According to documents that once belonged to Talaat Pasha, more than 970,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916. In 1983, Talaat's widow, Hayriye Talaat Bafralı, gave the documents and records to Turkish journalist Murat Bardakçı, who published them in a book titled "The Remaining Documents of Talat Pasha" (also known as "Talat Pasha's Black Book"). According to the documents, the number of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire before 1915 stood at 1,256,000. It was presumed, however, in a footnote by Talaat Pasha himself, that the Armenian population was undercounted by thirty percent. Furthermore, the population of Protestant Armenians was not taken into account. Therefore, according to the historian Ara Sarafian, the population of Armenians should have been approximately 1,700,000 prior to the start of the war. However, that number had plunged to 284,157 two years later in 1917.