Boyadzhik massacre

[1][2][3][4] The massacre took place in the wake of the Bulgarian April Uprising, even though Boyadzhik did not participate in the insurrection and was located hundreds of kilometres away from the scene of any hostilities.

A rumour made believe the local Ottoman administrator, Şefket paşa, that the villagers were going to rebel, and he dispatched a band of Circassian bashi-bazouk to Boyadzhik.

In his memoirs, John Atanasoff writes:[3]My grandmother ran, while the child (my father) was in the hands of my grandfather ... a shot sounded ... one of the Turkish soldiers shot my grandfather right in the chest, he fell dead, a ricocheted bullet hurt my father and left a scar for the rest of his life, as a terrible reminder of those events.There is a list of a total of 145 confirmed victims: women, children and men (of whom two Orthodox priests).

[4] In his description of the April Uprising, American writer Justin McCarthy confuses the much smaller and unrelated "Boyadzhik massacre" (spelled "Boajic") with the biggest Ottoman atrocity committed at Batak,[9] which caused an enormous public outcry in Europe (dubbed "The Bulgarian Horrors"[10][11][12][13]) and led to the Bulgarian autonomy proposal of 1876.

[19][20] The town was saved by local Ottoman dignitary İsmail Hakkı Paşa, who ordered the paramilitary units to stand down and disband.