Daybreak in Turkey / Second Edition

by James L. Barton

In 1833 the political atmosphere had so cleared that the press was removed from Malta, the Arabic equipment going to Beirut in Syria, while the Greek, Turkish, and Armenian outfit was set up in Smyrna. During the ten years at Malta, over twenty-one million pages were printed in four different languages, namely modern Greek, Italian, Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic. The largest amount by far was in Greek. No printing in Armenian was done until the press was set up in Smyrna and, previous to 1837, less than 175,000 pages had been printed in that language.

In 1829 it was decided to do more in the way of providing much needed books for elementary schools. One of these books was so popular that 27,000 copies were sold in Greece alone. In 1831 the Armeno-Turkish New Testament, translated by Dr. Goodell, was printed. That same year over five million pages of modern Greek were put out from the press. Nearly all of this was circulated about as rapidly as it could be run off.

The publication work in the Turkish missions outside Syria was carried on at Smyrna until 1853, or for about twenty years. The last and one of the most important works published there was the modern Armenian Bible translated by Dr. Elias Riggs. This one book has accomplished more to fix, unify, and simplify the modern spoken Armenian language than all other influences combined. What the King James version has done for the English speaking peoples, and Luther’s Bible for the Germans, this scholarly and accurate translation has done for the Armenians all over the world.

Besides the Bible and strictly Biblical works, a large number of school-books of almost every grade as well as translations of choice parts of English literature were printed and sold. The eagerness of the Greeks and Armenians, and especially the latter, for a literature suited to their aroused intellectual condition made it possible to sell at cost much that was published. After the organization of the Evangelical Protestant Church, hymn-books in various languages were prepared and printed. It would be impossible in the limits of this discussion to give even a classified list of the publications issued from the mission presses of Turkey since printing began. The output upon the average from 1833, even to the present time, has been at the rate of from twelve to fifty million pages each year in not less than ten languages, including Bulgarian and Koordish. In some years this has been exceeded.

At Beirut in 1906 there were printed on the American press 152,500 volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a total of 47,278,000 pages. To this was added nearly 9,000,000 pages of other Christian and educational books, making a total of 56,000,000 pages of literature from this one press alone in a single year.

For the Bulgarians and the Armenians the missionaries practically created their new literature in the spoken tongue. Of the first one hundred books printed in the modern Bulgarian, some seventy were the product of the missionary press. The first grammar of the modern Armenian language was printed by the missionaries. The Koords had no literature of any kind, while their language is even yet unclassified. The New Testament was translated into that tongue, written with the Armenian characters, and in that language it was printed. Parts of the Bible have also been printed in the Albanian tongue.

The Bible has been translated into Arabo-Turkish, the language read by all the educated Moslems in Turkey north of Syria and is printed and widely circulated. This, with the Arabic and Syriac versions printed at Beirut, puts the Bible into the language of all the Moslems of Turkey, except the Koords and Albanians. As yet the former have only a part of the Bible, and the latter a very poor and fragmentary version, in their own language.

However great the influence of the press has been in the preparation of books and tracts, it has probably reached and permanently moved more people still by its periodical publications. Papers have been printed for more than a generation in Armenian, Greek, Armeno-Turkish, Greco-Turkish, Bulgarian, and Arabic which have had wide circulation among all classes, but especially among the evangelicals. These papers while religious, have also been newspapers, carrying into the remote hamlets of the interior information of the great outside world of which the masses were profoundly ignorant when mission work began. The influence of these papers can best be measured by the fact that when the cholera was approaching any section of the country, the missionaries were accustomed to publish detailed instructions regarding the best methods to prevent contracting the dread disease and what to do as soon as the symptoms appeared. Those who read the papers took great care to follow directions, and so the Protestants who usually knew how to read seldom suffered from the scourge.

When the cholera was raging with unusual virulence in Aintab, taking for the most part the Moslems and ignorant Gregorians and leaving the Protestants almost unscathed, a learned Moslem asked a missionary if God spread a tent over the Protestants that the cholera should pass them by. Through the periodicals in the various languages, the missionaries and leading Armenians have been able constantly to speak directly to the most intelligent classes of people in the entire empire.

When the missionaries began work in Turkey in 1820 there was no newspaper worthy the name in the country in any language and the number of books was but few. Printing was not left, however, entirely in the hands of the missionaries, for, after a time, to meet the demands of the different religious communities other presses were started. These were small in output and power and did not amount to much until within the last twenty-five years. During this time the Armenians have prepared and published some excellent text-books, many of which have been and still are in constant use in Protestant schools. They also have started a few periodicals that for the most part have little permanent value. The Moslems have done but little in the way of printing books or periodicals of any kind. They do not allow the Koran to be translated into the vernacular of the people, and it is their policy to exclude from their subjects, as far as possible, all knowledge of the outside world. The Moslem press has produced little of real value to the people.