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The blight of Asia

Chapter 2: CHAPTER I TURKISH MASSACRES, 1822-1909
By George Horton
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About This Book

The author presents a firsthand chronicle of the systematic destruction of Christian communities across Asia Minor, combining eyewitness reporting of massacres and the catastrophic burning of a major port city with documentary testimony and political analysis. The narrative traces earlier campaigns of extermination, records refugees' sufferings, and assigns responsibility to regional perpetrators while criticizing the inaction or complicity of Western powers. Interspersed are moral appeals about missionary and relief work and arguments that commercial or diplomatic interests cannot outweigh humanitarian duty. The book mixes vivid incident reports, summaries of atrocities, contemporary correspondence, and polemical commentary to make a case for public awareness and accountability.

CHAPTER I
TURKISH MASSACRES, 1822-1909

Mohammedanism has been propagated by the sword and by violence ever since it first appeared as the great enemy of Christianity, as I shall show in a later chapter of this book.

It has been left to the Turk, however, in more recent years, to carry on the ferocious traditions of his creed, and to distinguish himself by excesses which have never been equaled by any of the tribes enrolled under the banner of the Prophet, either in ancient or modern times.

The following is a partial list of Turkish massacres from 1822 up till 1904:

1822 Chios, Greeks 50,000
1823 Missolonghi, Greeks 8,750
1826 Constantinople, Jannisaries 25,000
1850 Mosul, Assyrians 10,000
1860 Lebanon, Maronites 12,000
1876 Bulgaria, Bulgarians 14,700
1877 Bayazid, Armenians 1,400
1879 Alashguerd, Armenians 1,250
1881 Alexandria, Christians 2,000
1892 Mosul, Yezidies 3,500
1894 Sassun, Armenians 12,000
1895-96 Armenia, Armenians 150,000
1896 Constantinople, Armenians 9,570
1896 Van, Armenians 8,000
1903-04 Macedonia, Macedonians 14,667
1904 Sassun, Armenians 5,640
Total 328,477

To this must be added the massacre in the province of Adana in 1909, of thirty thousand Armenians.

So imminent and ever-present was the peril, and so fresh the memory of these dire events in the minds of the non-Mussulman subjects of the sultan, that illiterate Christian mothers had fallen into the habit of dating events as so many years before or after “such and such a massacre.”