Mourad, called by many Medz'n Mourad,
was born in the mountainous Cilician town of Hajin in 1867 as
Hampartsoum Boyadjian.
His brother was the famous Hunchakian leader known as the Immortal
Girayr, organised much of Armenia Minor until he was hanged by the
Ottomans in 1894. Mourad, then a medical student in
Constantinople, joined the Hunchakians and became one of the
leaders of the 1890 Kum Kapu demonstration.
With a price on Mourad's head (2000 gold pieces), after hiding in
the Ottoman capital he fled to Greece, from there he travelled to
France, and to America.
In 1892, Mourad went to the Caucasus to try to get men and aid
from the Russian Armenians for Sassoun, where he travelled to on
foot and arrived in 1893 to be one of the leaders of the
rebellion.
After another trip to the Caucasus for aid, Mourad returned to
Sassoun and became the leader of the 1894 armed rebellion. Among
his friends in arms were Antranig, Kevork Chavoush and Hrair
Tjokhg. During 1-15 August, 1894 they fought against Zeki Pasha's
Fourth Turkish battalion with no help from outside. By the end of
August, Mourad with a small group of friends was surrounded and
cornered in a small cave. After three days of fighting he was
arrested, imprisoned, and then exiled to Tripoli in Africa.
In 1905, The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party's Fifth Congress
elected the imprisoned Mourad as a member of the Party's Central
Committee. This not only showed the Party's support of Mourad but
also their outright belief that they will be able to get Mourad
out of prison.
In 1906, the S.D. Hunchakian Party succeeded in helping him escape
after 11 years of imprisonment. The news of his escape echoed all
around the world and was greeted with words of joy and happiness
in both Armenian and foreign papers.
After his escape, Mourad dedicated himself to working towards the
unity of the Armenian revolutionary movement.
After the 1908 Ottoman constitutional revolution he and his
friends returned to Constantinople, and was soon elected as a
member of the Ottoman Parliament for the province of Adana, in
which he defended the rights of the common people, especially
provincial Armenians. Mourad, 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,
thus he was among the first to be arrested in April 1915 during
the eve of the Armenian Genocide, and sent to Caesarea, where he
was severely tortured in prison and after a trial in July, hanged
on 24 August 1915, with 12 fellow friends.
Medz'n Mourad will be remembered as the greatest revolutionary
hero of all Armenians...