Historians assert, that of all the different people who have migrated into foreign countries,
a single instance is not to be found, which accords with that of the Gypsies. The religious rites and observances of the Jews were calculated to prevent their imbibing the customs and habits of other nations. But it is universally admitted, that Gypsies did not bring any particular religion with them from their native country, by which they could be distinguished among other people; being as inconstant and unsettled respecting religion, as they are to place of residence.
Indeed it is asserted, that no Gypsey has any idea of submission to any fixed profession of faith; that patents suffering their children to grow up as themselves, without education or instruction, they acquire little knowledge either of morality or justice; that few of them wilt attend to any discourse on religion, but they hear it with indifference, if not with impatience and repugnance. Despising all remonstrance; they endeavour to live without the least solicitude concerning a future state of being.
The Turks are so fully convinced of the little religious sincerity possessed by Gypsies,
that although a Jew, by becoming a Mahometan, is freed from the payment of the Charadsch, the Gypsies are not; at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, they are compelled to pay the poll-tax, even though their ancestors for centuries had been Mahometans, or though they should actually have been a pilgrimage to Mecca. The privilege of wearing a white turban, is the only advantage their conversion gives them, over unbelieving Jews and Gypsies.
Among warlike nations, many instances have occurred, in which the people subdued, being more enlightened than their conquerors, the latter have adopted the manners of the former. After the conquest of Greece, the Romans assumed the manners of the Greeks; and the Turks in like manner assumed those of the Gauls. The Mancheans vanquished the Chinese, but Chinese customs prevailed over those of the Mancheans.
Grellmann.
Our countryman Dr. Clarke, page 4, of part the second of his Travels in Greece, says: “There is every reason to believe that the
Turks themselves, at the conquest of Constantinople, adopted many of the customs, and embraced many of the refinements of a people they had subdued.
“Their former habits had been those of nomad tribes, their dwellings were principally tents, and the camp, rather than the city, distinguished their abode.”