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

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

The code of laws which Jenghiz Khan dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of foreign hostility. These fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each other. Their primitive religion consisted in belief in the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills by His presence the heavens and the earth which He has created by His power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their various tribes yet there were among them converts to the religions of Moses, Mohammed and of Christ.

Soon all the kindred tribes from the great wall of China to the Volga owned his sway. He was the Khan of many millions of shepherds and warriors. The court of Pekin was astonished at receiving an embassy from a former vassal demanding the same tribute and obedience which he himself had but lately paid. On receiving a haughty answer innumerable squadrons soon pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall and ninety cities were laid low. On his second invasion he laid siege to Pekin. The famine was terrible. Men were chosen by lot to be slain for food. The Moguls mined under the capital and the conflagration of the city lasted for thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Jenghiz. On the west he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan.

A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants having been put to death by the orders of Mohammed, after he had fasted and prayed for three nights on a mountain, Jenghiz appealed to the judgment of God and his own sword. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the banners of Jenghiz and his four sons. On the vast plains stretching north of the river Jaxartes (now Jihon) they encountered four hundred thousand soldiers of the Sultan. In the first battle it is said that one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. The whole country then lay open to his fierce warriors and from the Caspian to the Indus, a tract of many hundreds of miles, adorned with the habitations and labors of the most highly civilized races of Asia, was desolated so completely that five centuries have not repaired the ravages of four years. In all this Jenghiz Khan indulged and encouraged the fury of his army. He now yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary but wealthy troops who sighed for the rest of their native lands.

The return of Jenghiz was signalized by the overthrow of the few remaining independent kingdoms in Tartary: and he died in the fulness of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese Empire. In the sixty-eight years of his first four successors the Mogul had subdued almost all Asia and a large portion of Europe.

To the East China was subdued; to the South the conquest of Hindustan was reserved for the house of Timour or Tamerlane. While the hosts that went forth to conquer Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc., (1235–1245) inscribed on the military roll numbered fifteen hundred thousand men. Holagon the grandson of Jenghiz Khan had but to thrust at the phantom of power which the Caliphs of Bagdad enjoyed when it vanished like the mist. Bagdad after a siege of two brief months, was stormed and sacked and the savage Tartar pronounced the death of the Caliph Mostasem the last of the temporal successors of Mohammed whose noble kinsmen of the race of Abbas had reigned in Asia above five hundred years.

Once more the torrents of woe flow in upon Armenia lying in the track of the Tartar armies westward. Ani is again besieged and soon a famine broke out within the walls and many of the citizens rushed out and gave themselves up to the mercy of their enemies. They were kindly received and a sufficient supply of food was given to them. Induced by this kindness more than half of the inhabitants were soon found in the camp of the Tartars. All at once the poor wretches were divided into small parties under the pretext of receiving better protection when the soldiers fell upon them and massacred every individual. Then the city was easily taken, destroyed by fire and the entire population put to the sword.

Many cities suffered the desolations and horrors of Ani till the Khan ordered his chiefs on to other conquests. Then followed the infliction of a heavy capitation tax on all the remaining provinces—sixty pieces of money being demanded of every Armenian from the age of ten upwards. Those who were unable to pay this sum suffered intolerable tortures. Those who were possessed of lands lost them, their wives and children being seized and sold into slavery. Nothing ever equalled the horrors that now overspread this unhappy country, most of the inhabitants having no money to pay the tax and having no place to which to flee from their oppressors. Finally an embassy to Mangon Khan, a grandson of Jenghiz secured some little alleviation of their misery.

Meantime there was growing up in Cilicia a subordinate kingdom of Armenia with Tarsus for its capital—and receiving favor from the Sultan of Egypt and the Khan of the Tartars. Leo III. resumed the kingly reins of his kingdom comprising all of Modern Anatolia. He repaired his cities; he erected public schools. He caused all the literary productions of the Armenians from the earliest ages to be recopied and distributed among the convents of the kingdom. He reigned for twenty years ardently devoted to the service of God and died in the year 1289.

His son, Hethum, was a prince who despised all worldly pomp and grandeur, seldom arrayed himself in royal apparel. He was greatly attached to the priests of his capital engaging daily with them in prayers and other religious exercises. He was particularly fond of the literary productions of the Fathers of the Church. His Bible was his daily companion. He caused a copy of it to be prepared expressly for himself, and at the end of it wrote some lines expressive of the high satisfaction and comfort he had derived from its frequent perusal.

These paragraphs may show what has ever been the character of these people who are still being harried to death in the same provinces where they have lived and suffered for centuries.