RUMELIA.--THE TURK STOCK.--ZONES OF CONQUEST.--EARLY INTRUSIONS OF
TURK POPULATIONS WESTWARD.--THRACIANS.--THE ANCIENT
MACEDONIANS.--THE PELASGI OF MACEDONIA.--BOSNIA, HERZEGOVNA AND
TURKISH CROATIA.--BULGARIA.
The European population of the Ottoman Empire, laying aside Jews,
Armenians, and other similarly non-indigenous populations, is
fivefold--Turk, Greek, Slavonic, Rumanyo, and Albanian. The Albanian,
however, it was necessary to consider in the first chapter.
_Rumelia_, the province which first comes into notice is, the true and
proper area of the Turks, Ottomans, or Osmanlis; a family which,
considered in respect to _European_ ethnology, is as unimportant from
its numerical magnitude, as it is recent in respect to its introduction.
Yet this is a fact which we are slow to perceive at first; since the
Turkish empire is so great, that, unless we separate its ethnological
from its political elements, we fail to realize the extent to which the
Osmanlis are not only intrusive, but inconsiderable. It is only in one
of its provinces that the number of the Osmanli conquerors so nearly
approaches that of the original Europeans, to give them the appearance
of the natural occupants of the country; this being the province in
question, coinciding, as nearly as possible, with the Valley of the
ancient Hebrus, or the modern Maritza. It is a wide and fruitful plain,
that Nature, perhaps, meant for tillage, but which the pastoral habits
of its possessors have kept a grazing country. It is a plain, with the
exception of the small mountain ridges on each side--the Despoto-Dagh
and the Stanches-Dagh--a point worth remembering, because its physical
conditions determine the probable permanence of its earlier
populations--populations which, in all impracticable countries, are
likely to have held their own in the mountains, and to have retreated
before an invader in the plains.
As A.D. 1458 is the date of the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II.
it may also pass for the date of the commencement of the Osmanli sway in
Europe, and the Osmanli preponderance in the particular occupation of
the province of Rumelia; for the time, in short, when ancient Thrace
became Turkish. But the preliminaries had been going on for some time
before, and it was as early as A.D. 1360 that the Hellespont was crossed
by Amurath I. Till then, the Osmanli belonged to Asia Minor, Anatolia,
or Roum, as it was called from the declining power of the degenerate
Romans of Constantinople. But they were not indigenous even there; since
Roum or Anatolia was a conquered country, even as Rumelia
was--conquered, too, from the same degenerate and fictitious Romans.
Hence the stream of Ottoman blood that passed from Asia to Europe was by
no means pure. The occupancy of Asia Minor was not the work of a day; on
the contrary, the process of appropriation was upwards of four centuries
in duration; since the conquest of the race of Seljuk began in A.D.
1074. And this again was an extension of frontier from Persia; and
Persia was never truly Turk. The stream that spread and wasted itself in
Europe is not discovered at its fountain-head until we have traced it
from Rumelia to Anatolia, from Anatolia to Persia, and from Persia to
either Turkistan or further. Then, indeed, we find amongst the most
southern members of the great Turk stock, amongst those whose blood has
been most mixed, and amongst those who are farthest from the country of
the Mongols of Mongolia, the great great ancestors of the family and
followers of Othman.
It must be remembered that all the recorded movements that thus brought
a conquering population from the Oxus to the Hebrus were
military--marches of armies consisting of hosts of warriors. That
anything approaching a national migration wherein the females bore a
reasonable proportion to the males ever took place in Turkish ethnology
has not been shown; so that, on the mother’s side, the Osmanli must, in
ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, be other than Turk--sometimes
Persian, sometimes Armenian, sometimes Georgian or Circassian, sometimes
Anatolian (for some such adjective is required to denote the population
of Asia Minor), sometimes European--and when European, Greek,
Wallachian, Albanian, or Slavonic.
I have enlarged upon this because the majority of the travellers who, in
Independent Tartary, Siberia, Turcomania, or Bokhara, meet with the
other members of the Turk stock, in their original homes, are struck by
the extent to which they differ in physiognomy from the Osmanli or
Ottoman of Europe. They are often smooth-skinned and beardless, glabrous
and glaucous, with high-cheek bones and oblique eyes, and other similar
characteristics of the Mongol. The inference from this has, too often,
been the wrong way; and an infusion of Mongolian blood been presumed.
The truth is, that it is the Turks of Europe that have been modified; at
any rate, it is only with the European that an intermixture of blood at
all proportionate to the differences of physical conformation can be
shown as an historical fact.
As a general rule the Osmanli prefers pastoral to agricultural
employment, and dominant idleness to either. There is a reason for his
preference to flocks and herds rather than to corn and tillage. His own
proper and original area, the parts to the east and north of the
Caspian, is a steppe, fitted for the nomad, but unfitted for the
husbandman. Here, and here only, he has not been an intruder and a
conqueror. Here, and here only, has he been without a subject population
to work for him. This he has in Europe, this he has in Bokhara, this he
has in Egypt; so that his love for looking-on and enjoying the labour of
others is what he shares with the rest of the world, whereas his
preference of a shepherd’s life to a cultivator’s is a habit rather than
instinct. In the few parts of the original Turk area, where the
conditions of soil and climate are favourable to agriculture, and where
he is no dominant lord, but only an ordinary occupant, the Turk is as
good a farmer as the generality. If he be not so in Asia Minor it is due
to the insecurity of the fruits of his industry. On the other hand, in
the valley of the Gurgan (falling into the Caspian from the east) the
pre-eminently Turk branch of the Goklan Turcomans is mainly employed
upon agriculture--growing grain and rearing silkworms. This, it may be
said, is a singular instance. It is so; but where, besides, does any
member of the great Turk stock come under the conditions necessary for
agricultural industry--a fit soil and climate, combined with security of
possession, and the absence of a subject and inferior class? Like any
other fact, however isolated, it sets aside the current notion of the
unfitness of the Turk for regular and industrial labour; a habitude,
which, like so many other points of ethnology, is connected with
external circumstances far more than blood, pedigree, or race.
The intellectual development of the Turk stock in general has been that
of the majority of the families of mankind--moderate, or less than
moderate; for invention and originality are the exceptions rather than
the rule. And here they are in the same predicament as they were in
respect to their industry. In their original country they are far
removed from the contact of any literature or science better than their
own; for what are the models for the Turk of Independent Tartary? In the
country of their conquests they have clever Greeks and Arabs to do their
head-work for them. And we may add to these drawbacks, the unfavourable
effects of their creed. The language that gave them the Koran can give
them nothing useful for the Europe of the nineteenth century; whilst the
Europe of the nineteenth century is, in their eyes, a Europe of
infidels.
However much we may lament the bigotry, ignorance, and sensuality of
the Osmanli, he is only what his creed, conquests, and other unfortunate
conditions make him. Of the hardy and simple families of the world, as
opposed to the effeminate and subtle, he belongs to the most typical.
This is shown in his history. Of the _material_ conquerors of the world,
of the disturbers of things physical by physical force, the Turks are
the greatest: since what they have won has been by hardihood of will and
strength of arm far less than by diplomacy or the more indirect effects
of their arts and literature--of which, indeed, they have had none. But
because they have been thus material, they have not been permanent. Had
they conquered, like the ancient Romans, Egypt and Barbary and Servia
and Persia and Hindustan would be Turk, giving an area greater than that
of the Anglo-Saxons or the Slavonians. Still, they are the great
material conquerors of history.
Yet this is but a result of certain physical and geographical
conditions:--no proof of any specific hardihood of nature. It is no
fanciful imagination to say, that the areas of the great conquering
nations of the world, are as definitely bounded by certain lines of
latitude as are those of climate; and that such areas give us _zones of
conquest and subjugation_ as truly as the Temperate or the Frigid give
us zones of climate. There are _a priori_ reasons for this; and there
are proofs of it in every page of history. The effects of a northern
latitude are to stunt the population, after the fashion of the
Laplander; those of the tropics to enervate. Between these extremes the
peoples that are at once hardy and well-grown strike, as with a
two-edged sword, both upwards and downwards, north and south. The
Germans, Slavonians, Turks, and Algonkins verify this. Sometimes a
superior civilization, sometimes undeveloped energies, referable to some
new influences, counteract this natural disposition (one of the nearest
approaches to a law in ethnology) but the general rule is, as has been
stated,--apparent exceptions, as are the Romans and Arabians.
The Turks pressed forward in the direction of Europe, even as the
Sarmatians did towards India, earlier than they have the credit of
doing. The Skoloti have been already considered. But what do we find in
the early history of Asia Minor? A mountain throughout the Turk area is
_Tagh_ or _Dagh_. The mountain from which the 10,000 Greeks saw the sea
was _Thekh_-es. This, perhaps, is accidental. But who dwelt around it?
The Skythini, the Anatolian equivalents to the Russian Skythæ. But this
proves too much, since Skythæ was no native name, but one of Sarmatian
origin, and, as such, indicative of Sarmatians in the parts about.
Otherwise, how could it be used? These Sarmatians cannot be
demonstrated. Nevertheless, the name in the Anabasis of the king of the
Paphlagonian neighbours of the _Scythini_, near the mountain _Thekhes_,
is _Korylas_, and _Kral_ is the Lithuanic for _king_. But _king_ is a
common, not a proper name. So is _Zupan_ (=_chief_, _lord_, _or
superior_) in the present Slavonic. Yet Gibbon speaks of _Zupanus_, as a
king so-called, by certain Slavonians of the Middle Danube. All this may
be accidental. Such accidents, however, are stranger than the facts
which explain them away.
Ottomans, Greeks, Romans, Goths, and Slavonians have all modified the
original blood of Thrace; yet the present blood of Ottoman Rumelia is,
probably, more Thracian than aught else, Thracian on the mothers’ side.
The old Thracian affinities are difficult; but not beyond investigation.
A series of statements on the part of good classical authors tell us,
that the Daci were what the Getæ were, and the Thracians what the Getæ;
also, that the Phrygians spoke the same language as the Thracians, and
the Armenians as the Phrygians. If so, either the ancient language of
Hungary must have been spoken as far as the Caspian, or the ancient
Armenian as far as the Theiss. Many facts are against this: indeed the
evidence must be dealt with by attributing two languages to Phrygia, one
approaching the nearest tongue on the East, which would be the
Armenian, and another standing in the same relation to the Thracian, on
the west. This distinction being drawn, the rest is probable.
The evidence as to there having been members of the Thracian stock on
both sides the Hellespont, is not limited to the Phrygians of Mysia. The
Bithyni and others are in the same category. Which way was the
migration? It is generally believed to have been from Asia to Europe;
but the deduction of the Greeks from Italy, and that of the Sanskrit
language from Europe, modifies this view. In truth, the present writer
reads the whole history of Thrace backwards; seeing in the majority of
the populations akin to the Thracians on the eastern side of the
Hellespont signs of European intrusion. Signs, too, of European
intrusion he sees in the world-wide tale of Troy; the historical basis
of the great Homeric poems being not the struggle between the Greek and
the Asiatic, but that between the Greek and Thracian, each fighting for
a footing in Asia Minor. Perhaps the beginning of the Greek colonization
was the end of the Sarmatian; for the ancient Thracians I believe to
have belonged to this stock. Like the Lithuanians of the Cimmerian
Bosphorus, they have effected their share of achievements in India;
their conquests having been Bacchic, Thracian, and Slavonic, just as the
Cimmerian inroads were Lithuanic. So that there was a double origin to
the so-called Indo-Europeans of Hindostan and Persia; a trace of which
may _possibly_,--I do not say _probably_--exists at the present moment
in the name _Jat_.[23]
Between the original Thracian basis and the present dominant population
of Osmanlis, there have been the following elements of intermixture:
Pelasgic (whatever that was), Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, Gothic,
Slavonic, and Bulgarian.
So far as the Macedonians were other than Hellenic, they were either
Skipetar or Slavonian, _i.e._, in the category of the ancient Albanians,
or in the category of the ancient Thracians; or they may have been mixed
in some unascertained manner. Even if we suppose them to have pressed
southwards and eastwards from the head-waters of the Axius, and from the
southern boundary of Servia, a place for them in the same great class
with the Thracians is admissible; and, in all probability, southern
Servia was their original locality. That they, too, pressed forwards in
Asia is likely. That words so radically alike as _Mygdon-es_ and
_Macedon-es_, are wholly unconnected, and that they resemble each other
by accident, is what I am slow to believe; but that the line of
demarcation between the Thracians and Macedonians is broad and
trenchant for members of the same stock, is likely, since each was an
encroaching population, and, as such, a population which obliterated
transitional and intermediate varieties.
It is well known that of the three localities of the Pelasgian stock,
known under that name within the period of authentic history, two are in
Macedonia: one of these we get from Herodotus, the other from
Thucydides.
1. Herodotus mentions the Pelasgi of Khreston--above the Tyrsênians.
2. Thucydides, those of Cleonæ, Dium, and Olophyxus on the peninsula of
Mount Athos.
The Pelasgi of the third locality, the Asiatic Pelasgi, or the
Herodotean Pelasgi of the parts about Plakia and Skylake, near Cyzicus,
may reasonably be considered as settlers of comparatively recent origin,
both from the general phenomena of ethnological distribution, and the
most scientific interpretation of the few _data_ we possess for the
ancient ethnology of Asia Minor.
But the Pelasgi of Chreston and Mount Athos, are in localities wherein
they may as easily be aboriginal as intrusive. Which were they? I cannot
make up my mind; I can only exhaust the two alternatives. If aboriginal,
they were one of three things, Skipetar, Slavonic, or members of an
extinct stock; if intrusive, members of some extinct stock, Asiatic or
Italian. How they may have been, this is easily understood.
1. An eastern extension of the oldest Skipetar area would carry a
population akin to the ancestors of the present Albanians as far as the
Ægean.
2. A southern extension of the Thracian area would carry the ancient
Thracian stock as far as Thessaly.
3. Semitic, or other Asiatic colonies, would give us a series of
maritime settlements.
4. So would a series of very early Italian colonizations. These we may
deduce from some part of Italy, different from the mother-country of the
true Hellenic Greeks; and we may, also, assume a difference in the date
of the movement. In such a case the Pelasgi may have been Hellenic, as
the Anglo-Saxons were Scandinavian; in other words, out of two Italian
colonizations one (the Pelasgic) may have been the analogue to the
Angle, the other (the Hellenic) to the Danish invasion of Britain.
Of these alternatives I prefer the second and fourth to the first and
third.
The name itself seems to have been applied to one stock only, not to
several--though the evidence of this is by no means conclusive.
It seems not to have been _native_. Native names are, usually, more
specific and less general. It was a name which A gave to B, not one
which B gave itself.
It seems to have been originally other than Greek.
With a strong inclination to see in the Œnotrian conquest of Greece a
_third_ rather a _second_ stream of population, and with the belief that
the earliest displacement of the original Skipetar population was
effected by movements from Thrace and Macedon (by members of the great
Slavonic stock), the Greek occupancy being later than this; favouring,
too, the idea that the Pelasgi of Macedon were, at one and the same
time, indigenous to the soil, and members of the same stock as the
Thracians (the stock being the Slavonic); I am opposed to the broad line
of demarcation which so many recent authors have drawn between the
Hellenic civilization and the Thracian, a line of demarcation which has
led them, in many cases, to explain away rather than admit the evidence
of several good writers of antiquity, as to the influence of the
Thracian music and the Thracian poetry on early Greece.
To claim for the Homeric poems the same amount of Thracian elements that
the Welshman claims for those of the cycle of King Arthur, would be to
illustrate the _obscurum per obscurius_, inasmuch as the Welshman’s
claim is of a somewhat impalpable nature. It cannot attach to the poems
themselves, in any known form. They are all in Norman-French, or German,
or English, or Italian--none in Welsh. Neither are they translations of
a Welsh original now lost. Neither is their subject-matter Welsh to the
amount of one-third. Yet, the germ of the fiction is, in some way or
other, Welsh, and the claim of the Welshman is, up to a certain point,
valid.
_Mutatis mutandis_, let us ask whether the Trojan cycle may not, in the
same sense, be Slavonic--assuming the Thracians to have belonged to that
stock?
I. _a._ When we find the name of a non-historical person coincide with
that of an historical people or an historical locality, it is a fair
inference, all the world over, to consider that form as an _epônymus_.
_b._ It is also fair to connect such legends as attach to the name with
the people or the locality.
_c._ Now several names in the early Greek epic cycles are thus
_eponymic_--thus localized in Thracian and other similar
localities--Teucer, Æneas, Dardanus, &c.
II. Again--the national poetry of the existing Slavonic nations, more
nearly approaches--_longo intervallo_, I admit--that of the Homeric
Greeks than does that of any other families of mankind.
III. The metres do the same.
IV. The Sanskrit metres are in the same category with the Slavonic; so
that--the European origin of the Sanskrit being admitted--the similarity
must be of great antiquity.
These points cannot be enlarged on. They form, however, the basis of
some claim for the existence of Slavonic elements in the old heroic
poetry of Greece; which--it must be remembered--originated on the
Helleno-Slavonic debatable land of Æolic Asia.
The propounder of an hypothesis has no right to lay down, peremptorily,
the laws by which his doctrine is to be tested. At the same time, he may
fairly claim that the objections to it should rest on the same broad
grounds on which it is based. The Homeric poems are Greek; and the
Orlando Furioso is Italian. Yet there are Welsh and other non-Italian
elements in the latter, and, it is submitted, that there are Slavonic
and non-Hellenic elements in the former. Their amount I do not profess
to measure.
_Bosnia_, _Herzegovna_, _Turkish Croatia_,--Slavonic in speech, and
Slavonic in blood, the Bosnians and Herzegovnians differ from the
Servians only in a few details--the chief being their Mahometan creed.
Equally slight is the difference between the Turkish and Austrian
Croatians.
_Bulgaria_ is Slavonic and Rumanyo in speech, Mœsian, Gothic, Turk,
and Slavonic in blood.