Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian

by George H. Filian

THE PRESENT SULTAN, HAMID II.

This is the thirty-fourth Sultan in the Ottoman line, and probably the worst, the least, and the last. It is not likely the Turks will ever have another Sultan, for this one is pretty sure to bring the Sultanate to an end. His days are numbered, he knows it well, and the Turks know it well too. Before his life and his kingdom are finished, he has resolved to end the Armenian nation; that, however, will not be ended, the people will not be exterminated; when the Turkish Empire is abolished the remaining Armenians will have freedom.

THE SULTAN, FROM A RECENT PORTRAIT.

(By permission of “The Youths Companion.”)

Hamid II was born September 22, 1842, second son of Abdul Mejid, and wrested the throne from his brother Mourad August 31, 1876. He is not a legitimate Sultan, but a usurper. When but a little boy he manifested a savage and cruel spirit. While the Dalma Bagsh Palace, the largest in Constantinople, perhaps in the world—was going up, he went to visit it; seeing it unfinished, he called the Armenian architect and told him it must be finished by the next day. “My dear prince and lord,” said the architect, “I wish I could finish it, but it is impossible; and especially not to-morrow, since it is Sunday, and we Christians do not work on Sundays.” “You heathen dog, you Armenian,” said the boy Hamid, “if I grow up, and some day become a Sultan, I will force all the Armenians to break the Sabbath, and if they do not, I will order the soldiers to kill them all.” He is carrying out his threat. He grew to manhood without becoming any milder, and is morally corrupt besides. He has drunken bouts with worthless associates, and spent his time in all sorts of monstrous debauchery and brutality. He was such a miserable wretch that it is impossible to describe his beastly life on paper. There is no humanity in him, no grace, no sympathy, no brains, no strength; he is pale and sick, well worthy to be called the “sick man of Turkey.”

This is a very different description of him from that given by General Lew Wallace and Mr. Terrell. I can only say that I know what I am talking about, and they do not. I lived in Constantinople, as a native of Turkey, and with means of knowing, seeing him often, and hear authentic stories of his doings day by day. General Wallace was invited to the palace, feasted and flattered, and his wife decorated with jewels; naturally, he thinks no ill of a man who treated him so well, and with whom he hopes for more good times when he goes back. He has done infinite harm to the cause of Armenia by his popular lectures, declaring the atrocities “exaggerated” (he evidently thinks that if a newspaper report gives ten thousand men murdered when there were only five, and all the women of a city violated when a dozen of them got away, you are entitled to dismiss the whole thing from your mind as of little account), and the Sultan a good man, incapable of such things. People are bewildered, and ask, “How can we doubt a good American who was minister there?” Why, good people, what has his ministry got to do with it? He was hundreds of miles from Armenia, and did not know any of the chief languages of Constantinople,—either Armenian, Turkish, or Romanic; and what could he tell of his host, except of the quality of his hospitality? A man usually shows his best side to those he entertains; did he suppose the Sultan was going to amuse his guests by having one Armenian disemboweled, and another emasculated or impaled on red-hot iron rods, and a couple of women ravished, as a light and playful interlude between the main dishes and the dessert? His praise of the Sultan is as valuable as his praise of the Grand Llama would be,—he knows nothing of either; and his inference from the Sultan’s pleasant talk that he could not order a nation extirpated with hideous cruelties, is simply imbecile. And since he has given all this loose talk, the consular reports, from English residents among the very scenes, have been published, showing that the atrocities have not only not been exaggerated, but are even worse than reported. In this case, even the newspapers were unable to come up to the truth; their rhetoric fell short of the full measure of the awful truth.

To go back a little: Twenty years ago Abdul Aziz, uncle of the present Sultan, was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. He cared little for the country or the people; he wanted only to eat and drink, and have good times. He was a very strong and hearty man, and I was told he could eat a whole roast lamb for dinner, and think it probable. He had the innate cruelty of his family, their love of blood for its own sake. He had tigers and lions fight together; he would order a live lamb flung to a lion, and laugh to see the lion tear and devour it. He married all the handsome girls he could find, but for pure animality; he cared nothing for their education or virtue, and his several hundred wives were what you might expect. One of them fell in love with the commander-in-chief, or Minister of War, Heussein Avni Pasha, a very ambitious and daring adventurer, who had gained the confidence of the Sultan, and went often to the palace. The Sultan heard of the intrigue, went to the woman’s room, kicked her fatally, and threw her out of the window. But before her death, she sent word to Heussein to avenge her on the Sultan. Heussein’s position was very critical; evidently it was a race between him and the Sultan which should kill the other first. He went to Midhad, the Grand Vezir, and to Kaysereli Ahmed, the admiral, both liberal-minded pashas, in favor of establishing a constitutional (or even if they could, a republican) government, and without telling them his relations to and fears from the Sultan, persuaded them that now was the time to depose the Sultan, and establish liberal institutions, and told them it must be done that night, or the Sultan would get wind of it, and then good-by to all of them. And he clinched the argument by telling them he would order his soldiers to kill both of them if they refused to join him, and then depose the Sultan just the same; “as commander-in-chief,” he said, “I can compel obedience, and I am in earnest.” They consented, and while the Sultan was asleep that night the commander’s soldiers and the admiral’s sailors surrounded the palace by the land and sea. This was the Dalma Bagsh, the largest and handsomest palace in Constantinople. Heussein entered, saying he had important news for the Sultan. Going to the chamber where Aziz was sleeping, he awakened him, and said, “In the name of your nephew, Sultan Murad, I depose you.” Then he compelled him to go down-stairs to a boat in waiting, filled with soldiers, carried him to Cheragan Palace, and imprisoned him there; after which he informed the Sultan’s nephew, then Prince Murad, that his uncle had been deposed because the people would not endure him, and added, “As the oldest in the royal family you succeed him, and I, as commander-in-chief, have the honor and privilege of humbly serving my master, and leading your majesty to the throne of the Ottoman Empire.”

PRESENT SULTAN, HAMID II.

From an early portrait.

Murad was too astonished to know what to do or say; but Heussein was resolute, and Murad reluctantly followed him to the Dalma Bagsh; there the commander ordered the soldiers to cry out three times “Padishahum chock yasa” (Long live the Sultan). All this was about midnight; and meantime printed notices were prepared and scattered throughout Constantinople that Sultan Aziz was deposed and Sultan Murad was on the throne. After a few days the commander-in-chief sent a eunuch and a physician to Cheragan Palace, with orders to put Aziz to death. They did so by chloroforming him and cutting his blood-vessels with scissors. Heussein prepared a false report stating that he had committed suicide, and brought it to Sultan Murad. The latter did not believe it, and said, “you killed my uncle.” Heussein left the Sultan’s presence in great anger, and went to Midhad’s palace to confer with him, calling in also Kaysereli Ahmed and other officers. While they were together, another officer, Cherkez Hassan by name, brother-in-law of the dead Sultan, came to the palace, informing the guard that he had a message from the Sultan to the pashas, who were in conference. The guard admitted him, and he went to the parlor. After the usual salutations the commander asked him, “Hassan, why did you come here?” Hassan replied, “I came to kill you, dog,” and fired three shots at him from his revolver, stretching him dead on the floor. Then, before the others could assail him, he killed every one present, except Midhad, who escaped. Hassan was finally captured and hanged, but Murad was established on the throne. He was a good-natured and liberal-minded man; he believed in constitutional government, and organized a working system. There was to be a parliament, one-third Christians and two-thirds Mohammedans, elected by the people of the provinces or vilayets. Each vilayet furnished three members, two Mohammedans and one Christian, all indorsed by the clergymen. During the elections I was pastor of Adana in Armenia Minor, and had to endorse our members. The Adana member was an Armenian named Krikor Bizdigian, the richest man of that city, perhaps in Turkey; if still living, he must be ninety. When the parliament was opened in Constantinople, Sultan Murad presided, and told the members to discuss any questions freely. He said, “We are here for the good of the country, and the empire needs to be reformed; how can we reform it?” This was an entire novelty; “government by discussion” is not the Oriental way, and not the Oriental liking either. The Mohammedan members were astonished, and they were wrathful at the Christian members when the latter began to make free and able speeches. They said, “Are we going to be governed by these heathen dogs, the Christian hogs? We will have no parliament where every dog is free to open his mouth. We want the good old ways of Mohammed.” They were like mad dogs, ready to bite. They hated the Christians, and they hated the Sultan. They went to his younger brother, the present Sultan, and told him his brother Murad was insane. “He makes Christian dogs equal to Mussulmen; he will ruin the country; you must become Sultan to save the Turkish Empire.” This suited Abdul Aziz exactly; he headed a revolt, deposed his good brother, dissolved the parliament, imprisoned Murad in the palace where his uncle was assassinated, and since then has been carrying the country to destruction. He is a perfect devil in all respects. A devil can take the guise of an angel, and the Sultan has the cunning to make himself appear a perfect gentleman, a benevolent and humane person. The devil can cheat most people, and so can the Sultan, all but the native Christians in Turkey, to whom he shows his horns, and hoofs, and tail.

The nauseous praise of the Sultan from travelers and ministers reminds me of a Turkish brigand named Guro, who infested Asia Minor a quarter of a century ago. He robbed year after year all travelers who had anything worth taking; but when he met tramps he gave them money, and even a roasted lamb to eat now and then. The tramps all praised him; he was a benevolent, humane, kind-hearted man; they had never seen anything cruel or dishonest about him. So the Sultan robs the Armenians, and uses their money to feast the American ministers and decorate their wives. Oh, but the Sultan sent money to the sufferers from famine in the Western States of America; so generous of him! I am glad to say the money was refused. All Americans who praise the Sultan are like the tramps and the brigand. They are either ignorant or in effect bribed. And then there is the affectation of impartiality, so easy a cover for ignorance, coldness, and laziness. You must say some good things about a scoundrel, and some ill ones about a saint, or you will be considered a partisan. You must not tell even the truth, if the truth is all on one side. If the Sultan massacres all the Christians in Turkey, why, there are two sides to the question; perhaps the Christians were not agreeable people, and if so, you cannot wonder he has them exterminated by sword, and fire, and torture, and rape; it is really the only way he could get rid of them. And then, he is king, and has a right to do what he pleases with his own; nobody has any business to interfere. Of course a President could not order three millions of people put to death by letting loose all the savage Indians of the West on them to do as they pleased with them, for the sake of making them worship the Big Manitou; but a Sultan—that is different, even though a Kurd is exactly as bad as an Indian, and an Indian’s knife does not cut throats any more effectively, nor an Indian’s tortures inflict more unnamable horrors of suffering, nor an Indian’s torch burn houses any better, nor an Indian’s beastly lust defile women any worse. Are all the writers, then, who have praised him ignorant or silly? Yes; the Sultan’s deeds, proved by countless thousands of witnesses, set forth in the consular reports, show that they are.

As soon as Abdul Hamid had seized the throne, he girded on the sword of Osman, which I will explain later is equivalent to coronation. The keys of the palace where Murad was imprisoned he keeps in his pocket. The nominal ground of his imprisonment is insanity, but he was not insane; it was his liberality of mind, his greatness of heart, and his mild and kind spirit. He was an exceptional Turk. Then Hamid called Midhad Pasha to him, gave him $25,000, and told him to leave the country and never come back. The country was thus left without a single man of any force of character and a large position combined. After the death of Aziz the two greatest Turks were Sultan Murad and Midhad Pasha, and had Murad not been imprisoned, and Midhad banished, the Turkish Empire would be an entirely different country, and have a different future.

Midhad was finally recalled, but only to be murdered. As the Sultan felt his position secure, he began to get rid of all men of superior character and education. Some he banished, some he imprisoned, some he killed. But Midhad, as the greatest, was the most obnoxious. He was of course not dispatched at once. He was invited back, made governor of Smyrna, given the highest emoluments, paid the greatest honors; then one night he was suddenly summoned to Constantinople by the Sultan. He knew it was the death-call, and fled to the French consulate for shelter, but the consul was afraid to protect him. Finally he was taken by force to Constantinople, tried before a tribunal of course packed by the Sultan, and condemned to death. But the kind-hearted Sultan commuted the death sentence to banishment and hard labor for life, and quietly ordered the officers who were going to take him to banishment to kill him instead, which they did.

After he had got rid of all the great Turks, he appointed a host of ignorant and cruel ruffians as governors, sub-governors, and generals; like Hadjii Hassan Pasha, governor of Beshick-Tash near the Sultan’s palace, and whose business is to watch over the Sultan, and who cannot read or write. He prefers ignorance, because it means fanaticism, and he thinks cannot plot against him. He dreads and hates education and the educated, though he makes a show of encouraging them. He taxed the people for public schools and put up magnificent buildings, but there are few if any scholars in them; they were not built for educational purposes, but for a show, and if necessary, for barracks in the future. All the same, he has his agents in Europe and America chant his praises as a lover of learning. Parents will not send their children to them anyway, for there are not competent teachers in them; there are a very few ignorant Mohammedan teachers, but even they are so corrupt morally that no one dares trust his boy or girl with them. The Sultan professed that people of all nationalities and religions would have equal privileges in his public schools, therefore he ordered all to contribute money for them. He raised the farmers’ tax from one-tenth to one-eighth of the crops on pretense of supporting the public schools. Of course he got most of it from the Armenians, but there is not an Armenian teacher or child in them.

Abdul Hamid is a stupendous hypocrite and charlatan; he makes a great pretense of wisdom, religion, and morality, and he has not a spark of either one. His wisdom is only the animal cunning of a jealous, cruel, suspicious brute, his morals simply do not exist, and his religion is pure sham. It is often reported that he is very religious. All that it amounts to is that every Friday (the Mohammedan Sunday) he goes to the mosque to worship (a ceremony called selamlik), with several thousand soldiers lining the roads from the palace to the mosque to prevent his assassination, of which he is in hourly fear; that once a year he goes to the old Seraglio and pays tribute to the mantle of Mohammed and other relics, kissing the slipper, coat, and beard of the prophet; and he worships in the mosque of St. Sophia as a conqueror. All this is merely for show, to please the fanatic Mohammedans. He advertises himself as a temperance man, too, but he drinks to excess privately. In a word, he is thoroughly false from top to bottom, pretending all good, and doing all evil.

His officers of course imitate him; most of them are absolute infidels, believing in nothing, but professing great devotion. I knew a governor of this stamp. He used to worship at the mosque, and even ordered a hair of Mohammed’s whiskers to be brought from Constantinople to please the Mohammedan population. He never drank a drop of liquor in public, but privately drank all he could hold. He had plenty of fellows. For instance, Khalil Rifat Pasha, the present Grand Vezir, appointed a few months ago, has been governor of several different provinces, and notorious in all as a great hypocrite and a thoroughly corrupt man, full of lust and profligacy. When a European or a native Christian of high position called on him, he would treat the visitor with great politeness, promise anything he asked, say, “take my word of honor,” and assure him of his entire sincerity; as soon as he was gone, Khalil would curse him, and call him a heathen dog, say to another Mohammedan, “See how that Christian hog believed what I said!” and keep not a word of his promises.

The Sultan is just the same. He is outwardly very pleasant, very gentlemanly, very humane. He will promise almost anything, but he will do nothing, and he calls his enraptured guests dogs and hogs behind their backs. Who knows how many times he has called Lord Salisbury, the German Emperor, or the Russian Czar, who are helping him to kill the Armenians, heathen dogs? See the promises of the Sultan in 1878, in the Berlin Treaty, Article 61:—“The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the powers, who will superintend their application.” These promises were made eighteen years ago, and the reforms were to be made “without further delay.” His reforms have consisted in ordering Circassians and Kurds to murder and plunder them. Since the Berlin Treaty, the Sultan, calling the European kings, emperors, and princes heathen hogs and Christian dogs, directly and indirectly has killed 200,000 Armenians. That was his reform.

When he seized the throne, Turkey had 40,000,000 people, and the Sultan thought his power was irresistible. He let loose a horde of Circassians to massacre the Bulgarians, just as he has let loose the Kurds to massacre the Armenians. But the Bulgarians are Slavs, and belong to the Greek Church, and the Russian Czar, Alexander, grandfather of the present Czar, interfered in their favor. This excited the fears of the other powers, and a Congress was held in Constantinople to settle the question. Lord Salisbury came from England, Count Ignatieff from Russia, and others from other parts of Europe, gathered in a beautiful palace (now the admiralty) on the shores of the Golden Horn of sweet waters, discussed the question, and decided that the Bulgarian atrocities must stop, Bulgaria be reformed and allowed to govern itself internally, and that Turkey must not fight Russia because it was too weak. This decision was communicated to the Sultan, and he was furious: he would not grant freedom or a government to Bulgaria, and he was quite able to fight Russia. Finally he refused flatly to accept the decision, and called a Turkish Congress to give their “opinion.” Of course they gave what was wanted, and pronounced in favor of a war with Russia. A few were bold enough to disfavor it, and the Sultan punished them. One of these was Hagop Efendi Madteosian, the representative of the Protestant Armenian community. Another was a thoughtful, experienced Turk, and when the Sultan asked him his reason for opposing the war, he related the following parable:

“There was once a miser whom the king gave his choice of three things: to eat five pounds of raw onions without bread at one meal, to receive five hundred lashes on the bare back, or to pay $5,000. The miser could not bear to lose so much money; he could not endure such a flogging; and he chose to eat the onions. After eating a pound or so their bitterness and rankness nauseated him, and he concluded to take the whipping. He stood about a hundred lashes, and saw that he should die under it; and decided to pay the $5,000 after all.” “Now,” said the wise Turk, “this illustrates what I mean. If you go to war with Russia, you will sacrifice many thousands of soldiers, which is a very bitter thing to digest; then you will lose European Turkey, and finally you will have to pay millions of dollars indemnity and ruin the country. I cannot approve the war.” The Sultan cried out in rage, “Begone, you old crank! I will not listen to any more foolish words from you. I shall conquer the Czar, enlarge the country, and strengthen my kingdom.” He did go to war in 1876, was whipped by the Czar, and lost almost the whole of European Turkey and other parts of the empire, with 22,000,000 people: Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, part of Macedonia, part of Armenia, Cyprus, and afterwards Egypt. He lost many thousands of soldiers and millions of dollars, and besides has had to pay millions of dollars indemnity to Russia. And the Sultan is called an “able man” and “wise ruler”! These things look like it.

After the war and the loss of the provinces, he encouraged the Mohammedan population of European Turkey to emigrate to Asiatic Turkey, that they might not live under Christians, and that they might increase the number of Mohammedans in the Asiatic part. The slaughter of the Armenians and the confiscation of their property forms part of the scheme to make room for them. Before his time the Armenians in Armenia outnumbered the Turks; but the massacres, the occupation of the farms and houses by the savages let loose on them, and the emigration of many more Armenians to Persia and Russia, have greatly diminished their numbers. Of course they are not permitted to emigrate, they simply fly. About 200,000 have actually perished. As to the forced conversions, the Sultan does not care a particle for Islamism, but wants to please the Moslem and finds this an agreeable way to do it. As to the converts from Islamism to Christianity, they are ordered to go to Constantinople and are killed there. Hundreds and thousands of the Mohammedan Turks are Christians in secret, but do not dare to confess it. These are the ones who helped and protected the Armenians during the recent atrocities. Some six years ago a number of such professed the Christian religion publicly; they were at once ordered to go to Constantinople and every one of them was murdered by order of the Sultan. When the representatives of the Christian powers asked about them the Sultan denied that they had come there at all. This was the method of their assassination: The Sultan has several pleasure boats, and in one of these boats he fitted up an air-tight room with an air-pump; each night one of the converts was taken from prison and put into this room, the air was pumped out, and he was suffocated; then an iron chain was hooked round him, and he was thrown into the Bosphorus. One by one all of them were so murdered. How did the author of this book discover the secret? Well, when in Constantinople, I had an intimate friend among the engineers; the engineer of this death boat told my friend about it, and he told me.

And the Sultan is not simply a murderer by proxy and official order; he is a murderer himself personally. When in Constantinople, I learned from several authoritative sources that he killed with his own revolver several of his servants, for no cause whatever, but merely from suspicion or rage. He always keeps a revolver in his pocket, and whomever in the palace he suspects, he shoots. He is a great coward. I heard there that he has more than 10,000 detectives, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars a year. He lives in Yildiz Palace, about two miles from the Bosphorus, on a hill on the European shore; he has built new barracks, and keeps a large army around the palace to protect him from assassination. His “wisdom” is merely care for his skin. He cares nothing for the prosperity of the country; it is steadily growing poorer, while he is personally growing very rich. That is one reason why he keeps an Armenian treasurer, that the Turks may not know his secrets. Even the Turks are disgusted with him. I often used to hear the Turks say, “God deliver us from the Sultan and send another master, even if he is the Czar of Russia.” His immense family costs him from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year; it is the largest in the world. I was told that it consists of 5,000 persons, counting the eunuchs, the servants, and all. He has about 500 wives; he did not marry them all; he inherited most of them. When a Sultan dies, his successor has everything that belonged to him, including his wives. And besides, he has to marry a new wife every year, by the Mohammedan and governmental law; he has no choice in the matter. That makes twenty wives in the twenty years of Abdul Hamid’s reign. This is the system: He has at present nearly one hundred young girls in the harem, supposed to be the most beautiful in the world; they are presented to him by the governor-generals, who get them from the local governors, who get their offices by sending their superiors the finest looking girls, or the best Arabian horses, and the governor-generals get theirs by passing the gifts on to the Sultan. That is the way to get office in Turkey. You may be a murderer, a thief, or an ignoramus, but you can be sure of an office if you can furnish a handsome girl, or a fine stallion, or a few thousand dollars. When I was pastor in Marsovan, the local governor, Sudduc Bey, bought a very pretty girl, and sent her to the governor-general of Beshick-Tash in Constantinople, Hadji Hassan Pash, the Sultan’s special guard; he had got his office from that functionary. As to how the girls are got, it depends; if they are Mohammedan, they are bought; if they are Christian they are seized by force, for the Christians will not sell their daughters. Several months ago Bahri Pasha, the governor-general of Van, carried off several Armenian girls and presented them to the Sultan, who decorated him for the service, and appointed him Vali or governor-general of Adana, in Armenia Minor. These girls are kept in the harem of the Sultan. When the time comes to marry another wife, he has the girls stand in a row, and chooses one of them by covering her face with a silk handkerchief; then she is taken by the eunuchs to the quarters allotted to the Sultanas, and can have separate servants, carriages, and eunuchs. The life of the Sultan and his big family is the most miserable in the world. The palace is a focus of discontent, quarrels, jealousy, lust, and cruelty; in a word, it is a perfect hell. The women have nothing to do, and nothing to think of; they do not read, they have no work, and no share even in household management; they are idle, and unspeakably bored, and they do what most idle people of both sexes do all over the world—excite their nerves with sensual cravings, and then try to satisfy them. They often manage to bring boys to their quarters by stealth, and keep them there for weeks for purposes of lust, and the Sultan knows nothing about it; often they bribe their eunuchs, and go to other places to satisfy their desires, and the Sultan never hears of it. Aziz lost his life through an intrigue of one of his wives. With so large and exacting a family, it is no wonder the Sultan has no time or energy left for improving his administration. He only finds a little time to send telegrams to the governors to exterminate the Armenians.