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Bill Federer recalls famous pundit's observation: 'Wretchedness, poverty' indicate 'presence of Moslem rule'
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County” was his first popular story, written in 1865 while he was in San
Francisco. In 1866, as a reporter for the Sacramento Union, he travel to the Sandwich
Islands (present-day Hawaii). In 1867, a newspaper funded his voyage to the
Mediterranean, which he recorded in his book, “Innocents Abroad,” 1869.
While on this trip, he saw the picture of his
friend’s sister, Olivia Langdon of Elmira, New York, and he fell in love.
Immediately upon his return, he met and married Olivia. His name was Samuel
Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, born Nov. 30, 1835.
In “Innocents Abroad,” 1869, which established
his reputation as a writer, Mark Twain described Syria under the Ottoman
Turkish Empire: “Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet’s children and at … the
mausoleum of the five thousand Christians who were massacred in Damascus in
1861 by the Turks. They say those narrow streets ran blood for several days,
and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to
rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the
stench was dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city,
and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the ‘infidel dogs.’
The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and
in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their
possessions laid waste. …”
Mark Twain added: “How they hate a Christian
in Damascus! – and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And how they will
pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again! It is soothing to the
heart to abuse England and France for interposing to save the Ottoman Empire
from the destruction it has so richly deserved for a thousand years. …”
Mark Twain continued: “It hurts my vanity to
see these pagans refuse to eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat
from a dish we have eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have
polluted with our Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag
which they put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! … These degraded Turks
and Arabs. … When Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and
France will not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere. …”
Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad,”
chapter XLII: “If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see
fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish
Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little – not much, but enough to
make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a
diving-bell.”
Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad,”
chapter LVI: “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell
of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies … about whose
borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that
treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes
at the touch. … Palestine is desolate and unlovely. …”
In “Innocents Abroad,” chapter LIII, Mark
Twain described the condition of Jerusalem under Ottoman Muslim rule: “Rags,
wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence
of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. … Jerusalem
is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. … The
Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they
have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it
the Ottoman Empire. It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was
getting a little shaky.”
Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad,”
chapter LVI: “Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has
lost all its ancient grandeur … the wonderful temple which was the pride and
the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot
where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the
Holy Cross.”
In chapter XLVII of “Innocents Abroad,” 1869,
Mark Twain described the land of Israel: “We dismounted on those shores which
the feet of the Saviour had made holy ground. … We left Capernaum behind us. It
was only a shapeless ruin. It bore no semblance to a town. But, all desolate
and unpeopled as it was, it was illustrious ground. From it sprang that tree of
Christianity whose broad arms overshadow so many distant lands today. Christ
visited his old home at Nazareth, and saw His brothers Joses, Judas, James, and
Simon. … Who wonders what passed in their minds when they saw this brother (who
was only a brother to them, however He might be to others a mysterious
stranger; who was a God, and had stood face to face with God above the clouds)
doing miracles, with crowds of astonished people for witnesses? …
“One of the most astonishing things that has
yet fallen under our observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth
from which sprang the new flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest
journey our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem – about one hundred
to one hundred and twenty miles. … Leaving out two or three short journeys, He
spent His life, preaching His Gospel, and performing His miracles, within a
compass no larger than an ordinary county of the United States. …”
Of the Bible, Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents
Abroad,” 1869: “It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a
book which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain
that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story of
Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their simplicity of language, their
felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all, their faculty of sinking
themselves entirely out of sight of the reader and making the narrative stand
out alone and seem to tell itself? Shakespeare is always present when one reads
his book; Macaulay is present when we follow the march of his stately
sentences; but the Old Testament writers are hidden from view.”
Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad,” 1869:
“In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the
heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a
religion able to save the world.”
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