Habil Bey

Rescue of Greeks

During the Pontic Greek genocide, Habil learnt of an incoming attack against the inhabitants of a Greek village near Samsun by Turkish irregulars (çetes). The attack was to take place the following day. He firmly opposed it and, rather than participate in it, warned the villagers and accompanied them into the mountains, where they took shelter alongside Greek resistance fighters.

In June 1921, Hippocrates Dedeoglou, known by his nom de guerre "İppok Ağa", sought to remove his relatives and other Greeks from Bafra after he heard reports of killings and murders of Greeks. Dedeoglou asked Habil for help. The two worked with each other, alongside Habil's two nephews, Eyüp and Kadir, in order to take 122 Greek civilians out of the town at night. Some were taken to the mountains and others to Habil's estate near the coast.

Habil helped arrange their escape by sea, contacting captains of boats carrying goods to Bafra from Constantinople and personally paying the refugees' fares. The refugees left in two groups of 101 and 21 people, eventually reaching Greece.

When the Turkish authorities began searching for him, Habil abandoned all of his property and, in disguise, fled through Trabzon to Constantinople. He later sent himself into exile to Greece with Eyüp and Kadir, settling in Athens.

Exile and death

Habil developed tuberculosis while living in Athens. Dedeoglou personally invited him to join him near Kavala, where he was living among other refugees from Bafra. Habil took up on the offer and settled in the refugee village of Dysvato [el] in 1926, dying there the same year.

The Greek refugees buried him with Muslim rites in their Christian cemetery, with an imam brought from Xanthi to conduct his Islamic funeral. They placed a marble inscription on his grave commemorating his rescue of their compatriots. Following the funeral, one of the refugees became concerned that the inscription identifying Habil as a Muslim might eventually become illegible, leading future generations to place a Christian cross on his grave. To prevent this, he travelled to Kavala, took a turbaned gravestone and erected it at the head of Habil's grave. Even today, his grave remains marked by a marble inscription and that same headstone instead of a cross. The inscription on his grave reads:

A philhellene Circassian landowner from Bafra, who saved 122 Bafraians from slaughter by the Turks in 1921. Persecuted by the Kemalist authorities, he fled to Athens, where he contracted tuberculosis. In 1926, he came to Dysvato to be near his friend, the resistance commander Hippocrates Dedeoglou, and died. The inhabitants of Dysvato who came from Bafra in Pontus buried him in their cemetery, honouring this philhellene, compassionate and noble man. Eternal be the memory of the philhellene Circassian Habil Bey.