You may think, Gentlemen, I have been very
long in coming to the Turks, and indeed I have
been longer than I could have wished; but I
have thought it necessary, in order to your taking
a just view of them, that you should survey them 5
first of all in their original condition. When they
first appear in history they are Huns or Tartars,
and nothing else; they are indeed in no
unimportant respects Tartars even now; but, had they
never been made something more than Tartars, 10
they never would have had much to do with the
history of the world. In that case, they would
have had only the fortunes of Attila and Zingis;
they might have swept over the face of the earth,
and scourged the human race, powerful to destroy, 15
helpless to construct, and in consequence
ephemeral; but this would have been all. But this has
not been all, as regards the Turks; for, in spite
of their intimate resemblance or relationship to
the Tartar tribes, in spite of their essential 20
barbarism to this day, still they, or at least great
portions of the race, have been put under
education; they have been submitted to a slow
course of change, with a long history and a profitable
discipline and fortunes of a peculiar kind;
and thus they have gained those qualities of
mind, which alone enable a nation to wield and
to consolidate imperial power.
I have said that, when first they distinctly 5
appear on the scene of history, they are
indistinguishable from Tartars. Mount Altai, the
high metropolis of Tartary, is surrounded by a
hilly district, rich not only in the useful, but in
the precious metals. Gold is said to abound 10
there; but it is still more fertile in veins of iron,
which indeed is said to be the most plentiful in
the world. There have been iron works there
from time immemorial, and at the time that the
Huns descended on the Roman Empire (in the 15
fifth century of the Christian era), we find
the Turks nothing more than a family of slaves,
employed as workers of the ore and as blacksmiths
by the dominant tribe. Suddenly in the course
of fifty years, soon after the fall of the Hunnish 20
power in Europe, with the sudden development
peculiar to Tartars, we find these Turks spread
from East to West, and lords of a territory so
extensive, that they were connected, by relations
of peace or war, at once with the Chinese, the 25
Persians, and the Romans. They had reached
Kamtchatka on the North, the Caspian on the
West, and perhaps even the mouth of the Indus
on the South. Here then we have an
intermediate empire of Tartars, placed between the 30
eras of Attila and Zingis; but in this sketch it has
no place, except as belonging to Turkish history,
because it was contained within the limits of
Asia, and, though it lasted for 200 years, it only
faintly affected the political transactions of
Europe. However, it was not without some sort 5
of influence on Christendom, for the Romans
interchanged embassies with its sovereign in the
reign of the then Greek Emperor Justin the
younger (A.D. 570), with the view of engaging
him in a warlike alliance against Persia. The 10
account of one of these embassies remains, and
the picture it presents of the Turks is important,
because it seems clearly to identify them with
the Tartar race.
For instance, in the mission to the Tartars 15
from the Pope, which I have already spoken of,
the friars were led between two fires, when they
approached the Khan, and they at first refused
to follow, thinking they might be countenancing
some magical rite. Now we find it recorded of 20
this Roman embassy, that, on its arrival, it was
purified by the Turks with fire and incense. As
to incense, which seems out of place among such
barbarians, it is remarkable that it is used in
the ceremonial of the Turkish court to this day. 25
At least Sir Charles Fellows, in his work on the
Antiquities of Asia Minor, in 1838, speaks of the
Sultan as going to the festival of Bairam with
incense-bearers before him. Again, when the
Romans were presented to the great Khan, they 30
found him in his tent, seated on a throne, to which
wheels were attached and horses attachable, in
other words, a Tartar wagon. Moreover, they
were entertained at a banquet which lasted the
greater part of the day; and an intoxicating
liquor, not wine, which was sweet and pleasant, 5
was freely presented to them; evidently the
Tartar _koumiss_.[32] The next day they had a
second entertainment in a still more splendid
tent; the hangings were of embroidered silk, and
the throne, the cups, and the vases were of gold. 10
On the third day, the pavilion, in which they were
received, was supported on gilt columns; a couch
of massive gold was raised on four gold peacocks;
and before the entrance to the tent was what
might be called a sideboard, only that it was a 15
sort of barricade of wagons, laden with dishes,
basins, and statues of solid silver. All these
points in the description--the silk hangings, the
gold vessels, the successively increasing splendor
of the entertainments--remind us of the courts 20
of Zingis and Timour, 700 and 900 years
afterwards.
[32] Univ. Hist. Modern, vol. iii. p. 346.
This empire, then, of the Turks was of a Tartar
character; yet it was the first step of their
passing from barbarism to that degree of civilization 25
which is their historical badge. And it was their
first step in civilization, not so much by what
it did in its day, as (unless it be a paradox to
say so) by its coming to an end. Indeed it so
happens, that those Turkish tribes which have 30
changed their original character and have a place
in the history of the world, have obtained their
_status_ and their qualifications for it, by a process
very different from that which took place in the
nations most familiar to us. What this process 5
has been I will say presently; first, however, let
us observe that, fortunately for our purpose, we
have still specimens existing of those other
Turkish tribes, which were never submitted to
this process of education and change, and, in 10
looking at them as they now exist, we see at this
very day the Turkish nationality in something
very like its original form, and are able to decide
for ourselves on its close approximation to the
Tartar. You may recollect I pointed out to 15
you, Gentlemen, in the opening of these lectures,
the course which the pastoral tribes, or nomads
as they are often called, must necessarily take
in their emigrations. They were forced along
in one direction till they emerged from their 20
mountain valleys, and descended their high
plateau at the end of Tartary, and then they had
the opportunity of turning south. If they did
not avail themselves of this opening, but went on
still westward, their next southern pass would 25
be the defiles of the Caucasus and Circassia, to
the west of the Caspian. If they did not use this,
they would skirt the top of the Black Sea, and
so reach Europe. Thus in the emigration of the
Huns from China, you may recollect a tribe of 30
them turned to the South as soon as they could,
and settled themselves between the high Tartar
land and the sea of Aral, while the main body
went on to the furthest West by the north of the
Black Sea. Now with this last passage into
Europe we are not here concerned, for the Turks 5
have never introduced themselves to Europe by
means of it;[33] but with those two southward
passages which are Asiatic, viz., that to the east
of the Aral, and that to the west of the Caspian.
The Turkish tribes have all descended upon the 10
civilized world by one or other of these two roads;
and I observe, that those which have descended
along the east of the Aral have changed their
social habits and gained political power, while
those which descended to the west of the Caspian 15
remain pretty much what they ever were. The
former of these go among us by the general
name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans
or Turkmans.... At the very date at which
Heraclius called the Turcomans into Georgia, at 20
the very date when their Eastern brethren
crossed the northern border of Sogdiana, an event
of most momentous import had occurred in the
South. A new religion had arisen in Arabia.
The impostor Mahomet, announcing himself the 25
Prophet of God, was writing the pages of that
book, and molding the faith of that people, which
was to subdue half the known world. The Turks
passed the Jaxartes southward in A.D. 626; just
four years before Mahomet had assumed the royal
dignity, and just six years after, on his death,
his followers began the conquest of the Persian
Empire. In the course of 20 years they effected
it; Sogdiana was at its very extremity, or its 5
borderland; there the last king of Persia took
refuge from the south, while the Turks were
pouring into it from the north. There was little to
choose for the unfortunate prince between the
Turk and the Saracen; the Turks were his 10
hereditary foe; they had been the giants and
monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw
himself into their arms. They engaged in his
service, betrayed him, murdered him, and
measured themselves with the Saracens in his stead. 15
Thus the military strength of the north and south
of Asia, the Saracenic and the Turkish, came into
memorable conflict in the regions of which I have
said so much. The struggle was a fierce one, and
lasted many years; the Turks striving to force 20
their way down to the ocean, the Saracens to
drive them back into their Scythian deserts.
They first fought this issue in Bactriana or
Khorasan; the Turks got the worst of the fight,
and then it was thrown back upon Sogdiana 25
itself, and there it ended again in favor of the
Saracens. At the end of 90 years from the time
of the first Turkish descent on this fair region,
they relinquished it to their Mahometan
opponents. The conquerors found it rich, populous, 30
and powerful; its cities, Carisme, Bokhara, and
Samarcand, were surrounded beyond their
fortifications by a suburb of fields and gardens, which
was in turn protected by exterior works; its plains
were well cultivated, and its commerce extended
from China to Europe. Its riches were 5
proportionally great; the Saracens were able to extort
a tribute of two million gold pieces from the
inhabitants; we read, moreover, of the crown
jewels of one of the Turkish princesses; and of
the buskin of another, which she dropt in her 10
flight from Bokhara, as being worth two
thousand pieces of gold.[34] Such had been the prosperity
of the barbarian invaders, such was its end; but
not _their_ end, for adversity did them service, as
well as prosperity, as we shall see. 15
[33] I am here assuming that the Magyars are not of the Turkish
stock; vid. Gibbon and Pritchard.
[34] Gibbon.
It is usual for historians to say, that the
triumph of the South threw the Turks back again
upon their northern solitudes; and this might
easily be the case with some of the many hordes,
which were ever passing the boundary and 20
flocking down; but it is no just account of the
historical fact, viewed as a whole. Not often indeed
do the Oriental nations present us with an
example of versatility of character; the Turks, for
instance, of this day are substantially what they 25
were four centuries ago. We cannot conceive,
were Turkey overrun by the Russians at the
present moment, that the fanatical tribes, which
are pouring into Constantinople from Asia Minor,
would submit to the foreign yoke, take service 30
under their conquerors, become soldiers,
custom-officers, police, men of business, attaches,
statesmen, working their way up from the ranks and
from the masses into influence and power; but,
whether from skill in the Saracens, or from 5
far-reaching sagacity in the Turks (and it is difficult
to assign it to either cause), so it was, that a
process of this nature followed close upon the
Mahometan conquest of Sogdiana. It is to be
traced in detail to a variety of accidents. Many 10
of the Turks probably were made slaves, and the
service to which they were subjected was no
matter of choice. Numbers had got attached to
the soil; and inheriting the blood of Persians,
White Huns, or aboriginal inhabitants for three 15
generations, had simply unlearned the wildness
of the Tartar shepherd. Others fell victims to
the religion of their conquerors, which ultimately,
as we know, exercised a most remarkable
influence upon them. Not all at once, but as 20
tribe descended after tribe, and generation
followed generation, they succumbed to the creed
of Mahomet; and they embraced it with the
ardor and enthusiasm which Franks and Saxons
so gloriously and meritoriously manifested in their 25
conversion to Christianity.
Here again was a very powerful instrument
in modification of their national character. Let
me illustrate it in one particular. If there is one
peculiarity above another, proper to the savage 30
and to the Tartar, it is that of excitability and
impetuosity on ordinary occasions; the Turks,
on the other hand, are nationally remarkable for
gravity and almost apathy of demeanor. Now
there are evidently elements in the Mahometan
creed, which would tend to change them from 5
the one temperament to the other. Its
sternness, its coldness, its doctrine of fatalism; even
the truths which it borrowed from Revelation,
when separated from the truths it rejected, its
monotheism untempered by mediation, its severe 10
view of the Divine attributes, of the law, and of a
sure retribution to come, wrought both a gloom
and also an improvement in the barbarian, not
very unlike the effect which some forms of
Protestantism produce among ourselves. But 15
whatever was the mode of operation, certainly
it is to their religion that this peculiarity of the
Turks is ascribed by competent judges.
Lieutenant Wood in his journal gives us a lively
account of a peculiarity of theirs, which he 20
unhesitatingly attributes to Islamism. "Nowhere,"
he says, "is the difference between European and
Mahometan society more strongly marked than
in the lower walks of life.... A Kasid, or
messenger, for example, will come into a public 25
department, deliver his letters in full durbar, and
demean himself throughout the interview with
so much composure and self-possession, that an
European can hardly believe that his grade in
society is so low. After he has delivered his 30
letters, he takes his seat among the crowd, and
answers, calmly and without hesitation, all the
questions which may be addressed to him, or
communicates the verbal instructions with which
he has been intrusted by his employer, and
which are often of more importance than the 5
letters themselves. Indeed, all the inferior classes
possess an innate self-respect, and a natural
gravity of deportment, which differs as far from
the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the
awkward rusticity of an English clown." ... "Even 10
children," he continues, "in Mahometan countries
have an unusual degree of gravity in their
deportment. The boy, who can but lisp his 'Peace be
with you,' has imbibed this portion of the national
character. In passing through a village, these 15
little men will place their hands upon their
breasts, and give the usual greeting. Frequently
have I seen the children of chiefs approach their
father's durbar, and stopping short at the
threshold of the door, utter the shout of 'Salam 20
Ali-Kum,' so as to draw all eyes upon them; but
nothing daunted, they marched boldly into the
room, and sliding down upon their knees, folded
their arms and took their seat upon the musnad
with all the gravity of grown-up persons." 25
As Islamism has changed the demeanor of the
Turks, so doubtless it has in other ways materially
innovated on their Tartar nature. It has given
an aim to their military efforts, a political
principle, and a social bond. It has laid them under 30
a sense of responsibility, has molded them into
consistency, and taught them a course of policy
and perseverance in it. But to treat this part
of the subject adequately to its importance would
require, Gentlemen, a research and a fullness of
discussion unsuitable to the historical sketch 5
which I have undertaken. I have said enough
for my purpose upon this topic; and indeed
on the general question of the modification of
national character to which the Turks were at
this period subjected. 10