But nothing, probably, contributed more towards the rapid conquest of the Osmanlis than their spirit of tolerance in matters of religion. This will, I know, seem strange to those who, from their youth, have listened to the story of the atrocities of that mythical personage, “the Moslem warrior with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other.”
But [writes one who has made a special study of the subject], whether their tolerance was actuated by policy, by genuine kindly feeling, or by indifference, the fact cannot be gainsaid that the Osmanlis were the first nation in modern history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the cornerstone in the building up of their nation. During the centuries that bear the stain of unremitting persecution of the Jew [in western Europe] the Christian and the Moslem lived together in harmony under the Osmanlis.[106]
To one who is familiar with the teachings of the Koran and the policy of Islam since the days of Mohammed there is nothing surprising in this tolerance and religious freedom which Osmanlis and Moslems have always accorded their Christian subjects. “Let there be no compulsion in religion,”[107] declares the Prophet, and again it is written, “Wilt thou compel men to become believers? No soul can believe but by the permission of God.”[108]
Nor were these and numerous other declarations of the Koran of similar import ever ignored by the leaders of Islam in their dealings with their non-Moslem subjects. There have been, it is true, frequent outbursts of fanaticism, even of persecution among Mohammedans, which resulted in much suffering on the part of the Christian population and in putting in force against them very intolerant measures. But the persecutions and harsh ordinances were not so much the result of religious antagonism as of political conditions at the time. Not a few of them are traceable to a distrust of the loyalty of Christians towards their Moslem rulers or to the intrigues of Christian nations like Russia whose secret emissaries have been responsible for so much of the agitation in Asia Minor for generations past. Others again may be traced to the bad faith of certain European powers in their dealings with Moslem rulers, or to the “harsh and insolent behavior of Christian officials” in the service of Mohammedan sovereigns.[109]
Neglected as the Eastern Christians have been by their Christian brethren in the West, unarmed for the most part and utterly defenceless, it would have been easy for any of the powerful rulers of Islam to have utterly rooted out their Christian subjects or banished them from their dominions as the Spaniards did the Moors, or the English the Jews, for nearly four centuries. It would have been perfectly possible for Selim I (in 1514) or Ibrahim (in 1646) to have put into execution the barbarous notion they conceived of exterminating their Christian subjects, just as the former had massacred forty thousand Shiahs with the aim of establishing uniformity of religious belief among his Mohammedan subjects. The muftis who turned the minds of their masters from such a cruel purpose did so as the exponents of Muslim law and Muslim tolerance.[110]
“The very survival,” therefore, “of the Christian Churches to the present day, is,” as the same author pertinently observes, “a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of the Mohammedan governments towards them.”[111]
Ecclesiastical writers of the epoch of the Mohammedan conquest give still another explanation of the rapid progress of Moslem armies, which was quite in accord with the spirit of the time. God wished, they declared, to chastize the Christians for their infidelity and to compel them to do penance for their manifold heresies. In their view it was not the astounding conquests of the Mussulmans that led to the apostasy of such vast numbers of Christians. It was rather the numerous and widespread defections of heretical churches which rendered the conquest of Islam so easy that it surprised the victors as much as the vanquished. Moslem arms, then, according to these writers were but an instrument of divine vengeance, or, as one of them expressed it, peccatis exigentibus victi sunt Christiani.[112]
As one traverses the small territory which was the cradle of the Osmanlis and reflects that the people to whom the insignificant emir of Sugut gave his name were, from their first appearance in history, almost within sight of the City of Constantine, one cannot help admiring their marvelous transformation from retainers of a village chieftain to heirs of the empire of the Cæsars, to masters of vast territories in Asia, Africa, and Europe.[113] From the humblest beginnings they gradually became a people who can boast of the longest continued dynasty in Europe; and who can point in their early history to a rare series of brilliant rulers and a line of sovereigns who have occupied a throne which has been immovable from the days of Mohammed the Conqueror, nearly five centuries ago, and which, notwithstanding menaces from many quarters, seems destined to remain immovable for many long generations to come.
CHAPTER VI
HOME LIFE OF THE OSMANLIS IN ANATOLIA
Truths can never be confirmed enough,