Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/42

 of the great Moslem reformation had not yet passed from Christendom and it was natural that it should resent the fact of Moslem rule over Palestine and the inferior position necessarily accorded to Christian communities in a Moslem country. There were a number of these Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire, but we shall confine ourselves here to the mention of the two of them which most vitally concern us—the Rûm community which included all members of the powerful Orthodox Church who recognized the Oecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, and the Ermeni community or the Gregorian Church, a small but historic sect whose membership was limited to Armenians. Both these communities were exempt from the operation of Moslem law and subject instead to their own Christian laws. Both were officially established and represented in the Sultan's Government, the Oecumenical Patriarch himself representing the Rûm community and the Ermeni community, since the seat of its Catholicos is in Trans-Caucasia, being represented by a Patriarch appointed for the purpose in Constantinople. These communities included most of the Christians who had survived the great Moslem reformation and on the whole they lived quite peaceably under Moslem rule. While their Moslem neighbors formed the governing class, they formed the trading class and in any feudal country trading is the occupation of the lower class. Still, their ablest men were frequently utilized by the Sultan in the government of the country and when they were so utilized, they were called upon quite without reference to their position as religious dissenters, just as Nonconformists, Catholics and