Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam — John Shaqi
Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of IslamWilliams, Augustus Warner
History
Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam
Williams, Augustus Warner
Armenian question
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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