It is probably correct to say that the races of the great plains of Asia have never been religiously disposed. Mr. Schuyler, who was a keen observer, remarked, less than a generation ago, that the people which had been recently conquered by Russia in Central Asia were classified as to their religion with extreme difficulty. A few declared themselves Christians. The remainder were indiscriminately inscribed as Moslems, but very few among them really knew anything about the religion of Islam and did not even consider themselves as Moslems.[41] The fierce fanaticism which the early followers of Mahomet displayed and which led them within a century after his death to make the most wonderful and enduring series of conquests which have ever been accomplished by a people whose sole bond of union was religion was not shown by the followers of Genghis. They preferred to fight the Saracens and to aid the Christians rather than to do the reverse. We shall see that when, a century and a half later, another great invasion from Central Asia took place, its leader Timour the Lame’s greatest activity was directed against the Mahometans, and that he demanded from them the restoration to the Christian emperor of the cities which they had captured.
It is true that in the interval between the two invasions under Genghis Khan and Timour, the Turkish invaders, who had remained in Asia Minor, caught much of the fanatical spirit. But there are many indications which show that this spirit was of slow growth.[42] As their struggles with neighbouring and Christian peoples compacted them into a warlike nation, they all came to accept the religion of Mahomet, and as they became better acquainted with the tenets of the most war-inspiring religion in the world, they held to them tenaciously, and developed the hostility towards Christians which the spiritual pride of believers who consider themselves the elect of heaven, and their religion outside the range of discussion, always engenders. But during the development of their power in Asia Minor, many years passed before they isolated themselves, and were isolated from the Christians, on account of their religion. Their princes sought marriage with the princesses of the imperial and other noble Christian families. We obtain light only incidentally upon the relations between the professors of the two creeds at the period shortly after the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks. But such as we do obtain confirms the statement that the Asiatic settlers took their religion very easily. In 1267 certain charges were brought, as we have seen,[43] by the Emperor Michael against the patriarch, which give us a glimpse of interest. The relation is made by Pachymer, who was himself one of the clerks of the court. The patriarch was accused, not only of having conversed familiarly with a Turkish sultan, of having allowed him and his companions to use the bath attached to the church, around which were the Christian symbols, but of having ordered a monk to administer the Sacrament to the children of the sultan without having been assured that they were baptized. He was charged, further, with having said the Litanies with the sultan and his followers. The patriarch replied to the two first with contempt; if the Turks had used the church bath, no harm had been done. As to giving Communion, he declared that he had been duly certified that the children had been baptized.[44] Witnesses asserted that it was true that the accused had said the Litanies with the sultan, and that he had allowed him to sit by his side during celebration, but added that they did not know whether the sultan was a Christian or not! Other persons were found who declared that he was not a Christian. The sultan, hearing of the proceedings, sent to ask, either in jest or seriously, that the emperor would give him the sacred relics which he wore round his neck, and offered to eat ham as a proof that he was not a Moslem. Pachymer adds that in thus professing his readiness to worship the relics and to eat the forbidden flesh, the sultan caused the proceedings against the patriarch to fail. As it appeared that there were eminent ecclesiastics in the court who really believed that the sultan of the Turks was a Christian, those who desired the condemnation of the patriarch tried to turn the question by suggesting that, whether he was Christian or not, it was certain that members of his suite, who had been present when Communion was administered, were unbelievers.[45] That the sultan should have been present at a Christian service at all, that his children should have been allowed by him or his Moslem followers to communicate, and that his children were baptized, or believed to be baptized, show that, whether they were Christians or not, the fanatical spirit which animated the Moslems of an earlier period, or the Turks a century later, was not present among these representatives of the Asiatics who had entered the country as followers of Genghis or his immediate successors.
Permanent characteristics of Turkish race.
The characteristics of the Turk have remained singularly like those possessed by his ancestors. The Turkish soldiers who had come in with Genghis, and the hordes of those who followed during a century, had been for the most part wandering shepherds, and the nomadic instinct still continued, and still continues, in the race, notwithstanding that there has been a considerable admixture of other races. The tent of their leader was larger than that of his followers, and its entrance came, in the course of time, to be known as The Lofty Gate, or The Sublime Porte. The shepherd warriors, who were destined to destroy the empire of the New Rome, had few of the desires, habits, or aspirations of civilisation. Commerce, except in its simplest form of barter, was and has always been almost unknown to them. Among the Turks of a later period the disinclination to change the traditional habits of the race is to some extent due to the indifference or contempt felt for trading communities by a race of conquerors; though, perhaps, incapacity to hold their own as traders against the peoples they subdued has had a larger share in producing their aversion to commerce. The furniture of their huts is even yet only such as would have been found in their felt tents. They have no desire to possess the ordinary utensils which Europeans of every race consider either as the necessaries of life or as adding largely to its comfort. They have never taken kindly to agriculture. Surrounded by fertile land, the Turk will till only enough to supply him with the barest necessaries of life, and the traveller in the interior of Asia Minor is to-day, as he has been for centuries, astonished to see that Turkish peasants who, as the owners of large tracts of fertile land, capable of producing almost any fruits or vegetables, and of supporting even a large number of cattle, may be accounted wealthy, are yet content to live upon fare and amid surroundings at which the ordinary European peasant, and even the Turks’ own neighbours of different races, would express their dissatisfaction.[46]
We get few glimpses of the domestic life and manners of the Turks during the first two centuries of their emigration into Asia Minor. But such as we gain show them, in peace and war, to possess the same characteristics as distinguish their descendants at the present day. When not under the influence of their religion they are peaceful, kindly disposed, and truthful. In the hospitality of the tent or hut they are irreproachable. They possess little, but that little is at the disposal of the traveller. Judged by Western ideas, they are lazy, and lacking in intelligence. In the ordinary business of life they are singularly destitute of energy. They have learned, like their fathers, to be content with the poverty amid which they were born. They have not sufficient capacity to desire knowledge nor aspiration to make them discontented. If, as I believe the evidence to indicate, the ancestors of the present Moslems in Asia Minor were during the thirteenth and half of the fourteenth century but little under the influence of religious fanaticism, their easy-going, dolce far niente character may well be taken as sufficient explanation of the passing over into Turkish territories of many Christians who desired to escape from the heavy taxation under the rule of the Christian emperors.
Constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia.
In describing the movement of the Asiatic races into Asia Minor and Europe, but especially of the advance of the Turkish hordes who came after the death of Genghis, two facts ought never to be lost sight of. The first and most important is that from a period even preceding the recapture of the city in 1259 down to one within the memory of living men there was a constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia westward. The numbers of the immigrant settlers were thus steadily being increased. Probably at no time has the Turkish race been as prolific as the Christian races of Asia Minor, and the latter would long ago have outnumbered the conquering race had the stream of immigration been dammed. The second fact to be noted is that a constant settlement of the conquered lands was being All conquests followed by settlement.made, a settlement which, although possibly as nomadic and uncertain as that of the Kurds and Yuruks of to-day, was yet a real occupation of the country at the expense of Christian populations, who were either massacred or dispersed. It is in the nomadic character of the newcomers, in the wasteful character of their occupation of the country, in the substitution of sheep and cattle industry for agriculture, in their want of intelligence, and in their expulsion and persecution of the Christian population, that the explanation is to be found of the destruction and, in some cases, complete abandonment of cities still populous and flourishing when they were captured: cities like Ephesus, Nicaea, and a hundred others, whose ruins meet the traveller everywhere throughout Asia Minor. The Turk has at all times been a nomad and a destroyer. He has never been a capable trader or even agriculturist.
When the armies led by Genghis Khan and his successors retired, armies which were well disciplined and well led, many of his soldiers or their followers remained and took service with the Seljukian Turks. Others formed separate communities. One of the chiefs who thus settled in Asia Minor was Ertogrul or Orthogrul, the father of Osman or Othman, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty.
During Ertogrul’s life, the Seljuks had been greatly harassed by the newer invaders. Pachymer states that on the arrival of the Tartars the sultan of Konia (the ancient Iconium) was surrounded by enemies, and that he had sought the protection of the emperor. He had invited also the aid of the sultan of Egypt, known to the Crusaders as the sultan of Babylon, against the Tartars, by whom he was hard pressed. Three or four years after this sultan’s death in 1277, Ertogrul died. His son Osman or Othman by his courage and ability gave his followers the leading place among the Turks in Asia Minor and firmly established the dynasty named after him. He began his career by coming to an agreement with some of the other Moslem chiefs to divide the territory occupied by the Seljuks and themselves in Asia Minor into eight portions. Thereupon the combined forces of the old and new Turks commenced a series of attacks upon neighbouring territory. During the next twenty years, their success was almost unchecked. In 1282, they laid siege to Tralles (the present Aidin), and, though opposed by the son of Michael the Eighth, were able to capture and destroy the city.[47] A short time afterwards they obtained a fleet and took into their service a large number of sailors who had been discharged by the emperor from motives of economy. Twelve years later, Othman and Ali, chief of another Turkish band, pushed their raids northward and even crossed the river Sangarius and spread desolation throughout the Asiatic provinces of the Empire, before they could be driven back. Two years later, they laid waste the country between the Black Sea and Rhodes.