In early 1915, the village was occupied by the Ottoman Army, who required local Christians to register for food rations. Instead, 700 family heads were executed in the village on the orders of Djevdet Bey. Russian Army commander K. Matikyan reported seeing "with my own eyes hundreds of mangled corpses in pits, stinking from infection, lying in the open. I saw headless corpses, chopped off by axes, hands, legs, piles of heads, corpses crushed under rocks from fallen walls". According to historian David Gaunt, "This was where the Ottoman soldiers learned to execute unarmed noncombatant Christians", leading to the Armenian genocide and Assyrian genocide.[3]
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the village's population was 6,313 in 1,216 households.[6] The following census in 2011 counted 7,995 people in 1,796 households.[7] The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 8,203 people in 1,935 households. It was the most populous village in its rural district.[2]
^Haftvan can be found at GEOnet Names Server, at this link, by opening the Advanced Search box, entering "-3767370" in the "Unique Feature Id" form, and clicking on "Search Database".)
