I cannot mention the American missionaries without a tribute to the admirable work they have done. They have been the only good influence that has worked from abroad upon the Turkish empire. They have shown great judgment and tact in their relations with the ancient churches of the land, Orthodox, Gregorian, Jacobite, Nestorian, and Catholic. They have lived cheerfully in the midst, not only of hardships, but latterly of serious dangers also. They have been the first to bring the light of education and learning into these dark places, and have rightly judged that it was far better to diffuse that light through their schools than to aim at a swollen roll of converts. From them alone, if we except the British consuls, has it been possible during the last thirty years to obtain trustworthy information regarding what passes in the interior.

—Hon. James Bryce,
British Ambassador to the United States.

[Pg 197]

The entire plan and purpose of missionary work in Turkey involved the printing-press. Only a little more than two years after the first missionaries to Turkey arrived upon the field, a press under the care of a missionary of the Board arrived at Malta, commissioned to print for the use of the Palestine and Turkish missions. At that time hostilities between Greece and Turkey were in progress and no port upon the Mediterranean was safe for the American press. Malta was under the English flag, and so proved for the time the best base for the literary operations of the mission.

Undoubtedly the earlier publications were too impracticable to meet the needs of the people of Turkey. The missionaries assumed ability in the untrained Oriental mind to grasp the thoughts of the West. In the list of what was printed at Malta during the first ten years are found such works as “Serious Thoughts on Eternity,” “Guilt and Danger of Neglecting the Saviour,” “Scott’s Force of Truth,” “Content and Discontent,” “Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.” A great variety of books was prepared, for the most part, by those who knew practically nothing of the thought and life of the people who were supposed to read them.

In 1833 the political atmosphere had so cleared that the press was removed from Malta, the Arabic equipment going to Beirut in Syria, while the Greek, Turkish, and Armenian outfit was set up in Smyrna. During the ten years at Malta, over twenty-one million pages were [Pg 198] printed in four different languages, namely modern Greek, Italian, Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic. The largest amount by far was in Greek. No printing in Armenian was done until the press was set up in Smyrna and, previous to 1837, less than 175,000 pages had been printed in that language.

In 1829 it was decided to do more in the way of providing much needed books for elementary schools. One of these books was so popular that 27,000 copies were sold in Greece alone. In 1831 the Armeno-Turkish New Testament, translated by Dr. Goodell, was printed. That same year over five million pages of modern Greek were put out from the press. Nearly all of this was circulated about as rapidly as it could be run off.

The publication work in the Turkish missions outside Syria was carried on at Smyrna until 1853, or for about twenty years. The last and one of the most important works published there was the modern Armenian Bible translated by Dr. Elias Riggs. This one book has accomplished more to fix, unify, and simplify the modern spoken Armenian language than all other influences combined. What the King James version has done for the English speaking peoples, and Luther’s Bible for the Germans, this scholarly and accurate translation has done for the Armenians all over the world.

Besides the Bible and strictly Biblical works, a large number of school-books of almost every grade as well as translations of choice parts of English literature were printed and sold. The eagerness of the Greeks and Armenians, and especially the latter, for a literature suited to their aroused intellectual condition made it possible to sell at cost much that was published. After the organization of the Evangelical Protestant Church, hymn-books in various languages were [Pg 199] prepared and printed. It would be impossible in the limits of this discussion to give even a classified list of the publications issued from the mission presses of Turkey since printing began. The output upon the average from 1833, even to the present time, has been at the rate of from twelve to fifty million pages each year in not less than ten languages, including Bulgarian and Koordish. In some years this has been exceeded.

At Beirut in 1906 there were printed on the American press 152,500 volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a total of 47,278,000 pages. To this was added nearly 9,000,000 pages of other Christian and educational books, making a total of 56,000,000 pages of literature from this one press alone in a single year.

For the Bulgarians and the Armenians the missionaries practically created their new literature in the spoken tongue. Of the first one hundred books printed in the modern Bulgarian, some seventy were the product of the missionary press. The first grammar of the modern Armenian language was printed by the missionaries. The Koords had no literature of any kind, while their language is even yet unclassified. The New Testament was translated into that tongue, written with the Armenian characters, and in that language it was printed. Parts of the Bible have also been printed in the Albanian tongue.

The Bible has been translated into Arabo-Turkish, the language read by all the educated Moslems in Turkey north of Syria and is printed and widely circulated. This, with the Arabic and Syriac versions printed at Beirut, puts the Bible into the language of all the Moslems of Turkey, except the Koords and Albanians. As yet the former have only a part of the Bible, and the latter a very poor and fragmentary version, in their own language. [Pg 200]

However great the influence of the press has been in the preparation of books and tracts, it has probably reached and permanently moved more people still by its periodical publications. Papers have been printed for more than a generation in Armenian, Greek, Armeno-Turk............