In attempting to understand this motley field, two principles of the empire must always be kept in mind. One is the Mohammedan principle, which allows non-idolatrous peoples to retain their religion on payment of a poll-tax, at the same time freeing them from military duty. The other is the Turkish principle, which allows different nationalities to remain distinct, but requires them to be represented before the sultan by a political or religious head. There is no assimilating power tending to unify these many races and religions, like that of the British, or even the Mughals, in India. The consequence is that all these separate units form a conglomerate state, binding religions and nationalities together in a repellent contact ready to fly apart into fragments the moment the external fettering bond snaps.
—Edward A. Lawrence
in “Modern Missions in the East.”
[Pg 15]
When the Turks laid siege to Vienna in 1529 it was the period of their greatest prosperity. If at that time the entire Ottoman empire had been enclosed by a modest wall it would have taken a large army of workmen from that day to the present to tear down the old boundaries and reerect them upon the new lines. A most interesting feature of this constant change is that it has been almost uniformly a decrease in the area of the empire. At that time it was the most powerful realm in the world. It included all the states bordering upon the Mediterranean except Spain, France, Italy, and Morocco, the entire Black Sea coast, and nearly all that of the Red Sea, as well as the lower Danube district. Gradually province after province and state after state have slipped from the grasp of the sultan. The decline became decided in 1606 beginning with the treaties of the Sitavorok. With the treaty of Carlowitz in 1699 it amounted to actual dismemberment. The epithet, “The sick man of the East,” was applied to the sultan, after this loss of prestige from which he never recovered. The retrograde movement continued through the seventeenth century. While the Ottoman empire had been the object of extreme fear upon the part of the nations of Europe up to the beginning of that century, each of them vying with the rest in seeking the favor and good-will of the [Pg 16] reigning sultan, at the beginning of the eighteenth century Turkey had reached a point where it was protected by its relative weakness. It no longer inspired fear in the hearts of European rulers, while its impotency and the mutual antagonism of its subject non-Moslem races rendered aggressive national action practically impossible. Parts of its territory became wholly lost, like the Danube provinces, the Caucasus and Tunis, while other sections became semi-independent like Bulgaria, Cyprus, Crete, and Egypt.
The Turkish empire may now be defined as covering Macedonia in Europe, extending west to Greece, northward to include Albania, Bulgaria, and Adrianople,—all of Asia Minor to the Russian and Persian borders upon the east, Syria and Arabia, with two small sections of Africa and a few islands in the Mediterranean. It exercises no actual control of Egypt, while its hold upon parts of Arabia is constantly contested by the people themselves.
The size and population of territory under direct control of Turkey are:
Europe 65,350 sq. miles; 6,130,200 inhabitants
Asia 693,610 “ “ 16,898,700 “
Africa 398,900 “ “ 1,000,000 “
1,157,860 24,028,900
Under indirect control:
Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia 37,200 sq. miles; 3,744,300 inhabitants
Bosnia, etc. 19,800 “ “ 1,591,100 “
Crete 3,330 “ “ 310,400 “
Cyprus 3,710 “ “ 237,000 “
Samos 180 “ “ 54,840 “
Egypt 400,000 “ “ 9,820,700 “
464,220 “ “ 15,758,340 “
This makes a total area covered by both the immediate and quasi [Pg 17] possessions of the sultan 1,622,080 square miles, with a population of 39,787,240. These are the figures given by the Statesman’s Year-Book, the best attainable authority upon the subject; but even these must be taken largely as estimates and not as the results of a careful and reliable census,—something that never takes place in Turkey.
It may be said, therefore, that at the present time the sultan of Turkey actually rules over only Constantinople, the Macedonian provinces in Europe and Asia Minor to the borders of Russia and Persia, extending south through Syria and into Arabia. This includes an area of about 704,000 square miles, and a population of about 23,500,000.
These countries directly and indirectly governed by the Turkish empire command the interest of the Biblical, classical, and historical student beyond any other part of the earth. No other land possesses so many antiquities of such priceless worth. Turkey is the stage upon which many of the best-known characters of literature and history have lived and acted. It is the battle-field where, for more than thirty-five centuries, contending civilizations and hostile religions, under ambitious leadership, have met in bloody conflict. There is hardly a section of it that has not been connected directly with some well-known historical personage or race or that has not given the setting to some event of world-wide renown. This is true from Salonica on the Ægean Sea to Persia upon the east, and from Trebizond upon the Black Sea at the north to Aden at the southern point of Arabia. The ruins of massive castles and fortresses, moats and walled cities, that tell of former strength, of pride and of conflict, are found in almost every part of the empire. Inscriptions in many languages adorn the [Pg 18] cliffs or are built into walls now crumbling to ruin. Fragments of ancient roads with arches of bridges and of aqueducts still standing, as old as our Christian era, tell of the engineering skill of the early possessors of the land.
In the soil thrown up beneath one’s feet are found gold, silver, bronze, and copper coins, with dates varying from six hundred years before our Christian era to the coin of the present ruler of the realm.
The ancient city of the Trojans, for ten years defended by Priam against the finally successful assaults of Agamemnon and his Greeks, was upon what is now Turkish soil. Many of the scenes pictured in the Iliad and the Odyssey have their staging in what is modern Turkey. Assyria and Babylon and Nineveh there arose into prominence, wielded their power, and passed into ruin. Darius and Xerxes crossed and recrossed this country; and Cyrus met his great defeat and Xenophon made his immortal retreat and all within Turkey. Alexander the Great, born in Macedonia, conducted many of his brilliant campaigns, fought with Darius and defeated him, occupied Sidon and annexed Babylon and Nineveh to the throne of Greece, and died in Babylon while planning the conquest of Arabia; all in territory now subject to Sultan Hamid II.
At the time of Christ much of Asia Minor was a Roman province. Ruins of Roman roads and Roman bridges, in many parts of the country, extend to the northern borders of Mesopotamia, while Roman coins and Latin inscriptions are too common to attract special attention. It is safe to say that there is no other part of the world which presents so much of permanent interest to the student of classic literature and life as the territory now covered by the Turkish empire. [Pg 19]
The same is true in no less striking measure of the literature and life recorded in the Bible. Probably all Old Testament history, except that part which was enacted in Egypt, belongs to the geography of Turkey; and Egypt, until recent years, was a part of that empire. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers rise and flow throughout their length upon Turkish soil. Chaldea, Haran, Mt. Moriah, Sinai, the Wilderness, Nineveh, and the Promised Land are a part of the present Moslem empire. Turkey includes the land of the prophets and kings of Israel, and from what is to-day her domain the Hebrew poets sang; there, too, the temples were built, the chosen race was scattered, enslaved, and restored.
Except for one brief sojourn of our Lord in Egypt, his entire life was passed on what is now Turkish territory. With few exceptions the apostles lived and labored and wrote and died in regions now ruled over by the sultan of Turkey. The great foreign missionary, Paul, spent but little time outside this country, while the site of the seven churches of the Apocalypse is in Turkish territory. The most of our Christian Scriptures were written in the same country, passing from there to the west.
The land of Turkey may well be called the cradle of classic and Biblical literature of the Jewish and Christian religions as well as that of Islam. All this, however, be it not forgotten, refers only to the territory covered to-day by the Turkish empire and not at all to the empire itself.