Armenia had come largely under Ottoman rule during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The vast majority of Armenians, grouped together under the name Armenian millet (community) and led by their spiritual head, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, were concentrated in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire (commonly referred to as Turkish Armenia or Western Armenia), although large communities were also found in the western provinces, as well as in the capital Constantinople. The Armenian community was made up of three religious denominations: the Armenian Apostolic to which the overwhelming majority of Armenians belonged, and the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant communities. Through the millet system, the Armenian community were allowed to rule themselves under their own system of governance with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government. With the exception of the empire's urban centers and the extremely wealthy, Constantinople-based Amira class, a social elite whose members included the Duzians (Directors of the Imperial Mint), the Balyans (Chief Imperial Architects) and the Dadians (Superintendent of the Gunpowder Mills and manager of industrial factories), most Armenians – approximately 70% of their population – lived in poor and dangerous conditions in the rural countryside.[20][21] Ottoman census figures clash with the statistics collected by the Armenian Patriarchate. According to the latter, there were three million Armenians living in the empire in 1878 (400,000 in Constantinople and the Balkans, 600,000 in Asia Minor and Cilicia, 670,000 in Lesser Armenia and the area near Kayseri, and 1,300,000 in Western Armenia itself).[22] In the eastern provinces, the Armenians were subject to the whims of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors, who would regularly overtax them, subject them to brigandage and kidnapping, force them to convert to Islam, and otherwise exploit them without interference from central or local authorities.[21] In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the dhimmi system implemented in Muslim
countries, they, like all other Christians and also Jews, were accorded certain freedoms. The dhimmi
system in the Ottoman Empire was largely based upon the Pact of Umar. The client
status established the rights of the non-Muslims to property, livelihood and
freedom of worship but they were in essence treated as second-cl citizens
in the empire and referred to in Turkish as gavours, a pejorative word meaning "infidel" or "unbeliever". While building new places of worship by non-Muslims was forbidden under Pact of Umar, this prohibition wasn't followed in all regions of the Ottoman Empire and although some regions prohibited building new places of worship, it was ignored in some of the other regions. Although there were no law on religious ghettos, the prohibition on building new places of worship by non-Muslims led to them clustering near existing ones[23][24] Writing in the late 1890s after a visit to the Ottoman Empire, the British ethnographer
In addition to other legal limitations, Christians were not considered equals to Muslims and several prohibitions were placed on them. Their testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels. Their houses could not overlook those of Muslims; and their religious practices were severely circumscribed (e.g., the ringing of church bells was strictly forbidden).[23][26]