For a few years Temur, the lame, was the lord of Asia and the master of the original seat of the Ottoman. He returned with an immense number of captives and the plunder to the ancient city of the caliphs; there in Samarcand, he was preparing for another campaign into China, when he was removed to the presence of the eternal Judge, the King whose laws he had violated and whose creatures he had destroyed. He died in 1405, in his capital Samarcand, and his vast empire quickly crumbled into small fragments.
The magnificent city of Constantinople, after being the metropolis of a Christian nation over eleven centuries, fell into the hands of the barbarian Turks (1453). In vain, and too late, did the Greeks realize their critical condition, and struggle against the angel of death. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks filled the European nations with consternation. The following is a portion of the letter of Pius II, the Pope who tried to raise a crusade against the Turks:
“The strait of Cadiz has been passed, and the poison of Mohammed penetrates even into Spain.... In other directions, where Europe extends eastward, the Christian religion has been swept away from all the shores. The barbarian Turks, a people hated by God and man, issuing from the east of Scythia, have occupied Cappadocia, Pontus, Bithynia, Troas, Pisidia, Cilicia and all Asia Minor. Not yet content, counting on the weakness and dissensions of the Greeks, they have passed the Hellespont and got possession of nearly all the Grecian cities of Attica ... Achaia, Macedonia, and Trace.
“Still, the royal city of Constantinople did remain the pillar and head of all the East, the seat of patriarch and emperor, the sole dwelling place of Grecian wisdom.... This too, in our own day while the Latins, divided among themselves, forsook the Greeks, has that cruel nation of Turks invaded and spoiled, triumphing over the city that once gave laws to all the East.
“Nor is their savage appetite yet satiated. The lord of the unrighteous people, who is rather to be called a dark brute than a king, a venomous dragon than emperor, he, athirst for human blood, brings down huge forces upon Hungary. Here he harasses the Epirates and here the Albanians; and swelling in his own pride, boasts that he will abolish the lowly gospel and all the law of Christ, and threatens Christians everywhere with chains, stripes, death, and horrid torments....”
Even the great reformer, the immortal Luther, “composed a once popular prayer, suited to the times, to be sung as a hymn in the churches; and Robert Wisdome, afterwards Archdeacon of Ely, appended a translation of it to the metrical version of the Psalms, by Steinhold and Hopkins. It commenced with the lines:
‘Preserve us, Lord, by thy dear word,
From pope and Turk, defend us Lord.’”[65]
After the death of Temur, all the rulers whom he had subdued, began to rise and recover their respective reigns. Kara Yusuf returned to Sasoun and resumed his rule over southern Armenia. Temur’s son Sharukh was reigning in Persia and over the eastern portion of Armenia. Iskander (Alexander) the son and successor of Yusuf and Sharukh had a long contest over the southern and eastern part of Armenia (1421-1437). Sharukh finally subdued Iskander—who was also called Shahi Armen, Shah of Armenians—and set his brother Jihan Shal as a ruler, whose seat was in Tabriz, in the province of Azerbaijan, his reign extended over eastern and southern Armenia. Meanwhile in Mesopotamia, a Tatar prince, a Turcoman, by the name of Jehankir, was rapidly growing in power. His son, Uzun (long) Hasan, succeeded the father, and after the death of Jinan Shah he seized the throne of Persia and also reigned over the entire Armenia (1468).
In my endeavor to be brief, I have crowded the history of almost a century into less than a page, but these continuous wars, between the rival princes and rulers, have decimated and destroyed a large portion of the population of Armenia, the Armenians. And when the combatants were exhausted and ceased for a time, then the inevitable sequel of wars, famine, had to take its fearful toll of human life.
It is a miracle that any Armenians at all have been left to the present time. But it seems to me, that God purposely preserved some of them even to the beginning of the twentieth century to prove two things, namely, that the boasted Christian civilization of Europe is a Christless civilization, that Mohammedanism, after thirteen centuries of opportunity and trial has proved itself not a whit better than the barbarism of the past, and even worse in many respects.