independent of him, and pay no taxes but to their own
chiefs. In the neighbourhood of Caesarea, Kusan Oghlou, a Turcoman chief,
numbers 20,000 armed horsemen, rules despotically over a large district,
and has often successfully resisted the Sultan's arms. These people lead
a nomad life, are always engaged in petty warfare, are well mounted, and
armed with pistol, scimitar, spear, or gun, and would always be useful
as irregular troops."
4.
And now I have said enough, and more than enough, of the original state
of the Turkish race, as exhibited in the Chozars and Turcomans:--it is
time to pursue the history of that more important portion of it with
which we are properly engaged, which received some sort of education,
and has proved itself capable of social and political union. I observed
just now, that that education was very different in its mode and
circumstances from that which has been the lot of the nations with which
we are best acquainted. Other nations have been civilized in their own
homes, and, by their social progress, have immortalized a country as
well as a race. They have been educated by their conquests, or by
subjugation, or by the intercourse with foreigners which commerce or
colonization has opened; but in every case they have been true to their
fatherland, and are children of the soil. The Greeks sent out their
colonies to Asia Minor and Italy, and those colonies reacted upon the
mother country. Magna Graecia and Ionia showed their mother country the
way to her intellectual supremacy. The Romans spread gradually from one
central city, and when their conquests reached as far as Greece, "the
captive," in the poet's words, "captivated her wild conqueror, and
introduced arts into unmannered Latium."[20] England was converted by
the Roman See and conquered by the Normans, and was gradually civilized
by the joint influences of religion and of chivalry. Religion indeed,
though a depraved religion, has had something to do, as we shall see,
with the civilization of the Turks; but the circumstances have been
altogether different from those which we trace in the history of
England, Rome, or Greece. The Turks present the spectacle of a race
poured out, as it were, upon a foreign material, interpenetrating all
its parts, yet preserving its individuality, and at length making its
way through it, and reappearing, in substance the same as before, but
charged with the qualities of the material through which it has
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