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 this period (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”), and of
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 about A.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
the conquered 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
Bagdad to 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 foreign
rulers 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 of _emir_,
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 the text 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 of
St. 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....”
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 are _sunees_, or _sonees_,
orthodox, and they call the Persians _Sheahs_ or 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
and caves. 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 rendered a 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 to St. 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.”