Voices of Desolation

Abstract The paper deals with the phenomenon of the so-called Great Flight, which could be (within the context of Ottoman history) considered equivalent of Thirty Years’ War and its impacts in Central-Europe and elsewhere. Armenian primary sources depict this time generally as “bitter times of sorrow”, making references on forced deportations of urban or rural population ( surgun ), climate changes, crop failures, epidemics, raids of djelâli or levend rebels, war campaigns and scorched earth, famines and others. To explain the phenomenon of Armenian identity strategies during so turbulent 17th century helps to understand better later development, as well as National Revival period, while many contemporary topoi , such as the lamentation over the lost homeland and the emphasized motif of exile, remained valid until the mid-19th century only to be further modified and re-actualized.