The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

Based on a true episode of the Armenian genocide, Werfel's epic follows the Armenians of seven villages who, rather than submit to deportation in 1915, fortify the mountain of Musa Dagh above the Mediterranean and hold out for forty days until French warships take them off. The real coast of the old Vilayet of Aleppo, now Hatay, grounds it: the villages at the mountain's foot, the fortified plateau of the Damlayik, the sea below from which rescue comes, and the plain toward Antioch where the Ottoman power gathers.

Gabriel Bagradian

The seven villages

Book 1

Gabriel Bagradian, an Armenian long settled in Paris, has returned to his family's village below Musa Dagh with his French wife when the deportation orders come. As the villagers grasp that deportation means death, Gabriel, the one man among them with military training, persuades the seven villages to resist rather than march into the desert.

Book 1

inspired by The Armenians of seven villages at the foot of Musa Dagh, chief among them Yoghonoluk, are the community of the book; the villages are drawn from the real Armenian settlements of the mountain and sited there.

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