The Camp of Evil which Supports Terrorism (2): The Ottomans
Published in April 3, 2019
Translated by: Ahmed Fathy
Introduction:
We focus here on tyrannical, arrogant power which raised religious banners and mottoes while it commits massacres against civilians among the weak ones on earth. We provide in the brief points below black pages from human history; we tackle the Ottoman Turks here as they belong to the camp of evil, and in other articles, we tackle Wahabis and Wahabism and then white supremacists and extremists of the West, to which the Australian criminal, who committed the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand belongs. We emphasize here the vital importance of returning to the roots which must be examined in order to know how the poisonous fruits have been produced; we implore the Lord God to stop the increase of such fruits. Within the following lines, we prove how the Ottomans belong to the camp of evil which supports terrorism.
Firstly: massacres committed by the Ottomans during the zenith of their might:
The Europeans who faced the 'Muslim' Ottomans may have not realized the fact that the number of their Muslim victims of the Ottomans/Turks exceeds the number of their European/Christian victims. We provide more details in the points below.
Within the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in the 16th century A.D.:
1- Within the final chapter of our book on the influence of political Sufism on the Mameluke sultanate in Egypt (1250 – 1517 A.D.), we write about how the Mameluke sultanate collapsed in Egypt, the Levant, Libya, and Hejaz and how the Sunnite-Sufi Mameluke sultan, Al-Ghoury, allied himself to the Shiite Safavid Shah Ismail and both rulers fought against Selim I, the Sunnite-Sufi Ottoman sultan. This resulted in the victory of Selim I, and Al-Ghoury was defeated and killed during the battle of Marj Dabiq; the Ottoman troops of Selim I marched into Egypt and defeated the last Mameluke sultan, Tuman bay, who was put to death by hanging at one of the main gates of the Cairo Wall, as per the Syrian historian Ibn Tulun and the Egyptian historian Ibn Eyas who witnessed the Ottoman conquest of the Levant and Egypt, respectively. Our analysis within our book focuses on the major role of Sufism in the collapse of the Mameluke sultanate; we did not mention in our book the massacres perpetrated by the Ottomans to the weak ones among the Egyptians after defeating the Mamelukes.
2- In the following points, we quote briefly some lines from the history book by the Egyptian historian Ibn Eyas.
2/1: Ibn Eyas has recorded events of history in the form of annals from the 1st century A.H until his era which is the 10th century A.H. This great historian has recorded events of his era, as an eye-witness, day by day and month by month within the Mameluke sultanate. Ibn Eyas has recorded the injustices of the Mamelukes and then the Ottomans. This means he knew a lot about the suffering inflicted on the weak Egyptians in several decades; he mentions the following about their suffering once the Ottoman conquest of Egypt took place: (... The people of Egypt never suffered a plight worse than this one ...); (... Calamities were so many in the capital, Cairo, and people suffered many inflictions, more than the ones witnessed in any other eras since the Arab conquest of Egypt by Amr Ibn Al-As ...). Ibn Eyas writes the following about the Ottoman sultan Selim I: (... Selim Ibn Osman destroyed most houses in Egyptian cities and he confiscated huge amounts of spoils and money, as his soldiers killed and captured many Egyptian men who defended their homeland, thus rendering their children orphans, and ruin and sabotage spread everywhere ... Selim Ibn Osman was a blood-thirsty, furious, bad-tempered type of man who vowed to put to death as many Egyptians as possible and to burn down their houses ...). Ibn Eyas describes the Ottoman soldiers here: (... They lacked faith, modesty, politeness, and decency, and they drank wine in public, especially inside markets; most of them never prayed at all...they never fasted during Ramadan; they never attended Friday congregational prayers ...).
2/2: Selim I commanded his soldiers to kill – for no reason at all! – 10000 Egyptians in one day. Ibn Eyas writes the following: (... The Ottoman soldiers put so many people to the sword in the streets: old and young men and male children. Many people were killed as a punishment for crimes they never committed; corpses and cadavers filled the streets of Cairo and around the city-wall gates ... If it had not been for God's mercy, the Ottomans would have annihilated the entire Egyptian population ...).
2/3: Those who remained alive among the weak Egyptians were humiliated by the Ottoman soldiers; Ibn Eyas writes the following: (... The Ottoman soldiers snatched the turbans off the heads of men in the streets and sometimes made men strip naked to steal their clothes; the soldiers stole anything that their hands could reach, despite the fact that Selim Ibn Osman declared every day that he commanded his soldiers to impose peace and security in Cairo ...).
2/4: The Ottomans stole Egyptian wealth and treasures and employed Egyptians, within corvée or unpaid forced labor, to carry such treasures; they tied such carriers with ropes like animals; Ibn Eyas writes the following: (... They captured men, from the masses and also judges, rich men, and clergymen, and tied them with ropes, and they forced them to carry heavy loads of spoils and booty; they were flogged and beaten and never set free until all loads were stored in Ottoman ships in the Nile ...). Ibn Eyas mentions more details here: (... The Ottoman soldiers stole the wheat and all the crops in the storehouses to feed their horses; they stole the peasants' cattle, hens, mules, donkeys, horses, ducks, camels, etc. The Egyptians were helpless and defenseless and could not resist the Ottoman soldiers who captured their slaves and stole their money, treasures, valuable possessions, weapons, and precious stones ...).
2/5: Selim I, the Ottoman sultan, committed all such crimes as a theocratic ruler and he declared himself as the caliph of all 'Muslims'; Ibn Eyas writes that the Ottomans captured the members of the Abbasid dynasty who resided in Cairo and forced their leader to surrender the caliphate to Selim I who declared that Cairo is no the capital of any caliphate, because Selim I declared that the new capital of the Ottoman caliphate is Istanbul.
3- In order to terrorize their subjects, the Ottomans introduced to Egypt and the Levant putting people to death by impalement; the Turks were creative in making several types of poles of impalement and studied this method in detail. The Ottomans paid handsomely any clever executioners whose victims live up to one day while being impaled; the impalement was done by inserting a pole into the anus of the victim without piercing vital organs (e.g., the lungs and the heart) so as not to kill the victims instantly. In many cases, if the victims died while being impaled, the executioners were severely punished for negligence; sometimes, the executioners were impaled to death to punish them for accidentally killing victims at once while impaling them!
Within the Ottoman conquest of the Levant in the 16th century A.D.:
After the defeat of the Mameluke sultan Al-Ghoury, the Levantine region was conquered easily by the Ottomans who committed many massacres against the weak ones on earth which include the following.
1- The massacre of Aleppo and Maarat Al-Numan lasted for a week in 1515 A.D.; 40000 people were killed in Aleppo and 150000 in Maarat Al-Numan.
2- The massacre of Damascus in 1516 A.D. lasted for three days; 10000 people were killed.
3- The Ottomans attacked and massacred people and stole everything they could lay their hands on in Homs, Adlib, and Hama and then in rural areas; so many people ran away but most of them died of hunger.
Secondly: massacres committed by the Ottomans during their phase of weakness:
Inside Egypt during the 18th and the 19th centuries:
1- The French occupied Egypt (1798 – 1801 A.D.) and their military troops marched to the Levant; this indicates the weakness of the Ottomans at the time. The French rule was a different type of rule experienced by the Egyptians; the historian Al-Jabarty expressed his surprise in events of 1216 A.H. that the French occupiers put to death, by hanging, a French man condemned of theft. This was a surprise as the Ottoman rulers stole anything they liked anytime. Again, Al-Jabarty expressed his surprise because the French occupiers held a trial for Suleiman Al-Halaby the assassin of the French military leader Jean-Baptiste Kléber; in contrast, the Ottomans killed any Egyptian men anytime they liked. The French Expedition ended and the Egyptians felt a momentary relief before the Ottoman cruelty was restored. Al-Jabarty mentioned that a peddler in Cairo protested against the injustice inflicted on him by a Turkish soldier, and when this peddler insulted this soldier in public, the soldier simply killed him instantly.
2- Al-Jabarty mentioned that the Ottomans confiscated houses of people by force and attacked markets to steal the goods in them; they imposed a heavy tax on the rich people, collected from their houses, and stole victuals from houses of poorer people; many people deserted their houses as a result; besides, the Ottomans forced themselves on wealthy merchants as business partners.
3- Al-Jabarty mentioned that the Ottoman soldiers raped women and female and male children; they stood in the streets and alleys to kidnap and rape children and women among the passers-by. (... At one time, four soldiers took turns raping a male child inside a house of one of these soldiers; the masses surrounded this house and screamed their demand of setting the child free at once; the soldiers shot their bullets at the masses, killing 15 men ...). As per Al-Jabarty, many Ottoman soldiers consumed food items, smoked, and drank wine in public during daytime in Ramadan. (... At one time, a soldier forced a woman among the passers-by, at gunpoint, to enter into a mosque and he raped her after the noon prayers in Ramadan ... During Ramadan, many camps of the soldiers had tents for prostitutes and rent-boys, sellers of hash and wine, belly-dancers, and gamblers ...).
Inside Iraq and the Levant during the 19th centuries:
Within its phase of deterioration and weakness, the Ottoman empire witnessed rebellions inside its provinces and was attacked by Christian powers from the outside, mainly by Russia which aimed at annexing regions from the Ottoman empire in order to reach the Mediterranean Sea, the Bosporus, the Balkans, and the Middle of Europe, which were dominated by the Ottomans at the time. The Ottomans resisted by committing several massacres against Christians and Muslims as per what would serve the interests of the Ottoman caliph despite the fact that the weak ones inside the Ottoman empire had nothing to do with rebellions or foreign attacks. Sadly, the weak ones on earth paid a heavy price within the local and international struggle for authority, power, and influence. Such massacres are exemplified in the points below.
1- The massacre of Baghdad in 1831 A.D. was committed by the Ottomans as a punishment for the rebellion led by Dawood Pacha the Mameluke.
2- The massacre of Shiites (1842 – 1843 A.D.) was committed by the Ottomans as a punishment for the rebellion of the inhabitants of the city of Karbala; the number of victims was estimated to be ranging from 4 to 10 thousands of men, women, and children; other historians assert that the number of victims was more than 24 thousands.
3- The massacre of Badrkhan in the Levant and the several massacres inside Lebanon (1841 – 1860 A.D.); such massacres caused mass-immigration of Christian Arabs from Syria and Lebanon to North America and South America; some of literary figures there contributed to the Arab literature of the trend which came to be known as the immigrants' literature. Some of the Levantine people settled in Egypt and participated in its renaissance in the fields of arts, literature, and journalism.
Thirdly: the massacres committed by the Ottomans in the 20th century:
The Turkish political party,Committee of Union and Progress, controlled the Ottoman empire since 1908 A.D., and members of this political party were national extremists; Arabs were repulsed by the policies of Turkish nationalists who adopted the cultural and political movement known as Turanism. As a result, the Ottomans committed several massacres in the Levant, and the Ottoman governor of the Levant, Gamal Pacha, who committed several massacres, was came to be known as the assassin. Gamal Pacha was not the only Ottoman assassin, of course. These massacres hastened the Arabs' revolt against the Ottoman caliphate and drove Arabs to side with Great Britain in WWI. We exemplify such massacres in the points below.
1- Putting to death Arab officers who served in the Ottoman military.
2- Putting to death thousands of Arab men of the cultural elite class.
3- Annihilating the entire population of the Al-Mawajeda tribe in Jordan in 1910 A.D.
4- The Yathreb massacre in 1917 A.D.: The Ottoman military leader, Fakhry Pacha, who fought against the Wahabis in Arabia desired to impose the Turkish character on Yathreb; he committed a massacre against the inhabitants of Yathreb and expelled the rest who survived (about 140 men and less than 10 women), after stealing all goods and possessions of the city, including treasures and precious stones dedicated to the mausoleum attributed to Muhammad plus masterpieces and rare, invaluable manuscripts, all of which are put now on display in the Istanbul museum.
5- Imposing a famine on the inhabitants of Lebanon and Syria in 1917 A.D. to prevent the military troops of the Allies of the WWI from entering into the Levant. The number of the victims was estimated between 200 thousand and 250 thousand people. This imposed famine was linked with forced displacement (a known Ottoman policy at the time) of some inhabitants of the Levant.
6- The massacres committed against the Syriac people, the Chaldeans, and the Assyrians in Iraq and the Levant and south-eastern Turkey: they are the native inhabitants of these regions; the massacres against them continued between 1915 to 1923 A.D., accompanied by razing cities, arson, burning of farms and fields, and confiscation of property. The number of victims was estimated between 250 to 750 thousand people. If the number of victims among the Greeks and the Armenians is added, the total number is 2 million people. such massacres were linked with forced displacement, mainly inflicted on Christians, and this is why the percentage of Christians was 33% in 1915 in the Ottoman empire and it is now 0.01% in today's Turkey.
7- The massacre of the Armenians: It is noteworthy that the West in general did not pay attention to the massacres committed by the Ottomans against Arabs; in contrast, the West focused its full attention to the massacre committed by the Ottomans against the Armenian people. The Armenians were citizens who lived inside the Ottoman empire and many Armenian young men served as soldiers in the Ottoman military. Yet, at one point in time, the Ottomans decided to massacre the Armenians in 1915 A.D. during WWI. The number of victims is estimated between 1 to 1.5 million people, including men, women, children, and elderly people. It was an organized genocide; the Ottomans began with putting to death the Armenian leaders and the Armenian men of the cultural elite members. The other stages of the massacre included putting to death en masse all Armenian men while forcing Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman military into corvée (i.e., unpaid forced labor) until they die of fatigue; the Armenian women, children, and elderly people were killed slowly within forced displacement after stealing their property; they were forced to walk long miles in the desert without food and water while being supervised by Ottoman soldiers who raped many women. The surviving ones who did not die of hunger and thirst were put to death by immolation, drowning, poisonous gases, and morphine overdoses. It is noteworthy that with the help of the Russians, some Armenians in Armenia committed massacres (1914 – 1920 A.D.) against a minority of Turkish Muslims inside Armenia as a form of revenge.
Lastly:
The Turkish president, Erdoğan, the underway Ottoman 'sultan', has killed many people in Syria and he takes pride (in public!) in the history of his predecessors and forefathers and he defended the heinous crimes committed by the Ottoman military leader Fakhry Pacha in Yathreb during his fighting against the Wahabis of Arabia.