3. The Mizjeji.—Due east of the mountaineer Irôn come the equally mountaineer Mizjeji, a family numerically small, but falling into divisions and subdivisions. Hence, it has a pre-eminent claim to be considered aboriginal to the fastnesses in which it is found. The parts north of Telav, to the north-east of Tiflis, form the Mizjeji area. It is a small one—the Circassians bound it on the north, and on the east—
4. The Lesgians of Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan, next to the Circassians the most independent family of Caucasus. None falls into more divisions and subdivisions: e.g.
- a. The Marulan or Mountaineers (from Marul = mountain) speak a language called the Avar, of which the Anzukh, Tshari, Andi, Kabutsh, Dido and Unsoh are dialects.
- b. The Kasi-kumuk.
- c. The Akush.
- d. The Kura of South Daghestan.
The displacements of the Irôn and Mizjeji—and from the limited area of their occupancies, displacement is a legitimate inference—must have been chiefly effected by the Georgians alone; that of the Lesgians seems referable to a triple influence. That the Talish to the north of Ghilan are Lesgians who have changed their native tongue for the Persian, is a probable suggestion of Frazer’s. If correct, it makes the province of Shirvan a likely part of the original Lesgian area—encroachment having been effected by the Armenians, Persians, and Georgians.
5. The Circassians occupy the northern Caucasus from Daghestan to the Kuban; coming in contact with the Slavonians and Tartars, for the parts between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian. As both these are pre-eminent for encroachment, the earlier contact was, probably, that of the most northern members of the Circassian family, and the southern Ugrians. The divisions and subdivisions of the Circassian family are both numerous and strongly marked.
The Armenians.—Except amongst the mountaineer Irôn and Mizjeji, there are Armenians over the whole of Russian Caucasus—mixed, for the most part, with Georgians. They are sojourners rather than natives. In Shirvan, Karabagh, and Karadagh they are similarly mixed with Persians and Turks. In this case, however, the Armenian population is probably the older; so that we are approaching the original nucleus of the family. In Erivan there are more Armenians than aught else; and in Kars and Erzerúm they attain their maximum. In Diarbekr the frontier changes, and the tribes which now indent the Armenian area are the Semitic Arabs and Chaldani of Mesopotamia, and the Persian Kurds of Kurdistan.
A great deal has been said about the extent to which the Armenian language differs from the Georgian, considering the geographical contact between the two. True it is that the tongues are in contact now, and so they probably were 2000 years ago. Yet it by no means follows that they were always so. The Georgian has encroached, the Irôn retreated; a fact which makes it likely that, at a time when there was no Georgian east of Imiritia, the Osetic of Tshildir and the Armenian of Kars met on the Upper Kur. The inference drawn from the relations between the Môn, Khô, and Tʻhay tongues is repeated here, inasmuch as the Irôn and Armenian are more alike than the Armenian and Georgian. As a rough measure of the likeness, I may state the existence of the belief that both are Indo-European.
Asia Minor.—From Armenia the transition is to Asia Minor. One of the circumstances which give a pre-eminent interest and importance to the ethnology of Asia Minor is the certainty of the original stock being, at the present moment, either wholly extinct, or so modified and changed as to have become a problem rather than a fact. There is neither doubt nor shadow of doubt as to this—since it is within the historical period that this transformation has taken place. It is within the historical period that the Osmanli Turks, spreading, more immediately from the present country of Turkestan, but remotely from the chain of the Altaic Mountains, founded the kingdom of Roum under the Seljukian kings, and as a preliminary to the invasion and partial occupation of Europe, made themselves masters of the whole country limited by Georgia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Syria on the east and south, and by the Euxine, the Bosporus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Ægean Sea westwards. Since then, whatever may be the blood, the language has been Turk. This is, of course, primâ facie evidence of the stock being Turk also. Nor are there any very cogent reasons on the other side. The physiognomy is generally described as Turk, and the habits and customs as well.
Such is what we get from the general traveller—and a more minute ethnology than this has not yet been applied. What will be the result, when a severer test is applied, is another question. It is most probable that points of physiognomy, fragmentary traditions and superstitions, old customs, and peculiar idiotisms in the way of dialect, will point to a remnant of the older stock immediately preceding it. In such a case, the ethnological question becomes complicated—since the present Turks will be then supposed to have mixed with the older natives, rather than to have replaced them in toto: so that the phænomena will rather be those exhibited in England (where the proportion of the older Celtic and the newer Anglo-Saxon is an open question) than those of the United States of America, where the blood is purely European, and where the intermixture of the aboriginal Indian—if any—goes for nothing.
Of the occupants of Asia Minor previous to the Osmanli Turks we can ascertain the elements, but not the proportions which they bore to each other.