Aral have changed their social habits and gained
political power, while those which descended to the west of the Caspian
remain pretty much what they ever were. The former of these go among us
by the general name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans or Turkmans.

2.

Now, first, I shall briefly mention the Turcomans, and dismiss them,
because, when they have once illustrated the original state of their
race, they have no place in this sketch. I have said, then, that the
ancient Turco-Tartar empire, to which the Romans sent their embassy in
the sixth century, extended to the Caspian and towards the Indus. It was
in the beginning of the next century that the Romans, that is, the
Greco-Romans of Constantinople, found them in the former of these
neighbourhoods; and they made the same use of them in the defence of
their territory, to which they had put the Goths before the overthrow of
the Western Empire. It was a most eventful era at which they addressed
themselves to these Turks of the Caspian. It was almost the very year of
the Hegira, which marks the rise of the Mahometan imposture and rule. As
yet, however, the Persians were in power, and formidable enemies to the
Romans, and at this very time in possession of the Holy Cross, which
Chosroes, their powerful king, had carried away from Jerusalem twelve
years before. But the successful Emperor Heraclius was already in the
full tide of those brilliant victories, which in the course of a few
years recovered it; and, to recall him from their own soil, the Persians
had allied themselves with the barbarous tribes of Europe, (the
Russians, Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and others,) which, then as now, were
pressing down close upon Constantinople from the north. This alliance
suggested to Heraclius the counterstroke of allying himself with the
Turkish freebooters, who in like manner, as stationed above the Caspian,
were impending over Persia. Accordingly the horde of Chozars, as this
Turkish tribe was called, at the Emperor's invitation, transported their
tents from the plains of the Volga through the defiles of the Caucasus
into Georgia. Heraclius showed them extraordinary attention; he put his
own diadem on the head of the barbarian prince, and distributed gold,
jewels, and silk to his officers; and, on the other hand, he obtained
from them an immediate succour of 40,000 horse, and the promise of an
irruption of their brethren into Persia from the far East, from the
quarter of