Indeed it was through such rumours that suspicions were piqued and people sought to acquire weapons as a means of protecting themselves. One major rumour was that Armenians placed human faeces at the door of the Great Mosque. There were also rumours circulating among the Muslim community that Armenians had dug up an underground tunnel in order to reach the weapons depot, which was to aid them in their quest for independence. Another rumour was that a group of Armenian rebels were about to attack Muslim villages around the city, which stirred up the fears of Muslims. According to one rumour the Armenians were organizing themselves against the Muslims in order to separate from the Empire.
Indeed, my work on the archival sources of the incident have produced enormous documentation which indicate that the rumours circulated around the city had played unquestionable role in building distrust between the peoples and led to the rise of numerous conspiracy theories. In spite of the proliferation of writings, however, very few have touched upon the power of rumours in the escalation of violence between the two communities. Historians have so far heavily focused on the political, economic and social dimensions and/or reasons of the conflict. A good amount of works has been hitherto done by the historians of the Middle East about the communal conflict in Adana in April 1909. The Adana Incident of 1909 is one of the local events of the Armeno-Muslim relations during the final decades of the history of the Ottoman Empire.
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