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Νικόλαος Χειλαδάκης

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29 December, 2011

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«At the beginning of the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks forced their way into Armenia and there crushed the armies of several petty Armenian states. No fewer than forty thousand souls fled before the organized pillage of the Seljuk host to the western part of Asia Minor. From the middle of the eleventh century, and especially after the battle of Malazgirt [Manzikurt] (1071), the Seljuks spread throughout the whole Asia Minor peninsula, leaving error, panic and destruction in their wake. Byzantine, Turkish and other contemporary sources are unanimous in their agreement on the extent of havoc wrought an the protracted anguish of the local population…[The Greek chronicler] Kydones described the fate of the Christian peoples of Asia Minor thus: ‘The entire region which sustained us, from the Hellespont eastwards to the mountains of Armenia, has been snatched away. They [the Turks] have razed cities, pillaged churches, opened graves, and filled everything with blood and corpses…Alas, too, they have even abused Christian bodies. And having taken away their entire wealth they have now taken away their freedom, reducing them to the merest shadows of slaves. And with such dregs of energy as remain in these unfortunate people, they are forced to be the servitors of the Turk’s personal comforts.’ “From the time the Ottoman Turks first set foot in Thrace under Suleiman, son of Orchan, the Empire rapidly disintegrated….From the very beginning of the Turkish onslaught under Suleiman, the Turks tried to consolidate their position by the forcible imposition of Islam. [The Ottoman historian] Sukrullah [maintained] those who refused to accept the Moslem faith were slaughtered and their families enslaved. ‘Where there were bells’, writes the same author, ‘Suleiman broke them up and cast them onto fires. Where there are churches he destroyed them or converted them into mosques. Thus, in place of bells there were now muezzins. Wherever Christian infidels were still found, vassalage was imposed upon their rulers. At least in public they could no longer say ‘kyrie eleison’ but rather “There is no God but Allah; and where once their prayers had been addressed to Christ, they were now to ‘Mohammed, the prophet of Allah.’» Απόστολος Βακαλόπουλος, ιστορικός, συγγραφέας και πανεπιστημιακός (1909 - 2000).
Vacalopoulos, A.E. Origins of the Greek Nation-The Byzantine Period, 1204-1461, New Brunswick, N.J., 1970, pp. 61, 68; 72-73.