroun Mech — “In the Ruins” / “Among the Ruins” · 1911

Sent by the Armenian Patriarchate to Cilicia after the 1909 Adana massacres, Yesayan walked through burned churches, emptied villages and orphanages filled with the wounded. She recorded it all — with the cold discipline of a reporter and the heart of a poet. It remains the only eyewitness account of the massacres written as literature.

“Among the Ruins is the only work in the Armenian language in which an eyewitness account is turned into a literary form.”

— Marc Nichanian, literary scholar · English translation: AIWA Press, 2016

More about the book →

Sepia illustration of the Silihdar gardens in Üsküdar along the Bosphorus

From her memoir

“I took refuge in the gardens every time the ominous dark clouds piled up on the horizon of my life.”

The Gardens of Silihdar · 1935

In her own words — and theirs

These inconveniences are meaningless in my eyes, since I now take an active part in building the future of my country.

Zabel Yesayan, asked why she left Paris for Yerevan, 1933

From what fleeing child's foot had it fallen? In what ruin had the foot wearing it turned to ashes? A little shoe…

In the Ruins · Աւերակներուն մէջ · 1911

Among the Ruins is the only work in the Armenian language in which an eyewitness account is turned into a literary form.

Marc Nichanian, literary scholar

I had resolved to maintain my sangfroid.

Zabel Yesayan — In the Ruins · Աւերակներուն մէջ

Continue

The pen they could not silence

From a single-cell prison in Siberia, she still believed in the page. Read how a girl from the gardens of Üsküdar became Armenia's most important witness — and its most silenced writer.

Full biography → Her legacy today