Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

The southern portion of the Altaic mountains has long been inhabited by the Bashkirs, a race considerably mixed with Mongolic blood, savage and ignorant, subjects of Russia, and Mohammedans by faith. Their land is divided into four Roads, called the Roads of Siberia, of Kasan, of Nogai, and of Osa, a place on the Kama. Among the Bashkirs, and in villages [pg 304] near Ufa, is now settled a Turkish tribe, the Mescheräks who formerly lived near the Volga.

The tribes near the Lake of Aral are called Kara-Kalpak. They are subject partly to Russia, partly to the Khans of Khiva.

The Turks of Siberia, commonly called Tatars, are partly original settlers, who crossed the Ural, and founded the Khanat of Sibir, partly later colonists. Their chief towns are Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, and Tomsk. Separate tribes are the Uran'hat on the Chulym, and the Barabas in the steppes between the Irtish and the Ob.

The dialects of these Siberian Turks are considerably intermingled with foreign words, taken from Mongolic, Samoyedic, or Russian sources. Still they resemble one another closely in all that belongs to the original stock of the language.

In the north-east of Asia, on both sides of the river Lena, the Yakuts form the most remote link in the Turkic chain of languages. Their male population has lately risen to 100,000, while in 1795 it amounted only to 50,066. The Russians became first acquainted with them in 1620. They call themselves Sakha, and are mostly heathen, though Christianity is gaining ground among them. According to their traditions, their ancestors lived for a long time in company with Mongolic tribes, and traces of this can still be discovered in their language. Attacked by their neighbors, they built rafts and floated down the river Lena, where they settled in the neighborhood of what is now Yakutzk. Their original seats seem to have been north-west of Lake Baikal. Their language has preserved the Turkic type more completely than any other Turco-Tataric [pg 305] dialect. Separated from the common stock at an early time, and removed from the disturbing influences to which the other dialects were exposed, whether in war or in peace, the Yakutian has preserved so many primitive features of Tataric grammar, that even now it may be used as a key to the grammatical forms of the Osmanli and other more cultivated Turkic dialects.

Southern Siberia is the mother country of the Kirgis, one of the most numerous tribes of Turco-Tataric origin. The Kirgis lived originally between the Ob and Yenisei, where Mongolic tribes settled among them. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Russians became acquainted with the Eastern Kirgis, then living along the Yenisei. In 1606 they had become tributary to Russia, and after several wars with two neighboring tribes, they were driven more and more south-westward, till they left Siberia altogether at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They now live at Burut, in Chinese Turkestan, together with the Kirgis of the “Great Horde,” near the town of Kashgar, north as far as the Irtish.

Another tribe is that of the Western Kirgis, or Kirgis-Kasak, who are partly independent, partly tributary to Russia and China.

Of what are called the three Kirgis Hordes, from the Caspian Sea east as far as Lake Tenghiz, the Small Horde is fixed in the west, between the rivers Yemba and Ural; the Great Horde in the east; while the most powerful occupies the centre between the Sarasu and Yemba, and is called the Middle Horde. Since 1819, the Great Horde has been subject to Russia. Other Kirgis tribes, though nominally subject to Russia, are really her most dangerous enemies.

The Turks of Asia Minor and Syria came from Khorasan and Eastern Persia, and are Turkmans, or remnants of the Seljuks, the rulers of Persia during the Middle Ages. The Osmanli, whom we are accustomed to call Turks par excellence, and who form the ruling portion of the Turkish empire, must be traced to the same source. They are now scattered over the whole Turkish empire in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and their number amounts to between 11,000,000 and 12,000,000. They form the landed gentry, the aristocracy, and bureaucracy of Turkey; and their language, the Osmanli, is spoken by persons of rank and education, and by all government authorities in Syria, in Egypt, at Tunis, and at Tripoli. In the southern provinces of Asiatic Russia, along the borders of the Caspian, and through the whole of Turkestan, it is the language of the people. It is heard even at the court of Teheran, and is understood by official personages in Persia.

The rise of this powerful tribe of Osman, and the spreading of that Turkish dialect which is now emphatically called the Turkish, are matters of historical notoriety. We need not search for evidence in Chinese annals, or try to discover analogies between names that a Greek or an Arabic writer may by chance have heard and handed down to us, and which some of these tribes have preserved to the present day. The ancestors of the Osman Turks are men as well known to European historians as Charlemagne or Alfred. It was in the year 1224 that Soliman-shah and his tribe, pressed by Mongolians, left Khorasan and pushed westward into Syria, Armenia, and Asia Minor. Soliman's son, Ertoghrul, took service under Aladdin, the Seljuk Sultan [pg 307] of Iconium (Nicæa), and after several successful campaigns against Greeks and Mongolians, received part of Phrygia as his own, and there founded what was afterwards to become the basis of the Osmanic empire. During the last years of the thirteenth century the Sultans of Iconium lost their power, and their former vassals became independent sovereigns. Osman, after taking his share of the spoil in Asia, advanced through the Olympic passes into Bithynia and was successful against the armies of the Emperors of Byzantium. Osman became henceforth the national name of his people. His son, Orkhan, whose capital was Prusa (Bursa), after conquering Nicomedia (1327) and Nicæa (1330), threatened the Hellespont. He took the title of Padishah, and his court was called the “High Porte.” His son, Soliman, crossed the Hellespont (1357), and took possession of Gallipoli and Sestos. He thus became master of the Dardanelles. Murad I. took Adrianople (1362), made it his capital, conquered Macedonia, and, after a severe struggle, overthrew the united forces of the Slavonic races south of the Danube, the Bulgarians, Servians, and Kroatians, in the battle of Kossova-polye (1389). He fell himself, but his successor Bayazeth, followed his course, took Thessaly, passed Thermopylæ, and devastated the Peloponnesus. The Emperor of Germany, Sigismund, who advanced at the head of an army composed of French, German, and Slavonic soldiers, was defeated by Bayazeth on the Danube in the battle of Nicopolis, 1399. Bayazeth took Bosnia, and would have taken Constantinople, had not the same Mongolians, who in 1244 drove the first Turkish tribes westward into Persia, threatened again their newly acquired possessions. Timur had grasped the reins fallen from the hands of Chingis-khán: Bayazeth [pg 308] was compelled to meet him, and suffered defeat (1402) in the battle of Angora (Ankyra) in Galatia.