Caption:
The Hamidian massacres were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that took place in the mid-1890s. It was estimated casualties ranged from 80,000 to 300,000, resulting in 50,000 orphaned children. The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology. Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms. Photograph taken by William Lewis Sachtleben, depicting the victims of a massacre of Armenians in Erzerum on October 30, 1895, being gathered for burial at the town's Armenian cemetery. Erzurum is a city in eastern Anatolia (Asian Turkey).