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Fayez El Ghossein (1883 - 1938)

his memoir is one of the first pieces of documentation and testimony about the Armenian Genocide

Fayez was born in 1883 in El Sharaeh, a village in Ottoman Syria. As the son of a sheik of the Sulut tribe, on turning 14, he was sent to school in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He then attended law school and became a lawyer. He was appointed kaimakan (sub-prefect) in Mamuret-Ul-Aziz, in the Kharput district, but, after three years he decided to go back to Damascus to work as a freelance.

During the Great war he was arrested and accused both of belonging to a secret association that fought to free the Arabian territories from the Ottoman Empire and make them independent, and of being in contact with the British. Sentenced to death by court martial, he was spared and exiled to Erzurum

On the way from Damascus to Aleppo, in Siverek he often met columns of deported Armenians; he saw the horrors and sufferings, the meetings with their executioners and with the managers of the Union and Progress committee. His journey was interrupted in Diyarbakir as the Russians advanced. He stayed in the region for six months and gathered the secrets of Turkish officers, officials, notables, influential people, Armenian Ottoman citizens and witnesses. He saw the convoys of prisoners, witnessed massacres and the rape and murder of girls and children. 

He managed to escape and reach Bassora, a city controlled by the British to whom he begged for protection. His family knew nothing about him. He was sent first to India, to Bombay, then to Gedda in Saudi Arabia, where he met Sharif al-Husayn ibn Ali and became his advisor. He met Lawrence of Arabia who often remembered him in his famous book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. With the son of al-Husayn ibn Ali, Faysal, and Lawrence, Fayez worked for Arabian independence and, once the war was over, he moved to Damascus.

He was appointed judge of the criminal court of Margieh, but he left the assignment due to problems of conscience and carried on his activity as a lawyer with his two wives and his many children till he died in 1938. He is buried in the cemetery in El Sharaeh.

Fayez wrote four books, including his memoirs, one of the first contemporary documents to witness the Armenian genocide at the hands of the government of the Young Turks. The text, written in Arabic in 1915 and published in 1916, is the simple and brave reproach of a Bedouin, faithful to Islamic rules and offended by the Turkish atrocities, which pushed him to denounce the evil born of mean political interests and against the teachings of Islam.

Today, in the village El Sharaeh in Syria, almost all the inhabitants have the name El Ghossein. Fayez’s son Kussei still lives in the family home, an elegant palace with a hall and pillars. In the background, there is a picture of Fayez wearing a turban and standing near the family tree of the formerly nomadic Bedouin tribe of the Salut.

Justin Mc Carthy, a world famous historian, claims that Fayez El Ghossein never actually existed, but has been invented by the Armenians to counteract those who still deny the truth about the Armenian genocide!

Gardens that honour Fayez El Ghossein

Fayez El Ghossein is honoured in the Garden of Yerevan.

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Righteous Encyclopedia - Armenian Genocide

Before, during, and after the genocide, the Righteous helped victims, tried to stop the massacres, or bore witness to what happened. They also denounced, at their own personal risk, the planning and implementation of the genocide.

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