Turks as it can well be, and is quite unsuited to typically Turkish life
and manners.

While of course it would be absurd to propose at this time of day any
change in the terms by which the civilized world unanimously designates
the Osmanlis and their dominion, it is well to insist on their
incorrectness, because, like most erroneous names, they have bred
erroneous beliefs. Thanks in the main to them, the Ottoman power is
supposed to have originated in an overwhelming invasion of Asia Minor by
immense numbers of Central Asiatic migrants, who, intent, like the early
Arab armies, on offering to Asia first and Europe second the choice of
apostasy or death, absorbed or annihilated almost all the previous
populations, and swept forward into the Balkans as single-minded apostles
of Islam. If the composition and the aims of the Osmanlis had been these,
it would pass all understanding how they contrived, within a century of
their appearance on the western scene, to establish in North-west Asia and
South-east Europe the most civilized and best-ordered state of their time.
Who, then, are the Osmanlis in reality? What have they to do with true
Turks? and in virtue of what innate qualities did they found and
consolidate their power?

1

_Origin of the Osmanlis_

We hear of Turks first from Chinese sources. They were then the
inhabitants, strong and predatory, of the Altai plains and valleys: but
later on, about the sixth century A.D., they are found firmly established
in what is still called Turkestan, and pushing westwards towards the
Caspian Sea. Somewhat more than another century passes, and, reached by a
missionary faith of West Asia, they come out of the Far Eastern darkness
into a dim light of western history. One Boja, lord of Kashgar and Khan of
what the Chinese knew as the people of Thu-Kiu--probably the same name as
'Turk'--embraced Islam and forced it on his Mazdeist subjects; but other
Turkish tribes, notably the powerful Uighurs, remained intolerant of the
new dispensation, and expelled the Thu-Kiu _en masse_ from their holding
in Turkestan into Persia. Here they distributed themselves in detached
hordes over the north and centre. At this day, in some parts of Persia,
e.g. Azerbaijan, Turks make the bulk of the population besides supplying
the reigning dynasty of the whole kingdom. For the Shahs of the Kajar
house are not Iranian, but purely Turkish.

This, it should be observed, was the western limit of T