Massacre of Armenians by Police, Softas and Kurds.

Bleeding Armenia

ITS HISTORY AND HORRORS
Under the Curse of Islam

BY Rev. A. W. WILLIAMS, of Chicago
For twenty years a close student of Missionary work in the East—Syria, Turkey and Persia
AND
Dr. M. S. GABRIEL
President of the Armenian Patriotic Alliance, New York
CONTAINING ALSO THE VIEWS OF
HON. WM. E. GLADSTONE
ON THE TURKISH ATROCITIES
THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY
ON ENGLAND’S ATTITUDE
AND
EDWARD A. FREEMAN, the Historian
ON THE EASTERN QUESTION

Fully and Appropriately Illustrated.
PUBLISHERS’ UNION
1896

Copyright 1896
BY
A. W. Williams

PREFACE.

In offering to the public this volume on Bleeding Armenia under the Curse of Islam the writer does not seek to harrow the feelings of sensitive readers by the recital of blood-curdling outrages, tortures, murders, and butcherings; neither does he aim to discuss at any length the involved problems of the Eastern Question, but he does definitely seek to awaken interest in the history and fate of what may truly be called the Martyr Nation of the World.

It is not the isolated fact that Armenia is now undergoing a most terrible persecution, that fifty thousand or sixty thousand helpless men, women and children have already suffered death in every form which the most depraved nature, the most cruel instincts, the most bitter and fanatical hatred could devise, that so deeply arouses us; but the fact that for more than a thousand years this has been the bitter and bloody story of her wrongs—this is what staggers us.

That the reader may have some clearer conceptions of the present terrible situation in Armenia and of the causes which make her general condition one most deplorable to contemplate, its early history, civilization and conversion to Christianity is briefly sketched, and attention is called to the fact that its very geographical position has for many centuries made it the highway for the contending armies of the East and West.

Armenia has been the battle ground where diverse systems of religion and civilization have fought for supremacy. Its fate has always been to suffer, whichever power was for the time victorious. It has been sometimes ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone.

The rise of that alien system of religion which is the most bitter and relentless persecutor of the Christian faith the world has ever seen is accurately sketched, and careful attention given to it because Christian people believe it to be true that the cause of the fiercest and most vindictive hatred of the Turk to Greek, Bulgarian or Armenian is primarily his loyalty to Mohammed and his hatred of Jesus as the Christ.

It were not in the heart of humanity to kindle the passions into a flame so fierce as to consume every element of mercy and compassion, unless these were set on fire by fiendish fanaticism or religious bigotry.

In this light these persecutions are but the irregular outbreak of that spirit of opposition which will never cease so long as Islam has power to draw the sword. From the hour that the Ottoman Turk was securely seated on that eastern throne of the Cæsars, there never has been peace, and there never can be while he holds the keys to the gateway of nations.

Without laborious disquisition, with only a sincere desire to let history tell its own story, some phases of the struggle for place, preëminence and power between England and Russia, which form the heart of the Eastern Question are also presented.

No one can be in the slightest doubt as to which side of the Turkish-Armenian question the policy of England leans. There is no question as to the fact that England has been the firmest friend to Turkey for more than sixty years, and that the more she has feared the growing power of Russia the more resolutely she has stood by the Porte in spite of the atrocities which have marked the frequent persecutions of the Christian races under the sway of Islam.

Her purely selfish and commercial “interests” have caused the English government to be deaf to the cry of the decimated Bulgarians, and of Armenians to-day. The part that England played in elaborating the great treaties of Paris and of Berlin which controlled the issues of the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish wars stamps the character of her interests in the affairs of Turkey.

There is thus furnished in this historical data a broad ground on which public opinion in this country may call upon Great Britain in this hour of remorseless cruelty that she shall fulfil the treaty obligations which she most solemnly and publicly accepted and assumed and demand of the Porte at the mouth of shotted guns if need be, that the rights of Christian Armenians shall be defended and maintained by the whole power of the Turkish Empire.

The situation in Armenia is given with considerable fulness, though volumes could not contain a complete account of the sufferings that this long-doomed race has endured under the Curse of Islam.

The position that our government should occupy is that of high moral equity, the insistence upon the preservation of common rights of humanity irrespective of race or creed.

The immediate duty lying at our doors is to assist in relieving the distress even unto starvation, which hundreds of thousands of Armenians are now enduring. Many will perish before aid can reach them. What is to be done must be done quickly.

This book while making little pretension to literary polish is the result of wide historical research and has been carefully written and edited, and is now cast upon the great tide of public opinion with the hope that it may stimulate permanent interest in the great problems which are at issue in the conflict between Christianity and Islam—that it may reach and move the springs of deepest sympathy for suffering Armenians; that it may rouse a more vigorous moral indignation against such crime and cruelty, and thereby assist in creating such a just and righteous public sentiment that our government may take such a stand as shall tell speedily for the bettering of the conditions of human existence in far off Armenia.

Thus confiding in the kindly consideration of a generous public, I send forth this book on the mission to which it is hereby dedicated, viz:—to plead the cause of Bleeding Armenia which is being done to death under the Curse of Islam.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

[EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA].

A Martyr Nation—Need of a Voice—Historical Annals at Nineveh—Abgar’s Letter to Jesus of Nazareth—Acceptance of Christianity—Council of Nice—Persian Conquests—Bible Translated—Great Persecutions—Dying for the Faith—Magi Driven Out—Saracens in Armenia—Fearful Tortures—Burned Alive—Bogha the Tyrant—Sultan of Turkey—Islam or Death—Yussuf the Persian—Great Horrors Repeated—Starvation—Peace Returns 21

CHAPTER II.

[THE RISE OF ISLAM].

Arabia—Mecca—Idolatry—Mohammed’s Birth—Carlyle on Islamism—The Hegira—Battle of Beder—Mecca Captured—Death of Mohammed—Golden Era of the Saracens—Khaled at Damascus—City Captured—Jerusalem Besieged—Capitulates—Persia Conquered—Egypt Won in a Day—Constantinople Besieged 44

CHAPTER III.

[THE STORY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE].

Origin—Jerusalem Captured by the Turks—Peter the Hermit—Pope Urban—Crusade of the Mob—Walter the Penniless—Battle of Nicomedia—300,000 Perished in all—Crusade of the Kings and Nobles—Godfrey of Bouillon—Europe Moves Westward—Antioch—Jerusalem Captured July 14th, 1099—Godfrey Elected King 72

CHAPTER IV.

[THE GREAT TARTAR INVASIONS].

The Turcomans—Seljuks—Persia Conquered—Armenia Wasted—140,000 Slain—Ani with 1,001 Churches Falls—Awful Slaughter—Asia Minor Ravaged—Emperor of Constantinople Defeated—Damascus Falls—Saladin—Jerusalem Capitulates—Silence on the Coast—Jenghiz Khan—Armenia in Great Distress—Turks in Europe—Tamerlane—Armenia again in Torture—Pyramids of Human Skulls—Death of Tamerlane 104

CHAPTER V.

[THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE].

Ottoman Empire Rising—Danger to Europe—Mohammed II. the Conqueror—Fortress Built at Gallipoli—Emperor Alarmed—Europe Indifferent—First Great Siege with Artillery—Seven Weeks Bombardment—Final Assault—50,000 Ottomans Fall—Charge of the Janissaries—Constantine Died at His Post—Church of St. Sophia is turned into a Mosque—Islam sits on the Throne of Christianity 135

CHAPTER VI.

[THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE].

Four Centuries of Misrule—Chios, 40,000 Slain—Christians in Turkey Persecuted—Russia Demands their Protection—France and England against Russia—Czar’s Army Crosses into Moldavia—Sultan Declares War—Siege of Sebastopol—Treaty of Paris 1856—Turkish Loans—Revolt in Servia—Andrassy Note—Reforms Promised—Bulgarian Massacres—England Horror Struck—Gladstone on the Massacres—15,000 Butchered—Russia Arms for the Deliverance of the Christians 159

CHAPTER VII.

[THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR].

War Declared—Crossing the Danube—Siege of Plevna—Skobeleff’s Gallant Charge—Third Siege—Plevna Reduced and Surrenders—Alexander at the Danube—Shipka Pass—The Valley of Roses—Turkey Conquered—Adrianople—San Stefano—Berlin Treaty—Russia Robbed of her Victories 185

CHAPTER VIII.

[THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID].

Questions of Policy—Palace Rule—Alarm of the Porte—Shrewd Diplomacy—Playing off the Powers—Balance of Power—Reforms Promised—Never Fulfilled 213

CHAPTER IX.

[PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE].

The First Chapter in Turkish Missions—Have Missions been a Failure—Modern Triumphs of the Gospel 250

CHAPTER X.

[THE KURDS AND ARMENIANS].

Territory—Origin—Occupation—Character—Agriculture—Robbers—Cruelty of Warfare—Language—Homes—Women—Ruined Castles—Churches 277

CHAPTER XI.

[THE REIGN OF TERROR—SASSOUN] 303

CHAPTER XII.

[THE REIGN OF TERROR—TREBIZOND AND ERZEROUM] 341

CHAPTER XIII.

[THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH] 360

CHAPTER XIV.

[THE REIGN OF TERROR—HARPOOT AND ZEITOUN] 383

CHAPTER XV.

[RELIEF WORK IN ARMENIA].

Mission Stations—The Christian Herald—Red Cross Society—Miss Clara Barton 400

CHAPTER XVI.

[THE CURSE OF ISLAM].

Despotic in Government—Intolerant in Religion—Evils of Polygamy—Degradation of Women—Ignorance—Cruelty of Officials—Extortion—Universal Distress—No Advance Possible—The Turk never Improves—Islam—Worse and Worse—Its Rule is against Humanity 423

CHAPTER XVII.

[THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY].

England’s Inactivity—Her Solemn Obligation—Treaty of San Stefano—Berlin—Convention with Turkey—Cyprus—Occupation of Egypt—Position of the English Government—Difficulties in the Way—But the Suffering Awful—Freeman—Gladstone 433

CHAPTER XVIII.

[AMERICA’S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE].

Possible Solution—Universal Arbitration—Constantinople a Free City—Europe Free—Armenia’s Sorrows Healed—The Dawning of the Twentieth Century 470

APPENDIX.

[DESCRIPTION OF ILLUSTRATIONS] 495

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MAPS.

INTRODUCTION.

At no time of the world’s history have there ever been two months so rich in grand tragedy as the Armenian period of November and December, 1895. It is not the enormous number of the killed nor the frightful suffering of the survivors that give this period its unique character, but the fact that the great majority of the 75,000 or more of the massacred Christians had a free choice to make between life and death, and they chose death. Civilized humanity is bound to take a supreme interest in the action of those heroes and heroines who sacrificed all the interests of existence to their moral ideal of life,—in those women who, in order to escape from the outrage of a bestial soldiery, threw themselves into the river Euphrates and were drowned,—in those virgins who, captured by the brutal Moslems, received twenty, thirty sword cuts in defending their honor,—in those men who, when threatened with instant death if they would not embrace Islam, answered, “we are ready to be immolated for the love of Christ,” and they were slaughtered like sheep. The historian and the dramatic writer, the poet and the painter will soon follow the diplomatist and the journalist to take up the matter, and the Christian peoples of all lands will continue to receive now a thrill of pious admiration, now a tremendous shock at the recital of these events.

In fact, the Armenian occurrences have two sides, one glorious, and one of hellish darkness. They bring out in the most striking fashion, the infernal genius of the Mahommedan religion. The Moslems, high and low, exhibited such foul sensuality, such satanic cruelty and such delight in ferocity of which even the savages are incapable. And these qualities are precisely those which Mohammedanism cultivates.

The Armenian crisis served also as a test to bring out the actual degree of European morality. Alas! who would have believed a year ago that the Christian powers of Europe would permit the Turk to attempt before their eyes the extermination of a Christian nation and church by wholesale massacre and forced conversions? Such is, nevertheless, the dreadful revelation of the year. They did not prevent the most colossal crime of the century, nor did they punish the criminal who by their mercy alone had the power of committing such a crime; moreover, they had the front, at least some of them, to declare that, for reasons of high diplomacy, they were ready to support the authority of the monstrous criminal over his victims.

What makes this infamous course of the Christian governments the more ominous, is the fact that the Christian peoples and churches did not seem to be shocked. They stifled their indignation and swallowed their own protests if they felt or uttered any, and we see no nation whatever boiling with the sacred rage of revolting conscience.

The British government and press have tried hard to show that England has done all she could in order to protect the Armenians. Russia has yet her national conscience very imperfectly developed, Germany’s conscience is nearly dead under the curse of her success against France. It is only the government of Great Britain that feels the obligation of executing itself. But its failure in protecting Armenia is not merely the forced consequence of the course of the other powers in the matter, as it would like to make the public believe. England had sinned against Armenia during all the long period of 18 years before the matters came to a crisis. She had been, in 1878, the champion of the Turk against Russia, and in order to justify her support of a Moslem power which had been the curse of its Christian subjects, Great Britain pledged herself by the Cyprus Convention to protect the Christians against Turkish misrule as she would protect Turkish territory against Russian aggression.

Did England fulfill her solemn obligation toward Armenia? No! The British consuls in Armenia did report to the government that the Turkish authorities and Kurdish beys and Hamidieh troops continued to oppress the Armenians just as before, nay, worse than before,—that their worthiest leaders, bishops, professors, influential men were being exiled, the benevolent associations scattered, the useful books censured, the peasantry ground to dust, and hundreds of innocent men flung into prison and tortured—but the British Government did not move.

Let there be no misunderstanding as to my meaning. I do not mean England remained absolutely indifferent, but she never acted in time, and with adequate energy. She remained always behind the times. She brought to bear upon the Sultan a pressure of 1,000 tons when a weight of 10,000 was required, and used 10,000 when 100,000 was needed, with the result that Abdul-Hamid, instead of coming to his senses, grew bolder after each successful resistance. With trifling concessions he pushed his way and had the Kurdish brigands organized into imperial troops, acquitted Moossa Beg, enjoyed the Erzeroum massacre, undertook the more important massacre of Sassoon, and after all, the crowning massacres of 1895. Had England insisted upon Moossa Beg’s being hung, the Erzeroum slaughter would not have been allowed, and if the leaders of the Erzeroum carnage at least were punished, the greater devastation of the Sassoon province would have been prevented. Evidently it was much easier for the British government to successfully coerce the Sultan for the exemplary punishment of the first criminals than later to check the greater tides of sweeping evils. To judge aright, we must consider the whole course of the British in the matter and not merely what happened at the critical moment when the task was so much harder. And even then, namely in October last, did England show herself equal to the requirements of the crisis? Whatever Lord Salisbury and his party organs may say, he must have many times since avowed to himself that he did not act then as he could and ought to. He lacked courage and now the prestige of Great Britain has sunk to a miserably low degree in the Orient.

For the present the Sultan reigns in Constantinople and the Czar governs. The situation is evidently an unsettled one, as Hamid’s suicidal policy has prostrated the whole country, and a radical change is to come in the near future. The final doom of the Ottoman Empire can not delay much longer. The world expects to see some sudden developments in the affairs of the East. The fate of agonizing Armenia will be decided, and the relations of the Christian with the Moslem world will enter on a new phase.

This book therefore, is devoted to “Bleeding Armenia,” Under the Rule of Islam; will touch problems of the highest importance and command general interest. It can not give a definite solution to the multitudinous questions raised by the condition of Armenia, but will contribute to bring them to public comprehension and right judgment.

M. S. Gabriel.

Great and Little Ararat, From the Northeast.

BLEEDING ARMENIA.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA.

“Gather you, gather you angels of God

Chivalry, Justice and Truth:

Come, for the earth has grown cursed and old

Come down and renew us her youth!

Freedom, self-sacrifice, mercy and love,

Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above

To the Day of the Lord at Hand.”

“Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold

While the Lord of all ages is here?

True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,

And those who can suffer can dare

Each past age of gold was an iron age too,

And the meanest of saints may find work to do

In the Day of the Lord at Hand.”

Kingsley.

The history of Armenia is a chapter of horrors unequalled by the history of any other nation under the sun. The record should arouse interest in the fate of this ancient and most remarkable people, who have suffered the most cruel outrages—the victims of the most horrible crimes that have ever stained the pages of history with tears and blood. As we read the heart rending story of their awful fate, we can scarcely wonder that a heartbroken mother, as she gazed on the lifeless form of a beloved daughter whom she had sought in vain to preserve from a ruffian band of Turks, should cry out in the frenzy of her grief that God himself had gone mad, and that maniacs and demons incarnate were stalking through the earth.

Where is there a voice with passion and fire enough in it to arouse the hearts of Christian America to demand, in the name of a common humanity, that the massacres and outrages of the fierce and fanatical Turks shall cease? In what nobler cause did ever Christian knight draw sword, or a nation ever spend treasure and blood.

Ours is not the terrible responsibility of the British nation which has suffered commercial considerations to outweigh frenzied appeals for justice and toleration, but it is a weight of shame that will be equally hard to bear in the Day of the Lord, if we, the mightiest Christian nation on the face of the globe, in the darkest night of religious persecution shall put forth no effective hand to deliver this most ancient Christian race from the clutch of fiendish fanaticism.

The cause of Armenia is founded on facts which exalt this people to the loftiest heights of martyrdom and have made them literally for eighteen centuries “The Blazing Torch of Asia.” Her tortures will not cease until the mailed hand of Christendom shall smite into the dust the power of the Prophet. The blood of probably a million martyrs to Christianity has drenched the soil of Armenia. Its fair proportions have been curtailed by conqueror after conqueror, its fields pillaged, its homes devastated and at no time has this devoted nation been without the presence of the sword suspended by the single hair. Embrace the creed of Islam, or the scimitar of the fanatic Moslem severs the hair which separates an existence of fear from the martyr’s crown, is forever in the thoughts of every Armenian.

The historians of this people of Armenia claim for them a very ancient heritage—a career which though narrow, is one of thrilling interest.

About the year 150 B. C., by the might of conquest a Parthian King came to the throne of Armenia; and wishing to know something of the origin of the race and of the history of the country, and not finding anything satisfactory in Armenia, he sent the most learned man in all his dominions to consult the old Chaldean manuscripts and tablets that were to be found in the Royal Archives of Nineveh. Every facility was afforded him in his search, and among the archives he found a manuscript written in the Greek characters with this label: “This book containing the annals of ancient history was translated from Chaldean into Greek by order of Alexander the Great.” He extracted from that the history of Armenia as written and continuing it down to his own times presented it to the King, who ordered it preserved with great care in his treasury.

The principal sources of their national history rests upon the works of a celebrated Armenian writer of the fifth century, who claims to have derived his information from the above mentioned manuscript. They derive their parentage from Gomer, the son of Japhet, or rather from Haig, a grandson of Gomer, who moving northward from the plains of Shinar, settled with his families and followers in the country round about Ararat. This interesting story, which touches in many points the authentic histories of Nineveh and Babylon, cannot here be told; but we hastily sketch the succeeding eras in the ever fateful history of this primitive race of people.

The grandson of the founder of this Parthian race of kings, Ardashes I., brought all Persia under his sway, and then turned westward with an army so vast he did not know their number. He subdued the whole of Asia Minor—passed the Hellespont, conquered Thrace and Greece, destroying many cities. Returning to Armenia, he planned another expedition into Persia in which he was defeated, wounded, and in dying, exclaimed, “Alas, how transient and unsatisfactory is glory.”

A little later an immense army of allied Persians and Armenians invade Palestine and Phenicia, the Roman armies being unable to stop their progress. For an immense bribe of one thousand talents of gold, Antigonus secures their assistance in dethroning Hyrcanus and establishes himself upon the throne of Jerusalem.

In the second year of Abgar (or Agbarus) (B. C. 3,) a decree was issued by Augustus that all the kingdoms acknowledging the Roman dominion should be taxed, and that statues of himself should be erected in the religious temples of every nation. Herod, King of the Jews, puffed up with pride, also sent statues of himself to be placed near those of Augustus. Abgar refusing to comply with this request, Herod sent a mighty force against him into Armenia, but the invaders were met and defeated with great loss. Abgar now determined to shake off the Roman yoke, and built the city of Edessa and strongly fortified it. Accused to Tiberius, the succeeding Emperor, of inciting the Persians to rebellion, he sent messengers to justify himself.

During their stay in Palestine they heard all the wonders which were related to them of the extraordinary power of Christ. To gratify their curiosity they went to Jerusalem, witnessed the miracles performed by our Lord, and then returned to Armenia. Abgar, listening to their accounts, became satisfied that Jesus was the Son of God, and immediately sent back his messengers to Jerusalem with a letter to Christ in which acknowledging Him to be the true and only Son of God, he says: “Therefore, now I have written and besought Thee to visit me, and to heal the disease with which I am afflicted. I have also heard that the Jews murmur against Thee and are plotting to injure Thee; I have, however, a very small but noble state which is sufficient for us both.”

The authenticity of this letter and the answer which Jesus sent in reply has been questioned: but truth is often stranger than fiction. Eusebius (Ecc’l Hist. Bk. I., chap. 13), declares that in the public registers of the city of Edessa these letters and records of the transactions following them were still to be found in his day.

The story is that St. Thomas, directed by our Lord, wrote a reply to this letter, promising to send to them an apostle after His resurrection. Accordingly Thaddeus was afterwards sent to Edessa, where King Abgar was instructed and baptized.

Many believed and were baptized. So gladly was the truth received, that tradition says that Bartholomew and Jude also were sent into Armenia, but later rulers apostatizing from the faith, began a fierce persecution. Bartholomew was crucified, the others also suffered martyrdom with multitudes of their disciples.

Thus early was the infant church of Armenia baptized in its own blood, and for scarcely a generation has its blood ever ceased to flow. It is the martyr church and race of Christendom. Its persecutors have literally bathed themselves in the blood of the slain.

Witness the horrible barbarity of a Persian Governor of Armenia in 1038, who, upon the capture of a city which had dared to rebel against their oppressors, was so wild with rage that he ordered all the Greek and Armenian captives to be slain; and when a trench that had been dug was filled with the blood of his butchered victims he satiated his revenge by bathing in it.

In 286 A. D., there was a revival of Christianity in Armenia. Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, restored Tiridates to his throne, driving out the Persian usurper. With Tiridates there came from Rome Gregory the Illuminator. By his preaching of the Gospel the whole nation was converted to Christianity; and in the year 302 A.D., on the occasion of his going to Cæsarea Gregory was consecrated Archbishop of Armenia by Leontius the Metropolitan. Later, when the news reached Armenia that the Emperor Constantine was a convert, Tiridates and St. Gregory undertook the journey to Rome, when an alliance was solemnly agreed upon between the two nations. At the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, the church of Armenia was represented by bishops who brought back with them the Creed of the Fathers. Thus the true light began to shine in fuller splendor in the midst of Cimmerian darkness.

The Armenians seem to have been born for sorrow. Their provinces were the highways of hostile nations. The armies of Rome and of Persia passing through always carried desolation and ruin with them. Compelled to yield to the demands of one conquering army, they became objects of vengeance to the other when the former had withdrawn. In the year 369, Shabuh, King of Persia, sent a large army against Arshag of Armenia, who, being caught in a fortress which could not stand a siege, determined to deliver himself to the Persian general with a view of pleading his cause before the king.

Upon his arrival in Persia a palace was given him for his residence and that of his court. But Shabuh immediately compelled him to write to his Queen to join him in Persia; an order was also sent to the chiefs and nobles to proceed with their Queen to the Persian capital.

The Armenian chiefs, alarmed at the order, begged to be excused, but the King being inexorable, they attacked the troops he had sent for their escort, put them to flight, and then fled into distant provinces. The Queen also taking the treasures of the royal palace retired to a strong fortress and wrote to Bab, a royal prince held as hostage at Constantinople, to raise an army of Greeks and hasten to the rescue of his father.

Shabuh angry at these events caused Arshag to be loaded with chains and cast into the castle of Oblivion, where, once immured, no one was ever heard of again.

The King of Persia sent a powerful army against the Queen headed by two apostate Armenians. They found the country in a most deplorable condition and at once laid siege to the fortress in which the Queen had sought safety. The siege became a blockade, until despairing of relief the inhabitants opened the gates and surrendered. The castle was plundered with horrible atrocities, while the Queen and captives who were spared were taken to Persia and by various and satanic methods of torture compelled to abjure their faith. Arshag, the imprisoned King, finding his bondage hopeless, driven to despair, fell on his sword and expired, having reigned eighteen years.

Shabuh sent Merujan the apostate again into Armenia with a large army and a company of magi, promising him the sovereignty of the country if he succeeded in subduing the chiefs and in forcing the Armenians to embrace the Persian religion. A most dreadful persecution followed, priests and bishops and people were exiled, and multitudes put to death. All the books found in the country written in Greek characters were destroyed, and an order issued that no Armenian should learn that tongue, and that thenceforth all writings must be in the Persian characters. The magi and the executioners were distributed among the towns and villages, the miserable inhabitants having only the alternative of abjuring their religion or meeting instant death.

This reads like a chapter of recent horrors. Finally Eastern Armenia became a province of Persia and after the death of Shabuh enjoyed a little tranquillity. At this time a certain Christian, Mesrob by name, became famous for sanctity and wisdom. He invented an Armenian alphabet, in the year 406. Learning began to flourish. Many schools were founded, and the Armenian youth were taught their language in their own alphabet. The Persian division of Armenia became celebrated throughout the East for its knowledge. The Old Testament was translated into Armenian from the Syriac, the New Testament having already been translated by St. Mesrob.

A few years later, A. D. 428, the dominion of the Arsacides ceased forever, after having lasted for nearly six hundred years: and Armenia came under the dominion of Persia and was ruled by Prefects for four hundred and fifty-six years.

In A. D. 441 Hazguerd (Yezdiged) II. came to the throne of Persia and meditated the forcible conversion of all Armenia to the worship of the sun (fire worship) and the doctrines of Zoroaster. He exhorted the chiefs and people to embrace the doctrine of the magi, but without effect. He sent officers to collect most extortionate taxes with power to torture at discretion. Many chiefs and nobles and multitudes of people were tortured, thrown into dungeons, suffered most terrible forms of martyrdom, yet remained steadfast in faith. Some few yielded under the fierceness of persecution and kissed their hands to the sun—but only a few.

Pleading in vain for mercy, they resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. The bishops and chiefs called a great assembly where they swore to fight for the honor and in defence of the Holy Church. They gathered an army of one hundred thousand men and attacked all the Persians in the kingdom. The magi were put to death and their temples were demolished. Fresh armies were poured in from Persia and the carnage increased. Fire worship was reëstablished, the former tragedies of blood and torture were reënacted, many churches were demolished, the priests dying under most excruciating torture. Is it the fifth century or the nineteenth that we are describing?

In A. D. 451, Hazguerd ordered his generals to proceed into Armenia with a large army and put the entire Christian population to the sword. They were opposed by Vartan, who by sending heralds throughout the country, warned the inhabitants of the threatened doom and gathered an army of sixty-six thousand determined men. The two armies faced each other late in the day with only a river between. That night Vartan, with priests and bishops, passed through the army exhorting them to fight manfully against the invaders. The Armenians all received the sacrament that night, and inflamed with love of Christ and country, were ready to do and die.

On the following day which was the 2d of June the Armenians, eager to shed their blood for their faith, crossed the river and commenced the attack.

At first they were successful and cut down the Persians with great slaughter. But there was treason in their ranks; and in the midst of the battle five thousand men drew off and joined their enemies. The fortunes of the day changed and the Armenians were routed. The glorious Vartan and eight allied chiefs and two hundred and eighty-six warriors were left on the field. Hundreds of wounded were taken prisoners and immediately put to death.

These outrages so exasperated the Armenians that again they rallied, defeated their enemies and pursuing them into Persian territory ravaged the country, burning towns and villages. The Persian King now offered terms of peace, promising to forbear persecuting them on account of their religious faith; and for a time the war ceased. But he did not deliver up his prisoners. Many bishops and priests suffered martyrdom in 454; not until 456 did the chiefs and nobles, who had been languishing in prison for years rather than deny their faith, regain their freedom and return into Armenia.

From the year 600 no Persian Prefect was ever again sent into Armenia, that office being held by men of their own race; but on the West, however, a power was rising up that would prove a fearful scourge, a relentless and most bitter persecutor—The Saracenic Power.

THE SARACENS IN ARMENIA.

About the year 636 Armenia was invaded by the Saracens. This was the beginning of the most unhappy era in the annals of Armenia. The whole country was shortly plunged into ruin and desolation.

Nothing at first could withstand the onslaught of these fierce warriors, Saracens, Infidels, who knew no word for mercy and regarded all women as but slaves to their worse than bestial passions.

After a fierce battle in which the Armenians were defeated with great slaughter the whole country was ablaze with conflagrations. A city captured after a siege of months was taken by storm. The most dreadful havoc ensued, twelve thousand inhabitants were massacred, churches, palaces pillaged and burned and thirty-five thousand citizens carried into captivity.

These were but the beginning of sorrows and horrors. Invasion after invasion followed until at last peace was bought at the cost of an immense yearly tribute which impoverished the whole people.

Justinian, the Greek Emperor, disregarding all ties of a common faith and heedless of the common danger from the rising power, demanded that they should renounce obedience to the Saracens and return to his authority. They replied: “How often have we been subject to the rule of Greeks, yet how little assistance have they rendered us in time of our distress. * * * Should we at present submit ourselves to your power, our kingdom would be exposed to invasion, we should be delivered up to the sword and our habitations to fire and pillage. * * * We beseech you, therefore to let us remain under the dominion of our present masters by which alone our safety and the safety of our nation can be secured.”

The Emperor enraged at this humble pleading, sent an army to invade Armenia. Twenty-five provinces were almost depopulated by its ravages and thousands were carried away and sold as slaves in foreign lands. The following year another army of forty thousand men came to ravage the remaining territory. The nation was driven to madness and despair by the devastations committed. But as if all the vials of wrath and the horrors of hell were to be let loose at once, the Saracens, believing they had returned to the subjection of the Greeks, again invaded Armenia. They destroyed every town and village on their line of march, and carried away vast multitudes of captives.

Again they returned with greater numbers than before. Cities, towns, villages, fortresses, were razed to the ground, garrisons and people either butchered or carried away captive. What could the poor Armenians do but yield up their country to the power and government of the Saracens?

Again the Greeks returned with a large army, and the weakened, disheartened, impoverished people could only bow in subjection. The emperor taking hostages from among the most distinguished chiefs returned to Constantinople, leaving behind an army of thirty thousand men to protect his vassals. At the expiration of three years all these had departed and the country lay open to the inroads of their fiercest enemies.

The Saracens soon reëstablished their power; the governors being appointed from Damascus. To punish the Armenians for what they termed their rebellion, many of the nobility were decoyed into churches which were then set on fire and the poor Armenians were burnt alive. Their property was then confiscated, their families siezed and put to death with fiendish cruelty on account of their religious faith.

This reads like a chapter of living horrors: for the photographs of to-day are only those of yesterday retouched with human blood.

The governors everywhere oppressed the Armenians with little intermission, levying heavy taxes and inflicting extortionate fines for their own private use. When the Saracens began the building of Bagdad, the tribute was mercilessly increased. The greatest distress prevailed, the evil became intolerable, a dreadful dearth occurred in their harvests because of the furious hailstorms that swept over wide regions of country. Clouds of locusts devoured what the hail had spared and famine and misery untold desolated the land.

BOGHA THE TYRANT.

It was in the year 850 that the most awful calamities fell upon this devoted race. Bogha the Tyrant, marched with a vast army to the utter ruin of Armenia. Everywhere terror and consternation prevailed as at their first entrance into the upper valleys, they cut off utterly every living soul they found. The Armenians who inhabited the summits of the mountains, beholding the awful massacres, rushed down in great numbers to attack their enemies, but the Saracens taking possession of all the passes cut off their retreat. A great many were killed, and many more were taken alive. These were bound with ropes and dragged into the presence of the governor. Bogha selected the finest looking men and put them in confinement, intending to force them to renounce their religion; the remainder he ordered slain before his eyes.

This horrible carnage was repeated in several provinces. One of the most famous chiefs sought to make his peace with costly gifts, but was seized with his wife and children and sent in chains to Bagdad. Then Bogha marched his army into the province of Vasburagan with orders to seize and bind all who were able to carry arms. Separating the finest men again for confinement and torture, the others were inexorably consigned to death. The slaughter was immense, as the records state, human blood fertilized the land, and the valleys were choked up with the bodies of former inhabitants. Those whom he had spared resolutely refusing to deny their faith were tortured with fiendish ingenuity until death relieved them of their sufferings.

In the extremity of their anguish they cried out: “How long O Lord? How Long?” A thousand years has brought no adequate reply. You recall the exclamation of Sojourner Truth’s humble piety when Frederick Douglas was fiercely lamenting the death of Abraham Lincoln, “Frederick, is God dead?” and we wonder how the faith of the harried Armenians lived when to swear by Mohammed would have delivered them from their horrible sufferings.

Is the heart of this nation dead? Are we so taken up with the greed for gold, the establishment of commerce, the extension of trade, the rivalries of political ambitions, that the bleeding arms of the Armenians are still stretched forth in vain, and their cries drowned by the din of business or the revels of pleasure.

But no deliverer was nigh. The mountains and the rocks reëchoed in vain their cries for help, their appeals for mercy.

Bogha was drunk with blood. The nation must perish. Province after province was swept of its cities, many thousands slain and massacred; and still the nobles and the chief men were spared for torture. Many were tortured to such an extent that scarcely a feature remained by which to distinguish them. When every art, device and glittering promise had failed to induce them to apostatize, and the cruel ingenuity of their tormentors could devise no more appalling agony, they were crucified.

The persecutions lasted almost without intermission for five years till the earth itself was sickened with the blood of innocent men. When almost the whole land lay desolate and many provinces were more like slaughterhouses than inhabited countries, Bogha gathered multitudes of captives for slavery, and the noblest, bravest men for sacrifice, and set out for Bagdad. In the presence of the Caliph and the chief and flower of Saracenic nobility, the most horrible scenes were reënacted in the capital of the Saracens. This only now remains for the Sultan of Turkey, the head of the Mohammedan religion to do, to equal in barbarity the deeds of Bogha the tyrant; and perhaps this alone will rouse all Christendom, viz: Drive the miserable and starving remnants left in his eastern provinces in chains to Constantinople and repeat in the eyes of all Europe the awful crimes with which in the blazing light of modern civilization he has darkened the face of all the East.

The Caliph gave these hapless victims but one alternative—the only alternative Islam ever offers when it has the power, viz: either to renounce Christianity and embrace Islamism, or be put to torture and to death. We shall learn what torture is when we come to rehearse in your tingling ears the devilish cruelties under which upwards of sixty thousand Armenians have perished within the last few months.

Many outwardly renounced Christianity as the sight of the prolonged tortures lacerated their hearts and smote them with weakness. Many others, more firm, gloriously died in defence and confirmation of their faith.

THE THIRD ARMENIAN DYNASTY. (A. D. 856.)

The pressure on the reader’s sympathy will be relieved by the portrayal of a brief reign of peace in Armenia, but righteous indignation will not be lessened.

Ashod I., the son of Sumpad, the Confessor who died in chains at Bagdad, gathered the remains of his tribe together, after the retirement of Bogha, the Tyrant, and by his courage, wisdom and humanity became greatly esteemed. The Caliph of Bagdad in an hour of strange friendliness conferred on him the government of Armenia.

He sent him also a special messenger, bearing rich presents and splendid official robes, directing him to invest Ashod with the supreme power.

ARMENIAN TYPES AND COSTUMES.

His first effort was to restore confidence and improve the condition of the country, to the great satisfaction of all the Armenians. George II., Pontiff, and all the chiefs united in drawing up a petition to the Caliph soliciting him to bestow a crown upon Ashod, promising at the same time not to falter in their allegiance to the authority of Bagdad. To the great joy of all Armenians, their prayer was heard and a crown of royalty was sent. Basilius, the Emperor of Constantinople, who was an Armenian of the family of the Arsacids also sent him a magnificent crown. Thus patronized by two emperors, Ashod ascended with great splendor the throne of Armenia. All the ancient royal customs were restored and Armenia again became a great and flourishing country.

Armenia being now at peace, Ashod set out to visit Western Armenia, and thence he passed on to Constantinople to visit Emperor Leo, son of Basilius. His reception was magnificent. On his returning he fell sick—his malady increasing he sent for George, the Pontiff, and received the sacrament, after which he appointed that large sums should be distributed to the poor at the church doors and to hospitals, convents and almshouses. He died in his seventy-first year, having governed Armenia thirty-one years, viz: Twenty-six as governor and five as king. He was buried with all the royal magnificence due to an eastern Monarch.

In 892 the Caliph confirmed the crown to Sumpad, eldest son of Ashod and the ceremony of coronation was again performed. The treaty of his father was renewed with the Emperor of Constantinople, but his reign proved to be a stormy one through successive invasions of the Persians. At length he was enticed into the power of Yussuf, the Persian, bound in chains and cast into a dark dungeon for a year. From prison he was taken before the walls of a castle which was being besieged. Furious with rage because of the continued resistance, Yussuf caused the most horrible barbarities to be executed upon the unfortunate Sumpad in sight of the beleaguered Armenians. The torture was renewed daily to cause him to deny Christ. Then hourly until death released his unshaken spirit.

Ashod II., surnamed the Iron-hearted, famed for bravery and extraordinary strength, son of Sumpad, now gathered a small body of six hundred men like himself and began to drive out the Persians. Soon he cleared the country of them and in gratitude the Armenians placed him on the throne. But many chiefs refused him their allegiance. They were a restless, jealous set of nobles, and these quarrels among themselves are by all their historians denounced as the chief source of their national weakness.

Nobles and peasants rose in rebellion, and Yussuf taking advantage of the anarchy again brought upon them his fiercest bands.

The former cruelties, and persecutions and barbarities were repeated. Aged men and women were tied together and then cut to pieces, babes were tossed in the air to be caught on the points of the spears or cut in twain with their swords, or dashed to the ground in the presence of their distracted and dishonored mothers.

Religious fanaticism was burning like the fires of hell in the breast of Yussuf and yet these Armenians though ready to fight against each other would die the death of martyrs rather than deny their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Greater horrors followed on the devastation of their fields. Sore and dreadful famine began its cruel work. Thousands died of starvation. Cities and villages were attacked solely for the sake of devouring the slain. Individuals were seized and slain by bands of men driven to madness by their hunger.

There was no Red Cross Committee in those days for the relief of the starving populations and even if so, no person wearing a cross would have been permitted to carry to them a loaf of bread lest the religious sensibilities of Yussuf and his Infidel hordes should be deeply wounded.

Starvation was his best ally. It swept off multitudes he could not reach with the sword. The tender heart of the Sultan of Turkey must not to-day be lacerated with even suggestion that there is more mercy under the cross than under his own blood-red crescent. He turns fair and fertile provinces into cemeteries and makes of villages heaps of ruins, then publishes to Europe that he has restored peace to his people.

Peace returned to Armenia for twenty-five years however after the driving out of the Persians, Apas succeeding his brother Ashod II. Multitudes of self-exiled Armenians returned to their deserted fields and ruined villages, and peace soon made the valleys smile again.

Cities were restored, magnificent churches erected. The city of Ani was chosen as the new capital. But Ashod III., derives his greatest fame from his private virtues. Having built a number of hospitals, infirmaries and almshouses for the poor and suffering he gave his personal attention to their management. He visited them frequently, indulging in kindliest familiarity with the poorest.

He even invited the poor, the sick and the maimed to eat with him at his own table. So unbounded was he in his donations to the poor and distressed that on his death not a single piece of money was found in his treasury. Hence he was surnamed the charitable.

These are the kind of men whom for more than a thousand years the Saracens and Turks have been trying to exterminate as dogs of Christians. And the work still goes fearfully on because the great Christian Powers of Europe say the Turk must be upheld and reverenced because he holds the balance of power. It would not do to offer him anything more than a diplomatic hint that some slight reform might be acceptable even if only put on paper to show to the guardians of poor, perishing Armenia.

Sumpad II., succeeded his father and completed the fortifying of the city of Ani. He surrounded it with a wall of exceeding height and thickness on which he raised lofty towers for the stations of its defenders. The wall was protected from assault by a wide, deep moat encompassing the city the whole being faced with stone and brick. It took him eight years to finish it. This city became the center of power and influence. A very large number of churches were erected so that in all they reached the surprising number of one thousand and one. The next largest city was Ardgen containing three hundred thousand souls and eight hundred churches.

The Empire was consolidated and strong and retained its prosperity and power until some years after the close of the century, (A. D., 1020).

Let us leave for a while this ancient race at the height of its power and glory, the only Christian Nation that western Asia has ever had, and take a glance at the uprising of that power of Islam which to-day is, as for more than a thousand years it has been, the bitterest foe of the Church of Christ, the most ruthless destroyer of human life, the most brutal oppressor of enslaved humanity, which has always and everywhere robbed woman of her honor and immortality, motherhood of its glory, childhood of its innocence, the Deity of His mercy and even Heaven itself of its purity, making of Paradise its vestibule only a Mohammedan Seraglio.

CHAPTER II.

THE RISE OF ISLAM.

The reader will please turn aside for awhile to consider the rise of an alien religion which was destined to change the map of Europe and the course of history for many centuries; a religion which binds with fanatical zeal a sixth part of the human race; a power, which gathering its forces from the sands of Arabia swept like a fierce and pitiless simoon over the most ancient civilizations, until the flag of the Prophet waved from the Indus to the pillars of Hercules over an empire vaster than that ever ruled by Roman legions and Roman law.

While empires and kingdoms rose and fell; and the shock of contending armies shook all Europe and Northern Africa, and convulsed the rest of Asia, on its southwestern border, protected by the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and vast stretches of burning sand, lay a great peninsula by the name of Arabia, almost untouched by the cataclysm of centuries. In the depths of its deserts, its primitive character and independence remained unchanged, nor had the nomadic tribes of Ishmael ever bent their haughty necks to servitude.

For more than two thousand years Ishmael had been “a wild man; his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him” and now the other word “I will make him a great nation” was about to receive its fulfillment.

Our first thought of Arabia is of a barren, desert country inhabited by a few wandering tribes, of little importance. But it is an immense country, almost as large as India, with a population of millions. Among its mountains are beautiful and fertile valleys, towns and castles surrounded by orchards and vineyards, groves of palm trees and date-palms, fields of grain and well-stocked pastures. In the south were the people of Yemen—or Arabia the Happy—that land of spices, perfumes and frankincense; the Sheba of the Scriptures.

These were the most active and skillful navigators of the eastern seas and brought the wealth of the far East to their ports: thence by caravans all these mingled products were distributed to Syria, Egypt and other lands on the borders of the Mediterranean. The caravans were generally fitted out and conducted by the nomadic tribes, who added to the merchandise of other lands the exquisite and costly garments woven from the finest fleeces of their countless flocks and herds. In Arabia, above all the other lands in the East, the track of the caravan has borne on it greater riches even than the ships of Tarshish.

At the intersection of two such tracks where the goods of India and of Africa were interchanged, and where the gold of the Roman Empire was weighed against the spices of “Araby the Blest,” was situated the great emporium of Mecca.

Mecca was both the commercial and religious center of the whole peninsula. Although there was no political capital, the tribe feeling had led to the establishment of a form of government aristocratic rather than despotic. The noblest tribe among them all was the Koreish; the noblest family of the Koreish was that of Hashem: and the family of Hashem at the time of which we are writing were the rulers of Mecca and the guardians of its Kaaba.

The original religion of Arabia appears to have been the patriarchal monotheism in which there was still retained some knowledge of one, true, living, personal Deity. One supreme God was still worshiped, but in the language of the Koran they “gave Him companions,” they paid adoration to various subordinate powers, as to the host of heaven—to three female intelligences spoken of as the daughters of God, and to various family, local and national idols of which three hundred and sixty were found in the temple at Mecca.

This ancient temple, built according to Arabian tradition by the patriarch Abraham, contained besides these molten and graven images, the Black Stone—one of the stones of Paradise which fell down with Adam, but being taken up at the deluge, it was brought to Abraham by the angel Gabriel as a sacred ornament for his restored temple. At any rate, here at this temple in Mecca was the great center of worship, of sacrifice, and to it thronged in vast numbers the idolaters of Arabia.

The wild Arab of the desert and the comparatively civilized Arab of the cities show, though in different degrees, the same great elements of national character. Among them all the virtues and the vices of the half savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty were to be seen in their full force. How often have we had pictured before us the simplicity and beauty of such a natural life.

This wild man has been described as generous and hospitable. He delighted in giving gifts; his door was always open to the wayfarer, with whom he was ready to share his last morsel; and his deadliest foe, having once broken bread with him, might repose securely beneath the inviolable sanctity of his tent.

His social life, however, was most degraded. Drunkenness, gambling and unrestrained licentiousness abounded: the horrible practice of female infanticide was prevalent among the pagan tribes: while polygamy, that curse of the East, everywhere prevailed.

Though speaking a language, copious in the extreme, the words of which have been compared to gems and flowers, literature in the strict sense of that word can hardly be said to have existed; but the Arab had a quick intellect, was always ready with a native vein of rhetoric and was easily aroused by the appeals of eloquence and charmed by the graces of poetry. He was naturally an orator, delighted in proverbs and clothed his ideas in florid oriental style with apologue and parable.

While thus a degraded and degrading polytheism was the prevailing religion of Arabia, many Jews were to be found at Medina and in the cities bordering on Syria, and there was also a corrupted form of Christianity incrusted with numerous errors and superstitions, so that in no part of the world did Christianity give forth so feeble a light.

A very decided reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief in the unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality.

It is claimed by his admirers that Mohammed brought about such a reform. He was born in the year 570 of the family of Hashem and the tribe of Koreish to whom was entrusted the guardianship of the pagan temple and the Black Stone. Early left an orphan and in poverty, he was reared in the family of one of his uncles under all the influences of idolatry. This uncle was a merchant, and the youth made long journeys with him to distant fairs, especially into Syria where he became acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, especially with the Old Testament. At the age of twenty-five he entered the service of Cadijeh, a very wealthy widow conducting her immense caravans to fairs in distant cities. His personal beauty, his intelligence and spirit, won the heart of this powerful mistress and she became his wife.

He was now second to none in Arabia and his soul began to meditate on great things. There was in his household his wife’s cousin, Waraka, a man of flexible faith and of speculative spirit; originally a Jew, then a Christian, and withal a pretender to astrology. His name is worthy of notice as being the first on record to translate parts of the Old and New Testaments into Arabic.

As Mohammed contrasted these spiritual religions with the surrounding idolatry, he became more and more sensible of its grossness and absurdity. It appeared to him that the time for another reform had arrived. He talked with his uncles, they laughed at him. Only Cadijeh listened to him, believed in him, and encouraged him. Long afterwards, when she was dead, Ayeshah, his young and favorite wife, once asked him: “Am I not better than Cadijeh? Do you not love me better than you did her? She was a widow, old and ugly?” “No, by Allah,” said the prophet, “she believed in me when no one else did. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that friend.”

Without her sympathy and faith he probably would have failed. He told her, and her alone, his dreams, his ecstasies, his visions; how that God at different times had sent prophets and teachers to reveal new truth: how this one God who created the heavens and the earth had never left himself without witness in the most degraded times.

It was in the fortieth year of his age while spending the month Ramadhan in the cavern of Mount Hara in fasting and prayer that an angel appeared to him and commanded him to read the writing displayed to him on a silken cloth.

Instantly he felt his understanding illumined with celestial light and read what was written thereon:—they were the decrees of God as afterwards promulgated in the Koran. When he had finished reading the angel said: “O Mohammed of a truth, thou art the prophet of God! and I am His angel Gabriel—”

In the morning, as we are told, Mohammed came trembling to Cadijeh not knowing whether what he had heard and seen was indeed true; and that he was a prophet decreed to effect that reform so long the object of his meditations; or whether it might not be a hallucination or worse than all, the apparition of an evil spirit. Cadijeh, however, saw everything with the eye of faith and the credulity of an affectionate wife. “Rejoice, Allah will not suffer thee to fall to shame.” Waraka caught eagerly at the oracle and exclaimed, “Thou speakest true, O Cadijeh! The angel who has appeared to thy husband is the same who, in days of old, was sent to Moses the son of Amram. His annunciation is true. Thy husband is indeed a prophet.” The wavering mind of Mohammed was thus confirmed and throughout his life and even in the hour of death he never uttered a word of doubt concerning his heaven-sent mission.

“This,” says Carlyle, “is the soul of Islam. This is what Mohammed felt and now declared to be of infinite moment, that idols and formulas were nothing: that the jargon of argumentative Greek sects, the vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery and a delusion; that there is but one God: that we must let idols alone and look to Him. He alone is reality. He made us and sustains us. Our whole strength lies in submission to Him. The thing He sends us, be it death even, is good, is the best. We resign ourselves to Him.”

Thus far while possessed of this sole idea that he must proclaim to his degenerate countrymen in the midst of all but universal polytheism, that there is but one supreme God, Mohammed is regarded as a great reformer. He was neither a fanatic nor hypocrite; he was a very great man, and according to his light a very good man.

He began to preach everywhere that first word of Revelation “Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord.” “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” Few, however, believed in him. But why not acknowledge such a fundamental truth, appealing to the intellect as well as the moral sense? Because to confess that there is a supreme God who rewards and punishes, and to whom all are responsible both for words and actions, is to imply a confession of sinfulness and the justice of retribution.

Those degraded Arabians would not receive willingly such a truth as this; and how did the Israelites forget it in spite of deliverance from slavery and quickly fall back into idolatry: and how opposed it is to the epicureanism of to-day and the natural pride of the human breast.

The uncles and friends of Mohammed treated his message with scorn and derision. Zealously he labored for three years, yet with all his eloquence, fervor and sincerity he had only won by his preaching some thirteen persons, one of whom was his slave.

His worldly relatives urged him to silence. Why attack idols? Why destroy his own interests? Why destroy his popularity? Then explained that great hero, “If the sun stood on my right hand and the moon on my left, ordering me to hold my peace I would still declare, there is but one God.” A speech following in spirit the famous words of Luther at the Diet of Worms.

At last hostilities began. He was threatened, he was persecuted. They laid plots to take his life. Then his wife died. The priests of an idolatrous religion became furious. He had laid hands on their idols. He was hated, persecuted and alone. Thirteen years had passed away in reproach, in persecution, in fear. At last forty picked men swore to assassinate him. Should he remain and die, or fly for his life? He concluded to fly to Medina, where there were a few Jews and some nominal converts to Christianity.

This was in the year 622—and the flight is called the Hegira—from which the East dates its era; the fifty-third year of the prophet’s life.

In this city he was cordially welcomed and soon found himself surrounded with enthusiastic followers. He built a mosque and openly performed the rites of the new religion. He was for a time at a loss to know how to call his followers to prayer. While in this perplexity, Abdallah, the son of Zeid, suggested a form of words that he declared were revealed to him in a vision. It was instantly adopted by Mohammed, and is to this day heard from the lofty minarets throughout the East calling the Moslems to prayer: “God is great! God is great! There is no God but God. Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to prayers! Come to prayers! God is great! God is great. There is no God but God.” To which at dawn of day are added the words: “Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than sleep.”

Mohammed soon had an army at his disposal, and with this sudden accession of power there was wrought a fearful change in the spirit of his dreams. He had earnestly declared his great idea of the unity of God. He had pronounced the worship of images to be idolatrous. He held idolatry in supreme abhorrence. He enjoined charity, justice and forbearance. He denounced all falsehood and deception, especially in trade. He commanded his disciples to return good for evil, to be submissive to God; declared humility and benevolence to be the greatest virtues. He enjoined prayers, fastings and meditation as a means of grace.

But when he found an army at his command he lost command of himself. His anger burned against the Koreishites and their vindictive chief, Abu Sofian who now held full sway at Mecca. By them his fortunes had been blasted, his family degraded, impoverished, dispersed, and he himself driven into exile. He began to have visions to suit his changing temper, as all false religionists have even down to our own day. He declared himself, the last of all the prophets, to be sent forth into the world with the sword: “Let those who promulgate my faith enter into no argument nor discussion; but slay all who refuse obedience to the law. Whoever fights for the true faith whether he fall or conquer will assuredly receive a glorious reward. * * * The sword is the key of heaven and hell; and all who draw it in the cause of the faith will be rewarded with temporal advantages; every drop shed of their blood, every peril and hardship endured by them, will be registered on high as more meritorious than even fasting or prayer. If they fall in battle, their sins will at once be blotted out, and they will be transported to Paradise, there to revel in eternal pleasures in the arms of black-eyed houris.” He added to this promise of sensual pleasures the doctrine of fixed-fate, predestination absolute. No man could die sooner or later than his alloted hour and when it arrived, it would be the same, whether the angel of death should find him in the quiet of his bed, or amid the storm of battle.

Behold in these words the chief sources of the fanatical fury which had well-nigh conquered the entire Christian world.

It is as if some Mephistopheles had whispered in his ear; “thy countrymen are wild, fierce and warlike, incite their martial passions in defence of thy doctrines. They are a fanatical people and believing in these teachings they will fight for them and establish them not only in Arabia but throughout the East. Grant them a reward in what their passions crave and they will follow you to the death.”

Certainly this is true, that these counsels of evil let loose upon the world the fiercest, the most cruel and rapacious passions that were ever set on fire in hell. He resolved to adopt his religion to the depraved hearts of his followers. He mingled with sublimest truth the most debasing error. It was success he wanted; he would no longer scruple as to the means used to secure it. He became ambitious. He would become a mighty spiritual potentate, but descended to the level of his people to win them. He granted polygamy under the sanction of a pretended revelation from heaven. He who in his youth had been faithful to Cadijeh, fifteen years his senior, was now in his own age false to his youthful wife Ayeshah, multiplied wives to himself, robbed his faithful Zeid of his beautiful wife, absolved himself from his own law that a believer could only have four wives, and brought forth new revelations to justify in himself the gratifications of passions he condemned in others.

In the second year of the Hegira, Mohammed gratified his revenge against the Koreishites by attacking a caravan of a thousand camels laden with the merchandise of Syria. His arch enemy, Abu Sofian, commanded the escort. In this fight, known as the battle of Beder, the Moslems were victorious. It was during the progress of this battle that Mohammed encouraged his warriors with the memorable words: “Fight and fear not; the gates of Paradise are under the shade of swords.” This first cavalcade entering Medina with spoils, made Moslems of all the inhabitants and gave him control of the city. A few years later, at the head of ten thousand horsemen, he entered the city of Mecca—nothing but the swift commands of Mohammed to Khaled, “The Sword of God,” preserving the city from a general massacre. Mohammed now proceeded to execute the great object of his religious aspirations—the purifying of the temple. He entered it with the sublime words: “Truth is come; let falsehood disappear,” and shivered in quick succession the three hundred and sixty abominations which were in the holy place.

Monastic Rock Chambers at Gueremeh.

Mohammed soon found himself the sovereign of all Arabia; and yet his military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory as they would have done had they been effected for selfish ends. He ever maintained the same simplicity of manners as in the days of his adversity. As to the temporal rule which grew up in his hands, as he used it without ostentation, so he took no steps to perpetuate it in his family. The riches which poured in upon him from tribute and the spoils of war were used in relieving the poor or expended in promoting the victories of the faith; so that his treasury was often drained of its last coin. “Allah” says an Arabian historian “offered him the keys of all the treasures of the earth; but he refused to accept them.”

It is this abnegation of self and his apparently heartfelt piety that even in his own dying hour, when there could be no worldly motive for deceit, still breathed the same religious devotion and the same belief in his apostolic mission; that so perplexes one in trying to estimate justly the full force of his character.

Whatever we may think of Mohammed personally, even though we may concede that he was a sincere religious fanatic we can but hold in abhorrence the religion which has ever appealed to the sword and to the basest passions of men either to compel or persuade them to yield allegiance to Islam. When he died at the age of sixty-three, eleven years after the Hegira, Mohammed was next to Buddha, the most successful founder of a religion the world has ever known—a religion that is the most relentless and bitterest foe to Christianity, and that stands like a wall of fire and of adamant to oppose its progress in all the East.

The Saracens were ever loyal to the truth for which they fought. They never became idolaters; but their religion has ever been built up on the miseries of nations. To propagate the faith of Mohammed they drew the sword and overran the world. Never were conquests more rapid, more terrible or more remarkable.

Upon the death of Mohammed, Abu Beker, the father of Ayeshah, was elected to the supreme power, but refused to be called king or God’s vicar on earth, assuming only that of Caliph, that is to say Successor, and by this title the Arab sovereigns have ever since been designated. He was indifferent to riches, to all pomp and luxuries; his Arab establishment was of the simplest kind: his retinue consisting of a camel and a black slave.

The Golden Age of the Saracens was the twelve years, A. D. 632–644, comprised in the reigns of Abu Beker and Omar—a period of uninterrupted harmony and external conquest. Though Mohammed was dead, the sword of Islam was not buried with him; for Khaled, surnamed the Sword of God, now advanced to sustain the fame of former conquests. Within a year, Moseilma, a rival, and hence a false prophet, was slain, the rebellion subdued, the empire of Islam firmly reëstablished in Arabia; the scattered leaves gathered for the Koran; and an army for the subjugation of Syria and the East.

It was a strangely opportune hour for the fierce warriors of the desert. The Romans and the Persians were almost always engaged in warfare and their last and most terrible war was contemporary with the preaching of Mohammed.

Under the great Khosru a war began which lasted more than twenty years and exhausted both nations and left them a more easy prey to the Saracens. The Asiatic provinces fell under his victorious armies and, as in the days of Darius, the Persian Empire extended to the Mediterranean and the Ægean Seas. When Heradius in 610 A. D. came to the throne of Constantinople, he was compelled to submit to the sight of a Persian army encamped at Chalcedon; but after some years’ preparation, he entered on a series of campaigns which places his name beside those of Hannibal and Belisarius. Leaving his own dominions, he struck at the very heart of his enemy’s country, and by a series of victories, one of them gained on the site of Nineveh, he utterly overthrew the Persian power, till Khosru was slain by his own subjects and a peace was concluded. Heradius returned to Constantinople leaving Persia torn by contending factions. The Prophet had been diligently watching from his safe retreat the course of the war which is alluded to in the Koran, and now the hour had come for the Saracens to strike their fatal blow.

In the second year of his reign, therefore, Abu Beker prepared for the great enterprise contemplated by Mohammed—the conquest of Syria.—Under this general name was included all the country lying on the north of Arabia and extending from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. This had long been a land of promise to them. It was a land of abundance. From it they had drawn their chief supplies of corn. Its cities had long been chief marts for the merchandise of their caravans; its seaports still were the centers of an opulent and widely extended commerce. This summons was sent to the chiefs of Arabia Petrea, and Arabia Felix: “In the name of the Most Merciful God * * * to all true believers, health, happiness and the blessing of God. Praise be to God and to Mohammed his prophet. This is to inform you that I intend to send an army of the faithful into Syria, to deliver that country from the infidels, and I remind you that to fight for the true faith is to obey God.”

This call to the conquest of nations in the name of the most merciful God is tender compared with the prayers which is now being daily offered up by the Mohammedans regarding the Armenians: “O Allah! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes. Cause their feet to slip, give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”

Has the spirit of Islam changed any during the last twelve hundred years? certainly not, except it be as much for the worse as the Turk is more lustful and cruel than the Saracen.

Speedily the plains about Medina were covered with the encampments of the chiefs who had responded from all Arabia, in hope of the rich booty to be had from conquered cities and provinces. From the brow of a hill, Abu Beker reviewed the army on the point of departure. His heart swelled with pride, as he gazed on the passing multitudes; the glittering arms; the squadrons of horsemen; the lengthening line of camels, and called to mind the handful of men that followed Mohammed a fugitive from Mecca. Scarce ten years had elapsed, and now a mighty host assembled at the summons of his successor, and distant empires were threatened by the sword of Islam. He lifted up his voice and prayed God to make these troops valiant and victorious. Then giving the word to march, the tents were struck, the camels laden, and in a little while the army poured forth in a long, continuous train over hill and valley.

The “Scourge of God” was let loose against the nations. Before long an immense cavalcade of horses, mules and camels came pouring in with the booty from the first victory over a body of troops sent by the Emperor Heradius to observe them and harass their march.

Soon four armies were in the field; Jerusalem and Damascus were doomed and fate hastened on its march to Persia in the person of Khaled, “The Sword of God” with an army of ten thousand men. He besieged the city of Hira; stormed its palaces; slew the king in battle; subdued the kingdom; imposed on it an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of gold; the first tribute ever levied by Moslems on a foreign land, and sent the same to Medina. City after city fell before him. Nothing seemed able to withstand his arms. Planting his victorious standard on the banks of the Euphrates, he wrote to the Persian monarch calling upon him to embrace the faith or pay tribute. “If you refuse both, I will come upon you with a host who love death as much as you do life.”

But meantime partial defeat had discouraged the leaders of the armies in Syria, and the caliph summoned Khaled to the command of the northern armies. Leaving the army in Persia under the command of a tried and trusty general, Khaled with an escort of fifteen hundred men spurred across the Syrian borders to join the Moslem host about to besiege the Christian city of Bosra.

It was on the Syrian frontier, a walled city of great strength and wealth, that could at anytime put twelve thousand men into the field.

After two days of furious battle the city was taken by treachery, many were massacred, and the survivors were compelled to pass under the yoke.

Khaled now aspired to the capture of Damascus. This renowned and beautiful city, one of the largest and most magnificent in the East and possibly the oldest in the world, stood in a plain of wondrous fertility, covered with groves and gardens. Through this plain flowed a river called by the ancients “The Stream of Gold,” feeding the canals and water courses of its gardens and the fountains of the city.

This most beautiful city lay at the mercy of the coming foe. As the Moslems accustomed to the barrenness of the desert came in sight of the rich plain of Damascus and wound along the banks of the shining river, it seemed as if they were already realizing the paradise promised by the Prophet to true believers: but when the walls and towers and fanes of the city rose upon their vision they could not restrain their shouts of rapture. For the many deeds of valor and personal prowess in single combat, and the fierce and repeated charges of either army, the reader may be referred to the brilliant pages of Irving’s Mahomet or Ockley’s Saracens.

The inhabitants tried to bribe Khaled to raise the siege. The stern reply was: Embrace Islam, pay tribute; or fight unto the death. While the Arabs lay close encamped about the city as if watching its expiring throes, unusual shouts were one day heard within its walls. The cause of it proved to be that an army of one hundred thousand men sent by Heraclius from Antioch were drawing near to their relief.

With fierceness yet the coolness of a practiced warrior Khaled marched to the support of a small body of horsemen who had been sent to harass the enemy. He met and defeated division after division of this Roman army, defeating it in detail by an army less than a third of their number. Thousands of fugitives were slain in the pursuit that followed. An immense booty in treasure, arms, baggage, and horses fell into his hands; and Khaled flushed with conquest, fatigued and burdened with the spoils, led back his army to resume the siege of Damascus.

Word was soon received however that another army of seventy thousand men had been gathered by Heraclius to raise the siege of Damascus. Sending swift couriers to all the Moslem generals within his call to meet him at the camp of the Greeks, he began a hasty march to Aiznadin. When the Moslems beheld the multitude and formidable array of the imperial host they at first quailed at the sight: but Khaled harangued them with fervid speech: “You behold,” he said, “the last stake of the infidels. This army met and vanquished they can never muster another force, and all Syria is ours.” Khaled armed the fierce women who were among them—some of them of the highest rank with orders to slay any Moslem whom they saw turning his back to the foe. Reinforced by fresh thousands, when, after some preliminary skirmishes, on the second day the trumpets sounded a general charge, the imperial armies were struck with confusion and what followed was rather a massacre than a battle. They broke and fled in all directions to Cæsarea, to Damascus and to Antioch. The booty of the camp was of immense value, which Khaled declared should not be divided until after the capture of Damascus.

Great indeed was the consternation in the city when they learned from the fugitives that escaped, of the slaughter of this second army and that all hope of succor was gone. But they set themselves bravely to work to meet the coming storm. New fortifications were erected. The walls were lined with engines for hurling stones and darts upon the besiegers.

Soon the Moslems appeared greatly reinforced. The city was invested. The troops were carefully stationed and orders given as to the support to be given. The battles that followed were fierce as the passions of desperate men could make them. One day a simultaneous sortie was made from every gate of the city at the first peep of day. The besiegers were taken by surprise and were struck down before they could arm themselves or mount. Khaled is said to have wept as he beheld the carnage and the slaughter of his finest troops. “O thou, who never sleepest, aid thy faithful servants; let them not fall beneath the weapons of the infidels.” Finally the tide of battle turned and the Christians were repulsed and driven within the walls leaving several thousand dead on the field. It was no disgrace for even such Christians to be beaten by such Moslems.

For seventy days had Damascus been besieged by these fanatic legions of the desert. They had no heart to make further sallies. They began to talk of capitulation. Khaled turned a deaf ear to their prayer for a truce: he was bent upon taking the city by the sword and giving it up to be plundered by his Arabs. Then they sought under promise of security the meek and humane Abu Obeidah. One hundred of the principal inhabitants went by night to this leader of the mighty power that was shaking the empire of the Orient, and found him living in a humble haircloth tent like a mere wanderer of the desert. He listened to their proposals, for his object was conversion rather than conquest, and tribute rather than plunder. A covenant was written; such of the inhabitants as pleased could depart in safety with so much of their effects as they could carry: the rest should remain as tributaries and have seven churches allotted to them. The gate was then thrown open and the venerable chief entered at the head of a hundred men to take possession.

At the eastern gate a very different transaction was taking place. An apostate priest, on condition of security of person and property to himself and relatives, agreed to deliver the gate into the hands of Khaled. Thus a hundred Arabs were introduced into the city, broke the bolts and chains and bars of the Eastern gate and threw it open with the cry “Allah Achbar.”

Khaled and his legions rushed in at the gate with sound of trumpet and tramp of steeds; putting all to the sword, deluging the streets with blood. “Mercy! Mercy!” was the cry. “No mercy for infidels,” was Khaled’s fierce response. He pursued his career of carnage into the great square and there to his utter astonishment beheld Abu Obeidah and his attendants, with priests and monks, surrounded by the principal inhabitants and women and children.

Khaled was furious when he heard of the covenant. Abu Obeidah entreated him to respect the covenant he had made in the name of God and the prophet.

After fierce altercation he listened to policy though deaf to the cry of pity. They were just beginning their career of conquest. Many cities were to be taken. If the Moslem word was broken, other cities warned by the fate of Damascus would in fear and fury fight to the bitter end.

Khaled finally gave a slow consent, though murmuring at every article of the covenant.

All who chose to remain as tributaries were to enjoy the free exercise of their religion. All who wished might depart, but Khaled only gave them three days grace from pursuit.

It was a piteous sight to behold aged men, delicate and shrinking women, and helpless children thus setting forth with what they could carry on a wandering journey through wastes and deserts and mountains, and the angry hordes of Arabs only three days behind them and swiftly mounted. Many a time did they turn to cast another look of fondness and despair on their beautiful palaces and luxuriant gardens; and still they would turn and weep and beat their breasts—gaze through tears on the stately towers of Damascus and the flowery banks of the Pharpar. Thus Damascus was conquered and yet spared both fire and sword after more than a twelve months’ siege, which Voltaire has likened for its stratagems, skirmishes and deeds of valor in single combat, to Homer’s Siege of Troy.

The cities of Baalbec, the famous city of the Sun, and Emessa the capital of the plains, with many intermediate cities soon fell before the victorious sword of Khaled.

After a short rest at Damascus Abu Obeidah wrote, asking if he should undertake the siege of Cæsarea or Jerusalem. The decision was for the instant siege of Jerusalem.

This was a holy war for the Moslems and soon the army was on the march to Jerusalem. The people saw the approach of these triumphant invaders: but sent out no plea for help. They planted engines on their walls and prepared for vigorous defence.

At early dawn, in the morning of the first assault, the Moslem host was marshalled—the leaders repeated the Matin prayer, each at the head of his battalion, and all as if by one consent with a loud voice gave the verse of the Koran “Enter ye, oh people! into the holy land which Allah hath destined for you.”

For ten days they made repeated but unavailing attacks and then the whole army was brought to their aid. Then a summons was sent requiring the inhabitants to accept the divine mission of Mohammed, to acknowledge allegiance and pay tribute to the Caliph, otherwise he concludes, “Nor will I leave you, God willing, until I have destroyed your fighting men and made slaves of your children.”

But the Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem felt confidence in setting the invaders at defiance, and above all, there was a pious incentive to courage and perseverance in defending the Sepulchre of Christ.

Four wintry months elapsed and still the siege was carried on with undiminished spirit. Finally the Patriarch consented to give up the city if the Caliph would come in person to take possession and sign the articles of surrender.

To preserve the city, and inspirit his own troops after their long absence and the hardships of many campaigns the Caliph consented. His journey was made in utmost simplicity. He traveled on a red camel across which was slung his saddle bags, one pocket containing dates and dried fruits, and the other, nothing more than barley, rice or wheat, parched or sodden.

His companions ate with him out of a common wooden platter, using their fingers in true oriental style. At night he slept on a mat under a tree or under a common Bedouin tent: and never resumed his march until he had offered up the morning prayer.

When he came in sight of Jerusalem he lifted up his voice and exclaimed “Allah Achbar, God is mighty! God grant us an easy conquest.”

We give the degrading conditions somewhat in full as they formed the basis upon which other cities were granted terms of peace. “The Christians were to build no new churches in the surrendered territory. * * No crosses should be erected on the churches nor shown openly in the streets. They should not speak openly of their religion; nor attempt to make proselytes; nor hinder their kinsfolk from embracing Islam. * * * They should entertain every Moslem traveler three days gratis. They should sell no wine, bear no arms, and use no saddle in riding, nor sit in the presence of a Mohammedan.”

This utter prostration of all civil and religious liberty took place in the old scenes of Christian triumph. The most bitter scorn and abhorrence of their religious adversaries formed main pillars in the Moslem faith. Upon agreeing to these degrading terms the Caliph gave them under his own hand an assurance of protection in their lives and fortunes, the use of their churches and the exercise of their religion.

The gates of the once splendid city of Solomon were then opened. Omar entered it in reverence and on foot in his simple Arab garb and soon the flag of the Prophet waved over the battlements of the Holy City. Strange city that is thus held in equal reverence by Moslem, Jew and Christian. The surrender of Jerusalem took place in the seventeenth year of the Hegira, the six hundred and thirty-seventh year of the Christian era. With the rapidly succeeding fall of Aleppo, Antioch, Tripoli and Tyre the conquest of Syria was complete. It still remains under the heel of the invader after more than twelve hundred years of varying fortunes.

Meanwhile the conquest of Persia had been pushed forward vigorously since the fall of Damascus. After the battle of Kadesia in which thirty thousand Persians are said to have fallen and upwards of seven thousand Moslems, all Persia lay at the feet of the conquerors. As they advanced with an army of sixty thousand against the capital Madayn the ancient Ctesiphon, fear paralyzed the King and his counsellors. There was no one brave enough to take the command and when the enemy were only a day’s march away they decided on flight to the mountains, leaving behind them the richest city of the world to be sacked by the Arabs. The spoil was incalculable. It required a caravan of nine hundred heavily laden camels to convey to Medina the Caliph’s fifth part of the spoil.

Thus fell without a blow the capital of Persia in the same fateful year that saw the desolation of Jerusalem.

But one more struggle remained—it was the death agony of the Persian Empire. The fugitive king gathered to his standard at Nehavend, on the plains of Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand men. Tidings were sent to the Caliph Omar at Medina—and there in the Mosque, by a handful of grey-headed Arabs, who but a few years previously had been homeless wanderers, was debated and decided the fate of the once magnificent empires of the Orient,—Syria, Chaldea, Babylonia and the dominions of the Medes and Persians.

The army of the Saracens, reinforced by men hardened in war, daring, confident, and led by able generals, was greatly inferior in numbers, but fired with zeal and the courage of death.

At the signal given “Allah Achbar” thrice repeated with the shaking of the standard, the army rushed to battle rending the air with the universal shout “Allah Achbar! Allah Achbar!” The shock of the two armies was terrific. In an hour the Persians were routed; by midnight their slain numbered a hundred thousand men, and their Empire was destroyed. The battle of Nehavend commemorated as “The Victory of Victories,” took place in the twenty-first year of the Hegira the year six hundred and forty-one of our era, and only nine years after the death of Mohammed.

If all Syria fell in six years; if the fate of Persia was decided by a single battle, Egypt may be said to have fallen in a single moment. With the fall of Alexandria perished the largest library of the world, the thesaurus of all the intellectual treasures of antiquity.

While Egypt was won almost without a blow, Latin Africa withstood the Saracens for sixty years. But at last it was conquered. Spain also fell. The world staggered. Thirty-six thousand cities, towns and castles had fallen. The armies of the Saracens were victorious from Scinde in India, westward to Constantinople, then southward they had swept through Palestine, Egypt, Northern Africa beyond the Pillars of Hercules into Spain, and were only and finally arrested in Western Europe as all the world knows by Charles Martel in 732 upon the field of Tours.

But all the world does not know so well how that in 673 the Saracens were beaten back from the walls of Constantinople and the Commander of the Faithful compelled to purchase peace by an annual tribute of three thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves and fifty of the finest Arabian horses. The year 717 saw Constantinople again besieged by a Saracen army, but Leo, the Isaurian, again beat back the invader with utter defeat; and no Moslem army ever again appeared under the walls of the New Rome, until a fiercer, ruder, more cruel race of Conquerors from the far East grasped again with bloody hand the sword of the Prophet.