In the battle for the Arakelots Monastery, a bunch of Armenian fedayis under the command of the legendary Andranik Ozanyan and Gevorg Chaush (Gazaryan) fought against an Ottoman regiment with a total of about 6,000 people.
Already in the first three days of continuous encounters, the Turks lost a huge piece of their manpower, which forced the Turkish command to start negotiating with the Armenians on the 19th day of the battle.
Only on the 24th day, when the Armenian heroes ran out of ammunition, they decided to leave the monastery. Andranik, wearing the uniform of a Turkish officer, went around the Turks, speaking to them in fluent Turkish, and at the same time guided the retreat of his people.
”Andranik is not a human being, he is a ghost,” the Turks then would say. Both fearing and respecting him, they pronounced his name in conjunction with the high Ottoman title “Pasha”. The Kurds believed that when Andranik took off his coat at nights, dozens of bullets fell out of him.
Gevorg Chaush, who was nicknamed “the lion of the mountains,” was also widely known among the Turks. In the battles against the Turkish enslavers, he almost always was victorious. The people said: “No one was able to murder Turks the way he did!”
