During the famines of 1878-81 that spread across the Ottoman East, from Erzurum to Mosul, inhabitants had “nothing left to do but fly or starve,” the British Consul at Diyarbakir wrote. This paper examines how, during these famines, aid and arms flowed unevenly to farmers and nomads, radicalizing relations between the two and transforming the development of sectarian politics in the region. Recent work has explored the history of Ottoman nomads and sedentarization projects during the Tanzimat reforms (1839-76) and reign of Abdülhamid II (1876-1908). Re?at Kasaba and Janet Klein describe the state’s efforts to break or co-opt the power of predominantly Kurdish nomadic tribes, while Richard Antramanian and Dzovinar Derderian show how the Armenian Patriarchate’s constitutional regime became a junior partner in centralization and sedentarization efforts. This paper shifts the focus from Istanbul-based institutions like the Ottoman state and the Armenian Patriarchate to local politics between nomads and farmers, which hinged on uneven allocations of food and arms. In the wake of the 1877-8 Russo-Turkish War, stocks of food and flocks collapsed, endangering farmers and nomads alike. Aid institutions, however, shared an idea of progress that favored cultivation over pastoralism. Drawing on data from humanitarian aid organizations, British and French consular reports, American missionary accounts, and internal correspondence among Armenian and Ottoman officials in the region, I argue that nomads were not included in the humanity that aid organizations sought to protect. Famine aid, consisting primarily of cereals, seed, and farming implements, focused on replanting fields rather than repopulating herds. While farmers benefitted from uneven aid flows, nomads benefitted from uneven arms flows, thanks to Ottoman policies to arm tribes during the previous year’s war. As Ottoman officials tried to settle them and aid efforts neglected them, many tribes pillaged settlements to survive. In addition, nomads brandished the power of their modern rifles to forge their own coalitions of local notables and state officials, people who could shield them from sedentarization efforts. Reading this history through uneven aid and arms allocations, I argue, allows us to account for the circulations of arms, food, and capital that radicalized farmer/nomad relations and shaped the Ottoman-Russian borderlands’ developing sectarian politics.