Of the Turkish literature we need speak but briefly. The Turks were not
Semites, but a Tartar or East Asiatic stock who, after wandering into
Western Asia, accepted the Mohammedan faith about A.D. 1288. At the
very moment when the vast Mohammedan empire was crumbling to pieces,
assailed by pagan Tartar hordes and crusading Christian armies from
without, and withering from spiritual decadence within, the Turks took
up the waning faith, and with the energy of new and younger converts
carried it onward to the military conquests which built up the Turkish
Empire.
This new empire soon included geographically most of the older Arab
Empire; but the Turks brought to their new faith only the dubious glory
of victory in war. They added little, either to its thought or to its
literature. They were, in fact, a nation still semi-barbaric, strong
in the natural virtues of faith and honesty and a rude kindliness, but
wholly lacking in the subtlety and intellectual keenness which could
have advanced Mohammedan thought.
Hence we shall find in their literature, at first, only childish
tales, echoes of the childhood of the world, magic stories close akin
to those of our own fairyland. Then comes a native poetry, not rising
to remarkable heights in any one great poet, but full of a warm human
love of romance and justice. Later we come to more thoughtful and
elaborate writings, but these incline to deal with the practical world
rather than with that of religion and speculative thought. So that
we close our Turkish section with what is perhaps the most valuable
piece of early Turkish literature, a work of travel, the celebrated
autobiography of Sidi Ali Reis.