VIITHE PERIOD OF SUBJECTION

The Mameluke Sultans of Egypt were the unhappy instruments of harassing and finally overthrowing the Armenian independence in Cilicia, but they did not enjoy the pleasure of ruling over Armenia, nor Cilicia and the Armenians. The course of events was taking a different shape in Western Asia.

By a succession of influxes of the Mongolian hordes into the country, during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, the power of the Caliphs of Bagdad was broken into pieces and a vast empire was formed by the Seljukian Turks. After the death of the third sovereign, Malek Shah, the empire was divided into various principalities. One of these became a kingdom of considerable importance, lying on the frontier of the Greek empire, having Nice, afterwards Iconium (now Koniah), its capital. The same influx of the Mongolian invaders had not yet stopped on the one hand; on the other hand the Western Crusaders did render some service in annoying this kingdom, while the Mameluke Sultans by no means were at peace with the Seljukian Turks.

The turbulent condition of Western Asia at thisperiod (13th century) could well afford the growth of a new power, or dynasty, provided this power was in sympathy with the prevalent religion, Mohammedanism, and congenial with the invading hordes. Unfortunately for the Christians, both in Western Asia, and later in Eastern Europe, we find a power, growing out of a nomadic tribe into a formidable empire, which held the Christian world in terror for several centuries. The following is the origin of this empire:

“About the middle of the thirteenth century a tribe of Turks, not of the stock of Seljuk, driven forward by the Mongol invaders, left their camping grounds in Khorasan and wandered into Armenia in search of undisturbed pasturage. After seven years of exile, deeming the opportunity favorable to return, they set out to their ancient possessions. But while fording the Euphrates, the horse of their leader fell with him and he perished in the river. A spot upon its banks now bears the name of the tomb of the Turk. Upon this accident occurring the tribe was divided by his sons into four companies and Ertogrul, the warlike head of one division, resolved to return to the westward and seek a settlement in Asia Minor. While pursuing his course he spied two armies in hostile array. Not willing to be a neutral spectator of the battle he joined himself to the apparently weaker party and his timely aid decided the victory. The conquered were an invading horde of Mongols, the conqueror was Aladdin, the Seljukian Sultan of Iconium, and Ertogrul received from the grateful victor an assignment of territory in his dominions for himself and his people. It consisted of the rich plains around Shughut, in the valley of the Sangarins (called the “country of pasture”), andof the Black Mountains on the borders of Phrygia and Bithynia. The former district was for his winter abode; the latter for his summer encampment. In this domain was nurtured his son Othman, or Osman, who became the founder of a dynasty and an empire. From him the Turks of the present day have the name of Ottoman, or Osmanli, which they universally adopt, rejecting that of Turk with disdain as synonymous with barbarian.”[62]

Othman began to reign aboutA.D.1289. The shepherd, warrior, and freebooter were united in his character. He was dependent on the Sultan of Iconium during the life of the latter, but otherwise he was free to prey upon his neighbors and govern his people. After the death of the sultan, who had no sons to succeed him, his kingdom was divided, and Othman became, practically, an independent ruler. He increased and extended his power and territories by gradual encroachments upon the Grecian dominions, and by repeated inroads year after year. He captured Brousa and made it the capital of his government. His son and successor, Orchan, extended the bounds of Othman’s territories with astonishing rapidity. He crossed the Straits of Hellespont and Bosphorus. He appointed his brother, Aladdin, vizier. Aladdin created the system of the standing army in the year 1330.

“But the soldiers (taken from the Turks) proved intractable and could not be brought to submit to the strict discipline involved in military organizations. To obviate this difficulty the expedient was resorted to of rearing up in the doctrine of Islam the children of theconquered Christians inuring them from youth to the profession of arms and forming them into a separate corps. This black invention, as Von Hammer truly characterizes it, was adopted by Aladdin at the instance of Kara (black) Chalil Chenderli, the judge of the Army, and he adds, has ‘a diabolical complexion, much blacker than the gunpowder almost contemporaneously discovered by Schwartz (black) in Europe.’ Hence arose the Janissaries, a name which the westerns have corrupted from the Turkish Jenicheri, signifying the ‘new troops.’ The Corps continued to be recruited from the children of the captives taken in war, or from those Christian subjects, an inhuman tax of every fifth child or one child every fifth year, being rigorously levied upon the families. The number of the Janissaries, originally one thousand, was successively raised to twelve, to twenty, and to forty thousand, immediately connected with the Court, besides a much larger number scattered through the provinces. Hence it has been estimated that not less than half a million Christian children were cruelly torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islamism, and trained to maintain it with the sword. At length, in the reign of Mohammed IV (A.D.1648-1687) began the custom of admitting into the regiment the children of the soldiers themselves; and after this innovation, the Janissaries became a kind of military caste, transmitting from father to son the profession of arms.“In the days of their pristine vigor, the new troops were distinguished by their fanaticism and valor. Through upwards of three centuries, marked by a long series of great battles, they sustained only four single reverses, chiefly from Tamerlane in 1402, and John Humades, the Hungarian general, in 1442. During that period they extended the petty kingdom of Brousa over the vast dominions of Constantine the Great, and made known their prowess from the walls of Bagdadto the gate of Vienna, and from the Caspian Sea to the Nile, while their name was the common terror of Christendom.”[63]

“In the days of their pristine vigor, the new troops were distinguished by their fanaticism and valor. Through upwards of three centuries, marked by a long series of great battles, they sustained only four single reverses, chiefly from Tamerlane in 1402, and John Humades, the Hungarian general, in 1442. During that period they extended the petty kingdom of Brousa over the vast dominions of Constantine the Great, and made known their prowess from the walls of Bagdadto the gate of Vienna, and from the Caspian Sea to the Nile, while their name was the common terror of Christendom.”[63]

The reason of our apparent deviation by giving at this time an account of the origin and growth of the Turkish empire, will be readily seen in the succeeding pages; for it was with the Turks that the Armenians have mostly had to do during the last five hundred years. Moreover, we would call attention to the fact that the brilliant conquests have not been accomplished by the Tatar Turks, but by the Christian youths, who from their early childhood were cruelly torn away from their parents and paternal Christian religion and compelled to embrace Islamism, and inured to the profession of arms to maintain with the sword the religion of Mohammed.

A considerable number of Armenians driven from the face of the Mongolian invaders, had chosen for themselves the life of voluntary exiles in the Grecian provinces, and towards the end of the fourteenth century after the overthrow of their Cilician independence, the Turkish empire then being nearly a century old, many Armenians became a ready prey to the fanaticism of the Turks.

It has been estimated that not less than 500,000 Christian children were thus cruelly torn from their parents, compelled to embrace Islamism, and trained to maintain it with the sword. How many thousands of families were compelled to exchange their religion, the religion of love and chastity,for the religion of Mohammed, the religion of sensualism and tyranny; how many thousands were massacred because they would not obey such an infernal behest, it is impossible to tell. Suffice it to say that these questions are not imaginary possibilities, but attested facts of history which make up the darkest pages of the Ottoman chronicles. Indeed we would be unwilling to believe them if we had not seen and heard even worse things in the early part of the twentieth century.

While the expatriated Armenians were cruelly treated by the Turks, who were growing in power and increasing in numbers at the expense of the Christians in western and central Asia Minor, those still in Armenia proper received one of the severest calamities ever inflicted upon humanity. The executor of this terrible infliction was the famous Mongolian savage and warrior, Lenk Temur, commonly called Tamerlane (Temur the lame). He made himself the master of an empire extending from the great wall of China to Moscow and to the Mediterranean, having Samarcand his capital. He marched with an immense army against the Persians and in a short time subdued them. He subjugated Bagdad, plundered Aleppo (Hallep), burned down the greater part of Damascus and wrested Syria from the Mameluke Sultan. From the city of Van to the city of Sebastia (Sivas), from one end to the other of Armenia, no city, town or village of any size escaped the notice of the rapacious potentate; he reduced them all to ruinous heaps and ashes. The foreignrulers of the different parts of Armenia had no power whatever, to withstand the terrible army of Temur, which covered the land like an army of locusts. A Kurd, chief by the name of Kara (black) Yusuf, who was assuming control over the Sasoun district and southern part of Armenia, fled from the face of Temur into the mountain fastnesses, where with some of his subjects he wandered until the calamity was past. The city of Van, after a feeble resistance surrendered; the youths were carried as captives, the rest were massacred in various forms. The inhabitants of Sivas surrendered on his solemn promise that “no soldier of his will lift up the sword on them.” He was true to the letter, but not to the spirit of his promise. Four thousand soldiers were roasted to death, and as many were buried alive, and thousands of the very young and old whose hands and feet were tied, were thrown together and trampled under the hoofs of the horses. The spot upon which this barbarous mode of massacre took place, to this day, bears the name of Sev Hokher, signifying in the Armenian language the “Black Plains.” He then marched to meet the Ottoman ruler Bajazet I. Bajazet may deserve a word or two before we hand him over to the tender mercies of Temur—his three predecessors had borne the title ofemir, commander, but Bajazet changed it for that of Sultan. He was the first also to set the example of fratricide in the royal family, for he caused his only brother to be put to death. The Mohammedan historian trying to justify him, says, “remembering thetext of the Koran, that disturbance is worse than execution.” Sigismund of Hungary, with his allies, “a body of French and German knightly auxiliaries, endeavored to cope with the fiery Turk, but was defeated with terrible loss in the battle of Nicopolis in 1396.”

Bajazet, fierce and proud, warlike and bloodthirsty (in the above battle ten thousand prisoners were put to death by his order), acquired the name of Ylderum, ‘lightning,’ on account of his energy and quickness of action. “Elated by his successes, he contemplated a campaign into the heart of Europe, and boasted that he would one day feed his horse at Rome with a bushel of oats on the altar ofSt.Peter’s.”[64]He who has the destinies of men in His hand, had differently mapped the career of Bajazet, the Ylderum. The lame Temur with his immense army moved westward, and Bajazet eastward to meet the Tatar warrior. The latter fully confident of a victory courted an encounter with the former. Their armies met one another on the plains of Angora. Fierce must have been the conflict. There is always some reason, or excuse for a defeat. It is said that Bajazet was ill at the time and though he was riding on one of the fleetest horses in the field, he could not effect his escape. He was captured and his army scattered in 1402. It is supposed that he died in the following year from natural causes, “aggravated by his inability to brook a reverse of fortune so signal and complete.”

For a few years Temur, the lame, was the lord of Asia and the master of the original seat of the Ottoman. He returned with an immense number of captives and the plunder to the ancient city of the caliphs; there in Samarcand, he was preparing for another campaign into China, when he was removed to the presence of the eternal Judge, the King whose laws he had violated and whose creatures he had destroyed. He died in 1405, in his capital Samarcand, and his vast empire quickly crumbled into small fragments.

The magnificent city of Constantinople, after being the metropolis of a Christian nation over eleven centuries, fell into the hands of the barbarian Turks (1453). In vain, and too late, did the Greeks realize their critical condition, and struggle against the angel of death. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks filled the European nations with consternation. The following is a portion of the letter of Pius II, the Pope who tried to raise a crusade against the Turks:

“The strait of Cadiz has been passed, and the poison of Mohammed penetrates even into Spain.... In other directions, where Europe extends eastward, the Christian religion has been swept away from all the shores. The barbarian Turks, a people hated by God and man, issuing from the east of Scythia, have occupied Cappadocia, Pontus, Bithynia, Troas, Pisidia, Cilicia and all Asia Minor. Not yet content, counting on the weakness and dissensions of the Greeks, they have passed the Hellespont and got possession of nearly all the Grecian cities of Attica ... Achaia, Macedonia, and Trace.“Still, the royal city of Constantinople did remain the pillar and head of all the East, the seat of patriarch and emperor, the sole dwelling place of Grecian wisdom.... This too, in our own day while the Latins, divided among themselves, forsook the Greeks, has that cruel nation of Turks invaded and spoiled, triumphing over the city that once gave laws to all the East.“Nor is their savage appetite yet satiated. The lord of the unrighteous people, who is rather to be called a dark brute than a king, a venomous dragon than emperor, he, athirst for human blood, brings down huge forces upon Hungary. Here he harasses the Epirates and here the Albanians; and swelling in his own pride, boasts that he will abolish the lowly gospel and all the law of Christ, and threatens Christians everywhere with chains, stripes, death, and horrid torments....”

“Still, the royal city of Constantinople did remain the pillar and head of all the East, the seat of patriarch and emperor, the sole dwelling place of Grecian wisdom.... This too, in our own day while the Latins, divided among themselves, forsook the Greeks, has that cruel nation of Turks invaded and spoiled, triumphing over the city that once gave laws to all the East.

“Nor is their savage appetite yet satiated. The lord of the unrighteous people, who is rather to be called a dark brute than a king, a venomous dragon than emperor, he, athirst for human blood, brings down huge forces upon Hungary. Here he harasses the Epirates and here the Albanians; and swelling in his own pride, boasts that he will abolish the lowly gospel and all the law of Christ, and threatens Christians everywhere with chains, stripes, death, and horrid torments....”

Even the great reformer, the immortal Luther, “composed a once popular prayer, suited to the times, to be sung as a hymn in the churches; and Robert Wisdome, afterwards Archdeacon of Ely, appended a translation of it to the metrical version of the Psalms, by Steinhold and Hopkins. It commenced with the lines:

‘Preserve us, Lord, by thy dear word,From pope and Turk, defend us Lord.’”[65]

After the death of Temur, all the rulers whom he had subdued, began to rise and recover their respective reigns. Kara Yusuf returned to Sasoun and resumed his rule over southern Armenia. Temur’s son Sharukh was reigning in Persia and over the eastern portion of Armenia. Iskander (Alexander)the son and successor of Yusuf and Sharukh had a long contest over the southern and eastern part of Armenia (1421-1437). Sharukh finally subdued Iskander—who was also called Shahi Armen, Shah of Armenians—and set his brother Jihan Shal as a ruler, whose seat was in Tabriz, in the province of Azerbaijan, his reign extended over eastern and southern Armenia. Meanwhile in Mesopotamia, a Tatar prince, a Turcoman, by the name of Jehankir, was rapidly growing in power. His son, Uzun (long) Hasan, succeeded the father, and after the death of Jinan Shah he seized the throne of Persia and also reigned over the entire Armenia (1468).

In my endeavor to be brief, I have crowded the history of almost a century into less than a page, but these continuous wars, between the rival princes and rulers, have decimated and destroyed a large portion of the population of Armenia, the Armenians. And when the combatants were exhausted and ceased for a time, then the inevitable sequel of wars, famine, had to take its fearful toll of human life.

It is a miracle that any Armenians at all have been left to the present time. But it seems to me, that God purposely preserved some of them even to the beginning of the twentieth century to prove two things, namely, that the boasted Christian civilization of Europe is a Christless civilization, that Mohammedanism, after thirteen centuries of opportunity and trial has proved itself not a whit better than the barbarism of the past, and even worse in many respects.

Some new warriors were preparing themselves to enter into the arena. Shah Ismail established and founded the Suffavean dynasty of Persia (1499). The Suffaveans claimed that Ali, the fourth Caliph, would have been the successor of Mohammed and the head of Islamism had not Abubeker, Omar, and Osman, usurped his right. They, moreover, claimed lineage from Ali, and thus to be the lawful successor of Mohammed. The Osmali sultans repudiated this right and descent. Though both the Persians and Turks venerate the false prophet, yet they divide the Mohammedans into two sects. The Turks aresunees, orsonees, orthodox, and they call the PersiansSheahsor heterodox. This difference and the national jealousies between the Turks and Persians furnished these two Islam nations with an occasion for constant war and bloodshed which lasted over two centuries. But alas! the noble land of Ararat had to furnish them the battle-field, and the unfortunate “House of Torgarmah” to suffer the doleful consequence of their bloody conflicts.

Sultan Selim I, who merited the title of “the cruel,” is believed to have caused the death of his father, Bajazet II. He had forced him to abdicate, and while on his way to Adrianople as an exile, he was murdered. Selim was fiercely intolerant in religion. Naturally, all the fanatics loved him. Turning his army of 140,000 eastward he subdued Armenia and Mesopotamia and conducted a successful war in Persia against Shah Ismail. The latter was defeated and barely escaped from capture (1514).Selim captured Tabriz and there he found a dethroned prince of Temur’s race and carried him to Constantinople.

It was a fortunate thing for the Christians, that though this eastern campaign was a religious war it was conducted against the Sheahs or the heterodox Mohammedans; and a formal expression of opinion by the Ulema was, that there was “more merit in killing one Sheah than in shedding the blood of seventy Christians.” Selim’s savage intolerance was so fierce that he thought to annihilate every member of the sect in his dominions.[66]

The conflict between the successors of Selim I and Shah Ismail in Armenia continued with varying fortunes. But one of the notable misfortunes that befel the people was in the reign of Shah Abbas, a magnificent barbarian. He was one of the Shahs of the Suffavian dynasty, and was preparing for a conflict with the Turks in 1605. Pretending that he was afraid he might be compelled to cede the province which he had conquered to the enemy, he gave orders to his army to vacate immediately as many cities and towns as possible, burn them to ashes, and drive the inhabitants into Persia. Within a short time many a city and town lay in ashes, and the country was reduced to a fearful condition of desolation. Thousands sought refuge in mountains andcaves. Some found a refuge but others were found by the enemy, and twenty-five thousand families—some before and some after this event—were led into captivity.

This great host of captives was composed of the venerable patriarchs, bishops, priests, old men and women; children of all ages; mothers with their infants in their arms, baptizing them with their tears; gallant young men and beautiful maidens. These all were indiscriminately driven by the Persian soldiers to the banks of the Araxes, where rafts and galleys were in readiness to hasten their crossing the swift waters of the river. With the pretense that the enemy was pressing hard, they compelled many to hasten the crossing by swimming the river, many of them were carried in the current.

Opposite Ispahan these captives were settled and built New Jula (some write Julfa). The Jula proper in Armenia was destroyed by Shah Abbas. The Persians were conquerors in this war: “Upon the sword being drawn the Persians rapidly recovered the provinces wrested from them by Selim and Solimon; and a large Turkish army was signally defeated August the 24th, 1605. Five pashas were slain; the same number were taken prisoners; and the victor continued to receive the heads of his enemies till midnight, when more than twenty thousand had been counted. Shah Abbas performed pilgrimages on foot to the shrines of Moslem saints, and swept their tombs. Yet while doing this he allowed a Roman Catholic convent to be established at Ispahan,stood godfather to the child of Sir Robert Shirley, and even formally received baptism—events to which the Jesuits ascribed his execrable triumphs.”[67]

Sultan Amurath (Murath) IV marched, with a large army, against the Persians, and recovered the provinces of Armenia from the Persians. He then marched and laid siege to Baghdad which the Persians had taken. Ten thousand of the Persian garrison lost their lives during the siege; and twenty thousand more, being the whole number in the town, were massacred during and immediately after the capture. A few days afterwards an equal number of the inhabitants, who were Sheahs, were slaughtered by the triumphant Sonnees (1638).

After this the Armenians in Armenia enjoyed a comparative rest of over eighty years. They had some time to repair their churches and schools, monasteries and homes. They did all these and they also recuperated and raised a new and sturdy posterity to meet the hardships of the eighteenth century.

During the early part of the eighteenth century some disturbances in Persia and Armenia made the Armenians in both of these countries greatly to suffer. Then again the Turks and the Persians were not always at peace with one another. The Russians, moreover, were slowly moving southward and preparing to enter into the contest. They contended with the Persians over the northwestern portion of Armenia and other provinces belonging to the latter from 1772-1828. In their contest the Armenians rendereda signal service to the Russians and decided the victory for them.

“From 1813 to 1829 the Armenians appear to think their emancipation at hand. Russia stood in need of them to make a diversion against the Ottoman forces and held out to them the hope of becoming an independent principality, under the protection of the Czar. Her promises were believed, and, in their devotion to their destined liberator, they withstood for more than six weeks an army of eighty thousand Persians who were marching against Russia, and prevented them from crossing their frontier; but these services reaped a poor reward, for not only were the Russians faithless to their promises, but they seized the opportunity of some trifling disturbance in the country to lay violent hands on the venerable Archbishop Narses, who was dragged first toSt.Petersburg and afterward banished to Bessarabia, whilst several of the Armenian chiefs were scattered in exile through foreign countries, or carried off to Russia, to be heard of no more.”[68]

Russia also wrested from the degenerate Turkish Empire at times, especially in 1878, a large territory and the important city of Kars of Armenia, and now the Russian armies are occupying almost all of Armenia, and it is hoped that not a foot of ground in Armenia will be returned to the “unspeakable Turk.”

FOOTNOTES:[62]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 6-7.[63]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 18-20.[64]Milner, “Turkish Empire,” p. 33.[65]Happily, Luther did not live in the days of William II of Germany.[66]In his campaign against Syria and Egypt, Selim captured Cairo, deposed the last Caliph Al-mutawakkel. Selim was invested with the dignity by the sheriff of Mecca, who consigned the keys of Kaaba to his custody. He added the title of defender of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His successors have since been regarded as the supreme chiefs of the orthodox Moslem world. Milner, “Turkish Empire,” p. 105.[67]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 135, 138.[68]Ubicini, “Letters on Turkey,” Vol. II, p. 340.

[62]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 6-7.

[63]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 18-20.

[64]Milner, “Turkish Empire,” p. 33.

[65]Happily, Luther did not live in the days of William II of Germany.

[66]In his campaign against Syria and Egypt, Selim captured Cairo, deposed the last Caliph Al-mutawakkel. Selim was invested with the dignity by the sheriff of Mecca, who consigned the keys of Kaaba to his custody. He added the title of defender of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. His successors have since been regarded as the supreme chiefs of the orthodox Moslem world. Milner, “Turkish Empire,” p. 105.

[67]Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 135, 138.

[68]Ubicini, “Letters on Turkey,” Vol. II, p. 340.

Back to Index Next