Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) / The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive Christianity

by John Henry Newman

As to Sogdiana, we have already reviewed one season of power and then in turn of reverse which there befell the Turks; and next a more remarkable outbreak and its reaction mark their presence in Persia. I have spoken of the formidable force, consisting of Turks, which formed the guard of the Caliphs immediately after the time of Harun al Raschid:—suddenly they rebelled against their master, burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, murdered him, and cut his body into seven pieces. They got possession of the symbols of imperial power, the garment and the staff of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake Caliphs at their pleasure. In the course of four years they had elevated, deposed, and murdered as many as three. At their wanton caprice, they made these successors of the false prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. They dragged them by the feet, stripped them, and exposed them to the burning sun, beat them with iron clubs, and left them for days without food. At length, however, the people of Bagdad were roused in defence of the Caliphate, and the Turks for a time were brought under; but they remained in the country, or rather, by the short-sighted policy of the moment, were dispersed throughout it, and thus became in the sequel ready-made elements of revolution for the purposes of other traitors of their own race, who, at a later period, as we shall presently see, descended on Persia from Turkistan.

Indeed, events were opening the way slowly, but surely, to their ascendancy. Throughout the whole of the tenth century, which followed, they seem to disappear from history; but a silent revolution was all along in progress, leading them forward to their great destiny. The empire of the Caliphate was already dying in its extremities, and Sogdiana was one of the first countries to be detached from his power. The Turks were still there, and, as in Persia, filled the ranks of the army and the offices of the government; but the political changes which took place were not at first to their visible advantage. What first occurred was the revolt of the Caliph's viceroy, who made himself a great kingdom or empire out of the provinces around, extending it from the Jaxartes, which was the northern boundary of Sogdiana, almost to the Indian ocean, and from the confines of Georgia to the mountains of Affghanistan. The dynasty thus established lasted for four generations and for the space of ninety years. Then the successor happened to be a boy; and one of his servants, the governor of Khorasan, an able and experienced man, was forced by circumstances to rebellion against him. He was successful, and the whole power of this great kingdom fell into his hands; now he was a Tartar or Turk; and thus at length the Turks suddenly appear in history, the acknowledged masters of a southern dominion.

4.

This is the origin of the celebrated Turkish dynasty of the Gaznevides, so called after Gazneh, or Ghizni, or Ghuznee, the principal city, and it lasted for two hundred years. We are not particularly concerned in it, because it has no direct relations with Europe; but it falls into our subject, as having been instrumental to the advance of the Turks towards the West. Its most distinguished monarch was Mahmood, and he conquered Hindostan, which became eventually the seat of the empire. In Mahmood the Gaznevide we have a prince of true Oriental splendour. For him the title of Sultan or Soldan was invented, which henceforth became the special badge of the Turkish monarchs; as Khan is the title of the sovereign of the Tartars, and Caliph of the sovereign of the Saracens. I have already described generally the extent of his dominions: he inherited Sogdiana, Carisme, Khorasan, and Cabul; but, being a zealous Mussulman, he obtained the title of Gazi, or champion, by his reduction of Hindostan, and his destruction of its idol temples. There was no need, however, of religious enthusiasm to stimulate him to the war: the riches, which he amassed in the course of it, were a recompense amply sufficient. His Indian expeditions in all amounted to twelve, and they abound in battles and sieges of a truly Oriental cast. "Never," says a celebrated historian,[36] "was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy," or their elephants of war. One of the sovereigns of the country brought against him as many as 2,500 elephants; the borderers on the Indus resisted him with 4,000 war-boats. He was successful in every direction; he levelled to the ground many hundreds of pagodas, and carried off their treasures. In one of his campaigns[37] he took prisoner the prince of Lahore, round whose neck alone were sixteen strings of jewels, valued at £320,000 of our money. At Mutra he found five great idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies; and a hundred idols of silver, which, when melted down, loaded a hundred camels with bullion.

These stories, which sound like the fables in the Arabian Nights, are but a specimen of the wonderful fruits of the victories of this Mahmood. His richest prize was the great temple of Sunnat, or Somnaut, on the promontory of Guzerat, between the Indus and Bombay. It was a place as diabolically wicked as it was wealthy, and we may safely regard Mahmood as the instrument of divine vengeance upon it. But here I am only concerned with its wealth, for which grave writers are the vouchers. When this temple was taken, Mahmood entered a great square hall, having its lofty roof supported with 56 pillars, curiously turned and set with precious stones. In the centre stood the idol, made of stone, and five feet high. The conqueror began to demolish it. He raised his mace, and struck off the idol's nose. The Brahmins interposed, and are said to have offered the fabulous sum, as Mill considers it, of ten millions sterling for its ransom. His officers urged him to accept it, and the Sultan himself was moved; but recovering himself, he observed that it was somewhat more honourable to destroy idols than to traffic in them, and proceeded to repeat his blows at the trunk of the figure. He broke it open; it was found to be hollow, and at once explained the prodigality of the offer of the Brahmins. Inside was found an incalculable treasure of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. Mahmood took away the lofty doors of sandal-wood, which belonged to this temple, as a trophy for posterity. Till a few years ago, they were the decoration of his tomb near Gazneh, which is built of white marble with a cupola, and where Moollas are still maintained to read prayers over his grave.[38] There too once hung the ponderous mace, which few but himself could wield; but the mace has disappeared, and the sandal gates, if genuine, were carried off about twelve years since by the British Governor-General of India, and restored to their old place, as an acceptable present to the impure idolaters of Guzerat.[39]

It is not wonderful that this great conqueror should have been overcome by the special infirmity, to which such immense plunder would dispose him; he has left behind him a reputation for avarice. He desired to be a patron of literature, and on one occasion he promised a court poet a golden coin for every verse of an heroic poem he was writing. Stimulated by the promise, "the divine poet," to use the words of the Persian historian, "wrote the unparalleled poem called the Shah Namna, consisting of 60,000 couplets." This was more than had been bargained for by the Sultan, who, repenting of his engagement, wished to compromise the matter for 60,000 rupees, about a sixteenth part of the sum he had promised. The indignant author would accept no remuneration at all, but wrote a satire upon Mahmood instead; but he was merciful in his revenge, for he reached no more than the seven-thousandth couplet.

There is a melancholy grandeur about the last days of this victorious Sultan, which seems to show that even then the character of his race was changed from the fierce impatience of Hun and Tartar to the grave, pensive, and majestic demeanour of the Turk. Tartar he was in his countenance, as he was painfully conscious, but his mind had a refinement, to which the Tartar was a stranger. Broken down by an agonizing complaint, he perceived his life was failing, and his glory coming to an end. Two days before his death, he commanded all the untold riches of his treasury, his sacks of gold and silver, his caskets of precious stones, to be brought out and placed before him. Having feasted his eyes upon them, he burst into tears; he knew they would not long be his, but he had not the heart to give any part of then away. The next day he caused to be drawn up before his travelling throne, for he observed still the Tartar custom, his army of 100,000 foot and 55,000 horse, his chariots, his camels, and his 1,300 elephants of war; and again he wept, and, overcome with grief, retired to his palace. Next day he died, after a prosperous reign of more than thirty years.

But, to return to the general history. It will be recollected that Mahmood's dominions stretched very far to the west, as some say, even round the Caspian to Georgia; and it is not wonderful that, while he was adding India to them, he found a difficulty in defending his frontier towards Persia. Meantime, as before, his own countrymen kept streaming down upon him without intermission from the north, and he thought he could not do better than employ these dangerous visitors in garrison duty against his western enemies. They took service under him, but did not fulfil his expectations. Indeed, what followed may be anticipated from the history which I have been giving of the Caliphs: it was an instance of workmen emancipating themselves from their employer. The fierce barbarians who were defending the province of Khorasan so well for another, naturally felt that they could take as good care of it for themselves; and when Mahmood was approaching the end of his life, he became sensible of the error he had committed in introducing them. He asked one of their chiefs what force he could lend him: "If you sent one of the arrows into our camp," was the answer, "50,000 of us will mount to do thy bidding." "But what if I want more?" inquired Mahmood; "send this arrow into the camp of Balik, and you will have another 50,000." The Sultan asked again: "But what if I require your whole forces?" "Send round my bow," answered the Turk, "and the summons will be obeyed by 200,000 horse."[40] The foreboding, which disclosures such as this inspired, was fulfilled the year before his death. The Turks came into collision with his lieutenants, and defeated one of them in a bloody action; and though he took full reprisals, and for a while cleared the country of them, yet in the reign of his son they succeeded in wresting from his dynasty one-half of his empire, and Hindostan, the acquisition of Mahmood, became henceforth its principal possession.

5.

We have now arrived at what may literally be called the turning-point of Turkish history. We have seen them gradually descend from the north, and in a certain degree become acclimated in the countries where they settled. They first appear across the Jaxartes in the beginning of the seventh century; they have now come to the beginning of the eleventh. Four centuries or thereabout have they been out of their deserts, gaining experience and educating themselves in such measure as was necessary for playing their part in the civilized world. First they came down into Sogdiana and Khorasan, and the country below it, as conquerors; they continued in it as subjects and slaves. They offered their services to the race which had subdued them; they made their way by means of their new masters down to the west and the south; they laid the foundations for their future supremacy in Persia, and gradually rose upwards through the social fabric to which they had been admitted, till they found themselves at length at the head of it. The sovereign power which they had acquired in the line of the Gaznevides, drifted off to Hindostan; but still fresh tribes of their race poured down from the north, and filled up the gap; and while one dynasty of Turks was established in the peninsula, a second dynasty arose in the former seat of their power.