Jews in the Ottoman Empire
Report sent to London by her Majesty's Ambassador in Istanbul:
No. 350
Sir A. H. Layard to the Marquis of Salisbury,
No. 148
Constantinople, April 13, 1880 (received April 23).
My Lord,
I have the honor to transmit herewith to your Lordship a Report on the Vilayet of Angora (Ankara) by Mr. Vice-Consul Gatheral which I have received from Mr. Consul-General Wilson, who is sending it to me suggests that it should be printed. I have, &c. (Signed) A. H. Layard
F. O. 424/106, p. 306, No. 151 Turkey No. 23 (1880), p.121, No. 72
Inclosure in No. 350
Report on the Population, Industries, Trade, Commerce, Agriculture, Public Works, Land Tenure, and Government of City and Province of Angora, Anatolia, by Vice-Consul Gatheral. Extract.
The population of this city and province is a small one, taking into consideration its wide extent and general fertility, and for five years past that population has been visibly diminishing, owing to the emigration of considerable numbers during the famine of 1873-74, the drain on the male Muslim population owing to the war of 1877-78, and the special products of the province having for three years in succession proved unremunerative to the Christians engaged in its commerce many of them have quitted the province for Constantinople or other parts of Anatolia. A Turkish census takes no note of females or male children under fifteen years of age, returning only the total of males liable to military service amongst Muslims, and amongst Christians those from whom the "military service exemption tax" is exigible.
The last enumeration was in 1877, and the total then returned was 449.241; this multiplied by three, according to the Redhouse rule, gives a total of 1.347.723 souls. These are divided into the follow ing sects or communities: Muslims, Gregorian or Orthodox Armenians, Catholic Armenians, Protestant Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Gipsies. The numbers of each community are stated in the same Return as follows:
Males liable to military service Muslims. 393.074
Total population (Muslims) 1.179.222
Males paying military service exemption tax - Christians -Gregorian Armenians 3.445
Roman Catholic Armenians 3.985
Protestant Armenians 660
Jews 280
Gipsies 262
Total population other than Muslims 168.501
Total of males 449.241
Total population 1.347.723
Those different races have origins as varied as their creeds. The Muslims are for the most part the descendants of the Turkish soldiery who conquered the province from the Byzantine Empire, A.D. 1344-45, under Sultan Murad I, then reigning at Broussa (today Bursa). The Armenians are the result of an emigration from the eastward during the fifteenth century; they have been subdivided into Roman Catholic and Protestant in recent times; the leading Roman Catholic families were exiles from Constantinople in 1830, during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II; their wealth, intelligence, and commercial relations with Europe added greatly to the prosperity of the city, later an energetic Jesuit propaganda, directed from Rome, had considerable success, but in later years they have lost their ascendency, having split up into old and new Catholics as in Europe; the schism officially and outwardly has been healed, but the rancorous feeling towards each other remains, and they seem to have no further success in making converts. The Protestants are the result of American missionary effort during the last twenty-eight years. Though meanwhile small in numbers, they are as a community better educated, more truthful and honest, than any of the other Christian sects, and are gaining rapidly in numbers and influence. The Orthodox or Gregorian Armenians are, as a community, ignorant, superstitious, and poverty-stricken, but count more adherents than either of the later sects. The small Jewish community, being mostly blonde and speaking a bastard Spanish, are evidently of Iberian origin; whilst the origin of the few nomad gipsy tribes who come and go is as great a mystery in Anatolia as in Europe.
(The rest of the letter deals with details of the province of Ankara which, although interesting, are less relevant to the subject matter of this book.) "The small Jewish community, being mostly blonde and speaking a bastard Spanish, are evidently of Iberian origin ..." reports the British Vice-Consul, Gatheral, to his ambassador in Istanbul. The ambassador rushed these precise notes concerning the Vilayet of Angora (Ankara) on to his Foreign Minister in London. The blond-haired Jewish community with its "bastard Spanish" was indeed of Iberian origin. The Catholic kings had not only cracked down radically on the Arabs and all other Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula, they had also envisaged a final solution for the Jews of the Christian kingdom. Since 1412, the Jews had been forced to wear degrading markings on their clothes. In 1480, the Inquisition started persecuting them with deadly hostility, and finally the Grand Inquisitor carried out the expropriation and expulsion of 300,000 Jews. Some fled to Morocco, but many more found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan even sent his own ship to them, in order to speed up the rescue operation. The Turkish government showed similar generosity towards the Jewish refugees from Germany and the countries occupied by Hitler. Asylum was granted to tens of thousands.
It was not only the Ottomans who offered protection to the Jews (when they were being threatened by the Catholic kings of Spain). Kemal Atatürk's Turkey also provided asylum for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in the Hitler era. In spite of massive threats and attempts at intervention, Turkey never turned over a single Jewish refugee.
The Greek Orthodox - Patriarchate
Before the conquest of Constantinople by Fatih Sultan Mehmed (Mehmed The Conqueror) in the year 1453, the sphere of influence of the Greek Orthodox patriarchs had shrunk to the point where it was limited to the city of Constantinople. That changed abruptly when Constantinople (Istanbul) became the capital of the Ottoman Empire on the 29th of May, 1453. While it is true that the Patriarch had to move out of the church of Hagia Sophia (it was turned into a mosque), the power of the Greek Orthodox patriarchs was greater under the Sultans than it had ever been under the Byzantine emperors. The Greek Orthodox patriarch ruled like a national king over all the Greek Orthodox citizens of the Ottoman Empire.
The Greeks of the "Phanar", the district of Istanbul in which the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate is still located today, were among the most respected, wealthy, and influential citizens of the Ottoman Empire, as were the equally capable Armenians. The situation took a tragic turn centuries later when the Kingdom of Greece, and in particular the Venizelos government, tried to realize the dream of a "Great Greek Empire" after World War I. In May, 1919, the Greeks occupied Izmir (Smyrna) and pushed ahead toward central Anatolia with their invading troops. Their hope was to score an easy victory over the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.
The resistance of the Turks led by Kemal Atatürk and ‹smet ‹nönü, however, put an end to the high-flying plans of the Greeks in 1922. The invading army was forced to withdraw from Asia Minor in disgrace. Before their retreat, they set fire to Izmir (Smyrna), so that the Turks would be left with nothing but "scorched earth". The Armenians of Izmir, who had not been relocated in 1915, repaid the Turks very poorly for their tolerance . . . After the collapse of the Greek offensive, the two sides agree upon an exchange. The Greeks in Asia Minor moved to Greece, while the Turks living in Greece moved to Anatolia and Thrace. This exchange naturally weakened the position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. After the overthrow of the Greek military junta in 1974, many more Greeks left Istanbul, so that today the importance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate is greatly reduced (solely because of the inconsiderate expansionist policy of Athens), although the reputations of individuals like Patriarch Athenagoras and Patriarch Demetrios remain strong in spite of daily politics and outside influences.
The Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate
The Ottoman Sultan-Caliphs lovingly called them their "most loyal subjects". Under the rule of the Seljuks and the Ottomans, from the eleventh to the nineteenth century, the Armenians enjoyed their happiest time, their golden age.
Today, the Armenians are still Turkey's largest minority, and they are still highly respected as businessmen, artists, engineers, doctors, traders, and craftsmen. They also enjoy the same rights and have the same responsibilities as all other Turkish citizens, regardless of national origin. The Armenian Question was created by the Russian dictate of San Stefano in 1878. Before that time, the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was made up of four very distinct groups. In Istanbul and Izmir lived the influential Amiras, who were prosperous and highly educated Armenians. Anatolia was home to the Kavaragan. These were wellto-do, provincial craftsmen and traders, whose influence could be felt in the cities as well. The Armenian peasants had largely the same way of life as their Islamic counterparts. Last but not least were the mountain-dwellers, who had special rights. Even within the autonomy of the Armenian millet, they enjoyed special rights, one could even call it semi-independence. As long as it was possible, the central Ottoman government left the Armenians alone. Unfortunately, there were a few Armenian revolutionaries and Protestant zealots whose nationalistic fervor knew no bounds. These people used all available means of demagoguery to stir up unrest in the semi-independent rural communities. The Armenian uprising in Zeitun is an example of what resulted. Every national / religious community (in Turkish "millet") within the Ottoman Empire enjoyed extensive autonomy and took care of its own administration.
The Armenian Orthodox patriarch of Istanbul ruled over all Christians who did not belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. Aside from the Armenian Gregorians themselves, these included the Monophysitic churches of Asia Minor and Africa, such as the Jacobites and the Syrians, as well as the Copts in Egypt.
In those days, gypsies were believed to come from Egypt and were called "Copti". Therefore, all the gypsies of the Ottoman Empire were also subject to the rule of the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul in matters of civil law. Another religious group under Armenian Orthodox rule was the Bogomils of the Balkans and their founding fathers, the Paulicians. They still survived in small communities in eastern Anatolia and held Manichean beliefs. The history of the historical province of Armenia and the many peoples who have lived there begins under the banner of the fight between East and West for world supremacy. The Haik, an Indo-European people, probably from the Balkans or Thrace, migrated to the historical province of Armenia in the sixth century B.C. At that time, the Urartian kingdom was collapsing under the blows of the Scythians.
The newly-arrived Indo-European Haik mixed with the Urartians to some extent. The Asian language of the Urartians was an agglutinative language like Turkish. It had a certain influence on the Indo-European language of the Armenians, as did the superior culture of the Urartians. While their immigration to eastern Anatolia was still going on, the Haik (Armenians) fell under Median rule, and in the year 550 the emperor Kyros took possession of the ancient lands of the Urartians along with the newly arrived Haik. The first mention of the Armenians is to be found in the inscription of Behistun in connection with the triumphant reports of the victories of Darius (486 B.C.) At that time, the Armenians were already Persian subjects.
In the fourth century before Christ, Armenia (with all its races, tribes, and people of mixed blood) was under the rule of the Achaemids and later, that of the Seleucids.
When the Parthians took over, the Armenian prince Tigranes became a hostage in the Parthian court. Tigranes II. (95-55 B.C.) succeeded in freeing Armenia from the Parthians and creating an independent Armenian nation. His capital was Tigranakert (now called Silvan, southwest of Lake Van). Tigranes II.
married the daughter of the king of Pontus, Mithridates VI. Eupator, and made the disastrous mistake of joining Mithridates in a revolt against Rome.
In 69 B.C., the Roman general Lucullus defeated the Armenian ruler Tigranes II., and the short-lived dream of Armenian independence was over. For the Haik to refer nowadays on occasion to that short period of real Armenian rule in eastern Anatolia and for Armenian terrorists to base their territorial demands on that is comparable to Italian mafiosi in the United
Patriarch Snork Kalutsyan, spiritual leader of the Armenians of Turkey. In the Ottoman Empire, the patriarch's power was that of a "national king". All Monophysitic Christians of the Empire - and all gypsies -were subject to his rule.
When the Armenian king Tigranes refused to hand over his megalomaniac father-in-law, Mithridates, ruler of Pontos, to the Roman generals, Lucullus attacked "Tigranes City".
Tigranes' armored lancers were alone more numerous than Lucullus' entire force, which the Armenians scorned, saying it was "too large for a legation but too small for an army". The battle lasted just one day (October 9, 69 A. D.), and the Romans destroyed the army of Tigranes, which had been twenty times stronger. According to the Roman military report there were virtually no Romans killed at all, only Armenians. Tigranes managed to escape unre cognized and met up again with his father-inlaw, Mithridates, who was later killed by his own people. The subject peoples deserted the tyrant Tigranes and paid homage to the victors, Lucullus and Pompeius.
States wishing to be the successors of the Romans (or better of Lucullus or Trajan) and taking control of eastern Anatolia as the heirs of the victors of Tigranakert . . . The French could demand vast portions of North America over which they once ruled. And the examples go on ad infinitum. If every group of people claimed all the lands over which they ruled at some point in their history, then the entire world would have to be evacuated and resettled, and there would be constant warfare. There were several eventful centuries during which dominance in eastern Anatolia belonged sometimes to the Romans (Trajan, Nero, Hadrian, Diocletian) and sometimes to the Persian Sassanids. At the end of this period, the emperor Diocletian named Tiridates III. King of Armenia. Gregory Parthev, a Parthian, preached Christianity. The most recent findings indicate that Armenia did not adopt Christianity until after the conversion of the emper or Constantine in 313 A.D. The Armenian conversion most likely occured in 314 at the behest of King Trdat (Tiridates). The missionizing of Armenia probably began in Edessa (present-day Urfa). It has been proven that Christian communities existed as early as the second century. The great converter was Gregory Parthev Lusarevic, the Illuminator. He was not a Haik, but rather an Armenian in the true sense of the word, an inhabitant of the province of Armenia. He was, however, of Parthian origin.
Gregory lived in Roman Caesarea (Kayseri) as a refugee from the Persians. It was there that he became a Christian. At first, King Tiridates persecuted Gregory, but then he himself became a Christian, and with him, gradually, the people of Armenia. Christianity quickly took hold throughout the Roman Empire, in Georgia as well as in Caucasian Albania and in Armenia. This deeply troubled the Persians. Julian the Apostate, who might have been able to handle the Persians, died unexpectedly. His successor, Jovian, relinquished the Caucasus and
Castle and mosque of the Semiramis near Van. From the art collection of the bibliographical institute in Hildshausen, West Germany.
A. D. MDCCCXXXXIX (1849).
When the church of Aghtamar was built in the tenth century, the Armenians of eastern Anatolia and their princes were subjects of the Abbaside Caliphs of Baghdad. The Caliphs were in turn at the mercy of the "Mamluks", who lived at the Caliphs' court and controlled art and culture (not just the military!). These Mamluks were Turkish and belonged to the administrative and military caste. They influenced both Seljuk and Armenian architecture with their classical round buildings.
Armenia to the Persians without a fight. After the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395, the Roman Empire was divided into an Eastern and a Western Empire. The Armenian princes, who suffered greatly under the intolerant, sometimes fanatically anti-Christian religious policies of the Sassanids tried in vain to obtain more freedom.
In the decisive battle of Avarayr in the year 451, the Armenian leader Vardan Mamikonean was defeated by the Persians. His pleas to the Byzantines for help were of no avail. 451 was a fateful year for the Armenians, it was also the year of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalzedon (present-day Kad›köy, in Istanbul). Because of the tragic war situation, the Christians from beyond the Byzantine borders were unable to attend the Council. The imperial policy, which was also the official policy of the Byzantine clergy, won an unchallenged victory. The doctrine of the dual nature of Christ, divine and human, prevailed. The Monophysites did not recognize the decisions of the Council. The most important Monophysitic group was the Armenians, but also in this category were the Syrians, the Egyptian Copts, their neighbors to the South in Ethiopia, and the Indian church. One must also mention the Nestorians in Persia, who at that time were quite strong.
This conflict resulted in a feud between Byzantium and the Armenians - a feud which had grave consequences for both sides. The Byzantines watched disdainfully as the Armenians were weakened. They failed to recognize that they were losing a buffer against their Persian archenemies, as well as against the new invaders from the East. In 484, Byzantium was decisively weakened by Persians attacking from the East. When the emperor Justinian came to power in Byzantium a generation later, there was not a trace left of Armenian independence. Power was divided between Persians and Byzantines. The emperor Maurice even resettled a lot of Armenians in Thrace, which may well have been their original home. Following the struggle between Persians and Romans to gain the upper hand in Armenia, the Arabs
Recurring themes of Armenian art: the constant struggle with the Persians, which lasted from the days of the Armenian immigration to the battle near Caldiran in 1514, where the Ottomans drove the Persians out.
Illustration from Codex 189 of Lake Van: the Haik fighting the Persians in 451. Near Avarayr the Haik lost not only the battle but also the cream of their fighting nobility under Vartan Mamigonian. (Illustration from the sixteenth century from the canon of Saint Vartan and his companions.
Mechitaristenkloster, Vienna.) The same theme, the battle of Avarayr, seen through the eyes of the nineteenth century (Georg Drah, 1888): The Persian king, Yadzegert II, tried to force the Haik to return to Mazdaism in 451 (exactly at the time of the Council of Chalzedon). He did not succeed, but the Haik ended up in a schism due to their absence at Chalzedon. Mechitaristenkloster, Vienna.
and Byzantium shared power until Byzantium wiped out what little was left of Armenian autonomy in 1040. As late as 630 A.D., the emperor Heraclios had been hammering out plans for a Church union with the Monophysitic Armenians, but just ten years later, the Arabs relieved him of this concern by invading eastern Anatolia and breaking the Byzantines' hold on power. The occasional victories of the Byzantines (such as those under Emperor Justinian II., 685-695) only led to more brutal attempts to bring the Armenians into line with the official Greek Orthodox Church. In the end, the Byzantines and the Arabs divided up control of Armenia in much the same way as the Romans and Persians had done for eastern Anatolia and the adjoining Caucasus.
At his coronation as King of Armenia, Prince Ashkot received his insignia from both Arabs and Byzantines. Armenia blossomed as a semi-independent buffer state between Arabs and Byzantines and did not do too badly. The cleverness of the Armenian princes, who recognized the limits of their power and knew what was attainable, was always the best guarantee for the well-being of the Haik.
It was during this period that the magnificent buildings of Ani and the church on the island of Aghtamar in Lake Van were constructed. The supremacy of the Caliphs of Damascus and Baghdad was entirely bearable.
No Arab would ever have dreamed of harrassing the Armenians because of their Monophysitic beliefs. On the contrary, they gave the Armenians the job of supervising the holy sites of Jerusalem. Under the Bagratids, who were in turn under Byzantine and Arab rule, the Armenians achieved a blossoming of their culture. Ani was completed, and the church of Aghtamar became the thriving see of the Armenian Catholicoses.
Nevertheless, the Byzantines could not resist shortening the Armenians' leash more and more. New, unsettling reports kept coming in about new tribes out of the East who were advancing across Persia to the West.
But in stead of promoting and reinforcing the Armenian buffer state, the Byzantines forced the prince of Ani, Hovanes Smbat, to relinquish Ani fully and unconditionally. After his triumph in the Balkans, Emperor Basil II., the "Bulgar-slayer", turned to the Caucasus and Armenia, where he met with equally great success. His expansionist policies had their crowning glory in Armenia under his successor, the emperor Constantine IX. Constantine IX. Monomachus was a ruthless Orthodox zealot. He annexed "heretical" Ani and made it part of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The Armenian version reads, "King Gagik II. is forced to surrender the Kingdom in Constantinople." That was in 1045, another fateful year for the Armenians. Since 1045, there has never been an independent or semi-independent principality or kingdom in
The destruction of the semi-independent Armenian principalities, which had long served as buffer states between Byzantium and the Muslims and Persians of the East, was the work of the Greeks. They were not willing to tolerate the Monophysitic Armenians, whom they saw as inferior heretics, and they were constantly trying to convert them by force. It was the Mamie Seljuks and Ottomans who finally saved the Armenians from this fate.
Ani: the Church of St. Gregory of Tigran Honent. It is part of the unquestioned mythology of the Armenians that "the Turks" destroyed the capital of the Bagritid dynasty. The historical truth: Since at least 772 A. D., the one-time Urartian city had been under Arab control.
After the Byzantine invasion, the pillaging of the city by the Georgians and further weakening of the prinicipality, Hovhannes Smbat was forced to sign an agreement bequeathing his capital to the Byzantines. In 1041, Basil II (the "Bulgarslayer") was ready to cash this I. O. U. in. When the Armenians did not want to give their capital up, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachus sent two armies to Ani. Together with the Arab princes of Dvin, they broke the Armenian resistance.
In 1045, the patriarch and the governor of Ani opened the gates of the city to the Byzantines, and with that the last remnants of Armenian inde pendence in eastern Anatolia vanished. The Seljuk leader Alp Arslan did not make it as far as Ani until 1065 - a full two decades later - and he did not fight against Armenians, but rather Byzantines, who at that time shared power in eastern Anatolia with the Arabs.
eastern Anatolia, the historical region of Armenia. There has been no trace of Armenian self-government or autonomy. It was Emperor Basil II., the Bulgar-slayer, and after him Emperor Constantine IX. Monomachus who wiped out every kind of Armenian political life in eastern Anatolia - no one else.
The Triumph of the Ottomans in Eastern Anatolia and Cilicia Armenian principalities in Cilicia, suffice it to say that at the time of the Ottoman takeover of power (1512, by Sultan Selim I.), there had not been an independent or semi-independent Armenian principality in Cilicia for 137 years. Sis was conquered by the Mamluks in 1375. The struggle for supremacy in eastern Anatolia and the adjacent regions in the south and south-west of the Ottoman realm ended on the 23rd of August, 1514 at the battle near Çald›ran. Here, Sultan Selim I. (1512-1520) dealt a crushing blow to the Persian Safavids, and with that the entire historical province of Armenia was brought under Ottoman control. At this time, it had already been nearly five centuries since an Armenian prince had held any kind of power here.
Almost exactly two years later, on August 24, 1516, Selim I. opened the way to Syria with his victory at the battle of Marc Dabik, not far from Aleppo. Selim's successor, Süleyman the Magnificent, went on to conquer Rhodes, Azerbaijan and the entire Caucasus, Mesopota-
The island of Aghtamar with its famous church of the Holy Cross. When the church was built in the tenth century, eastern Anatolia with its Armenian principalities was ruled by the Abbaside Caliphs of Baghdad. Before the Abbasides, eastern Anatolia and its inhabitants had belonged to the realm of the Ommiad Caliphs, who ruled from Damascus.
The battlefield of Çaldiran. On August 23, 1514, Sultan Selim I defeated the Persians on this site and finally brought eastern Anatolia under Ottoman control. The border that was agreed to at that time still stands today. On the same day two years later, Sultan Selim I brought southern Anatolia and Syria under his control. Immediately thereafter, Selim I made his triumphant entrance into Cairo, and the Sherif of Mecca recognized Selim I as the new Caliph.
Ottomans continued to be Caliphs until the new Turkish Republic abolished the Caliphate in 1924.
mia (which was not lost again until World War I) and Hungary. The Viennese finally brought him to a halt in 1529. For the Armenians, this was the beginning of a golden age. As the Ottomans expanded their realm further and further, the Armenians followed right on the heels of the victorious armies. The domain for their activities as traders and craftsmen grew until it was a hundred times the size of their original district in eastern Anatolia.
The Causes of the Armenian Tragedy
The Armenian tragedy begins. Ultra-nationalistic ideologies together with an unfortunate rivalry between the various Armenian churches and sects heat up the internal political climate in the Ottoman Empire. The superpowers of the time - England, Russia and France - wanted to weaken the Ottoman Empire, and they used the Armenians callously toward this end.
Until this time, Armenians and Turks had lived together in nearly perfect harmony from the time of the Seljuk conquest of the Byzantine lands in eastern Anatolia (eleventh and twelfth centuries) until well into the nineteenth century.
The causes of the "Armenian Tragedy" are not to be found inside, but rather outside the realm of the multinational empire of the Seljuks and Ottomans. In the nineteenth century, it was primarily Russia which was responsible for bringing unrest to the Ottoman Empire. They did, however, have the help of some Americans, such as the Protestant missionaries from Boston.
Russia's objective was to gain access to the "warm seas". The American Protestant missionaries proved themselves to be "useful idiots" for the Russians.
The Rivalry Among the Churches and Sects to Win the Favor of the Ottoman Armenians
While on a missionary trip to the Choctaw Indians, the North American missionary William Goodell came up with the idea of "reconquering" the Holy Land for Christianity. At that time, the Holy Land was entirely under Ottoman rule.
This new Crusade - for that is exactly how the undertaking was seen - began with a series of reconnaissance tours, planned in an almost military fashion. The American missionaries spared no personal sacrifice in the course of these tours. Their total dedication to a cause in which they truly believed deserves our respect. In 1821, a small advance troop set up camp on the Holy Sepulchre.
Their main objective was to have a missionary (Protestant) influence on the many pilgrims there. This first missionary effort in Jerusalem was a complete fiasco. Neither the Jews nor the Muslims nor anyone else was interested in being converted to American-style Protestantism. Finally the Americans abandoned this unfortunate attempt at proselytizing in Jerusalem, and they moved their operations to Beirut. In spite of strong resistance from all the Christian groups in Lebanon, the Americans did succeed in winning two Armenians over to their camp, Gregor Vardapet and Garabed Dionysius. At that time, the Armenians were exclusively Gregorian. They were subject to the rule of their patriarch in Istanbul in all matters of civil law. It soon became clear that it was the Armenians who were most interested in what the Americans were offering. What they found most attractive was the generous offer of education.
The Protestant missionaries started down several false paths in the Ottoman Empire. Their missionary activities took them to Malta, Greece, and finally on to Izmir (Smyrna). At the same time, they must be credited with some admirable achievements. In the end, it became quite clear that their experiences throughout the empire would follow the pattern established in Beirut. In other words, their mission only met with success among the Armenian Gregorians. Two major facts about the Armenian Orthodox hierarchy contributed to this success. First of all, the hierarchy did not pay enough attention to the educational needs of the highly intelligent Armenians. Secondly, it was practically drowning in wealth and power. The Americans finally opened their mission headquarters in Constantinople under the direction of William Goodell. In studying the history of the American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire, it is quite intriguing to follow the story of all the wrong turns the missionaries took before they finally recognized with great relief that the capital of the huge empire was also without a doubt the best location for their headquarters.
The studies done by the missionaries Smith and Dwight soon confirmed the pattern established in Beirut and Izmir (Smyrna). The Armenians, hungry for learning, gratefully and eagerly accepted the education offered by the "American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" in Constantinople.
As early as 1833, many Armenian students, eager for learning and knowledge, were converting to Protestantism. In the same year, the Protestant mission already had more than fifteen young Armenian clergymen. The missionary wave soon spread from Constantinople into the provinces. In 1834, Benjamin Schneider opened a mission in Bursa. Another in Trabzon soon followed. Five years later, in 1839, came the beginning of what the Protestant Armenian-Americans refer to in their historical writings as the "spirit of persecution". The Armenian orthodox clergy had become uneasy about the incredible success that the American missionaries were having among the most talented and capable Armenians. They launched an effort to get rid of the missionaries and win back the Armenians who had gone astray. When persuasion did not work, the church turned to force. Schools were burned to the ground, and according to the missionary chronicler William E. Strong, "arrests were made and terror spread". The patriarch was deposed for being too tolerant, and a list was drawn up of roughly five hundred "principal suspects". They belonged to the highest social classes of the Armenian millet; they were bishops, bankers, businessmen and artists; and they were all accused of heresy. That meant expulsion from the Gregorian Church, which at that time was equivalent to losing one's nationality - a personal catastrophe for those affected. Without membership iri a millet, one could not marry or have a Christian burial. One enjoyed no protection under the law and was subject to social ostracism.
Nevertheless, Protestantism continued to gain ground among the Armenians. This was undoubtedly due to the fine abilities of the American-Armenian clergy, as well as the thirst for learning of the Ottoman Armenians. A Protestant mission even sprung up in Van, practically the farthest corner of the huge Ottoman Empire, and the Protestants won converts among the "Mountain Nestorians" in the distant Hakkari Mountains. Protestantism did not bring much luck to either the Nestorians or the people of Van, however. Both the Armenians and the Nestorians started collaborating with the Russians (using American money) and finally drifted into the revolt movement of March, 1915. The Ottomans responded with a general relocation order. That was the beginning of the Ottoman-Armenian catastrophe of 1915, which claimed so many tragic victims on both sides.
The Beginning of the End -
The Formation of a Protestant Armenian Millet
In 1846, the curtain came down twice on the Armenians, both literally and figuratively. In the church of the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople, with the curtains drawn and the altar covered, the patriarch read an excommunication order against the Armenians who had converted to Protestantism. They were accused of - and threatened with - every kind of evil in the world. Afterwards, the excommunication edict was read in all the Armenian Orthodox churches in the land under the same kind of theatrical circumstances. The great powers rushed to the aid of the Protestant Armenians, who had now been stripped of all their rights. England was especially eager to help because it saw the situation as a good opportunity for intervention. Finally, the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire was forced to act. On July 1, 1846, a new millet was created in the Ottoman Empire - the "First Evangelical Armenian Church". In 1848, the grand vizier published an imperial "ferman" (proclamation) concerning this matter, and two years later the Sultan personally granted a charter to his new Protestant millet. Now the Protestant Armenians had the right to elect their own representatives, who could then present their concerns to the Sublime Porte with the same rights as the representatives of the Orthodox Church.
In the beginning, the new era looked promising. The intentions of the Protestant missionaries had undoubtedly been good, and they had shown unprecedented courage and selfless devotion. Nevertheless, the outcome was unintentionally disastrous for the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.
With the establishment of the Protestant millet, a threeway struggle began for the hearts of the Ottoman Armenians. First, there was the old, established "Gregorian" Church, which still referred back to its founding by St. Gregory the Illuminator. Next came the Protestant Church, officially established in 1850, and thirdly the Armenian Catholic community of the Ottoman Empire, although the latter must admittedly be measured on a different scale.
While the Protestants owed their official acceptance to English (and to a lesser extent American) intervention, the establishment of the Catholic Armenian millet was a result of the intervention of the French, who had always seen themselves as the protectors of Catholics living in the East.
The first Catholic Armenian patriarch Hagop Chukurian was recognized by the Sultan in 1831. It is significant that his first residence was in Adana, in the precincts of the former Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, which had ceased to exist centuries before. Armenians had been living in Cilicia ever since an ambitious relocation program carried out by the Byzantines in the wake of several Byzantine victories over the Arabs. The Hetums and the Rubens were the most important Armenian families among those relocated, and they produced the leaders of Cilicia. In 1080, the Rubens felt that they were strong enough to establish a separate principality, independent of the Byzantines. "Armenian Cilicia" existed as a wholly or at least partially independent principality until the year 1375, when the Mamluks brought it to an end.
The Armenian leaders of Cilicia were of course always looking for allies positioned behind their immediate neighbors.
These included the otherwise disparaged Mongols and the even more hated Catholics. Cilicia even formed an alliance with the Crusaders. The climax of this alliance came in 1198 when Conrad Cardinal von Wittelsbach anointed Prince Leo II. King of Cilicia. The fourteenth century was a time of bitter, merciless struggle between the Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic families of Cilicia. In 1342, Cilicia became "Frankish" when it fell to Guy de Lusignan. The Gregorian majority among the Cilician Armenians reacted with rebellion, and in 1344 Guy de Lusignan and three hundred of his Frankish knights were killed. Under his Catholic successors, the "kingdom" of Cilicia consisted only of the city of Sis. In April of 1375, the Mamluks conquered Sis and took Leo V. prisoner, thus extin-
The location of the Armenian Catholic church in Istanbul could not be more appropriate. The church practically grows out of the elegant building complex of the former French Embassy. Analogously, the establishment of a separate Armenian Catholic millet in 1831 can be attributed to massive French pressure on the Sublime Porte (Bab-› Ali).
Robert College, Istanbul (today, Bo¤aziçi University). Founded in 1840 as a school for gifted Armenians, it also proved to be a training ground for Armenian nationalism. The founders of Robert College, in particular Cyrus Hamlin, saw great significance in the location of the new college. It was built right next to Rumeli Hisar›, the fortress from which the Ottomans had conquered half of Europe. The new school buildings were to become a symbol of the "reconquista". In his history of the "American Board", William E. Strong describes the school's founder as the "terror of the evasive Turk", whereas the Armenians were to be assisted "in every way possible". Misunderstood ultra-nationalism now started to run its course.
guishing the last traces of any Armenian state entity. It is open to question, however, whether Frankish Cilicia really had anything to do with Armenia in the first place. The death in Paris of the last king of Cilicia struck many Europeans as very romantic.
A Franciscan monk had bought the king's freedom from the Mamluks following an ambitious fundraising drive. It was especially the French who remembered the king's death. This was, among reasons, because Leo V. was laid to rest next to the French kings in the Celestine Monastery in Paris following a solemn state funeral.
The fall of the Cilician kingdom occured in the year 1375, a good century and a half before the conquest of Cilicia by the Ottomans. Many Armenians did of course continue to live in Cilicia, although they were always a small minority here, as they were throughout Anatolia. The memory of King Leo was still alive in 1831 when the French forced the establishment of a Catholic Armenian patriarchate. It was probably also still alive in 1915 when they acted as accomplices to the tragedy suffered by the local Ottoman-Armenian population during the rebellion of Musa Dagh. They were accomplices to another crime in 1918 when they landed troops in the South and made promises to the Armenian community which they were unable to keep.
A book that appeared in 1896 with the title Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities (the author was certainly not aware of the ambiguity of the chosen title) shows just how far the American Protestants were willing to go with their propagandistic excesses. The spirit and content of the book are best illustrated by a few lines from the foreword by Francis E. Willard. Armenians are apparently the most noble race in the world since, "in countenance, figure, and poise they are remarkably attractive. That is to say that their personal appearance comes closer to the probable appearance of Our Lord than that of any other race." Francis E. Willard describes
The American Protestant mission to the Armenians of Van began its work in 1872. The resistance from the indigenous Armenian Orthodox clergy was bitter. (Van had, after all, been the seat of the Armenian Catholics for a long time.) It was thus a full five years before the Americans managed to erect the first place of worship for their mission. The Americans called Van "the Sebastopol of the Armenian Church" obviously alluding to the long siege and eventual assault by the allies in 1855.
Partly because of the bitter rivalry between Orthodox and Protestant Armenians over who the "better" Armenian was, Van quickly became a breeding ground for fanatical nationalism. This erupted in a number of uprisings and finally led to the revolt of 1915, in which tens of thousands of Muslims lost their lives. What had started with an offer of education ended in nationalistic excesses, in spite of the idealistic zeal of many well-meaning missionaries, such as Dr. Reynolds and his wife.
Worship service in an Armenian Protestant church in Istanbul (built in 1914, immediately before the outbreak of World War I).
the Armenians as "unarmed" and says that they would never do "anything to harm anyone". In view of the huge quantities of arms that the Armenians not only stockpiled but also put to use in numerous uprisings, these remarks seem to be nothing but pure mockery. 1896 was a year of intensive Armenian terrorist activity. It was the year of the spectacular raid on the Ottoman Bank, where hostages were taken. But Islamic hostages obviously meant nothing at all to those who had an uncritical preference for the "Armenian race". After all, "the Mohammedans believe in the harem above all else." Conclusion: "Armenians are the nation, the Sultan and his soldiers are the devil's scourge. A cold-hearted observer is the Anglo-Saxon race." Apparently the intervention of England and the United States was not enough to satisfy some Protestant missionaries. Similar views were expressed by the Russians. By the turn of the century, the Armenians had become the great powers' favorite pretense for getting involved in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire.
Trapped by bloodhounds: Sultan Murad V is shown here trying to deal with the rebellious European provinces of the Ottoman Empire: Bosnia; Herzegovina; Montenegro; and Serbia. These nations all had the distinct advantage of having solid, self-contained national minorities on their territory. (The Armenians, on the other hand, did not even come close to having a well-defined area of settlement anywhere in the Ottoman Empire in which they were in the majority.) The Czar of Russia, Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph, Emperor Wilhelm I, King George I of Greece, and Italy's King Humbert all look on with interest, while Germany's Bismarck and England's Beaconfield are ready to jump into the fray. The Armenian patriarch, Nerses II Vartabedian, declared to the British ambassador at the time, "that if, in order to secure the sympathy of the European powers, it was necessary to rise in insurrection, there would be no difficulty in getting up such a movement" (Letter of the British ambassador, Henry Elliot, to his foreign minister in London; F. O. 424/46, p. 205-206; December 7, 1876).
Cartoon: PUNCH, July 22, 1876.
Artin Dadyan Pasha, Ottoman Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1880-1887) actually did not work for the Sultan but for the Armenian case . . .
The Ottoman-Armenian architect Garabed Amira Balyan (1800- 1866, above left) worked for the Sultan Abdülmecid (center) and Sultan Abdülhamid II (right). Among his most significant works are the Ortaköy Mosque and the imposing Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, on the banks of the Bosphorus.
Over the years, virtually all foreign and domestic trade passed into the hands of the Ottoman Armenians. Later, this fact would contribute to their undoing because the ringleaders of the Armenian uprisings based their actions partly on the belief that the Ottoman Empire would surely collapse if the Armenians withdrew their friendship
End of Part II
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