Sketch of the Tartar invasions. Their seats.

We have been treating of countries which have, in different ages of the world, sent forth successive hordes to overrun and occupy the fairest regions of Asia, and our curiosity now leads us to note the present state and condition of these various tribes of human beings. Attila and Alaric spread devastation in the empire of the Cæsars. Jengis and Timour have succeeded them in more modern but equally destructive inroads. Through these great revolutions we trace the ever-wandering spirit of the Tartar people; but ere the first of these destroyers inflicted his calamities on Rome, we could gather the evil propensities of the race from the histories of Semiramis, Cyrus, and Alexander. Subsequent to the age of Timour, we have another irruption from the Uzbek Tartars, though it wasted its strength at the base of Hindoo Koosh. From the days of Herodotus to the present time, we are presented with a state of ceaseless change and fluctuation in the countries of Central Asia. For this great storehouse of emigration we have been referred to Khitai, the regions of Northern China; but authentic history fixes it in a site far less remote. Jengis and his bands issued from the pastoral lands beyond the Jaxartes, which is also the migration seat of his successors; and may be, therefore, safely fixed as the cradle of Scythian, Hun, and Tartar inroad.

Exaggerated numbers.

We shall not stop to speculate on the probabilities of a country so thinly peopled sending forth hordes which have been exaggerated by terror to thousands and hundreds of thousands. With greater reason shall we attribute the size of these armies to their increasing number, as they advanced to plunder and victory. A pastoral is but another name for a migratory nation, and its transfer to a near or distant country, generally depends upon the ambition or spirit of a few of its leaders. This state of society is not altered in the paternal seats of Jengis and Timour, and an invader might pursue, though with limited success, the same paths of conquest. The volcano may rest for a time in a quiescent state, but the Tartar, in his erratic life, will ever sigh for new scenes; but it depends on the Khan if that passion be gratified. Probabilities of success in modern times. The disciplined valour of Russia would now arrest him on the west; and European prowess, engrafted on the legions of India, might there oppose the torrent; but in Turkey, Persia, Cabool, and China, a horde of Tartars would make the same impression as in former times. The Tartar inroads have ever been of the most transitory nature. Neither the empires of Jengis or Timour were consolidated, and the subjugation of India, afterwards effected by their successors, arose from fortuitous circumstances, over which their previous inroads had had little influence.

Tartar tribes.

The literary world has long dwelt with an attentive and scrutinizing eye on the history of the Tartars, exercising, as they ever have, so great an influence over the destinies of the world. Received opinions now present to us a vast nation in Northern Asia, classed into three grand divisions, under the generic name of Tartar. I shall, elsewhere, record the few facts, which I gathered in the country regarding this race, but the subject partakes too much of a dissertation to be here introduced. The intermixture of the Tartars with the more western nations has brought about many changes, and the Tartar is no longer disfigured by those unseemly features which inspired disgust. But a physiognomist will not deduce from the change, that the Toork of the Oxus differs from his countrymen of Yarkund, the Moghul of modern writers, and far to the eastward. The Toorks intermarried with the Tajiks of Mawurool nuhr, much in the same manner as the Seljooks, who entered Persia, formed alliances in that country; but we cannot on that account reckon them a separate race, because of their beauty. The features of the Tartar have not altogether disappeared from the natives of Toorkistan; and may yet be traced in small eyes, flattened foreheads, and a scanty beard, though we see nought of the hideous visages which are described in the records of their inroads. The well-known couplet[31] of Hafiz, that paints the beautiful Toorkee girl of Shiraz, near Samarcand, has been celebrated; nor have the fair sex ever been destitute of charms in these regions, since we learn that Roxana, whom Alexander married in Transoxiana, was the most beautiful woman whom the Greeks had seen in Asia, after the wife of Darius. The inhabitant of the city, however, is more changed than the peasant; and on the mountains of Hindoo Koosh we had among the Huzaras a much closer resemblance to the Tartars. Among them there is a singular tribe, known by the name of Tatar Huzaras, which amount to about a thousand families, and occupies the space between Hindoo Koosh and Bameean. Tradition states these people to be descendants of Jengis Khan’s army, but their name of Tatar deserves remark, since the only other tribe so denominated by the people themselves is the Nogai on the frontiers of Russia.

Uzbek tribes.

Such is the mutability of men and things in this circle of Tartar abode, that if you now ask for the race of Zagatye or Chaghtye, the illustrious descendants of Jengis and the conquerors of Hind, and find them at all, they exist in the most abject poverty. The kings of Bokhara did, however, claim a lineage and uninterrupted descent from it, till a profligate minister snapped the thread by assassination. The Uzbek ruler of Kokan, the second state in Transoxiana, still asserts his descent from Baber, whose paternal kingdom of Ferghana he now inherits. The Uzbeks distinguish themselves by thirty-two tribes, into which they are said to have been divided in their pastoral seats. The following list exhibits a few of the principal divisions of the Uzbek race.

Bokhara.Mungut.
Kokan.Yooz.
Hissar.——
——Lakay.
Baeesoon.Kongrad.
Kuwadian.Doormun.
Koondooz.Kutghun.
Khooloom.Moeetun.
Heibuk.Kunglee.
Balkh.Kipchuh.
——Yaboo.
Maimuna.Meeng.
Orjunje.Kongrad.

Kalmuks. Kirgizzes. Kuzzaks.