Bill Federer recalls famous pundit’s observation: ‘Wretchedness, poverty’ indicate ‘presence of Moslem rule’
“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. …”
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