From the foregoing history it will easily be understood that the Armenians have been subjected to all kinds of cruelties. Owing to calamitous wars, merciless persecutions, voluntary and involuntary exiles, and emigrations into different countries, they have been justly compared to the Jews. Like them scattered all over the globe the Armenians are met with in every commercial city throughout Europe and Asia. However, until the beginning of 1915 the great majority of them still dwelled in the land of Ararat in the Turkish empire. There were over two hundred thousand Armenians in the city of Constantinople, and as many in other European countries. The number of the Armenians in Turkish Armenia and in Asia Minor was not considered to be below two millions and a half.[69]
The Armenians lived (before this world war) in their respective villages, towns and cities. If a town, or village is not exclusively occupied by the Armenians, then they had their own district clustered by themselves with sufficient churches and schools for their religious and educational needs. The dwellings in the villages and towns are of primitive style in the interior being built either of unhewn stone entirely, or half of stone and half of sun-dried bricks. The roofs are flat. Large logs or beams are laid crosswise, supported by strong pillars. These are covered with planks and earth to a thickness of two or three feet, and then hardened to prevent leaking. But in spite of all sometimes “through idleness of lands, the house droppeth through.”[70]
Some of these villages are built on the hillsides, and the roofs of the lower row of houses are on the level with the streets above, or with the yards of the houses above. Some travelers, careless in their observations or basing their statements on the information of others, betray incorrectness in their assertions in regard to them when they say that “the inhabitants are literally dwelling under ground.”
The villagers and some dwellers in towns were and are (what is left of them in Asia Minor) exclusively engaged in agricultural pursuits and the raising and tending of cattle and sheep, their land and fold, being within a distance of several miles from the villages and towns. The farmers go to their fields of labor in the morning early and return in the evening to their homes. They could not do like the farmers in this country, live on or near their farms on account of insecurity of life and property. The Turkish government had determined for years to expose the Armenians to all manner of oppressions, thefts, plunders and murders perpetrated by the Circassians, Kurds and Turks, especially the former two, who have been human parasites on the Christian inhabitants of Turkey.
In Armenia many families formerly could be found (still some may be found) living in a patriarchal style like the families of Abraham, Job and Jacob, who could raise a force and chase the invaders from their borders; the younger sons and grandsons with the hired servants tending the flocks and following the herds like Jesse’s younger son, and not a few of them had the fate that Job’s servants had.
Many Armenian youths have been like Jesse’s youngest son, leading the sheep on the lonely hills of Armenia. Yet none finds the life of an Oriental shepherd an easy and pleasant one, not only because it is exposed to dangerous conflicts with robbers, thieves, wild beasts and ravenous wolves, but also the irksome anxiety to find green pastures and still waters to lead the flocks thereto. Added to this is the feeling of loneliness day and night and compulsive association with the mute creature whom they call by their names. Some shepherds again, like David, have a source of comfort, not the harp, but their flutes, and the sheep seem to delight to listen to those pensive melodies, when the shepherds play, while the shepherd-dogs with their accredited faithfulness, always follow the flocks.
The farming implements are also in primitive simplicity, like the mode of cultivation. The western plows, planters, sowers, cultivators, reapers, and self-binders and threshing machines are comparatively unknown in most of the places in the Turkish Armenia. The employment of oxen and tamed buffaloes, instead of horses in some hilly and rocky districts, for hauling and farming might be justifiable, but in many places and for many many purposes on the farm the horses could be used with advantage. They are not, however, except for riding and traveling.
It is due to the inexhaustive fertility of the land and to the industry of the people, and not to the modern improvements or advantageous circumstances, that the inhabitants of Armenia have not starved long ago. If we, moreover, remember the absence of railroads and good roads, the difficulty of transportation of the products into the market, the dangers from the highway robbers encountered in traveling which paralyze the spirit of enterprise and energy of the farmer, we well may be surprised to know that they not only make a living, but that thousands of bushels of grain were annually exported into the European countries.
In every village, town and city of Armenia and in Asia Minor where there were and are Armenians, churches and schools are found, one, two, or more of them according to the numbers of the Armenian inhabitants. Some of these villages and towns are wholly inhabited by the Mohammedans who have seized the property of the Christians and have also converted their churches into mosques and their schools into tekes (schools).
Many of the churches are of great antiquity, but some only a few centuries old. They are invariably of substantial characters. One of the peculiarities of the older churches is that their entrances or doors are quite small and low. The reason of this was and still is in the interior to prevent the enemies of their religion from desecrating the sacred edifices by putting their horses into the churches and converting them into stables, as the greatest insult to Christianity and a single triumph of Mohammedanism. Sultan Bajazet himself boasted he “would one day feed his horse at Rome with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter’s.” What Bajazet and others of his type and character boasted that they would do in Europe, so both long before and after him, others have done it in Armenia and elsewhere; and even worse, as the following verse, composed by our immortal “prince of poets.” Nerses Shnorhali (graceful or gracious), who lived in the twelfth century: