DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0281
IN ASIA MINOR
271
by the want of educative surroundings, or rather by
the atmosphere round them of filthy joke and talk
which constitute a continuous education towards
evil, and a continuous deteriorating influence on
character. A similar feature of village life has
been alluded to above, p. 41 ff., in reference to the
young men.
Further, I am not blind to the evil character of
Byzantine rule, and have done what I can to trace
the history of its benumbing influence on the popu-
lation of Asia Minor. It was the moral weakness,
the decay of education, and the growing rigidity
and want of adaptability of social institutions that
exposed the country defenceless to the Turks.
Any single city, like Philadelphia for example,
which was cut off from the enervating influence of
Byzantine administration and left free to develop
its own inherent strength and moral power in the
face of the enemy, could maintain for more than a
century its freedom and its institutions in the sur-
rounding sea of hostile Mohammedanism, until it
was reduced to surrender to the combined armies
of a Byzantine Emperor and a Turkish Sultan.1
Similar was the history of the small Armenian state
of Zeitun, with its few thousands of a people, which
was a free unconquered country down till almost
yesterday. It has almost always been by the
1 John Palieologus II. and Murad (Amurath), 1379.
271
by the want of educative surroundings, or rather by
the atmosphere round them of filthy joke and talk
which constitute a continuous education towards
evil, and a continuous deteriorating influence on
character. A similar feature of village life has
been alluded to above, p. 41 ff., in reference to the
young men.
Further, I am not blind to the evil character of
Byzantine rule, and have done what I can to trace
the history of its benumbing influence on the popu-
lation of Asia Minor. It was the moral weakness,
the decay of education, and the growing rigidity
and want of adaptability of social institutions that
exposed the country defenceless to the Turks.
Any single city, like Philadelphia for example,
which was cut off from the enervating influence of
Byzantine administration and left free to develop
its own inherent strength and moral power in the
face of the enemy, could maintain for more than a
century its freedom and its institutions in the sur-
rounding sea of hostile Mohammedanism, until it
was reduced to surrender to the combined armies
of a Byzantine Emperor and a Turkish Sultan.1
Similar was the history of the small Armenian state
of Zeitun, with its few thousands of a people, which
was a free unconquered country down till almost
yesterday. It has almost always been by the
1 John Palieologus II. and Murad (Amurath), 1379.