by Raymond Ibrahim on substack
Last April 24 was the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide—when Turks slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians between 1915-1916.
Ironically, most people, including most Armenians, are unaware that the first genocide of Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks did not occur in the twentieth century. It began a millennium ago (1,007 years to be exact). Soon after the Turks had subjugated and turned Persia into their seat of power, they began to pour into and transform a then much larger Armenia, the world’s oldest Christian nation, into what it is today, the eastern portion of modern-day Turkey.
Thus, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword,” writes Matthew of Edessa (d.1144), a chief source for this period. Three decades later the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Turkic Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the un-walled city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”
After thoroughly plundering that city—which reportedly contained eight hundred churches—he ordered it set ablaze and turned into a desert. Arzden was “filled with bodies” and none “could count the number of those who perished in the flames.”
The invaders “burned priests whom they seized in the churches and massacred those whom they found outside. They put great chunks of pork in the hands of the undead to insult us”—Muslims deem the pig unclean—“and made them objects of mockery to all who saw them.”