Eugene Rogan's recent archival reconstruction focuses on the July 1860 killing of Christians in Damascus that followed the Mount Lebanon fighting, drawing on Ottoman, European and Arabic-language sources including eyewitness testimony to revise earlier, often inflated contemporary press and missionary casualty claims downward, and to document in detail the Ottoman investigation and executions that followed, and the sheltering of thousands of Damascene Christians by the exiled Algerian resistance leader Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi. Rogan characterizes the episode as, in his words, "a genocidal moment, but not a genocide." Rogan directs the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability TierA 2024 archival study by a leading historian of the modern Middle East at Oxford University, drawing on Ottoman and consular records not fully used in earlier accounts; named a Financial Times Best History Book of the Year and treated here as the current standard reassessment of the Damascus phase specifically, complementing rather than replacing Fawaz's earlier Mount Lebanon focused account. Citation
Publication Year Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Damascus directly: "the July 1860 killing of Christians in Damascus that followed the Mount Lebanon fighting, drawing on Ottoman, European and Arabic-language sources including eyewitness testimony to revise earlier..."
This source names Lebanon directly: "in Damascus that followed the Mount Lebanon fighting, drawing on Ottoman, European and Arabic-language sources including eyewitness testimony to revise earlier, often inflated contemporary press and..."
Sources
Claims Backed By This Source (20 claims)
This source backs 20 claims across the atlas. As facts: 15 well-attested. As cited relationships: 2 connected. Plus 3 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
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- Articles, 7 claims: 5 well-attested, 1 connected, 1 general references.
- Wars & Conflicts, 7 claims: 5 well-attested, 1 connected, 1 general references.
- Open Questions, 6 claims: 5 well-attested, 1 general references.
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