TURKEY

PART I - HISTORY

Somewhere about the second decade of the 13th century the little Turkish tribe which in due course was to found the Ottoman empire fled before the Mongols from its original home in Central Asia, and, passing through Persia, entered Armenia, under the leadership of Suleymán Sháh, its hereditary chief. His son, Er-Toghrul, who succeeded him as head of the tribe, when wandering about the country with his warriors came one day upon two armies engaged in a furious battle. Er-Toghrul at once rode to the assistance of the weaker party, who were on the point of giving way, but who through the timely aid thus rendered not only regained what they had lost but totally defeated their enemies. The army thus saved from destruction proved to be that of ‘Alá-ud-Dín, the Seljúk sultan of Asia Minor, and their adversaries to be a horde of marauding Mongols. By way of recompense fro this service e ‘Alá-úd-Dín granted to Er-Toghrul a tract of land on the Byzantine frontier, including the towns of Sugut and Eski Shehr. ‘Osmán, the son of Er-Toghrul and the prince from whom the race derives its name of ‘Osmánli (see TURKS, p. 661 below), corrupted by Europeans into Ottoman, was born in Sugut in 1258 (A.H. 656). While still young ‘Osmán won from the Greeks Karaja Hisár (Karahissar) and some other towns, on which account he received from his suzerain, the Seljúk sultan of Konya (Konieh), the title of beg or prince, along with the drum and the horsetail standard, the symbols of princely rank.

In 1300 (699) the Seljúk empire (see SELJUKS) fell to pieces under the onslaught of the Mongols, who were, however, powerless to replace it by any government of their own. Thereupon ten separate Turkish dynasties arose from its ruins; that of Karasi sprang up in ancient Mysia, the houses of Saru Khan and Aydin in Lydia, of Mentesha in Caria, of Tekka in Lycia and Pamphylia, of Hamíd in Pisidia and Isauria, of Karaman in Lycaonia, of Kermiyan in Phrygia, of Kizil Ahmedli in Paphlagonia, and of ‘Osmán in Phrygia Epictetus. These principalities were all eventually merged in that of the ‘Osmánlis, once the least among them, and the inhabitants assumed the name of Ottoman. Hence by far the greater portion of the people called Ottomans owe their name to a series of political events. On the collapse of the Seljúk power the Greeks retained hardly any possessions in Asia except Bithynia and Trebizond. Armenia was abandoned for a time to roving Tatar or Turkman tribes, till some sixty or seventy years later one or two petty local dynasties sprang up and founded short-lived states.

The year 1301 (700), in which ‘Osmán, who shortly before had succeeded his father, first coined money and caused the khutba, or public prayer for the reigning monarch, to be read in his name—the two prerogatives of an independent sovereigns in the East—may be regarded as the birth-year of the Ottoman empire: and it was about this time that his followers and subjects began to call themselves ‘Osmánlis, or, as we might render it, ‘Osmánites. Having thoroughly established his authority in his capital of Yeni Shehr, ‘Osmán began to wrest from the Greeks many of the neighbouring towns and strongholds, among other Ayina Göl and Koyun Hisári, routing before the last named a large Byzantine army. He then turned his attention to the administration of his state, and such was the feeling of security he succeeded in establishing districts flocked into his dominions and became his subjects. After six years of peace several of the Byzantine castellans of the neighbourhood, instigated by the governor of Brusa (Broussa), made a simultaneous attack upon the Ottoman, but ‘Osmán totally defeated them and sent in pursuit Kara ‘Alí Alp, who took possession of all their domains. Gházán, the khan of the Mongols, who had entered into an alliance with the emperor of Constantinople, sent to all the Turkish princes an arrogantly worded message forbidding them to do any hurt to the Byzantine territories. To show how light he held this menace, ‘Osmán assembled an army forth with, marched to Nicaea and thence to the Bosphorus, laying waste the country as he went and taking possession of a number of towns and villages. Michael, called by the Turkish historians Kösa Míkhál or Michael Scantbeard, the governor of one of these, embraced Islám and became one of the most trusted officers of ‘Osmán and of his son and successor Orkhan. The descendants of this Michael were the hereditary commanders of the akinjis, a corps of light cavalry who played a great part in the early Ottoman wars. The first service on which Michael was employed was to destroy, along with Orkhan, a Mongol horde that had taken and pillaged the Ottoman town of Karaja Hisár. Meanwhile ‘Abd-ur-Rahmán and Akcha Koja, two of ‘Osmán’s generals, were adding to the Ottoman dominions in the north, capturing several towns and laying siege to the city of Nicaea. The Ottoman chiefs next resolved to acquire Brusa, the natural capital of these parts. So they built round it a series of towers, in which they placed garrisons, with the view of intercepting communications and eventually starving the city into submission. At length, in 1326 (726), after a desultory siege of eight years, the keys were, through the intervention of Míkhál, handed over to Orkhan, who was in command of the Ottomans, and the townspeople were allowed to ransom themselves for 30,000 sequins. Very soon after this ‘Osmán died, aged seventy, at Sugut, whence his remains were carried for burial to Brusa. ‘Osmán was distinguished for piety and generosity as well as for equity and courage. He cared nothing for amassing wealth, and on his death his personal effects were founded to consist of two or three suits of clothes, a few weapons, some horses, and a flock of sheep. And so high was his reputation for justice that, we are told, many of the Asiatic subjects of the Caesars fled to him for that protection which their own rulers would not or could not give them.

Orkhan, who succeeded his father ‘Osmán, continued the war against the Greeks, taking from them Nicomedia, Nicaea, and many of the towns which they still retained in Asia. Hitherto the Ottomans had not interfered with the other Turkish states; but now Orkhan, granting a short respite to the Byzantines, took advantage of a dispute regarding the succession to the throne of Karasi, entered that principality, and annexed it to his own dominions. To his son Suleymán the Ottomans owe their first establishment in Europe; one night that prince, accompanied by a few companions, crossed the Hellespont on a raft and surprised the town of Galipoli (Gallipoli). The next day he brought over a number of Turkish troops, with whose assistance he possessed himself of many of the neighbouring towns and villages; but his career was cut short by a fatal fall from his horse when out hunting. Orkhan did not long survive his son, grief at whose untimely end is said to have hastened his own death, in 1359 (761). This monarch is celebrated for the number of mosques, colleges, and other public institutions that he founded. During his reign the Ottoman army was thoroughly organized, and a body of regular paid soldiers was raised, which formed the nucleus of the military power of the state, though the old irregular militia was still called out whenever a campaign was to be undertaken. The famous corps of the janissaries (Turkish yeni cheri, i.e., "new troop") was instituted at this time. It consisted of the children of Christian subjects, who were educated as Mussulmans and brought up to a military life.

Having taken the city of Angora from certain territorial lords who, incited by the prince of Karaman, had attacked the Ottoman dominions, Murád I., the son and successor of Orkhan, found himself free to extend his possessions across the Hellespont. He forthwith passed over into Europe, where he and his generals soon reduced almost all Roumelia, capturing Adrianople, Philippopolis, and many other places of importance. These successes alarmed the Christian princes, who determined to make a vigorous effort to drive the Turks back into Asia. The kings of Bosnia, Hungary, and Servia accordingly marched with a large army upon Adrianople, but were surprised during the night and completely defeated by an inferior Turkish force. Some time after this victory Murád returned to Asia, where he celebrated the wedding of his son Báyesiz with the daughter of the prince of Kermiyán, a large portion of whose territory was made over to the ‘Osmánli monarch as the dower of the bride. Next year, when Murád set out to inspect his new possessions, he met the prince of Hamíd, whom he constrained to sell all his dominions. The Karaman prince, ever the jealous rival of the Ottoman, now stirred up some of the Turkman tribes to ravage his enemy’s land; but Murád was beforehand with him, and, entering his country, defeated him and annexed the district of Ak-Shehr to his own kingdom. The Bosnian and Bulgarian princes having allied themselves against the sultan, the Turkish commander in Europe invaded Bulgaria, which was speedily subdued and added to the Ottoman possession. Murád next entered Servia and advanced to the plain of Kosovo, where he found awaiting him the levies of Servia, Bosnia, Hungary, Albania, and Walachia. The Turks, though far inferior in number to their adversaries, gained a complete victory, 1389 (791), but it was purchased with their sovereign’s life. After the battle Murád was riding over the field with some of his people, when a wounded Servian, who was lying among the slain, sprang up and stabled him so that he died among immediately afterwards. In consequence of this battle Servia became subject to the Turk.

Báyezíd I., surnamed Yildirium, "Thunderbolt," on account of the fury of his attack and the rapidity of his movements, received the oath of fealty on the battlefield of Kosovo. He did much to secure the position of the Ottomans, in Europe, taking many of the towns which still remained to the Christians in Roumelia. In Asia he annexed the remaining Turkish principalities, and pushed his conquests as far as Caesarea and Sívás. The Christians made another great effort to free themselves from their Eastern foes; whilst Báyezíd was absent in Asia, the king of Hungary led a powerful army, in the ranks of which were many knights of France and Germany, into the Ottoman dominions and laid siege to Nicopolis. Báyezíd sped to the rescue, and inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the Christians. He next turned his attention to Constantinople, the reduction and annexation of which he had long meditated, when he was summoned to meet Tímúr, the Tatar conqueror, who had invaded his Asiatic dominions and taken Sívás. The Ottoman and Tatar hosts encountered each other outside Angora, an there the former sustained their first disastrous overthrow, Báyezíd being taken prisoner and his army practically annihilated. Next year, 1403 (805), he died in captivity; the story of his having been imprisoned in an iron cage is not confirmed by the Turkish historians, and is most probably fictitious. After this victory Tímúr overran the Ottoman territories in Asia, taking and sacking Brusa, Nicaea, and many other cities. With a view to the complete annihilation of the ‘Osmánli power, he restored the independence of the Turkish principalities which Báyezíd had annexed, and placed them under the rule of their former emirs.

On the withdrawal of Tímúr from Asia Minor the four surviving sons of Báyezíd fought for what was left of their father’s kingdom; after ten years of civil war success finally rested with Muhammed, who alone of the four is reckoned among the Ottoman sovereigns. The attention of the new sultan, whom his people called Chelebi Muhammed or Muhammed the Debonair, was turned rather to the restoration of his father’s empire than to the conquest of neighbouring countries. In Europe he lived on amicable terms with the Byzantine emperor, and the Christian kings further north did not venture to make any serious attack upon him. But in Asia he had to contend with many enemies, the most formidable of whom was the emir of Karaman, who, having been defeated and made prisoner, was generously pardoned and restored to liberty. Another difficulty with which Muhammed had to deal was a strange religious outbreak; a vast number of fanatic dervishes, headed by an apostle Jew and a Turkish adventurer of low birth, rose in revolt, and were only dispersed after several bloody battles. This sultan, who was much beloved by his subjects and is spoken of with praise by the Byzantine historians, was stricken with apoplexy while riding in Adrianople, and died almost immediately in the thirty-third year of his age, 1421 (824).

The first care of his son and successor Murád II. was to rid himself of a pretender to the throne who, aided by the Greek emperor, had made a descent upon the Asiatic shore of the Dardanelles. This adventurer was soon defeated and pursued to Adrianople, where he was taken and hanged. In revenge for the assistance rendered to his enemy, the sultan invested Constantinople, but he was compelled to relinquish the siege in order to subdue a revolt headed by his brother, which had broken out in Asia. Murád again annexed all the Turkish principalities which had been restored by Tímúr, except those of Kizil Ahmedli and Karaman, which did not finally become incorporated with the empire till the time of Muhammed II. The Turks were now called to face the most formidable Christian enemy they had yet encountered, namely Hunyady, the illegitimate son of Sigismund, king of Hungary. This famous general, after having inflicted several severe though not very important defeats upon his adversaries, invaded European Turkey with a large army of Hungarians, Poles, Servians, Bosnians, Walachians, and Frankish crusaders, the last-named being under the command of Cardinal Julian. The Ottoman army was utterly routed, Sophia taken, and the chain of Balkans forced; and Murád was compelled to sign a treaty for ten years, by which he resigned all claims to Servia and gave over Walachia to Hungary. Weary of the cares of state, and thinking that peace was, for a time at least, secured, Murád abdicated in favour of his young son Muhammed and sought a quiet retreat in the town of Magnesia. But he was not allowed to enjoy repose for long; the Christian princes, incited by Cardinal Julian and in direct violation of the treaty, assembled their forces, and, under Hunyady as commander-in-chief, without declaring war, entered the Turkish dominions and took many of the Ottoman strongholds in Bulgaria. When the news reached Murád he resumed the imperial power, put himself at the head of his troops, and advanced to meet the invaders, who had just captured Varna. Outside that town a great battle was fought, in which a copy of the violated treaty, raised high upon a lance, formed one of the standards of the Ottomans. The conflicts, which was long and bloody, resulted in the total overthrow of the Christians, the Polish king, Ladislaus, and Cardinal Julian being among the slain, 1444 (848) Murád again abdicated and sought the retirement of Magnesia; but once again abdicated and sought the retirement of Magnesia; but once again he had to take up the reins of government. This time the janissaries and sipáhís, accustomed to the firm rule of the victor of Varna, had refused obedience to the young Muhammed. The sultan remained at the head of the state until his death, which occurred in 1451 (855).

Muhammed II., who now ascended the throne for the third time, determined to accomplish the long-cherished design of his house, and make Constantinople the capital of the ‘Osmánli empire. He easily found a pretext for declaring war against Constantine Palaeologus and in the spring of 1453 (857) led an immense army to beleaguer the city. His troops covered the ground before the landward walls between the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn; but he found that even his monster cannon could do but little against the massive fortifications. At length he resolved to assail the city from its weakest side, that facing the Golden Horn. But the Greeks, having foreseen the likelihood of an attack from this quarter, had thrown a great chain across the entrance to the harbour, thereby blocking the passage against the hostile ships. The Ottomans, however, constructed a road of planks, five miles long, across the piece of ground between the Bosphorus, where their own fleet lay, and the upper part of the Golden Horn. Along this road they hauled a number of their galleys, with sails set to receive the aid of the favouring wind, and launched them safely in the harbour, whence they cannonaded with more effect the weaker defences of the city. This compelled the Greek emperor to withdraw a portion of his little garrison from the point where the more serious attack was being made, to repair the destruction wrought in this new quarter. At dawn on May 29th the Ottomans advanced to storm the city. The Christians offered a desperate resistance, but in vain. The emperor died fighting in the forefront of the battle, and at noon Muhammed rode in triumph into his new capital and went straight to the cathedral of St Sophia; there, before the high altar, where the preceding night Constantinople had received the Holy Sacrament, he prostrated himself in the Moslem act of worship. The capture of Constantinople is not the only exploit to which Muhammed owes his surname of Fáith, or the Conqueror; he also reduced Servia and Bosnia, overthrow and annexed the Greek empire of Trebizond and the Turkish principality of Karaman, acquired the suzerainty of the Crimea, and won many of the islands of the Greek-Archipelago from the Venetians and Genoese. But before Belgrade, which he had besieged as the first step to an attack upon the northern kingdoms, he suffered a serious defeat, being driven wounded from the field by Hunyady and John Capistran, with the loss of 300 cannon and 25,000 men. Rhodes, whither an Ottoman force was dispatched, was the scene of another failure; here the Knights of St John gallantly and successfully withstood their Muhammedan foes, and compelled them to retire from the island. In Albania a long and, for a time, successful resistance was offered to the Turkish arms by the famous George Castriot, the Iskender Beg of the Turks. This chieftain had been in his youth in the service of Murád II., and was by him appointed governor of his native Albania, whereupon he revolted and tried to restore the independence of his country. Among the favourite designs of Muhammed were the subjugation of Italy and the establishment of the Mussulman dominion in the capital of Western Christendom. A Turkish army crossed the Adriatic and stormed the city of Otranto; but its further progress was stropped, and for ever, by the death of the Conqueror, which occurred a few months later, in 1481 (886). The Muhammedan soldiers besieged in Otranto, being unsupported from Turkey, were, after a long and brave defence, forced to surrender.

Báyezíd II. was hardly seated on the throne before he was called upon to face a formidable revolt raised by his younger brother Jem. This youthful pretender, who was both talented and high-spirited, was, after a number of adventurers, finally compelled to fly the country. He sought the protection of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, who, however, retained him a prisoners, and made an arrangement with Báyezíd whereby they received from that monarch a yearly sum of 45,000 ducats as the price of the compulsory detention of his brother. After thirteen years of captivity the unfortunate price was murdered by Pope Alexander VI. (Borgia), who, it is said, received 300,000 ducats from the sultan as the reward of his crime. Though frequently compelled to engage in defensive wars, Báyezíd was of peace-loving and unambitious disposition, and a few towns in the Morea were all the additions made to the empire while he was on the throne. It was during his reign, however, that the Ottoman fleet began to be formidable to Christendom, the desperate battle off Sapienza, won by Kemál Re’is against the Venetians, being the first of the Turkish naval victories over the Mediterranean powers. Báyezíd, whose pacific habits had alienated the sympathies of the janissaries, was in 1512 (918) forced by these dreaded guards to abdicate in favour of Selím, the youngest of his three sons. This prince had already been in open revolt against his father; but his determined and warlike character had won from him the esteem of the Turkish praetorians. Báyezíd’s health, which had long been failing, gave way under this blow; and the old sultan died three days after his deposition, at a little village on the way to Demitoka, whither he was going to end his life in retirement.

Selím I. was personally the greatest of the Ottoman monarchs; his unflinching courage and tireless vigour were not more remarkable than his political sagacity and his literary and poetic talents; but so merciless was he that he had always been thrown in Turkish history as Yawuz Selím or Selím the Grim. Happily for Europe he turned his attention to the neighbouring Muhammedan states and left the Christian powers in peace. Having caused both his brothers to be put to death, he marched against Persia, the king of which country had given refuge to the family of one of the hapless Turkish princes. The quarrel between them was further embittered by religious hatred: the shah of Persia was the pillar of the Shí’ites, as the Ottoman sultan was of the Sunnites. Selím in his fanatical zeal had ordered a massacre of his Shí’ite subjects, in which forty-five thousand persons suffered death. The shah was eager to avenge the slaughter of his co-religionists. The janissaries showed signs of insubordination upon the march, but Selím resolutely maintained order and reduced them to submission. At length they came upon the Persian host drawn out on the plain of Chaldiran, where a great battle was fought, which ended in the rout of the Persians and left the way to Tabríz, the residence of the Persian king, open to the sultan. Thither Selím proceeded; but eight days later he set out on his homeward march. The battle of Chaldiran brought no addition of importance to the empire; but the districts of Diyár-Bekr (Diarbekr) and Kurdistán, through which the army had passed on the way to Persia, were completely subdued and annexed to the Ottoman dominions. Selíms next important campaign was against the Memlúks of Egypt. This body of Eastern chivalry offered a most gallant resistance to the ‘Osmánlis; but, possessing no artillery, which they disdained as unbecoming men of valour, they were defeated in a series of engagements, and Selím and his army entered Cairo as conquerors in 1517 (923). The results of this war were momentous and far-reaching: the Ottoman empire was greatly increased by the addition of Egypt, Syria, an the Hejáz, of all of which the Memlúks had been lords; the caliphate of Islám was won for the house of ‘Osmán, Selím constraining the representative of the old ‘Abbásid family, who resided, a purely spiritual prince, at Cairo, to make over to him and his heirs the rights and privileges of the successors of the Prophet. The sultan at the same time acquired from him the sacred banner and other relics of the founder of Islám, which had been handed down to the Arabian prince from his fathers, and which are now preserved in the seraglio at Constantinople. On his return Selím set himself to strengthen and improve his fleet, doubtless with a view to the conquest of Rhodes. He died, however, in 1520 (926), before his extensive preparations were completed. This sultan reigned only eight years, but in that short time he almost doubled the extent of the Ottoman empire.

Suleymán I., who succeeded his father Selím as sultan, had not been long on the throne before he found himself involved in a war with the king of Hungary. He marched northwards with a powerful army and wrested from the enemy several placed of importance, including the strongly fortified city of Belgrade. Having left a large garrison in this city, which was regarded as the key to the Christian lands north of the Danube, the sultan returned to Constantinople, where he continued his father’s work of creating a strong and efficient Ottoman fleet. When all was ready Suleymán set out for Rhodes, determined to wipe away the disgrace of his ancestor’s second failure, as he had done that of his first. The conquest of Egypt had, moreover, rendered the possession of Rhodes necessary to the Turks, as the passage between Constantinople and their new acquisition could never be safe so long as that island remained in hostile hands. The Knights of St John met the attack in a manner worthy of their illustration order; but the overwhelming force of the Ottomans and the hopelessness of any relief compelled them to accept the sultan’s terms. These were highly honourable to the defenders, who were permitted to retire unmolested, while Suleymán pledged himself to respect the Christian religion in the island, which now, 1522 (929), became his. Four years after the conquest of Rhodes the sultan again invaded Hungary, where in the renowned battle of Mohacz he annihilated the army of the Magyars and slew their king. Thence he marched along the Danube to Buda-Pesth, which opened its gates to him, and there he rested a little while before starting on his homeward way. The disturbed state of Asia Minor hastened Suleymán’s departure; but in three years (1529) he was back at Buda, ostensibly as the ally of Zapolya, an Hunharian who claimed the throne left vacant by Louis, who fell at Mohacz. Ferdinand of Austria had opposed the claim of Zapolya, who thereon had applied to the sultan for aid, which that monarch was most willing to accord. The troops of Ferndinand being driven from Buda, Syleymán, accompanied by his protégé, advanced upon Vienna. On 27th September 1529 the vast Turkish host, under the personal command of one of the greatest of the family of ‘Osmán, laid siege to the capital of the German empire, and on the 14th of the following month, after a most desperate assault carried on for four days, the invaders were compelled to retire, leaving the city in the possession of its heroic defenders. The torrent of Turkish military might had now reached its northern limit; once again it vainly swept round the walls of Vienna, but further it never went. Suleymán next directed his arms against Persia, from which country he won a large portion of Armenia and ‘Irák as well as Baghdád, the old capital of the ‘Abbásid caliphs. In 1542 he was again in Hungary, having been appealed to by the widow of Zapolya on behald of her infant son against the pretensions of Ferdinand. Suleymán’s promised to place the child upon the throne when he should be of a proper age; in the meantime he treated Hungary as an Ottoman province, dividing it into sanjaks or military districts, and garrisoning Buda and other important cities with Turkish troops. Six years later a truce for five years was concluded between the sultan and Ferdinand, whereby almost all Hungary and Transylvania were made over to the former, who was also to receive a yearly present, or more correctly tribute, of thirty thousand ducats. The Turks, now at the zenith of their power, were the terror of all around them. The achievements of the Ottoman navy during the reign of Suleymán were hardly, if at all, less remarkable than those of the army. Khayr-ud-Dín, the Barbarossa of the Europeans, won Algiers for Turkeys, and held the Mediterranean against the fleets of Spain and Italy; Torghud added Tripoli to he empire; and Piyála routed the galleys of Genoa, Florence, Naples, and Malta off the isle of Jerba. In 1565 (973) Suleymán sustained the second great check he was destined to encounter. The Turks once more measured swords with the Knights of St John, to drive them from Malta, which had been given to the order by Charles V. on its expulsion from Rhodes. A powerful Turkish army and fleet, commanded by officers of renown, were accordingly dispatched to win Malta for the Ottoman crown; but so valiantly was it defended that the Turks were forced to withdraw with a loss of twenty-five thousand men. Suleymán died in harness. In 1566 (974), when seventy-six years of age, he entered Hungary for the last time, summoned thither to aid his vassal, young Sigismund Zapolya. Sziget, a place which had foiled the Turks on previous occasions, was the first object of attack. Count Zrinyi, the governor, determined to resist to the last, so the Ottomans found themselves compelled to undertake the siege of this comparatively unimportant town. There on the night of 4th September the great sultan died, and a few hours later Count Zrinyi and his brave companions perished amid the smoking ruins of the fortress they had most nobly held. Under Suleymán I., whom European historians call the Magnificent, but whom his own people style Kánúmí or the Lawgiver, the Turkish empire attained the summit of its power and glory. The two great disasters, at Vienna and Malta, were eclipsed by the number and brilliancy of the sultan’s victories, by which large and important additions were made to the empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Selím II., the unworthy son and successor of the Magnificent Suleymán, was the first Ottoman monarch who shrank from leading his army in person. He was a man of mean and ignoble character, whose sole pleasure seems to have consisted in the indulgence of his disgraded tastes and vicious appetites. The first conflict between the Turks and the Russians occurred in his reign. In view of a threatened war with Persia, the grand vizier Sokolli conceived the idea of uniting the rivers Don and Volga by a canal, by means of which an Ottoman fleet could be sent into the Caspian. But in order to carry out this scheme it was necessary that the town of Astrakhan should be in the hands of the Turks. A considerable force was accordingly dispatched from Constantinople to take possession of that city; but the Russian army which Ivan the Terrible sent to its relief drove back the Turks and their Tatar allies from before the walls, 1569 (977). Cyprus was the next object of attack. This island, which belonged to Venice, was assailed and taken, though not without heavy loss, at a time of peace between the republic and the Porte, 1570-71 (978). The Christian powers of the Mediterranean were roused and alarmed by this act of treachery, and a maritime league was formed through the efforts of Pope Pius V., with Spain, Venice, and Malta for its most important members. On 7th October 1571 the Christian fleet, under the command of Don John of Austria, encountered the Ottoman ships, led by the gallery of the kapudan pasha, Mu’ezzin-záda ‘Alí, just outside the Gulf of Lepanto. A furious conflict ensued, which resulted in the utter defeat of the Turks, their admiral being killed and their fleet almost annihilated. This famous fight, although it brought little immediate material advantage to the victors, was of the highest moral value to them; for it broke the spell of Barbarossa, and showed that the Ottoman was no longer invincible on the seas. The only other event of importance during this reign was the final conquest of Tunis for Turkey by Kilij ‘Alí, who won it from the Spaniards in 1574 (982). Selím II. died miserably the same year.

Murád III., who now succeeded to the Ottoman throne, was no improvement upon his father; he ruled in name only, all real power being in the hands of worthless favourites. As a natural consequence the empire began rapidly to decay; corruption infected all ranks of official society, the sultan himself selling his favours for bribes; while the other great curse of old Turkey, military insubordination, showed itself in a more threatening aspect than ever. The janissaries mutinied on several occasions, and each time compelled the weak Murád to accede to their demand. Notwithstanding this wretched state of affairs, some extensive and important, though not permanent, additions were made to the empire. These, consisting of Azerbijan and Georgia—the latter had been in alliance with Persia—were the result of a campaign against the last-named country, the internal condition of which was then even worse than that of Turkey. Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia rose in revolt, encouraged by the war which broke out in 1593 between Turkey and Austria. In 1594 hostilities with Persia were resumed; and early in the following year Murád died, leaving the empire to his eldest son Muhammed III.

Things had been going very badly in the war with Austria, when in June 1596 the grand vizier and the mufti, joining their voices with that of Sa’d-ud-Dín the historian, prevailed upon the new sultan, whose character resembled only too closely that of his father, to place himself at the head o the Ottoman army which was about to march into Hungary. Four months later Muhammed met the imperialists under the archduke Maximilian, and the Transylvanians led by Prince Sigismund, on the marshy plain of Keresztes, where a battle lasting three days took place. Although at one time things looked so hopeless for the Turks that the sultan would have fled but for the entreaties and remonstrances of Sa’d-ud-Dín, the "Osmánlis gained a complete and decisive victory. But nothing came of it; for Muhammed, instead of following up his success, hastened back to Constantinople to receive the congratulations of his courtiers and to resume his indolent and voluptuous life. Nothing else worthy of note occurred during his inglorious reign. He died in 1603 (1012).

Muhammed III. Was the last heir to the Ottoman throne who was entrusted with the government of a province during his father’s lifetime; henceforth all the sons of the sultan were kept secluded in a pavilion called the Kafes or cage in the seraglio gardens. This new system, which was necessarily very prejudicial to the character of the future rulers, had its origin in the same dread of rivals that caused a sultan in those times to put all his brothers to death immediately on his accession.

The reign of Ahmed I. is nor marked by any event of importance. The peace of Sitavorok (Zsitvatorok) between Turkey and Austria, 1606 (1015), made no change of any moment in the territorial possessions of either power, but is interesting as being the first treaty in which an Ottoman sultan condescended to meet a Christian prince on a footing of equality. Hitherto the Turkish monarchs had affected to great merely short truces to their European enemies. But this peace was to be permanent; the annual payment or tribute of thirty thousand ducats by Austria was to be discontinued; and the ambassadors sent from the Porte were now to be officials of rank, and not, as formerly, menials of the palace or camp.

Ahmed died in 1617 (1026) and was succeeded by his brother Mustafa I. Up till this time the succession had been regularly from father to son; but, as Mustafa’s life had been spared by his brother on his accession, that prince now ascended the throne in preference to ‘Osmán, the eldest son of Ahmed I. This arose from the peculiar nature of the Turkish law of succession, which gives the throne to the eldest male relative of the deceased sovereign. Mustafa was, however, imbecile; so after a reign of three months he was deposed, and his nephew ‘Osmán, though only fourteen years of age, seated on the throne in his stead.

An unsuccessful war with Persia, which had been going on for some time, was now brought to an end by a treaty which restored to the shah all the territories conquered since the days of Selím II. In 1621 the sultan led his troops against Poland, partially with the view of weakening the janissaries, whom he justly regarded as the most deadly enemies of his empire. This expedition was not attended by any important results, neither Turks nor Poles going a decisive advantage. On his return ‘Osmán formed another plan for freeing himself from his tyrannical soldiery; he gave out that he was going to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, but his real intention was to proceed only as far as Damascus, there place himself at the head of an Asiatic army, and march against the janissaries and sipáhís in Constantinople. But the janissaries heard of this design and rose in revolt. Incited by a vizier whom ‘Osmán had deposed, they seized their sovereign and dragged him to the sate prison of the Seven Towers, where shortly afterwards he was foully murdered by the traitor minister, 1622 (1031).

The wretched Mustafa was again raised to the throne, only to be deposed fifteen months afterwards in favour of Murád, the eldest surviving brother of ‘Osmán.

In Murád Iv., who succeeded to the supreme power in 1623 (1023), when a child of eleven years, Turkey had once more a sultan of the old ‘Osmánli type. Since the death of Suleymán the empire had been cursed with a succession of rois fainéants, under whom it had rapidly fallen to decay. The vigour and courage of the new sultan stayed it fro a while upon its downward course, and restored to it something of its bygone glory. While still quite young, Murád had been compelled by the favourite vizier, Háfiz Pasha. This embittered him against that corps, and, when soon afterwards the soldiers began openly to discuss his deposition, Murád swiftly and suddenly cut off the ringleaders and all others whom he suspected of disloyalty; this struck fear into the hearts of the disaffected soldiers, who, finding themselves without any to organize or direct them, returned to their allegiance. Murád next turned his attention to checking the intolerable corruption and abuses which pervaded every department of the state. He had but one simple though terribly drastic method of reform,—the execution of every official whom he even suspected of any malpractice. Having restored some sort of order in his capital, Murád marched against Persia and recaptured the city and district of Erivan. In 1638 (1048) he undertook a second and more important campaign against the same power. His object was the recovery of Baghdád, which had been taken by the sháh’s troops some sixteen years before. The Persians resisted long and gallantly, but at length the Turks carried the city by storm, when Murád disgraced himself by the slaughter of a vast number of the inhabitants. By the peace which followed Turkey restored Erivan to Persia, but retained Baghdád, which has been in its hands ever since. Murád on his return entered Constantinople in triump. This sultan died in 1640 (1049); his death is said to have been hastened by habits of intemperance, which he had contracted towards the close of his life.

Ibráhím, the brother of the late sultan, now mounted the Ottoman throne. He was another of those wretched princes who have themselves up to the indulgence of their own follies and vices without bestowing a though upon the welfare of their people or the prosperity of their country. All the evile that had been curbed for a time by the stern had of Murád broke out afresh and in worse form than before. The sultan himself was the most venal of the venal. Shut up in the seraglio, he thought of nothing but the gratification of his own and his favourites’ caprices; gem-encrusted coaches and pleasure-boats, and carpets and hangings of richest sable for his rooms, were among the objects for which he plundered his people and sold every office to the highest bidder. This went on for eight years, till at length his subjects, weary of his ex-actions and tyranny, deposed him, and made his son Muhammed, then only seven years of age, sultan in his room. The only events of note that occurred during Ibráhím’s tenure of power are the capture of Azoff from the Cossacks and the occupation of Crete. This island, which was then in the hands of Venice, was soon overrun, but it was not till well on in the next reign, after a siege of twenty years, that the Ottomans succeeded in taking Candia the capital.

The minority of Muhammed Iv., who became sultan in 1648 (1058), was marked by all the troubles and evils that might have been anticipated, until the grand vizierate was conferred on Köprili Muhammed in 1656 (1067). This statesman, who was seventy years old when he entered upon the duties of prime minister of Turkey, was the founder of an illustrious family of viziers, whose integrity and strength of character did much to counteract the pernicious influence of degenerate sultans and to prop up for a season the declining empire. Old Köprili accepted the office of grand vizier only upon condition of receiving absolute power; this he employed much in the same way as Murád Iv. Had done when he set about the work of reform; he executed every one who fell under his suspicion. He died in 1661 (1072), leaving the vizierate to his son Fázil Ahmed. Ahmed was, like his father, a man of great ability, and happily for Turkey he enjoyed the complete confidence of the young sultan, who cared for nothing but the chase, whence he is called in the Ottoman histories Avji Muhammed or Muhammed the Huntsman. Before long Ahmed was called on to lead the Turkish army against Austria. He took Neuhäusel and several places of little importance; but near the convent of St Gotthard (on the Raab) he was completely defeated in 1664 (1075) by a smaller Christian force under Montecuculi. A truce for twenty years on the basis of the treaty of Sitavarock was the result of this battle; the Ottomans, however, retained Neuhäusel. Ahmed next appeared in arms in Crete, for the purpose of bringing to a close the siege of Candia, which had been going on ever since 1648; but it was not till other three years had passed that the brave garrison opened the gates to the grand vizier, in 1669 (1079). The sultan himself was induced to head the next campaign, which was undertaken on behalf of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, who had craved the protection of the Porte against Poland. The Turks took the cities of Kamenetz and Lemberg, whereupon King Michael sued for peace, 1672 (1083), and promised to make over Podolia and the Ukraine to Turkey and to pay an annual tribute of 220,000 ducats. The sultan accepted these terms and returned home in triumph; but the Poles refused to be bound by them, and under the command of Sobieski they attacked and defeated the troops of Ahmed Pasha. The war lasted till 1676, when it was brought to an end by the treaty of Zurawno, which left the sultan in possession of Podolia and almost all the Ulkaine. Three days after this peace was signed Ahmed Pasha died. Few men have done more to ruin their country than Kara Mustafa, who succeeded Ahmed in the grand vizierate. His pet scheme was the conquest of Germany and the establishment of a great Turkish province between the Danube and the Rhine, with himself as nominal viceroy but virtual sovereign. He accordingly marched with an enormous army, probably not far off half a million strong, against Vienna. In the summer of 1683 (1094) this mighty host appeared before the walls of the Austrian capital. For an account of the siege, see vol. xix. p. 296. A few weeks after his discomfiture, Kara Mustafa was executed at Belgrade by the sultan’s orders. Venice and Russia now declared war against Turkey; misfortune followed misfortune; city after city was rent away from the empire; the Austrians were in possession of almost the whole of Hungary, the Italians of almost all the Morea. At length a severe defeat at Mohacz, where Suleymán had triumphed years before, exhausted the patience of the soldiery, and Muhammed IV., was deposed in 1687 (1099).

The first of the reign of Suleymán II. who succeeded his brother, was marked by a serious mutiny of the janissaries of the capital, who, aided by the dregs of the population, created a reign of terror in Constantinople, during which they pillaged the palaces of the principal officers of the government and murdered the grand vizier, along with many of the members of his household. The Austrians, under Charles of Lorraine, Louis of Baden, and Prince Eugene, were carrying all before them in the north: Erlau, Belgrade, and Stuhlweissenburh fell into their hands; and by the end of 1689 the Ottomans had lost almost all their former possessions beyond the Danube. Meanwhile the Venetian leader, Morosini, was equally successful in the Morea, completing the conquest of that province, which he added to the dominions of St Mark. When matters had come to this pass, the sultan summoned an extraordinary meeting of the divan to consult on the measures to be taken to meet the danger threatening on every hand. By the unanimous advice of his ministers, Suleymán appointed to the grand vizierate Köprili-záda Mustafa, another son of old Köprili Muhammed. This statesman, who had been trained in the duties of office under his father and brother, worthily upheld the high name of his house. He gave up the whole of his gold and silver plate to be coined into money wherewith to pay the troops; he sought out the best men to fill positions of trust and responsibility in the army and navy; and he exercised and encouraged a wise and just policy of toleration towards the Christian subjects of the sultan. Such was the confidence which his high character and illustrious connexion inspired that large numbers of volunteers hastened to join the Turkish hosts; and in a very few weeks from the time when he took command of the army Mudtafa had driven the Austrians out of Servia, and Belgrade once more received a garrison of Ottoman troops. Mustafa returned in triumph to Constantinople, where, early in the summer of 1691 (1102), Suleymán II. died, and was succeeded on the throne by his brother Ahmed II.

The most important event which occurred during the brief and disastrous reign of this monarch was the defeat and death at Slankamen (Szlankament) of Köprili-záda Mustafa, who in August 1691 advanced from Belgrade to attack the Austrians under Louis of Baden. The unfortunate result of the battle was in great measure owing to the rashness of the vizier, who, in opposition to the advice of the oldest and most experienced of his officers, refused to await behind the lines the attack of the enemy. The Ottoman’s fought with desperate courage; but the day was decided against them by the death of Mustafa, who was shot while cutting his way through the Christian ranks. Ahmed II. reigned for four years, during which the hapless empire, besides continuing to suffer defeat at the hands of foreign foes, was visited with the curses of pestilence and domestic insurrection.

On the death of Ahmed II. in the year 1695 (1106) Mustafa II., son of Muhammed IV., was girt with the sword of "Osmán. The new sultan, aware of the pitiful condition to which the empire had sunk, in part, at least, through the negligence and indifference of his predecessors, resolved to restore the old Ottoman usages, and placed himself at the head of his armies. His first campaign was altogether successful; he recaptured several important fortresses and totally defeated a great Austrian army. During the following winter he worked hard to repair the finances and bring the forces of the empire into a higher state of efficiency; and, when he set out in the spring against the Austrians, fortune continued to smile upon his banners. He defeated the duke of Saxe, raised the siege of Temesvar, and strengthened the garrisons of those fortresses which Turkey still held in Hungary. But in the next year, 1697, all was changed: prince Eugene was at the head of the Austrians, and on the banks of the Theiss, near Zenta, the Turks sustained an overwhelming defeat, which compelled the sultan to retreat to Temesvar. Thence he returned to Constantinople, and never again led an army against the enemy. Recourse was once more had to the house of Köprili, and Amuja-záda Huseyn, a nephew of old Köprili Muhammed, was promoted to the grand vizierate. Huseyn raised fresh troops; but he saw that what was really needful was peace, and this he succeeded in bringing about. At Carlowitz on 26th January 1699 a peace was arranged, through the intervention of England and Holland, between Turkey on the one hand and Austria, Venice, Russia, and Poland on the other. The basis of the treaty, agreed to with certain modifications, was that each power should retain the territories in its possession at the time of opening negotiations. This arrangement left Austria in possession of Transylavania and almost all Hungary and Slavonia; Venice remained mistress of its conquests in Dalmatia and the Morea; Poland received Podolia; and Russia, which under Peter the Great was only now becoming conscious of its strength, retained Azoff, which it had wrested from Turkey three years before. Huseyn Pasha took advantage of the restoration of peace to check the disorders which had sprung up in various parts of the empire, and to endeavour to effect much needed reforms in many departments of the state. But unfortunately his efforts were thwarted by others less disinterested than himself; and, broken-hearted by the calamities of his country, he retired from office three years after the peace of Carlowitz, and very shortly afterwards died. Mustafa II. very soon followed the example of his minister, and abdicated in 1703 (1115) in favour of his brother Ahmed III.

Although the peace of the empire was often broken during his reign, Ahmed III. Was not of a warlike disposition, and all the representations and entreaties of Charlies XII. of Sweden, who after the disaster of Pultowa had taken refuge in Turkey, failed to induce him to re-open hostilities with the czar. In 1710 Nu’mán Pasha, son fo Amuja-záda Huseyn, and the last of the Köprili family, was appointed grant vizier. Though able and tolerant, he was appointed grant vizier. Though able and tolerant, he was so much addict ed to interfering in the business of his subordinates that he became the object of general dislike, and was dismissed from his office after holding it for fourteen months. The menacing preparations of Russia in the south had more influence with the Porte than the prayers of the Swedish king, and in 1711 the new grand vizier, Baltaji Muhammed, marched into Moldiva to meet the forces of Peter the Great, who had formed an entrenched camp near the village of Hush, on the right bank of the Pruth. Here the vizier blocked him to surrender with all his army. By the treaty which followed the czar pledged himself, among other things, to restore the fortress of Azoff and all its dependencies to the sultan, and to grant the king of Sweden a free and safe passage to his own country through the Muscovite dominions. The lenity of Baltaji Muhammed in not destroying the czar and his army when they were within his grasp caused such discontent at Constantinople that he was dismissed from the vizierate, which was conferred on ‘Alí Pasha, known as Dámád ‘Alí or ‘Alí the Son-in-Law, from the circumstance of his having married a daughter of the sultan. This vizier distinguished himself by winning back from Venice the whole of the Morea in a single campaign (1715). His next venture, a war against Austria, undertaken in the following year, had a very different issue, he himself being slain and his army routed in a great battle at Peterwardein. Next year Prince Eugene, the conqueror of Dámád ‘Alí, laid siege to Belgrade, which he forced to capitulate after driving off the large army sent by the Turks to its relief. These events led to the peace of Passarowitz in 1718, by which Austria acquired that portion of Hungary which had remained in the possession of Turkey, as well as extensive territories in Servia and Walachia. The grand vizier Ibráhím, another son-in-law of the sultan, who was at the head of affairs from 1718 to 1730, contrived to secure for the empire an unusually long respite from internal disorders; but the sultan’s love of costly pomp and splendour and the luxurious magnificence of his court rendered him so unpopular that, in consequence of a riot in the autumn of 1730 (1143), he voluntarily abdicated the throne, and his nephew Mahmúd I. became páhisháh in his stead. (E. J. W. G.)

History from 1718.

With the treaty of Passarowitz the Venetian republic disappears from the scene of Turkish warfare. Russia gradually becomes a more formidable enemy than AuStria; and the subject Christian races imperceptibly enter on the first stages of national consolidation and revival. After the long and resultless war with Persia hostilities again broke out with Russia in 1736. Marshal Münnich stormed the lines of Perekop and devastated the Crimea; but he was unable to maintain his army there and retreated with greatly diminished forces. Azoff was taken by General Lascy; and in the following year Otchakoff fell into the hands of Münnich, while the Crimea was again invaded and ravaged. Austria now joined Russia, and the Porte had to sustain a war in Servia and Bosnia as well as on the coasts of the Black Sea. The double combat was carried on with very different results. While the Russians won victory after victory, and finally penetrated into the heart of Moldavia, the Austrians were defeated and driven across the Danube. On their advancing from Belgrade in the summer of 1739 they were defeated with great loss at Krotzka, and compelled to sue for peace. The treaty of Belgrade, which was signed on 1st September 1739, restored to the Porte Belgrade and Orsova, with the portions of Servia, Bosnia, and Walachia which it had ceded to Austria at the peace of Passarowitz. Russia, unable to continue the war with a victorious Turkish army ready to fall upon its flank, had to conclude peace on very moderate terms. It received Azoff, but under a stipulation that the fortifications should be razed, and that no Russian vessels of war should be kept either on the Black Sea or on the Sea of Azoff. The peace was the last advantageous one made by the Porte without allies; and the succeeding thirty years were on the whole a period of respite from misfortune.

After this followed the wars with the empress Catherine, before whose genius and resources it seemed as if Turkey must inevitably sink into nothingness. The first contest was provoked by the armed intervention of the empress in Polish affairs and her well-known intrigues with rebellious subjects of the Porte. War was rashly declared by Mustafa III. in October 1768. In 1769 the Russians entered Moldavia and captured the fortress of Choczin (Chotim); in the following year their armies made good the conquest of Moldavia and Walachia, while a fleet from the Baltic entered the Greek Archipelago and landed troops in the Morea. The Greeks of the Morea rose in insurrection; they were, however, overpowered, and the small Russian force withdrew, leaving the Greeks to the vengeance of their conquerors. At sea the Turks suffered a severe defeat near Chios, and their fleet was subsequently blockaded and set on fire in the Bay of Tchesme, the principal officers in the Russian navy being Englishmen. Assistance was, moreover, given by the Russians to AlI Bey, a Mameluke chieftain who was in rebellion against the Porte in Egypt, and to Tahir, a sheikh who had made himself independent at Acre. In 1771 the Russians invaded and conquered the Crimea. Austria now took alarm, and signed a convention with the Porte preparatory to armed intervention.

But the partition of Poland reunited the three neighbouring Christian powers and prevented a general war. An armistice was agreed upon between Russia and the Porte, and negotiations followed. These were broken off in 1773. The Russians crossed the Danube, and, though unsuccessful in their attempts upon Silistria and Varna, so completely defeated the Turkish forces in the field that on 21st July 1774 the Porte concluded peace at Kutchuk-Kainardji under conditions more unfavourable than those which it had rejected in the previous year. The Tartar territory of the Crimea, with Kuban and the adjoining districts, was made into an independent state, Russia retaining Azoff, Kertch, and Kinburn. Moldavia and Walachia were restored, but on the condition that, as occasion might require, the Russian minister at Constantinople might remonstrate in their favour. Russia, in fact, was given a species of protectorate over these provinces. Permission was given to Russia to erect a church in Constantinople, and the following engagement was made: "The Porte promises to protect the Christian religion and its churches; and it also allows the court of Russia to make upon all occasions representations as well in favour of the new church at Constantinople as on behalf of its ministers, promising to take such representations into consideration." Out of this clause arose the claim of Russia to the right of protection over all the Christian subjects of the Porte, though the specific right of intervention was clearly attached only to a single church and its ministers. By other clauses in the treaty the obligations restraining Russia from making fortifications and placing ships of war on the Black Sea were annulled. It received the right of free navigation for its merchant ships on all Turkish waters, and the right of placing consuls at all Turkish ports. These last two conditions were of great historical importance through their effect upon Greece. The consuls appointed were usually Greek traders, and permission to carry the Russian flag was indiscriminately given to Greek vessels. Hence there followed that great development of Greek commerce, and of the Greek merchant navy, which in half a century made the insurgent Greeks more than a match for the Turks at sea.

The stipulation that the Crimea and adjoining districts should be made into an independent state was of course not intended by Russia to be anything more than a veil for annexation; and in 1783 Catherine united this territory to her dominions. She had now definitely formed the plan of extinguishing Turkish sovereignty in Europe and placing her younger grandson on the throne of a restored Greek kingdom. The boy was named Constantine; his whole education was Greek and such as to fit him for the throne of Constantinople. Joseph II. of Austria threw himself eagerly into the plan for a partition of the Ottoman empire, and in 1788 followed Russia into war. While the Russians besieged Otchakoff, Joseph invaded Bosnia; but he was unsuccessful and retired ingloriously into Hungary. Otchakoff was stormed by Suwaroff on 16th December 1788. In the following year the Turkish armies were overthrown by Suwaroff in Moldavia and by the Austrian Laudon on the south of the Danube. The fate of the Ottoman empire seemed to tremble in the balance; it was, however, saved by the convulsions into which Joseph’s reckless autocracy had thrown his own dominions, and by the triple alliance of England, Prussia, and Holland, now formed by Pitt for the preservation of the balance of power in Europe. Joseph died in 1790; his successor Leopold II. entered into negotiations, and concluded peace at Sistova in August 1791, relinquishing all his conquests except a small district in Croatia. Catherine continued the war alone. Ismail was captured by Suwaroff with fearful slaughter, and the Russian armies pushed on south of the Danube. Pitt, with the triple alliance, attempted to impose his mediation on the empress Catherine, and to induce her to restore all her conquests. She refused, and both Prussia and England armed for war ; but public opinion declared so strongly against the minister in England that it was impossible for him to pursue his plan. Catherine nevertheless found it in her interest to terminate the war with the Porte. Poland claimed her immediate attention; and, adjourning to a more convenient season her designs upon Constantinople, she concluded the treaty of Jassy in January 1792, by which she added to her empire Otchakoff, with the seaboard as far as the Dniester. The protectorate of Russia over Tiflis and Kartalinia was recognized.

Catherine'’ successor Paul (1796-1801) made it his business to reverse his mother’s policy by abandoning the attack on Turkey. Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt and the destruction of the French fleet by Nelson at the battle of the Nile led the Porte to join the second coalition against France. Bonaparte, invading Syria, was checked and turned back at Acre, where Jezzar Pasha was assisted in his strenuous defence by an English squadron under Sir Sidney Smith. A Turkish army was meanwhile transported from Rhodes to the Egyptian coast. This army was destroyed by Bonaparte on his return to Egypt at the battle of Aboukir on 25th July 1799, after which Bonaparte set sail for France, leaving the Egyptian command to Kléber. Kléber, cut off from all communication with France and threatened by superior Turkish forces, entered into a convention at El Arish for the evacuation of Egypt. This convention, however, was annulled by Lord Keith, the English admiral, and Kléber replied by giving battle to the Turks and defeating them at Heliopolis on 20th March 1800. Egypt was finally wrested from the French by the English expedition under Abercromby, and restored to the sultan. The Ionian Islands, which France had taken from Venice at the time of the treaty of Campo Formio, were conquered by a combined Russian and Turkish force, and were established as a republic, at first under the joint protectorate of Russia and the Porte, afterwards under the sole protectorate of Russia. The former Venetian ports on the mainland of Epirus and Albania were given up to Turkey. Somewhat later, under pressure from St Petersburg, the sultan undertook not to remove the hospodars, or governors, of Walachia and Moldavia without consulting Russia, and to allow no Turks except merchants and traders to enter those territories.

On the restoration of peace France reassumed its ancient position as the friend and ally of the Porte. The sultan now on the throne was Selím III. (1789-1807). Though the results of the war of the second coalition had been favourable to Turkey, the Ottoman empire was in a most perilous condition. Everywhere the provincial governors were making themselves independent of the sultan’s authority; a new fanatical sect, the Wahhabees, had arisen in Arabia and seized upon the holy places; the janissaries were rebellious and more formidable to their sovereign than to a foreign enemy; and the Christian races were beginning to aspire to independence. It had seemed for a while as if the first to rise against the Porte would be the Greeks, among whom the revolutionary influences of 1789 and the songs of the poet Rhegas, put to death by the Turks in 1798, stirred deep feelings of hatred against their oppressors. Circumstances, however, postponed the Greek revolt and accelerated that of the Servians. In the country immediately south of the Danube the sultan’s authority was defied by the janissaries settled about Belgrade and by Passwan Oglu, ruler of Widdin in Bulgaria. The pasha of Servia, hard pressed by these rebels, called upon the rayas to take up arms in defence of the sultan. They did so, and in 1804 the janissaries answered by a series of massacres in the Servian villages. The Servians now rose as a nation against the janissaries. Kara George became their chief, and in combination with the pasha of Bosnia, acting under the sultan’s orders, exterminated the janissaries or drove them out of the country. Victorious over one oppressor, the Servians refused to submit to another. They carried on the war against the sultan himself, and at the suggestion of Russia sent envoys to Constantinople demanding that for the future the fortresses of Servia should be garrisoned only by Servian troops.

When the third European coalition against France was in course of formation Russian and French influences were in rivalry at Constantinople. The victories of Napoleon in 1805 gave him the ascendency, and his envoy prevailed upon the sultan to dismiss, without consulting Russia, the hospodars of Walachia and Moldavia, who were considered to be agents of the court of St Petersburg. This was a breach of the engagement made by the sultan in 1802, and it was followed by the entry of Russian troops into the principalities. England, as the ally of Russia, sent a fleet under Admiral Duckworth through the Dardanelles to threaten Constantinople. While the admiral wasted time in negotiations, the French ambassador, General Sebastiani, taught the Turks how to fortify their capital. The English admiral found that he could do nothing, and repassed the Dardanelles, suffering some loss on the passage. The war on the Danube was not carried on with much vigour on either side. Alexander was occupied with the struggle against Napoleon on the Vistula; Selím III. was face to face with mutiny in Constantinople, having brought upon himself the bitter hatred of the janissaries by attempting to form them into a body of troops drilled and disciplined after the methods of modern armies. While the military art in Europe had been progressing for centuries, Turkey had made no other changes in its military system than those which belonged to general decay. Its troops were a mere horde, capable indeed of a vigorous assault and of a stubborn defence, but utterly untrained in exercises and manoeuvres, and almost ignorant of the meaning of discipline. Selím was a reformer in government and administration as well as in military affairs. He broke from the traditions of his palace, and began a new epoch in Turkish history; but the influences opposed to him were too strong, and a mutiny of the janissaries in Constantinople deprived him of his crown. He was allowed to live, but as a prisoner, while the puppet of the janissaries, Mustafa IV., was placed on the throne (May 1807).

A few weeks after this event the treaty of Tilsit ended the war between France and Russia, and provided for the nominal mediation of Napoleon between Russia and the Porte. A truce followed between the armies on the Danube. Among the Turkish generals who had understood the necessity of Selím’s reforms, and who were prepared to support him against the janissaries, was Bairaktar, commander at Rustchuk. As soon as the truce gave him freedom of action, Bairaktar marched upon Constantinople. Leading his troops against the palace, he demanded the restoration of Selím. As the palace gates were closed, Bairaktar ordered an assault; but at the moment when his troops were entering Selím was put to death. Besides Mustafa there was only one member of the house of Osman remaining, his brother Mahmúd, who concealed himself in the furnace of a bath until the palace was in the hands of Bairaktar’s soldiers. He was then placed on the throne (July 1808). For a while Bairaktar governed as grand vizier. He was rash enough, however, to dismiss part of his own soldiers from Constantinople. The janissaries attacked him in his palace. A tower in which he defended himself was blown up, and after a battle in the streets of Constantinople between the janissaries and the remainder of Bairaktar’s troops, during which the dethroned sultan Mustafa was put to death, the janissaries remained conquerors, and Mahmúd was forced to submit to their demands. The innovations of the late reign were abolished, and for a while Mahmúd seemed content to reign as servant of the reaction.

It is well known that plans for the partition of the Ottoman empire occupied Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit. Austria, though unwilling to see Russia aggrandized, was prepared in the last resort to combine with the dismembering powers, if all attempts to prevent the execution of the plan by diplomatic means should fail. But after a few years the alliance declined and a war between France and Russia was seen to be inevitable. Meanwhile the conflict on the Danube had been resumed, and the Servians were still in arms. The Russians had advanced into Bulgaria and captured Silistria. England, which had made peace with Turkey in 1809, sought to reconcile the belligerents, in order that the czar might be free to employ his whole force against Napoleon. In May 1812 a treaty was signed at Bucharest, by which Bessarabia was ceded to Russia, the river Pruth becoming the boundary of the two empires. The Porte in this treaty promised to grant an amnesty to the Servians, to leave to them the management of their internal affairs, and to impose upon them only moderate taxes. These promises, however, were neither accepted by the Servians as a sufficient concession, nor were they observed by the Porte. The Servians continued to fight, and ultimately secured their autonomy about 1817 without help from Russia.

Mahmúd II. (1808-1839) was the only sultan of modern times who possessed the qualities of a great ruler. Brought up in the seclusion of the seraglio till the age of twenty-three, when he was suddenly placed on the throne, it is surprising that he should have shown the power, the resolution, and the intelligence which marked his government. The difficulties of his reign were enormous. He belonged to an epoch when the Ottoman empire might fairly be considered as in actual dissolution. This he to some extent arrested, and the reforms which he effected, partial and imperfect as they were, have prolonged the existence of the Turkish state to our own day. The first and most obvious internal danger to be met was the insubordination of the provincial pashas. Against these rebellious servants Mahmúd waged a persistent and unwearying war, now employing them against one another, now crushing them by his own armed force. One of the most formidable was Ali Pasha of Janina, who had made himself master of Albania and part of Greece. When Mahmúd in 1820 threw his armies upon this chieftain, the outbreak of hostilities in Epirus was the signal for the insurrection of Greece. While Hypsilanti, grandson of a hospodar of Moldavia who had been put to death by the Porte, raised the standard of revolt in Moldavia, asserting that Russia had promised the Christians its support, the Greeks of the Morea rose and exterminated the Turkish population among them. Hypsilanti was soon crushed; and the rising in the Morea was answered by massacres of the Greeks in the principal cities of the empire, and by the execution of Gregory, patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Greek Church. These deeds of violence excited the utmost indignation in Russia. A despatch was sent to Constantinople, calling upon the Porte to restore the churches which had been destroyed, to guarantee the inviolability of Christian worship in the future, and to discriminate in its punishments between the innocent and the guilty. These demands were presented as an ultimatum by the Russian ambassador, who, not receiving an answer within the time allowed, quitted Constantinople (27th July 1821). The influence of Austria and England, however, restrained the emperor Alexander from declaring war, and the Greeks were left to sustain their combat by themselves. As long as Ali Pasha was unsubdued, the only forces which the sultan could employ against the Greeks were irregular bands of volunteers. It was by one of these hordes that the fearful massacres of Chios, in the spring of 1822, were perpetrated. In that same spring, however, the overthrow and death of Ali set free the regular troops. Two armies of considerable strength now moved southwards from Thessaly, with the object of reducing the country north of the Gulf of Corinth and then uniting to conquer the Morea. The western army, commanded by Omer Brionis, was checked by the Suliotes, and subsequently beaten back by the defenders of Missolonghi. The eastern army, after advancing under the command of Dramali into the Morea, was compelled to retreat. But the passes in its rear had been seized by the Greeks; on all sides the enemy closed in upon it; and it was only through the disorders of the Greeks themselves that Dramali’s force escaped annihilation. Of those who survived the encounter most perished by sickness and famine in the neighbourhood of Corinth. Nor was the fortune of the Ottomans better at sea. The destruction of their admiral’s vessel with all its crew by the fire-ship of the Greek captain, Kanaris, caused such terror that all further attempts to reduce the islands were abandoned, and the fleet returned to the Dardanelles.

After an interval of ineffective land warfare, the sultan determined to call upon Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, for assistance. Mehemet had risen to power in the disturbed period that followed the expulsion of the French from Egypt. He had a more powerful fleet than that of his sovereign, and an army disciplined after the European system. In calling upon his powerful vassal for help the sultan must have been aware of the dangers which his aggrandizement would involve. Mehemet eagerly responded to Mahmúd’s call; and his son Ibráhím, in command of a powerful armament, set sail in the spring of 1824 from Alexandria against Crete. This island was rapidly conquered, and Ibráhím, after failing in some combined operations against Samos, crossed over to the Morea. Here he marched across the peninsula, carrying all before him. Nauplia alone maintained its defence, while the Egyptian sent out his harrying columns, slaughtering and devastating in every direction. From the Morea Ibráhím was summoned to assist the Turks, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully engaged in a second siege of Missolonghi. Ibráhím began his siege operations in the beginning of 1826 ; but it was not for three months more that Missolonghi fell. The tide of Ottoman conquest moved on eastwards, and the acropolis of Athens capitulated in the following year. But the defence of Missolonghi had lasted long enough to bring the powers of Europe into the field. On the death of the emperor Alexander at the end of 1825, Canning sent the duke of Wellington to St Petersburg to negotiate conditions of joint diplomatic action on the part of England and Russia. A protocol signed at St Petersburg on 4th April 1826 fixed the conditions on which the mediation of Great Britain was to be tendered to the Porte. Greece was to remain tributary to the sultan, but to be governed by its own elected authorities and to be independent in its commercial relations. The surviving Turkish population was to be removed from Greece; all property belonging to Turks, whether on the continent or the islands, was to be purchased by the Greeks. This protocol was developed into the treaty of London between England, Russia, and France, signed in July 1827, by which the three powers bound themselves to put an end to the conflict in the East. In pursuance of this treaty the mediation of the powers was offered to the Porte, and an armistice demanded. It was contemptuously refused. The united fleets of the powers consequently appeared before Navarino, where Ibráhím was assembling his forces for an expedition against Hydra. After a vain attempt at negotiation, they entered the harbour and fought the battle of Navarino, on 20th October 1827, in which the Turco-Egyptian fleet was totally destroyed. Canning had just died; his successors could only speak of Navarino as an "untoward event" and withdraw from further interference, leaving Russia and the Porte face to face. After a proclamation by the sultan calling the Mohammedans to arms, war was declared by Russia in April 1828. The moment was singularly favourable for Russia, for Mahmúd had, little more than a year before, exterminated the janissaries. After bringing over soldiers from Asia to make him secure of victory in the event of a conflict, he had called upon the janissaries to contribute a certain number of men to the regiments about to be formed on the European pattern. The janissaries refused and raised the standard of rebellion. Mahmúd opened fire on them with cannon, and the slaughter did not cease until the last of them had perished. The great difficulty in the way of a military reorganization was thus removed, and the newly-modelled regiments were raised to about 40,000 men. Small as the army was with which he had to meet the Russian invasion in 1828, the campaign of that year was honourable to the Turkish arms. Though Varna fell into the hands of the Russians, Silistria and Shumla were successfully defended, and the Russians, after suffering great losses, were compelled to withdraw to winter quarters on the Danube. In the following year they advanced through Bulgaria, defeated the Turks at Kulevtcha, and, after the surrender of Silistria, crossed the Balkans under the command of Diebitsch. They reached Adrianople, which immediately capitulated. Diebitsch, concealing the real weakness of his force, sent out detachments towards the Euxine and the Aegean, while the centre of his army marched on Constantinople. Had the sultan known the insignificant number of his enemy, he might safely have defied him. But the wildest exaggerations were current in the capital; Kars and Erzeroum had fallen into the hands of Paskiewitch, commander of the czar’s forces in Asia; and in Constantinople the friends of the slaughtered janissaries threatened revolt. Mahmúd listened to the advocates of peace, and on 14th September hostilities were brought to a close by the treaty of Adrianople. This treaty gave Russia the ports of Anapa and Poti on the eastern coast of the Black Sea; but its most important clauses were those which confirmed and extended the protectorate of the czar over the Danubian principalities. The office of hospodar, hitherto tenable for seven years, was now made an appointment for life, and the sultan undertook to permit no interference on the part of neighbouring pashas with these provinces. No fortified point was to be retained by the Turks on the left bank of the Danube; no Mussulman was to reside or hold property within the principalities. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles were declared free and open to the merchant ships of all nations. The Porte further gave its adherence to the treaty of London relating to Greece, and accepted the act entered into by the allied powers for regulating the Greek frontier. An indemnity in money was declared to be owing to Russia; and by leaving the amount to be fixed by subsequent agreement Russia retained in its own hands the most powerful means of enforcing its influence at Constantinople. The suzerainty over Greece, which the powers had at first agreed to leave to the sultan, was by common consent abandoned, and Greece became an independent kingdom.

At the close of eight years of warfare Mahmúd’s southernmost provinces were even more completely severed from the empire than Servia and the Danubian principalities. It was in vain that he had borne the humiliation of calling upon his vassal, Mehemet Ali, for help, and Meheme’'s reward had now to be paid. Crete was offered to him; this, however, was far from satisfying his ambition, and in November 1831 he threw an army under Ibráhím into Palestine and began the conquest of Syria. The sultan now declared Mehemet and his son to be rebels, and despatched an army against them. The first encounter took place in the valley of the Orontes. The Turks were put to the rout, and retired into Cilicia. Ibráhím following gained a second victory at the pass of Beylan, and, after crossing Mount Taurus, destroyed the last army of the sultan at Konieh, on 21st December 1832. In this extremity Mahmúd looked for help to the European powers, and Russia at once tendered its aid. At the request of the sultan a Russian fleet appeared before Constantinople. The French ambassador thereupon threatened to quit the capital; and finally, under French mediation, terms of peace were signed with Ibráhím at Kutaya (April 1833), the sultan making over to his vassal, not only the whole of Syria, but also the province of Adana between Mount Taurus and the Mediterranean.

Scarcely had this treaty been concluded when Russian influence again won the ascendency at Constantinople, and a treaty of alliance between Turkey and Russia was signed at the palace of Unkiar Skelessi, which in fact reduced Turkey to the condition of a vassal state. The form of the treaty was skilfully framed to disguise the relation of dependence which it created and the right of intervention in the internal affairs of the Ottoman empire which it gave to Russia. Each power pledged itself to render assistance to the other not only against the attack of an external enemy but wherever its peace and security might be endangered. Another article declared that, in order to diminish the burdens of the Porte, the czar would not demand the material help to which the treaty entitled him, but that in lieu thereof the Porte undertook, whenever Russia should be at war, to close the Dardanelles to the warships of all nations. The control of the Dardanelles was thus transferred from Turkey to Russia, and the entrance to the Black Sea converted into a Russian fortified outpost. In this treaty, brilliant as it appeared, Russia had gone too far. The Western powers declared that they would not recognize it, and the most strenuous and systematic efforts were henceforth made both by France and England to diminish Russian influence in the East. France, anxious to gain in Egypt a counterpoise to England’s naval power in the Mediterranean, made itself the patron and ally of Mehemet Ali. England adhered to the cause of the sultan, and on many occasions showed its hostility to Mehemet. Thus the two Western powers, though both in antagonism to Russia, were directly in conflict with one another in their Eastern policy. Mahmúd in the meantime was steadily preparing to renew the war with his rival. He obtained the services of Moltke and other Prussian officers in organizing his army, and, after a successful, campaign against the rebellious tribes of Kurdistan, assembled his troops in the spring of 1839 on the upper. Euphrates, and marched against Ibráhím. In the operations which followed the advice of the European officers ; was persistently disregarded by the pasha in command; and on 24th June the Turkish army was annihilated by Ibráhím at Nisib. To complete the ruin of the empire, the Turkish admiral, Achmet Fewzi, sailed into the port of Alexandria and handed over his fleet to Mehemet Ali. The sultan did not live to hear of the overthrow of his hopes. He died in the same week in which the battle of Nisib was fought, leaving the throne to his son ‘Abd-ul-Mejíd (1839-1861).

The very suddenness of these disasters contributed ultimately to the preservation of the Ottoman empire, inasmuch as it compelled the powers of Europe to take action. The French and English fleets appeared in the Dardanelles. The czar saw that it was impossible to maintain the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and this treaty was tacitly abandoned. Russia now addressed itself to the task of widening the existing differences between France and England. France insisted on far more favourable conditions for Mehemet Ali than England would allow, demanding that Egypt and all Syria should be given to him in hereditary dominion, with no further obligation towards the sultan than the payment of an annual tribute. Russia and the other powers took part with England, and ultimately, without asking the sanction of France, the four powers signed a treaty pledging themselves to enforce upon Mehemet the terms proposed by England, which practically reduced him to the position of an ordinary pasha in Palestine, while leaving him the hereditary government of Egypt. On the publication of this treaty Thiers, the French minister, prepared for war. He was, however, dismissed by Louis Philippe, and his successor, Guizot, accepted the situation. As Mehemet Ali refused to give up his conquests, an Anglo-Austrian naval squadron was sent to co-operate with a Turkish force in attacking the coast-towns of Syria. Acre was captured, and Ibráhím, assailed by the mountain tribes of the interior, was forced to retire to Egypt. A convention made between Mehemet and Sir Charles Napier, who had appeared at Alexandria with part of the fleet, formed the basis of the ultimate settlement, by which Mehemet, after formal submission to the sultan, was recognized as hereditary governor of Egypt. Russia now united with the other powers in a declaration that the ancient rule of the Ottoman empire, forbidding the passage of the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations, except when the Porte should itself be at war, was accepted by Europe at large.

The young sultan entered on his reign nominally as an independent sovereign, but really under the protection of the European powers. His minister, Reshid Pasha, who had gained in an unusual degree the confidence of Western statesmen, understood the necessity of bringing the Turkish system of government more into harmony with the ideas of the civilized world. An edict, known as the Hattisherif of Gulhane, announced the speedy establishment of institutions "which should insure to all subjects of the sultan perfect security for their lives, their honour, and their property, a regular method of collecting the taxes, and an equally regular method of recruiting the army and fixing duration of service." Scarcely had this edict been published when Reshid was driven from power by a palace intrigue. His reforming efforts, like those of Mahmúd, were not wholly ineffective; yet little was realized in comparison with what was promised and what was needed. The Turkish Government was soon discredited, and the intervention of Europe required, by conflicts between the Christian and Mohammedan tribes in the Lebanon, resulting in massacres of the former. After the convulsions of 1848 the sultan incurred the enmity of the autocratic courts by refusing to give up Kossuth and other exiles who had taken refuge within his dominions. The suppression of the national Hungarian Government by Russia in 1849 had heightened in the emperor Nicholas the sense of his own power. He now looked forward to the speedy extinction of Turkey, and in 1853 proposed to the British ambassador, Sir H. Seymour, a plan for the division of "the sick man’s" inheritance as soon as he should expire. Disputes between France and Russia relating to the rights of the Latin and Greek Churches in certain sacred places were made the occasion for the assertion of a formal claim on the part of the czar to a protectorate over all Christians in Turkey belonging to the Greek Church. This claim not being acknowledged by the Porte, a Russian army entered the Danubian principalities. After ineffective negotiations war was declared by the sultan on 4th October 1853. Hostilities commenced in Walachia, and the Turkish fleet was attacked and destroyed at Sinope. England and France allied themselves with the Porte, and landed an army at Varna in the spring of the following year. Silistria was successfully defended by the Turks; and, on the occupation of the Danubian principalities by Austria, the allies took up the offensive and transferred their forces to the Crimea. The siege of Sebastopol followed, ending in its capture in September 1855. Meanwhile Russian and Turkish forces were opposed in Asia. Kars maintained a gallant defence, but succumbed to famine two months after the fall of Sebastopol. The peace of Paris followed, in which Russia ceded to Turkey the portion of Bessarabia adjacent to the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was neutralized, Russia and the Porte alike engaging to keep no war-ships and to maintain no arsenals there. The exclusive protectorate of Russia over the Danubian principalities was abolished, and the autonomy of these provinces, as well as of Servia, placed under the guarantee of all the powers. The Porte published a firman, the Hatti-Humaiun, professing to abolish "every distinction making any class of the subjects of the empire inferior to any other class on account of their religion, language, and race," and establishing complete equality between Christians and Mahommedans; the powers in return declared the Porte admitted to the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe. The absurd stipulation was added that no right should thereby accrue to the powers to interfere either collectively or separately in the relations of the sultan with his subjects.

The Crimean War gave to part of the Balkan population twenty years more of national development under the slackened grasp of the Porte; and by extinguishing the friendship of Austria and Russia it rendered the liberation of Italy possible. But each direct proviso of the treaty of Paris seemed made only to be mocked by events. Scarcely a year passed without some disturbance among the Christian subjects of the sultan, in which the interference of the powers invariably followed in one form or another. A new series of massacres in the Lebanon in 1860 caused France to land a force in Syria, Walachia and Moldavia formed themselves into a single state under the name of Roumania, to which the house of Hohenzollern soon afterwards gave a sovereign. Bosnia and Montenegro took up arms. Servia got rid of its Turkish garrisons. Crete fought long for its independence, and seemed for a moment likely to be united to Greece under the auspices of the powers; but it was ultimately abandoned to its Turkish masters. The overthrow of France in the war of 1870 and the consequent isolation of England led Russia to declare the provision of the treaty of Paris which excluded its ships of war and its arsenals from the Black Sea to be no longer in force. To save appearances, the British Government demanded that the matter should be referred to a European conference, where Russia’s will was duly ratified.

A few years later the horizon of eastern Europe visibly darkened with the coming storm. Russian influences were no doubt at work; but the development of national feeling which had so powerfully affected every other part of Europe during the 19th century could not remain without effect among the Christian races of the Balkan peninsula. In 1875 Bosnia and Herzegovina revolted. In the meantime the government of ‘Abd-ul-‘Azíz (1861-1876) had become worse and worse. The state was bankrupt. Ignatieff, the Russian ambassador, gained complete ascendency in the palace, and frustrated every attempt on the part of the better Turkish statesmen to check the torrent of misrule. His creature, Mahmúd Pasha, maintained his place in spite of universal contempt, until a conspiracy was formed at Contantinople, which cost the sultan his throne (30th May 1876) and a few days later his life. His imbecile successor, Murád V., gave place after a reign of three months to ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd II. The Bosnian insurrection had already extended to Bulgaria, and the slaughter of the Turkish inhabitants in certain villages had been avenged by massacres of the most fearful character. Servia and Montenegro took up arms. The resources of European diplomacy were exhausted in fruitless attempts to gain from the Porte some real securities for better government, and in April 1877 Russia declared war. The neutrality of Austria had been secured by a secret agreement permitting that country to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, if Russia should extend its influence beyond the Balkans. The Bulgarian massacres had excited such horror and indignation in England that Lord Beaconsfield was forced to remain neutral. The ministry contented itself with stating that England would not permit Egypt to be the scene of hostilities, nor acquiesce in any prolonged occupation of Constantinople by Russian troops. Turkey was thus left without an ally. The Russians entered Bulgaria in June; and, while Rustchuk was besieged, their advanced guard under Gourko hurried across the Balkans. Meanwhile Osman Pasha, coming from Widdin, occupied and fortified Plevna on the Russian line of march. Against his redoubts the Russians, ill commanded threw themselves in vain, and Gourko was compelled to fall back on the Shipka Pass. But in December the capture of Plevna in which Roumanian troops cooperated, set tree the invading army, and the march on Constantinople was resumed. The Balkans were passed in mid-winter; Adrianople was occupied; and the Turkish armies were captured or annihilated. The Russians now pressed forward; to the very suburbs of Constantinople, and on 3d March 1878 peace was concluded at San Stefano. In Asia the Russians had captured Kars and were besieging Erzeroum. The treaty of San Stefano ceded to Russia the portion of Bessarabia taken from it in 1856, together with the Dobrudja, and also Kars, Batoum, and the adjoining territory in Asia. It recognized the independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and largely extended the territory of the first two. Bulgaria was constituted an autonomous state, though tributary to the Porte, and was defined so as to extend to the Aegean Sea and to include the greater part of the country between the Balkans and the coast. Crete, Thessaly, and Epirus were to receive the necessary reforms at the hands of a European commission. To this treaty Great Britain refused to give its assent, and vigorous preparations were made for war. The fleet was at the Dardanelles, and Indian troops were brought to Malta. Russia could no longer count on the neutrality of Austria. Under these circumstances the court of St Petersburg consented to submit the treaty to a European congress, which, after a secret agreement had been made between Russia and England on the principal points of difference, assembled at Berlin. The treaty of San Stefano received various modifications, the principal being a reduction of the territory included in Bulgaria and the division of that state into two parts. Bulgaria north of the Balkans was constituted an autonomous principality; Bulgaria south of the Balkans was made into a province, with the title of Eastern Roumelia, subject to the authority of the sultan, but with a Christian governor and an autonomous administration. Austria received Bosnia and Herzegovina. The territory ceded to Servia and Montenegro by the treaty of San Stefano as well as that ceded to Russia in Asia, was somewhat diminished. The Porte was advised to make some cession of territory to Greece, and the line of frontier subsequently recommended gave to Greece Janina as well as Thessaly. The usual promises of organic reform were made by Turkey. By a separate convention England undertook the defence of Asiatic Turkey and received Cyprus. The organization of Eastern Roumelia was duly taken in hand by a European commission and brought to a favourable conclusion; but it was not until a naval demonstration had been made by England that the final cession of Dulcigno to the Montenegrins was effected, and that Thessaly, without Epirus, was given up to Greece. Alexander of Battenberg became prince of Bulgaria. By a popular movement in 1885 Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia were united into a single state. This revolution occasioned the utmost displeasure at St Petersburg; and under Russian influence Prince Alexander was kidnapped and forced to abdicate. The Porte offered no armed resistance to the union. (C. A. F.)

Literature.—The best work on Ottoman history is Von Hammer’s Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (Buda-Pesth, 1834-35), which covers the period between 1300 and 1774. The author availed himself of the writings of the Turkish annalists as well as of those of his European predecessors; and all later Western historians of the empire have borrowed directly or indirectly from his volumes. This valuable work has been translated into French by Hellert, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman 9Paris, 1835-41). The best English work is Creasy’s History of the Ottoman Turks (London, 1854-56); it is complied for the most part from Von Hammer. Prince Cantemir of Moldavia’s History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire 9London, 1734) contains many interesting particulars, but is not always trustworthy. The best Turkish authorities for the period 1300-1730 are—Sa’d-ud-Dín, Táj-ut-Tevárikh (1300-1520); Pecheví, Táríkh, i.e., "History" (1520-1631); Na’ímá, Túkíkh (1591-1659); Ráshid Táríkh (1661-1722); and Chelebi-záda, Táríkh (1722-28). For the later period, see Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, 7 vols. (Hamburg and Gotha, 1840-63); Finlay, Grecce under Othoman Domination (Edinburgh, 1856); Kanitz, Donau-Bulgarien (Leipsic, 1875-79); Prokesch-Osten, Geschicte des Abfalls der Griechen (Stuttgart, 1867); Finlay, Greek Revolution (Edinburgh, 1861); Bourchier’s Codrinton; H. von Moltke, Russisch-Türkische Feldzúg (1828-29) (2d ed., Berlin, 1877); H. von Moltke, Briefe über Zustände in der Türkei (1835-39) (ed ed., Berlin, 1877); Prokesch-Osten, Medmed Ali (Vienna, 1877); Rosen, Geschichte der Türkei (1826-56) (2 vols., Leipsic, 1866-67); Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea (6 vols., new ed., Edinburg, 1875-80); Eichmann, Reformen des Osmanischen Reiches (Berlin, 1858); V. Baker, War in Bulgaria (2 vols., London 1879); W. Müller, Russisch-Türkischer Krieg (stuttgart, 1878). For the diplomatic history, see Aus Metternich’s Papieren (Vienna, 1880-84); Wellinton, Despatches (new ser., London, 1867-71); Gentz, Dépéches Inédites (3 vols., Paris, 1876-77); Sir H. Bulwer, Palmerston (2 vols., London, 1871); Guizot, Mémoires (Paris, 1858-67); Sir F. Hertslet, British and Foreign State Papers (London, 1819, and still in progress), and Map of Europe by Treaty (1875); Parliamentary History; and Papers Presented to Parliament.

SULTAN OF THE HOUSE OF ‘OSMÁN.

The dates are those of the sultan’s accession, according to the Moslem and Christian eras.

1. ‘Osmán I…….. son of Er-Toghrul……….. 700 A.H. 1301 A.D.

2. Orkhan……….son of ‘Osmán I…………..726 A.H. 1326 A.D.

3. Murád……….. son of Orkhan…………….761 A.H. 1359 A.D.

4. Báyezíd I……..son of Murád I…………….791 A.H. 1389 A.D.

Interregnum………………………………...804 A.H. 1402 A.D.

5. Muhammed I….son of Báyezíd I…………. 816 A.H. 1413 A.D.

6. Murád II………son of Muhammed I………824 A.H. 1421 A.D.

7. Muhammed II…son of Murád II…………..855 A.H. 1451 A.D.

8. Báyezíd II…….son of Muhammed II……..886 A.H. 1481 A.D.

9. Selím I………..son of Báyezíd II…………918 A.H. 1512 A.D.

10. Suleymán I….son of Selím I……………..926 A.H. 1520 A.D.

11.Selím II………son of Suleymán I………..974 A.H. 1566 A.D.

12. Murád III……son of Selím II……………982 A.H, 1574 A.D.

13. Muhammed III..son of Murád III……….1003 A.H. 1595 A.D.

14. Admed I…….son of Muhammed III….. 1012 A.H. 1603 A.D.

15.Mustafa I……son of Muhammed III……1026 A.H. 1617 A.D.

16. ‘Osmán II…..son of Ahmed I…………..1027 A.H. 1618 A.D.

Mustafa I…….(restored)…………………1031 A.H. 1622 A.D.

17.Murád IV……son of Ahmed I…………..1032 A.H. 1623 A.D.

18. Ibráhím……..son of Ahmed I…………..1049 A.H. 1640 A.D.

19. Muhammed IV..son of Ibráhím…………1058 A.H. 1648 A.D.

20. Suleymán II…son of Ibráhím……………1099 A.H. 1687 A.D.

21. Ahmed II……son of Ibráhím……………1102 A.H. 1691 A.D.

22.Mustafa II……son of Muhammed IV……1106 A.H. 1695 A.D.

23. Ahmed II……son of Muhammed IV…….1115 A.H. 1703 A.D.

24. Mahmúd I…..son of Mustafa II………….1143 A.H. 1730 A.D.

25. ‘Osmán III….son of Mustafa II………….1168 A.H. 1754 A.D.

26. Mustafa III….son of Ahmed III………….1171 A.H. 1757 A.D.

27. ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd I..son of Ahmed III………1187 A.H. 1773 A.D.

28. Selím III…….son of Mustafa III…………1203 A.H. 1789 A.D.

29. Mustafa IV….son of ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd I……1222 A.H. 1807 A.D.

30. Mahmúd II….son of ‘Abd-ud-Hamíd I……1223 A.H. 1808 A.D.

31. ‘Abd-ul-Mejíd…son of Mahmúd II……….1255 A.H. 1839 A.D.

32. ‘Abd-ul-‘Ariz….son of Mahmúd II……….1277 A.H. 1861 A.D.

33. Murád V………son of ‘Abd-ul-Mejíd……1293 A.H. 1876 A.D.

34. ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd II…son of ‘Abd-ul-Mejíd..1293 A.H. 1876 A.D.

PART II - GEOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS

Turkey, or the Ottoman empire (Osmanli Vilaieti), embraces extensive territories in south-eastern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa, grouped mainly round the eastern waters of the Mediterranean, and along both sides of the Red Sea, the west coast of the Persian Gulf, and the southern and western-shores of the Black Sea. These territories form an aggregate of provinces and states, some under the direct control of the sultan, some enjoying a large share of political autonomy, some practically independent, either administered by foreign powers or ruled by hereditary vassals or tributary princes. The present (1887) extent of the Ottoman empire is about 1,692,150 square miles, and its population 42,346,000.

EUROPEAN TURKEY.

Since the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 (see above), the extremely irregular frontiers of European Turkey are conterminous with Greece in the south, and in the north with Montenegro, Austria, Servia, and Roumania, being separated from the last country partly by the Danube, partly by a conventional line drawn from Silistria on that river to Mangalia on the Black Sea. By the Berlin congress Roumania and Servia, hitherto vassal states, were made absolutely independent kingdoms, Roumania at the same time receiving the district of Dobrudja between the lower Danube and the Black Sea, and Servia those of Nish and Leskovatz about the upper Morava river. Montenegro was also recognized as an independent principality, with an increase of territory, which gave it a sea frontier limited southwards by the river Boyana, and including the Albanian ports of Dulcigno and Antivari on the Adriatic. The Greco-Turkish frontier was also shifted north, Greece obtaining most of Thessaly and a strip of Epirus (south Albania), so that since 1881 the border line runs from near Mount Olympus on the Gulf of Saloniki (40° N. lat.) west to the Pindus range, then south-west to the Gulf of Arta on the Ionian Sea. A still more serious step was taken towards disintegration by the withdrawal of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia from the immediate jurisdiction of the Sublime Porte. The former was constituted a tributary principality, with representative institutions, and Eastern Roumelia was erected into an autonomous province, both under the guarantee of the European powers. But in 1885 the latter province declared for union with Bulgaria, and since then these two territories have practically formed one state administered from Sophia, Europe assenting and Turkey consenting (imperial firman of 6th April 1886) on the retrocession to Turkey of the Moslem districts of Kirjali and the Rhodope. In the year 1878 Austria occupied and assumed the civil administration of the north-western provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, besides taking military possession of the contiguous strategical district of Novi-Bazar. The direct possessions of the sultan have thus been reduced in Europe to a strip of territory stretching continuously across the Balkan Peninsula from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic (29° 10' to 19° 20' E. long.), and lying in the east mainly between 40° and 42° and in the west between 39° and 43° N. lat. It corresponds roughly to ancient Thrace, Macedonia with Chalcidice, Epirus, and a large part of Illyria, constituting the present administrative divisions of Stambul (Constantinople, including a small strip of the opposite Asiatic coast), Edirneh (Adrianople), Saloniki with Kosovo (Macedonia), Janina (parts of Epirus and Thessaly), Shkodra (Scutari or upper Albania). To these must be added the Turkish islands in the Aegean usually reckoned to Europe, that is, Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros, and, in the extreme south, Crete or Candia, with estimated (1887) areas and populations as under :—

TABLE

For detailed accounts of the physical features, climate, fauna, and flora of these regions, the reader is referred to the articles ALBANIA, BOSNIA, BULGARIA, CONSTANTINOPLE, EPIRUS, HERZEGOVINA, MACEDONIA, and THRACE. Here it will suffice to remark in a general way that the territory still directly administered from Stambul comprises one of the most favoured regions of the temperate zone. The extensive igneous and metamorphic system of the Great Balkans and Rhodope (Despoto-Dagh), culminating in the Rilo Dagh (9000 feet), interspersed in the Pindus range farther west by Permian formations of unknown age, and succeeded in the extreme east (both sides of the Bosphorus) by Lower Devonian sandstones and some more recent volcanic rocks, is pierced by the four rich alluvial valleys of the Maritza, Kara-su or "Blackwater," Struma (Strymon), and Vardar. These rivers, flowing in nearly parallel south-easterly courses to the Aegean, collect most of the drainage of Roumelia, as Thrace and Macedonia are commonly called by the Turks. The whole region thus enjoys a somewhat southerly aspect, sheltered from the north by the lofty crests of the Rilo Dagh and northern Pindus, and in every way admirably suited for the cultivation of most cereals, as well as of cotton, tobacco, madder, the mulberry, the vine, and fruits. Here maize yields such a bountiful harvest that, although originally introduced from America, it has long been regarded as indigenous, and for the Italians is simply the Turkish corn ("gran turco") in a pre-eminent sense. The inhabitants also, Greeks intermingled with Turks in the east, with Bulgarians in the west, are intelligent and industrious, noted for their skill in the manufacture of carpets and other woven goods, of saddlery, arms, and jewellery.

ASIATIC TURKEY.

The mainstay of the Ottoman dynasty is the Asiatic portion of the empire, where the Mohammedan religion is absolutely predominant, and where the naturally vigorous and robust Turki race forms in Asia Minor a compact mass of many millions, far outnumbering any other single ethnical element and probably equalling all taken collectively. Here also, with the unimportant exception of the islands of Samos and Cyprus and the somewhat privileged district of Lebanon, all the Turkish possessions constitute vilayets directly controlled by the Porte. They comprise the geographically distinct regions of the Anatolian plateau (Asia Minor), the Armenian and Kurdish highlands, the Mesopotamian lowlands, the billy and partly mountainous territory of Syria and Palestine, and the coastlands of west and north-east Arabia. The changes caused by the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 were the cession to Persia of the little district of Kotur on the eastern frontier and to Russia of the districts of Kars and Batoum on the north-east frontier, while to England were conceded the military occupation and administration of Cyprus. Asiatic Turkey is conterminous on the east with Russia and Persia ; in the south-west it encloses on the west, north, and north-east the independent part of Arabia. Towards Egypt the frontier is a conventional line drawn from Akabah at the head of the Gulf of Akabah north-westwards to the little port of El Arish on the Mediterranean. Elsewhere Asiatic Turkey enjoys the advantage of a sea frontage, being washed in the north-west and west by the Euxine, Aegean, and Mediterranean, in the south-west by the Red Sea, and in the south-east by the Persian Gulf.

The above enumerated five natural divisions of Asiatic Turkey are divided for administrative purposes into about twenty vilayets, which, however, have been and still are subject to considerable fluctuations. The subjoined grouping, with areas and populations, is based mainly on data lately communicated confidentially to the British Government by Mr Redhouse. His estimates of population have been strikingly confirmed by the official returns that have for the first time just been made for certain provinces in Asia Minor and the Armenian highlands. Thus the census of the Trebizond vilayet, completed in 1886, gave a total of 1,010,000, which differs only by 7000 from Mr Redhouse’s estimate for 1878 (1,017,000). So also the just completed (1887) census for the Erzeroum vilayet gives 583,000, or 998,000 including the territory ceded to Russia in 1878, which is 45,000 higher than Mr Redhouse’s estimate.

TABLE

Detailed descriptions of Asiatic Turkey will be found under the separate articles ARABIA, ARMENIA, ASIA MINOR, KURDISTAN, MESOPOTAMIA, PALESTINE, and SYRIA. Of these natural divisions Asia Minor or Anatolia is by far the most important for extent, population, and natural resources. It constitutes an elevated and fertile plateau enclosed by irregular mountain ranges, which in the Taurus and Antitaurus on the south and east rise to from 7000 to 10,000 feet, culminating in the volcanic Erjish-Dagh, or Argaeus, nearly 12,000 feet high. The plateau, which has a mean altitude of some 3000 feet, is depressed in the centre, where the Tuz-gol (Tatta Palus) and several other lacustrine basins have at present no outflow, but which appear to have formerly drained through the Sakaria (Sangarius) northwards to the Euxine. In the same direction, and in curiously parallel curves, flow the more easterly Kizil-Irmak (Halys) and Yeshil-Irmak (Iris), which carry off most of the surface waters of the plateau. The western rivers—Granicus, Xanthus (Scamander), Hermus, Simois, Meander—although renowned in song and history, are comparatively insignificant coast-streams, rushing from the escarpment of the plateau down to their fiord-like estuaries in the Aegean. None of the rivers are navigable to any distance from their mouths, and in the absence of good means of communication the very rich resources of the plateau in minerals and agricultural produce have hitherto been little developed. Owing to the different elevations and varied aspects of the land towards the Euxine, Aegean, and Mediterranean, the climate is extremely diversified, presenting all the transitions from intense summer heat along most of the seaboard to severe winters on the lofty tablelands of the interior, which are exposed to biting winds from the Russian steppes. Anatolia has an endless variety of natural products, from the hardy boxwood of Lazistan (Trebizond vilayet) to the sub-tropical figs and grapes of the western coastlands. On the plateau thrives the famous breed of Angora goats, whose soft, silky fleece (mohair) forms a staple export.

Of far less economic importance are the Armenian uplands, forming a rugged plateau of limited extent, above which rise many lofty peaks, culminating in the tower-crested Ararat (16,916 feet), the converging point of three empires. The long and terribly severe winters, intolerably hot short summers, and generally poor soil of Armenia present a marked contrast to the far more temperate climate, rich upland valleys, and densely wooded slopes of the more southern Kurdistan highlands. But these advantages are counter-balanced by the generally inaccessible nature of the country, the want of good highways, and especially the lawless character of its inhabitants, who have undergone little social change since the days of their wild Karduchi forefathers. In the heart of this savage region lies the magnificent basin of Lake Van, which, like Tuz-gol and the more easterly Urmiya, has no present outflow, but formerly, no doubt, discharged to the Tigris valley.

In the Van district lie the sources of most of the head streams of the TIGRIS (q.v.) and EUPHRATES (q.v.), which have created the vast and fertile alluvial plains of Mesopotamia. This latter region, the seat of the ancient Accadian and Assyrian and the more recent Moslem cultures, forms a continuous plain from the escarpments of the Kurdistan highlands to the Persian Gulf, broken only in the north by the Sinjar Hills, and capable of yielding magnificent crops wherever water is available. But under Osmanli rule the splendid system of irrigation works, dating from the dawn of history, has fallen into decay: the lower Euphrates now overflows its banks and converts much of the region above and below Kurnah, at the confluence of the two great arteries, into malarious marshlands. Hence the populous cities and innumerable villages formerly dotted over the Babylonian plains have been succeeded by the scattered hamlets of the Montefik and other amphibious Arab tribes.

This lowland region is separated by the more elevated Syrian desert or steppe from the much smaller and less productive provinces of Syria and Palestine. Here the main physical features are at once simple and yet striking. The narrow, hilly region disposed north and south between the Mediterranean and the desert, and stretching for over 400 miles between Anatolia and the Sinai Peninsula, culminates towards the centre in the parallel Libanus and Antilibanus (10,000 to 11,000 feet), enclosing between them the fertile depression of the Beká’ (Coele-Syria). The stupendous ruins of Baalbek, standing at the highest point of this depression in 30° N. lat, mark the parting line between the northern and southern watersheds of the region. Northwards flows the El-‘Asi (Orontes), southwards the Lítáni (Leontes), both through the Beká’ in moderately sloping beds to the Mediterranean. For further particulars, see the articles LEBANON, JORDAN, PALESTINE. In the Lebanon the Christian Maronite communities enjoy a measure of self-government under the guarantee of France, while their pagan neighbours and hereditary foes, the Druses, are gradually withdrawing to the hilly Hauran district beyond Jordan.

Turkey’s Arabian possessions comprise, besides El-Hasa on the Persian Gulf, the low-lying, hot, and insalubrious Tehama and the south-western highlands (vilayets of Hejaz and Yemen) stretching continuously along the east side of the Red Sea, and including the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. These are held by military occupation, probably at a loss to the imperial exchequer, and certainly against the wishes of the inhabitants. But these drawbacks are supposed to be more than compensated by the political prestige derived from the possession of the Holy Land of Islam.

AFRICAN TERRITORIES.

Since the abandonment of eastern or Egyptian Soudan in 1884, consequent on the revolt of the Mahdi, and the occupation of Tunis by the French in 1881, Turkey in Africa has been reduced to the two territories of Egypt and Tripolitana with Barca and Fezzan, jointly occupying the north-east corner of the continent. Of these Tripolitana alone is directly administered, constituting the pashalik or vilayet of Tripoli. Egypt, whose southern frontier was temporarily fixed in January 1887 at the station of Akashe above Wady Halfa, near the second cataract in Lower Nubia (22º N lat.), has formed a practically independent principality under the dynasty of Mehemet Ali since 1841, subject only to an annual tribute of £695,000 to the Porte. The areas and populations of Turkey in Africa were estimated as follows in 1887:—

TABLE

Turkey is essentially a theocratic absolute monarchy, being subject in principle to the direct personal control of the sultan, who is himself at once a temporal autocrat and the recognized caliph, that is "successor" of the Prophet, and consequently the spiritual head of the Moslem world (see MOHAMMEDANISM). But, although the attempt made in 1876 to introduce representative institutions proved abortive, this theoretical absolutism is nevertheless tempered not only by traditional usage, local privilege, the juridical and spiritual precepts of the Koran and its ‘ulemá interpreters, and the privy council, but also by the growing force of public opinion and the direct or indirect pressure of the European powers. The ‘ulemá 1form a powerful corporation, whose head, the shezkhu ‘l-Islám, ranks as a state functionary scarcely second to the grand vizier, or prime minister. Owing to their intensely conservative and fanatical spirit, the ‘ulemá have always been determined opponents of progress, and are at present one of the greatest obstacles to reform in a political system where the spiritual and temporal functions are inextricably interwoven. Besides these expounders of Koranic doctrine, the sovereign is to some extent bound also by the Multeka, a legal code based on the traditional sayings of Mohammed and the recorded decisions of his successors, having the force of precedents.

The grand vizier (sadr-azam), who is nominated by the sultan, presides ex-officio over the privy council (mejliss-i-khass), which, besides the sheikhu ‘1-Islám, comprises the ministers of home and foreign affairs, war, finance, marine, trade, public works, justice, public instruction, and worship, with the president of the council of state and the grand master of artillery. For administrative purposes the immediate possessions of the sultan are divided into vilayets (provinces), which are again subdivided into sanjaks or mutessariks (arrondissements), these into kazas (cantons), and the kazas into nahiés (parishes or communes). A vali or governor-general nominated by the sultan, stands at the head of the vilayet, and on him are directly dependent the pashas, effendis, beys, and other administrators of the minor divisions. All these officials unite in their own persons the judicial and executive functions, and all alike are as a rule thoroughly corrupt, venal in the dispensation of justice, oppressors of the subject, embezzlers of the public revenues, altogether absorbed in amassing wealth during their mostly brief and precarious tenure of office.2 Foreigners settled in the country are specially protected from exactions by the so-called "capitulations," in virtue of which they are exempt from the jurisdiction of the local courts and amenable for trial to tribunals pre.



FOOTNOTES (page 654)

(1) See SUNNITES, vol. xxii. P. 660.

(2) Major-General F. T. Haig, who travelled through the heart of Yemen in the winter of 1886-87, thus speaks of the administration in that almost exclusively Moslem province: "The fiscal system of the Turks, if it were really carried into effect, would he by no means bad ; but like every other department of the government it is ruined by the utter corruption that prevails in every branch of the administration from top to bottom. No more eloquent expounders of the evils and hopelessness of their whole system are to be found than the Turks themselves, as I found from conversation with two or three of their own officials" (Proc. R. Geog. Soc., August 1887, p. 487). Mr G. P. Devey also, consul at Erzeroum, reports that in a part of that province the sheep-tax for 1885 was collected three times over : "On the first occasion the real number had been underestimated, and the collector therefore came again, and, finding that such was the case, made the villagers pay the whole sum of 14,000 piastres (9000 had been levied on the previous occasion), instead of the difference, on the ground that they had cheated the Government in not declaring their whole stock. A third time a collector visited the caza, and, when the villagers could produce no receipt that the tax had been paid (for none had been given), a third time the full sum was taken" (Cons. Rep., July 1887, p. 3).



sided over by their respective consuls. Cases between foreigners of different nationalities are heard in the court of the defendant, and between foreigners and Turkish subjects in the local courts, at which a consular dragoman attends to see that the trial is conducted according to law.

The trade returns for the last few years show that the country is slowly recovering from the disastrous consequences of the Russo-Turkish War. For the four years 1882-86 the exports from and imports to Turkey were valued as under :—

TABLE

The share of the chief foreign states in these exchanges is shown in the subjoined table 2 for the years 1884-85 and 1885-86 :—

TABLE

The chief staples of the export trade are raisins (£1,370,000 in 1884-85), wheat (£900,000), cotton (£700,000), opium (£500,000), olive oil (£450,000), valonia (£450,000), barley (£332,000), figs (£200,000), sesame (£196,000), maize (£194,000), pulse (£185,000), nuts (£184,000), mohair (£145,000), wool (£140,000), dates (£115,000) ; and of the import trade cotton and cotton stuffs (£4,350,000, in 1883-84), cereals and flour (£1,350,000), sugar (£1,150,000), draperies, hosiery, &c. (£735,000), woollen stuffs (£650,000), coffee (£535,000), metals (£516,000), ironmongery (£475,000), dyes (£450,000), silk and silk stuffs (£400,000), petroleum (£375,000), hides and skins (£255,000), live stock (£236,000), chemicals (£167,000), coal (£135,000).

In the next table are given the principal seaports of the empire with their imports, exports, and shipping for 1886 :—

TABLE

Exclusive of coasting craft, the mercantile fleet of Turkey in 1885 consisted of 14 steamers of 11,000 tons and 400 sailing vessels of 65,000 tons.

All branches of the foreign trade, together with most of the local traffic and the banking business, are almost exclusively in the hands of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and foreigners. The Turks and other Mohammedans are engaged nearly altogether in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. But the land, especially in Anatolia, is gradually passing from its Moslem owners into the possession of Christian mortgagees. Scarcely any accurate agricultural returns are available, except for one or two districts. In the Erzeroum vilayet in 1886 3 the live-stock stood as under,—sheep 1,485,000, goats 645,000, oxen 470,000, buffaloes 48,000, horses 61,000, asses 42,000, mules 5000; beehives numbered 80,000. The chief agricultural produce for the same year was—wheat 16,690,000 bushels, barley 13,297,000 bushels, beans 46,250 cwts., melons 17,000 cwts., mulberries 10,000 cwts., other fruits 40,000 cwts. In the same year of the 12,000 square miles constituting the Trebizond vilayet 2100 were under cultivation, 1860 uncultivated, 2520 woodland, and 5520 highland pasturage, the annual yield being about 2,300,000 cwts. of cereals, 1,000,000 cwts. of nuts, fruits, vegetables, &c., and 500,000 cwts. of fodder; whilst of live-stock there were 300,000 sheep and goats, 150,000 horses, 25,000 mules and asses, 60,000 oxen.4

Previous to 1880 Turkey was commonly regarded as practically bankrupt. But since then a considerable improvement has been effected. Trustworthy data are still wanting; but a careful estimate gave the gross revenue and expenditure of 1884 at £T16,313,000 and £T16,223,000 respectively, the expenditure including over £T4,000,000 available for state creditors. The public debt stood at £106,437,000 in 1882. The sultan is reported to draw a sum of from £1,000,000 to £2,000,000 annually from the public revenues for the support of the seraglio or imperial household of over five thousand persons.

Until 1886 the military service, compulsory on all Moslems over 18 years of age, was kept up by 45,000 annual recruits drawn by ballot; but in November of that year universal conscription of the whole able-bodied male population was decreed. By this measure the army, hitherto reckoned at about 160,000 men, with a war strength of from 450,000 to 500,000, will be probably raised to a permanent footing of 1,000,000 effectives under the flag and in the reserves. These will continue to be grouped in the three categories of the nizam or regulars in active service, the redif or first reserve, and the mustahfiz or second reserve. There is to be a considerable increase of cavalry, all conscripts being allowed to join that branch of the service who have the means of providing themselves with mounts and equipment. For military purposes the empire is divided into seven divisions, with headquarters at Constantinople, Adrianople, Monastir, Erzingian, Baghdad, Damascus, and Sanaa, all except Sanaa (for Yemen) hitherto furnishing an army corps for the nizam and two for the redif.

The navy at the beginning of 1887 comprised 15 large and several smaller ironclads (monitors, gunboats, &c.), a number of mostly old-fashioned steamers, and 14 torpedo boats, and was manned by 30,000 sailors and 10,000 marines (nominal strength), raised by conscription or voluntary enlistment and serving for 12 years in the active and reserve classes.

Public instruction is much more widely diffused throughout the empire than is commonly supposed. This is due partly to the Christian communities, notably the Maronites and others in Syria, the Anatolian and Roumelian Greeks, and the Armenians of the eastern provinces and of Constantinople. Education is practically limited amongst the Mohammedans to reading and writing and the study of the Koran. But amongst the Christians, especially the Armenians, the Greeks of Smyrna, and the Syrians of Beyrut, it embraces a considerable range of subjects, such as classical Hellenic, Armenian, and Syriac, as well as modern French, Italian, and English, modern history, geography, and medicine. Large sums are freely contributed for the establishment and support of good schools, and the cause of national education is seldom forgotten in the legacies of patriotic Anatolian Greeks. Even the Turks are bestirring themselves in this respect, and great progress has been made during the last twenty years in the Erzeroum vilayet.5 In 1886 that province contained 1216 schools and 163 madrasas (colleges), with a total attendance of 25,680, including 1504 girls. Elsewhere few official statistics are available.

Besides administrative and financial reforms, one of the most pressing needs is improved means of communication. In Trebizond the route from the coast at Unieh through Niksar to Sivas has recently been completed to the limits of the vilayet. But the works on the more important road from Kirasun to Kara-hissar for the silver and lead mines at Lijessy are still suspended, owing to disputes between the contiguous provincial administrations. Many of the great historic highways are also much out of repair. At the end of 1885 only 1250 miles of railway were completed in the empire, of which 903 were in Europe and 347 in Asia. The chief lines are those connecting the capital with Adrianople (210 miles), Adrianople with Saremby (152), Saloniki with Uskub (150), Zenica with Brod (118), Uskub with Mitrovitza (75), and Kulleli with Dégéagatch (70) in Europe, and, in Asia, Scutari with Ismid (40), Smyrna with Ala-Shehr (130), and Smyrna with Denizli (170). By imperial decree (August 1887) a contract was granted to an English syndicate for the extension of the Ismid line and the construction of a system of Asiatic railways to extend to Baghdad within the space of ten years.

The telegraph system is much more developed, comprising (1885) 14,620 miles, with 26,100 miles of wire and 470 stations. The yearly average of letters and packages of all sorts sent through the 710 post-offices scarcely exceeds 2,600,000. Most of the foreign postal service is conducted through the British, Austrian, German, French, and Russian privileged post-offices.

For the ethnography of the Turks, see TURKS. (A. H. K.)



PART III.—LITERATURE.



In all literary matters the Ottoman Turks have shown themselves a singularly uninventive people, the two great schools, the old and the new, into which we may divide their literature, being closely



FOOTNOTES (page 655)

(1) Exclusive of tobacco, which for fiscal reasons is not included in the general trade returns, but the export of which amounted to £11,500,000 in value for 1884-5, and nearly £11,000,000 for 1885-6.

(2) Consul-General Fawcett’s Report for July 1887, p. 31.

(3) Cons. Rep. for July 1887.

(4) Cons. Rep., May 1887.

(5) Cons. Rep., July 1887, p. 4.



modelled the one after the classics of Persia, the other after those of modern Europe, and more especially of France. The old or Persian school flourished from the foundation of the empire down to about 1830, and still continues to drag on a feeble existence, though it is now out of fashion and cultivated by none of the leading men of letters. These belong to the new or European school, which sprang up some fifty or sixty years ago, and which in spite of the bitter opposition of the partisans of the old Oriental system has succeeded, partly through its own inherent superiority and partly through the talents and courage of its supporters, in expelling its rival from the position of undisputed authority which it had occupied for upwards of five hundred years. For the present purpose it will be convenient to divide the old school into three periods, which may be termed respectively the pre-classical, the classical, and the post-classical. Of these the first extends from the early days of the empire to the accession of Suleymán I., 1301-1520 (700-926); the second from that event to the accession of Mahmúd I., 1520-1730 (926-1143); and the third from that date to the accession of ‘Abd-ul-‘Aziz, 1730-1861 (1143-1277).

The works of the old school in all its periods are entirely Persian her in tone, sentiment, and form. We find in them the same beauties and the same defects that we observe in the productions of the Iranian authors. The formal elegance and conventional grace, alike of thought and of expression, so characteristic of Persian classical literature, pervade the works of the best Ottoman writers, and they are likewise imbued, though in a less degree, with that spirit of mysticism which runs through so much of the poetry of Irán. But the Ottomans did not stop here: in their romantic poems they chose as subjects the favourite themes of their Persian masters, such as Leylí and Mejn’n, Khusrev and Shírín, Yúsuf and Zuleykhá, and so on ; they constantly allude to Persian heroes whose stories occur in the Sháh-Náma and other storehouses of Iranian legendary lore ; and they wrote their poems in Persian metres and in Persian forms. The mesneví, the kasída, and the ghazel,—all of them, so far at least as the Ottomans are concerned, Persian,—were the favourite verse-forms of the old poets. A mesneví is a poem written in rhyming couplets, and is usually narrative in subject. The kasída and the ghazel are both monorhythmic ; the first as a rule celebrates the praises of some great man, while the second discourses of the joys and woes of love. Why Persian rather than Arabian or any other literature became the model of Ottoman writers is explained by the early history of the race (see TURKS). Some two centuries before the arrival of the Turks in Asia Minor the Seljúks, then a mere horde of savages, had overrun Persia, where they settled and adopted the civilization of the people they had subdued. Thus Persian became the language of their court and Government, and when by and by they pushed their conquests into Asia Minor, and founded there the Seljúk empire of Rúm, they carried with them their Persian culture, and diffused it among the peoples newly brought under their sway. It was the descendants of those Persianized Seljúks whom the early Ottomans found ruling in Asia Minor on their arrival there. What had happened to the Seljúks two centuries before happened to the Ottomans now: the less civilized race adopted the culture of the more civilized; and, as the Seljúk empire fell to pieces and the Ottoman came gradually to occupy its place, the sons of men who had called themselves Seljúks began thenceforth to look upon themselves as Ottomans. Hence the vast majority of the people whom we are accustomed to think of as Ottomans are so only by adoption, being really the descendants of Seljúks or Seljúkian subjects, who had derived from Persia whatever they possessed of civilization or of literary taste. An extraordinary love of precedent, the result apparently of conscious want of original power, was sufficient to keep their writers loyal to their early guide for centuries, till at length the allegiance, though not the fashion of it, has been changed in our own days, and Paris has replaced Shiráz as the shrine towards which the Ottoman scholar turns. While conspicuously lacking in creative genius, the Ottomans have always shown themselves possessed of receptive and assimilative powers to a remarkable degree, the result being that the number of their writers both in prose and verse is enormous. Of course only a few of the most prominent, either through the intrinsic merit of their work or through the influence they have had in guiding or shaping that of their contemporaries, can be mentioned in a brief review like the present. It ought to be premised that the poetry of the old school is greatly superior to the prose.

Ottoman literature may be said to open with a few mystic lines, the work of Sultán Veled, son of Mauláná Jelál-ud-Dín, the author of the great Persian poem the Mathnawi. Sultán Veled flourished during the reign of ‘Osmán I., though he did not reside in the territory under the rule of that prince. Another mystic poet of this early time was ‘Ashik Pasha, who left a long poem in rhyming couplets, which is called, inappropriately enough, his Díván. The nocturnal expedition across the Hellespont by which Suleymán, the son of Orkhan, won Galipoli and therewith a foothold in Europe for his race, was shared in and celebrated in verse by a Turkish noble or chieftain named Ghází Fázil. Sheykhí of Kermiyán, a contemporary of Muhammed I. and Murád II., wrote a lengthy and still esteemed mesneví on the ancient Persian romance of Khusrev and Shírín ; and about the same time Yaziji-oghlu gave to the world a long versified history of the Prophet, the Muhammediya. The writers mentioned above are the most important previous to the capture of Constantinople ; but there is little literature of real merit prior to that event. The most notable prose work of this period is an old collection of stories, the History of the Forty Vezirs, said to have been compiled by a certain Sheykh-záda and dedicated to Murád II. A few years after Constantinople passed into the hands of the Ottomans, some ghazels, the work of the contemporary Tatar prince, Mír ‘Alí Shir, who under the nom de plume of Neváyí wrote much that shows true talent and poetic feeling, found their way to the Ottoman capital, where they were seen and copied by Ahmed Pasha, one of the viziers of Muhammed II. The poems of this statesman, though possessing little merit of their own, being for the most part mere translations from Neváyí, form one of the landmarks in the history of Ottoman literature. They set the fashion of ghazel-writing; and their appearance was the signal for a more regular cultivation of poetry and a greater attention to literary style and to refinement of language. In Sinán Pasha, another minister of Muhammed the Conqueror, Ottoman prose found its first exponent of ability; he left a religious treatise entitled Tazaru’át (Supplications), which, notwithstanding a too lavish employment of the resources of Persian rhetoric, is as remarkable for its clear and lucid style as for the beauty of many of the thoughts it contains. The most noteworthy writers of the Conqueror’s reign are, after Ahmed and Sinán, the two lyric poets Nejátí and Zátí, whose verses show a considerable improvement upon those of Ahmed Pasha, the romantic poets Jemálí and Hamdí, and the poetesses Zeyneb and Mihrí. Like most of his house, Muhammed II. was fond of poetry and patronized men of letters. He himself tried versification, and some of his lines which have come down to us appear quite equal to the average work of his contemporaries. Twenty-one out of the thirty-four sovereigns who have occupied the throne of ‘Osmán have left verses, and among these Selím I. stands out, not merely as the greatest ruler, warrior, and statesman, but also as the most gifted and most original poet. His work is unhappily for the greater part in the Persian language; the excellence of what he has done in Turkish makes us regret that he did so little. The most prominent man of letters under Selím I. was the legist Kemál Pasha-záda, frequently called Ibn-Kemál, who distinguished himself in both prose and verse. He left a romantic poem on the loves of Yúsuf and Zuleykhá, and a work entitled Nigáristán, which is modelled both in style and matter on the Gulistán of Sa’di. His contemporary, Mesíhí, whose beautiful verses on spring are perhaps better known in Europe than any other Turkish poem, deserves a passing mention.

With the accession of Selím’s son, Suleymán I., the classical period begins. Hitherto all Ottoman writing, even the most highly finished, had been somewhat rude and uncouth; but now a marked improvement becomes visible alike in the manner and the matter, and authors of greater ability begin to make their appearance. Fuzúlí, one of the four great poets of the old school, seems to have been a native of Baghád or its neighbourhood, and probably became an Ottoman subject when Suleymán took possession of the old capital of the caliphs. His language, which is very peculiar, seems to be a sort of mixture of the Ottoman and Ázerbiján dialects of Turkish, and was most probably that of the Persian Turks of those days. Fuzúlí showed far more originality than any of his predecessors ; for, although his work is naturally Persian in form and in general character, it is far from being a mere echo from Shíráz or Ispahán. He struck out a new line for himself, and was indebted for his inspiration to no previous writer, whether Turk or Persian. An intense and passionate ardour breathes in his verses, and forms one of the most remarkable as well as one of the most attractive characteristics of his style; for, while few even among Turkish poets are more artificial than he, few seem to write with greater earnestness and sincerity. His influence upon his successors has scarcely been as far-reaching as might have been expected,—a circumstance which is perhaps in some measure owing to the unfamiliar dialect in which he wrote. Besides his Diván, he left a beautiful mesneví on the story of Leylí and Mejnún, as well as some prose works little inferior to his poetry. Báki of Constantinople, though far from rivalling his contemporary Fuzúlí, wrote much good poetry, including one piece of great excellence, an elegy on Suleymán I. The Ottomans have as a rule been particularly successful with elegies ; this one by Bákí has never been surpassed. Rúhi, Lámi’í, Nev’í, the janissary Yahya Beg, the muftí Ebú-Su’úd, and Selím II. all won deserved distinction as poets. During the reign of Ahmed I. arose the second of the great poets of the old Ottoman school, Nef’í of Erzerúm, who owes his pre-eminence to the brilliance of his kasídas. But Nef’í could revile as well as praise, and such was the bitterness of some of his satires that certain influential personages who came under his lash induced Murád IV. to permit his execution. Nef’í, who, like Fuzúlí, formed a style of his own, had many to imitate him, of whom Sabrí Shákír, a contemporary, was the most successful. Ná’ilí, Jevrí, and Fehím need not detain us; but Nábí, who flourished under Ibráhím and Muhammed IV., calls for a little more attention. This prolific author copied, and so imported into Ottoman literature, a didactic style of ghazel-writing which was then being introduced in Persia by the poet Sá’íb ; but so closely did the pupil follow in the footsteps of his master that it is not always easy to know that his lines are intended to be Turkish. A number of poets, of whom Seyyid Vehbí, Rághib Pasha, Rahmí of the Crimea, Kelím, and Sámí are the most notable, took Nábí for their model. Of these, Sámí is remarkable for the art with which he constructed his ghazels. Among the writers of tills time who did not copy Nábí are Sábit, Rásikh, and Tálib, each of whom endeavoured, with no great success, to open up a new path for himself. We now reach the reign of Ahmed III., during which flourished Nedím, the greatest of all the poets of the old school. Little appears to be known about his life further than that he resided at Constantinople and was alive in the year 1727 (A.H. 1140). Nedím stands quite alone: he copied no one, and no one has attempted to copy him. There is in his poetry a joyousness and sprightliness which at once distinguish it from the work of any other Turkish author. His ghazels, which are written with great elegance and finish, contain many graceful and original ideas, and the words he makes use of are always chosen with a view to harmony and cadence. His kasídas are almost equal to his ghazels ; for, while they rival those of Nef’í in brilliancy, they surpass them in beauty of diction, and are not so artificial and dependent on fantastic and far-fetched conceits. The classical period cames to an end with Nedím ; its brightest time is that which falls between the rise of Nef’í and the death of Nedím, or, more roughly, that extending from the accession of Ahmed I., 1603 (1012), to the deposition of Ahmed III., 1730 (1143).

"We will now glance at the prose writers of this period. Under the name of Humáyán Náma (Imperial Book) ‘Alí Chelebi made a highly esteemed translation of the well-known Persian classic Anvár-i Suheyli, dedicating it to Suleymán I. Sa’d-ud-Dín, the preceptor of Murád III., wrote a valuable history of the empire from the earliest times to the death of Selím I. This work, the Táj-ut-Teváríkh (Crown of Chronicles), is reckoned, on account of its ornate yet clear style, one of the masterpieces of the old school, and forms the first of an unbroken series of annals which are written, especially the later among them, with great minuteness and detail. Of Sa’d-ud-Dín’s successors in the office of imperial historiographer the most remarkable for literary power is Na’ímá. His work, which extends from 1591 (1000) to 1659 (1070), contrasts strongly with that of the earlier historian, being written with great directness and lucidity, combined with much vigour and picturesqueness. Evliyá, who died during the reign of Muhammed IV., is noted for the record which he has left of his travels in different countries. About this time Tash-köpri-záda began and ‘Ata-ulláh continued a celebrated biography of the legists and sheykhs who had flourished under the Ottoman monarchs. Hájí Khalífa (see vol. xi. p. 377), frequently termed Kátib Chelebi, was one of the most famous men of letters whom Turkey has produced. He died in 1658 (1068), having written a great number of learned works on history, biography, chronology, geography, and other subjects. The Persianizing tendency of this school reached its highest point in the productions of Veysi, who left a Life of the Prophet, and of Nergisí, a miscellaneous writer of prose and verse. Such is the intentional obscurity in many of the compositions of these two authors that every sentence becomes a puzzle, over which even a scholarly Ottoman must pause before he can be sure he has found its true meaning. The first printing press in Turkey was established by an Hungarian who had assumed the name of Ibráhím, and in 1728 (1141) appeared the first book printed in that country; it was Vankuli’s Turkish translation of Jevherí’s Arabic dictionary.

Coming now to the post-classical period, we find among poets worthy of mention Belígh, Nevres, Hishmet, and Sunbuli-záda Vehbí, each of whom wrote in a style peculiar to himself. Three poets of note—Pertev, Neshet, and Sheykh Ghálib—flourished under Selím III. The last-named is the fourth great poet of the old school. Husn u ‘Ashk (Beauty and Love), as his great poem is called, is an allegorical romance full of tenderness and imaginative power. Ghálib’s style is as original as that of Fuzúlí, Nef’í, or Nedím. The most distinguished of the prose writers of this period are perhaps Ráshid, the imperial historiographer, ‘Asím, who translated into Turkish two great lexicons, the Arabic Kámús and the Persian Burhán-i Kátí and Kání, the only humorous writer of merit belonging to the old school.

When we reach the reign of Mahmúd II., the great transition period of Ottoman history, during which the civilization of the West began to struggle in earnest with that of the East, we find the change which was coming over all things Turkish affecting literature along with the rest, and preparing the way for the appearance of the new school. The chief poets of the transition are Fázil Bey, Wásif, notable for his not altogether unhappy attempt to write verses in the spoken language of the capital, ‘Izzet Molla, Pertev Pasha, ‘Akif Pasha, and the poetesses Fitnet and Leylá. In the works of all of these, although we occasionally discern a hint of the new style, the old Persian manner is still supreme.

More intimate relations with western Europe and a pretty general study of the French language and literature, together with the steady progress of the reforming tendency fairly started under Mahmúd II., have resulted in the birth of the new or modern school, whose objects are truth and simplicity. In the political writings of Reshíd and ‘Akif Pashas we have the first clear note of change; but the man to whom more than to any other the new departure owes its success is Shinásí Efendi, who employed it for poetry as well as for prose. The European style, on its introduction, encountered the most violent opposition, but now it alone is used by living authors of repute. If any of these does write a pamphlet in the old manner, it is merely as a tour de force, or to prove to some faithful but clamorous partisan of the Persian style that it is not, as he supposes, lack of ability which causes the modern author to adopt the simpler and more natural fashion of the West. The whole tone, sentiment, and form of Ottoman literature have been revolutionized by the new school: varieties of poetry hitherto unknown have been adopted from Europe ; an altogether new branch of literature, the drama, has arisen ; while the sciences are now treated and seriously studied after the system of the West. Among writers of this school who have won distinction are Ziyá Pasha, Jevdet Pasha, the statesman and historian, Ekrem Bey, the author of a beautiful series of miscellaneous poems, Zemzema, Hámid Bey, who holds the first place among Ottoman dramatists, and Kemál Bey, the leader of the modern school and one of the most illustrious men of letters whom his country has produced. He has written with conspicuous success in almost every branch of literature,—history, romance, ethics, poetry, and the drama.

For the Turkish language, see p. 661 below.

There is no work in existence which gives a satisfactory account of Ottoman literature. Von Hammer-Purgstall’s Geschichte der Osmanischen Dichtkunst (Pesth, 1836) is not always trustworthy and leaves much to be desired in many ways. Other works on the poetry are La Muse Ottomane, by Servan de Sugny (Paris, 1853); On the History, System, and Varieties of Turkish Poetry, by Redhouse (London, 1878); Ottoman Poems, by Gibb (London, 1882). Of translations we have Bákí’s Divan, by Hammer (Vienna, 1825) ; the Travels of Evliyá by Hammer (London, 1834) ; Rose und Nachtigall (a poem of Fazli, a mediocre writer of the time of Suleymán I.), Turkish and German, by Hammer (Pesth); Les Conseils de Nabi, Efendi, by Pavet de Courteille (Paris, 1857); The History of the Forty Vezirs, by Gibb (London, 1886). An interesting and valuable sketch of Ottoman poetry is given by Kemál Bey in a series of articles in the Turkish literary journal Mejmú’ a-i Ebu-z-Ziyá. (E. J. W. G.)



TURKEY, an abbreviation for TURKEY-COCK or TURKEYHEN as the case may be, a well-known large domestic gallinaceous bird. How it came by this name has long been a matter of discussion, for it is certain that this valuable animal was introduced to Europe from the New World, and in its introduction had nothing to do with Turkey or with Turks, even in the old and extended sense in which that term was applied to all Mahometans. But it is almost as unquestionable that the name was originally applied to the bird which we know as the GUINEAFOWL (q.v.), and there is no doubt that some authors in the 16th and 17th centuries curiously confounded these two species. As both birds became more common and better known, the distinction was gradually perceived, and the name "Turkey" clave to that from the New World— possibly because of its repeated call-note—to be syllabled turk, turk, turk, whereby it may be almost said to have named itself (cf. Notes and Queries, ser. 6, iii. pp. 23, 369). But even Linnaeus could not clear himself of the confusion, and unhappily misapplied the name Meleagris, undeniably belonging to the Guinea-Fowl, as the generic term for what we now know as the Turkey, adding thereto as its specific designation the word gallopavo, taken from the Gallopava of Gesner, who, though not wholly free from error, was less mistaken than some of his contemporaries and even successors.1



FOOTNOTE (page 657)

1 The French Coq and Poule d’Inde (whence Dindon) involve no contradiction, looking to the general idea of what India then was. One of the earliest German names for the bird, Kalekuttisch Hün (whence the Scandinavian Kalkon), must have arisen through some mistake at present inexplicable; but this does not refer, as is generally supposed, to Calcutta, but to Calicut on the Malabar coast (cf. Notes and Queries, ser. 6, x. p. 185).



The Turkey, so far as we know, was first described by Oviedo in his Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias 1 (cap. xxxvi.), said to have been published in 1527. He, not unnaturally, includes both Curassows and Turkeys in one category, calling both "Pavos" (Peafowls); but he carefully distinguishes between them, pointing out among other things that the latter make a wheel (haçen la rueda) of their tail, though this was not so grand or so beautiful as that of the Spanish "Pavo," and he gives a faithful though short description of the Turkey, The chief point of interest in his account is that he speaks of the species having been already taken from New Spain (Mexico) to the islands and to Castilla del Oro (Darien), where it bred in a domestic state among the Christians. Much labour has been given by various naturalists to ascertain the date of its introduction to Europe, to which we can at present only make an approximate attempt; 2 but after all that has been written it is plain that evidence concurs to show that the bird was established in Europe by 1530—a very short time to have elapsed since it became known to the Spaniards, which could hardly have been before 1518, when Mexico was discovered. The possibility that it had been brought to England by Cabot or some of his successors earlier in the century is not to be overlooked, and reasons will presently be assigned for supposing that one of the breeds of English Turkeys may have had a northern origin ; 3 but the often quoted distich first given in Baker’s Chronicle, (p. 298), asserting that Turkeys came into England in the same year—and that year by reputation 1524—as carps, pickerels, and other commodities, is wholly untrustworthy, for we know that both these fishes lived in the country long before, if indeed they were not indigenous to it. The earliest documentary evidence of its existence in England is a "constitution" set forth by Cranmer in 1541, which Hearne first printed (Leland’s Collectanea, ed. 2, vi. p. 38). This names "Turkey-cocke" as one of "the greater fowles" of which an ecclesiastic was to have "but one in a dishe," and its association with the Crane and Swan precludes the likelihood of any confusion with the Guinea-Fowl. Moreover the comparatively low price of the two Turkeys and four Turkey-chicks served at a feast of the serjeants-at-law in 1555 (Dugdale, Origines, p. 135) points to their having become by that time abundant, and indeed by 1573 Tusser bears witness to the part they had already begun to play in "Christmas husbandlie fare." In 1555 both sexes were characteristically figured by Belon (Oyseaux, p. 249), as was the cock by Gesner in the same year, and these are the earliest representations of the bird known to exist.

There is no need to describe here a bird so familiar and in these days so widely distributed. As a denizen of our poultry-yards (see POULTRY, vol. xix. p. 646) there are at least two distinct breeds, though crosses between them are much commoner than purely-bred examples of either. That known as the Norfolk breed is the taller of the two, and is said to be the more hardy. Its plumage is almost entirely black, with very little lustre, but the feathers of the tail and some of those of the back have a brownish tip. The chicks also are black, with occasionally white patches on the head. The other breed, called the Cambridgeshire, is much more variegated in colour, and some parts of the plumage have a bright metallic gloss, while the chicks are generally mottled with brownish grey. White, pied, and buff Turkeys are also often seen, and if care be taken they are commonly found to "breed true." Occasionally Turkeys, the cocks especially, occur with a top-knot of feathers, and one of them was figured by Albin in 1738. It has been suggested with some appearance of probability that the Norfolk breed may be descended from the northern form, Meleagris gallopavo or americana, while the Cambridgeshire breed may spring from the southern form, the M. mexicana of Gould (Proc. Zool. Society, 1856, p. 61), which .indeed it very much resembles, especially in having its tail-coverts and quills tipped with white or light ochreous,—points that recent North-American ornithologists rely upon as distinctive of this form. If this supposition be true, there would be reason to believe in the double introduction of the bird into England at least, as already hinted, but positive information is almost wholly wanting.4 The northern form of wild Turkey, whose habits have been described in much detail by all the chief writers on North-American birds, is now extinct in the settled parts of Canada and the eastern States of the Union, where it was once so numerous ; and in Mexico the southern form, which would seem to have been never abundant since the conquest, has been for many years rare. Further to the south, on the borders of Guatemala and British Honduras, there exists a perfectly distinct species, M. ocellata, whose plumage almost vies with that of a Peacock in splendour, while the bare skin which covers the head is of a deep blue studded with orange caruncles (Proc. Zool. Society, 1861, pi. xl.).

The genus Meleagris is considered to enter into the Family Phasianidae, in which it forms a Subfamily Meleagrinae, peculiar to North and Central America. The fossil remains of three species have been described by Prof. Marsh—one from the Miocene of Colorado, and two, one much taller and the other smaller than the existing species, from the Post-Pliocene of New Jersey. Both the last had proportionally long and slender legs. (A. N.)



TURKS. The use of the name "Turks" has never been limited in a clear and definite way from the time of the Byzantine authors to the present day. To the former, as also to the Arabs, it has a collective sense like Scythians or Huns; 5 at the present day we are wont to restrict the name to the Osmanli Turks, though they themselves refuse to be called Turks, having, as they hold, ceased to be such in becoming imbued with Arabo-Persian culture. On the other hand, when we speak of Uigurs and Tatars, we mean tribes who style themselves Turks and really are such. It is only by the aid of historical and linguistical evidence that we can determine the true limits of the Turkish name.

The national Turkish traditions, preserved by the Persian historians Rash_d ed-D_n and Jowaini from Uigurian books which are now lost, point to the region watered by the river Selenga and its affluents, the Orkhon and the Tugila, as the primitive seat of the Turkish people. Rash_d ed-D_n combines this tradition with that of the Mohammedan descendants of Oghuz, who, in accordance with Moslem traditions, derive the whole Turkish stock from Japhet, the son of Noah, or more accurately from Turk, the son of the former (Yafiz-oglan), and pretend that he pitched his tents in the vicinity of Lake Issyk-kul (in Semiryetchensk). But, though Turkish tribes did wander so far to the west, and even farther, in remote antiquity, it seems pretty certain that the Uigurian tradition has preserved the memory of the true origin of the race, that Turks and Mongols were originally different stems of a single people, and that these two members of the URAL-ALTAIC (q.v.) family were more closely related to each other than to any other member of the same family (Finno-Ugrians, Samoyedes, Tungus-Manchus). The evidence for this rests, not on the ethnological system of Rash_d ed-D_n, though it affords a secondary argument, but on the indubitable affinity of the Mongolian and Turkish languages and the similarity of the ethnological characters of the two races. Here, of course, we do not argue from the Osmanlis, who have lost all their original race-characters and have become "Caucasians" of the best type, but rather, for instance, from the Kirghiz, who are considered as the typical Turks of the present day, and are described by Ujfaivy as being midway between the Mongol and the Caucasian. We must now turn our attention to the wanderings of the Turks and their subsequent fate,—a rather difficult task,



FOOTNOTES (page 658)

(1) Purchas (Pilgrimes, iii. p. 995) in 1625 quoted both from this and from the same author’s Hystoria General, said to have been published a few years later. Oviedo’s earlier work is only known to the present writer by the reprint of 1852.

(2) The bibliography of the Turkey is so large that there is here no room to name the various works that might be cited. Recent research has failed to add anything of importance to what has been said on this point by Buffon (Oiseaux, ii. pp. 132-162), Pennant (Arctic Zoology, pp. 291-300),—an admirable summary,—and Broderip (Zoological Recreations, pp. 120-137)—not that all their statements can be wholly accepted. Barrington’s essay (Miscellanies, pp. 127-151), to prove that the bird was known before the discovery of America and was transported thither, is an ingenious piece of special pleading which his friend Pennant did him the real kindness of ignoring.

(3) In 1672 Josselin (New England’s Rarities, p. 9) speaks of the settlers bringing up "great store of the wild kind" of Turkeys, "which remain about their houses as tame as ours in England." The bird was evidently plentiful down to the very seaboard of Massachusetts, and it is not likely to have been domesticated by the Indian tribes there, as, according to Hernandez, it seems to have been by the Mexicans. It was probably easy to take alive, and, as we know, capable of enduring the voyage to England.

(4) The results of a comparison of the skulls of wild and domesticated Turkeys are given by Dr Shufeldt in Journ. of Comp. Medicine and Surgery, July 1887.

(5) Constantine Porphyrogenitus calls the Magyars Turks, even in contradistinction to the truly Turkish Petchenegs.



owing to the want of accurate information. The only truly historical records are to be found in the Chinese chronicles and encyclopaedias,1 where, however, the Turkish proper names appear in such distorted forms, as to be unrecognizable ; yet, till the 6th century of our era, no other accounts are available.

It is generally admitted that the first Turkish people mentioned by the Chinese are the Hiong-nu, who, wandering to the west, occupied the country south of the Altai Mountains and expelled (about 177 B.C.) the former occupants of those regions, the Yue-chi,2 Kan-goi, and Usun (U-ssun),—tribes of unknown nationality, but possibly also Turks.3 The Hiong-nu were identified by Deguignes with the Huns, this denomination being used in a political or collective sense, and including, besides the Huns proper, the Ephthalites or White Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Khazars, and Petchenegs, who are styled by several scholars Hunnic or Scythian peoples,—a term of no scientific value whatever, as the main body of these peoples consisted really of Mongol-Turks or Finno-Ugrians. As, however, separate articles have been devoted to most of these ethnical names, we abstain from further details, as also from discussion of the question of the Turkish origin of the Magyars and the Khazars, though that of the former seems to us as improbable as that of the latter is certain.4 Be this as it may, the Hiong-nu are, so to speak, proto-Turks, and the history of the Turks proper begins with the Tu-kiu, the Chinese equivalent of the word Turk. Originally a division of the Hiong-nu, almost extirpated by wars, but miraculously saved from complete destruction, the Tu-kiu settled south of the Kin-Shan (Altai ?) Mountains, and were miners and iron-smelters in the service of the Juen-Juen 5 ("les Tartares Geou-gen" of Deguignes). About 552 A.D., however, they conquered their former masters and founded a mighty empire under princes who took the title of Ili khan. In these Tu-kiu Deguignes recognized the Turks who entered into friendly relations with Byzantium, and to whom Justin II. sent two ambassadors,—Zemarchus (568) and Valentinus (575). The narratives of these ambassadors are preserved in the fragments of Menander Protector; and (comparing the variations of the corrupt text with the record of Tabar_) from him we learn that at the first date the reigning prince was Sinjibulus (Arabic Sinjibu).6 From the Greek and the Arabo-Persian accounts it seems that Sinjibu put an end to the empire of the Ephthalites or Haitals in those regions. He shared the conquered country with Khosrau I., the Oxus becoming the frontier between Ir_n and Tur_n. The memory of the empire of Sinjibu and of its political strength has been preserved by the Arabic authors Ibn Khord_dbeh and Mas’udi, who inform us that the Turkish tribe of the Karluks, settled in the provinces of Fergh_na and Sh_sh (Tashkend), were of old the mightiest of all the Turks, and that their sovereign, the khak_n of khak_ns, was obeyed by all the neighbouring princes. To them they reckon the mythical Afr_si_b and the historical Sh_wa.6 It is uncertain at what epoch the empire of the Karluks came to an end; but the Chinese assert that about 650 they reduced the inhabitants of the Ili and Jaxartes territory, though they were unable to protect them afterwards against the inroads of the Arabs under Kotaiba b. Moslim (706-714). The latter defeated the armies sent to their aid under Kurbogha Noyon, a sister’s son of the Chinese emperor.8 It is also doubtful if the so-called Afr_si_b kings or Ilek-khans, who reigned in the 10th century at K_shgar and Bal_s_ghun and conquered (999) the dominions of the Samanids in Transoxiana, belonged to the Karluks, as is supposed by Grigorieff and Lerch, or to the Uigurs, as others think.

The name Uigurs is very common during the Mongolian period, and Rash_d ed-D_n and others use it (by an anachronism) in speaking of remote antiquity, though it is wholly unknown to the Arabic geographers, and, asVambéry has shown, to the Uigurs themselves,—nay, even impossible in the old Turkish language, in which the form would be Utkur. The name Ugur, Ogur, or Ogor of Byzantine authors is really different; but Grigorieff has recognized the name in the corrupt Arabic form of Tagazgaz, which must be read Toguz-Ugur,9 the "Nine Ugurs," to distinguish them from another division of the same tribe, the On-Ugur or "Ten Ugurs." In the time of Ibn Khord_dbeh and Mas’udi these Turks had gained the supremacy amongst their brethren, and had their residence at Kush_n, which has been identified with the Kiao-chang of the Chinese. According to their accounts, the Kiao-chang form the southern division of the Hui-khe (Hoei-ke of Deguignes), and were settled before the Christian era south and east of the Tian-Shan up to the Pamir plateau and the Kuen-Lun. The Arabic authors make them adherents of Manichaeism; but, as the original Turkish Shamanism has developed into a dualistic system, this statement may rest on a partial misapprehension. It seems, however, certain that Buddhism reached these Turks on its way towards China, for we know that this religion spread in the 2d century B.C. throughout the adjacent kingdom of Bactria, and was still flourishing when Hwen-T’sang visited (7th century) those regions. Thus we can understand why the old Ural-Altaic religion bears a Sanskrit name. The northern division of the Hui-khe, which remained unknown to the Arabs, wandered from the Selenga region to the sources of the Yenisei, vanquished the Tu-kiu (745), and founded an empire from the Selenga to Lake Balkash, till they were overthrown (841) by the Ha-kas (identified with the Kirghiz). These northern Uigurs are called by the Chinese Kao-che, Chi-le, Di-li, and Te-le. The history of the southern branch is unknown, for the chronological data of Rash_d ed-D_n and Abu-‘l-Gh_zi are contradictory and useless, though their statements that the prince bore the title of Idi-kut and submitted to the Mongols have full historical weight. That the Uigurs rose during the



FOOTNOTES (page 659)

(1) Translated in the well-known works of Deguignes, Visdelou, &c.; for a French translation by Stanisl. Julien of the accounts of the Pien-i-tien, referring to the Tu-kiu, see Journ,. Asiat.,1864, p. 325 sq.

(2) Comp. PERSIA, vol. xviii. pp. 592-4, 600, 603.

(3) Radloff, for instance, thinks that the name U-ssun, and perhaps remnants of the people denoted by it, survive in the present Uisuns, a division of the Great Horde of the Kirghiz. At the time of Alexander the Great’s expeditions against the Scythians beyond the Jaxartes, we find in that region certain traces of the Turkish language in names of places and persons (cp. vol. xviii. p. 582, note 4). It is therefore certain that long before the age of the Hiong-nu Turkish tribes had spread to the borders of the Jaxartes, and even along the northern coast of the Caspian to the rivers Ural and Volga. But the ethnical denominations of antiquity—Scythians, Parthians, Massagetae, Sacae, &c.—do not convey to our mind clear ethnical distinctions, so that the tree nationality of these peoples has been much debated. Neither are the pre-Semitic culture of Babylonia and the supposed "Turanian" origin of the Accads facts of such character that from them we can infer the presence of Turks in these regions in remote antiquity.

(4) On the Petchenegs see below.

(5) From their Chinese name it may be inferred that the Juen-Juen were a Mongolian people, in which case the Avars, who are supposed to have been a division of them, were also Mongols.

(6) See Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber, p. 158. The first part of this name is without doubt the Turkish sünjü, süngü, which means "lance," a Turkish proper name of the same kind as Kilij=: "sword," which in its Persian form, Nizek, was afterwards borne by a prince of Transoxiana, often mentioned in the accounts of the Arabic conquest.

(7) Cp. Mas’udi, ed. Paris, i. 288; Nöldeke, ut sup., p. 269, n. 1.

(8) The title Noyon, if the present writer’s conjecture on the text of Tabar_, ii. 1195, is right, proves that Kurbogha was a Mongolian prince.

(9) Before this Reinaud had conjectured that the Tagazgaz were the same as the Uigurs, but failed to correct the Arabic corruption.



Mongolian epoch to a certain supremacy by higher culture is attested by Rash_d ed-D_n and Jowaini, who often mention Uigurian books.

The Petchenegs (Gr. GREEK, GREEK; Magyar Besenyö, Lat. Bisseni) were of old, as Constantine Porphyrogenitus tells us, settled about the lower Ural and Volga, but were driven thence (894-899) by the Ghuzz (Ouzoi). A part of them returned afterwards to their ancient abode, but the great majority wandered westward and settled on both sides of the Dnieper, driving the Hungarians before them to the Carpathians. Here they annoyed the neighbouring peoples by their raids, and engaged readily in the Russian expeditions against the Greek empire, till the policy of the Byzantine court incorporated large numbers of them with its own armies, sometimes with fatal result, as was experienced by Romanus Diogenes, when these auxiliaries passed to the camp of his antagonist Alp Arsl_n. At the period of the first crusade the Christian armies met with them on their march through Servia and Bulgaria; but the Petchenegs are not mentioned after the 13th century. The learning of Orientalists has discovered faint traces of the language once spoken by them in the Turkish dialect of the Bosnians.1

Comans or Cumani (Russ. Polowtze, Magyar Palocz and Kun) is a term chiefly used by Europeans for the Turkish tribes that occupied Moldavia and the adjacent regions of south Russia. The origin of the name is uncertain; but it seems to be Turkish, though it rarely occurs in Oriental records. The most probable conjecture regarding the people denoted by it is that they were a mixture of Ghuzz and Petchenegs. Oriental authors know much more of their neighbours to the east, the Kipchaks, a very common name of Turkish clans down to the present day. Sometimes both names are combined : Rubruquis speaks of the Coman Kipchaks. Anna Comnena informs us that the Comans spoke the same dialect as the Petchenegs, a dialect well known to European scholars from the so-called Codex Cumanicus.2 On the arrival of the Mongols in these regions, the Kipchaks suffered great hardships, and large numbers of them were sold as slaves throughout the Mohammedan world. From them sprang the Bahrite Mameluke sultans of Egypt (1250-1380). The Comans sought refuge amongst the Hungarians and became Christians; but their arrival, causing internal dissensions in Hungary, greatly favoured the advance of the Mongolian arms. The remnants of the Comans, Kipchaks, and other Turkish tribes continued to dwell in southern Russia under Mongolian rule (see MONGOLS), whilst others became merged with the Hungarians.

The Ghuzz dwelt originally in the far East amongst the Toguz-Ugur, but migrated in the reign of the caliph Al-Mahdí (775-785) to Transoxiana, where they adhered to the cause of the famous Al-Mokanna’, not from religious predilection, but to satisfy their love of war and plunder. In the same manner they afterwards served every warlike prince in their neighbourhood, and entered like other Turks into the service of the caliphs. The main body of the life-guard of the ‘Abb_sids consisted of Turks, and some individuals rose very soon to high commands. Entrusted with the administration of distant provinces, they founded independent princely houses, such as those of the Tulunids and Ikhshids in EGYPT (vol. vii. p. 750) and the Ghaznavids (see GHAZNI). In the meantime fresh bands of the Ghuzz poured from the east and the north into Turkestan, the region becoming overstocked with a nomadic population. Some of them sought and found an outlet to the west by occupying the territory of the Petchenegs and joining the Turkish population of southern Russia; but the great majority, seeing the ruined state of the empire of the caliphs, crossed the Oxus and overran the northern and eastern provinces of Persia. How these loose desultory bands were guided to subsequent victories, and moulded with the peoples amongst whom they settled into regular political bodies, has been already narrated under SELJUKS (q.v.).

Meanwhile they underwent a great change in their outward appearance, habits, &c., as Rash_d ed-D_n relates, ma owing to the influence of the air and the water, and, we may add, to frequent intermarriage with the inhabitants of the countries invaded by them. After some generations the change was great enough to strike their Iranian neighbours, who called them Turkmans (Turcomans),3 a term implying resemblance to Turks. It is therefore quite natural that the modern Osmanlis should have become Caucasians; for, if Rash_d ed-D_n in the 13th century noticed the difference between a Turkman and a genuine Turk, the six centuries which have elapsed since amply suffice to have obliterated all original Ural-Altaic characteristics. The old name Ghuzz, originally, as it seems, the Turkish Oghuz (an eponymous hero of whom Turkish chronicles tell many fables) was wholly superseded by the new name Turkman and by other political names.

During the Seljukian period there arose in Transoxiana the empire of the Kh_rizm shahs, founded by Mohammed b. Anushteg_n, upon whom the government of Kh_rizm (Khiva),—which down to 995 had belonged to princes of Iranian descent—was conferred (1097) by the Seljuk prince Barkiy_rok. His son Atsiz became independent (1138), but his empire seemed destined to early ruin by the arrival of the Kara-Chitai, who defeated the Seljuk prince Sinjar (1141) and became for a time supreme masters of Turkestan. Nevertheless the Kharizmian dynasty held its place as a tributary sovereignty, and developed great power under the princes Takash and Mohammed his son. The former defeated and killed (1194) the last Seljuk prince of ‘Ir_k, and the latter extended his dominion from the Caspian to the Indus and from the Jaxartes to the coast of ‘Om_n. His cunning antagonist, the ‘Abb_sid caliph An-N_sir, invoked the aid of Jenghiz Kh_n, who scarcely required this invitation to attack Mohammed. The sack of Bokh_ra was followed in the same year (1220) by that of the other principal cities of Transoxiana and by the persecution of the unhappy prince, who died in a forgotten island of the Caspian. His son Jel_l-ed-D_n was driven towards India, but by a change of fortune ascended once more the throne of his fathers, till the new Mongol kh_n, Ogdai, sent fresh armies against him and forced him to seek refuge in the Kurdish Mountains, where he was murdered (1231). The fate of the Turks of Transoxiana was shared by their brethren in Asia and Europe, and new Mongol-Turkish empires arose, of which an outline has been given under MONGOLS. As the Mongol rule grew weaker, there arose in Persia and on the frontiers of Asia Minor the Turkman dynasties of the Ak Koyun-lu, the Kara Koyun-lu, the Zu’l-kadria, and the Ramaz_n Oglu, whose history is closely connected either with that of the rise of the Ottoman power (see below) or with the history of PERSIA (see vol. xviii. p. 632 sq.).

At the present day the Turkish people occupy a very extensive area, the centre of which lies in Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand, and which stretches from the lower Lena in Siberia to the Danube and from the Crimea to Kerm_n and India. Politically they be-



FOOTNOTES (page 660)

(1) Comp, Blau, Bosnisch-Türkische Sprachdenkmäler (Leipsic, 1868), p. 315.

(2) Edited by Geza Kuun, Buda-Pesth, 1880-83.

(3) The term "Turkman" occurs in Arabic chronicles of the Seljukian period, and even in Mokaddasí, p. 274. Rash_d ed-D_n therefore exaggerates in stating that it only came into use in his lifetime. But Vambéry’s statement that it was applied of old to the descendants of Oghuz is contradicted by the genuine Persian text of Rash_d ed-D_n and the unanimous testimony of history. His objections against the popular etymology mentioned above are, however, not quite unfounded.



long to Russia, Turkey, Persia, China, and Afghanistan. In religion the great majority are Mohammedans ; a few tribes in Russia are baptized Christians ; and some others adhere to the original Shamanism, which has also influenced the religious conceptions of the Christian and Mohammedan Turks. The principal Turkish peoples are the following. (I.) By a popular distinction the Turks of Siberia and Russia, with some colonies in Turkey, are styled Tatars (see TARTARS), though the Yakuts of northern Siberia are not usually included in this term. The Yakuts, who are perhaps a mixture of Turkish and Tungus tribes, deviating from the ordinary course of Turkish wanderings, are settled about the lower Lena, and number probably 200,000 (Rittig, 80,000 ; Lansdell, 210,000).1 They are nominally Christians. (II.) On the Kirghiz (Kara-Kirghiz and Kaz_ks) and Kara-Kalpaks see KIRGHIZ ; but note that the Kipchaks, named there as a separate tribe, really form a subdivision of the Kaz_k-Kirghiz, and are perhaps akin to the Kitai-Kipchaks, who are reckoned to the Uzbegs. (III.) Uzbeg is a political, not an ethnological denomination, originating from Uzbeg Kh_n of the Golden Horde (1312-1340). It was used to distinguish the followers of Shaib_ni Kh_n (16th century) from his antagonists, and became finally the name of the ruling Turks in the khanates as opposed to the Sarts, Tajiks, and such Turks as entered those regions at a later date and are known to be Kirghiz, Kara-Kalpaks, or Taranjis. The Uzbegs are therefore a mixed race of different Turkish tribes. According to Kostenko,2 they number 201,972 in the Russian provinces of Sir-Daria, Fergh_na, Zerafshan, and Amu-Daria, and Vambéry conjectures that there are 1,000,000 more in Bokhara, 700,000 in Khiva, and 200,000 under Afghan supremacy, giving a total number of about 2,000,000. They are agriculturists or inhabit the cities; a few are semi-nomads. (IV.) The eastern Turks on the southern slopes of the Tian-Shan Mountains at Kashgar, Ustturfan, Ak-su, Sairam, Kutcha, Yarkand, Khotan, &c., are the remnants of the ancient Uigurs; and of the same origin are the Taranjis (=agriculturists), settled in the Ili valley and elsewhere. The number of the latter is given as about 50,000; that of the former may be estimated from the statements of Forsyth 3 and Kuropatkin 4 at about 1,000,000 for the whole district, the great majority being Turks and the rest Mohammedan Chinese (Sungans). (V.) The Turcomans (properly Turkmans) inhabit the steppe east of the Caspian and south of the Oxus from Astrabad to the Paropamisus. The term is sometimes taken to include their brethren in Persia and Asia Minor, who will be treated separately. The following are the principal tribes:—(1) theTchaudors and Imrailis, in the north-western part of the Ust-Urt to the Gulf of Karaboghaz; (2) the Yomuts, extending from Khiva across the Ust-Urt to the Caspian, and along the sea-board to Persia ; (3) the Göklen, on Persian territory, between the upper Görgen and Atrek ; (4) the Tekkes, the most numerous tribe at the present day, divided into the Akhal Tekkes and the Merv Tekkes, so named after the centres where their greatest numbers are found ; (5) the Sakars, on the left bank of the Oxus, to the east of Tcharjui, considered by Vambéry as a division of the Tekkes ; (6) the Sariks, at Penjdeh and Yul-utan on the north-western slopes of the Paropamisus; (7) the Salors, one of the oldest Turkman tribes, who suffered greatly from the Tekkes, till they finally migrated (1857) to Zurabad in Persia, and left their former districts to the Tekkes and Sariks; (8) the Ersaris, on the Oxus about Khoja Salih; and (9) the Ali-elis, about Andkhui. Their total number, inclusive of some Turkmans who do not belong to any of these tribes, and are scattered throughout the provinces of Syr-Daria, Amu-Daria, Zerafshan, and Astrakhan (about 16,000), is estimated by Vambéry at about 1,000,000, and by Grodekoff at 1,170,000. The Turkmans are, with few exceptions, nomads, and were formerly the terror of their neighbours, who feared them as the "man-stealing Turks" ; but since Merv has been annexed to Russia (1884) they have been compelled to abandon their predatory habits.5 (VI.) The Turkish nomads scattered throughout Persia are partly the descendants of the Ghuzz tribes that invaded the country at the Seljukian period ; others have migrated thither in the following centuries. They are known by the name of Il_t or Iliy_t (meaning tribes or peoples) and consist of several tribes, having each its own chieftain, the Ilkh_n_, appointed by the shah. An accurate list of the names of these tribes does not exist; but the most powerful and most numerous are the following. (1) The Kajars, wlio dwelt in Transcaucasia down to the time of Abbas the Great, by whom one division of them was compelled to settle at the south-east corner of the Caspian near Astrab_d. To this division belongs the present dynasty of Persia. (2) The Afshars or Aushars, a very numerous tribe, in the province of Adarbaij_n (Azerbijan). A division is also settled in the mountainous regions of the Antitaurus ; its members are nominally subjects of the Ottoman empire but really independent. (3) The Shekakis and Shah-sewen. The latter is not a tribal, but a political name, meaning those who love the shah, i.e., partisans of the Safawí dynasty (1499-1736) and the Sh_’ite faith. (4) The Kara Koyun-lu, near the town of Khoi, the remnants of the once powerful tribe named above. Besides these, many other names are recorded of tribes wandering in the Transcaucasian regions and in the provinces of Adarbaij_n and Mazénderan, but many of them are very uncertain. All these Turks are comprehended under the general denomination of Adarbaij_ni Turks; they are nomads or semi-nomads and speak a peculiar Turkish dialect, the Turk Azeri or Adarbaij_ni Turkish. Some specimens of it have been published by Chodzko, Bergé, Melgunoff, and Barbier de Meynard. In the southern provinces of Persia are settled the (5) Kashkais, (6) Abul-werdis, (7) Kara-Gözlüs, (8) Bahar-lu, and (9) Inan-lu. To the first named are reckoned by some the Khalaches, 6 an old Turkish tribe which was already settled near Herat before the Seljukian period and has given rise to some Indian dynasties. Vambéry thinks that the total number of Iranian Turks may amount to about two millions, or, if we add the Caucasian Turks under Russian supremacy, three millions.7 (VII). The Osmanlis, under which term are comprehended all the Turkish subjects of the sultan of Turkey, consist chiefly of the following elements. (1) Turkmanian tribes and Turks of every description, who poured into Asia Minor after the defeat of Romanus Diogenes (1071); to these we may also reckon the Ottomans proper, though they did not enter the country till after the downfall of the Kharizmian empire. The Mongolian invasion drove the obscure ancestors of this the most illustrious Turkish dynasty to Asia Minor, whence they gradually spread to the province of Khodawendiky_r (Bithynia). (2) Tatars scattered amongst the rest of the population, but forming a large colony in the Dobrudja. In part they occupied their present settlements before the conquest of Constantinople ; but others have immigrated into Asia Minor during the last two centuries from the Crimea and Caucasus, since the Russian conquests of those regions. They have fared very badly under Turkish rule, as is attested by Captain Wilson. That tribes of Turkish origin were settled in Europe long before the rise of the Ottoman power is known from the Byzantine authors, who mention a colony of them (about 30,000) as early as the 10th century in the Vardar valley in Macedonia.8 (3) The so-called Kizil-bashis or "Red Heads," a nickname of the Shi’itic Turkish immigrants from Persia, who are found chiefly in the plains from Kara-hissar along Tokat and Amasia to Angora. During the wars with Persia the Turkish sultans forced them to settle here. They are agriculturists and highly praised by several travellers for their honesty and laborious habits. (4) Turkmenian tribes—Yuruks and Götchebes (words meaning "nomads" and characteristic of their most distinctive quality),—who occupy the mountains in summer and descend into the plains in winter, though some are settled in the plains of Cilicia near Tarsus and Adana, the rest being semi-nomads. Reclus estimates the total number of Turks in Europe at 1,500,000 and 35,000 Tatars. For Asia Minor statistics are wanting; but P. de Tchihatchef, the chief authority for matters relating to this peninsula, thinks that 6,000,000 is a fair estimate for the total population, including Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, &c., but excluding the islands. It appears therefore necessary to reduce the already moderate number of Osmanlis given by Vambéry (10,000,000) to about 6,000,000.



LANGUAGE.



The Turkish, or, as some prefer to say, the Turco-Tatar language, is a member of the Ural-Altaic family (see UKAL-ALTAIC) and comprehends many dialects, which differ considerably in their vocabulary and in a less degree also in their grammar. The study of these dialects has made great advances during the 19th century. Abel Rémusat in 1820 knew only of four, viz., the Uigurian, Jagatai, Tatar, and Osmanli. Béresine in 1848 distinguished nineteen, grouped round three types, viz., (1) Jagatai dialects (Uigur, Coman, Jagatai, Uzbegian, Turkmani, Kazani literary language); (2) Tatar dialects (Kirghizian, Bashkiri, Nogai, Kumi, Karatchai, Kara-Kalpaki, Meshtcheryaki, and Siberian); (3) Turki dialects (Derbendi, Adarbaij_m, Krimmi, Anadoli, and Rumili). Böhtlingk (1851) added the Yakuti, and Shaw (1877) the Eastern Turki. Radloff (1882) subdivided the one Siberian dialect of Béresine into more than a dozen different dialects. On phonetic principles the last-named proposes the following classification, which seems, however, not quite satisfactory: (1) Oriental dialects (Altai, Baraba, Lebed, Tuba, Abakan, Küärik, Soyon, Karagass dialects, and Uigur); (2) Occidental (Kirghizi, Irtish, Bashkir, and Volga dialects, with numerous subdivisions); (5) Central-Asiatic (Taranji, Jagatai, &c.) ; and (4) southern (Turkmani, Adarbaijäni, Caucasian, Anadoli, Krimmi, and Osmanli). It would be premature to criticise this system till the author publishes the second part of his grammar, which will treat of the real etymological phenomena of the north Turkish dialects.



FOOTNOTES (page 661)

(l) Cp. E. Petri, "Neuerea über die Jakuten," in Peterm. Mitth., 1887, vol. xxxiii. p. 102 sq.

(2) Turkestanskii Krai, St Petersburg, 1880, p. 326.

(3) Report of a Mission to Yarkand.

(4) Kashgaria., translated by W. E. Gowan, Calcutta, 1882.

(5) Cp. N. Petrusevitch, The Turcomans, translated by R. Michell; O’Donovan, The Merv Oasis, London, 1882; and the journals of travellers in these regions, Vambéry, Schuyler, Lessar, &c.

(6) Cp. the Tabak_t i-N_siri, by Major Raverty, p. 553 sq., where the name is incorrectly written Khalj.

(7) Cp. Lady Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), and various articles by Von Seidlitz in the Russische Revue, &c.

(8) Cp. Lejean, "Ethnographic der Europäischen Türkei," in Peterm. Ergänz." Heft 4 (1861), p. 33.



On the phonetical characteristics of each of these dialects ample information is given in his Phonetik der nördlichen Türk. Sprachen.

These great dialectical varieties are easily accounted for by the want of a common Turkish literary language understood everywhere. The most developed and refined Turkish tongue, that of the Osmanlis, which is very rich in literary monuments, has admitted too many Arabic and Persian words, grammatical forms, and even whole sentences, and has been too much spoiled by the precepts of Persian rhetoric, to produce a popular literature. With the exception of some tales and novels, this literature has remained an exotic production, unintelligible even to the people who are supposed to speak the same language (see TURKEY, p. 656 above). The Jagatai and Uzbegian dialects would have answered the purpose better, and present the best type of a (hypothetical) general Turkish language, of which the most prominent features may be here given.

The Arabic alphabet is in general use, though some tribes in Russia make use of Russian and others in Asia Minor of Armenian and Greek characters. But the oldest Turkish alphabet, the Uigurian, is a direct transformation of the Syriac, and has fourteen characters. When and by whom it was invented is uncertain; the Arabic author of the Fihrist does not mention it, and the Uigurian MSS. which we possess date for the most part from the 15th century. It is commonly supposed to be the work of Nestorian missionaries, who may have preached the Gospel amongst the Turks as early as the 6th or 7th century.1 In the age of Sinjibu the Turks seem to have used the Sogdian characters in their political intercourse with Byzantium ; but as a rule they remained illiterate till their conversion to Islam. As the Semitic languages are characterized by the three-radical system and the constancy of the consonants, all Ural-Altaic languages are dominated by the law of vowel harmony and agglutination. We have therefore in Turkish a double range of vowels, commonly eight in number, of which a, i, o, u denote the hard or guttural and ä, ï, ö, ü the soft or palatal vowels, the vowels in every separate word being of the same range. The i only is in most dialects indifferent. The law of agglutination is derived from the same principle, but has regard, not only to the vowels, but also to the consonants and the syllables ; it is an abuse of the term if it is taken to mean that in Turkish no real etymology exists, but only an agglutination of themes and roots.

As regards the etymology we observe the absence of gender, of a separate form for the dual, and of the nominative in the nouns. There are commonly five oblique cases—genitive, dative, accusative, commorative, and ablative—though Böhtlingk has shown that in the Yakut dialect, which distinguishes ten cases, the genitive is wanting. The adjective, unless used as substantive, is uninflected both as attribute and as predicate ; the comparative is formed by the suffix -rak (-rek), and takes the compared noun in the ablative ; the superlative has no specific form, though a peculiar intensive is formed by prefixing to the adjective (though in writing always as two words) a syllable beginning with the same consonant, and ending in a labial p or m: for instance, kap kara, "intensely black" ; kip kizil," "intensely red." The decimal system has prevailed over an original septimal system. The article does not exist. The relative pronoun has been borrowed from the Persian in many dialects; it is absent in the original Turkish. The theme of the verb is seen in the imperative, from which are derived various participles and gerunds, used either separately or combined with pronominal suffixes. These combinations supply the forms of the simple tenses and moods, though different dialects use different forms of participle and gerund for this purpose. Compound tenses and moods are expressed by means of auxiliary verbs. The theme of the imperative may, by the addition of a simple consonant, vowel, or syllable, be modified into a negative, passive, reflexive, reciprocal, impossible, causative, or doubly causative form, which are conjugated in the same manner as the original form. The causative forms again admit of a passive negative, &c., so that in fact the number of possible verbal forms derived from a single theme has been calculated by Shaw at 29,000. There are no prepositions, only postpositions.

In syntax the order of the words and clauses of a period is almost the inverse of what seems natural to us, the subject and its predicate being placed at the end, while all hypothetical, causal, prohibitive,—in short all subordinate—clauses come first. In the simple style of illiterate peasants, and in popular romances and tales, this method presents no inconvenience as regards easy understanding, but in the artificial, often excessively long periods of an Osmanii stylist, it presents serious difficulties to a European reader.

Bibliography.—(a) General works on the history and ethnography of the Turks: Deguignes, Histoire des Huns; Vambéry, Das Türkenvolk (Leipsic, 1885), Ursprung der Magyaren (Leipsic, 1882), and several other publications ; Kadloff, Aus Sihirien (Leipsic, 1884); W. Griporieff, Zemlewjedjenie K. Rittera Wostotschni ili Kitaiski Turkestan; Neumann, Die Völker des südlichen Russland (Leipsic, 1847). We may add the historians of the Mongols—D’Ohsson, Howorth, and others—the numerous journals of travellers amongst Turkish peoples, and several articles in the Russische Revue, Journal of the Royal Asiatic



FOOTNOTE (page 662)

1 For details about the spread of Christianity amongst the Turks, see Yule, Cathay and the Way thither, i. 90-100.



Soc., &c. A full bibliography of works relating to Central Asia may be found in V. J. Mejoff, Recueil du Turkestan (St Petersburg, 1878-84), and a useful excerpt at the end of vol. ii. of Lansdell’s Russian Central Asia. Other works have already been cited in the course of this article.

(b) For the study of Turkish dialects the subjoined books may be used. (1) Osmanli: the grammars and dictionaries of Redhouse, Mallouf, Zenker, Barbier de Meynard, &c. (2) Uigur: the works of Klaproth ; Abel Rémusat Recherches sur les Langues Tartares (Paris, 1820); and Vambéry, Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik (Innsbruck, 1870). (3) Jagatai: the dictionary of Pavet de Courteille, and Vambéry, Jagataïsche Spraclistudien (Leipsic, 1867). (4) Eastern Turki: Shaw’s grammar and vocabulary (Jour. Roy. As. Soc. of Bengal, 1877). (5) Tatar dialects: the grammars of Kasimbeg-Zenker (Leipsic, 1848), Ilminski (Kazan, 1869), and Radloff (Leipsic, 18S2); Dictionary of Trojanski (Kazan, 1833); the chrestomathies of Béresine (Kazan, 1857), Terentieff, and specially Radloff, Prohen der Volksliteratur der türkischen Stämme Sü-Sibiriens (St Petersburg, 1872). And (6) Yakuti: Böhtlingk, Die Sprache der Jakuten (St Petersburg, 1851). (M. T. H.)