This is how the image of David Al-Halabi was drawn when the hour of his testimony with his blood for Christ approached: a Roman Orthodox man, married, with four children and an elderly mother who he cared for, rich, a former honest tax collector, people testified for his integrity, sharp-tempered, steadfast in his conviction, he spoke the truth whenever his spirit was stirred up in him, whoever he was. It was the price. He does not favor faces and does not care about threats. He was fifty years old when the Turks beheaded him.
When his place in the collection was taken by an unjust, envious, and sinful man named Joseph, the latter was fed up with David because the people were blaming him for his behavior and his mistreatment of them, and he recognized David as a good male who was upright in his conduct and good in integrity, without a successor. When Joseph became extremely angry and his bad thoughts became intense, he secretly resolved to get rid of his rival. So he devised a terrible trick in his mind from the stomachs of the devils.
Youssef knew that his predecessor was hot-tempered and quick to anger, so he sent his traveling representative to him, accompanied by two Muslim witnesses. As soon as they met him, the agent quickly told him that he owed a tax that he had not paid, which was the fez tax. Wearing the fez, at that time, was subject to tax, and fezzes were of different colours, and Christians were not permitted to wear them except those colored blue with white stripes. David objected, stressing that he had already paid what he owed. As the only goal of those who were harassing him was to provoke him and make him go out of his way, they mistreated him and beat him with rods. Blood rose to his head and he became angry until his anger went away. He grabbed his fez and threw it to the ground and shouted: “What! Is my situation worse than that of the Turks, and because I am a Christian, do you find it permissible to insult me and abuse me in the way you do?!” However, the agent and his two companions pretended to calm the man and guide him, and they left, and David returned to his home.
When he reached the house, the eyes of his household looked upon him in astonishment and astonishment. What's on your head?! On David's head was not his usual, blue-striped fez, but another fez, a green one, which is prohibited for non-Muslim Turks to wear. As David began beating fifths with sixths, not knowing whether he was awake or in a dream, while his family sought protection from God as a result, the sounds of drums and flutes began to echo in the distance and then get louder and stronger as if they were approaching the house. Whats going on? Messengers from the judge came, with all the noise and excitement, congratulating David on his conversion to Islam, registering him, and preparing him for circumcision. They dressed him in an Islamic fez, unawares, and made two witnesses against him before the judge, so he would consider him a Muslim! When the man realized the hole into which the fraudsters sought to put him, he shouted: “God forbid that I should be left behind, for I am a Christian and in the religion of Christ I will die.” Then he took the Turkish fez, trampled it with his feet, turned to those approaching him, and said: “Go back to your teacher and tell him that I do not despise the law more than I despise his law... And the fez that they put on my head, without me ignoring it, I placed under my feet and trampled it in front of you so that you might know my attachment to Jesus Christ.” . People jumped on him, hurling shouts and insults at him, and their hands and feet flew at him, attacking and punching him. Then they handcuffed him and dragged him to “Al-Muslim” and the Pasha’s deputy, who interrogated him and then referred him to the judge. The judge courted him and bestowed upon him one of the best appointments, but he received nothing but disappointment from him. He returned him to “Al-Muslim” and he did not want to throw him in the ordinary prison, but rather put him in the palaces in handcuffs. In chains and iron, in a compartment of the death row.
Daoud stayed in prison for two full months, during which his rivals tried to break his resistance in various ways, but they did not succeed. They threatened him several times about what would happen to him and his family. They renewed their promises to them of great goodness if he complied. They locked his legs with bars several times. They forced his mother and wife to stand in front of him and cry over him and ask him to submit, even outwardly, and to remain Christian in secret. He did not respond to their call or accept their petition, even if the situation hurt him extremely, and his soul was disturbed and his being was shaken. But the Lord God strengthened him, so he remained steadfast in his faith.
Finally, the Pasha summoned him and said to him: “Don’t you know, dog, that I still respect you? I implore you by God Almighty to acknowledge the law of the Great Prophet. If you do, I will honor you and give you everything you need to make you and your family happy. If you do not, I will take your soul and make life for your son worse than death. David replied that he had never accepted the religion of Muhammad and had no intention of accepting it now. Rather, he remained committed to the religion of Christ and was ready to die for it. The executioner blindfolded him, raised the sword above his head, and brought it down on him, hitting his right shoulder, on purpose, to frighten him. One word could have lifted the sword from him, but he did not utter it. Prove faithfulness to Christ! The swordsman fell on him again with the sword, hitting his left shoulder and cutting off part of it. David's voice rose: I do not accept anything other than Christ as a religion! The sword fell a third time, and his head was cut off, and his martyrdom was completed. This happened on the twenty-eighth of July of the year one thousand six hundred and sixty.
On the next day, the twenty-ninth of July, Patriarch Makarios Ibn al-Zaim (1647 - 1672 AD) presided over the service, in the presence of the Syriac Patriarch, the Armenian Patriarch, five other bishops, numbers of priests, and large crowds of the people of Aleppo. The service was the service of a martyr. He was buried by four Greek Orthodox bishops.
About the forgotten saints in the Antiochian heritage by Archimandrite Thomas Bitar
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Footnotes
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(1) We derived this biography from what Elie Dennaoui graciously placed in our hands from the news and reports of foreign missionaries and the French consul in Aleppo, François Picquet (1652-1662 AD) at that time. See in this regard:
+ Goyau, Georges, “Le rôle religieux du consul François Picquet in Alep (I652 – I662)” in Revue d’Histoire des Missions, Tome XI, I934 P. I6I – I98
+ “L'âge d'or des Missions Latines en Orient (XVIIe – XVIIIe siècles)” in L'Unité de l'Eglise, 8I (I936) P. 784 – 789.
+ Goyau, Georges, “Un précurseur: François Picquet...”, t.2 Institut Français de Damas, Paris I942, P. I03 – II4.
+ “Briève Relation de la Mission d'Alep en I662”, Archives Nationales, Paris, L. 932 n. 4, pp. 450 – 460.
(2) David was born, raised, and lived as a Roman Orthodox. However, foreign sources reported that one of the Carmelite missionaries, Father Bruno de St-Yves, the head of the Barefoot Carmelites in Aleppo, was able, with the help of Consul Picquet, to enter the cell in which David was being held and take him to the Latin Church. The same sources also reported that the French consul bought his body with gold after his head was cut off. When he was laid to rest, what I translated was written on his grave in Latin: “This is David, who once lived separated from his head. It is now firmly attached to the head, even if its head is cut off. His death is life after he was living in a state of death. Because life flows from the one head, as the one faith teaches.” It was mentioned that Wahba (God), the son of the martyr, later joined the Carmelites, took the name David de Saint-Charles, after his father, studied in Rome and died as an apostolic nuncio and bishop of Izmir.
It is useful to mention something about the foreign missionaries and their mental climate in Aleppo at that time. These were Carmelites, Capuchins, and Jesuits. They settled in the city in the twenties and thirties of the seventeenth century. They came to the Syrian country imbued with the papal idea that whoever does not follow the faith of the Pope of Rome and is subject to him and in communion with him is outside the Church. Accordingly, the missionaries aimed, with all good intentions, to restore what they called “separatists and heretics,” considering themselves “obligated to provide care for them in order to return them to the bosom of the Church and place them, once again, on the path of salvation.” The separatists, in their view, were the Rum, whom they called “the Greeks.” As for the heretics, they were the Syriacs, Armenians, and Chaldeans. Before the arrival of Consul Picquet, the work of missionaries was limited, fraught with harassment and danger, and most of it was in secret. When Picquet came to Aleppo as consul, he provided them with security cover and financial and political support until his work in serving foreign missions seemed much more prominent than his consular work. All of this provided the missionaries with privileges that encouraged them to come out of their hiding places and dispelled their fears, so they became bold and courageous, moving with confidence and freedom unlike other local Christians. In the context of the new climate, missionaries are concerned with taking advantage of all available opportunities to penetrate local churches. Here we must acknowledge that the end, for these missionaries, justified the means. They sought, through Picquet and with him, to gain publicity for themselves, in every possible way. Perhaps it is difficult to differentiate between what was for Picquet and what was for these missionaries because they were all working with one hand and one thought. There is no doubt that Picquet was a public relations man of the highest caliber. He knew how to woo the Pasha and other Turkish officials with gifts and money. He also knew how to approach the patriarchs and bishops through tables, services, and aid, and how to reflect himself as an image of a popular man, by spending money to feed the hungry. And solve problems. There is no doubt, before all that, that he knew very well how to provide all these services for the benefit of the missionaries. On the other hand, Picquet and the missionaries would not refrain from conspiring and exploiting political influence to pass their plans and attack the local church authorities. For example, the selection and installation of Andrew Akidzian, the Syrian dissident, as Archbishop of the Syriacs in Aleppo, after being seized by the Maronite Patriarch in the Qannoubine Monastery (!), and then issuing a decree from the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul ordering the recognition of the Syriac community in Aleppo, under penalty of death. By hanging. Subsequently, the Syriac Patriarch fled from Aleppo and the Syriac priests entered into a conflict with the alleged Archbishop. The conflict continued until Akidzian was forced to leave Aleppo. But it happened, after a while, that a crime occurred in the Al-Saryyan neighborhood, so the Turks forced the neighborhood’s people to pay a sum of money as punishment. When the people were confused about their situation and did not know how to manage, Picquet intervened, taking advantage of the opportunity, and paying the money on their behalf. They came to him with grateful thanks, and he made the price for his service to them to go out to the priests who had resisted Akidzian to search for him and return him as Archbishop of Asila over Aleppo (!).
In this opportunistic, deviant, opportunistic climate, missionary sources spoke with pride (!) about the accession of David the Martyr, the trembling Orthodox Roman, to the Latin Church. Those who followed did not forget to point out the impact that this had on the priests and people, who began to approach the missionaries with zeal and enthusiasm that the missionaries had never seen before in Aleppo.
