The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim FaithArnold, Thomas Walker, Sir
Islamic
The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith
Arnold, Thomas Walker, Sir
Islam -- History; Islam -- Missions -- History; Islam -- Relations
After this Albanian immigration, Islam began to spread more rapidly
among the remnant of the Servian population. The Servian clergy were
very ignorant and unlettered, they could only manage with difficulty to
read their service-books and hardly any had learned to write; they
neither preached to the people nor taught them the catechism,
consequently in whole villages scarcely a man could be found who knew
the Lord’s Prayer or how many commandments there were; even the priests
themselves were quite as ignorant. [653] After the insurrection of
1689, the Patriarch of Ipek, the ecclesiastical capital of Servia, was
appointed by the Porte, but in 1737, as the result of another
rebellion, the Servian Patriarchate was entirely suppressed and the
Servian Church made dependent upon the Greek Patriarch of
Constantinople. The churches were filled with Greek bishops, who made
common cause with the Turkish Beys and Pashas in bleeding the
unfortunate Christians: their national language was proscribed and the
Old Slavonic service-books, etc., were collected and sent off to
Constantinople. [654] With such a clergy it is not surprising that the
Christian faith should decline: e.g. in the commune of Gora (in the
district of Prizren), which had begun to become Muhammadanised soon
after the great exodus of 1690, the Servians that still clung to the
Christian faith, appealed again and again to the Greek bishop of
Prizren to send them priests, at least occasionally, but all in vain;
their children remained unbaptised, weddings and burials were conducted
without the blessing of the Church, and the consecrated buildings fell
into decay. [655] In the neighbouring district of Opolje, similarly,
the present Muslim population of 9500 souls is probably for the most
part descended from the original Slav inhabitants of the place. [656]
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bizzi found in the city of
Jagnevo, 120 Roman Catholic households, 200 Greek and 180 Muhammadan;
[657] less than a hundred years later, every house in the city was
looked upon as Muhammadan, as the head of each family professed this
faith and the women only, with some of the children, were Christian.
[658] About the middle of the eighteenth century, the village of Ljurs
was entirely Catholic; in 1863 there were 90 Muslim and 23 Christian
families, but at the present day this village, together with the
surrounding villages, has wholly given up Christianity. [659] Until
recently some lingering survivals of their old Christian faith, such as
the burning of the Yule-log at Christmas, etc., were still to be met
with in certain villages, but such customs are now fast dying out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account