If these be the Huns of the Classics, the evidence as to their being Turk rather than Hungarian, is nearly conclusive; the Turk division being the only one which is, at one and the same time, conterminous with Europe, and almost conterminous with China.
Moreover, if the Hiong-nou be the Huns, we may infer that the name Hun was a native name, in the way that Deutsche is the native name of what we call the Germans; since it is not likely that the Greeks and Chinese would use the same appellation, unless it were also the indigenous appellation of the people to which it was applied.[26]
The Thú-kiú.—These are the proper Turks of the Altai mountains under a Chinese name. They are mentioned as being powerful about A.D. 545.
1. If the word Thú-kiú be the Chinese form of Turk, we learn that the name was native.
2. If the Hiong-nu and Thú-kiú be the same people, we fix the former as Turk rather than aught else.
Now, both these suppositions are highly probable. Several Thú-kiú glosses have been collected by Klaproth from Chinese writings, and they are all Turk, more especially the Turk of Central Asia; whilst, on the other hand, the Chinese writer, Ma-túan-in, derives the Thiú-kiú from the Hiong-nou.
Such of my readers as know that Niebuhr considered the Huns to be Mongols, and that Humboldt insists upon their Finnic origin will excuse the length to which these remarks on their ethnographical position have been extended.
Additions to the Turk area made within the historical period.—This means Asia Minor (Anatolia), and Turkey in Europe; additions of a true ethnological character; additions whereby the Turk division came in contact with other divisions of our species wholly new, e.g., the Greek, the Arabian, and the Armenian. The points to be considered are—the direction, the date, the rate, the completeness or incompleteness of the ethnological change effected.
a. The direction.—From south-east toward north-west; i.e., from Persia; and the parts south of the Caspian and Caucasus, rather than from the parts between the northern Caspian and the Black Sea; so as to be a prolongation of the Turcoman and Uzbek frontier, rather than of the Nogay.
b. Date.—From A.D. 1038 to A.D. 1063, the reign of Togrul Beg, grandson of Seljuk; a Turk of either Turcomania or Bokhara—The Arabian kingdom of Persia is now disorganized; chiefly by Turks, who have raised themselves from the governors of provinces to the founders of empires, e.g., Mahmúd of Ghizni. The power of the Kalif of Bagdad, at best but nominal, is reduced still more by Togrul. The Seljukian Turks (or rather Turkomans), are the sultans of Persia, now become a consolidated empire.