Kemaliye today is a charming but obscure town tucked into the cliffs above the Keban Reservoir. Many of the locals still call it by its old name Eðen, which turns out to be the Turkish version of the original name Agn. The town has a historical significance far larger than its size, of which a book, unfortunately in French, has been written.

Under review: Pascal Carmont, Les Amiras: Seigneurs de l´Armenie ottomane(The Amiras: Lords of Ottoman Armenia). Paris: Salvator, 1999. 187 pages.

From the small town of Agn (today´s Kemaliye) in Anatolia´s Erzincan province, a remarkable group of enterprising and ambitious Armenians rose to the forefront of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. They are referred to simply as amiras (a variant of emirs) and these men who came from modest provincial backgrounds accomplished great things in almost every human sphere.

The full review is at:

http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-02-20-the-amiras-giving-armenians-back-some-of-their-history