Խտրականութիւնը Օսմանեան կայսրութեան մէջ

Abstract

Segregation in the Ottoman Empire never was a novelty nor a fact just brought to light in the nineteenth century. It was there in the Ottoman Empire since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Segregation in the empire was a government as well as a religious and social policy. It received its force from the teachings of the Sheriat and the laws promulgated especially to create a wide gap between the Moslem and the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, once the policy enforced, it helped to distinguish the two major classes of the Ottoman society and to render easier the confiscation and appropriation, requisitioning and carting away of the rayas’ ownings; it also furthered and helped to engross the pillaging and looting desires of the Kurds, the Circassians and other marauding elements. Moreover, it was this policy of segregation which debarred the rayas of the right of self-protection and let loose all the evil forces to kidnap or massacre the non-Moslems especially in the eastern vilayets of the Ottoman Empire. This paper examines the differences existing between clothing, headgears, shoes, rights of arm-bearing, houses, gardens, merry-making, wedding-ceremonies, ringing of bells, singing and chanting, burial ceremonies, horse-riding, etc. of the Moslem inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire on the one hand and the Christian Armenians on the other. With ample evidence and documentation, it sheds light on the prevailing differences; moreover, it tells the sad and gloomy story of the Armenian rayas’ daily life in a society which drew its right of existence from the very being of these same rayas. The paper is composed of two parts: the first deals with the everyday life of the Armenians, while the second examines the Ottoman official brutal permits which come almost from all the parts of the Ottoman Empire.