The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith

by Sir Thomas Walker Arnold

Some account still remains to be given of two other Christian Churches of Western Asia, viz. the Armenian and the Georgian. Of the former it may be said that of all the Eastern Churches that have come under Muhammadan rule, the Armenian Church has probably given fewer of its members (in proportion to the size of the community) to swell the ranks of Islam, than any other. So in spite of the interest that attaches to the story of the struggle of [[97]]this brave nation against overwhelming odds and of the fidelity with which it has clung to the Christian faith—through centuries of warfare and oppression, persecution and exile—it does not come within the scope of the present volume to do more than briefly indicate its connection with the history of the Muhammadans. The Armenian kingdom survived the shock of the Arab conquest, and in the ninth century rose to be a state of some importance and flourished during the decay of the caliphate of Bag͟hdād, but in the eleventh century was overthrown by the Saljūq Turks. A band of fugitives founded the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, but this too disappeared in the fourteenth century. The national life of the Armenian people still survived in spite of the loss of their independence, and, as was the case in Greece under the Turks, their religion and the national church served as the rallying point of their eager, undying patriotism. Though a certain number, under the pressure of cruel persecution, have embraced Islam, yet the bulk of the race has remained true to its ancient faith. As Tavernier[204] rather unsympathetically remarks, “There may be some few Armenians, that embrace Mahometanism for worldly interest, but they are generally the most obstinate persons in the world, and most firm to their superstitious principles.”

The Georgian Church (founded in the early part of the fourth century) was an offshoot from the Greek Church, with which she has always remained in communion, although from the middle of the sixth century the Patriarch or Katholikos of the Georgian Church declared himself independent. Torn asunder by internal discords and exposed to the successive attacks of Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Turks and Mongols, the history of this heroic warrior people is one of almost uninterrupted warfare against foreign foes and of fiercely contested feuds between native chiefs: the reigns of one or two powerful monarchs who secured for their subjects brief intervals of peace, serving only to bring out in more striking contrast the normally unsettled state of the country. The fierce independent spirit of the Georgians that could not brook a foreign rule has often exasperated well-nigh [[98]]to madness the fury of their Muhammadan neighbours, when they failed to impose upon them either their civil authority or their religion. It is this circumstance—that a change of faith implied loss of political independence—which explains in a great measure the fact that the Georgian Church inscribes the names of so many martyrs in her calendar, while the annals of the Greek Church during the same period have no such honoured roll to show.

It was not until after Georgia had been overrun by the devastating armies of the Mongols, leaving ruined churches and monasteries and pyramids of human heads to mark the progress of their destroying hosts, and consequently the spiritual wants of the people had remained long unprovided for, owing to the decline in the numbers and learning of the clergy—that Christianity began to lose ground.[205] Even among those who still remained Christian, some added to the sufferings of the clergy by plundering the property of the Church and appropriating to their own use the revenues of churches and monasteries, and thus hastened the decay of the Christian faith.[206]

In 1400 the invasion of Tīmūr added a crowning horror to the sufferings of Georgia, and though for a brief period the rule of Alexander I (1414–1442) delivered the country from the foreign yoke and drove out all the Muhammadans—after his death it was again broken up into a number of petty princedoms, from which the Turks and the Persians wrested the last shreds of independence. But the Muhammadans always found Georgia to be a turbulent and rebellious possession, ever ready to break out into open revolt at the slightest opportunity. Both Turks and Persians sought to secure the allegiance of these troublesome subjects by means of conversion to Islam. After the fall of Constantinople and the increase of Turkish power in Asia Minor, the inhabitants of Akhaltsikhé and other districts to the west of it became Muhammadans.[207] In 1579 two Georgian princes—brothers—came on an embassy to Constantinople with a large retinue of about two hundred [[99]]persons: here the younger brother together with his attendants became a Musalman, in the hope (it was said) of thereby supplanting his elder brother.[208] At a rather later date, the conquests of the Turks brought some of the districts in the very centre of Georgia into their power, the inhabitants of which embraced the creed of the conquerors.[209] From this period Samtzkhé, the most western portion of Georgia, recognised the suzerainty of Turkey: its rulers and people were allowed to continue undisturbed in the Christian faith, but from 1625 the ruling dynasty became Muhammadan and many of the chiefs and the aristocracy followed their example.

Christianity retained its hold upon the peasants much longer, but when the clergy of Samtzkhé refused allegiance to the Katholikos of Karthli, there ceased to be regular provision made for supplying the spiritual needs of the people: the nobles, even before their conversion, had taken to plundering the estates of the Church, and after becoming Musalmans they naturally ceased to assist it with their offerings, and the churches and monasteries falling into decay were replaced by mosques.[210]

The rest of Georgia had submitted to Persia, and when Tavernier visited this part of the country, about the middle of the seventeenth century, he found it divided into two kingdoms, which were provinces of the Persian empire, and were governed by native Georgian princes who had to turn Muhammadan before being advanced to this dignity.[211] One of the first of such princes was the Tsarevitch Constantine, son of King Alexander II of Kakheth, who had been brought up at the Persian court and had there embraced Islam, at the beginning of the seventeenth century.[212] The first Muhammadan king of Karthli, the Tsarevitch Rustam (1634–1658), had also been brought up in Persia, and he and his successors to the end of the century were all Muhammadans.[213]

Tavernier describes the Georgians as being very ignorant in matters of religion and the clergy as unlettered and vicious; some of the heads of the Church actually sold the [[100]]Christian boys and girls as slaves to the Turks and Persians.[214] From this period there seems to have been a widespread apostasy, especially among the higher classes and those who sought to win the favour of the Persian court.[215] In 1701 the occupant of the throne of Georgia, Wakhtang VI, was a Christian: for the first seven years of his reign he was a prisoner in Ispahan, where great efforts were made to induce him to become a Muhammadan; when he declared that he preferred to lose his throne rather than purchase it at the price of apostasy, it is said that his younger brother, although he was the Patriarch of Georgia, offered to abandon Christianity and embrace Islam, if the crown were bestowed upon him, but though invested by the Persians with the royal power, the Georgians refused to accept him as their ruler, and drove him out of the kingdom.[216]

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the king of Georgia placed his people under the protection of the Russian crown. Hitherto their intense patriotic feeling had helped to keep the Christian faith alive among them so long as their foreign invaders had been Musalmans, but now that the foreign power that sought to rob them of their independence was Christian, this same feeling operated in some of the districts north of the Caucasus to the advantage of Islam. In Daghistan a certain Darvīsh Manṣūr endeavoured to unite the different tribes of the Caucasus to oppose the Russians; preaching the faith of Islam he succeeded in converting the princes and nobles of Ubichistan and Daghistan, who have remained faithful to Islam ever since; many of the Circassians, too, were converted by his preaching, and preferred exile to submitting to the Russian rule.[217] But in 1791 he was taken prisoner, and in 1800 Georgia was formally incorporated in the Russian empire.

Darvīsh Manṣūr was not alone in his efforts to convert the Circassians. When the treaty of Kūchak-Qaïnarji in 1774 had recognised the independence of the Crimea and [[101]]opened the Black Sea to Russian vessels, the Turkish government became alarmed at the prospect of a further movement of Russian domination along the eastern coast of the Black Sea and resolved to make an attempt to stir the Circassians to resistance. A Turkish officer, named Faraḥ ʻAlī, was sent in 1782 to establish a military colony at Anāpa, near the outlet of the sea of Azov, and to enter into relations with the Circassian tribes. Faraḥ ʻAlī’s first care was to seek the hand of a daughter of one of the Circassian beys, offering rich presents of arms, horses, etc., to her father; the marriage was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, and Faraḥ ʻAlī encouraged his soldiers to follow his example, by promising to defray the expenses of their nuptials. The result was that a number of Circassian women joined the little colony and accepted the religion of their husbands, and with the zeal of new converts won over to Islam their fathers and brothers. An active movement of proselytism began, and the Circassians who came in contact with the Turkish colony appear readily to have abandoned their pagan beliefs for the religion of the Qurʼān, the mollas were kept busy in instructing the new Muslims, and help had to be sought from Constantinople to deal with the increasing number of conversions.[218] But the work of Faraḥ ʻAlī was short-lived; he died in 1785 and his tomb was reverenced as that of a saint, but his work perished with him. Anāpa passed into the hands of the Russians in 1812, and when the resistance of the Circassians was finally overcome in 1864, more than half a million Circassian Muhammadans migrated into Turkish territory.

Under Russian law conversions to any faith other than that of the Orthodox Church were illegal, and the further progress of Islam was stayed until the promulgation of the edict of toleration in 1905. One of the results of this in the Caucasus was a large accession to Islam from among the Abkhazes, who had long been nominal converts to Christianity, but now became Muhammadans in such numbers that the Orthodox clergy became alarmed and founded a special society for the distribution of religious tracts among them, in the hope of combating Muhammadan influences.[219] [[102]]