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Read Ebook: In Griekenland De Aarde en haar Volken 1909 by Adossid S A
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Ebook has 19 lines and 6032 words, and 1 pages
The Land of Armenia, 21
The People of Armenia, 39
The Armenian Dynasties, 45
Rulers of The Ottoman Empire, 132
The Great Powers and The Armenian Question, 175
The Causes of the Atrocities, 217
The Turkish Atrocities in Armenia, 239
The Armenians of To-Day, 334
The Future of Armenia and the Battle of Armageddon, 350
Poems on the Armenian Question, 362
FACE PAGE Portrait of Armenian Catholicos, 1 Portrait of Author, 12 City of Antioch, 17 Map of Armenia, 21 Mount Ararat, 23 Kurdish Bandits, 35 Oriental Threshing Floor, 35 Armenian Flags--Coats of Arms, 45 Lake and City of Van, 49 Oldest Church Edifice in the World, 101 Portrait of Armenian Patriarch, 108 Recent Portrait of Sultan of Turkey, 139 Early Portrait of Sultan of Turkey, 143 A Bread Seller, 166 A Zeibeck, 166 A Softa, 166 Group of Circassians, 217 Group of Georgians, 217 Kurdish Home, 239 Kurd Chiefs, 239 Kurd Woman, 239 Massacre at Sassoun, 247 Massacre at Erzeroum, 247 Massacre at Stamboul, 257 City of Harpoot, 264 Armenian Peasant Girl, 272 Mousa Beg, Kurd Chief, 272 Rev. Prof. Thourmain, 272 City of Marsovan, 280 A Water Peddler, 280 City of Trebizond, 300 Group of Armenian Children, 319 Group of Young Armenian Women, 319 Anatolia College, 335 Armenian Family, 335
PREFACE
The problem of Armenia and the Turkish atrocities there, is in the very forefront of the world's burning questions at the present time. In every civilized land it is ranked alongside their own pressing local issues; everywhere there is not only sympathy and indignation, but a feeling of real responsibility. We are a group of Christian nations, and the first Christian nation is being exterminated. Within a few months the unspeakable Turks and barbarous Kurds destroyed more than a thousand villages and towns, murdered a hundred thousand Armenian Christians,--men, women, and innocent children,--and left 500,000 others without homes, clothing, or food, thousands of women shamefully defiled, and thousands of men put to horrible tortures. Dying in the streets, in the fields, on the mountains; dying of hunger, of cold, of storm, and of diseases bred of all these; dying of broken hearts and despair, even more, of shame and mental torture. Yet all these Armenians who thus suffered and were driven forth to starve and die like deserted animals, were absolutely peaceable,--indeed, they were totally unarmed and could not have been otherwise if they wished,--perfectly respectable, most of them comfortably off, and some of them rich. One who was last week a banker is to-day a beggar; yesterday a merchant, to-day a tramp. Why? For the main reason that he is a Christian, and the Sultan has resolved to have no more Christians in his dominion; the doom of Islamism is hanging over their heads. "If you accept Islam," they are told, "well and good; if you do not, you shall be killed--or worse--as your fellows have been."
These are all facts, proved to superfluity, though the Sultan denies them and instructs his ministers everywhere to deny them. How often has the Turkish minister in Washington, Mavroyeni Beg, officially declared the Armenian atrocities to be fiction, giving the papers lying statements , and asserted that the Armenians were the aggressors! It is precisely as though one should account for a devastated sheepfold, with the wolves raging about in it, by alleging that the lambs had wantonly assailed and slain the wolves first. Some pretended to believe this rubbish; but most people, to their credit, are only the more angered and disgusted by it. The Turkish proverbs, occasionally good, are generally evil,--a significant index to the race; one of the commonest is this: "Yalan yigitin kullesi dir" . Kill, plunder, ravish, and then deny it; not simply deny it, but charge those very things to your enemy, and make them an excuse for all you do to him or his. Such are the principles of the Sultan, the false successor of the false prophet of Arabia. At the very time when noble American and European Christians are sending help to the survivors of his massacres, to the half-million homeless, naked, starving, heart-broken beggars he has made from prosperous citizens, he coolly denies that anything has happened but the putting down of a few local riots. He writes to Queen Victoria sympathizing with her expressions of humane sentiment, but declaring that the reports were invented by evil-disposed persons; that on the exact contrary, it was the Turks who were first attacked while praying in the mosques. He assures the Queen that his measures have succeeded in restoring order.
And this same Sultan a few months ago, before the greatest of the recent massacres, wrote to Lord Salisbury as follows:--"Take the words of my honor, I will make reforms in Armenia. I will keep before me every article of the desired reforms, and will order the governors of the provinces to carry them into effect." He at once began to put this pledge of his "honor" into effect, by sending orders from Yildiz Kiosk to the provincial governors in Armenia to root out or convert the accursed infidels. Since that promise of his "honor" months have passed away; and during the time at least eighty thousand more Armenian Christians have been killed, and even death has been the most merciful "reform" he has bestowed on the land. The word in his mouth means beggaring, burning, ravaging, violating, mutilating, torturing, and assassinating. When all the leading Armenians are slain and their helpless families forced to become Mohammedans, after the women have been dishonored,--in a word, when all the Armenian Christians are exterminated, then Armenia will have been reformed. A special chapter is devoted to the person and doings of this eminent reformer.
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND BIRTHPLACE.
I was born January 20, 1853, in a suburb of Antioch; twelfth child and youngest son of a family of nine boys and four girls, and therefore considered the Joseph of the family, and as a small boy went to a missionary school with my elder brothers. My father was a banker and merchant. His partner in the former business was Mr. Edward Barker, English consul at Aleppo; in the latter a Greek, Jabra Antaki, their traffic being in raw silk, for which and for silk-worms Antioch is a great center. Millions of dollars passed through his hands, and he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the city. A common saying was, "If you can drain the Mediterranean dry, you can drain Filian's money dry." This saying roused the cupidity of the local governor; he imprisoned my father, and proposed to torture and kill him, and confiscate his property. Americans would relish living under this sort of government. His partner, the consul, saved him, however, and won his undying gratitude; and when Mr. Barker died, my father gave his son a part of his own orchard for a burial ground. The son erected a beautiful ,000 monument there, which still stands, the ground being owned by my brother, Moses Filian.
When I was fourteen or fifteen, my father lost all his money through the failure of others, became hopelessly bankrupt, and was too old to regain his position, and sank into a poor and broken-hearted old man: his Mediterranean was not inexhaustible. He often patted me and said, "My dear boy, I am sorry--I helped your brothers and gave them good educations, and I meant to do the same by you; but I cannot, for I am too poor. You will have to make your own way." He was a devoted friend of education, himself highly educated, master of three languages,--Armenian, Arabic, and Turkish,--and of strong reasoning powers, logical, imaginative, profound, and far-sighted. Moreover, he was a zealous Christian, greatly respected and liked. In person he was tall, and very stout, with large, bright eyes, and full, rosy cheeks; built like my great-grandfather, from whose elephantine figure the family took its surname. Filian means "Son of an elephant," and his descendants--about 150 in all, one of the largest single families in the Orient--have been mostly large-framed men and women.
At about fifteen I had to go to work. One of my brothers being a weaver, I learned that trade from him, and kept at it for three years, weaving both cotton and silk, and not only supporting myself, but helping support my father. Then I took up shoemaking, which paid better, but neither my father nor myself was satisfied to have me remain a common workman. He wanted me to become a banker and merchant, as he had been, and his old friends, who respected him, would have given me a chance to start; but I had always been devout from a little boy, and felt that I had a call to be a minister. While making shoes, I prayed the Lord to open the way. I often thought, "Suppose I become the richest shoemaker or even the richest banker in Antioch, what then? Shall I ever be happy? No. Then Lord, what is my call?" I believed I heard the answering voice of God in my soul saying, "I have created thee to become a minister of the gospel." So I went to a missionary of the American Board in Antioch, and consulted him; by his encouragement I went to the Theological Seminary at Marash, in Armenia Minor, and studied there three years in the preparatory course.
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