One distinctive¹ feature of Islam in Turkey—and this applies to nearly all Moslem² races in the Ottoman empire except the Arabs—is that the Turk does not know the language of his sacred book. The Koran is as much a sealed book to the Turk as the Bible is to the peasant Roman Catholic of Central Europe. He knows, even if he is a peasant, many Arabic words and phrases, but although he may read the Koran, he cannot understand it; and it is, to the Mohammedan, a greater impiety³ to attempt to translate the Koran from the Arabic, than it was, till recent years, in the eyes of the faithful but ignorant Romanist to translate the Latin Bible into French or German. This ignorance of Arabic is a fact even among the more or less educated Turks of the capital and coast cities. It is very rare to find one who can read Arabic intelligently, and who speaks it correctly. Some years ago, when K—— Effendi, a learned Arab Koord, who had embraced Christianity, was called before the highest Mohammedan court, his perfect knowledge of the Arabic, of the Koran and of Mohammedan law and traditions completely confounded and silenced those who would have been his judges.

—From “The Mohammedan World of To-day.”

[Pg 249]

At the beginning of mission work in Turkey the government and high officials seemed indifferent. They looked upon missionaries⁵ as only another sect⁶ of Christians⁷. It apparently⁸ did not occur to them that Christians would attempt to present the claims of their religion to Moslems, or that there was the least probability that any Mohammedan would listen to a Christian⁴ upon the subject of religion. For centuries no Christian in Turkey had made any such attempt. Indeed, the lives of the Christians there exhibited little that was attractive in the religion of Jesus Christ.

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