The Town of Mush in 1912

The photograph shows the town of Mush in 1912. Mush was the historic centre of the Mush plain and for centuries one of the largest Armenian settlements of Western Armenia, with a developed educational, church and economic life.

A large crowd has gathered in the street. Around it stand flat-roofed houses, and a minaret and mountains are visible behind. At the bottom of the photograph is a handwritten inscription in which the name of the town and the year 1912 can be read.

The photograph was taken only a few years before the Genocide and preserves the appearance of a town that was later completely destroyed and emptied of its Armenians.