I cannot mention the American missionaries without a
tribute to the admirable work they have done. They have
been the only good influence that has worked from abroad
upon the Turkish empire. They have shown great judgment
and tact in their relations with the ancient churches
of the land, Orthodox, Gregorian, Jacobite, Nestorian,
and Catholic. They have lived cheerfully in the midst,
not only of hardships, but latterly of serious dangers
also. They have been the first to bring the light of
education and learning into these dark places, and have
rightly judged that it was far better to diffuse that
light through their schools than to aim at a swollen roll
of converts. From them alone, if we except the British
consuls, has it been possible during the last thirty years
to obtain trustworthy information regarding what passes
in the interior.
—HON. JAMES BRYCE,
British Ambassador to the United States.
The entire plan and purpose of missionary work in Turkey involved the
printing-press. Only a little more than two years after the first
missionaries to Turkey arrived upon the field, a press under the
care of a missionary of the Board arrived at Malta, commissioned to
print for the use of the Palestine and Turkish missions. At that time
hostilities between Greece and Turkey were in progress and no port upon
the Mediterranean was safe for the American press. Malta was under the
English flag, and so proved for the time the best base for the literary
operations of the mission.
Undoubtedly the earlier publications were too impracticable to meet
the needs of the people of Turkey. The missionaries assumed ability
in the untrained Oriental mind to grasp the thoughts of the West. In
the list of what was printed at Malta during the first ten years are
found such works as “Serious Thoughts on Eternity,” “Guilt and Danger
of Neglecting the Saviour,” “Scott’s Force of Truth,” “Content and
Discontent,” “Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.” A great variety of
books was prepared, for the most part, by those who knew practically
nothing of the thought and life of the people who were supposed to read
them.
In 1833 the political atmosphere had so cleared that the press was
removed from Malta, the Arabic equipment going to Beirut in Syria,
while the Greek, Turkish, and Armenian outfit was set up in Smyrna.
During the ten years at Malta, over twenty-one million pages were
printed in four different languages, namely modern Greek, Italian,
Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic. The largest amount by far was in Greek.
No printing in Armenian was done until the press was set up in Smyrna
and, previous to 1837, less than 175,000 pages had been printed in that
language.
In 1829 it was decided to do more in the way of providing much needed
books for elementary schools. One of these books was so popular that
27,000 copies were sold in Greece alone. In 1831 the Armeno-Turkish New
Testament, translated by Dr. Goodell, was printed. That same year over
five million pages of modern Greek were put out from the press. Nearly
all of this was circulated about as rapidly as it could be run off.
The publication work in the Turkish missions outside Syria was carried
on at Smyrna until 1853, or for about twenty years. The last and one of
the most important works published there was the modern Armenian Bible
translated by Dr. Elias Riggs. This one book has accomplished more to
fix, unify, and simplify the modern spoken Armenian language than all
other influences combined. What the King James version has done for
the English speaking peoples, and Luther’s Bible for the Germans, this
scholarly and accurate translation has done for the Armenians all over
the world.
Besides the Bible and strictly Biblical works, a large number of
school-books of almost every grade as well as translations of choice
parts of English literature were printed and sold. The eagerness of
the Greeks and Armenians, and especially the latter, for a literature
suited to their aroused intellectual condition made it possible to
sell at cost much that was published. After the organization of the
Evangelical Protestant Church, hymn-books in various languages were
prepared and printed. It would be impossible in the limits of this
discussion to give even a classified list of the publications issued
from the mission presses of Turkey since printing began. The output
upon the average from 1833, even to the present time, has been at the
rate of from twelve to fifty million pages each year in not less than
ten languages, including Bulgarian and Koordish. In some years this has
been exceeded.
At Beirut in 1906 there were printed on the American press 152,500
volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a total of
47,278,000 pages. To this was added nearly 9,000,000 pages of other
Christian and educational books, making a total of 56,000,000 pages of
literature from this one press alone in a single year.
For the Bulgarians and the Armenians the missionaries practically
created their new literature in the spoken tongue. Of the first one
hundred books printed in the modern Bulgarian, some seventy were the
product of the missionary press. The first grammar of the modern
Armenian language was printed by the missionaries. The Koords had no
literature of any kind, while their language is even yet unclassified.
The New Testament was translated into that tongue, written with the
Armenian characters, and in that language it was printed. Parts of the
Bible have also been printed in the Albanian tongue.
The Bible has been translated into Arabo-Turkish, the language read by
all the educated Moslems in Turkey north of Syria and is printed and
widely circulated. This, with the Arabic and Syriac versions printed at
Beirut, puts the Bible into the language of all the Moslems of Turkey,
except the Koords and Albanians. As yet the former have only a part of
the Bible, and the latter a very poor and fragmentary version, in their
own language.
However great the influence of the press has been in the preparation
of books and tracts, it has probably reached and permanently moved
more people still by its periodical publications. Papers have been
printed for more than a generation in Armenian, Greek, Armeno-Turkish,
Greco-Turkish, Bulgarian, and Arabic which have had wide circulation
among all classes, but especially among the evangelicals. These papers
while religious, have also been newspapers, carrying into the remote
hamlets of the interior information of the great outside world of
which the masses were profoundly ignorant when mission work began.
The influence of these papers can best be measured by the fact that
when the cholera was approaching any section of the country, the
missionaries were accustomed to publish detailed instructions regarding
the best methods to prevent contracting the dread disease and what to
do as soon as the symptoms appeared. Those who read the papers took
great care to follow directions, and so the Protestants who usually
knew how to read seldom suffered from the scourge.
When the cholera was raging with unusual virulence in Aintab, taking
for the most part the Moslems and ignorant Gregorians and leaving the
Protestants almost unscathed, a learned Moslem asked a missionary
if God spread a tent over the Protestants that the cholera should
pass them by. Through the periodicals in the various languages, the
missionaries and leading Armenians have been able constantly to speak
directly to the most intelligent classes of people in the entire empire.
When the missionaries began work in Turkey in 1820 there was no
newspaper worthy the name in the country in any language and the
number of books was but few. Printing was not left, however, entirely
in the hands of the missionaries, for, after a time, to meet the
demands of the different religious communities other presses were
started. These were small in output and power and did not amount to
much until within the last twenty-five years. During this time the
Armenians have prepared and published some excellent text-books, many
of which have been and still are in constant use in Protestant schools.
They also have started a few periodicals that for the most part have
little permanent value. The Moslems have done but little in the way
of printing books or periodicals of any kind. They do not allow the
Koran to be translated into the vernacular of the people, and it is
their policy to exclude from their subjects, as far as possible, all
knowledge of the outside world. The Moslem press has produced little of
real value to the people.
Great freedom to the work of the press was given in the earlier days,
all of which has changed during the last thirty years. While the Turks
were never favorable to it, they tolerated it under a silent protest.
Gradually the opposition became more and more open and violent.
Undoubtedly all this originated among the Roman Catholics and the
Jesuits, who even in the early days of the mission fought against the
circulation of the Bible and Protestant books. They did much to stir
up opposition to Protestant books, among the Greeks first and later
among the Armenians, always assuming that the Bible is a Protestant
book. There is no doubt that this hostility was helped on also by the
representatives at the Porte from Russia. The Turks were not so much
concerned with what they regarded as squabbles between the various
Christian sects.
About 1878 Dr. Wheeler, President of Euphrates College, imported a
printing-press into Harpoot, where he set it up and ran it with great
industry for several years. Only a local work was done there, while
the general publication operations of the missions were carried on
at Beirut and Constantinople. In the eighties the Turkish government
began to put severe restrictions upon the press. The one at Harpoot
was silenced and has so remained to this day.[1] Strict rules were
promulgated to restrict printing in the empire. Formal permission
must be procured in order to own a printing outfit, and strict rules
were formulated for its conduct. All matter to be printed must first
be submitted to a royal censor whose stamp of approval upon every
article is necessary before it is put upon the press. The same stamp
of approval which carries with it the sanction of the sultan must
be printed upon the first page of every book, otherwise its issue,
circulation, or even possession by a subject of the empire constitutes
a crime. This approval must be obtained for every edition of the same
book. It is almost as difficult to secure permission to-day to print a
new edition of the Bible as it was after the appointment of the first
censorship to print the first edition. Permission to print a book like
the Bible carries with it no authority to print separately any part of
the same. These rules have greatly hampered the work of the press, but
have not by any means been able to stop the constant output of useful
books and periodicals in the leading languages of the country.
There is no department of missionary effort which has done more to
open the eyes of the people and stir in them new desires and ambitions
than this work of publication, taken in connection with the general
educational operations. Many English books and periodicals find their
way into these schools and are included in the libraries of the
teachers and students. These too are subject to all the restrictive
laws which hamper the press. The tendency is more and more to exclude
all foreign books and periodicals and to have it almost a crime for a
subject of Turkey to have in his possession a library of any kind. Many
an Armenian has been arrested and thrown into prison for no other crime
than the possession of a few harmless English books. No one has yet
been bold enough to confiscate from the libraries of the missionaries
the books which they possess, but this step has been repeatedly
threatened. The officials, however, intercept many books in the mails
or in transit by freight.
In all work of reform which marks the history of missions in that
country this agency has been supremely potent. Undoubtedly to-day there
is no more vitalizing force in the empire affecting the intellectual
and religious life of the Moslems than that which is exerted not only
through the Bible and especially prepared literature, but through books
on science. These contain startling revelations to the old-school
Moslem, since modern science runs counter to nearly every teaching of
the Koran. He cannot deny their truth forever, and when he yields he
has already met with a mighty intellectual and religious evolution.
[Footnote 1: This press began operations again in September, 1908.]