applied promiscuously to all the nomadic warriors whom Asia then poured
forth over Europe. Originally Tatar was a name of the Mongolic races, but
through their political ascendency in Asia after Chingis-khán, it became
usual to call all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name
of Tatar. In linguistic works Tataric is now used in two several senses.
Following the example of writers of the Middle Ages, Tataric, like
Scythian in Greek, has been fixed upon as the general term comprising
_all_ languages spoken by the nomadic tribes of Asia. Hence it is used
sometimes in the same sense in which we use Turanian. Secondly, Tataric
has become the name of that class of Turanian languages of which the
Turkish is the most prominent member. While the Mongolic class—that which
in fact has the greatest claims to the name of Tataric—is never so called,
it has become an almost universal custom to apply this name to the third
or Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic division; and the races belonging to
this branch have in many instances themselves adopted the name. These
Turkish, or as they are more commonly called, Tataric races, were settled
on the northern side of the Caspian Sea, and on the Black Sea, and were
known as Komanes, Pechenegs, and Bulgars, when conquered by the Mongolic
army of the son of Chingis-khán, who founded the Kapchakian empire,
extending from the Dniestr to the Yemba and the Kirgisian steppes. Russia
for two centuries was under the sway of these Kháns, known as the Khans of
the Golden Horde. This empire was dissolved towards the end of the
fifteenth century, and several smaller kingdoms rose out of its ruins.
Among these Krim, Kasan, and Astrachan, were the most important. The
princes of these kingdoms still gloried in their descent from
Chingis-khán, and had hence a right to the name of Mongols or Tatars. But
their armies and subjects also, who were of Turkish blood, received the
name of their princes; and their languages continued to be called Tataric,
even after the tribes by whom they were spoken had been brought under the
Russian sceptre, and were no longer governed by khans of Mongolic or
Tataric origin. It would perhaps be desirable to use Turkic instead of
Tataric, when speaking of the third branch of the northern division of the
Turanian family, did not a change of terminology generally produce as much
confusion as it remedies. The recollection of their non-Tataric, _i.e._
non-Mongolic origin, remains, it appears, among the so-called Tatars of
Kasan and Astrachan. If asked whether they are Tatars, they reply no; and
they call their language Turki or Turuk, but not Tatari. Nay, they
consider Tatar as a term of abuse, synonymous with robber, evidently from
a recollection that their ancestors had once been conquered and enslaved
by Mongolic, that is, Tataric, tribes. All this rests on the authority of
Klaproth, who during his stay in Russia had great opportunities of
studying the languages spoken on the frontiers of this half-Asiatic
empire.
The conquests of the Mongols or the descendants of Chingis-khán were not
confined, however, to these Turkish tribes. They conquered China in the
east, where they founded the Mongolic dynasty of Yuan, and in the west,
after subduing the khalifs of Bagdad, and the Sultans of Iconium, they
conquered Moscow, and devastated the greater part of Russia. In 1240 they
invaded Poland, in 1241 Silesia. Here they recoiled before the united
armies of Germany, Poland, and Silesia. They retired into Moravia, and
having exhausted that country, occupied Hungary. At that time they had to
choose a new khan, which could only be done at Karakorum, the old capital
of their empire. Thither they withdrew to elect an emperor to govern an
empire which then extended from China to Poland, from India to Siberia.
But a realm of such vast proportions could not be long held together, and
towards the end of the thirteenth century it broke up into several
independent states, all under Mongolian princes, but no longer under one
khan of khans. Thus new independent Mongolic empires arose in China,
Turkestan, Siberia, Southern Russia, and Persia. In 1360, the Mongolian
dynasty was driven out of China; in the fifteenth century they lost their
hold on Russia. In Central Asia they rallied once more under Timur (1369),
whose sway was again acknowledged from Karakorum to Persia and Anatolia.
But in 1468, this empire also fell by its own weight, and for want of
powerful rulers like Chingis-khán or Timur. In Jagatai alone, the country
extending from the Aral Lake to the Hindu-kush, between the rivers Oxus
and Yaxartes (Jihon and Sihon), and once governed by Jagatai, the son of
Chingis-khán—the Mongolian dynasty maintained itself, and thence it was
that Baber, a descendant of Timur, conquered India, and founded there a
Mongolian dynasty, surviving up to our own times in the Great Moguls of
Delhi. Most Mongolic tribes are now under the sway of the nations whom
they once had conquered, the Tungusic sovereigns of China, the Russian
czars, and the Turkish sultans.
The Mongolic language, although spoken (but not continuously) from China
as far as the Volga, has given rise to but few dialects. Next to Tungusic,
the Mongolic is the poorest language of the Turanian family, and the
scantiness of grammatical terminations accounts for the fact that, as a
language, it has remained very much unchanged. There is, however, a
distinction between the language as spoken by the Eastern, Western, and
Northern tribes, and incipient traces of grammatical life have lately been
discovered by Castrén, the great Swedish traveller and Turanian
philologist, in the spoken dialect of the Buriäts. In it the persons of
the verb are distinguished by affixes, while, according to the rules of
Mongolic grammar, no other dialect distinguishes in the verb between
am_o_, am_as_, am_at_.
The Mongols who live in Europe have fixed their tents on each side of the
Volga and along the coast of the Caspian Sea near Astrachan. Another
colony is found south-east of Sembirsk. They belong to the Western branch,
and are Ölöts or Kalmüks, who left their seats on the Koko-nur, and
entered Europe in 1662. They proceeded from the clans Dürbet and Torgod,
but most of the Torgods returned again in 1770, and their descendants are
now scattered over the Kirgisian steppes.
_Turkic Class_.
Much more important are the languages belonging to the third branch of the
Turanian family, most prominent among which is the Turkish or Osmanli of
Constantinople. The number of the Turkish inhabitants of European Turkey
is indeed small. It is generally stated at 2,000,000; but Shafarik
estimates the number of genuine Turks at not more than 700,000, who rule
over fifteen millions of people. The different Turkic dialects of which
the Osmanli is one, occupy one of the largest linguistic areas, extending
from the Lena and the Polar Sea, down to the Adriatic.
The most ancient name by which the Turkic tribes of Central Asia were
known to the Chinese was Hiung-nu. These Hiung-nu founded an empire (206
B. C.) comprising a large portion of Asia, west of China. Engaged in
frequent wars with the Chinese, they were defeated at last in the middle
of the first century after Christ. Thereupon they divided into a northern
and southern empire; and, after the southern Hiung-nu had become subjects
of China, they attacked the northern Hiung-nu, together with the Chinese,
and, driving them out of their seats between the rivers Amur and Selenga,
and the Altai mountains, westward, they are supposed to have given the
first impulse to the inroads of the barbarians into Europe. In the
beginning of the third century, the Mongolic and Tungusic tribes, who had
filled the seats of the northern Hiung-nu, had grown so powerful as to
attack the southern Hiung-nu and drive them from their territories. This
occasioned a second migration of Asiatic tribes towards the west.
Another name by which the Chinese designate these Hiung-nu or Turkish
tribes is Tu-kiu. This Tu-kiu is supposed to be identical with Turk, and,
although the tribe to which this name was given was originally but small,
it began to spread in the sixth century from the Altai to the Caspian, and
it was probably to them that in 569 the Emperor Justinian sent an
ambassador in the person of Semarchos. The empire of the Tu-kiu was
destroyed in the eighth century, by the ’Hui-’he (Chinese Kao-che). This
tribe, equally of Turkish origin, maintained itself for about a century,
and was then conquered by the Chinese and driven back from the northern
borders of China. Part of the ’Hui-’he occupied Tangut, and, after a
second defeat by the Mongolians in 1257, the remnant proceeded still
further west, and joined the Uigurs, whose tents were pitched near the
towns of Turfan, ’Kashgar, ’Hamil, and Aksu.
These facts, gleaned chiefly from Chinese historians, show from the very
earliest times the westward tendency of the Turkish nations. In 568
Turkish tribes occupied the country between the Volga and the sea of Azov,
and numerous reinforcements have since strengthened their position in
those parts.
The northern part of Persia, west of the Caspian Sea, Armenia, the south
of Georgia, Shirwan, and Dagestan, harbor a Turkic population, known by
the general name of Turkman or Kisil-bash (Red-caps). They are nomadic
robbers, and their arrival in these countries dates from the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
East of the Caspian Sea the Turkman tribes are under command of the
Usbek-Khans of Khiva, Fergana, and Bukhára. They call themselves, however,
not subjects but guests of these Khans. Still more to the east the
Turkmans are under Chinese sovereignty, and in the south-west they reach
as far as Khorasan and other provinces of Persia.
The Usbeks, descendants of the ’Huy-’he and Uigurs, and originally settled
in the neighborhood of the towns of ’Hoten, Kashgar, Turfan, and ’Hamil,
crossed the Yaxartes in the sixteenth century, and after several
successful campaigns gained possession of Balkh, Kharism (Khiva), Bukhára,
and Ferganah. In the latter country and in Balkh they have become
agricultural; but generally their life is nomadic, and too warlike to be
called pastoral.
Another Turkish tribe are the Nogái, west of the Caspian, and also north
of the Black Sea. To the beginning of the seventeenth century they lived
north-east of the Caspian, and the steppes on the left of the Irtish bore
their name. Pressed by the Kalmüks, a Mongolic tribe, the Nogáis advanced
westward as far as Astrachan. Peter I. transferred them thence to the
north of the Caucasian mountains, where they still graze their flocks on
the shores of the Kuban and the Kuma. One horde, that of Kundur, remained
on the Volga, subject to the Kalmüks.
Another tribe of Turkish origin in the Caucasus are the Bazianes. They now
live near the sources of the Kuban, but before the fifteenth century
within the town Majari, on the Kuma.
A third Turkish tribe in the Caucasus are the Kumüks on the rivers Sunja,
Aksai, and Koisu: now subjects of Russia, though under native princes.
The southern portion of the Altaic mountains has long been inhabited by
the Bashkirs, a race considerably mixed with Mongolic blood, savage and
ignorant, subjects of Russia, and Mohammedans by faith. Their land is
divided into four Roads, called the Roads of Siberia, of Kasan, of Nogai,
and of Osa, a place on the Kama. Among the Bashkirs, and in villages near
Ufa, is now settled a Turkish tribe, the Mescheräks who formerly lived
near the Volga.
The tribes near the Lake of Aral are called Kara-Kalpak. They are subject
partly to Russia, partly to the Khans of Khiva.
The Turks of Siberia, commonly called Tatars, are partly original
settlers, who crossed the Ural, and founded the Khanat of Sibir, partly
later colonists. Their chief towns are Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, and Tomsk.
Separate tribes are the Uran’hat on the Chulym, and the Barabas in the
steppes between the Irtish and the Ob.
The dialects of these Siberian Turks are considerably intermingled with
foreign words, taken from Mongolic, Samoyedic, or Russian sources. Still
they resemble one another closely in all that belongs to the original
stock of the language.
In the north-east of Asia, on both sides of the river Lena, the _Yakuts_
form the most remote link in the Turkic chain of languages. Their male
population has lately risen to 100,000, while in 1795 it amounted only to
50,066. The Russians became first acquainted with them in 1620. They call
themselves Sakha, and are mostly heathen, though Christianity is gaining
ground among them. According to their traditions, their ancestors lived
for a long time in company with Mongolic tribes, and traces of this can
still be discovered in their language. Attacked by their neighbors, they
built rafts and floated down the river Lena, where they settled in the
neighborhood of what is now Yakutzk. Their original seats seem to have
been north-west of Lake Baikal. Their language has preserved the Turkic
type more completely than any other Turco-Tataric dialect. Separated from
the common stock at an early time, and removed from the disturbing
influences to which the other dialects were exposed, whether in war or in
peace, the Yakutian has preserved so many primitive features of Tataric
grammar, that even now it may be used as a key to the grammatical forms of
the Osmanli and other more cultivated Turkic dialects.
Southern Siberia is the mother country of the Kirgis, one of the most
numerous tribes of Turco-Tataric origin. The Kirgis lived originally
between the Ob and Yenisei, where Mongolic tribes settled among them. At
the beginning of the seventeenth century the Russians became acquainted
with the Eastern Kirgis, then living along the Yenisei. In 1606 they had
become tributary to Russia, and after several wars with two neighboring
tribes, they were driven more and more south-westward, till they left
Siberia altogether at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They now
live at Burut, in Chinese Turkestan, together with the Kirgis of the
“Great Horde,” near the town of Kashgar, north as far as the Irtish.
Another tribe is that of the Western Kirgis, or Kirgis-Kasak, who are
partly independent, partly tributary to Russia and China.
Of what are called the three Kirgis Hordes, from the Caspian Sea east as
far as Lake Tenghiz, the Small Horde is fixed in the west, between the
rivers Yemba and Ural; the Great Horde in the east; while the most
powerful occupies the centre between the Sarasu and Yemba, and is called
the Middle Horde. Since 1819, the Great Horde has been subject to Russia.
Other Kirgis tribes, though nominally subject to Russia, are really her
most dangerous enemies.
The Turks of Asia Minor and Syria came from Khorasan and Eastern Persia,
and are Turkmans, or remnants of the Seljuks, the rulers of Persia during
the Middle Ages. The Osmanli, whom we are accustomed to call Turks _par
excellence_, and who form the ruling portion of the Turkish empire, must
be traced to the same source. They are now scattered over the whole
Turkish empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and their number amounts to
between 11,000,000 and 12,000,000. They form the landed gentry, the
aristocracy, and bureaucracy of Turkey; and their language, the Osmanli,
is spoken by persons of rank and education, and by all government
authorities in Syria, in Egypt, at Tunis, and at Tripoli. In the southern
provinces of Asiatic Russia, along the borders of the Caspian, and through
the whole of Turkestan, it is the language of the people. It is heard even
at the court of Teheran, and is understood by official personages in
Persia.
The rise of this powerful tribe of Osman, and the spreading of that
Turkish dialect which is now emphatically called the Turkish, are matters
of historical notoriety. We need not search for evidence in Chinese
annals, or try to discover analogies between names that a Greek or an
Arabic writer may by chance have heard and handed down to us, and which
some of these tribes have preserved to the present day. The ancestors of
the Osman Turks are men as well known to European historians as
Charlemagne or Alfred. It was in the year 1224 that Soliman-shah and his
tribe, pressed by Mongolians, left Khorasan and pushed westward into
Syria, Armenia, and Asia Minor. Soliman’s son, Ertoghrul, took service
under Aladdin, the Seljuk Sultan of Iconium (Nicæa), and after several
successful campaigns against Greeks and Mongolians, received part of
Phrygia as his own, and there founded what was afterwards to become the
basis of the Osmanic empire. During the last years of the thirteenth
century the Sultans of Iconium lost their power, and their former vassals
became independent sovereigns. Osman, after taking his share of the spoil
in Asia, advanced through the Olympic passes into Bithynia and was
successful against the armies of the Emperors of Byzantium. Osman became
henceforth the national name of his people. His son, Orkhan, whose capital
was Prusa (Bursa), after conquering Nicomedia (1327) and Nicæa (1330),
threatened the Hellespont. He took the title of Padishah, and his court
was called the “High Porte.” His son, Soliman, crossed the Hellespont
(1357), and took possession of Gallipoli and Sestos. He thus became master
of the Dardanelles. Murad I. took Adrianople (1362), made it his capital,
conquered Macedonia, and, after a severe struggle, overthrew the united
forces of the Slavonic races south of the Danube, the Bulgarians,
Servians, and Kroatians, in the battle of Kossova-polye (1389). He fell
himself, but his successor Bayazeth, followed his course, took Thessaly,
passed Thermopylæ, and devastated the Peloponnesus. The Emperor of
Germany, Sigismund, who advanced at the head of an army composed of
French, German, and Slavonic soldiers, was defeated by Bayazeth on the
Danube in the battle of Nicopolis, 1399. Bayazeth took Bosnia, and would
have taken Constantinople, had not the same Mongolians, who in 1244 drove
the first Turkish tribes westward into Persia, threatened again their
newly acquired possessions. Timur had grasped the reins fallen from the
hands of Chingis-khán: Bayazeth was compelled to meet him, and suffered
defeat (1402) in the battle of Angora (Ankyra) in Galatia.
Europe now had respite, but not long; Timur died, and with him his empire
fell to pieces, while the Osmanic army rallied again under Mahomet I.
(1413), and re-attained its former power under Murad II. (1421).
Successful in Asia, Murad sent his armies back to the Danube, and after
long-continued campaigns, and powerful resistance from the Hungarians and
Slaves under Hunyad, he at last gained two decisive victories; Varna in
1444, and Kossova in 1448. Constantinople could no longer be held, and the
Pope endeavored in vain to rouse the chivalry of Western Europe to a
crusade against the Turks. Mahomet II. succeeded in 1451, and on the 26th
of May, 1453, Constantinople, after a valiant resistance, fell, and became
the capital of the Turkish empire.
It is a real pleasure to read a Turkish grammar, even though one may have
no wish to acquire it practically. The ingenious manner in which the
numerous grammatical forms are brought out, the regularity which pervades
the system of declension and conjugation, the transparency and
intelligibility of the whole structure, must strike all who have a sense
of that wonderful power of the human mind which has displayed itself in
language. Given so small a number of graphic and demonstrative roots as
would hardly suffice to express the commonest wants of human beings, to
produce an instrument that shall render the faintest shades of feeling and
thought;—given a vague infinitive or a stern imperative, to derive from it
such moods as an optative or subjunctive, and tenses as an aorist or
paulo-post future;—given incoherent utterances, to arrange them into a
system where all is uniform and regular, all combined and harmonious;—such
is the work of the human mind which we see realized in “language.” But in
most languages nothing of this early process remains visible. They stand
before us like solid rocks, and the microscope of the philologist alone
can reveal the remains of organic life with which they are built up.
In the grammar of the Turkic languages, on the contrary, we have before us
a language of perfectly transparent structure, and a grammar the inner
workings of which we can study, as if watching the building of cells in a
crystal bee-hive. An eminent orientalist remarked “we might imagine
Turkish to be the result of the deliberations of some eminent society of
learned men;” but no such society could have devised what the mind of man
produced, left to itself in the steppes of Tatary, and guided only by its
innate laws, or by an instinctive power as wonderful as any within the
realm of nature.
Let us examine a few forms. “To love,” in the most general sense of the
word, or love, as a root, is in Turkish _sev_. This does not yet mean “to
love,” which is _sevmek_, or “love” as a substantive, which is _sevgu_ or
_sevi_; but it only expresses the general idea of loving in the abstract.
This root, as we remarked before, can never be touched. Whatever syllables
may be added for the modification of its meaning, the root itself must
stand out in full prominence like a pearl set in diamonds. It must never
be changed or broken, assimilated or modified, as in the English I fall, I
fell, I take, I took, I think, I thought, and similar forms. With this one
restriction, however, we are free to treat it at pleasure.
Let us suppose we possessed nothing like our conjugation, but had to
express such ideas as I love, thou lovest, and the rest, for the first
time. Nothing would seem more natural now than to form an adjective or a
participle, meaning “loving,” and then add the different pronouns, as I
loving, thou loving, &c. Exactly this the Turks have done. We need not
inquire at present how they produced what we call a participle. It was a
task, however, by no means so facile as we now conceive it. In Turkish,
one participle is formed by _er_. _Sev_+_er_ would, therefore, mean lov+er
or lov+ing. Thou, in Turkish, is _sen_, and as all modificatory syllables
are placed at the end of the root, we get _sev-er-sen_, thou lovest. You
in Turkish is _siz_; hence _sev-er-siz_, you love. In these cases the
pronouns and the terminations of the verb coincide exactly. In other
persons the coincidences are less complete, because the pronominal
terminations have sometimes been modified, or, as in the third person
singular, _sever_, dropped altogether as unnecessary. A reference to other
cognate languages, however, where either the terminations or the pronouns
themselves have maintained a more primitive form, enables us to say that
in the original Turkish verb, all persons of the present were formed by
means of pronouns appended to this participle _sever_. Instead of “I love,
thou lovest, he loves,” the Turkish grammarian says, “lover-I, lover-thou,
lover.”
But these personal terminations are not the same in the imperfect as in
the present.
PRESENT. IMPERFECT.
Sever-im, I love, sever-di-m, I loved.
Sever-sen, sever-di-ñ.
Sever, sever-di.
Sever-iz, sever-di-k (miz).
Sever-siz, sever-di-ñiz.
Sever-ler, sever-di-ler.
We need not inquire as yet into the origin of the _di_, added to form the
imperfect; but it should be stated that in the first person plural of the
imperfect a various reading occurs in other Tataric dialects, and that
_miz_ is used there instead of _k_. Now, looking at these terminations
_m_, _ñ_, _i_, _miz_, _ñiz_, and _ler_, we find that they are exactly the
same as the possessive pronouns used after nouns. As the Italian says
_fratelmo_, my brother, and as in Hebrew we say, _El-i_, God (of) I,
_i.e._ my God, the Tataric languages form the phrases “my house, thy
house, his house,” by possessive pronouns appended to substantives. A Turk
says,—
Bâbâ, father, bâbâ-m, my father.
Aghâ, lord, aghâ-ñ, thy lord.
El, hand, el-i, his hand.
Oghlu, son, oghlu-muz, our son.
Anâ, mother, anâ-ñiz, your mother.
Kitâb, book, kitâb-leri, their book.