Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

Upon the death of Togrul, (A. D. 1062) he was succeeded by his nephew, Alp Arslan who, in the following year came to wreak vengeance on unhappy Armenia. Everywhere he committed the most horrid devastation. Marching to the province of Ararat he laid siege to Ani the Magnificent, with its thousand and one churches.

The city was lost by the cowardice of the Governor. A breach had been made in an unprotected part of the wall, but being narrow the citizens so valiantly defended it that they compelled the Sultan to retire; but the Governor, fancying that the Persians had succeeded in forcing an entrance, retired into the citadel. Thinking themselves deserted, a panic seized the Armenians and about fifty thousand of them fled into the country from the gates on the opposite side of the city.

The retreat of the Persians was countermanded, the city was taken, orders being given to put every man to the sword. Human blood flowed in torrents. So great was the carnage that the streets were literally choked up with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Akhurian flowed in crimson tides. After his first fury was somewhat abated, Alp Arslan gave orders to seize the most wealthy citizens still alive and torture them to make them reveal places where their treasures were hidden. Then he pillaged the thousand and one churches, murdered all the priests found therein,—some were drowned, some he flayed alive, others died under tortures as excruciating as most fiendish imagination could conceive or invent. Finally, gathering his captives—men, women and children and his plunder, Alp Arslan returned to Persia.

We must leave for awhile the bleeding Armenians whose kingdom had been annihilated, to the tender mercies of the wicked, to follow the path of rapine and horror as the torrents of unspeakable Turks flowed westward.

They captured cities, put the inhabitants of Asia Minor to the sword and devastated the interior provinces to convert them into pasture lands for their nomad followers.

Romanus, husband of the Greek Empress Eudocia took the field against them, and driving them back to the Euphrates, laid siege to the fortress of Manzikert or Malasgerd in Armenia midway between modern Erzeroum and Van. It was on the plain of Manzikert in 1071 after the capture of the fortress, that the East gained one of its greatest triumphs over the West. The Seljuk Sultan and the Roman Emperor met face to face. Romanus rejected in haughty pride the overtures of the Sultan that might have secured his retreat, perhaps peace—and prepared for battle. The Sultan with his own hands tied up the flowing tail of his horse, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and scimitar, clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk, and declared that if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of his burial. The Sultan himself had cast away his missile weapons, but his hopes of victory were in the arrows of his cavalry whose squadrons were loosely placed in the form of a crescent. Romanus led his army in a single and solid phalanx and pressed with vigor the artful and yielding resistance of the barbarians. Thus the greater part of a hot summer’s day was spent in fruitless combat until fatigue compelled him to sound a return to camp. This was the fatal moment. The Turkish squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on the retreating army throwing them into confusion. The horns of the crescent closed in upon the rear of the Greeks.

The destruction of the army was complete, the booty immense. Nobly did the Emperor with desperate courage maintain the fight till the close of the day. The imperial station was left naked on all sides to the victorious Turks. His body guard fell about him—his horse was slain and he himself was wounded, yet he stood as a lion at bay. He was captured, despoiled of his jewelled robes, bound and guarded all night on the field of the dead.

In the morning the successor of Constantine in plebian habit was led into the presence of the Sultan and commanded to kiss the ground at the feet of the Lord of Asia. Reluctantly he obeyed, and Alp Arslan, starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the neck of the Roman Emperor. No captive was ever more nobly treated than Romanus Diogenes; but no captivity ever wrought more lasting woe. Three years later the Seljuk was the recognized Lord of Asia Minor, and as such ventured to call himself the Lord of Rome. Following the defeat of the Romans the Turks marched into Syria and reduced Damascus by famine and the sword. Other cities in Palestine yielded until the victorious army passing southward stood on the banks of the Nile. The city of Cairo in desperate battle drove back the armies of the Sultan from the confines of Egypt; but in their retreat Jerusalem was conquered and the house of Seljuk held the city for some twenty years.

When Jerusalem fell before the arms of the Crusaders in 1099, the event was applauded as a deliverance in Europe, and was deplored as a calamity in Asia. The Syrian fugitives diffused everywhere their sorrow and consternation: Bagdad mourned in the dust; the Cadi of Damascus tore his beard in the Caliph’s presence; the Commanders of the faithful could only weep and vow vengeance on the head of the infidels who had defiled the Holy City.

It is not our purpose to pursue the story of the crusades through all the years that made Jerusalem the prize of battle equally to Christian and Mohammedan. The life and exploits of Saladin and Richard, the lion-hearted are more thrilling than any romance. In a fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem of the Christians; the Emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship; the Greek Emperor solicited his alliance. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges and mosques; Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his works were consecrated to public use: nor did the Sultan indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. The son of Job, a simple Kurd, Saladin was after the follies of a hot youth, a rigid Mussulman, his garment of coarse woolen, and water his only drink.