ABSTRACT
The forces that reconquered Edirne were associates of Enver Pasha known as fedais: from the Arabic word commonly used in the Middle East to refer to irregular forces in battle, in this case from various political and ethnic groups struggling to define their positions in the empire. Arabs in the Ottoman Empire faced a differed set of problems from the Amenians, but shared with them the stresses of sudden political change. Instead, they either were heavily influenced by domestic authoritarian groups, such as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire, or were decisively shaped by the interventions of outside powers, as in the case with Russia and England in Iran. The widespread pogroms that accompanied the 1905 Russian Revolution had been fueled by Pan-Slavic nationalist and anti-semitic groups called the Black Hundreds. When the Iranian parliament rejected this complaint as an infringement on its sovereignty, the Russians sent troops marching in the direction of Tehran.
