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

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

The decline of the spirit of conquest in the Mogul princes of Persia gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman Empire which was soon to strike fear into the heart of the Emperor of Constantinople, and finally establish itself in Europe where it remains to this day a blot on Western civilization and a curse to all the people over which it rules.

In 1360 we find the throne of the Ottoman Turks established at Adrianople almost within sight of Constantinople which after resisting for a thousand years the assaults of barbarians of the East and the West, now saw herself hemmed in, both in Europe and Asia, by the same hostile power and her Emperor following at his summons the court and camp of an Ottoman Prince.

Bajazet surnamed Ilderim, or “The Lightning” who came to the throne in 1389, and reigned fourteen years, fills a brilliant page in Ottoman history. He forced Constantinople to pay tribute and enjoyed the glory of being the first to found a royal Mosque in the glorious metropolis of the Eastern Church. He would speedily have forced its absolute surrender but that he was doomed to meet and be overthrown by a savage still more savage than himself—the name that caused all Europe and Asia to tremble with fear—the great, the terrible, the blood-thirsty Timour or Tamerlane. The family of Tamerlane was another branch of the imperial stem of Jenghiz Khan. He was born 1335 A. D., in a village that lies forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in a tribe of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs. His birth was cast in a time of anarchy of bitter domestic feuds; when the Khans of Kashgar with an army of Calmucks harassed the Trans-oxian Kingdom. At the age of twenty-five he stood forth as the deliverer of his people: and in ten years he was invested with imperial command of the Zagatai. The rule over a fertile and populous land five hundred miles in extent either way, might have satisfied an ordinary man: but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world and before his death the crown of Zagatai was but one of twenty-seven which he had placed upon his head. He first swept Persia to the sea. The city of Ormuz bought its safety for an annual tribute of six hundred thousand pieces of gold. Bagdad was laid in ruins: and from the gulf to the mountains of Ararat the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates was reduced to his obedience.

The Khan of the Mogul Empire of the North swept down through the gates of Derbend entering Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse, burned the palaces of Timour and compelled him amidst the snows of winter to contend for Samarcand and his life.

After a mild expostulation, and a glorious victory he resolved on revenge. He invaded Tartary with armies so vast that thirteen miles stretched between his left and right wing. In a march of five months they rarely beheld the footsteps of man. At length the armies met in most fearful conflict. In the heat of conflict the treachery of the bearer of the imperial standard of Kipzak turned the tide of victory to the Zagatai, and Timour gave up the mingled hosts to the “wind of desolation.” The pursuit of a flying enemy led him into the provinces of Russia. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, but he turned his armies southward, and on the banks of the Don received a deputation of the merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, and Spain, who had built up the great commerce and the city of Azoph. They offered him gifts, admired his magnificence, trusted his word. But the peaceful visit of an Emir who explored the state of the magazines and harbors was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars, who reduced the city to ashes, pillaged the Moslems, and put every Christian to the sword or sold them into slavery. Having laid waste all the cities in Southern Russia, he returned to his capital at Samarcand.

Samarcand, the center of his magnificence, the depot of all riches, arose and extended itself as by magic at each return of the world’s conqueror. It is said that Babylon, Bagdad, Persepolis, Palmyra, Baalbec and Damascus, were all cast into the shade by the mosques, palaces, gardens, and aqueducts which arose under the hands of most skillful artisans brought from every captured city to decorate the capital of a barbarian.

Here amid the delights of his gardens, the love of his women, the conversation of his men of letters, the eulogies of poets, did Tamerlane refresh himself after the exploits of a five years’ campaign. But his loves, and delights of ease, did not make him forget that dream of all conquerors—India, and at this invasion he overran it from the Indus to Delhi, and from the Ocean to Thibet.

As he proceeded on his march, his army became encumbered with the captives, and he ordered one hundred thousand of them slain in a single night. Remorse, pity, and indignation, seized even a Tartar army, but Tamerlane answered it only by the conquest and massacre of Delhi, that great and magnificent city which had flourished for three hundred years, under Mohammedan kings; the ruins of which are still seen for miles on every side of the modern city. The blood of the slain, crimsoned the waters of the Sacred Ganges for many, many miles on its course to the sea. The recital of his cruelties could not be believed, were they not recorded in the history of all the nations he conquered. The treasures were of incalculable value, and every soldier received one hundred slaves for his share and every Tartar camp follower, twenty.

It was while camping on the bank of the Ganges that Tamerlane received from his couriers the tidings of the disturbances on the confines of Anatolia and Georgia, of the revolt of the Christians and the ambitious designs of Bajazet. He returned to Samarcand having accomplished in a twelve month the ten years’ campaign of Alexander the Great.

After enjoying a few months tranquillity he proclaimed a seven years’ campaign against the countries of Western Asia. To the soldiers who had served in the Indian wars he granted their choice of home or camp, but the troops of all the kingdoms and provinces of Persia were commanded to assemble at Ispahan and await the imperial standard.