The Turkish Empire in its relations with Christianity and Civilization

Front matter

THE TURKISH EMPIRE. IN ITS GELATIONS WITH CHEISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. BY RICHARD ROBERT MADDEN, Fel. R.C.S. Eng., M.R.I.A., &o. Author os " Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine," " Egypt and Mahommed All," " The Mussulman," " Life and Martyrdom of Savonarola," " Infirmities of Genius," " Memoirs of the Countess of Blessington," &c. VOL. II. gmttom : T. CAUTLEY NEWBY, PUBLISHER. 30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. 1862. CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS OF VOL. II. chapter. page I. Syria — Its Divisions, Sects, and Races . . . ,1 II. Syria under Mohammed Ali . . . . .43 III. The Greek Rayah Community of the so-called " Orthodox Church. — Constitution of the Greek Church in Russia and Turkey.— The proposed Re-Union [of the Greek and Latin Churches . . . . . , .51 TV. Proposed Re-Union of the Greek and Latin Churches . . 87 V. The Armenian Community . . . . .117 VI.

The Maronites . . . . . . .153 VII. The Order of the Assassins of Persia and Syria of the 11th and 12th centuries, and the derivation from them of the existing secret sects of Syria . . . . .162 VIII. The secret sects supposed to be derived from the Assassins — The Ansayrii ....... 195 IX. The secret sects supposed to be derived from the Assassins — The Druses , . . . . . .209 X. The secret sects supposed to be derived from the Assassins— The Metoualis ....... 237 XI. The influence of Russia over the Great Mass of the Christian Population of the Turkish Empire — The Exercise and Results of that Influence at Different Periods of the Greek Revolution . . . . . . . .248 XII. The Syrian Massacres of Christians by the Druses and Turkish Authorities, in 1860 . . . . . .266 XIII. Observations on Latest Official Correspondence Relating to Massacres in Syria — Withdrawal of French Troops ; and Labors of International Commission .... 370 XIV.

Death of Sultan Abdul Medjid and Accession of his Brother Abdul Azis — Latest Statement of Financial Statistics of Turkey . . . . . . . .387 XV. The Beginning of The End of The Turkish Empire— Failure of its Institutions to Fulfil the Legitimate Purposes of Governmental Regime — The Well-being and Protection of the People subjected to it — The Decay of Turkey and Impossibility of its Maintenance and Restoration . . . 409 (For Contents of Appendix see over.)

Appendix

.— VOL. II. NO. PAGE I. Sir Moses Montefiore, Bart., the Originator of The Relief Committee in aid of The Christian Sufferers of Syria, in the late Disturbances ....... 437 II. Numbers of Believers in Mohammedanism and Buddhism, and and Latest Estimate of Population of the Globe . . 441 III. List of Ottoman Sovereigns ..... 442 IV. Dates of Different Crusades ..... 443 V. The Suez Canal Project THE TURKISH EMPIRE > IN ITS RELATIONS WITH CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.

Chapter I

Syria — Its Divisions, Sects, and Races. There are few regions in the globe that have undergone more revolutions, have had more names assigned to them, and pro vinces more frequently confounded, than those of Syria. In its numerous revolutions the different races have become so inter mixed, that their original characters have been nearly lost altogether. Volney counts ten invasions of Syria in the course of 2,500 years that have introduced different foreign nations of a distinct origin. 1. The Assyrians of Nineveh, passing the Euphrates, about 750 years before the Christian Æra, sent Colonies into Syria, and in the course of sixty years, were masters of nearly the whole region north of Judea. 2. The Chaldeans of Babylon followed the Assyrians, obtained all the possessions of the latter in Syria, and completed the conquest of that country, with the exception of Tyre. 3.

Next came the Persians into Syria, under Cyrus, as con querors and masters. VOL. II. B 4. The Macedonian rule, under Alexander, succeeded the Persian dominion in Syria. 5. Then yielding to the arms of Pompey, Syria became a province of the Roman Empire. 6. Four centimes later, when the sons of Theodosius divided their vast patrimony, Syria was annexed to the Empire of Constantinople. 7. In 622 a.d., the hordes of Arabia, under the banners of Mohammed, ravaged various parts of Syria, and retained possession of some strongholds. 8. The Saracens of the Fatimite and Ommiade dynasties alternately established their power in Syria, and the unhappy country became the theatre of their wars for upwards of three centuries. 9. Turcoman hordes supervened on the ruins of the Saracen power, and obtained possession of several of the chief cities and towns of Syria. 10.

Next came the Crusaders, who obtained possession of four or five towns and cities of importance, and, in their turn, were dispossessed by the Mamelukes of Egypt, and Saracens of Damascus ; then suddenly the hordes of Tartary, under Timour, swept over Syria, ravaged and desolated the unhappy country, and disappeared as swiftly as they came, and were replaced by the Ottoman Turks, who have now been the ruthless masters and barbarous rulers of Syria, in all its extent, for upwards of four hundred years. The Romans gave the name Palœstina to the territory in cluded in Judea in its largest extent, to the exclusion however of Phœnicia, They divided Palestine into four regions, — Galilea, Samaria, Judea, and Perea. Palestine corresponds to the land of Canaan, and its name is probably a corruption from that of the Philistines, which occupied a region westward of this land of Canaan.

The name of Syria has been given to this region of Asia Minor, extending north and south (along the Mediterranean), from the Gulf of Alexandretta southward to Gaza, an extreme length of about three hundred miles ; and east and west, from the shores of the Mediterranean, westward, from Beirout to Palmyra, its greatest breadth of settled and permanently occu pied territory, of about one hundred and fifty miles. This name of Syria, transmitted to us from the Greeks, is an abridgment of that of Assyria, first adopted by the Ionians, who frequented their coasts, after Syria had become a province of Assyria. Abraham Or telius, in his " Synonymia Geographica" (4to. Aut. 1578), article Syria, tells us that this country was called by the Hebrews, Aram, as St. Jerome testifies. Homer called the people of this country Arimos ; and Strabo speaks of them in his day as being still designated Arimos.

Josephus calls them Syros Aramœos. Diodorus Siculus speaks of Syria Superior and Inferior. Pliny divides Palestine into several regions : — Palestina, Judea, Cœle, Phœnice, Damascena, Baby lonia, Mesopotamia, Sophene (or Sophanina), Comagene, Adia bene, and Antiochia.* Fuller, in his " Historie of the Holy War" (Book i. ch. 18), says that Palestine, in David's time, maintained a population of 1,300,000 men, besides women, children, and impotent per sons ; exclusive also of the tribes of Benjamin and Levi, as we are informed in Holy Writ. " Palestine (says Fuller) is bounded on the north by Mount Libanus ; west by the Medi terranean Sea ; south, by the wilderness of Paran, parting it from Egypt ; and the East, by the mountains of Gilead, and the river of Arnon. The soil of this region was transcendantly fruitful.

Palestine contained four provinces, Gallilee, Tracho nitis (beyond the Jordan), Judea, and Samaria." In the article on Palestine, Ortelius, in his " Synonymia Geographica," says, " Ptolomy, in his geography, refers to this region, which in the Scriptures is called Elisthem — Canaan — and the Promised Land." St. Jerome (in Locis Hebræicis) says, " It is to be borne in mind, in historical accounts of this • See Ortelius's " Synonymia Geographica," p. 308. B country, that Judea belongs to Palestine, but Galilea and Samaria belong to Phœnicia." " But now (continues Ortelius) by all Europeans, this country is called the Holy Land, in various terms belonging to different languages, but having the same significations. The Arabs designate Syria by the name Barr-el-Sham, which signifies, " The country to the left."

The promise made (a.m. 2023) to the father of the Jewish people, who came out of Ur, of the Chaldeas, and dwelt in Haran — "And the Lord said to Abram: Go forth, out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father's house, and come into the land which I will show to thee," was followed by the departure of Abram, his household and his people ; his passage through the Vale of Sichem, and his coming into the Land of Canaan. And there " The Lord appeared unto Abram, and said to him : To thy seed will I give this land." And passing on from thence to a mountain that was on the east side of Bethel, he there pitched his tent, Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east ; he built there an altar to the Lord, and called upon his name. And then, we are informed, he went forward, and proceeded to the south, and again returned to Bethel.

Abram dwelt henceforward in the land of Canaan, but Lot and his herdsmen, " Chose to himself the country about the Jordan, and he departed from the east."* Four hunched and seventy-five years passed over, " And the Lord spoke to Moses the same day (on which speaking to all Israel, he said to the wanderers of forty years in the desert, he commanded them to fulfil the law, ' that they might continue a long time in the land whither they were going over the Jordan to possess it.') Saying : Go up into this mountain, Abarim (that is to say, of the Passages), unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, over against Jericho, and see the land of Canaan, which I will deliver unto the children of Israel to possess, and die thou in the mountain. . . . Thou shalt see * Genesis ch. the land before thee, which I will give to the children of Israel, but thou shalt not enter into it."* " Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto Mount Nebo, to the top of Phasgah, over against Jericho, and the Lord showed him all the land of Galaad, as far as Dan."f In the Book of Joshua, chap. i. v. 2, 3, 4, we read that after the death of Moses, the Lord spoke unto Joshua, and said : — " Moses, my servant, is dead ; arise, and pass over this Jor dan, thou, and thy people with thee, unto the land which I will give unto the children of Israel.

" I will deliver unto you every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, as I have said to Moses. " From the desert and from Libanus, unto the great river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, unto the great sea towards the going down of the sun, shall be your border." These limits would include Phœnicia and its principal towns. " Beirout was included in the land of promise (observes Dr. Thompson, in " The Land and the Book," Lond. Ed. 8vo. 1860. p. 19.), but hardly in the land of possession, being one of the seaports of Phœnicia, a country that continued, after the settlement of the Israelites, to be inhabited by the remarkable people who gave it its name. The great size and importance of Beirout are quite modern, indeed within the last thirty years." It is not mentioned in Scripture under its present name.

Beirout, the ancient Berytus, the place supposed to have its name from the idol, Baal Berith, subsequently named Julia Felix, by Augustus, on account of the fertility and beauty of the adjoining country, still later was the chief place of residence of the Emir Faccardine. The Emir Faccardine, says Maundrell, was, in the reign of Sultan Marat (Sultan Amurath), the fourth Emir, or Prince of the Druses. Tyre, the principal city of Phœnicia, was founded by a colony from the neighbouring city of Sidon — as Larcher sup- * Deuteronomy ch. xxxii. w. 48, 49, 52. t rbid, ch, xxxiv, v. 1. poses, for the event was not certainly known— 1690 years before the Christian era (Chron. d'Herodote, cap. p. 131). The prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who flourished for 600 to 700 years before our era, represent Tyre at those periods as our Macaulays, McCullocks, and Allisons, now ex patiate on the unequalled greatness, and commerce, and wealth of London, as a city of unrivalled trade and opulence, whose "merchants were princes, and her traffickers the honourable of the earth."

And lo ! all that remains of the greatness, and the commerce, and the riches, and the merchant princes, and the honourable of the earth, who were the traffickers of Phœnicia, is a miserable hamlet, with a few squalid rayahs and wretched Arabs for its inhabitants. I have visited many wrecks and ruins of ancient capitals, pitiful remains of former renowned cities that were in their time of prosperity great emporiums of trade ; vast cities, in fact, that at one period absorbed the commerce of the then known world, and there were gloom and desolation, squalor and penury there in abundance ; but nowhere have I felt the overwhelming influ ence of depression, of this kind of decay and death of all power, activity, movement, and prosperity, so much as at Sour, the squalid representative of her ancient Tyre with all her ships, colonies, and commerce ; better far encamp amidst the ruins of Tamor or Thebes, where no human being is to be seen, where there is no interruption to the solemn silence of the place, and where the stillness of death has something of a sacred compo sure in it, than to be reminded of the awful change that has come over the place and its people by such remnants of human ity as the miserable hovels of Sour send forth to startle the traveller who wanders over the site of ancient Tyre.

" In ancient times Sidon underwent no small share of the vicissitudes incidental to Syrian cities of importance. " In 1629 the last act of barbarity towards unoffending Sidon (we are told by Chasseaud in his History of the Druses), was perpetrated by the Egyptian Mamelukes under the order of the then Sultan of Egypt, who to the end that it might no more afford a shelter to or a favourite resort of Christians, caused Sidon to be destroyed ; and the pretty gardens and dwelling houses were laid waste by the hands of the ruthless Egyptian soldiers or razed to the ground with fire. Few cities lay claim to greater antiquity than Sidon ; it is supposed to have been founded by Sidon, the eldest son* of Canaan, and if this be the case, it is now nigh four thousand years old. A Phœnician colony after wards existed at Sidon.

From this date Sidon fell successively under Saracen, Sel jukian, Turkish and Egyptian Sultans, till at the date above recorded, five hundred and sixty-five years ago, the last act of spoliation was committed; and in 1841 Sidon, in common with Syria and Palestine, again fell under the sway of the Ottoman empire, after having been ruled by Ibraham Pasha for a few brief years. " Sidon is now computed to contain upwards of twelve thousand inhabitants, two-thirds of which are Mohammedans, the rest Christians and Jews ; the Christians being by far the most numerous of the two. They still continue to be a very in dustrious people, excelling in the manufacture of silk scarfs and gaily ornamented boshias, a species of wide handkerchiefs bound round the caps of the men, partly to protect their heads from the sun, and partly for ornament's sake.

" Beirout and Sidon may be said to be the sea-port towns of the country of the Druses." Arnold in his " Lectures on History," justly observes, that the physical geograjfliy of a country exercises a vast influence over the destiny of its inhabitants. There is no country in the world more peculiar in respect to its physical geography than Syria, and especially that southern part of it which includes Palestine. The observation of Arnold applies to the whole region of Syria from north to south, from its northern frontier, the line from the Gulf of Alexandretta, eastward to the Euphrates, and along the Mediterranean, Beirout? Sidon, and Tyre, and the Lebanon range eastward of them, then from Mount Carmel to Ascalon, within which parallels Pales tine is included. In a popular modern work by a reverend professor of Oxford, that treats of Syria — " Sinai and Palestine in connexion with their history."

By the Rev. A. N. Stanley A.B. Canon of Can terbury (8vo. London, 1856), we find the singular features of the physical geography of Syria pointed out and their conformity strikingly exhibited, with the character of the people principally concerned in its history, and the destiny of those separated from surrounding nations and preserved from them till the time appointed for their deliverance. " In Palestine (says Mr. Stanley), as in Greece, every traveller is struck with the smallness of the territory. He is surprised, even after all that he has heard, at passing, in one long day from the capital of Judea to that of Samaria or of seeing within eight hours three such spots as the Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jeru salem. The breadth of the country from the Jordan to the sea is rarely more than fifty miles.

Its length from Dan to Beer sheba is about a hunched and eighty miles. So that the main breadth of Palestine from east to west is estimated at 50 miles, and its length from north to south 180 miles. " The time is now gone by when the grandeur of a country is measured by its size, or the diminutive extent of an illustrious people otherwise than enhance the magnitude of what they have done." The contrast between the littleness of Palestine and the vast extent of the Empires which hung upon its northern and southern extremities is rarely absent from the mind of the Pro phets and Psalmists. It helps them to exalt their sense of the favour of God, towards their land by magnifying their little hills, and dry torrent-beds into an equality with the giant hills of Lebanon, and Herman, and the sea like rivers of Mesopotamia.

It also fosters the consciousness that they were not always to be restrained within these earthly barriers. " This place is too straight for me : give me place where I may dwell." Nor is it only the smallness but the narrowness of the territory which is remarkable. From almost every high point of the country its whole breadth is visible, from the long wall of the Moab Hills on the east to the Mediterranean on the west.* Here we find the physical geography of a country fitted as it were for a nation secluded and set apart by Providence from the rest of the world. Between the people of Israel in the Holy Land and the great empires of Assyria and Babylon, which rose on the plains of Mesopotamia, the cities of the Euphrates, and the Tigris, the rulers and corruptors in their days of pride and prosperity of all the kingdoms then known in the world : the Eastern wilderness intervened.

The wandering tribes of the desert, the Nomade, Turcomans, and Bedouins, hung on the eastern frontier of the Holy Land. And on the southern frontier, they and the desert of Arabia interposed between Palestine and Egypt. The western boundary of the Holy Land was the Mediterranean. .Palestine was like an oasis in the wilderness, in the midst of plunderers indeed, but secured by her mountain barriers from the predatory hordes of the desert. The whole geological structure of Palestine is limestone, with a few exceptions in the valley of the Jordan. The rocky cha racter of the whole country has its bearings on historical events. " As a general rule," says Professor Stanley, " Palestine is not only a mountainous country, but a mass of mountains rising from a level on the sea-coast on the west, and from a level de sert on the east, only cut asunder by the valley of the Jordan from north to south, and at the valley of Jezreel from east to west.

The result of this peculiarity is, that not merely the hill tops but the valleys and the plains of the interior of Palestine, both east and west, are themselves so high above the level of the sea as to partake of all the main characteristics of mountainous districts and scenery, "f * "Sinai and Palestine," by the Rev. A. B. Stanley, p. 114. t Professor Stanley, " Sinai and Palestine," p. 126. Jerusalem is 2,200 feet above the level of the sea. Bethlehem 2,500 „ „ Mount of Olives 2,396 „ „ Hebron 2,800 „ „ Lebanon is the birthplace of the four rivers of Judea and Phœ nicia, of Antioch and Damascus ; of these, the Orontes, the river of the Greek kingdom of Antioch and Seleucia is of most celebrity in history. The Litany, or the " Syrian River," is theLeontes of modern geography, a name perhaps erroneously given to it.

The Barada is the ancient Abana or Pharpar of the Old Testament, This region of the Lebanon was the border land of sacred and common history, " the scene of the oldest traditions and civili zations of the world." According to Professor Stanley, "the meeting point of all the religions of western Asia." The ancient city of Ephron the Hittite, the first home of Abraham and the Patriarchs in Syria, Hebron was the nearest seat of civilized life, not only of Juclah but of Palestine. Of the Jordan with its manifold peculiarities, that river which throughout the length of Palestine, " the artery of the whole country is unique on the surface of the globe," Mr. Stanley observes : — " The ranges are remarkable of the Lebanon, the courses of the Orantes, the Leontes, and the Barada (the Pharpar of the Old Testament, the river of the Syrian kingdom of Damascus) are curious, but the deep depression of the Jordan has absolutely no parallel.

" No other valley in the world presents such extraordinary physical features, none has been the subject of such various theories as to its origin and character. How far this strange conformation of the Holy Land has had any ex tensive influence on its history may be doubtful. But it is perhaps worth observing at the outset, that we are in a country, of which the geography and the history, each claims to be singular of its kind : — the history, by its own records, uncon scious, if one may so say, of the physical peculiarity, the geo graphy, of the discoveries of modern science, wholly without regard, perhaps even indifferent or hostile, to the claims of the history. Such a coincidence may be accidental ; but at least it serves to awaken the curiosity, and strike the imagination ; at least, it lends dignity to the country, where the earth and the man are thus alike objects of wonder and investigation.

It is around and along this deep fissure that the hills of western and eastern Palestine spring up, forming the link be tween the high group of Lebanon on the north, and the high group of Sinai on the south : forming the mountain-bridge, or isthmus, between the ocean of the Assyrian desert, and the ocean (as it seemed to the ancient world) of the Mediter ranean, or " Great Sea," of the west.* An anonymous writer, whom I know to be a Protestant clergyman, in a publication of no slight merit, entitled " Some Strictures upon that Portion of ' Sinai and Palestine,' by the Rev. A. P. Stanley (" By a Recent Traveller There" Lon. 1857,) makes the following very just and valuable observations, applicable indeed to statements put forth by nine-tenths of our modern travellers in Syria. " The Oxford Professor (the Rev. A. P. Stanley) appears ever anxious to impress upon his readers his opinion of the superiority of Western Christianity — that portion of it which, we presume, he would term Protestant — over that form of doctrine and practise which obtains in the east.

This is not only re markable in the work under notice, but likewise peeps out of the author's introductory professional lecture delivered in the University. Perhaps Utah and the Mormon colony, that most consistent of all sects, claiming and exercising the right of private judgment, and most protesting of all Protestants, was not present to his mind when Professor Stanley wrote of our holy religion the words — ' Which has attained its full dimen sions only in proportion as it has travelled farther from its original source' — or — ' as rising in the east, yet finding its * " Sinai and Palestine," by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A. p. 111. London, 1856. highest degree of development and fulfilment in the west " (pp. 155, 456). The question involved in these quotations is too large for discussion in this place.

To these, however, together with the assertion that ' Christianity has no home on earth, least of all in its own birthplace,' we can only state our non adhesion, believing them, as we do, to arise from an un-Catholic and Sectarian spirit, and from a narrow and bigoted system, which, unable to sympathise with anything in a Sister Church that accords not to its peculiar Shibboleth ; a system and a spirit which predeterminately objects to everything in doc trine and discipline not fashioned to its own meagre form ; and which ends in a depreciation of Christ's holy Church in the east, and in an Anti-Christian admiration of the followers of the false prophet of Mecca." For these words of a high principled Christian philosophy, full of wisdom and charity, and evidential of a tolerant spirit, enlightened, enlarged, and improved by travel, every intelligent Christian reader, whatever may be his creed, will feel grateful.

The different races of Syria, or rather, the mixture of different nations settled in that country, may be divided into three classes : — 1. The descendants of the people conquered by the Arabs — namely, the Greeks of the Lower Empire. 2. The descendants of the Saracen conquerors. 3. The descendants of the Turcoman tribes, settled in Syria, during the period of the Seljukian domination, and the present rulers, the Ottoman Turks. With respect to the Greeks and Arabs, Volney sub-divides them thus : — " Firstly — The Greeks who are called Orthodox, and who are separated from the Roman Catholic Church. Secondly — Latin Greeks, re-united to that communion. Thirdly — Maronites, or Greeks ofthesectof the Monk Maron, formerly independent of the two communions, but at present united to the latter. " The Arabs must be divided into : " Firstly — The proper descendants of the conquerors, who have greatly intermixed their blood, and are considerably the most numerous.

" Secondly — The Metoualis, distinguished from these by their religious opinions. " Thirdly — The Druses, distinct likewise from the same reason. " Fourthly — The Ansarians, who are also descended from the Arabs. " To these people, who are the cultivators and settled inhabitants of Syria, must still be added three other wandering or pas toral tribes, viz., the Turkomen, the Kurds, and the Bedouin Arabs. " Such are the different races dispersed over the country, between the sea and the desert, from Gaza to Alexandretta. " In this enumeration it is remarkable that the ancient in habitants have no remaining representative ; their distinguish ing character is lost and confounded in that of the Greeks, who in fact, by a continued residence from the days of Alexander, have had sufficient time entirely to take place of the ancient people ; the country alone, and a few traits of manners and customs, preserve the vestiges of distant ages."* " The general language of Syria is the Arabic tongue.

M. Niebuhr reports, upon hearsay, that the Syriac is still used in some villages of the mountains ; but though I interrogated, on this subject, several monks, who are perfectly well acquainted with the country, I have not been able to learn anything like it. I have been told only, that in the towns of Maloula and Sidnaia, near Damascus, they speak a dialect so corrupted, that it is difficult to be understood. But this difficulty proves nothing, since in Syria, as in all Arabian countries, the dialects vary at every place. The Syriac may be, therefore, regarded as a dead language ; for the Maronites, who have preserved it in their liturgy, and in their mass, understand very little of it, while * Volney, " Travels in Syria and Egypt." Ed. 8vo. 1788. vol. i. p. 222. they recite them. We may assert the same of the Greek.

Among the monks and schismatic priests, there are very few who have any knowledge of it, unless they have made it their particular study, in the islands of the Archipelago ; besides, we know that the modern Greek is so corrupted, that it would no more enable a man to understand Demosthenes, than the Italian to read Cicero. The Turkish language is only used in Syria by the military, persons in office, and the Turkoman hordes. Some of the natives learn it, as the Turks learn Arabic, to facilitate their dealings with strangers ; but the jDronunciation and accent of these two languages, have so little analogy, that they always continue foreign to each other."* The descendants of the various races of the inhabitants of Syria with few exceptions, are dispersed over the country. The Greeks, especially those of the orthodox community.