FOOTNOTES:
[1] When in meditation during the solitary night, I contemplate the waves, there arises in the bright moonlight the pretty water nymph from the Danube, from the beautiful blue Danube.
[2] He loved to wander over unknown places and to see unknown rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue.
[3] Le Rhin, Letter XIV.
[4] Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, 294, 295.
[5] 01., III, 13–15.
[6] The Danube, p. 71 (by W. Beattie, London, 1843).
[7] Cf. A History of the Life of Richard, Coeur de Lion, King of England, Vol. II, p. 419 (by G. P. James, London, 1854).
[8] Adventure XXII.
[9] History of the House of Austria from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh to the Death of Leopold the Second, Vol. IV, pp. 440, 441 (by W. Cox, London, 1820).
[10] Cf. Voltaire’s Précis du Siècle de Louis XV, Chap. VI (Paris, 1828). The application to Maria Theresa of the title Rex—King—instead of Regina—Queen—was in accordance with a peculiar custom in Hungary which required that her signature on all public documents should be Maria Theresa Rex.
[11] Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. XXII, p. 692. Another Englishman declares: “The Latin is so common in Hungary that during my travels I frequently heard the servants and the postillions converse and dispute with great fluency in that language.” Cox, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 440.
[12] Tour of Austria, p. 372 (London, 1844).
[13] Another saying frequently accompanies this, to wit: Nullum vinum, nisi Hungaricum—Hungarian is the only wine.
[14] Nevill Forbes, in The Balkans, A History of Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Roumania, Turkey, p. 48 (Oxford, 1915).
[15] The Balkans, p. 6 (Oxford, 1915).
[16] It is curious to remember that Attila’s first attack upon the Roman Empire “was delivered at the very spot upon the Danube where the Germanic powers in August, 1914, began their offensive. Attila directed his armies upon the frontiers of modern Servia at the point where the Save joins the Danube, where the city of Singidunum rose then and where to-day Belgrade stands.” Cf. Attila and the Huns, p. 37 (by Edward Hutton, New York, 1915).
[17] See the Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, pp. 411–419 (by C. W. Russell, London, 1858).
[18] Cf. Historical Geography of Europe, p. 70 (London, 1881).
[19] Ibid., p. 71.
[20] While I knew the honesty and truthfulness of McGahan too well ever to question his statements regarding the cruelties of the Turks which he so vividly described, I have never had any doubt that most of the atrocities that so shocked the world at the time were provoked by the people of the Balkans themselves. Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks had organized a systematic propaganda for the dismemberment of Macedonia and “when those methods flagged a bomb would be thrown at, let us say, a Turkish official by an agent provocateur of one of the three players, inevitably resulting in the necessary massacre of innocent Turks, and an outcry in the European press.” Cf. Nevill Forbes, op. cit. p. 66.
“The Bulgarian Atrocities,” according to another well-informed writer, “were a clever and unscrupulous piece of diplomacy on the part of the Russian Foreign Office and of the Pan-Slavist Committees. In May, 1876, the Bulgarian Committees at Bukharest and Odessa organized an insurrection which broke out simultaneously in many of the large towns of Bulgaria, accompanied by abominable atrocities on Moslems, ‘designedly committed by the insurgents as being the means best calculated to bring on a general revolution in Bulgaria, by rendering the position of the Christians, however peaceably inclined, so intolerable under the indiscriminate retaliation which the governing race were sure to attempt, as to force them in self-defence to rise.’” W. E. D. Allen in The Turks in Europe, p. 166 (London, 1919).
[21] “Of all the men,” writes Forbes, “who have gained reputation as war correspondents I regard McGahan as the most brilliant.” “He used to be called ‘The Cossack correspondent’ because of the swiftness of his movements. Frank Millet names him ‘Will-o’-the-wisp of war writers.’ George Augustus Sala pronounced him one of the most cosmopolitan men he had ever met—‘a scholar, a linguist, a shrewd observer, a politician wholly free from party prejudice, a traveler as indefatigable as Schyler, as dashing as Barnaby, as dauntless as Stanley.’” “No man of his age in recent years,” avers his friend, Lieutenant Greene, “has done more to bring honor on the name of America throughout the length and breadth of Europe and far into Asia.—I suppose that he and Skobeleff stood at the head of their respective professions.
“Year after year the praises of this bold adventurer and vivid writer are chanted in rude verse by the peasants of the Balkans, and every year the anniversary of his premature death is commemorated by the singing of a requiem mass in the cathedral at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria. When he was riding among the Bulgarian villages in war time the peasants used to crowd about and kiss his hands, hailing him as their liberator, and there were many of the Bulgars who agitated for the choice of this wandering writer as the head of the principality whose creation his dispatches had done so much to establish.” Cf. Famous War Correspondents, Chap. IV (by F. L. Bullad, Boston, 1914).
[22] After Trajan had conquered the Dacians he established in the newly acquired territory a large body of Roman colonists. But they were by no means all of Latin blood, for they were drawn, according to Eutropius, from all parts of the Roman Empire—ex toto orbe romano. Numerous votive inscriptions found in the country show that among the colonists besides those from Italy, were representatives from Gaul, Germany, Dalmatia, Phrygia, Galatia, Africa, Egypt, and far-off Palmyra, But, notwithstanding this complexity of ethnical stock, it was always those of Latin blood and Latin speech that dominated.
[23] For an illuminating account, with a map, of this much discussed campaign of Darius against the Scythians, see The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, sec. 7, 8 (by J. Rennell, London, 1830). Cf. also The Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III, pp. 434, 435 (by G. Rawlinson, New York, 1881); The History of Herodotus, Melpomene, 87–143; E. H. Bunbury’s A History of Ancient Geography Among the Greeks and Romans from the earliest Ages till the Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I., pp. 202–206, 217 (London, 1883).
[24] Cf. Le Danube, Aperçu historique, économique et politique, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917).
[25] See Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).
[26] Cf. The Orient Question, Appendix C (by Prince Lazarovich-Hebelianovich, New York, 1913).
[27] Cf. Baicoianu, op. cit., p. 14. See also for an illuminating discussion of this same subject La Question du Danube, Histoire Politique du Bassin du Danube; Études des divers régimes applicables à la navigation du Danube (by G. Demorgny, Paris, 1911).
[28] A venerable legend has it that Achilles met here the shade of Helen of Troy whom he had loved in life, by hearsay, although he had never seen her.
[29] These alleged appearances of Achilles and the Dioscuri, referred to by Arrian, were evidently the lambent electrical discharges known as St. Elmo’s Fires. They are also called corposant, Helena, and, when in pairs, the Dioscuri—namely, Castor and Pollux.
[30] Tristia, Lib. III, Elegia, III.
[31] Tristia, Lib. II, Elegia, IX.
[32] For the various names of the Euxine or Black Sea, cf. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 3 (trans, by H. Yule, London, 1903); Cathay and The Way Thither, Vol. II, p. 98 (printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1913).
[33] So paramount from the twelfth to the fifteenth century was the commerce of Genoa and Venice that an Italian writer does not hesitate to declare that, “during four centuries, the Genoese and Venetians were the arbiters of the destinies of Europe; that they alone thronged the trade-routes of Asia and Africa; that they alone controlled the commerce of these continents; that they alone civilized their barbarous inhabitants and dispelled the darkness of the Middle Ages.” Nuova Istoria della Repubblica di Genova, del Suo Commercio e della Sua Letteratura dalle Origini all’ Anno 1797, Vol. I, p. 7 (by Michel-Giuseppe Canale, Florence, 1858).
In marked contrast to this division of the commerce of the world between Genoa and Venice, the Venetian author, Fabio Mutinelli, would claim a mercantile monopoly for his countrymen. “To them alone,” he writes, “are earth and sea equally open; they alone are the channel of all the riches and the furnishers of all the world which poured into their hands all the money which it possessed.” Del Commercio dei Veneziani, p. 126 (Venice, 1835).
For interesting accounts of the Euxine trade routes during the period in question the reader may consult with profit Histoire du Commerce de la Mer Noire (by Elie de la Primaudaie); Le Danube, Chap. II (by C. I. Baicoianu, Paris, 1917); Intercourse Between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome (by H. G. Rawlinson, Cambridge, England, 1916); Travels of Marco Polo, Vol. I, Bk. I, Chap. IX (by Henry Yule, London, 1903). This masterly work is specially valuable for its numerous maps indicating the routes of Marco Polo, as well as those of the elder Polos through Asia. See also Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Vol. II, pp. 76, 78, 158 ff. (by Wilhelm Heyd, Stuttgart, 1879).
[34] Canto V, strophe v. Compare Byron’s graphic description of a storm on the Euxine with that given by Ovid in which he vividly portrays the struggling winds as they furiously rush against one another from all points of the compass.
[35] The Sweet Waters of Asia and the Sweet Waters of Europe on the Upper reaches of the Golden Horn are so called in contradistinction to the salt waters of the Bosphorus.
[36] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 136 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).
[37] Among the Ottomans and other eastern peoples the capital of Turkey is usually known as Stamboul, or Istamboul, a corruption of Constantinople. It is also called Constantineh. Frequently it is referred to as Roma Nova—New Rome. In the official documents of the Greek Patriarch this name is still retained. The Slavs love to speak of it as Tsargrad—the Castle of Cæsar. To Mohammedan poets, who are prodigal in the epithets which they apply to it, it is the City of Islam, the Portal of Felicity, the Gate of Happiness, the Mother of the World.
The municipal government of Constantinople embraces all the cities and villages fringing the Bosphorus from the Euxine to the Sea of Marmora, including the Princes Islands. But, although the superficial extent of the municipality—counting the water expanse of the Strait, the Golden Horn and the northern part of the Marmora—is quite large, its actual land area is comparatively restricted.
[38] Voyage en Orient, Tom. III, p. 190 (Brussels, 1835).
[39] Through South America’s Southland, Chap. IV (New York, 1916).
[40] For an elaborate account of Justinian’s marvelous temple see The Church of Sancta Sophia Constantinople, Chaps. III, IV, XI (by Lethaby and Swainson, London, 1894).
[41] Annalium, Pars V, p. 498 (by M. Glycas, Bonn).
[42] History of Architecture, Vol. II, p. 321 (London, 1867).
[43] Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, Stanza 77.
[44] The name given by the Italians to the official residence of the Grand Signor in Constantinople. The Turks use the word Serai, which is derived from the Persian serai, signifying palace—a word which is applied to any residence of Sultan. In English seraglio is frequently, but erroneously, confused with harem.
[45] The Eastern Question, p. 139 et seq. (by J. A. R. Marriot, Oxford, 1917). Whatever may be said regarding the genuineness of the famous “Political Testament” of Peter the Great “there can be no question that it accurately represented the trend and tradition of Russian policy in the eighteenth century. Constantinople was clearly indicated as the goal of Russian ambition. The Turks were to be driven out of Europe by the help of Austria; a good understanding was to be maintained with England and every effort was to be made to accelerate the dissolution of Persia and to secure the Indian trade. Whether inherited or not these were the principles which for nearly forty years inspired the policy of Peter the Great’s most brilliant successor on the Russian throne, Catherine II.” Marriot, op. cit., p. 138.
[46] Cf. Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, p. 268 (by Albert Vadal, Paris, 1869). The famous Field Marshal von Moltke expressed a similar opinion when he wrote, in 1846, “Rom wurde eine Weltstadt durch seine Männer, Konstantinople durch seine Weltstellung”—Rome was a world-city because of her men, Constantinople because of her world location. Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls, Tom. I, p. 165 (by Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, Berlin, 1892). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, in his valuable work, The Nearer East, declares: “No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages, nor perhaps ever will enjoy them. For the Isthmus of Suez is beset by deserts, and that of Panama has a climate not to be compared. Constantinople not only has an open and most fertile environment and easy access to the interior of both Europe and Asia, but its position between two seas and exposure on the side of Russia gives it an almost northern climate. Add to this a dry, sloping site, a superb harbor, an admirable outer roadstead, easy local communication by way of the Bosphorus and an inexhaustible water supply, and it is easy to agree that those who founded Chalcedon but left Byzantium to others, were indeed blind.” Pp. 240, 241 (New York, 1902).
[47] Beaconsfield boasted on his return from Berlin to England that he had secured “peace with honor.” McGahan, the brilliant war correspondent, declared as soon as he read the treaty, that “it was not worth the paper on which it was written.” An English writer, forty years later, stigmatized it as a treaty that “was concluded in a spirit of shameless bargain, with a sublime disregard of elementary ethics and in open contempt of the right of civilized peoples to determine their own future. It was essentially a temporary arrangement concluded between rival imperialist states. And it sowed the seeds of the crop of ‘Nationalist’ wars in which the Balkan peoples were to be embroiled for the next half century.” The Turks in Europe, p. 179 (by W. E. D. Allen, London, 1919).
[48] Cent Projects de Partage de la Turquie, 1281–1913 (by T. J. Djuvara, Paris, 1913).
[49] The distinguished Russian scholar, Prince Eugène Nicolayevich Trubetskoy, expresses in a single sentence the dominant idea of his countrymen when he declares: “The possession of the Straits”—the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles—“may become indispensable for Russia in order to secure her daily bread; the possession of Tsargrad as the condition of her power and importance as a State.” See his lecture Saint Sophia, Russians’ Hope and Calling, p. 8 (London, 1916).
[50] “The eternal Eastern Question,” writes the historian Freeman, “will never be settled till the Greek nation once more has its own. We claim for that nation that whole extent of land in Europe and Asia where the Greek race and speech is the race and speech of the Christian population; and with that we claim for them their own ancient capital, the city of the Constantines, the Leos, and the Basils. We claim all this on the score of simple justice, on the score of that general philanthropy which, when Greeks are concerned, is not ashamed of the name of philhellenism.”
Again, he declares: “The fact that Constantinople has been and is and ever must be the head of South-eastern Europe is a practical fact which stares us in the face. And while this fact may, with those who look below the surface, awaken some fears which do not lie on the surface, allay some fears which do. Constantinople can never be the head of a province; it must be the head of an empire. But it does not follow that it can now be the head of an universal empire. Its annexation by a distant power would, in all moral certainty lead to the dismemberment of the power that annexed it.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 376, 277 (London, 1879).
[51] Syria, the Desert and the Sown, p. X (by G. L. Bell, London, 1908).
[52] Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 403 (by E. A. Grosvenor, Boston, 1895).
[53] This tragic event is vividly pictured by the poet Shelley when in his lyrical drama, Hellas, he sings:
A chasm
As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul;
And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
Like giants on the ruins of a world,
Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust
Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
Of regal part has cast himself beneath
The stream of war. Another proudly clad
In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
Into the gap, and with his iron mace
Directs the torrent of that tide of men.
And seems—he is—Mohamet.
[54] According to the eminent Austrian historian, Von Hammer-Purgstall, the city sustained, from the time of its foundation until its capture by Mohammed II, no fewer than twenty-nine sieges. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. II, pp. 428, 521–523 (Paris, 1835).
[55] Op. cit. p. 251.
According to Augier de Busbecq, the scholarly Flemish diplomat, who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, spent eight years at the Ottoman Court, Constantinople “is a city which nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world. It stands in Europe, looks upon Asia, and is within reach by sea of Egypt and the Levant on the south and the Black Sea and its European and Asiatic shores on the north.” Letters, Vol. I, p. 123 (trans. by D. Forster, Paris, 1881).
[56] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, June, 1919, pp. 840, 841.
[57] Became a Greek by ceding to the Pastor. Paradiso, XX, 57.
[58] Frederic Harrison, The Fortnightly Review, April, 1894, pp. 439, 440.
[59] Cf. the author’s Great Inspirers, p. 16 (New York, 1917).
[60] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, Chap. LIII.
[61] Op. cit., Vol. VI, Chap. LXVI. “Indeed,” declares a recent writer, “when we consider that this state—the Byzantine Empire—was for a thousand years the defence of Europe against Asiatic invaders, which beat back the Arabs and Seljouks, and checked for a century the advance of the Ottomans, when at the height of their power; that during this period it represented civilization in the midst of barbarism, and maintained a wide commerce by land and sea; that by its missionaries both the Russians and the South Slavonic peoples were evangelized, and the Cyrillic alphabet invented; that to its care in preserving and multiplying manuscripts the existence of a great part of our classical literature is due; and finally, that it was the birthplace of Italian painting, and that its architecture has exercised a greater power than any other style, reaching in its effects from Spain to India; we can hardly overestimate its influence on the world’s history.” History of Greece From Its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, Vol. I, p. vii (by George Finlay, Oxford, 1877).
[62] Among the more distinguished Hellenists besides Lascaris and Chrysoloras, whose labors in Italy contributed enormously towards initiating and developing the work of the Renaissance, and who reflected undying honor on the Greek name, must be mentioned Theodore Gaza, Gemistus Plethon, John Argyropoulos, George of Trebizond, Demitrius Chalcondyles, and Cardinal Bessarion—who were all, as Hody, the noted Hellenist of Oxford, declared, “viri nullo ævo perituri.”
[63] Marriott, op. cit., Chap. II.
[64] Napoleon et Alexander I, L’Alliance Russe sous Le Premier Empire, Tom. I, p. 306 et seq. (by Albert Vandal, Paris, 1896).
[65] Note to “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto III, strophe XCI.
[66] How different is now the condition of the Trojan plain from what it was in ancient times! Then according to Schliemann it contained “eleven flourishing cities, all of which were probably autonomous and of which five coined their own money. If we consider further that the eleven cities, besides two villages, existed here simultaneously in classical antiquity and that one of these—the city of Ilium itself—had at least seventy thousand inhabitants, we are astounded and amazed how such large masses of people could have found the means of subsistence here, whilst the inhabitants of the present seven poor villages of the plain have the greatest difficulty in providing for their miserable existence. And not only had these ancient cities an abundance of food but they were also so populous and so rich that they could carry on wars and, as their ruins prove, they could erect temples and many other public buildings of white marble; Ilium especially must have been ornamented with a vast number of such sumptuous edifices.” Troja, Results of the Latest Researches and Discoveries on the Site of Homer’s Troy, pp. 345, 346 (New York, 1884).
[67] “The main contention was that the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of songs composed at different times and of very unequal values and that, like the Niebelungen Lied, they could be resolved into shorter lays, each celebrating the deeds of individual heroes. The more famous of these heroes, Achilles for example, like Siegfried, had, it was maintained, their ultimate origin in mythological personages, once worshiped as divine.” Schliemann’s Excavations, an Archæological and Historical Study, p. 17 (by C. Schuchhardt, London, 1891).
Troy—O horror!—the common grave of Europe and Asia,
Troy—the untimely tomb of all heroes and heroic deeds.
LXVIIIA.
[69] Herodotus. Book VII, 43.
[70] Troy, or Ilium, as the excavations of Schliemann and Dörpfeld have shown, was destroyed and rebuilt no fewer than seven times. During the Roman period it was known as Ilium Novum and was honored as the city of Æneas and consequently, as the parent of Rome. It was because of this fabulous origin of the Romans that Constantine first planned to establish the seat of empire on the plain of Troy instead of locating it on the site occupied by Byzantium between the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. Fortunately he gave his preference to the spot where has since stood the noble city which still bears his name.
Ilium Novum was for a long time the seat of a bishopric, but, since it was plundered by the Turks, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, it has lain in ruins.
For illuminating accounts of Schliemann’s epoch-making investigations see, besides the Troja above mentioned, his Troy and its Remains (New York, 1876); Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans (New York, 1881); and Schuchhardt’s work already quoted.
Dr. Schliemann has justly been acclaimed the creator of prehistoric Greek archæology. “He has introduced,” writes Oxford’s distinguished Orientalist, “a new era into the study of classical antiquity, has revolutionized our conceptions of the past, has given the impulse to that ‘research of the spade’ which is producing such marvelous results throughout the Orient and nowhere more than in Greece itself. The light has broken over the peaks of Ida and the long-forgotten ages of prehistoric Hellas and Asia Minor are lying bathed in it before us. We now begin to know how Greece came to have the strength and will for that mission of culture to which we of this modern world are still indebted. We can penetrate into a past of which Greek tradition had forgotten the very existence. By the side of one of the jade axes which Dr. Schliemann has uncovered at Hissarlik, the Iliad itself is but a thing of yesterday. We are carried back to a time when the empires of the Assyrians and the Hittites did not as yet exist, when the Aryan forefathers of the Greeks had not as yet, perhaps, reached their new home in the south, but when the rude tribes of the neolithic age had already begun to traffic and barter, and travelling caravans conveyed the precious stone of the Kuen-lun from one extremity of Asia to another. Prehistoric archæology in general owes as much to Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries as the study of Greek history and Greek art.” Professor A. H. Sayce, in the introduction to Dr. Schliemann’s Troja, pp. viii, ix.
[71] According to Suetonius and Horace both Julius Cæsar and Augustus, like Constantine the Great, contemplated making Ilium—Troy—the capital of the Roman Empire.
Lucan not only makes Julius visit the Ilium of his day and “each story’d place survey”—
Circuit exustæ nomen memorabile Trojae—
but also has him register a solemn vow to restore Priam’s city to its ancient state and honors—
Restituam populos, grata vice mœnia reddent
Ausomidæ Phrygibus, Romanaque Pergama surgent.
So proud, indeed, were the Romans of Ilium and of their descent from Æneas that their countrymen, under the command of Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, on getting their first view of the home of their forefathers from the Trojan shore, were so moved, Virgil informs us, that they exultingly exclaimed:
O patria, O divom domus Ilium et incluta bello
Mœnia Dardanidum!
“The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced we must find it but natural,” observes Grote, “that the Ileans assumed to themselves exaggerated importance as the recognized parents of all conquering Rome.” History of Greece, Vol. I, p. 328.
[72] Purgatorio, XXII, 102.
[73] Troy, Its Legend, History and Literature, p. 122 (by S. G. Benjamin, New York, 1916).
[74] Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 22 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869). (2) Odyssey, Vi, 51 et seq.
[75] So impressed was Kinglake, after visiting the Trojan plain, with the accuracy of the poet’s description of the most salient features of the landscape that he declared: “Now I know that Homer had passed along here.” Eothen, Chap. IV.
[76] “He who would understand the poet must visit the poet’s country.” Regarding Homer’s birthplace an anonymous poet long ago wrote:
Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ,
Orbis de patria oertat, Homere, tua.
But in whichever of these place the immortal bard was born, if in any of them, it is quite evident to even the casual visitor to Troy that the poet was thoroughly familiar with its environment which he describes with such marvelous precision.
[77] Iliad, XI, 89, 90.
[78] Thus the distinguished geographer, Elisée Reclus, in speaking of the Mysian Olympus, says positively: “West of the Galatian Olympus, this is the first that has received the name of Olympus, and amongst the fifteen or twenty other peaks so named, this has been chosen by popular tradition as the chief abode of the gods.” The Earth and Its Inhabitants. Asia, Vol. IV, p. 261 (New York, 1885). “This,” declares another writer, “is ‘the Olympus crowned with snow’ up ‘whose lofty crags the everliving gods mounted, Jove first in ascension.’” The Sultan and his subjects, Vol. II, p. 226 (by R. Davey, New York, 1897). Cf. also Constantinople, Vol. I, p. 30 (by R. W. Walsh, London, 1836). Lady Mary Wortley Montague calls the Mysian Olympus:
The Parliament seat of heavenly powers.
[79] Ibid., XIV, 251–257.
[80] Ibid., XIV, 317.
[81] Mr. Gladstone, that enthusiastic student of Homer and of
“Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays,”
in his preface to Dr. Schliemann’s notable work on Mycenæ does not hesitate to declare: “There is no preliminary bar to our entertaining the capital question whether the tombs now unearthed and the remains exposed to view are the tombs and remains of the great Agamemnon or his compeers who have enjoyed through the agency of Homer such a protracted longevity of renown.... The conjecture is that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company.”
Dr. Schliemann, writing on the same subject, tells us: “I have never doubted that a King of Mycenæ, by name Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, a princess Cassandra and their followers were treacherously murdered either by Ægisthus at a banquet, ‘like an ox at the manger,’ as Homer says, or in the bath by Clytemnestra, as the later tragic poets represent; and I firmly believed that the murdered persons had been interred in the Acropolis” of Mycenæ.... “My firm faith in the traditions made me undertake my late excavations in the Acropolis and led to the discovery of the five tombs with their immense treasures.” Mycenæ; a Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenæ and Tyryns, pp. 334, 335 (London, 1878).
[82] Plinii Epistulae No. 97. “Nequi enim dubitabam, qualecumque esset quod faterentur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri.”
[83] The Koran: Commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, p. I (Philadelphia, 1870).
[84] The reason why the Ottoman whose home is on the West of the Bosphorus desires to be buried in the cemetery of Scutaria is that “he considers himself a stranger and a sojourner in Europe and the Moslem of Constantinople turns his last lingering look to this Asiatic cemetery where his remains will not be disturbed when the Giaour regains possession of this European city, an event which he is firmly convinced will sometime come to pass. Thus the dying Turk feels a yearning for his native soil; like Joseph in the land of Egypt he exacts a promise from his people that ‘they would carry his bones hence’ and like Jacob, says ‘bury me in my grave which I have in the land of Canaan.’” Constantinople, p. 13 (by R. Walsh, London, 1836).
[85] Mohammed enjoined his followers to visit graveyards frequently. “Visit graves,” he says, for “of a verity they shall make you think of futurity.” Again, he declares: “Whoso visiteth the graves of his two parents every Friday, or one of the two, he shall be written a pious child, even though he might have been in the world, before that, disobedient to them.”
[86] The world has long admired the noble qualities of heart and mind of Florence Nightingale but admiration for her has been greatly enhanced by the recent publication of certain letters of hers, previously unknown, which she wrote to one of her associates in the care of the sick and wounded soldiers of the Crimean War. I reproduce a part of one of which she addressed to the Mother Superior of a band of Catholic sisters who were her collaborators in the great work of mercy to which she devoted herself with such sublime self-abnegation:
“Your going,” she writes, “is the greatest blow I have yet had. But God’s blessing and my love and gratitude go with you, as you well know. You know well, too, that I shall do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law. And I shall try to remain in the Crimea for their sakes as long as any of us are here. I do not presume to express praise or gratitude to you, Reverend Mother, because it would look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in wordly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which God values in a superior. The being placed over you in our unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault. Dearest Reverend Mother what you have done for the work no one can ever say. But God rewards you for it with Himself. If I thought that your valuable health would be restored by a return home, I should not regret it. My love and gratitude will be yours wherever you go. I do not presume to give you any tribute but my tears.” The letter concludes with the words, “The gratitude of the Army is yours.” Dublin Review, October, 1917.
[87] Anatolia is from the Greek word 'Ανατολπ which, like the Latin Oriens, signifies the eastern land, the land of sunrise. It is the modern name of Asia Minor which the Ottomans call Anadoli.
[88] For an interesting account of the two œcumenical councils of Nicæa see Hefele’s scholarly Histoire des Conciles, Tom. I, Livre II and Tom. III, Livre XVIII (trans. by Dom H. Leclercq, Paris, 1910).
[89] Cf. The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 93 (by W. M. Ramsay, London, 1890).
[90] “The fate of these cities,” observes a recent traveler in Anatolia, “is that of numerous others whose names are a part of classic history. Everywhere throughout Asia Minor decaying ruins mark the sites where art and culture were united with barbaric power. Everywhere are evidences of past refinement, splendor and greatness. And over all the prostrate columns and broken entablatures, the domed mosques and black-green cypresses, the fertile valleys and the great desert, the dark-visaged men and the silent, veiled women lingers the spell, undefinable but wondrously fascinating, of Asia; the cradle of the human race, the land of luxurious magnificence, the abode of mighty empires that rose and crumbled long before the western world had emerged from darkness; the birthlace, too, of subtle mysticism and of every religion that has soothed the soul in anguish and comforted it with hope.” Asia Minor, p. 317 (by W. A. Hawly, London, 1918).
[91] See the author’s Woman in Science, p. 12 et seq. (New York, 1913).
[92] Ionia and the East, pp. 8, 9 (by D. G. Hogarth. Oxford, 1907). Another eminent Orientalist, H. R. Hall, expresses substantially the same view when he tells us that “It was in Ionia that the new Greek civilization arose; Ionia, in whom the old Ægean blood and spirit most survived, taught the new Greece, gave her coined money and letters, art and poesy, and her shipmen, forcing the Phœnicians from before them, carried her new culture to what were then deemed the ends of the earth.” The Ancient History of the Near East from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis, p. 79 (London, 1916).
[93] The Story of Turkey, p. 78 (by Stanley Lane-Poole, New York, 1888).
[94] The historian Hammer-Purgstall tells us that the ablest generals and statesmen under the reigns of Selim and Solyman the Magnificent—those who raised the Ottoman Empire to its acme of prosperity—were renegades. During this period no fewer than eight out of ten of the grand viziers were likewise apostates. “Si donc la puissance ottomane foula aux pieds tant de nations, ce resultat ne doit pas être attribué au caractère indolent et grossier des Ottomans, mais à l’esprit de ruse et de finesse qui distingue les peuples grecs et slaves, a la témérité et a la perfidie des Allanais et des Dalmates, à la persévérance et à l’opiniâtreté des Bosnien et des Croates, enfin à la valeur et aux talents des renégats des pays conquis.” Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. VI, p. 452–454 (Paris, 1835).
[95] The Story of the Barbary Corsairs, p. 66 (by Poole and Kelly, New York, 1893).
[96] Op. cit., Tom. I, p. 18.
[97] Op. cit., p. 346 et seq.
[98] Tableau Général de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. II, p. 217 (Paris, 1790).
[99] The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 117 (by H. A. Gibbons, New York, 1916).
[100] Freeman writes to the same effect when he declares “between renegades, Janissaries and the mothers of all nations, the blood of many a Turk must be physically anything rather than Turkish.” Op. cit., p. 187.
[101] A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, Vol. III, p. 475 (Oxford, 1877). Among these causes Finlay indicates three which deserve special attention. “First, the superiority of the Ottoman tribe over all contemporary nations in religious convictions and in moral and military conduct. Second, the number of different races which composed the population of the country between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, the Danube and the Ægean. Third, the depopulation of the Greek Empire, the degraded state of its judicial and civil administration and the demoralization of the Hellenic race.”
[102] Gibbons, op. cit., p. 173.
[103] No one is more familiar with the Ottoman people or their history than Professor William Ramsay who does not hesitate to declare: “It has almost always been by the strength and skill of Christian allies that the Turks have vanquished the Christians:
But Turkish force and Latin fraud
Would break their shield, however broad.”
Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Years Wandering, p. 271 et seq. (London, 1897).
“The Christians were crushed by the arts and arms of their own brethren; Constantinople fell, not before the Saracen or the Turk but before warriors of Greek and Slavonic blood.” Op. cit., p. 272.
[104] Gibbons, op. cit., p. 302.
[105] Ibid., p. 123.
[106] H. A. Gibbons, op. cit., p. 81.
[107] Sura II, 257.
[108] Sura X, 99, 100.
[109] The erudite Assemani, Librarian of the Vatican Library, writing of certain persecutions of the Christians by Mohammedans, declares: “Non raro persecutionis procellam excitarunt mutuæ Christianorum ipsorum simultates, sacerdotum licencia, præsulum fastus, tyrannica magnatum potestas, et medicorum præesertim scribarumque de supremo in gentem suam imperio altercationes.” Biblotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana, Tom. III, Pars, II (Rome, 1719–1728).
[110] The Preaching of Islam, a History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith, pp. 422, 423 (by T. W. Arnold, London, 1913).
[111] Ibid., pp. 79, 80.
Of all who have made a careful study of the character and religion of the Mohammedans of Asia, no one probably, is better qualified to express an opinion on the subject under consideration than M. A. de Gobiñeau. As the result of thorough investigation during several years residence among them, he does not hesitate to declare that if one separates religious doctrines from political necessity which has often spoken and acted in its name, there is no religion that is more tolerant, one might almost say more indifferent regarding mens’ faith than Islam. “Cette disposition organique est si forte qu’en dehors des cas ou la raison d’État mise en jeu a porté les gouvernments mussulmans à se faire arme de tout pour tendre à unité de foi, la tolerance la plus complète a été la regle fournie par le dogme.... Qu’on ne s’arrête pas aux violences, aux cruautés commises dans une occasion ou dans une autre. Si on regarde de prés, on ne tardera pas à y découvrir des causes toutes politiques ou toutes de passion humaine et de tempérament chez le souverain ou dans la population. Le fait religieux n’y est invoqué que comme pretexte et, en réalité, il reste en dehors.” Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Central, pp. 24, 25 (Paris, 1865).
What has been said of the tolerance of the Osmanlis or of the peoples of Central Asia the distinguished Orientalist, Prince Caetani, claims for the Arabian followers of the Prophet. “Gli Arabi,” he writes in his monumental work Annali dell’ Islam, Vol. V, p. 4 (Milan, 1912), “nei primi anni non perseguitarono invece alcuno per ragioni di fede, no si diedero pena alcuna per convertire chicchessia, sicche sotto l’Islam, dopo le prime conquiste, i Christiani Semiti goderono d’una tolleranza religiosa quale non si era mai vista da varie generazioni.”
[112] L’España Sagrada, Teatro Geografico de la Iglesia de España, Tom. XXXVII, p. 312. Cardinal Hergenröther hold the same view when he declares that Islam was a Strafe—punishment—for the degenerate Christians of the Orient whose moral corruption, religious schism, and desecration of sacred things through arbitrary state-power had paved the way for it. Handbuch der Allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte, Tom. I, p. 748 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884).
The distinguished historian, F. X. Funk, expresses a similar opinion when he writes: “The Carthaginians were safely gathered under the standard of the Prophet and the conquerors were free to continue their victorious march on the Barbary States and the West of Africa, the many divisions and enmities to which Christological disputes had given rise among the Eastern Christians greatly facilitating their task.” A Manual of Church History, Vol. I, p. 132 (London, 1909).
[113] “Estimates of population,” observes Marriott, “are notoriously untrustworthy, but it seems probable that at a time when Henry VIII ruled over about four million people the subjects of Sultan Suleiman numbered fifty million.” The Eastern Question, p. 89 (Oxford, 1917).
“After the conquest of Constantinople,” writes Finlay, “the Ottomans became the most dangerous conquerors who have acted a part in European history since the fall of the western Roman Empire. Their Dominion, at the period of its greatest extension, stretched from Buda on the Danube to Bussora on the Euphrates. On the north, their frontiers were guarded against the Poles by the fortress of Kamenietz, and against the Russians by the walls of Azof; while to the south the rock of Aden secured their authority over the southern coast of Arabia, invested them with power in the Indian Ocean, and gave them the complete command of the Red Sea. To the east, the Sultan ruled the shores of the Caspian, from the Kour to the Tenek; and his dominion stretched westward along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, where the farthest limits of the regency of Algiers, beyond Oran, meet the frontiers of the empire of Morocco. By rapid steps the Ottomans completed the conquest of the Seljouk sultans in Asia Minor, of the Mamlouk sultans in Syria and Egypt, of the fierce corsairs of northern Africa, expelled the Venetians from Cyprus, Crete, and the Archipelago, and drove the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem from the Levant, to find a shelter at Malta. It was no vain boast of the Ottoman sultan that he was the master of many kingdoms, the ruler of three continents, and the lord of two seas.” History of Greece, Vol. V, p. 6 (Oxford, 1877).
[114] The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 23 (by W. M. Ramsay, London, 1890).
[115] L’Islamisme et la Science, p. 19 (Paris, 1883).
[116] Count Henry de Castries, in L’Islam, Impressions et Études, p. 121 (Paris, 1912).
[117] “It is an amusing fact,” writes an English woman who had an intimate knowledge of Turkey, “that an idea of impropriety is attached by Europeans who have never visited the East, to the very name of harem, while it is not less laughable they can never give a reason for their prejudice. How little foundation exists for so unaccountable a fancy must be evident at once when it is stated that harem, or woman’s apartment, is held so sacred by the Turks themselves, that they remain inviolate even in cases of popular disturbance, or individual delinquency; the mob never suffering their violence to betray them into an intrusion on the wives of their victims; and the search after a fugitive ceasing the moment that the door of the harem separates him from his pursuers.” Julia Pardoe, in The Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 126 (London, 1839).
Another English woman, Grace Ellison, who is familiar with the life of the harem and who has given public lectures in London on Turkish life, was seriously told by the secretary of a certain society: “You must not put the word ‘harem’ on the title of your lecture. Many who might come to hear you would stay away for fear of hearing improper revelations, and others would come hoping to hear those revelations and go away disappointed!” Cf. A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions, p. 16 (by Zeyneb Hanoum, Philadelphia, 1913).
[118] For an illuminating account of an Assyrian harem in the time of Sargon, more than seven centuries B. C., see Histoire de l’Art dans Antiquité, Tom. II, p. 435, et. seq. (by G. Perrot and Chipiez, Paris 1884). See also the account of the prehistoric palace of the Kings of Tiryns, as given in Schliemann’s Tiryns, p. 239, et. seq. (New York, 1885). According to Dr. Dörpfeld and other eminent archæologists this palace, the oldest in Greece, is distinctly oriental in plan and its smaller megaron was obviously a harem. Cf. also Schuchardt’s Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 31. For interesting descriptions of visits to harems in Turkey and Syria, consult the Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 125, et seq. (by Julia Pardoe, London, 1839), and the Inner Life of Syria, Chap. XI (by Lady Isabel Burton, London, 1884). Both of these women during their sojourn in the East, had exceptional opportunities for studying the real life of the harem where they were always cordially welcomed by its inmates.
The custom of wearing the veil, it may here be remarked, dates back almost as far, if not fully as far, as the harem. Cf. Genesis, xxii:65, and Isaiah, iii:23. Nor is the wearing of the veil in the Orient to-day confined entirely to Moslem women. Christian and other non-Moslem women wear it and have worn it from time immemorial. How erroneous, therefore, is the statement, so often made, that it was Mohammed that imposed the veil on the women of the Orient and inhumanly incarcerated them in the harem!
[119] Observations on the Mussulmans of India, p. 168 (London, 1917).
[120] Everyday Life in Turkey, p. 108 (London, 1897).
The Princess Christina Belgiojoso who spent three years in making a careful study of the people of Asia Minor writes: “The household of the Turkish peasant resembles that of the Christian peasant and, I am sorry to add, the former would often serve as a model for the latter. With equal fidelity, the advantage is in favor of the Turk, for his fidelity is neither imposed on him by civil or religious law, nor by public opinion, nor by local manners, customs and usages; he is led to it simply through the goodness of his nature to which any idea of causing grief to his associate would be repugnant.
“The Turkish peasant cherishes his companion as parent and as lover; never does he knowingly or willingly oppose her; there is no provocation to which he will not cheerfully submit through love for her.... I have seen women old, decrepit, infirm and hideous, led, comforted and adored by fine old men with long, flowing, silvery beards, strong, serene eye and as erect as mountain firs.” Oriental Harems and Scenery, p. 108–110 (New York, 1862).
[121] A well-known English journalist, Sidney Whitman, who was long on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished men of the Ottoman Empire, tells us that “The stranger, whatever his opportunities, only comes into contact with one-half of the Mohammedan population; the other is barred from his observation, from his very sight. In the course of all my visits to Turkey I never had an opportunity of approaching a Turkish woman within speaking distance.” Turkish Memories, p. 267 (London, 1914).
Writing from Constantinople, where she made a special study of the Turks, their manners and customs, the gifted and brilliant Lady Mary Wortley Montague, tells her correspondent in England, “It is a particular pleasure to me here to read the voyages of the Levant which are generally so far removed from the truth and so full of absurdities. I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women whom it is certain they never saw and talking wisely of men, into whose company they are never admitted, and very often describe mosques which they dared not even peep into.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 5 (London, 1793).
As wife of the British ambassador to the Porte, Lady Mary had the entrée of the homes of the Turks, rich and poor, where she was always cordially received and hospitably entertained. Besides this, she was familiar with the language of her hostesses of the harems which she visited and was thus able to become far more intimately acquainted with the people than those who must needs depend on unreliable interpreters. For these reasons her sprightly pictures of the life of the Turkish women have always had special value and one can easily understand her admiration for them and for many of their customs which are so different from those of her own country—England. She would have fully endorsed what her distinguished countrywoman, Lady Isabel Burton wrote many years afterwards: “As a rule I met with nothing but courtesy in the harems and much hospitality, cordiality and refinement.” The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton: The Story of Her Life Told in Part by Herself and in Part by W. H. Wilkins, Vol. II, p. 452 (New York, 1897).
[122] Turkey and the Turks, p. 84, et seq. (by Z. D. Ferriman, New York, 1911).
“There has been,” writes an American woman who has had exceptional opportunities for studying the condition of women in Turkey, “a vast amount of pity wasted upon the Moslem woman. It may surprise even the woman suffragist to learn that the laws of Mohammed confer upon women a greater degree of legal protection than any code of laws since the middle Roman law. The more recent liberties and protection granted to married women by the laws of divorce and the exclusive property rights now in the United States alone can be properly compared to those in force in, Turkey.” In the Palaces of the Sultan, pp. 448, 449 (by Anna Bowman Dodd, New York, 1903).
[123] Ibid.
[124] The Evil of the East, or Truths about Turkey, p. 42 (London, 1888).
[125] See the North American Review.
[126] Lieutenant Wood in his “Journey to the Source of the Oxus,” p. 194 (London, 1872), writes: “Nowhere is the difference between European and Mohammedan society more strongly marked than in the lower walks of life. The broad line that separates the rich and poor in civilized society is as yet but faintly drawn in Central Asia. Here unreserved intercourse between their superiors has polished the manners of the lower classes and, instead of this familiarity breeding contempt, it begets self-respect in the dependent.... Indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect and a natural gravity of deportment which differs as far from the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown.” These characteristics of the people of Central Asia, which so impressed the gallant explorer of the Oxus, are much more striking in the inhabitants of Anatolia.
Another author writes: “The fine manners of all classes of Mohammedans in Constantinople were a constant source of admiration to me. It was as if the grace and dignity of past times—of Courts of the eighteenth century—had taken refuge in Stamboul. Your Caiquejee, your Cafeje and the very boot-blacks, if they are Mohammedans, know how to be unobtrusively polite and well-bred towards each other, and even towards the Giaour himself, if he treats them civilly. The older fashioned, the more prejudiced, the Turkish gentleman, the finer are his manners, the more gracious and delightful his welcome.” The Sultan and His Subjects, Vol. I, pp. 280, 281 (by Richard Davy, New York, 1897).
[127] “The houses of the great Turkish ladies,” declares that keen observer, Lady Montague, “are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 24 (London, 1793).
[128] Destruction of the Greek Empire, p. 524 (London, 1903).
[129] Diary of a Turk, p. 64 (London, 1903).
Writing to the poet, Pope, Lady Montague declares: “I can assure you that the Princesses and great ladies pass their time at their looms embroidering veils and robes, surrounded by their maids, which are always very numerous, in the same manner as we find Andromache and Helen described.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 110.
[130] Op. cit., pp. 54, 55, 98, 99.
[131] Letters, Vol. I, p. 104.
[132] The noted traveler and Orientalist, Sir Richard Burton, graphically defines the meaning of the word Kaif, so frequently heard in the Near East as “The savoring of animal existence; the passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor, the dreamy tranquillity, the airy castle-building which in Asia stands in lieu of the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of a lively, impressible, excitable nature and exquisite sensibility of nerve—a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern regions where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and physical powers; where niggard earth commands ceaseless sweat of brow; and damp, dull air demands perpetual excitement, exercise or change, or adventure, or dissipation for want of something better. In the East man requires but rest and shade; upon the banks of a bubbling stream or under the cool shelter of a perfumed tree he is perfectly happy smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbert, but, above all things, deranging his body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the displeasures of memory and the vanity of thought being the most unpleasant interruptions to his Kaif. No wonder that Kaif is a word untranslatable in our mother-tongue.” Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, pp. 23, 24 (Boston, 1859).
[133] Ferriman, op. cit., p. 334. Professor W. M. Ramsay, than whom no one has a more intimate knowledge of the Osmanlis, writes: “Whenever any work has to be done for which absolute honesty is required, there is always a Turk employed; they are human watchdogs whom everybody employs and trusts.” Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Tears Wanderings, p. 43 (London, 1897).
Dr. Schliemann bears the same testimony to their honesty and trustworthiness in his Troja, pp. 10, 11.
[134] Turquie Agonisante, p. 49 (Paris, 1913).
[135] Les Massacres d’Arménie, pp. 19, 20 (Paris, 1918).
[136] Ansayrii, Vol. II, p. 144 (London, 1851). Cf. Schliemann’s Troja, p. 338.
[137] The Odyssey, XIV, 57, 58.
[138] Don Quixote, Part I, Chap. XL.
[139] Cf. Pierre Loti in Turquie Agonisante, p. 49 (Paris, 1913).
[140] A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time, Vol. V, p. 161 (Oxford, 1877). Finlay gives the following quotation from the Turco-Græcia, p. 487, of Crusius who writes as vigorously in favor of the Osmanlis as Knolles or Pierre Loti.
“Et mirum est inter barbaros in tanta tantæ urbi colluvie nullas cædes audiri, vim iniustam non ferri, ius cuivis dici. Ideo Constantinopolin Sultanus refugium totius orbis scribit: quod omnes miseri ibi tutissime lateant: quodque omnibus, tam infimis quam summis, tam Christianis quam infidelibus iustitia administretur.” Could the verdict of history be more explicit than in the remarkable statements here quoted?
[141] See also his informing brochure, Les Massacres D’Arménie (Paris, 1918).
[142] In Persia, according to the eminent traveler and Orientalist, Arminius Vambery, “Inferior officials cheat the people, and the latter again avail themselves of every opportunity to cheat the officials. Every one in that country lies, cheats and swindles. Nor is such behavior looked upon as anything immoral or improper; on the contrary, the man, who is straightforward and honest in his dealings is sure to be spoken of contemptuously as a fool or madman.” The Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambery, written by Himself, p. 284 (London, 1914).
How the Persians have degenerated since the days of Cyrus and Darius! Then, according to Herodotus, their sons were carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year in three things alone—to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth—“παιδεύονσι δε τους πᾶιδας, απ πενταετέος αρξάμενοι μέχρι εικοσαέτεος, τρία μουνα, ἱππεύειν καὶ τοξεύειν καὶ άληθίξεσθαι.” I, 136.
[143] It is interesting to note here that in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce which was concluded in 1535 between France and the Sublime Porte one of the articles reads: “It is forbidden to molest the French in matters of their religion which they have full liberty to practice.” This guarantee of religious freedom included the Christians of all other nations—a guarantee with which the Ottoman government has always faithfully complied. Cf. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. I, p. 171, 173 (by the Vicomte de la Jonquière, Paris, 1914).
[144] Quoted from Turkey and the Ottomans, p. 142, et. seq. (by Lucy M. Garnett, New York, 1911).
[145] Cf. Turkish Memories, p. 128, et passim (by Sidney Whitman). See Through Armenia on Horseback, Chap. VIII (by G. H. Hepworth, New York, 1918), and In the Palaces of the Sultan, pp. 426, 427 (by Anna Bowman Dodd).
[146] Op. cit., p. 108.
[147] Ibid., p. 116.
[148] Op. cit., p. 231.
[149] November 29, 1912.
[150] Le Chemin de Fer de Bagdad, p. 226 (Paris, 1915).
[151] Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition carried on by Order of the British Government during the years 1835, 1836 and 1837, p. 360 (London, 1868).
[152] Ibid., p. viii.
[153] Lord Palmerston, it is interesting to observe in this connection, did not hesitate to declare in Parliament that the construction of the Suez Canal, as planned by De Lesseps, was physically impracticable and that the project was but a trap set for gullible capitalists.
[154] “Ismaili to Koweit Ry.,” National Review, p. 464, May, 1902.
[155] Nineteenth Century, p. 1084, June, 1909.
[156] Ibid., p. 1085.
[157] Nineteenth Century, p. 966 et seq., May, 1914.
[158] June, 1901, p. 629.
[159] June, 1901, p. 629.
[160] Nineteenth Century, p. 961, May, 1914.
[161] Chéradame, op. cit., p. V.
[162] “Le tres distingué M. Eugène Gallos de la Société de Géographie de Paris qui, avec M. Le Général Dolot, ont parconru en 1914 la Syrie et la Mesopotamie peuvent affirmer qu il y avait la-has une seconde France, aimant inlassablement celle qui est en train d’ écrire sa plus belle page dans l’histoire des nations.” Bagdad, Son Chemin de Fer, Son Importance, Son Avenir, p. 25 (by Émile Aublé, Paris, 1917).
[163] The Geographical Journal, p. 33 et seq., July, 1917.
[164] The Fortnightly Review, p. 777, May, 1911.
[165] Speaking in the British Parliament April 8, 1903, Lord E. Fitzmaurice went still further when he declared: “Bound up with the future of this (Bagdad) Railway there is probably the future political control of large regions in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.”
[166] The Fortnightly Review, p. 216, February, 1914.
[167] “Les Gouvernment français et anglais refuserent formellment leur approbation et leur appui et conseillerent a leur nationaux de s’en abstenir.” E. Aublé, op. cit., p. 15.
[168] The Nineteenth Century, p. 1090 et seq., June, 1909.
It is gratifying to know that this anti-German feeling was not shared by Sir Clinton and his associates and by clear-visioned men like Sir Edwin Pears who did not hesitate to declare: “The Germans, in inviting British coöperation from the first, have acted fairly and loyally.” The Contemporary Review, p. 589, November, 1908.
[169] M. Aublé, op. cit., p. 16, referring to this matter, writes: “Si en elle—même l’enterprise du Chemin de Fer de Bagdad est resté telle qu’elle s’est presentée au début, une œuvre allemande, c’est parce qu’on n’a pas voulu profiter des offres allemandes pour lui donner un caractère international.”
[170] The Nineteenth Century, p. 1312, June, 1914.
[171] Ibid., p. 1313. After all negotiations looking towards internationalization of the Bagdad Railway had failed, M. Geraud, who is evidently a monarchist, wrote: “We cannot help regretting that the two powers who held the protectorate of the Orient—France her old religious protectorate, and England the protectorate of Anatolia sanctioned by the Cyprus Convention—should, in the space of one generation, have laid down such beneficent weapons.... In order that so much destruction could be consummated, all that was responsible in England and France was the rule of democracy.”
[172] Cf. his interesting brochure, Les Chemins de Fer in Turquie d’Asie (Zurich, 1902).
[173] Revue de Géographie, p. 398, May, 1902.
[174] According to Herodotus it was a three months’ journey from Ephesus to Susa—a somewhat greater distance than from Constantinople to Bagdad.
[175] Süddeutsche Monatshefte, September, 1915. Cf. The Quarterly Review, p. 149, January, 1917.
[176] Der Kampf um die Dardanellen (Stuttgart, 1916).
[177] The Quarterly Review, p. 528, October, 1917.
[178] For an interesting article on this subject, see “Plato in the Folk-lore of the Konia Plain,” by F. W. Hasluck, in the Annual of the British School of Athens, No. XVIII.
[179] Called Rum—Rome—because it was, before its conquest by the Seljuks, a portion of the Roman-Byzantine Empire.
[180] See Turkey in Europe, p. 185 (by C. Eliot, London, 1908).
[181] In the Koran, Sura V., it is written, “O believers! surely wine and games of chance and statues, and divining arrows are an abomination of Satan’s work! Avoid them that ye may prosper.”
[182] Cf. Mishcat-Ul-Masabih, or a Collection of the Most Authentic Traditions Regarding the Actions and Sayings of Mohammed, Vol. II, pp. 368–370 (trans. from the Original Arabic by Capt. A. N. Mathews, Calcutta, 1809). “The Angel Gabriel did not visit Mohammed as he promised to do one night because of the presence of a puppy, saying to Mohammed ‘we angels do not go into a house in which are pictures or dogs.’” Vol. II, p. 368.
[183] Sismondi, writing of the Eastern story-tellers, among whom are women as well as men, informs us they sometimes “excite terror or pity, but they more frequently picture to their audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of the eastern imagination.... The physicians frequently recommend them to their patients in order to soothe pain, to calm agitation or to produce sleep after long watchfulness; and these story-tellers, accustomed to sickness, modulate their voices, soften their tones and gently suspend them as sleep steals over the sufferers.” Historical View of the Literature of Southern Europe, Vol. I, p. 62 (Bohn Edition).
[184] The Sheik-ul-Islam issued a vigorous fetwa against it in which he declared that its use “was contrary to the Koran” and that “smoking was a hideous and abominable practice of the Giaours, which no true Believer should adopt.”
[185] “The Eastern nations are generally so addicted to both that they say ‘a dish of coffee and a pipe of tobacco are a complete entertainment’; and the Persians have a proverb that coffee without tobacco is meat without salt.” Sale, The Koran, p. 88, “Preliminary Discourse.”
[186] “Most people who have travelled in the Levant are enthusiastic in their praises of the Turkish coffee which they drank out there. There is no reason why coffee prepared in the Turkish style should not become popular here. There is no difficulty about making it. That the coffee may have the delicious flavor it has in the Levant, the beans must be freshly roasted and ground very fine. The water must be boiled in a tin or copper coffee-pot. To supply, say four or five persons with coffee in tiny cups, two or three teaspoonfuls of the powder should be put into the pot while the water is actually boiling therein. Some people do not like sugar in their coffee, but if sugar is required, it should be put into the boiling water and allowed to melt before the coffee is added. Great sweetness is not appreciated by connoisseurs in coffee drinking. When the ground coffee is added to the boiling water, the pot should be taken off the fire and the coffee stirred up in the water with a teaspoon. Then it should be put on the fire again until the froth rises up. It is then poured into the cups. It is better to pour out the coffee slowly, placing the pot on the fire at short intervals, and thus getting more froth for pouring out into the cups, as the taste of the coffee is supposed to be better with the yellowish froth on the surface. It is on account of this idea that greedy people in Turkey choose those cups that have the most froth when coffee is handed round on a tray, leaving those with less to the others who are waiting their turn to be served.” Halil Halid’s Diary of a Turk, p. 244 (London, 1903).
[187] In marked contrast to this wildly lyrical praise of the fragrant and delicious beverage made from the Arabian berry, is the denunciation which was hurled against it by the orthodox followers of Islam who declared it to be a menace to public morals and one of the four ministers of the Devil—the other three being wine, opium, and tobacco. “During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries coffee-drinkers were persecuted more rigorously in Constantinople than wine-bibbers have ever been in England or America. Their most unrelenting enemy was the bloody Murad IV—himself a drunkard—who forbade the use of coffee under pain of death. He and his nephew, Mehmed IV, after him used to patrol the city in disguise, à la Harun-al-Rashid, in order to detect and punish for themselves any violation of the law.... A personage no more straitlaced than Charles II caused a court to hand down the following decision: ‘The Retayling of Coffe may be an innocente Trayde; but as it is used to nourisshe Sedition, spredde Lyes, and scandalyse Greate Mene, it may also be a common Nuissaunce.’” Constantinople Old and New, p. 24 (by H. G. Dwight, New York, 1915).
[188] The Beauties of the Bosphorus, p. 127 (London, 1839).
[189] Cf. his Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 439 et seq. (New York; Géographie Botanique Raisonnée (Paris, 1885).
[190] Historical Sketches, Vol. I, p. 116, 117 (by Cardinal Newman, London, 1901).
[191] Cf. Discovery in Greek Lands, p. 57 et seq. (by F. H. Marshall, Cambridge, 1920). See also A Century of Archæological Discoveries, p. 166 ff. (by A. Michaelis, New York, 1908).
Nothing impressed us more during our journey through Anatolia than the utter destruction of those superb cities of which a Roman author once wrote,
Magnificas Asiæ perreximus urbes.
Of many of these even the sites were unknown until they were recently discovered by the archæologists of Europe. The site of the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus was not identified until 1869, although this celebrated structure was once classed as one of the seven wonders of the world. Nowhere in Asia Minor does one find anything to compare with the stately temples of Pæstum, Girgenti, and Segesta which, with the exception of the wonderful monuments in Athens, are the most remarkable and best preserved groups of ancient Greek architecture in existence.
[192] The region through which they marched was described in the graphic language of an old chronicler as Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam, sterilem, inamœnam.
[193] The History of the Crusades, Vol. 1. p. 126 (New York, n. d.).
[194] Ibid., p. 257.
[195] Ibid., p. 258.
[196] Called by Cicero Tauri-Pylæ.
[197] As legend has it, Charlemagne sleeps in Odenberg, in Hesse, where crowned and armed and girt with his trusty sword, La Joyeuse, he awaits the advent of Anti-Christ when he will awake and deliver Christendom.
Bonaparte, it is supposed in certain parts of France, will again return to restore the country to its pristine glory. When Louis Napoleon submitted the plebiscite to the countrymen, many gave their vote under the impression that it was in support of his famous uncle.
[198] Lares et Penates or Cilicia and Its Governors, p. 79 (by W. B. Barker, London, 1853).
[199] Barker, op. cit., p. 82.
[200] The legend about people sleeping preternatural lengths of time has an honored place in the folklore of many nations in both the East and the West. We have already noted the traditions concerning the long sleeps of Barbarossa, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and other distinguished characters. But many other instances might be enumerated showing the prevalence of similar tales in many lands from the sleepers of Sardis, mentioned by Aristotle, to Rip Van Winkle, immortalized by Washington Irving.
[201] Cf. Strabo, XIV, 5; and Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, II, 5. For an account of Asurbanipal, in the light of recent Assyrian discoveries, see Graven in the Rock, Chap. XIV (by S. Kinns, London, 1891).
Talk of our souls and realms beyond the grave,
The very boys will laugh and say you rave.
[203] History of Greece, Vol. X, p. 311 (by W. Mitford, London, 1810).
[204] The Greek word for pinion is tarsos.
[205] Cf. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, I. 6; VIII. 7. 2. The Jewish historian was probably misled by the similarity of sounds of the two words and ventured to solve what has always been a riddle to historians and Scripture commentators.
[206] “Oppidum autem Britanni vocant,” says Cæsar, referring to the capital of Cassivellaunus, now London, “cum sylvas impeditas vallo atque fossa munierunt, quo incursiones hostium vitandæ causa convenire consuerunt.” De Bello Gallico, Lib. V, Cap. 21.
[207] Strabo, Geography, XIV, 51.
[208] J. B. Lightfoot in Philippians, Appendix on St. Paul and Seneca, p. 271.
[209] The Cities of St. Paul, Their Influence on His Life and Thought, pp. 88, 89 (London, 1907).
[210] The Heathen World and St. Paul, p. 20 (by E. H. Plumptre, London, n.d).
[211] Acts of the Apostles, xvii; 6.
[212] In one of his beautiful homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, St. John Chrysostom, the greatest of pulpit orators, declares: “I honor Rome for this reason; for, though I could celebrate her praises on many other accounts;—for her greatness, for her beauty, for her power, for her wealth, for her warlike exploits, yet, passing over all these things, I glorify her for this reason, that St. Paul in his lifetime wrote to the Romans, and loved them, and was present among them and conversed with them, and ended his life among them. Wherefore the city is on this account renowned more than all others; on this account I admire her, not on account of her gold, her columns or her other splendid decorations.” Oeuvres Complètes de Saint Jean Chrysostome, Tom XVI, p. 308 (Paris, 1871).
[213] Across Asia Minor on Foot, pp. 35, 351 (by W. J. Childs, New York, 1917).
[214] The massacre in Constantinople which so horrified the civilized world was, like that in Adana, provoked by the revolutionary activities of the Armenians. After having boldly announced their intention of applying the torch to the city and “reducing it,” as their posted placards phrased it, “to a desert of ashes,” a party of audacious young conspirators proceeded to blow up the Ottoman Imperial Bank, while others of their associates made the Psammatia quarter flow in the blood of helpless inhabitants. During eighteen hours of terror the carnage which the Armenians caused by their use of dynamite and by throwing bombs from the windows upon the Turkish soldiers, who were detailed to suppress the outbreak, rivaled anything recorded in the worst days of the Paris Commune of 1871. Cf. Turquie Agonisante, p. 174 (by Pierre Loti).
Without pretending to absolve the exasperated Turks for their part in this appalling massacre, I may ask “what would the people of New York do if a foreign mob from the East Side with the red flag at their head were to attempt to blow up the Subtreasury Building and to make the same use of high explosives in their wanton destruction of life and property as did the Armenians in their ghastly work in Constantinople?” The answer will be sufficient attenuation for the conduct of the infuriated Turks on this frightful occasion. And yet, according to the reports flashed through the world at the time, this massacre, like that at Adana and at numberless other places, was laid to the charge of the “unspeakable Turk.” It was the old, old story; the Turk is always guilty, the Armenian never.
[215] A Wandering Scholar in the Levant, pp. 147–150 (London, 1896).
[216] Pierre Loti tells of a French consul in Asia Minor who barely escaped assassination at the hands of an Armenian agitator who, when questioned regarding his attempt on the life of the functionary, coolly replied: “I did this in order that the Turks might be accused of it and in the hope that the French would rise up against them after the murder of their consul.” Les Massacres d’Arménie, p. 50 (Paris, 1918).
[217] The Diary of a Turk, p. 130.
[218] D. G. Hogarth, op. cit., p. 77.
[219] Ibid., 65.
[220] Halil Halid’s Diary of a Turk, p. 129 (London, 1903). “Alors,” declares Pierre Loti, “comme des lions exaspérés ils se dechaînent contre ceux que, depuis des siècles, on leur a denoncés comme les plus dangereux responsables de tous les malheurs de la patrie.... Hélas! oui, les Turcs ont massacré! Je pretends toutefois que le recit de leur tueries a toujours été follement exagéré et les details enlaidis à plaisir; je pretends aussi—et personne là-bas n’osera me contredire—que la beaucoup plus lourde part des crimes commis revient aux Kurdes dont je n’ai jamais pris la defense.” Op. cit., p. 22–24.
[221] Commenting on this subject Professor, now Sir William Ramsay, writes, “Lord Salisbury protests in the strongest terms that Britain has never entertained any schemes of acquisition in Asia Minor. There is, however, probably no Russian or German or Frenchman who believes him.... The protestations that Britain entertains no designs in Asia Minor merely make people abroad all the more sure that a British statesman’s word can never be trusted.” And, referring to her creation of a new consular department to aid her in compassing her designs, he observes “as a piece of statesmanship, crafty and unscrupulous, but able, it was a master-stroke; though I think no one among us will ever look back to it without blushing for the jockeying by which it was effected.” Impressions of Turkey During Twelve Years Wanderings, pp. 142–144 (London, 1897).
In the light of recent events how significant—almost prophetic—are these words of Sir William on British policy and diplomacy regarding Turkey!
Where men once dwelt, a dreary lake is seen,
And coots and bitterns haunt the waters green.
Metamorphoses, VIII, 24, 25.
[223] Count Marcellinus, one of the first ministers of Justinian, vividly describes, in a single sentence, the frightful depredations of Attila when this dreadful “Scourge of God” Pene totam Europam, invasis excisique civitatibus atque castellis, conrasit. This sentence perfectly describes the depredations of Timur and Jenghiz Khan during their terror-inspiring careers in Western Asia. Of Jenghiz Khan the Arabian traveler, Ibn Batuta, writes that he “came into the countries of Islamism and destroyed them.” The same authority says that after destroying such great cities as Bokhara and Samarcand “he killed the inhabitants, taking prisoners the youth only and leaving the country quite desolate. He then passed over the Gihon and took possession of all Khorasan and Irak, destroying the cities and slaughtering the inhabitants.” His son, Hulaku, laid Bagdad in ruins, whence he proceeded with his followers to Syria, continuing his depredations “until divine Providence put an end to his career.” The Travels of Ibn Batuta, pp. 87, 88, 89 (trans. by S. Lee, London, 1829).
The English historian, Marshman, writing of the elder Mongol conqueror, declares: “From the Caspian to the Indus, more than one thousand miles in extent, the whole country was laid waste with fire and sword by the ruthless barbarians who followed Jenghiz Khan. It was the greatest calamity which had befallen the human race since the Deluge and five centuries have been barely sufficient to repair that desolation.” History of India from Remote Antiquity to the Accession of the Mogul Dynasty, Vol. I, p. 49 (London, 1842).
“Well might the Mussulman and Christian world shrink down upon its knees in the presence of such a terrible visitation. ‘We pray God,’ writes Ibin al Athir, ‘that He will send to Islam and to the Mussulmans someone who can protect them, for they are the victims of the most terrible calamity, the men killed, their goods pillaged, their children carried off, their wives reduced to slavery or put to death, the country in fact, laid waste.’ Juveni says that in the country traversed by the Mongols, only a thousandth part of the population remained and where there were previously one hundred thousand inhabitants there remained but a hundred. ‘If nothing interferes with the growth of the population in Khorasan and Irak Ajem from now to the day of resurrection,’ he adds, ‘it will not be the tenths of what it was before the conquest.’” History of the Mongols, Part III, p. i (by H. Howorth, London, 1888).
Jenghiz Khan and “his followers tramped over the fairest portions of the earth with the faggot and the sword in their hands, forestalling the day of doom and crumbling into ruin many old civilizations. His creed was to sweep away all cities as the haunts of slaves and of luxury, that his herds might freely feed upon grass whose green was free from dusty feet. It does make one hide one’s face in terror to read that from 1211 to 1223 eighteen million four hundred and seventy thousand human beings perished in China and Tangut alone at the hands of Jenghiz and his followers; a fearful hecatomb which haunts the memory until one forgets the other features of the story.” Howorth, op. cit., Part I, p. 113.
[224] Pliny in his Historia Naturalis, II, 86, writes: Maximus terræ memoria mortalium extitit motus, Tiberii Cæsaria principatu; XII urbibus Asiæ una nocte prostatis.
[225] History of Greece From Its Conquests by the Romans to the Present Time, B.C. 146 to A.D. 1864, Vol. I, p. 224 (by George Finlay, Oxford, 1877).
[226] I do not ignore the atrocities which the Turks, especially during the last few decades, are alleged to have committed in Armenia and elsewhere. But until reliable testimony as to the Ottoman side of the question is forthcoming it is only fair to the accused for one to suspend judgment.
[227] Mahomet et le Coran, p. vii (Paris, 1865).
[228] “Neque in hoc me falli opinor cum hodieque non paucos ex nostris, alioquin non indoctos, Mahumeticarum rerum tam rudes videam, ut Mahumetanos Idolatras, Lunæque ac Mahumeti adoratores existiment, aliasque de Agarenica secta ejusque Auctore neptias effutiant.” Alcorani Textus Universus, Tom. I, p. 6 (Patavii, 1698).
Padre Lodovico Marracci, who was a religious of the order of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, was the confessor of Pope Innocent XII. It was in obedience to the command of this Pontiff that he published his great work on the Koran on which he spent forty of the best years in his life. It embraces three folio volumes with the text of the Koran in Arabic, accompanied by a Latin translation and copious notes, and is notable as being the most successful of the earlier attempts to make the Koran and Mohammedanism known to the Christian world.
[229] Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed, Vol. II, p. 181 (Berlin, 1862).
A mil Franceis fait bien oerchier la vile,
Les sinagoges et les mahumeries:
A mailz de fer, à ouignèes qu ’il tindrent,
Fruissent Mahum e trestutes les ydles.
Lai CCXCVI.
A. I. josdi s’ala d’ un fort vin enivrer;
De la taverne issi; quant il s’en volt aler,
En une place vit. I. fumier reverser;
Mahomes si colcha, ne s’en volt trestorner:
Là l’estranglèrent porc, si com j’oï conter;
Por ce ne volt juis de char de porc goster.
Vv. 5547 et seq. (Paris, 1860).
[232] Porcorum verum esum, justa prorsus ratione, contemnunt qui morsibus eorum dominum consumserunt. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Tom. IV, p. 130 (Paris, 1879).
[233] “As a sample of the controversial works of the theologians of the Reformed Church on this subject,” Mr. R. B. Smith in his interesting work on Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 79 (London, 1876), calls attention to “the following modest title-page of a ponderous work written in 1666: Anti-Christus Mahometes: ubi non solum per Sanctam Scripturam, ac Reformatorum testimonia, verum etiam per omnes alios probandi modos et genera, plene, fuse, imvicte solideque demonstratur Mahometem esse unum illum verum, magnum de quo in Sacris fit mentio, Antichristum.”
[234] Mohammedanism, p. 12 (New York, 1916).
[235] Historia Orientalis, Dedicatio, p. 5 (by J. H. Hottinger, Zurich, 1660).
[236] “Quod vero dissimulandum non est, licet quidam docte, satis solideque scripserint, nonnulli ex rerum Sarracenicarum ignorantia, vera plerumque omittentes, ficta ac fabulosa in medium protulerunt, quæ Mahumetanis risus excitarent eosque in errore suo obstinatiores efficerent.” Alcorani Textus Universus, Tom. I, p. 1 (Patavii, 1698).
[237] Referring to the widespread errors concerning Mohammed and his teachings the eminent Orientalist, Adrian Reland, wrote more than two centuries ago: “Quotidie magis magisque experior mundum decipi velle et præconceptis opinionibus regi”—I daily become more and more convinced that the world wishes to be deceived and is governed by preconceived opinions. De Religione Mohammedica, p. xxii (Utrecht, 1705). Is there not still room for improvement in this respect?
[238] “Mohammed litt an einer Krankheit, welche in jener ausgepragten Form, wie bei ihm, in unseren Gegenden bisweilen bei Frauen, aber selten bei Mannern vorkommt, Mann hat ihr verschiedene Namen gegeben; Schönlein heisst sie hysteria muscularis.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 207.
[239] “Nulla porro falsa doctrina eat quæ non aliqua vera intermisceat.” Quæst, Evang. II. 40.
[240] Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschicte, Vol. I, p. 748 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1884).
“It can be readily understood how the sight of the Muslim trader at prayer, his frequent prostrations, his absorbed and silent worship of the Unseen, would impress the heathen African, endowed with that strong sense of the mysterious such as generally accompanies a low stage of civilization. Curiosity would naturally prompt inquiry and the knowledge of Islam thus imparted might sometimes win over a convert who might have turned aside had it been offered unsought, as a free gift.” The Preaching of Islam, p. 418 (by T. W. Arnold, London, 1913).
This view was emphasized by good old Father Marracci more than two centuries ago when he wrote: “Si ethnicus humani intellectus captum excedentia, vel naturali conditioni et imbecilitati dificillima, si non impossibilia, ... cum Alcoranica doctrina comparaverit, statim ab his refugiet et ad illa obviis ulnis accurret.” Op. cit., Tom. II, p. 9.
[241] Cf. J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, op. cit., p. x.
[242] De Heresibus Liber, Patrologia Græca, Vol. XVIV, Col. 763 et seq. (Migne Edition).
[243] “Summa vero hujus hæresis intentio est ut Christus Dominus ut neque Deus neque Dei Filius esse credatur; sed licet magnus Deoque dilectus homo tamen purus et vir quidem sapiens et propheta maximus. Quæ quidem olim diaboli machinatione concepta primo per Arium seminata deinde per istum Satanam, scilicet Machumet, provecta, per Antichristum vero ex toto secundum diabolicam intentionem complebitur.” Petri Venerabilis Opera Omnia, col. 655, Patrologia Latina, Vol. Tom. CLXXXIX (Migne Edition).
[244] “Seminator di scandalo e di scisma.” Inferno, XXVIII, 35.
[245] C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, p. 129, et seq. (New York, 1916).
[246] The duty of the imam “is to stand in front of the congregation, facing the Kibleh or Mecca-pointing niche, at the appointed hours of devotion, that is ordinarily, as every one knows, five times a day, when he recites aloud the public prayers, marks time for the various devotional postures, and, in a word, acts as fugleman to the worshipers ranged behind him, from whom, however, he is distinguished by no special dress, caste or character! Primus inter pares; but nothing more. The Khatib, or preacher, usually reads out of an old, well-thumbed manuscript sermon book, or, though much more rarely, delivers extempore the Friday discourse, a short performance, seldom exceeding ten minutes in duration.... Once outside the mosque, the imam, the khatib, or whoever else may have officiated during the prayers, is a house-mason, a green-grocer, or pipe-maker, or anything else, as before.” Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 91, et seq. (by W. G. Palgrave, London, 1872).
[247] Op. cit., p. 82.
[248] The word “mosque” is derived from the Arabic masjid which signifies a place of worship.
[249] For a full description of Beith Allah—house of God—and the holy Kaaba, “Navel of the World,” as the Arabian geographer, Ibn Haukal, calls it, see Sir Richard Burton’s A Pilgrimage to El Medina and Mecca, Chaps. XXIV, XXV.
[250] Cf. Aspects of Islam, p. 199 et seq. (by D. B. MacDonald, New York, 1911).
[251] Bibliothèque Orientale, Tom. II, p. 81 (by Barthèlemy d’Herbelot, The Hague, 1777).
[252] D’Herbelot, op. cit., Tom. II, p. 106.
[253] D’Herbelot, op. cit., Tom. II, p. 351.
[254] Op. cit., p. 122, et seq.
[255] Mohammed and Islam, p. 45 (by Ignaz Goldziher, trans, by K. C. Seelye, New Haven, 1917).
[256] Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 334. et seq. (by R. B. Smith. London, 1876).
[257] Studies in a Mosque, p. 169 (London, 1893).
[258] “The spiritual energy of Islam is not, as has been so often maintained, commensurate with its political power. On the contrary, the loss of political power and worldly prosperity has served to bring to the front the finer spiritual qualities which are the truest incentives to missionary work. Islam has learned the uses of adversity and so far from a decline in worldly prosperity being a presage of the decay of this faith, it is significant that those very Muslim countries that have been longest under Christian rule show themselves most active in the work of proselyting. The Indian and Malay Mohammedans display a zeal and enthusiasm for the spread of the faith, which one looks for in vain in Turkey and Morocco.” T. W. Arnold, op. cit., p. 426, 427.
[259] According to Dr. Hubert Jansen’s painstaking Verbreitung des Islams, the number of Mohammedans in the world in 1897 was 259,680,672.
[260] “Si les Mussulmans et les Chrétiens me prâtaient l’oreille, je ferais cesser leur divergence, et ils diviendraient frères à l’extérieur et à l’intérieur.” Rappel à l’Intelligent, Avis à Indifferent, p. 105 (Paris, 1858).
[261] An American writer, referring to the Italian campaign in Tripoli, asks: “Is there rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash away the stain on Italy’s fair name made deep and black by ruthless massacre?” G. F. Herrick in Christian and Mohammedan, p. 236 (New York, 1912).
And an English author writing of the British war on the Gold Coast declares: “Our ‘prestige’ serves as an excuse for committing what we should condemn as crimes in any other nation. It is an entity that has juggled us into the belief that to destroy what we cannot retain is the prerogative not of barbarism, but of civilization and Christianity.... Truly this war will be a damnosa hereditas to posterity, alike whether we accept or disclaim the fearful responsibilities in which it has involved us.” R. B. Smith, op. cit., p. 258.
[262] “Aggredior vos non, ut nostri sæpe faciunt, armis sed verbis; non vi, sed ratione; non odio, sed amore.” Peter the Venerable, op. cit., col. 673. “I attack you, not as our people often do with arms, but with words; not by force but by reason; not in hate but in love.” These are the words with which Peter the Venerable opens his first book against Mussulmans and shows what should be the attitude of the missionary that would have a hearing with a people who are as proud and sensitive as are the followers of Mohammed.
[263] For a helpful map, indicating the course of the Royal Road, the reader is referred to the third volume of Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies (New York, 1881). Much light is also thrown on this interesting subject by Rennell’s valuable work, The Geographical System of Herodotus, Vol. I, Sec. 13 (London, 1830).
It is well, in reference to this subject, to recollect that the ordinary policy of the Asiatic monarchies was not that of holding immense continuous areas of territory, but the comparatively simpler one of safeguarding the great highways of communication. “It is important to remember this in connection with rapid conquest like that of Alexander. To conquer the Achæmenian empire did not mean the effective occupation of all the area within its extreme frontiers—that would have been a task exceeding one man’s lifetime—but the conquest of its cultivated districts and the holding of the roads which connected them.” Cf. The House of Seleucus, Vol. I, p. 22 (by E. R. Bevan, London, 1902).
[264] Mishkab V, 6. Hughes’ Dictionary of Islam, p. 635 (London, 1885).
[265] Mohammedanism, p. 85 (New York, 1916).
[266] Missionary Review, 1889, p. 302.
[267] Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, p. 299 (by Richard F. Burton, Boston, 1858).
[268] “But for the earthquakes which have here and there rent the walls and caused the roofs to fall in nothing would be missing except the woodwork carried off by the builders of more recent cities. The removal of the basalts and other hard materials drawn from the quarries of the district would have been too troublesome and expensive.” The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Vol. IV, p. 285 (New York, 1885).
[269] “Nel far le mercanzie, non si contano, ma si pesano casse intere di denari; e non si fa mai compra o vendita dove non corran quaranta, cinquanta, ottanta o centomila que piu a minuto non si parla e sarebbe vergogna.” Viaggi di Pietro della Valle, Vol. I, p. 331 (Brighton, 1843).
When one remembers the purchasing power of money in the time of the illustrious patrician compared with what it is now, the sums mentioned were indeed considerable.
[270] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.
[271] The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies, Vol. I, p. 48 (pub. by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1885). “Merchants come thither”—Ormuz—“from India with ships loaded with spicery and precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants’ teeth and many other wares, which they sell to the merchants of Hormos”—Ormuz—“and which these in turn carry all over the world to dispose of again. In fact ’tis a city of immense trade.” The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Vol. I, p. 107 (trans. by H. Yule, London, 1903).
[272] Hakluyt’s Voyages, Vol. V, p. 446 (Glasgow, 1904).
[273] “Mettendo attorno al campo della carovana ... molte sentinelle che tutta la notte scorrevano intorno e gridavano, (secondo la lors usanza) agli amici que stessero all ’erta ed ai nemici che non si accostassero.” Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 353.
[274] See Vol. I, p. 7.
[275] “Vivendi licentia, inquies, illos allicit. Ita puto: sed aliquid aliud est quod illos sub boni verique specie decipiat. Habet nimirum hæc superstitio quidquid plausibile ac probabile in Christiana Religione reperitur et quæ naturæ legi ac lumini consèntanea videntur. Mysteria illa fidei nostræ quæ primo aspectu inchedibilia et impossibiblia apparent, et præcipue quæ nimis ardua humanæ naturæ consentur, penitus excludit.” Op. cit. Tom. I, p. 4.
[276] Dictionnaire Philosophique, s. v. “Mahometanisme.”
[277] Mankind and the Church, p. 289 (by G. A. Lefroy, London, 1907).
[278] “A certain solidarity characterizes not only family relations but all Moslem society. There are no paupers; almsgiving is not a mere theoretical obligation but an essential religious duty really discharged. It may be replied that there are many beggars. There are and the spectacle is very unpleasant; but from the beggars’ point of view, could they, given their misfortunes, have a better life? If one has twisted limbs or any incurable malady, including laziness, is it not more healthy, interesting and lucrative to sit begging at street-corners than to be the inmate of a charitable institution? One thing is certain—Moslem beggars never starve.” Turkey in Europe, p. 176 (by Sir Charles Eliot, London, 1908).
[279] Lieutenant Wood, the gallant explorer of the Oxus, referring to this subject, writes: “Often ... have I observed that the Mohammedans, both old and young, however worn out by fatigue or suffering from hunger and thirst, have postponed all thought of self-indulgence to their duty to their God.
It is not with them the mere force of habit; it is the strong impression on their minds that the duty of prayer is so important that no circumstance can excuse its omission.” Journey to the Source of the Oxus, p. 93 (London, 1872).
[280] These good reports about Mohammedans are not of recent date. Read what Ricoldus de Monte Crucis, a Dominican missionary among them in the thirteenth century, has to say of them: “Quis enim non obstupescat si diligenter consideret quanta ... devotio in oratione, misericordia ad pauperes, reverencia ad nomen Dei et prophetas et loca sancta, gravitas in moribus, affabilitas ad extraneos, concordia et amor ad suos.” Peregrinatores Medii Ævi Quatuor, p. 131 (by J. C. M. Laurent, Leipsic, 1864).
[281] Regarding the Armenian’s capacity for business, Mr. Curzon has wittily remarked, that, while “it takes four Turks to cheat one Frank, two Franks to cheat one Greek and two Greeks to cheat one Jew, it takes six Jews to cheat one Armenian.” Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, Vol. I, p. 8 (by H. F. Tozer, London, 1869).
According to Dr. Schliemann, however, the palm for business ability must be awarded to the Greeks from the island of Lesbos. “The Lesbian Greeks,” he tells us, “have the reputation of being the shrewdest merchants in the world; as a proof it is alleged that in cities the commerce of which is in the hands of Lesbians not a Jew is to be found.” Troja, p. 324.
[282] The learned Benedictine, Father Parisot, has recently collected the vocabulary of this interesting dialect which is threatened with early extinction.
[283] This peculiarity is explained by the fact that when the Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century tens of thousands of Jews migrated to Salonica and Constantinople where Spanish is still spoken by large numbers of their descendants.
[284] A like superstition attaches to nearly all similar remains of antiquity not only in Syria but in Egypt as well. Some are reputed to have special virtues for those suffering from tic-douloureux or from rheumatism for which affections they are said by Orientals to possess even greater curative properties than their famous panacea—the bezoar stone.
[285] Ibn Butlan, a noted Arabian physician, and a Christian, of Bagdad, who visited Aleppo in the middle of the eleventh century thus refers to this curious tradition: “In the lower part of the castle is a cave where he”—Abraham—“concealed his flocks. When he milked these, the people used to come for their milk crying ‘Halaba ya la’?—Milked yet or not?—asking thus one of the other, and hence the city came to be called Halab—Milked.” Cf. G. le Strange’s Palestine Under the Moslems, p. 363 (London, 1890).
[286] The Hittites, p. 12 (London, 1903).
[287] Genesis xxiii.
[288] Ezekiel xvi: 3.
[289] Kings ii: 12.
[290] St. Jerome in the beginning of his commentary on the gospel of St. Matthew, pertinently observes in this connection: “Notandum est ... nullam sanctarum assumi mulierum sed eas quas Scriptura reprehendit: ut que propter peccatores venerat, de peccatoribus nascens, omnium peccata deleret. Unde et in consequentibus Ruth Moabitis ponitur et Bethsabee uxor Uriæ.”
[291] Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 147 (London, 1822).
[292] Cf. The Language of the Hittites in The Times Literary Supplement, p. 180 (London, April 3, 1919).
[293] When the speech of the Hittites ceased to be a living tongue cannot even be surmised. St. Paul heard it in Lystra of Lycaonia, but how much later it may have continued to be spoken in certain other parts of Asia Minor cannot now be determined. As a people they doubtless long survived and, although they were gradually absorbed by neighboring races, “it is believed that some of them still exist, with their early distinctive characteristics, among the hills of the anti-Taurus range.”
We are likewise in ignorance as to when the languages of Egypt and Babylonia gave place to those of their conquerors. According to Sayce “the Egyptian hieroglyphics were still written and read in the time of Decius, the cuneiform characters of Babylon were employed in the age of Domitian.” The Ancient Empires of the East, p. ix (New York, 1886).
[294] According to recent investigations this was probably what is now known as the Wady el ’Arish and not the Nile, as usually supposed.
[295] Genesis xii: 5.
[296] Sayce’s Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 410 (London, 1898). Lucius Ampelius writing in his Liber Memorialis, Cap. II, of the origin of the constellations, refers to a more extraordinary legend in connection with the Euphrates. “Pisces ideo pisces quia bello Gigantum Venus perturbata in piscem se transfiguravit. Nam dicitur et in Euphrate fluvio ovum piscis in ora flumimis columba adsedisse dies plurimos et exclusisse deam benignam et misericordem hominibus ad bonam vitam. Utrique memoriæ causa pisces inter sidera locati.”
[297] For an interesting report on the excavations made at Djerabis on behalf of the British Museum, see the beautifully illustrated monograph Carchemish (by D. G. Hogarth, London, 1915).
[298] It is to this legend that is due the Mussulman name—Nimroud Dagh—the Mountain of Nimrod—of the elevation on which stands the citadel of Urfa.
[299] In the “Testament of St. Ephrem,” as given by Assemani, occurs the words “Benedicta civitas, ... Edessa sapientum mater, quæ ex vivo Filii ore benedictionem per ejus discipulum accepit. Illa igitur benedictio in ea maneat donec Sanctus apparuerit.” Bibliotheca Orientalis, Tom. I, p. 141 (Rome, 1719).
[300] Cf. Histoire Politique, Religieuse et Littéraire d’ Edesse jusque à la Première Croisade, p. 81 (by R. Duval, Paris, 1892).
[301] Ecclesiastical History, Bk. I, Chap. XIII.
[302] An ancient manuscript in the British Museum contains a service book of Saxon times, in which the letter of Our Lord to Abgar follows the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. At the end of the letter, which is in the Latin version of Rufinus, occurs the words: “Sive in domu tua, sive in civitate tua, sive in omni loco nemo inimicorum tuorum dominabit. Et insidias diaboli ne timeas et carmina inimicorum tuorum destruuntur (sic), et omnes inimici tui expellentur a te: sive a grandine, sive a tonitrua (sic) non noceberis, et ab omni periculo liberaberis: sive in mare, sive in terra, sive in die, sive in nocte, sive in locis obscuris. Si quis hanc epistolam secum habuerit, securus ambulet in pace.” Cf. Ancient Syriac Documents Relative to the Earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa and the Neighboring Countries, from the Year after Our Lord’s Ascension to the Beginning of the Fourth Century, Discovered, Edited, Translated and Annotated by the late W. Cureton, p. 154 (London, 1864). See also The Book of Cerne, p. 205, et seq. (by the erudite Benedictine, Dom. A. B. Kuypers, Cambridge, England, 1902).
[303] For a critical discussion of the “Legend of Abgar” see Les Origines de l’Eglise d’Edesse et La Légende d’ Abgar (by the learned Sulpician, L. J. Tixeront, Paris, 1888).
“The practice of keeping this letter as a philactery prevailed in England till the last century.... ‘The common people’ there have had it in their houses in many places in a frame with a picture before it and they generally with much honesty and devotion regard it as the word of God and the genuine epistle of Christ.’... I have a recollection of having seen the same thing in cottages in Shropshire.” Cureton, op. cit., p. 155.
[304] In the province of Osrhoene, about a day’s journey from Edessa, was a celebrated mart called Batne, where the Indians and the Seres came to trade with the Edessenes and rich merchants from other cities at an annual fair which was held in this place in the month of September. Here, Ammianus Marcellinus informs us “magna promiscuæ fortunæ convenit multitudo ad commercanda quæ Indi et Seres aliaque plurima vehi terra marique consueta.” Rerum Gestarum, Lib. XIV, Cap. III, 3.
For an illuminating map showing the importance of Edessa as a trade center during Roman times, see V. Chapot’s La Frontière de L’Euphrate de Pompée à la Conquête Arabe, facing p. 402 (Paris, 1907).
[305] L. J. Tixeront, op. cit., p. 7, et seq.
[306] Cf. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Record and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 200 (by T. G. Pinches, London, 1908).
[307] Genesis xi: 31.
[308] Ibid., 17.
[309] Purgatorio, XXVII, 94–108. Dante but follows the teaching of the Angelic Doctor who, writing on the active and the contemplative life, declares: “Istæ duæ vitæ significantur per duas uxores Jacob: activa quidem per Liam, contemplativa vero per Rachelem; et per duas mulieres quæ Dominum hospitio receperunt: contemplativa quidem per Mariam, activa vero per Martham.” Summ. Theol. Pars II, 2dæ, Q CLXXIX, Art. i.
[310] Cf. The Book of the Bee, p. 95–97, from the Syriac of Mar Solomon, Bishop of Basra (trans. by E. A. W. Budge, Oxford, 1886).
[311] Students of history will remember that the Emperor Carcacalla was assassinated at Haran by one of his soldiers while on a visit to the temple of the Moon. The Roman general Crassus suffered a crushing defeat at the same place and was treacherously slain in the vicinity while in a conference with a Persian satrap.
[312] “Quæ jam a Mithradati regni temporibus, ne Oriens a Persis occuparetur, viribus restitit maximis.” Lib. XXV, Cap. IX.
[313] Cf. Assemani, op. cit., Tom. III, Part II, p. 927, et seq.
Nisibis, “la grand metropole nestorienne, vit naïtre dans ses murs la première Université théologique, les premiers cours publics de théologie. Ce phenomene qui excitait l’admiration et étonnement du quæstor sacri palatii de Justinien ne peut que nous donner une idée avantageuse de la culture du clerge nestorien a cette époque de son histoire.” Le Christianisme dan l’Empire Perse sous la Dynastie Sassanide, (224–632), p. 301 (by J. Labourt, Paris, 1904).
[314] Dion Cassius, History of Rome, Bk. I, XVIII, 26.
[315] Genesis xxxv: 8.
[316] “In such circumstances,” writes one who knew the desert well, “the mind is influenced through the body. Though your mouth glows and your skin is parched with heat, yet you feel no languor, the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone and your spirits become exuberant; your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you stir up all the energies of your soul—whether for exertion, danger or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded: the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of civilization are left behind you in the city.... All feel their hearts dilate and their pulses beat strong as they look down from their dromedaries upon the glorious desert. Where do we hear of a traveler being disappointed by it? It is another illustration of the ancient truth that Nature returns to man, however unworthily he has treated her. And believe me, when once your tastes have conformed to the tranquillity of such travel, you will suffer real pain in returning to the turmoil of civilization. You will anticipate the bustle and confusion of artificial life, its luxury and its false pleasures with repugnance. Depressed in spirits you will for a time after your return feel incapable of bodily or mental exertion. The air of cities will suffocate you and the care-worn and cadaverous countenances of citizens will haunt you like a vision of judgment.” Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah, Vol. I, pp. 150, 151 (by Richard F. Burton, London, 1893).
[317] A celeritate Tigris incipit vocari. Ita appellant Medi sagittam. Pliny, Naturalis Historia, VI, XXVII.
[318] We have seen in a previous chapter how unfounded is this statement.
[319] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 60 (trans. by H. Yule, London, 1903).
[320] Geschichte der Ilchaner, Vol. I, p. 191 (Darmstadt, 1842).
[321] Acts of the Apostles, ii: 9, 11.
[322] See map III of Heussi and Mulert’s Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte for the extensive territory occupied by the Nestorian Church during its greatest development.
[323] The dwelling of the Patriarch, as described by a noted traveler of the last century, “is solidly built of hewn-stone and stands on the very edge of a precipice overhanging a ravine through which winds a branch of the Zab. A dark vaulted passage led us into a room scarcely better lighted by a small window closed by a greased sheet of coarse paper. The tattered remains of a felt carpet, spread in a corner, was the whole of its furniture. The garments of the Patriarch were hardly less worn and ragged. Even the miserable allowance of 300 piastres, about £2 10s., which the Porte had promised to pay him monthly on his return to the mountains was long in arrears, and he was supported entirely by the contributions of his faithful but poverty-stricken flock. Kochanes was, moreover, still a heap of ruins.” Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert, p. 363 (by A. H. Layard, New York, 1856).
[324] “La progression des Chrétians a été la suivante; en 1750, zéro; en 1856, de 30,000 a 40,000; en 1900, 66,000. Tout donne à espérer que le retour définitif des Nestoriens à la foi portera bientot et définitivement ce nombre, si ce n’est deja un fait accomplit, a 140,000.” Les Missions Catholiques Francaises au XIXe Siècle, p. 271 (Paris, 1900).
[325] For the dogmatic definitions of the Church at the General Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon against the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches see Denzinger’s Enchiridion, pp. 52, 65.
[326] The word Copt is apparently derived from the middle part of the Greek word Aigyptos which means Egyptian. It is, however, always used to indicate a member of the Egyptian Monophysite Church.
[327] Melchite is a Græco-Syriac word which signifies imperial. It was given at the outbreak of the Monophysite schism to those Christians in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt who accepted the decrees of Chalcedon and remained loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople and to the Catholic Church. The name is now applied to the Uniates of these lands.
[328] Cf. Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Bestand Sämtilicler Kirchen des Orients, p. 384 (by I. Silbernagl, Regensburg, 1904).
[329] The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 19 (by A. Fortescue, London, 1908).
[330] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 15.
[331] Not having a hierarchy, the Protestants in Turkey do not constitute a Millet. The Porte has consequently organized them, consisting chiefly of a small number of converted Armenians, and Syrians, into a special group under the Minister of Police.
[332] Among Orientals a common designation of Franks, which, since the time of the Crusades, has been applied to all the inhabitants of Western Europe.
[333] Paradiso, VI, I, 2.
[334] Addressing once a company of bishops Constantine declared: “You are bishops whose jurisdiction is within the Church; I also am a bishop ordained by God to overlook whatever is external to the Church.” Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, IV, 24.
[335] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 28.
[336] The Churches Separated from Rome, p. 151 (by L. Duchesne, New York, 1907).
“For three centuries after the foundation of New Rome,” writes Freeman, “Latin remained the tongue of government, law and warfare; and down to the last days of the Empire survivals of its use in that character still lingered on.... But Greek was from the beginning the tongue of literature and religion; and, even under Justinian himself, it began to creep into use as an alternative language of the law of Rome.—Gradually the Greek tongue displaced Latin for all purposes, but not till it had received a large infusion of Latin technical terms.... Save this technical Latin infusion the tongue of Constantinople was thoroughly Greek. The strange spectacle was there to be seen of an Emperor of the Romans, a Patriarch of New Rome, a Roman Senate and People glorying in the Roman name, and deriving their whole political existence from a Roman source, but in whose eyes the speech of Ennius and Tacitus and Claudian was simply the despised idiom of Western heretics and barbarians.” Historical Essays, Third Series, pp. 248, 249 (London, 1879).
[337] How great was their exasperation at the Pope’s action is evinced by the language they addressed to Luitprand, Archbishop of Cremona, when, in 968, he went on an embassy to Constantinople. “But,” they indignantly declare, “the mad and silly Pope does not know that St. Constantine transferred the imperial scepter, all the senate and the whole Roman army hither, and that at Rome he left only vile creatures such as fishermen, pastrycooks, bird-catchers, bastards, plebeians and slaves.” Cf. Fortescue, op. cit., p. 94.
[338] Cf. Le Schisme Oriental du XI Siècle, p. 275 (by L. Brehier, Paris, 1899).
[339] Now that the crash had come “one asks oneself what else the Legates could have done. They had waited long enough, and, if ever a man clearly showed that he wanted schism, it was Cerularius. He had already excommunicated the Pope by taking his name off the diptychs. We should note that this is the only sentence that the Roman Church pronounced against the Eastern Communion. She has never excommunicated it as such nor the other patriarchs. If they lost her communion it was because they too, following Cerularius’ example, struck the Pope’s name from their diptychs.” Fortescue, op. cit., p. 185.
[340] Although Innocent III, preacher of the Crusade, promptly excommunicated the Crusaders for their perfidy and treachery, the Greeks, nevertheless, persisted in declaring that His Holiness was the real cause of their misfortunes.
[341] According to the custom that subsequently prevailed it was the Grand Vizier who, in the Sultan’s name, gave the berat to the newly appointed Patriarch. As to bishops-elect it was obligatory that they should receive their berat from the government before their consecration.
[342] Thus, during the seventy-five years between 1625 and 1700, there were no fewer than 50 patriarchs whose average tenure of office was a year and a half. Compare this with the long reign—seventy-two years—of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII whose average tenure of office was twenty-four years—just thirty-six times as long as that of the unfortunate Patriarchs in question.
[343] Hom. II in Ephesios.
[344] “The Holy Father,” as Mgr. Duchesne beautifully declares, “has put all his heart into it; I might almost say, he had put only his heart into it.” Op. cit., p. 41.
[345] “Eo vel magis quod non ingenti discrimine seiunguntur: imo, si pauca excipias, sic cetera consentimus, ut in ipsis catholici nominis vindiciis non raro ex doctrina, ex more, ex ritibus, quibus orientales utuntur, testimonia atque argumenta promanus.”
[346] Inferno XXVIII, 35.
[347] Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, pp. 2, 30 (London, 1861).
The testimony of Professor H. Gelzer, likewise a Protestant, is almost the same as that of Dean Stanley. Writing of the monastic establishments of the Orthodox Church he pertinently inquires: “While the Catholic Orders as teaching and nursing bodies have become an important element in the civilization of the nineteenth century, what have Athos, Sinai, Patmos or Megaspilion been doing? The Greeks often bitterly complain of the mighty progress of Catholic propaganda, but they must themselves admit that the best schools and hospitals in Turkey belong to the Catholic Orders.” Von Heiligen Berge und aus Makendonien, p. 2 (Leipsig, 1904).
[348] Das Testament Leos XIII, in Reden und Aufsätze, Vol. II, p. 279 (Geissen, 1904).
[349] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 432, 433.
[350] Psalms, xliv: 10, “Neque aliud fortasse mirabilius est,” declares the Sovereign Pontiff, “ad catholicitatis notam in Ecclesia Dei illustrandam, quam singulare quod ei præbent obsequium dispares cæremoniarum formæ nobilesque vestustatis linguæ, ex ipsa Apostolorum et Patrum consuetudine nobiliares; fere ad imitationem obsequii lectissimi quod Christi divino Ecclesiæ auctori, exhibitum est nascenti, quum Magi ex varii Orientis plagis devecti venerunt ... adorare eum.”
[351] St. Paul to the Ephesians, iv: 13.
[352] St. John’s Gospel, xvii: 20, 21.
[353] Jonah, iv: 11. Those “that knew not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left,” is supposed to refer to young children.
[354] Genesis x: 11.
[355] iii: 19.
[356] ii: 13–15.
[357] Anabasis, Bk. III, Chap. 4. Cf. also Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 139 et seq. (by W. F. Ainsworth, London, 1844).
[358] Charon, 23.
[359] Even Cicero, declares: “Et apud Herodotum, patrem historiæ ... sunt innumerabiles fabulæ.” De Legisbus Lib. I, Cap. I.
[360] Arabian writers, it is true, had agreed “during nine hundred years, in identifying the mounds on the east bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul with the ruins of Nineveh” but their views were so far from meeting with general acceptance that so late as 1843 the great French explorer, Botta, was convinced when he uncovered the wonderful palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B. C. 721–705, that the site of Nineveh was occupied by the ruins of Khorsabad. But the noted English investigator, Layard, “contrary to the teachings of Arabian and Syrian historians and local tradition,” was equally positive that “the ruins of Nineveh were buried under the mound of Nimroud,” which is twenty miles to the south of the actual site of the famous Assyrian capital which was so long the rival and eventually the conqueror of Babylon. Cf. By Nile and Tigris, Vol. II, p. 8 et seq., 15, 16 (by E. A. Wallis Budge, London, 1920).
[361] The Buried City of the East: Nineveh, Preface (London, 1851).
[362] Nineveh and Its Palaces. The Discoveries of Botta and Layard Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ, p. 1 et seq. (by J. Bonomi, London, 1852).
[363] “At the end of the seventeenth century, B.C., Asurbanipal’s sculptors at Nineveh were representing horses which the frieze of the Parthenon can hardly equal, and lions which no sculptor has ever surpassed in careful observations and truthful delineation.” The Ancient History of the Near East, p. 536 (by H. R. Hall, London, 1913).
[364] vi: 1.
[365] See his Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 342–345 (London, 1853); cf. also Hormuzd Rassam’s Asshur and the Land of the Nimrod, p. 31 (New York, 1897), which gives an account of the discovery of more tablets, among which were the famed Deluge tablets.
[366] Relaçam em que se tratam as guerras e grandes victorias que alcançou o grãde rey da Persia Xa Abbas do grão Turco Mahometto and seu Filho Amethe, pello Padre F. Antonio de Gouvea (Lisboa, 1611).
[367] Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part II, pp. 1533, 1534 (London, 1625).
[368] As to the signification of the strange, wedge-shaped character described by the noted Italian traveler, Pietro della Valle admits that he knows nothing. In the fifteenth chapter of his Viaggi he frankly declares: “E queste iscritzioni in que lingua e lettera siano non si sa perchè è caratere oggi ignoto.”
[369] Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, p. 145 et seq. (London, 1638).
[370] Chardin became an English citizen and achieved such fame as a traveler that a tablet was dedicated to his memory in Westminster Abbey bearing the legend “Sir John Chardin—nomen sibi fecit eundo.”
[371] Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th Century, pp. 23, 24 (by H. V. Hilprecht, Philadelphia, 1903).
How Grotefend achieved such marvelous success when others, apparently more competent than he, had failed has been explained by the fact that “he early displayed a remarkable aptitude for the solution of riddles: a peculiar talent which he shared in common with Dr. Hincks, who also acquired great distinction as a cuneiform scholar.” The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 169 (by A. J. Booth, London, 1902).
Dr. R. W. Rogers, in his instructive work, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I, p. 61 (New York, 1915), referring to the same subjects, writes:
“It were difficult, if not impossible, to define the qualities of mind which must inhere in the decipherer of a forgotten language. He is not necessarily a great scholar, though great scholars have been successful decipherers. He may know but little of the languages that are cognate with the one whose secrets he is trying to unravel. He may, indeed, know nothing of them, as has several times been the case. But the patience, the persistence, the power of combination, the divine gift of insight, the historical sense, the feeling for archæological indications, these must be present, and all of these were present in the extraordinary man, Grotefend, who now attacked the problem that had baffled so many.”
[372] Hilprecht, op. cit., p. 71; cf. A Memoir of Major General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, pp. 143–148, 153–157 (by his brother, Canon George Rawlinson, London, 1898); Booth, op. cit., pp. 106–114.
[373] Although it was supposed that this prize, awarded by so learned a body as the French Institute, would be tantamount to une sanction qui devrait dissiper toutes les susceptibilités, many remained as skeptical as ever and continued “to decry a language in which one can never know if a syllable is ideographic or phonetic, and, when phonetic, which of two or three different values it may have in that place.” Cf. A. J. Booth, op. cit., p. 416.
[374] Op. cit., pp. 118, 119.
[375] New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land, p. 10 (by B. T. Evetts, New York).
[376] The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 110 (by M. Jastrow, Philadelphia, 1915).
[377] A few years before his death, when presiding at the commencement exercises of the College of Dole, in the Department of the Jura in which he was born and brought up, Pasteur told his youthful audience: “When one has studied much, one comes back to the faith of a Breton peasant; as to myself, had I studied more I should have the faith of a Breton peasant-woman.” The Ave Maria, February 14, 1920.
[378] Bible, Science and Faith, p. 314, 315 (Baltimore, 1895). Cf. also Evolution and Dogma, Chap. VIII (by J. A. Zahm, Chicago, 1896).
[379] Babel und Bibel, p. 4 (Leipzig, 1903).
[380] A name which, as we have seen, is also applied to the Euphrates.
[381] Cf. R. I. Wilberforce in The Five Empires, Chaps. XV, XVIII (London, 1852).
[382] Alexander the Great, p. 368 (by B. I. Wheeler, New York, 1900).
[383] Creasy’s Decisive Battles of the World, p. 79 (New York, 1899).
It was at Arbela, where was to be settled once for all the question of world supremacy, that Alexander, when counseled by his generals to make a night attack on Darius, gave the famous answer οὐ κλέπτο τἠν νίκην—I steal no victory—words that were his motto during his eventful and brilliant career.
[384] Voyages en Turquie, en Perse et aux Indes, Vol I, p. 185 (Paris, 1677).
[385] Die Bedeutung des heutigen Namen’s Kal. ‘at Schergat ist bis jetzt unaufgeklärt geblieben und durfte vielleicht eine Altassyrische Reminiscenz bergen. Vom Mittelmer zum Persischen Golf. Vol. II, p. 210 (by M. von Oppenheim, Berlin, 1900). His countryman, Baron Thielmann, writing of the same ruins a quarter of a century earlier, declares: “This great field of ruin with its pyramid looks truly venerable, but science has as yet made no discoveries here which could help us solve the mystery of this remnant of an ancient era.” Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, Vol. II, p. 136 (London, 1875).
[386] Cf. Sayce Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 122 (London, 1898).
[387] See Jastrow, op. cit., p. 229.
[388] See W. Andræ’s Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur (Leipsic, 1909); and his Die Festungswerke von Assur (Leipsic, 1913).
[389] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 328.
[390] See Die Stelenreien in Assur, p. ii (by Walter Andræ, Leipsic, 1913).
[391] “Many other works of Semiramis,” writes Strabo, “besides those of Babylon, are extant in almost every part of this continent, as, for example, earth-works which are called mounds of Semiramis, walls and fortresses, aqueducts and cisterns for water, stair-like roads over mountains, canals communicating with rivers and lakes; roads and bridges.” Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. II.
[392] Polyænus Strategemeta, VIII, 26.
[393] Cf. La Légende de Semiramis, pp. 22, 23 (by François Lenormant), in Mémoires de l’Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Tom. XL (1873).
[394] A. H. Sayce in Herodotos, with Notes, Introductions and Appendices, p. 105 (London, 1883).
[395] Ibid., p. 303.
[396] Ibid., p. 362.
[397] Mr. Robertson Smith in The English Historical Review, Vol. II, p. 305, April, 1887.
[398] Op. cit., p. 317.
[399] As many fantastic stories are related about Dietrich von Bern—Theodoric the Great, King of the East Goths—as there are about Semiramis. As the Assyrian queen was said to have been nursed by doves in her infancy and to have been transformed into a dove after her death so, the German legends have it, Dietrich von Bern was descended from a spirit and made his exit from the world on a black horse. In Lusatia the mythical Wild Huntsman who, during violent storms, rides furiously across the heavens is called Dietrich von Bern. Living so long after Semiramis it is more surprising that his life should be made the theme of Middle High German poems and Old Norse sagas than that the Assyrian queen should have been made the subject of oriental myth and Greek legend.
[400] Lehmann-Haupt in his interesting and illuminating lecture on Die historische Semiramis und ihre Zeit, which was delivered before the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in Berlin, February 6, 1910, declares: “Von der sagenhaften Ümhüllung befreit, sehen wir Semiramis vor uns als eine Herrschergestalt, die zu einer Zeit, da sonst der Frau eine Beteiligung am öffentlichen Leben versagt war, die Geschichte zweier, vornehmlich durch ihre Klugheit und Umsicht verbundener Reiche in Krieg und Frieden entscheidendend und durchgreifend geleitet hat.” P. 68 (Tübingen, 1910).
How different is this conclusion of the learned German, which is based on the brilliant discoveries of Andræ and his colleagues, from that of the distinguished Orientalist, F. Lenormant, who, as the result of an exhaustive study of Semiramis, makes the ex cathedra statement “ce personage divin ... doit être definitivement rayé de l’histoire—this divine personage ought to be definitely expunged from history.” Op. cit., p. 68.
[401] Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. I, IX.
[402] Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. VII, Chap. VII.
[403] Voyage au Levant, Tom. III, p. 200 (Amsterdam, 1727).
[404] Ibid., III, p. 183.
[405] So hot is it in Susa, the Greek geographer writes, that “lizards and serpents at midday in the summer ... cannot cross the streets quick enough to prevent their being burnt to death midway by the heat.” Op. cit., Bk. XV, Chap. III.
[406] “There are few sights more appalling than a sandstorm in the desert, the ‘Zauba’ah,’ as the Arabs call it. Devils or pillars of sand, vertical and inclined, measuring a thousand feet high, rush over the plain lashing the sand at their base like a sea surging under a furious whirlwind; shearing the grass clean away from the roots, tearing up trees which are whirled like leaves and sticks in the air, and sweeping away tents and houses as if they were bits of paper. At last the columns join at the top and form, perhaps three thousand feet above the earth, a gigantic cloud of yellow sand which obliterates not only the horizon but even the midday sun. These sand-spouts are the terror of travelers.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I, p. 114 (by Richard F. Burton, Benares, 1885).
[407] Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh with a Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad, Vol. II, p. 148 (London, 1836).
[408] Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, Vol. II, p. 138 (London, 1875).
[409] Convito, IV., 2.
[410] Divina Commedia, IV, v. 121, et seq.
[411] Moore’s Lalla Rookh, p. 181 (New York, 1890).
[412] Life and Letters of E. B. Cowell, p. 318 (by G. Cowell, London, 1904).
[413] Daniel, iii.
[414] Op. cit., II, 139.
[415] Gertrude L. Bell, in Amurath to Amurath, p. 246 (London, 1911).
[416] “Le Khalife, alors tout-puissant, vivait là au milieu de ses milices et de tous les grands scheiks de son royaume, plus entouré de courtisans que Louis XIV à Versailles. Il réservait d’ailleurs toutes ses faveurs à ceux qui venaient embellir Samara en coustruisant quelques belles residences dans le voisinage du palais.” Description du Palais de Al-Moutasim Fils d’Haroun-al-Raschid à Samara et de Quelques Monuments Arabs connus de la Mesopotamia, p. 23 and plate XIV (par M. H. Violet, Paris, 1909). Cf. Sarre und Herzfeld’s illuminating monograph on Samara.
[417] Cf. Von Oppenheim, op. cit., II, p. 221.
[418] Op. cit., p. 381.
[419] Cf. Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia, Vol. II, p. 152 (by W. F. Ainsworth, London, 1842).
[420] Les Missions Catholiques Françaises au XIXe Siècle, Tom. I, p. 223, et seq. (Paris, 1900).
[421] Cf. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Tom. I, p. 172 et seq. (by the Vicomte De la Jonquière, Paris, 1914).
[422] Du Caucasus au Golfe Persique à travers l’Arménie, le Kurdistan et la Mesopotamie, p. 458 et seq. (by P. Müller-Simonis and H. Hyvernat, Washington, 1892).
[423] See the interesting work of Mme. Dieulafoy on La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane, p. 576 et seq. (Paris, 1887).
[424] Turquie Agonisante, p. 137 (Paris, 1913).
[425] Baghdad during the Abbassid Caliphate from Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources, pp. 12–14 (by G. Le Strange, Oxford, 1900).
[426] Le Strange, op. cit., p. 64 et seq.
[427] Le Strange, op. cit., p. 71.
[428] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 63 (translated and edited by H. Yule, London, 1903).
[429] Bibliothèque Orientale, Tom. I, p. 326 (The Hague, 1777).
[430] Op. cit., I, 72.
[431] History of the Mongols from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century, Part III, p. 127 (by H. H. Howorth, London, 1888).
[432] See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, on a Greek Embassy to Bagdad 917, A. D. (January, 1897).
[433] Cf. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. LII.
[434] At this period, Sir Richard Burton tells us, London and Paris were in a state of quasi-savagery and “their palatial halls were spread with rushes.”
[435] Bagdad, at the zenith of its grandeur under Harun-al-Rashid, was the worthy successor of Babylon and Nineveh. It “had outrivalled Damascus, ‘the Smile of the Prophet,’” and “was essentially a city of pleasure, a Paris of the ninth century.” “Thither flocked from all parts of the oriental world the most noted and capable poets, musicians and artificers of the time; and the first thought of the Arabian or Persian craftsman who had completed some specially curious or attractive specimen of his art was to repair to the capital of the Muslim world, to submit it to the Commander of the Faithful from whom he rarely failed to receive a rich reward for his labors. Surrounded by pleasure-gardens and groves of orange, tamarisk, and myrtle, refreshed by an unfailing luxuriance of running streams, supplied either by art or nature, the great city on the Tigris is the theme of many an admiring ode or laudatory ghazel; and the poets of the time all agree in describing it as being, under the rule of the great Caliph, a sort of terrestrial paradise of idlesse and luxury, where, to use their own expressions, the ground was irrigated with rose-water and the dust of the roads was musk, where flowers and verdure overhung the ways and the air was perpetually sweet with the many-voiced song of birds, and where the chirp of lutes, the dulcet warble of flutes and the silver sound of singing houris rose and fell in harmonious cadence from every corner of the streets of palaces that stood in vast succession in the midst of their gardens and orchards, gifted with perpetual verdure by the silver abundance of the Tigris, as it sped its arrowy flight through the thrice-blest town.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. IX, pp. 333, 334 (translated by John Payne, London, 1884).
[436] Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe, Vol. I, p. 30 (New York, 1827).
[437] Haroun-Al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, p. 53 (by E. H. Palmer, London, 1881).
[438] Palmer, op. cit., p. 83.
[439] This crime, declares Sir Richard Burton, “stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded in history and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to this our day.” Thousand and One Nights, Vol. X, p. 142 (Benares, 1885).
[440] Sismondi, op. cit., I, 30.
Tamed Greece to tame her victress now began,
And with her arts fair Latium over-ran.
Horace, Epistles, Book II, 1.
[442] Gibbon, op. cit., Chap. LII.
[443] See D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, s. v. “Honain.”
[444] Cf. A History of Greece, Vol. II, p. 224 (by G. Finlay, Oxford, 1877).
[445] The History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 157 (London, 1877).
[446] Longfellow has chosen the grim episode said to have been connected with the tragic death of Al-Mostassem at the hands of Hulagu Khan for one of his well-known poems in which he makes his victor and executioner address the avaricious Caliph in the following words:
I said to the Caliph, “Thou art old,
Thou hast no need of so much gold;
Thou shouldst not have heaped and hidden it here,
Till the breath of battle was hot and near,
But have sown through the land these useless hoards,
To spring into shining blades and swords,
And keep thine honor sweet and clear.”
*****
Then into his dungeon I locked the drone,
And left him there to feed all alone,
In the honey cells of his golden hive;
Never a prayer, nor a cry, nor a groan,
Was heard from those massive walls of stone,
Nor again was the Caliph seen alive.
[447] Freeman, op. cit., p. 132.
[448] “Tamerlan fit passer au fil de l’epée tous sea Habitants, n’ epargnant ni age, ni sexe, ni condition et fit raser rez pied, rez terre tous ses principaux bätimens.” D’Herbelot, op. cit., s. v. “Timour.”
[449] Cf. Gibbon, op. cit., Chap. LXV. “The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his”—Timour’s—“abominable trophies—by columns or pyramids of human heads.” Ibid., Chap. LXV. “The people of Ispahan supplied seventy thousand human skulls for the structure of several lofty towers.” Ibid., Chap. XXXIV.
[450] Howorth, op. cit., Part III, p. 1.
[451] Cf. Benjamin of Tudela, op. cit., p. 98 et seq. According to the Babylonian Talmud which “became the main factor in the history and development of Judaism,” the Jews of Babylon passed for a purer race than those of Palestine.
[452] “Tous les pays,” it is said in the French translation of the Babylonian Talmud, “sont comme de la pâte relativement à la Palestine, mais ce pays l’est relativement à la Babylonie.” Cf. Géographie du Talmud, p. 320 (by A. Neubauer, Paris, 1868).
[453] The clever Ottoman author, Halil Halid, pertinently writes in reference to this subject: “In the language of diplomacy the French term ‘action civilisatrice’ may still have an impressive sound, but owing to the free use made of it by every politician and journalist, the sense of the term has been much contaminated with vulgarity. The dignified charm of the English political literature dealing with the affairs of the East has also begun to degenerate into something like a commonplace. The notion intended by the term is this, that when one of the mighty Powers of Christendom finds it incumbent upon itself to take under its patronizing ægis the internal affairs of a Muslim nation, which is incapable of holding its own, freedom, justice and the spread of civilization will either immediately or gradually follow the introduction of its good rule and signs of the public well-being will spring up here, there and everywhere.
“There is no necessity to cite here any examples of the astounding work which the civilizing Powers are doing in Eastern countries, as any one who studies the political settlement of these countries can find ample instances for himself. It should only be remarked that all the pains taken in this direction are at the expense of the sovereign rights and national independence of the people which submit to the civilizing tutelage.” The Crescent versus the Cross, pp. 184, 185 (London, 1907).
[454] “Neejdee horses are especially esteemed for great speed and endurance of fatigue; indeed in this latter quality none can come up to them. To pass twenty-four hours on the road without drink and without flagging is certainly something; but to keep up the same abstinence and labor conjoined under the burning Arabian sky for forty-eight hours at a stretch is, I believe, peculiar to animals of the breed.” Personal Narrative of a Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia, p. 310 (by W. G. Palgrave, London, 1869).
[455] The most prized horses in Arabia belong, it is said, to the Khamsa, namely, to one of the Kehilan breeds, which, according to tradition, are descended from Mohammed’s five favorite mares.
[456] Cf. E. Reclus, Asia, Vol. IV, p. 466 (New York, 1855).
[457] Op. cit., pp. 25, 26.
[458] See La Province de Bagdad, p. 108 (by Habib K. Chicha, Cairo, 1908).
[459] “Who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise, in Eden towards the East, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life?” De Principiis, Bk. IV, Chap. I.
[460] De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. VIII, Cap. I.
[461] Wo lag das Paradies, p. 44 (Leipsic, 1881).
[462] Lib. II, dist. 17, c. 5, “Unde volunt in orientali parte esse paradisum, longo interjacente spatio vel maris vel terræ a regionibus quas incolant hominea secretum, et in alto situm, usque ad lunarem circulum pertingentem, unde nec aquæ diluvii illuc pervenerunt.”
[463] Cf. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 255 et seq. (by S. Baring Gould, London, 1892).
[464] The Voyage and Travaile of Sir John Mandeville, Chap. XXX.
[465] See Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, pp. 141–147 (translated by R. H. Major and printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1870).
[466] La Nouvelle Revue, April 15, 1893.
[467] Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, p. 455 (New York, 1884).
[468] Popular Science Monthly, p. 678, September, 1883.
[469] Paradise Found, p. 433 (by W. F. Warren, Boston, 1885).
[470] The Human Species, p. 175–177 (New York, 1890).
[471] Histoire Ancienne de l’Orient, Tom. I, p. 96 et seq. (Paris, 1881).
[472] See chapter on The Site of the Garden of Eden, in Science and the Church (by J. A. Zahm, Chicago, 1896), from which I have extensively drawn for the present treatment of the subject.
[473] Cf. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Tom. IV, Col. 2121 (pub. by F. Vigoroux, Paris, 1908).
[474] See Reise der K. preussichen Gesellschaft nach Persia, Tom. I, p. 146 (by H. Brugsch, Leipsic, 1862).
[475] Cf. Dom Calmet, Commentaire littéral sur la Genèse, p. 61 (Paris, 1715).
[476] Duo sunt amnes qui in unum coeunt deinde abeunt in diversas partes. Ita flumen unum est in confluente; duo autem inferioribus alveis sunt capita, et duo versus mare postquam rursus longius dividi incipiunt. See his Commentarius in Genesin. The map of Babylonia, which accompanies the text renders the author’s view quite clear, although it does not specify the site of the Garden of Eden.
[477] See The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 95, 96 (by A. H. Sayce, London, 1894). Cf. The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, Chaps. I, II (by T. G. Pinches, London, 1908); The Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 305 (by George Smith, London, 1876).
[478] Ibid., p. 97.
[479] Op. cit., pp. 97, 98.
[480] Modern Science and Bible Lands, pp. 197, 198 (New York, 1889).
[481] Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Propheten Muhammed, Vol. II, p. 317, et seq. (Berlin, 1890).
[482] Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, p. 273 et seq. (Munich, 1901).
[483] “E chiaro che il narratore nel detto brano della Genesi ha avuto, dinazi agli occhi un luogo ben noto, e si e data la pena di discriverlo mimutamente, affinche non potessero surgere dubbi sul paese che egli voleva indicare.” Studi di Storia Orientale, Vol. I, p. 121 (Milan, 1911).
[484] Referring to the discovery of the word Eden—Edina—in cuneiform inscriptions the distinguished Assyriologist, T. G. Pinches, op. cit., p. 72, writes: “That we shall ultimately find other instances of Eden as a geographical name, occurring by itself and not in composition with another word, as in the expression Sipar Edina, and even a reference to gannat Edinni, ‘the Garden of Eden,’ is to be expected.”
[485] Purgatorio, XXXIII, 145.
[486] So called because of an Eastern tradition that it was the plantain and not the apple which was the forbidden fruit in Paradise. It is also known as Adam’s fig.
[487] Paradise Lost, Bk. IV.
[488] Nature herself confesses to have given the tenderest hearts to the human race, as she gave them tears; this is the best part of our faculties. Satire XV, vv. 131–133.
[489] According to Dr. Fries, an eminent German scholar, all games of ball are traceable back to an old light myth which was presumably Babylonian in origin: “Alles Ballspiel,” he writes, “ja bis herab zum Lawn-Tenis auf denselben Gedanken-den Lichtkampf-zurückgeht.” Studien zur Odyssee, Vol. I, p. 324 (Leipsic, 1910).
[490] The Excavations at Babylon, p. 15 (London, 1914).
[491] “But the devils believed not, they taught men sorcery and that which was sent down to the two angels at Babel, Harut and Marut.” The Koran, Sura II, 96.
[492] Chap. XIII, vv. 19–21. In lieu of the word “satyrs” the Vulgate has pilosi—the hairy ones—which is more in keeping with the original Hebrew text.
[493] Genesis xi: 4.
[494] Ερημία μεγάλη ἐστιν ἡ μεγάλη πόλις, Bk. XVI, I, 5.
[495] The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, Vol. X, Part I, p. 63 (collected by Richard Hakluyt, Edinburgh, 1889).
[496] “The inhabitants of these parts are as fond of attributing every vestige of antiquity to Nimrod as those of Egypt are to Pharaoh.” Rich, Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (London, 1818).
[497] Op. cit., Tom. I, p. 382 et seq.
[498] That Della Valle had no doubt that the mound of Babil was really the ruin of the Tower of Babel is quite evident from the positive statement which he makes to this effect: “che sia quella Babel antica è la torre di Nembrotto, non c’è dubbio, secondo me, perche oltre che il sito lo dimostra, da’ paesani ancora oggidi è conisciuta per tale, ed in Arabico è chiamata volgarmente Babel.” Op. cit., p. 384.
[499] Koldewey, op. cit., p. 11, et seq.
[500] Op. cit., p. 101.
[501] Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, Vol. II, p. 365 (by Robert Ker Porter, London, 1822).
[502] Op. cit., p. 317. The Jews of Babylonia call the tower of Birs-Nimrud “Nebuchadnezzar’s prison,” for what reason is not clear.
[503] The Old Testament in the Light of Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 138 (by T. G. Prinches, London, 1908).
[504] Observations Connected with the Astronomy and Ancient History, Sacred and Profane, on the Ruins of Babylon, p. 2 (by T. Maurice, London, 1816).
[505] Ibid., Vol. II, p. 336.
[506] Cf. Expedition de Mesopotamie, Vol. I, Lib. I (Paris, 1863).
[507] See also Die Tempel von Babylon and Borsippa, p. 59 (by Dr. Koldewey, Leipsic, 1911), that speaks of Oppert’s verkehrter Stadtplan von Babylon and who declares that Borsippa, as an independent city, bore the same relation to Babylon as does Charlottenburg to Berlin.
[508] The History of Herodotus, Bk. I, 178, 179.
[509] Library, Lib. II, Chap. VII.
[510] Rich, op. cit., p. 43.
[511] De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni, Lib. V, Cap. I.
[512] The Geographical System of Herodotus Examined and Explained, p. 347.
[513] Op. cit., p. 2.
[514] Im Lande des Einstigen Paradieses, p. 30 (Stuttgart, 1903). According to Oppert the great wall of Babylon embraces an area fifteen times as great as that of Paris in 1850 and as extended as that of the entire department of the Seine. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 234.
[515] Op. cit., p. 5.
[516] Op. cit., II, 8.
[517] Koldewey, op. cit., p. 54.
[518] Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, Bk. VII, Chap. XXVI.
[519] According to the measurements of Rich, the current of the Euphrates runs at a medium rate of about two knots an hour while that of the Tigris has a maximum velocity of full seven knots.
[520] Commentary on Isaias, Bk. V, Chap. XIII, Patrologiæ Latinæ, Vol. XXIV (Migne, Paris, 1865).
[521] Op. cit., Bk. I, Chap. 181.
[522] Geography, Bk. XVI, Chap. I, Sec. 5.
[523] Op. cit., p. 196.
[524] Ibid., p. 196.
[525] “Principio Assyrii”—the Chaldeans—“propter planitiem magnitudinemque regionum quos incolebant, cum cœlum ex omni parte patens et apertum intuerentur, trajectiones motusque stellarum observaverunt.” De Divinatione, Lib. I.
[526] Op. cit., Lib. V, Cap. I.
[527] Op. cit., p, 103.
[528] For a description of the ruins of Cuzco and the Great Chimu, as compared with those of Babylon, see Along the Andes and Down the Amazon, Chaps. XIII, XV (by J. A. Zahm, New York, 1911).
[529] The History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 2 et seq. (by E. A. Freeman, London, 1877).
[530] Babel and Bibel, p. 36, 37 (London, 1903).
[531] The Archæology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 111 (London, 1908).
[532] Entitled Der babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur (1892).
[533] Pliny, speaking of Belus, says: “Inventor hic fuit sideralis scientiæ, Naturalis Historiæ,” Lib. VI. Cap. 30.
[534] Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, p. 8 (New York, 1912).
[535] See especially Astronomisches aus Babylon, oder das Wissen der Chaldäer uber den gestirnten Himmel (by J. Epping, in collaboration with J. Straszmaier, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1889); Die Babylonische Mondrechnung (by F. Kugler, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1900).
[536] Cf. Dumont op. cit., p. 60.
[537] A comparison of the lunar periods as given by Babylonian and by modern astronomers will show how exact were the calculations of the observers of ancient Chaldea.
Periods as calculated by Babylonian astronomers:
| Mean sidereal month | 27 days, | 7 hours, | 43’ 14″ |
| Mean synodic month | 29 days, | 12 hours, | 44’ 31.3″ |
| Mean draconitic month | 27 days, | 5 hours, | 5’ 35.8″ |
| Mean anomalistic month | 27 days, | 13 hours, | 18’ 34.9″ |
Periods as calculated by modern astronomers:
| Mean sidereal month | 27 days, | 7 hours, | 43’ 11.5″ |
| Mean synodic month | 29 days, | 12 hours, | 44’ 2.9″ |
| Mean draconitic month | 27 days, | 5 hours, | 5’ 36″ |
| Mean anomalistic month | 27 days, | 13 hours, | 18’ 39.3″ |
From the foregoing figures it is seen that the maximum difference of time, as given by ancient and modern observers, is less than a half minute; the minimum one-fifth of a second! See Kugler’s Die Babylonische Mondrechnung, pp. 24, 40, 46.
[538] Kugler op. cit., p. 206.
[539] Hammurabi’s code which is carefully engraved on a large stele of black diorite was found by M. de Morgan and the distinguished Dominican archæologist, Father Scheil, among the ruins of Susa—the Susan of the Bible—whither it had been carried from Babylon as loot by the Elamites. When found in December, 1901, and January, 1902, it was in fragments but the parts were easily rejoined. In October, 1902, there appeared an admirable translation of it by Father Scheil which everywhere excited the greatest interest among scholars both of the Old and the New World. In many respects, it is the most interesting and valuable inscribed monument of old Babylonia which has yet been brought to light.
[540] Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters, pp. vii, viii (by C. H. W. Johns, New York, 1904).
[541] Op. cit., p. 186.
[542] Apocalypse, xvii: 5; xviii: 21.
[543] Daniel iv: 27, 28.
[544] Chap. li: 58.
[545] Chap. li: 37.
[546] Chap. li: 62.
[547] Psalm cxviii: 89.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.