ORIGIN OF THE TURKS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 10, 10 January 1913, Page 6

ORIGIN OF THE TURKS.

(Manchester Guardian.) In the middle of the sixth centun of our era the situation in China war as follows. South China had for three centuries been governed h> native Chinese dynasties which had nothing to do with Mongolia, Manchuria, or Turkestan. North China for twr centuries had been under the verj competent rule of a Tartar dynasty called Toba; this Toba dynasty (like the Manchu dynasty of to-day) had succumbed to the enervating effects of Chinese civilisation and after'splitting up into the Eastern and Western Toll? had finally been replaced by two new Tartar dynasties each founded by the two Toba dynasties disloyal Minister!or generals. One of these new dynasties reigned at Si-an Fu, and the other at either Lin-Chang Hien or Chang-teh Fu, in the extreme northeast of Ho Nan province. “Turk.” Now, at this moment the Tartar Khagan, or Emperor, ruling over the greater part of Mongolia was also at loggerheads with his vassal tribes ; one of them was called Turk, and i. had a century before been transplanted from its original haunt near Turfan to the mountains north of a place or the Chinese frontier marked on the maps as Shari-tan (roughly, latitude 40 N., longitude 100 E.); its famih or dan name was Ashino, hut the sobriquet of “Turk” was given to if on account of the resemblance of out of the peaks to a warrior’s headpiece, and this Tartar nickname was adopt"ted by the Chinese, who called them Tukne. The Turkish chief succeeded in completely overthrowing the suzerain Tartar power, and at once appro priated ;to himself the supreme title of Khagan, rapidly bringing under his victorious banner all the other roving tribes from Manchuria to Tobolsk His two sons ably continued the work. It has always been .supposed by foreigners—for instance, Gibbon—that the suzerain power overthrown by these Turks was the Avar power, but this is a mistake. Tumen Khagan of the Turks became so powerful that he was able to intervene in North China affairs with considerable effect; • whilst he effected an entente with the Si-an Fu Emperor, the few fugitives of the quondam Tartar suzerain race who escaped his vengeance tool refuge with the Chang-teh Fu colleague and rival. After various com plicated intrigues the Si-an Fu Emperor, at the peremptory demand of the Turks, was induced haeejy to surrender the last 3000 of the once ruling Tartar race, and they were all massacred (about 553 A.D.). The saving 'of China probably lay largely it the fact that the Turks had meanwhile split up into the Northern and the Western Khanates, which besides giving China trouble on different pretexts,' and thus enabling China tr play one off against the other, wore constantly at war between themselves on other grounds. A.D. 500. Previous to this permanent division into Northern and Western empires, the Turk?;- had driven westward a nation called by the Chinese Yue-pan, which the rules of Chinese etymology justify us us in believing were the Avars; west of the Avars, again, were the Eptals, who in B.C. 200 had been driven west by their kinsmen the Huns from almost exactly the spot occupied by the Turks in A.D. 500. The Turks utterly drove the Avars out oi Chinese sight and hearing: we never hear one word of them again in Asia. The Turks also utterly destroyed the Eptal dominion, which for a century or more had fought bloody wars with Persia. Here the Chinese historians cease to follow Turkish movements. How the Western Turks began to interfere in Persian affairs, hew tb ; went on to Constantinople and exchanged missions with the I grant in: empire, fiercely demanding the ;n.r rentier of their enemies the Avars all tin’s is known from Grech ... rrce; ; hut, apart from the Chines: 1 , pro /a ny the Northern Turks knew nothing of it either, as their stone records make no boast of it, though wherever they can boast they do. There is c,.j thing, however, the Chine£-3 uo in q.v. The Arab power was now becoming formidable in the Persian and Pamir regions; in their struggles with tne Western Turks for the no; session of Turkestan and Persia, hie Chinese found themselves face to face with the vanguard of the Arab hosts marching eastward to extend the conquests

of Islam. The Nestoriau, Mauichean, Mazdcan, and Mussulman religious all came tumbling into China together about this time. The Chinese historians have a good deal to say about this triangular duel with the Arabs and Turks, and amongst other events chronicle the flight to China for protection of the fugitive King Piruz of Persia. For a short period the Chinese were so successful in their military operations in the Pamir region that the whole of North Asia from Corea almost to the Urals and Mesopotamia was divided up by them into nominal Chinese principalities, left in most cases to the rule of native kings, princes, or governors, who were merely decorated with Chinese titles as governor, proconsul, or what not in the hope that they would he “good.” The total result of all this, : however, was that the Turks proper m.ver gave any more trouble in China; their broken power was succeeded in West Mongolia by their kinsmen the Ouigours (first Manicheans and later Mussulmans), and in East Mongolia by the Cathayans, a race almost destitute of any religion, and more or less distantly akin to the modern Manchus. Furnished Prosfs. Now all this might sound like a dream, hut about twenty-five years ago there was discovered not very far from Urga (where the Russians arc now said to he manipulating the degenerate Mongol “Saint” and his people) a series of remarkable stone monuments with bilingual inscriptions; one was to the memory of a royal Turkish prince called (in Chinese) “the te-k‘in (in Turkish, teghfin) kue.” The Chinese inscription was plain, and the teghin or “prince of the blood” in whose honour it had been raised 1200 years ago was perfectly well known to Chinese history as the brother of the Northern Turk Bilga Khagan. Additional proof is furnished by monuments to Bilga Khan himself and also to the great Turkish statesman and strategist Tunyukuk which have since been discovered. Away to the Wr.st. After their struggles with the Arabs and Persians the Turks gradually found their way west, repeating at last with the decaying caliphate what they and their ancestors the Huns had already so often done in China; that is, they took Persian and Arab dignities when it suited them to do so; their instincts were predatory; whenever it suited them to dethrone or to hel they did so; they founded dyna., iter dynasty of an ephemeral kind, g.adnally abandoning the word Turk (now carefully avoided by the Ottomans in their own language) and usually adopting some eponymous name for their ephemeral State, such as “tho Seljuks.’ But this is a matter for purely Western history; the Ottoman State, as is generally known derives its name from the Turk Othman. The Khanates of Bokhara, Khiva, Kokand,., | and others conquered by Russia in recent times were all Turk “of assort,” for the Usbeks are of the Turki group. So with the Kajar dynasty of Persia; in fact, the Turki language and Turkish race is continuous from Kazan in Russia to Kami (a Turki princedom) in China; tho only thing is that reshuffling of tribes has always gone or. the total 1 population probably never exceeded five or six millions.