[118] Jesup, “The Mohammedan Missionary Problem,” p. 31. Presbyterian Board of Publication, Phila.
[119] Sale’s “Koran,” preliminary discourses, p. 110.
XIII
MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS
The history of Mohammedanism is a continuous warfare against Christianity, and the latter alone has firmly and heroically stood against Islam in Western Asia. But through what tortures, martyrdoms, and massacres did the followers of Christ pass from the beginning of Mohammed’s religion to the present time? The answer to this question would fill volumes.
Hitherto the Turks have shown relentless barbarity, unabated intolerance and unprovoked massacres of the Christians. A very conservative estimate will not allow less than two hundred thousand Christians massacred during the last century by the fanatic followers of the self-made prophet of Arabia.
In 1821-7, during the Greek revolution, thousands of Greeks were put to death who had no other crime than being of the same religion and nationality. “Sultan Mohammed was in the habit of replying to every success of the Greek insurgents by ordering massacres, violations and enslavement in regions without defense, where there were none but women, children and inoffensive merchants.... The Turkish admiral was beaten at Samos; for that reason thirty days were spent in Cyprus in cutting off heads.... The Sultan wished to take new reprisal to terrify the rayas (Christian subjects) and cause the nations of Europe to reflect.” In the island of Chios, though the inhabitants were not in rebellion, but most docile and inoffensive, yet “above forty thousand of both sexes had either fallen victims to the sword, or were selected for sale in the bazaars.” Some fled to the more inaccessible parts of the island. They were assured of their safety by the Turks, guaranteed by the European consuls. But no sooner did they descend from the heights than the Turks put them to death. “The number of those, who became victims of this perfidious act, were estimated at seven thousand.”[120]
“The women and children escaped death, their beauty and youth saving them from massacre. They were, however, to be delivered over at once to the outrageous assaults or to be reserved for the shameful fate of the harem. They were led off in long troops; they were put on the market and sold in the bazaars of Smyrna, Constantinople and Brousa.”[121] Large numbers also suffered death or the worst form of slavery, by the hands of the “unspeakable Turks,” who were neither Greeks nor belonged to the same church, and their only crime also was that they, too, were Christians.
During the war between Russia and Turkey, the Kurds, finding the country in a disturbed condition, plundered many a village and massacred not a few Armenians. But the Turks seem to vie with the Kurds in cruelty. An Englishman, writing of the war between Russia and Turkey, says:
“The Turks with their usual ferocity, commenced a system of carnage at Akhalzik in 1829; every Christian inhabitant was slain.”
In 1843, in the southern mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan, ten thousand Nestorian and Armenian Christians were massacred by the faithful Moslems of Mohammed’s type, and as many women and children were taken captives and sold for slaves. The great explorer, A. H. Layard, three years after this fearful carnage, describes it in the following language: