The Christian slave who thus describes the doubts that arose in his mind as the slow-passing years brought no relief, doubtless gives expression here to thoughts that suggested themselves to many a hapless Christian captive with overwhelming persistency, until at last he broke away from the ties of his old faith and embraced Islam. Many who would have been ready to die as martyrs for the Christian religion if the mythical choice between the Qurʼān and the sword had been offered them, felt more and more strongly, after long years of captivity, the influence of Muhammadan thought and practice, and humanity won converts where violence would have failed.[104] For though the lot of many of the Christian captives was a very pitiable one, others who held positions in the households of private individuals, were often no worse off than domestic servants in the rest of Europe. [[173]]As organised by the Muhammadan Law, slavery was robbed of many of its harshest features, nor in Turkey at least does it seem to have been accompanied by such barbarities and atrocities as in the pirate states of Northern Africa. The slaves, like other citizens, had their rights, and it is even said that a slave might summon his master before the Qāḍī for ill usage, and that if he alleged that their tempers were so opposite, that it was impossible for them to agree, the Qāḍī could oblige his master to sell him.[105] The condition of the Christian captives naturally varied with circumstances and their own capabilities of adapting themselves to a life of hardship; the aged, the priests and monks, and those of noble birth suffered most, while the physician and the handicraftsman received more considerate treatment from their masters, as being servants that best repaid the money spent upon them.[106] The galley-slaves naturally suffered most of all, indeed the kindest treatment could have but little relieved the hardships incident to such an occupation.[107] Further, the lot of the slaves who were state property was more pitiable than that of those who had been purchased by private individuals.[108] As a rule they were allowed the free exercise of their religion; in the state-prisons at Constantinople, they had their own priests and chapels, and the clergy were allowed to administer the consolations of religion to the galley-slaves.[109] The number of the Christian slaves who embraced Islam was enormous; some few cases have been recorded of their being threatened [[174]]and ill-treated for the very purpose of inducing them to recant, but as a rule the masters seldom forced them to renounce their faith,[110] and put the greatest pressure upon them during the first years of their captivity, after which they let them alone to follow their own faith.[111] The majority of the converted slaves therefore changed their religion of their own free choice; and when the Christian embassies were never sure from day to day that some of their fellow-countrymen that had accompanied them to Constantinople as domestic servants, might not turn Turk,[112] it can easily be understood that slaves who had lost all hope of return to their native country, and found little in their surroundings to strengthen and continue the teachings of their earlier years, would yield to the influences that beset them and would feel few restraints to hinder them from entering a new society and a new religion. An English traveller[113] of the seventeenth century has said of them: “Few ever return to their native country; and fewer have the courage and constancy of retaining the Christian Faith, in which they were educated; their education being but mean, and their knowledge but slight in the principles and grounds of it; whereof some are frightened into Turcism by their impatience [[175]]and too deep resentments of the hardships of the servitude; others are enticed by the blandishments and flatteries of pleasure the Mahometan Law allows, and the allurements they have of making their condition better and more easy by a change of their Religion; having no hope left of being redeemed, they renounce their Saviour and their Christianity, and soon forget their original country, and are no longer looked upon as strangers, but pass for natives.”
Much of course depended upon the individual character of the different Christian slaves themselves. The anonymous writer, so often quoted above, whose long captivity made him so competent to speak on their condition, divides them into three classes:—first, those who passed their days in all simplicity, not caring to trouble themselves to learn anything about the religion of their masters; for them it was enough to know that the Turks were infidels, and so, as far as their captive condition and their yoke of slavery allowed, they avoided having anything to do with them and their religious worship, fearing lest they should be led astray by their errors, and striving to observe the Christian faith as far as their knowledge and power went. The second class consisted of those whose curiosity led them to study and investigate the doings of the Turks: if, by the help of God, they had time enough to dive into their secrets, and understanding enough for the investigation of them and light of reason to find the interpretation thereof, they not only came out of the trial unscathed, but had their own faith strengthened. The third class includes those who, examining the Muslim religion without due caution, fail to dive into its depths and find the interpretation of it and so are deceived; believing the errors of the Turks to be the truth, they lose their own faith and embrace the false religion of the Muslims, hereby not only compassing their own destruction, but setting a bad example to others: of such men the number is infinite.[114]
Conversion to Islam did not, as some writers have affirmed, release the slave from his captivity and make him a free man,[115] [[176]]for emancipation was solely at the discretion of the master; who indeed often promised to set any slave free, without the payment of ransom, if only he would embrace Islam;[116] but, on the other hand, would also freely emancipate the Christian slave, even though he had persevered in his religion, provided he had proved himself a faithful servant, and would make provision for his old age.[117]
There were many others who, like the Christian slaves, separated from early surroundings and associations, found themselves cut loose from old ties and thrown into the midst of a society animated by social and religious ideals of an entirely novel character. The crowds of Christian workmen that came wandering from the conquered countries in the fifteenth century to Adrianople and other Turkish cities in search of employment, were easily persuaded to settle there and adopt the faith of Islam.[118] Similarly the Christian families that Muḥammad II transported from conquered provinces in Europe into Asia Minor,[119] may well have become merged into the mass of the Muslim population by almost imperceptible degrees, as was the case with the Armenians carried away into Persia by Shāh ʻAbbās I (1587–1629), most of whom appear to have passed over to Islam in the second generation.[120]
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there would seem to have been a decay of the missionary spirit among the Turks, but the latter years of the reign of Sultan ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd witnessed a renewed interest in Muslim propaganda, and Turkish newspapers began to record instances of conversion. Among the most noteworthy of such converts were some eighteen amīrs of the princely family of Shihāb in Mount Lebanon, which had been Christian for about a century; they are said to claim descent from the Quraysh, and the Turks made every effort to bring them back to the fold of Islam; those who became [[177]]Muslims were appointed to lucrative posts in the Turkish civil service.[121]
In the following pages it is proposed to give a more detailed and particular account of the spread of Islam among the Christian populations of Albania, Servia, Bosnia and Crete, as the history of each of these countries after its conquest by the Ottomans presents some special features of interest in the history of the propagation of Islam.
The Albanians, with the exception of some settlements in Greece,[122] inhabit the mountainous country that stretches along the east shore of the Adriatic from Montenegro to the Gulf of Arta. They form one of the oldest and purest-blooded races in Europe and are said to belong to the Pelasgic branch of the Aryan stock.
Their country was first invaded by the Turks in 1387, but the Turkish forces soon had to withdraw, and the authority of the Sultan was recognised for the first time in 1423. For a short period Albania regained its independence under George Kastriota, who is better known under his Muhammadan name of Scanderbeg or Sikandarbeg. Recent investigations have established the falsity of the romantic fictions that had gathered round the story of his early days—how that as a boy he had been surrendered as a hostage to the Turks, had been brought up among them as a Muslim and had won the special favour of the Sultan. The truth is, that the days of his youth were passed in his native mountains and his warfare with the Turks began with the victory gained over them in 1444; for more than twenty years he maintained a vigorous and successful resistance to their invading forces, but after his death in 1467, the Turks began again to take possession of Albania. Krūya, the capital of the Kastriot dynasty, fell into their hands eleven years later, and from this date there appears to have been no organised resistance of the whole country, though revolts were frequent and the subjection of the country was never complete. Some of the sea-port towns held out much longer; Durazzo was captured in 1501, while Antivari, the northernmost point of the sea-coast of Albania, did not [[178]]surrender until 1571. The terms of capitulation were that the city should retain its old laws and magistrature, that there should be free and public exercise of the Christian religion, that the churches and chapels should remain uninjured and might be rebuilt if they fell into decay; that the citizens should retain all their movable and immovable property and should not be burdened by any additional taxation.
The Albanians under Turkish rule appear always to have maintained a kind of semi-autonomy, and the several tribes and clans remained as essentially independent as they were before the conquest. Though vassals of the Sultans, they would not brook the interference of Turkish officials in their internal administration, and there is reason to believe that the Turkish Government has never been able to appoint or confirm any provincial governor who was not a native of Albania, and had not already established his influence by his arms, policy or connections.[123] Their racial pride is intense, and to the present day, the Albanian, if asked what he is, will call himself a Skipetar,[124] before saying whether he is a Christian or a Muhammadan—a very remarkable instance of national feeling obliterating the fierce distinction between these two religions that so forcibly obtrudes itself in the rest of the Ottoman empire. The Christian and Muhammadan Albanians alike, just as they speak the same language, so do they cherish the same traditions, and observe the same manners and customs; and pride in their common nationality has been too strong a bond to allow differences of religious belief to split the nation into separate communities on this basis.[125] Side by side they served in the [[179]]irregular troops, which soon after the Turkish conquest became the main dependence of the government in all its internal administration, and both classes found the same ready employment in the service of the local pashas, being accounted the bravest soldiers in the empire. Christian Albanians served in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War,[126] and though they have perhaps been a little more quiet and agricultural than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, still the difference has been small: they have always retained their arms and military habits, have always displayed the same fierce, proud, untameable spirit, and been animated with the same intense national feeling as their brethren who had embraced the creed of the Prophet.[127]
The consideration of these facts is of importance in tracing the spread of Islam in Albania, for it appears to have been propagated very gradually by the people of the country themselves, and not under pressure of foreign influences. The details that we possess of this movement are very meagre, as the history of Albania from the close of the fifteenth century to the rise of ʻAlī Pasha three hundred years later, is almost a blank; what knowledge we have, therefore, of the slow but continuous accession of converts to Islam during this period, is derived from the ecclesiastical chronicles of the various dioceses,[128] and the reports sent in from time to time to the Pope and the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.[129] But it goes without saying that the very nature of these sources gives the information derived from them the stamp of imperfection—especially in the matter of the motives assigned for conversion. For an ecclesiastic of those times to have even entertained the possibility of a conversion to Islam from genuine conviction—much less have openly expressed such an opinion in writing to his superiors—is well-nigh inconceivable. [[180]]