Birth name Hampartsoum Boyadjian Died 1915, Kayseri, Turkey Name Hampartsoum Boyadjian | Years of service 1880's—1915 Nickname(s) Mourad the Great | |
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Battles/wars Armenian National Liberation Movement
Kum Kapu demonstration (1890)
1894 Sasun Resistance Allegiance Social Democrat Hunchakian Party | ||
Hampartsum Boyajian (Armenian: Համբարձում Պոյաճյան, Hambardzoom Poyachian) (14 May 1860 – 30 July 1915), also known by his noms de guerre Murad and sometimes Medzn Murad ("Mourad the Great"), was an Armenians fedayi and a leading political activist of the Hunchak party.
Biography
He was born in Hadjin (Cilicia). The famous Hunchakian leader Medzn Girayr was his senior brother.
Murad joined the Hunchakian party when he was a medical student in Constantinople. In 1890, he took part in the Kum Kapu demonstration. In 1894, he was a leader of the Sasun Resistance. He exhorted the inhabitants of Sasun to fight to their last drop of blood to defend their mountains and houses. Turkish authorities imprisoned and tortured him, and in 1896 Murad was exiled to Tripoli. During his exile the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party convention elected Mourad as a member of its Central Committee. Murad was one of the most popular figures of the Armenian Liberation movement, and several revolutionary groups worked towards his liberation. In 1906 he escaped from prison and in 1908 he returned to Constantinople. He was elected a member of the Ottoman parliament for the region of Adana.
Murad, a Hunchakian who never gave up on the dream of a united and independent Armenia was labelled, like thousands of others, an undesirable by the Young Turk Government. He was among the first to be arrested in April 1915 at Red Sunday, during the eve of the Armenian Genocide, and sent to Kayseri, where he was severely tortured in prison. After a trial in July, he was hanged on 30 July 1915, with 12 fellow friends.
From 1992 to 1994, a Medzn Murad battalion led by Gevorg Guzelian took part in the Nagorno-Karabakh War.