Some new warriors were preparing themselves to enter into the arena. Shah Ismail established and founded the Suffavean dynasty of Persia (1499). The Suffaveans claimed that Ali, the fourth Caliph, would have been the successor of Mohammed and the head of Islamism had not Abubeker, Omar, and Osman, usurped his right. They, moreover, claimed lineage from Ali, and thus to be the lawful successor of Mohammed. The Osmali sultans repudiated this right and descent. Though both the Persians and Turks venerate the false prophet, yet they divide the Mohammedans into two sects. The Turks are sunees, or sonees, orthodox, and they call the Persians Sheahs or heterodox. This difference and the national jealousies between the Turks and Persians furnished these two Islam nations with an occasion for constant war and bloodshed which lasted over two centuries. But alas! the noble land of Ararat had to furnish them the battle-field, and the unfortunate “House of Torgarmah” to suffer the doleful consequence of their bloody conflicts.
Sultan Selim I, who merited the title of “the cruel,” is believed to have caused the death of his father, Bajazet II. He had forced him to abdicate, and while on his way to Adrianople as an exile, he was murdered. Selim was fiercely intolerant in religion. Naturally, all the fanatics loved him. Turning his army of 140,000 eastward he subdued Armenia and Mesopotamia and conducted a successful war in Persia against Shah Ismail. The latter was defeated and barely escaped from capture (1514). Selim captured Tabriz and there he found a dethroned prince of Temur’s race and carried him to Constantinople.
It was a fortunate thing for the Christians, that though this eastern campaign was a religious war it was conducted against the Sheahs or the heterodox Mohammedans; and a formal expression of opinion by the Ulema was, that there was “more merit in killing one Sheah than in shedding the blood of seventy Christians.” Selim’s savage intolerance was so fierce that he thought to annihilate every member of the sect in his dominions.[66]
The conflict between the successors of Selim I and Shah Ismail in Armenia continued with varying fortunes. But one of the notable misfortunes that befel the people was in the reign of Shah Abbas, a magnificent barbarian. He was one of the Shahs of the Suffavian dynasty, and was preparing for a conflict with the Turks in 1605. Pretending that he was afraid he might be compelled to cede the province which he had conquered to the enemy, he gave orders to his army to vacate immediately as many cities and towns as possible, burn them to ashes, and drive the inhabitants into Persia. Within a short time many a city and town lay in ashes, and the country was reduced to a fearful condition of desolation. Thousands sought refuge in mountains and caves. Some found a refuge but others were found by the enemy, and twenty-five thousand families—some before and some after this event—were led into captivity.
This great host of captives was composed of the venerable patriarchs, bishops, priests, old men and women; children of all ages; mothers with their infants in their arms, baptizing them with their tears; gallant young men and beautiful maidens. These all were indiscriminately driven by the Persian soldiers to the banks of the Araxes, where rafts and galleys were in readiness to hasten their crossing the swift waters of the river. With the pretense that the enemy was pressing hard, they compelled many to hasten the crossing by swimming the river, many of them were carried in the current.
Opposite Ispahan these captives were settled and built New Jula (some write Julfa). The Jula proper in Armenia was destroyed by Shah Abbas. The Persians were conquerors in this war: “Upon the sword being drawn the Persians rapidly recovered the provinces wrested from them by Selim and Solimon; and a large Turkish army was signally defeated August the 24th, 1605. Five pashas were slain; the same number were taken prisoners; and the victor continued to receive the heads of his enemies till midnight, when more than twenty thousand had been counted. Shah Abbas performed pilgrimages on foot to the shrines of Moslem saints, and swept their tombs. Yet while doing this he allowed a Roman Catholic convent to be established at Ispahan, stood godfather to the child of Sir Robert Shirley, and even formally received baptism—events to which the Jesuits ascribed his execrable triumphs.”[67]
Sultan Amurath (Murath) IV marched, with a large army, against the Persians, and recovered the provinces of Armenia from the Persians. He then marched and laid siege to Baghdad which the Persians had taken. Ten thousand of the Persian garrison lost their lives during the siege; and twenty thousand more, being the whole number in the town, were massacred during and immediately after the capture. A few days afterwards an equal number of the inhabitants, who were Sheahs, were slaughtered by the triumphant Sonnees (1638).
After this the Armenians in Armenia enjoyed a comparative rest of over eighty years. They had some time to repair their churches and schools, monasteries and homes. They did all these and they also recuperated and raised a new and sturdy posterity to meet the hardships of the eighteenth century.
During the early part of the eighteenth century some disturbances in Persia and Armenia made the Armenians in both of these countries greatly to suffer. Then again the Turks and the Persians were not always at peace with one another. The Russians, moreover, were slowly moving southward and preparing to enter into the contest. They contended with the Persians over the northwestern portion of Armenia and other provinces belonging to the latter from 1772-1828. In their contest the Armenians rendered a signal service to the Russians and decided the victory for them.
“From 1813 to 1829 the Armenians appear to think their emancipation at hand. Russia stood in need of them to make a diversion against the Ottoman forces and held out to them the hope of becoming an independent principality, under the protection of the Czar. Her promises were believed, and, in their devotion to their destined liberator, they withstood for more than six weeks an army of eighty thousand Persians who were marching against Russia, and prevented them from crossing their frontier; but these services reaped a poor reward, for not only were the Russians faithless to their promises, but they seized the opportunity of some trifling disturbance in the country to lay violent hands on the venerable Archbishop Narses, who was dragged first to St. Petersburg and afterward banished to Bessarabia, whilst several of the Armenian chiefs were scattered in exile through foreign countries, or carried off to Russia, to be heard of no more.”[68]