'*** 



Photo by Stephen Van R. Tr< 



A CROWD OP TURKS IN THp MARKET-PLACE OP AINTAB 



"In the courts of justice the word of an Armenian will not be taken against that of a 

 Moslem. . . . No Armenian's life, his property, nor the honor of his women has been 

 safe in Turkey for a century" (see text, page 354). 



The mummied hand of Saint Gregory is 

 still laid on the head of every bishop at 

 his consecration, thus carrying on the 

 most perfect apostolic succession in the 

 world. 



TRANSIENT GLORIES 



The glories of independent Armenia 

 quickly passed. With the seventh cen- 

 tury there arose a power in the East more 

 fatal to Armenia than any of her ancient 

 enemies — the religion of Islam. Like 

 wildfire, the religion of Mohammed spread 

 from Mecca to Gibraltar; but when it 

 reached the Armenian people it found a 

 substance it could not consume ; the Ar- 

 menians could not be converted to Islam, 

 although their kingdom could be burned 

 to ashes and their people enslaved. Like 

 fire and water, Islam and Christianity 

 met and struggled, but neither could de- 

 stroy the other, until they settled down 

 in the same land, sullenly irreconcilable. 



The races might long ago have been 

 blended, for they are not temperamen- 



tally antagonistic, but, on the contrary, 

 well fitted to be friends ; but the two 

 clashing religions, each claiming the 

 world for its kingdom, could never be 

 reconciled. 



First, as the followers of the Prophet 

 conquered Syria and the Armenian prov- 

 inces of Byzantium, came the Arabs; 

 later came the Seljuk Turks and subju- 

 gated part of Armenia, and finally the 

 Ottoman Turk conquered a vast empire 

 and set up his mosque in Agia Sofia. 



Mohammed the Conqueror had not 

 enough Moslem subjects to fill his em- 

 pire or his conquered city, so he accepted 

 his great body of Christian subjects with 

 tolerance of their laws, customs, and re- 

 ligion. Many Turks today think that if 

 he had pursued a policy similar to that 

 of modern Russia and Germany, ruth- 

 lessly Turkifying and converting to Is- 

 lam his foreign subjects, he would have 

 made a homogeneous and happy Turkey. 

 But he left the Rayahs, or Christians, 

 contemptuously alone, granting them, 



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