1.
Mere occupation of a rich country is not enough for civilization, as
I have granted already. The Turks came into the pleasant plains and
valleys of Sogdiana; the Turcomans into the well-wooded mountains and
sunny slopes of Asia Minor. The Turcomans were brought out of their
dreary deserts, yet they retained their old habits, and they remain
barbarians to this day. But why? it must be borne in mind, they neither
subjugated the inhabitants of their new country on the one hand, nor
were subjugated by them on the other. They never had direct or intimate
relations with it; they were brought into it by the Roman Government at
Constantinople as its auxiliaries, but they never naturalized
themselves there. They were like gipseys in England, except that they
were mounted freebooters instead of pilferers and fortune-tellers. It
was far otherwise with their brethren in Sogdiana; they were there
first as conquerors, then as conquered. First they held it in
possession as their prize for 90 or 100 years; they came into the
usufruct and enjoyment of it. Next, their political ascendancy over it
involved, as in the case of the White Huns, some sort of moral
surrender of themselves to it. What was the first consequence of this?
that, like the White Huns, they intermarried with the races they found
there. We know the custom of the Tartars and Turks; under such
circumstances they would avail themselves of their national practice of
polygamy to its full extent of licence. In the course of twenty years a
new generation would arise of a mixed race; and these in turn would
marry into the native population, and at the end of ninety or a hundred
years we should find the great-grandsons or the great-great-grandsons
of the wild marauders who first crossed the Jaxartes, so different from
their ancestors in features both of mind and body, that they hardly
would be recognized as deserving the Tartar name. At the end of that
period their power came to an end, the Saracens became masters of them
and of their country, but the process of emigration southward from the
Scythian desert, which had never intermitted during the years of their
domination, continued still, though that domination was no more.
Here it is necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of that
association of the Turkish tribes from the Volga to the Eastern Sea, to
which I have given the name of Empire:—it was not so much of a
political as of a national character; it was the power, not of a
system, but of a race. They were not one well-organized state, but a
number of independent tribes, acting generally together, acknowledging
one leader or not, according to circumstances, combining and
coöperating from the identity of object which acted on them, and often
jealous of each other and quarrelling with each other on account of
that very identity. Each tribe made its way down to the south as it
could; one blocked up the way of the other for a time; there were
stoppages and collisions, but there was a continual movement and
progress. Down they came one after another, like wolves after their
prey; and as the tribes which came first became partially civilized,
and as a mixed generation arose, these would naturally be desirous of
keeping back their less polished uncles or cousins, if they could; and
would do so successfully for awhile: but cupidity is stronger than
conservatism; and so, in spite of delay and difficulty, down they would
keep coming, and down they did come, even after and in spite of the
overthrow of their Empire; crowding down as to a new world, to get what
they could, as adventurers, ready to turn to the right or the left,
prepared to struggle on anyhow, willing to be forced forward into
countries farther still, careless what might turn up, so that they did
but get down. And this was the process which went on (whatever were
their fortunes when they actually got down, prosperous or adverse) for
400, nay, I will say for 700 years. The storehouse of the north was
never exhausted; it sustained the never-ending run upon its resources.
2.
I was just now referring to a change in the Turks, which I have
mentioned before, and which had as important a bearing as any other of
their changes upon their subsequent fortunes. It was a change in their
physiognomy and shape, so striking as to recommend them to their
masters for the purposes of war or of display. Instead of bearing any
longer the hideous exterior which in the Huns frightened the Romans and
Goths, they were remarkable, even as early as the ninth century, when
they had been among the natives of Sogdiana only two hundred years, for
the beauty of their persons. An important political event was the
result: hence the introduction of the Turks into the heart of the
Saracenic empire. By this time the Caliphs had removed from Damascus to
Bagdad; Persia was the imperial province, and into Persia they were
introduced for the reason I have mentioned, sometimes as slaves,
sometimes as captives taken in war, sometimes as mercenaries for the
Saracenic armies: at length they were enrolled as guards to the Caliph,
and even appointed to offices in the palace, to the command of the
forces, and to governorships in the provinces. The son of the
celebrated Harun al Raschid had as many as 50,000 of these troops in
Bagdad itself. And thus slowly and silently they made their way to the
south, not with the pomp and pretence of conquest, but by means of that
ordinary intercommunion which connected one portion of the empire of
the Caliphs with another. In this manner they were introduced even into
Egypt.
This was their history for a hundred and fifty years, and what do we
suppose would be the result of this importation of barbarians into the
heart of a flourishing empire? Would they be absorbed as slaves or
settlers in the mass of the population, or would they, like mercenaries
elsewhere, be fatal to the power that introduced them? The answer is
not difficult, considering that their very introduction argued a want
of energy and resource in the rulers whom they served. To employ them
was a confession of weakness; the Saracenic power indeed was not very
aged, but the Turkish was much younger, and more vigorous;—then too
must be considered the difference of national character between the
Turks and the Saracens. A writer of the beginning of the present
century,[35] compares the Turks to the Romans; such parallels are
generally fanciful and fallacious; but, if we must accept it in the
present instance, we may complete the picture by likening the Saracens
and Persians to the Greeks, and we know what was the result of the
collision between Greece and Rome. The Persians were poets, the
Saracens were philosophers. The mathematics, astronomy, and botany were
especial subjects of the studies of the latter. Their observatories
were celebrated, and they may be considered to have originated the
science of chemistry. The Turks, on the other hand, though they are
said to have a literature, and though certain of their princes have
been patrons of letters, have never distinguished themselves in
exercises of pure intellect; but they have had an energy of character,
a pertinacity, a perseverance, and a political talent, in a word, they
then had the qualities of mind necessary for ruling, in far greater
measure, than the people they were serving. The Saracens, like the
Greeks, carried their arms over the surface of the earth with an
unrivalled brilliancy and an unchequered success; but their dominion,
like that of Greece, did not last for more than 200 or 300 years. Rome
grew slowly through many centuries, and its influence lasts to this
day; the Turkish race battled with difficulties and reverses, and made
its way on amid tumult and complication, for a good 1,000 years from
first to last, till at length it found itself in possession of
Constantinople, and a terror to the whole of Europe. It has ended its
career upon the throne of Constantine; it began it as the slave and
hireling of the rulers of a great empire, of Persia and Sogdiana.
3.
As to Sogdiana, we have already reviewed one season of power and
then in turn of reverse which there befell the Turks; and next a more
remarkable outbreak and its reaction mark their presence in Persia. I
have spoken of the formidable force, consisting of Turks, which formed
the guard of the Caliphs immediately after the time of Harun al
Raschid:—suddenly they rebelled against their master, burst into his
apartment at the hour of supper, murdered him, and cut his body into
seven pieces. They got possession of the symbols of imperial power, the
garment and the staff of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake
Caliphs at their pleasure. In the course of four years they had
elevated, deposed, and murdered as many as three. At their wanton
caprice, they made these successors of the false prophet the sport of
their insults and their blows. They dragged them by the feet, stripped
them, and exposed them to the burning sun, beat them with iron clubs,
and left them for days without food. At length, however, the people of
Bagdad were roused in defence of the Caliphate, and the Turks for a
time were brought under; but they remained in the country, or rather,
by the short-sighted policy of the moment, were dispersed throughout
it, and thus became in the sequel ready-made elements of revolution for
the purposes of other traitors of their own race, who, at a later
period, as we shall presently see, descended on Persia from Turkistan.
Indeed, events were opening the way slowly, but surely, to their
ascendancy. Throughout the whole of the tenth century, which followed,
they seem to disappear from history; but a silent revolution was all
along in progress, leading them forward to their great destiny. The
empire of the Caliphate was already dying in its extremities, and
Sogdiana was one of the first countries to be detached from his power.
The Turks were still there, and, as in Persia, filled the ranks of the
army and the offices of the government; but the political changes which
took place were not at first to their visible advantage. What first
occurred was the revolt of the Caliph's viceroy, who made himself a
great kingdom or empire out of the provinces around, extending it from
the Jaxartes, which was the northern boundary of Sogdiana, almost to
the Indian ocean, and from the confines of Georgia to the mountains of
Affghanistan. The dynasty thus established lasted for four generations
and for the space of ninety years. Then the successor happened to be a
boy; and one of his servants, the governor of Khorasan, an able and
experienced man, was forced by circumstances to rebellion against him.
He was successful, and the whole power of this great kingdom fell into
his hands; now he was a Tartar or Turk; and thus at length the Turks
suddenly appear in history, the acknowledged masters of a southern
dominion.
4.
This is the origin of the celebrated Turkish dynasty of the
Gaznevides, so called after Gazneh, or Ghizni, or Ghuznee, the
principal city, and it lasted for two hundred years. We are not
particularly concerned in it, because it has no direct relations with
Europe; but it falls into our subject, as having been instrumental to
the advance of the Turks towards the West. Its most distinguished
monarch was Mahmood, and he conquered Hindostan, which became
eventually the seat of the empire. In Mahmood the Gaznevide we have a
prince of true Oriental splendour. For him the title of Sultan or
Soldan was invented, which henceforth became the special badge of the
Turkish monarchs; as Khan is the title of the sovereign of the Tartars,
and Caliph of the sovereign of the Saracens. I have already described
generally the extent of his dominions: he inherited Sogdiana, Carisme,
Khorasan, and Cabul; but, being a zealous Mussulman, he obtained the
title of Gazi, or champion, by his reduction of Hindostan, and his
destruction of its idol temples. There was no need, however, of
religious enthusiasm to stimulate him to the war: the riches, which he
amassed in the course of it, were a recompense amply sufficient. His
Indian expeditions in all amounted to twelve, and they abound in
battles and sieges of a truly Oriental cast. “Never,” says a celebrated
historian,[36] “was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of
the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers,
the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy,” or their
elephants of war. One of the sovereigns of the country brought against
him as many as 2,500 elephants; the borderers on the Indus resisted him
with 4,000 war-boats. He was successful in every direction; he levelled
to the ground many hundreds of pagodas, and carried off their
treasures. In one of his campaigns[37] he took prisoner the prince of
Lahore, round whose neck alone were sixteen strings of jewels, valued
at £320,000 of our money. At Mutra he found five great idols of pure
gold, with eyes of rubies; and a hundred idols of silver, which, when
melted down, loaded a hundred camels with bullion.
These stories, which sound like the fables in the Arabian Nights,
are but a specimen of the wonderful fruits of the victories of this
Mahmood. His richest prize was the great temple of Sunnat, or Somnaut,
on the promontory of Guzerat, between the Indus and Bombay. It was a
place as diabolically wicked as it was wealthy, and we may safely
regard Mahmood as the instrument of divine vengeance upon it. But here
I am only concerned with its wealth, for which grave writers are the
vouchers. When this temple was taken, Mahmood entered a great square
hall, having its lofty roof supported with 56 pillars, curiously turned
and set with precious stones. In the centre stood the idol, made of
stone, and five feet high. The conqueror began to demolish it. He
raised his mace, and struck off the idol's nose. The Brahmins
interposed, and are said to have offered the fabulous sum, as Mill
considers it, of ten millions sterling for its ransom. His officers
urged him to accept it, and the Sultan himself was moved; but
recovering himself, he observed that it was somewhat more honourable to
destroy idols than to traffic in them, and proceeded to repeat his
blows at the trunk of the figure. He broke it open; it was found to be
hollow, and at once explained the prodigality of the offer of the
Brahmins. Inside was found an incalculable treasure of diamonds,
rubies, and pearls. Mahmood took away the lofty doors of sandal-wood,
which belonged to this temple, as a trophy for posterity. Till a few
years ago, they were the decoration of his tomb near Gazneh, which is
built of white marble with a cupola, and where Moollas are still
maintained to read prayers over his grave.[38] There too once hung the
ponderous mace, which few but himself could wield; but the mace has
disappeared, and the sandal gates, if genuine, were carried off about
twelve years since by the British Governor-General of India, and
restored to their old place, as an acceptable present to the impure
idolaters of Guzerat.[39]
It is not wonderful that this great conqueror should have been
overcome by the special infirmity, to which such immense plunder would
dispose him; he has left behind him a reputation for avarice. He
desired to be a patron of literature, and on one occasion he promised a
court poet a golden coin for every verse of an heroic poem he was
writing. Stimulated by the promise, “the divine poet,” to use the words
of the Persian historian, “wrote the unparalleled poem called the Shah
Namna, consisting of 60,000 couplets.” This was more than had been
bargained for by the Sultan, who, repenting of his engagement, wished
to compromise the matter for 60,000 rupees, about a sixteenth part of
the sum he had promised. The indignant author would accept no
remuneration at all, but wrote a satire upon Mahmood instead; but he
was merciful in his revenge, for he reached no more than the
seven-thousandth couplet.
There is a melancholy grandeur about the last days of this
victorious Sultan, which seems to show that even then the character of
his race was changed from the fierce impatience of Hun and Tartar to
the grave, pensive, and majestic demeanour of the Turk. Tartar he was
in his countenance, as he was painfully conscious, but his mind had a
refinement, to which the Tartar was a stranger. Broken down by an
agonizing complaint, he perceived his life was failing, and his glory
coming to an end. Two days before his death, he commanded all the
untold riches of his treasury, his sacks of gold and silver, his
caskets of precious stones, to be brought out and placed before him.
Having feasted his eyes upon them, he burst into tears; he knew they
would not long be his, but he had not the heart to give any part of
then away. The next day he caused to be drawn up before his travelling
throne, for he observed still the Tartar custom, his army of 100,000
foot and 55,000 horse, his chariots, his camels, and his 1,300
elephants of war; and again he wept, and, overcome with grief, retired
to his palace. Next day he died, after a prosperous reign of more than
thirty years.
But, to return to the general history. It will be recollected that
Mahmood's dominions stretched very far to the west, as some say, even
round the Caspian to Georgia; and it is not wonderful that, while he
was adding India to them, he found a difficulty in defending his
frontier towards Persia. Meantime, as before, his own countrymen kept
streaming down upon him without intermission from the north, and he
thought he could not do better than employ these dangerous visitors in
garrison duty against his western enemies. They took service under him,
but did not fulfil his expectations. Indeed, what followed may be
anticipated from the history which I have been giving of the Caliphs:
it was an instance of workmen emancipating themselves from their
employer. The fierce barbarians who were defending the province of
Khorasan so well for another, naturally felt that they could take as
good care of it for themselves; and when Mahmood was approaching the
end of his life, he became sensible of the error he had committed in
introducing them. He asked one of their chiefs what force he could lend
him: “If you sent one of the arrows into our camp,” was the answer,
“50,000 of us will mount to do thy bidding.” “But what if I want more?”
inquired Mahmood; “send this arrow into the camp of Balik, and you will
have another 50,000.” The Sultan asked again: “But what if I require
your whole forces?” “Send round my bow,” answered the Turk, “and the
summons will be obeyed by 200,000 horse.”[40] The foreboding, which
disclosures such as this inspired, was fulfilled the year before his
death. The Turks came into collision with his lieutenants, and defeated
one of them in a bloody action; and though he took full reprisals, and
for a while cleared the country of them, yet in the reign of his son
they succeeded in wresting from his dynasty one-half of his empire, and
Hindostan, the acquisition of Mahmood, became henceforth its principal
possession.
5.
We have now arrived at what may literally be called the
turning-point of Turkish history. We have seen them gradually descend
from the north, and in a certain degree become acclimated in the
countries where they settled. They first appear across the Jaxartes in
the beginning of the seventh century; they have now come to the
beginning of the eleventh. Four centuries or thereabout have they been
out of their deserts, gaining experience and educating themselves in
such measure as was necessary for playing their part in the civilized
world. First they came down into Sogdiana and Khorasan, and the country
below it, as conquerors; they continued in it as subjects and slaves.
They offered their services to the race which had subdued them; they
made their way by means of their new masters down to the west and the
south; they laid the foundations for their future supremacy in Persia,
and gradually rose upwards through the social fabric to which they had
been admitted, till they found themselves at length at the head of it.
The sovereign power which they had acquired in the line of the
Gaznevides, drifted off to Hindostan; but still fresh tribes of their
race poured down from the north, and filled up the gap; and while one
dynasty of Turks was established in the peninsula, a second dynasty
arose in the former seat of their power.
Now I call the era at which I have arrived the turning-point of
their fortunes, because, when they had descended down to Khorasan and
the countries below it, they might have turned to the East or to the
West, as they chose. They were at liberty to turn their forces eastward
against their kindred in Hindostan, whom they had driven out of Ghizni
and Affghanistan, or to face towards the west, and make their way
thither through the Saracens of Persia and its neighbouring countries.
It was an era which determined the history of the world. I recollect
once hearing a celebrated professor of geology attempt to draw out the
consequences which would have occurred, had there not been an outlet
for the Thames, which exists in fact, at a certain point of its course.
He said that, had the range of hills been unbroken, it would have
streamed off to the north-east, and have run into the sea at the Wash
in Lincolnshire. An utter change in the political events which came
after, another history of England, and nothing short of it, would have
been the result. An illustration such as this will at least serve to
express what I would say of the point at which we now stand in the
history of the Turks. Mahmood turned to the east; and had the barbarian
tribes which successively descended done the same, they might have
conquered the Gaznevide dynasty, they might have settled themselves,
like Timour, at Delhi, and their descendants might have been found
there by the British in their conquests during the last century; but
they would have been unknown to Europe, they would have been strange to
Constantinople, they would have had little interest for the Church.
They had rebelled against Mahmood, they had driven his family to the
East; but they did not pursue him thither; he had strength enough to
keep them off the rich territory he had appropriated; he was the
obstacle which turned the stream westward; in consequence, they looked
towards Persia, where their brethren had been so long settled, and they
directed their course for good and all towards Europe.
But this era was a turning-point in their history in another and
more serious respect. In Sogdiana and Khorasan, they had become
converts to the Mahometan faith. You will not suppose I am going to
praise a religious imposture, but no Catholic need deny that it is,
considered in itself, a great improvement upon Paganism. Paganism has
no rule of right and wrong, no supreme and immutable judge, no
intelligible revelation, no fixed dogma whatever; on the other hand,
the being of one God, the fact of His revelation, His faithfulness to
His promises, the eternity of the moral law, the certainty of future
retribution, were borrowed by Mahomet from the Church, and are
steadfastly held by his followers. The false prophet taught much which
is materially true and objectively important, whatever be its
subjective and formal value and influence in the individuals who
profess it. He stands in his creed between the religion of God and the
religion of devils, between Christianity and idolatry, between the West
and the extreme East. And so stood the Turks, on adopting his faith, at
the date I am speaking of; they stood between Christ in the West, and
Satan in the East, and they had to make their choice; and, alas! they
were led by the circumstances of the time to oppose themselves, not to
Paganism, but to Christianity. A happier lot indeed had befallen poor
Sultan Mahmood than befell his kindred who followed in his wake.
Mahmood, a Mahomedan, went eastward and found a superstition worse than
his own, and fought against it, and smote it; and the sandal doors
which he tore away from the idol temple and hung up at his tomb at
Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through centuries as the soldier
and the instrument of Heaven. The tribes which followed him, Moslem
also, faced westward, and found, not error but truth, and fought
against it as zealously, and in doing so, were simply tools of the Evil
One, and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not witnesses of God. The one
destroyed idol temples, the other Christian shrines. The one has been
saved the woe of persecuting the Bride of the Lamb; the other is of all
races the veriest brood of the serpent which the Church has encountered
since she was set up. For 800 years did the sandal gates remain at
Mahmood's tomb, as a trophy over idolatry; and for 800 years have
Seljuk and Othman been our foe, singled out as such, and denounced by
successive Vicars of Christ.
6.
The year 1048 of our era is fixed by chronologists as the date of
the rise of the Turkish power, as far as Christendom is interested in
its history.[41] Sixty-three years before this date, a Turk of high
rank, of the name of Seljuk, had quarrelled with his native prince in
Turkistan, crossed the Jaxartes with his followers, and planted himself
in the territory of Sogdiana. His father had been a chief officer in
the prince's court, and was the first of his family to embrace
Islamism; but Seljuk, in spite of his creed, did not obtain permission
to advance into Sogdiana from the Saracenic government, which at that
time was in possession of the country. After several successful
encounters, however, he gained admission into the city of Bokhara, and
there he settled. As time went on, he fully recompensed the tardy
hospitality which the Saracens had shown him; for his feud with his own
countrymen, whom he had left, took the shape of a religious enmity, and
he fought against them as pagans and infidels, with a zeal, which was
both an earnest of the devotion of his people to the faith of Mahomet,
and a training for the exercise of it. He died, it is said, in battle
against the pagans, and at the wonderful age of 107. Of his five sons,
whom he left behind him, one, Michael, was cut off prematurely in
battle against the infidels also, and has obtained the name of Shadid
or the Martyr; for in a religion where the soldier is the missionary,
the soldier is the martyr also. The other sons became rich and
powerful; they had numerous flocks and fertile pastures in Sogdiana,
till at length they attracted the notice of the Sultan Mahmood, who,
having dispossessed the Saracens of the country where Seljuk had placed
himself, looked about for mercenary troops to keep his possession of
it. It was one of Seljuk's family, who at a later date alarmed Mahmood
by telling him he could bring 200,000 horsemen from the Scythian
wilderness, if he sent round his bow to summon them; it was Seljuk's
horde and retainers that ultimately forced back Mahmood's son into the
south and the east, and got possession of Sogdiana and Khorasan. Having
secured this acquisition, they next advanced into Persia, and this was
the event, which is considered to fix the date of their entrance into
ecclesiastical history. It was the date of their first steadily looking
westward; it determined their destiny; they began to be enemies of the
Cross in the year 1048, under the leading of Michael the Martyr's son,
Togrul Beg.
It is the inconvenience of any mere sketch of historical
transactions, that a multiplicity of objects successively passes over
the field of view, not less independent in themselves, though not less
connected in the succession of events, than the pictures of a magic
lantern. I am aware of the weariness and the perplexity which are in
consequence inflicted on the attention and the memory of the hearer;
but what can I do but ask your indulgence, Gentlemen, for a
circumstance which is inherent in any undertaking like the present? I
have in the course of an hour to deal with a series of exploits and
fortunes, which begin in the wilds of Turkistan, and conclude upon the
Bosphorus; in which, as I may say, time is no measure of events, one
while from the obscurity in which they lie, at another from their
multitude and consequent confusion. For four centuries the Turks are
little or hardly heard of; then suddenly in the course of as many tens
of years, and under three Sultans, they make the whole world resound
with their deeds; and, while they have pushed to the East through
Hindostan, in the West they have hurried down to the coasts of the
Mediterranean and the Archipelago, have taken Jerusalem, and threatened
Constantinople. In their long period of silence they had been sowing
the seeds of future conquests; in their short period of action they
were gathering the fruit of past labours and sufferings. The Saracenic
empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a Turk showed
himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he found
himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred which had been so long
in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the
Romans in a former age had shown the passes of the Caucasus; and he
could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of
his native desert, and following in his track. Such was the state of
Western Asia in the middle of the eleventh century.
7.
I have said there were three great Sultans of the race of Seljuk, by
whom the conquest of the West of Asia was begun and completed; their
names are Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I have not to write
their histories, but I may say a few words of their characters and
their actions.
1. The first, Togrul, was the son and grandson of Mahometan Martyrs,
and he inherited that fanaticism, which made the old Seljuk and the
young Michael surrender their lives in their missionary warfare against
the enemies of their faith. Each day he repeated the five prayers
prescribed for the disciples of Islam; each week he gave two days to
fasting; in every city which he made his own, he built a mosque before
he built his palace. He introduced vast numbers of his wild countrymen
into his provinces, and suffered their nomadic habits, on the condition
of their becoming proselytes to his creed. He was the man suited to his
time; mere material power was not adequate to the overthrow of the
Saracenic sovereignty: rebellion after rebellion had been successful
against the Caliph; and at the very time I speak of he was in
subjection to a family of the old Persian race. But then he was
spiritual head of the Empire as well as temporal; and, though he lay in
his palace wallowing in brutal sensuality, he was still a sort of
mock-Pope, even after his armies and his territories had been wrested
from his hands; but it was the reward of Togrul's zeal to gain from him
this spiritual prerogative, retaining which the Caliph could never have
fallen altogether. He gave to Togrul the title of Rocnoddîn, or “the
firm pillar of religion;” and, what was more to the purpose, he made
him his vicegerent over the whole Moslem world. Armed with this
religious authority, which was temporal in its operation, he went to
war against the various insurgents who troubled the Caliph's repose,
and substituted himself for them, a more powerful and insidious enemy
than any or all. But even Mahomet, the Caliph's predecessor, would not
have denied that Togrul was worthy of his hire; he turned towards
Armenia and Asia Minor, and began that terrible war against the Cross,
which was to last 500 years. The prodigious number of 130,000
Christians, in battle or otherwise, is said to be the sacrifice he
offered up to the false prophet. On his victorious return, he was again
recognized by his grateful master as his representative. He made his
public entry into the imperial city on horseback. At the palace gate he
showed the outward deference to the Caliph's authority which was his
policy. He dismounted, his nobles laid aside their arms, and thus they
walked respectfully into the recesses of the palace. According to the
Saracenic ceremonial, the Caliph received them behind his black veil,
the black garment of his family was cast over his shoulders, and the
staff of Mahomet was in his hand. Togrul kissed the ground, and waited
modestly, till he was led to the throne, and was there allowed to seat
himself, and to hear the commission publicly declaring him invested
with the authority of the Vicar of the Arch-deceiver. He was then
successively clothed in seven robes of honour, and presented with seven
slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Saracenic Empire. His
veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were set upon his head; two
scimitars were girded on his side, in token of his double reign over
East and West. He twice kissed the Caliph's hand; and his titles were
proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the Moslem.
Such was Togrul Beg, and such was his reward. After these exploits,
he marched against his brother (for these Turkish tribes were always
quarrelling over their prey), deposed him, strangled him and put to
death a number of his adherents, married the Caliph's daughter, and
then died without children. His power passed to his nephew Alp Arslan.
2. Alp Arslan, the second Sultan of the line of Seljuk, is said to
signify in Turkish “the courageous lion:” and the Caliph gave its
possessor the Arabic appellation of Azzaddin, or “Protector of
Religion.” It was the distinctive work of his short reign to pass from
humbling the Caliph to attacking the Greek Emperor. Togrul had already
invaded the Greek provinces of Asia Minor, from Cilicia to Armenia,
along a line of 600 miles, and here it was that he had achieved his
tremendous massacres of Christians. Alp Arslan renewed the war; he
penetrated to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, attracted by the gold and pearls
which encrusted the shrine of the great St. Basil. He then turned his
arms against Armenia and Georgia, and conquered the hardy mountaineers
of the Caucasus, who at present give such trouble to the Russians.
After this he encountered, defeated, and captured the Greek Emperor. He
began the battle with all the solemnity and pageantry of a hero of
romance. Casting away his bow and arrows, he called for an iron mace
and scimitar; he perfumed his body with musk, as if for his burial, and
dressed himself in white, that he might be slain in his winding-sheet.
After his victory, the captive Emperor of New Rome was brought before
him in a peasant's dress; he made him kiss the ground beneath his feet,
and put his foot upon his neck. Then, raising him up, he struck or
patted him three times with his hand, and gave him his life and, on a
large ransom, his liberty. At this time the Sultan was only forty-four
years of age, and seemed to have a career of glory still before him.
Twelve hundred nobles stood before his throne; two hundred thousand
soldiers marched under his banner. As if dissatisfied with the South,
he turned his arms against his own paternal wildernesses, with which
his family, as I have related, had a feud. New tribes of Turks seem to
have poured down, and were wresting Sogdiana from the race of Seljuk,
as the Seljukians had wrested it from the Gaznevides. Alp had not
advanced far into the country, when he met his death from the hand of a
captive. A Carismian chief had withstood his progress, and, being
taken, was condemned to a lingering execution. On hearing the sentence,
he rushed forward upon Alp Arslan; and the Sultan, disdaining to let
his generals interfere, bent his bow, but, missing his aim, received
the dagger of his prisoner in his breast. His death, which followed,
brings before us that grave dignity of the Turkish character, of which
we have already had an example in Mahmood. Finding his end approaching,
he has left on record a sort of dying confession:—“In my youth,” he
said, “I was advised by a sage to humble myself before God, to distrust
my own strength, and never to despise the most contemptible foe. I have
neglected these lessons, and my neglect has been deservedly punished.
Yesterday, as from an eminence, I beheld the numbers, the discipline,
and the spirit of my armies; the earth seemed to tremble under my feet,
and I said in my heart, Surely thou art the king of the world, the
greatest and most invincible of warriors. These armies are no longer
mine; and, in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the
hand of an assassin.” On his tomb was engraven an inscription,
conceived in a similar spirit. “O ye, who have seen the glory of Alp
Arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it
buried in the dust.”[42] Alp Arslan was adorned with great natural
qualities both of intellect and of soul. He was brave and liberal:
just, patient, and sincere: constant in his prayers, diligent in his
alms, and, it is added, witty in his conversation;—but his gifts
availed him not.
3. It often happens in the history of states and races, in which
there is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest
glories take place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun.
Thus, for instance, in the history of the Ottoman Turks, to which I
have not yet come, Soliman the Magnificent is at once the last and
greatest of a series of great Sultans. So was it as regards this house
of Seljuk. Malek Shah, the son of Alp Arslan, the third sovereign, in
whom its glories ended, is represented to us in history in colours so
bright and perfect, that it is difficult to believe we are not reading
the account of some mythical personage. He came to the throne at the
early age of seventeen; he was well-shaped, handsome, polished both in
manners and in mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. He engaged
himself even more in the consolidation of his empire than in its
extension. He reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he repaired the
high roads, bridges, and canals; he built an imperial mosque at Bagdad;
he founded and nobly endowed a college. He patronised learning and
poetry, and he reformed the calendar. He provided marts for commerce;
he upheld the pure administration of justice, and protected the
helpless and the innocent. He established wells and cisterns in great
numbers along the road of pilgrimage to Mecca; he fed the pilgrims, and
distributed immense sums among the poor.
He was in every respect a great prince; he extended his conquests
across Sogdiana to the very borders of China. He subdued by his
lieutenants Syria and the Holy Land, and took Jerusalem. He is said to
have travelled round his vast dominions twelve times. So potent was he,
that he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great
princes. He gave to his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and
planted him over against Constantinople, as an earnest of future
conquests; and he may be said to have finally allotted to the Turcomans
the fair regions of Western Asia, over which they roam to this day.
All human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great
Sultan's rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he
came to his power, the earlier did he lose it He had reigned twenty
years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with
pride and came to his end. He disgraced and abandoned to an assassin
his faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years
had been the servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk. After
obtaining from the Caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title
of “the commander of the faithful,” unsatisfied still, he wished to fix
his own throne in Bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his
few remaining honours. He demanded the hand of the daughter of the
Greek Emperor, a Christian, in marriage. A few days, and he was no
more; he had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was
opened, and the blood would not flow. A burning fever took him off,
only eighteen days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten
before the day when the Caliph was to have been removed from Bagdad.
8.
Such is human greatness at the best, even were it ever so innocent;
but as to this poor Sultan, there is another aspect even of his
glorious deeds. If I have seemed here or elsewhere in these Lectures to
speak of him or his with interest or admiration, only take me,
Gentlemen, as giving the external view of the Turkish history, and that
as introductory to the determination of its true significance.
Historians and poets may celebrate the exploits of Malek; but what were
they in the sight of Him who has said that whoso shall strike against
His corner-stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall,
shall be ground to powder? Looking at this Sultan's deeds as mere
exhibitions of human power, they were brilliant and marvellous; but
there was another judgment of them formed in the West, and other
feelings than admiration roused by them in the faith and the chivalry
of Christendom. Especially was there one, the divinely appointed
shepherd of the poor of Christ, the anxious steward of His Church, who
from his high and ancient watch tower, in the fulness of apostolic
charity, surveyed narrowly what was going on at thousands of miles from
him, and with prophetic eye looked into the future age; and scarcely
had that enemy, who was in the event so heavily to smite the Christian
world, shown himself, when he gave warning of the danger, and prepared
himself with measures for averting it. Scarcely had the Turk touched
the shores of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, when the Pope
detected and denounced him before all Europe. The heroic Pontiff, St.
Gregory the Seventh, was then upon the throne of the Apostle; and
though he was engaged in one of the severest conflicts which Pope has
ever sustained, not only against the secular power, but against bad
bishops and priests, yet at a time when his very life was not his own,
and present responsibilities so urged him, that one would fancy he had
time for no other thought, Gregory was able to turn his mind to the
consideration of a contingent danger in the almost fabulous East. In a
letter written during the reign of Malek Shah, he suggested the idea of
a crusade against the misbeliever, which later popes carried out. He
assures the Emperor of Germany, whom he was addressing, that he had
50,000 troops ready for the holy war, whom he would fain have led in
person. This was in the year 1074.
In truth, the most melancholy accounts were brought to Europe of the
state of things in the Holy Land. A rude Turcoman ruled in Jerusalem;
his people insulted there the clergy of every profession; they dragged
the patriarch by the hair along the pavement, and cast him into a
dungeon, in hopes of a ransom; and disturbed from time to time the
Latin Mass and office in the Church of the Resurrection. As to the
pilgrims, Asia Minor, the country through which they had to travel in
an age when the sea was not yet safe to the voyager, was a scene of
foreign incursion and internal distraction. They arrived at Jerusalem
exhausted by their sufferings, and sometimes terminated them by death,
before they were permitted to kiss the Holy Sepulchre.
9.
Outrages such as these were of frequent occurrence, and one was very
like another. In concluding, however, this Lecture, I think it worth
while to set before you, Gentlemen, the circumstances of one of them in
detail, that you may be able to form some ideas of the state both of
Asia Minor and of a Christian pilgrimage, under the dominion of the
Turks. You may recollect, then, that Alp Arslan, the second Seljukian
Sultan, invaded Asia Minor, and made prisoner the Greek Emperor. This
Sultan came to the throne in 1062, and appears to have begun his
warlike operations immediately. The next year, or the next but one, a
body of pilgrims, to the number of 7,000, were pursuing their peaceful
way to Jerusalem, by a route which at that time lay entirely through
countries professing Christianity.[43] The pious company was headed by
the Archbishop of Mentz, the Bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon,
and, among others, by a party of Norman soldiers and clerks, belonging
to the household of William Duke of Normandy, who made himself, very
soon afterwards, our William the Conqueror. Among these clerks was the
celebrated Benedictine Monk Ingulphus, William's secretary, afterwards
Abbot of Croyland in Lincolnshire, being at that time a little more
than thirty years of age. They passed through Germany and Hungary to
Constantinople, and thence by the southern coast of Asia Minor or
Anatolia, to Syria and Palestine. When they got on the confines of Asia
Minor towards Cilicia, they fell in with the savage Turcomans, who were
attracted by the treasure, which these noble persons and wealthy
churchmen had brought with them for pious purposes and imprudently
displayed. Ingulphus's words are few, but so graphic that I require an
apology for using them. He says then, they were “exenterated” or
“cleaned out of the immense sums of money they carried with them,
together with the loss of many lives.”
A contemporary historian gives us fuller particulars of the
adventure, and he too appears to have been a party to the
expedition.[44] It seems the prelates celebrated the rites of the
Church with great magnificence, as they went along, and travelled with
a pomp which became great dignitaries. The Turcomans in consequence set
on them, overwhelmed them, stripped them to the skin, and left the
Bishop of Utrecht disabled and half dead upon the field. The poor
sufferers effected their retreat to a village, where they fortified an
enclosure and took possession of a building which stood within it. Here
they defended themselves courageously for as many as three days, though
they are said to have had nothing to eat. At the end of that time they
expressed a wish to surrender themselves to the enemy, and admitted
eighteen of the barbarian leaders into their place of strength, with a
view of negotiating the terms. The Bishop of Bamberg, who is said to
have had a striking presence, acted for the Christians, and bargained
for nothing more than their lives. The savage Turcoman, who was the
speaker on the other side, attracted by his appearance, unrolled his
turban, and threw it round the Bishop's neck, crying out: “You and all
of you are mine.” The Bishop made answer by an interpreter: “What will
you do to me?” The savage shrieked out some unintelligible words,
which, being explained to the Bishop, ran thus: “I will suck that blood
which is so ruddy in your throat, and then I will hang you up like a
dog at your gate.” “Upon which,” says the historian, “the Bishop, who
had the modesty of a gentleman, and was of a grave disposition, not
bearing the insult, dashed his fist into the Turcoman's face with such
vigour as to fell him to the ground, crying out that the profane wretch
should rather be the sufferer, for laying his unclean hands upon a
priest.”
This was the signal for an exploit so bold, that it seemed, if I may
so express myself, like a particular inspiration. The Christians,
unarmed as they were, started up, and though, as I have observed, they
may be said to have scarcely tasted food for three days, rushed upon
the eighteen Turcomans, bound their arms behind their backs, and
showing them in this condition to their own troops who surrounded the
house, protested that they would instantly put them all to death,
unless they themselves were let go. It is difficult to see how this
complication would have ended, in which neither side were in a
condition either to recede or to advance, had not a third party
interfered with a considerable force in the person of the military
governor, himself a Pagan,[45] of a neighbouring city; and though, as
our historian says, the Christians found it difficult to understand how
Satan could cast out Satan, so it was, that they found themselves at
liberty and their enemies marched off to punishment, on the payment of
a sum of money to their deliverers. I need not pursue the history of
these pilgrims further than to say, that, of 7,000 who set out, only
2,000 returned to Europe.
* * * * *
Much less am I led to enter into the history of the Crusades which
followed. How the Holy See, twenty years after St. Gregory, effected
that which St. Gregory attempted without result; how, along the very
way which the pilgrims I have described journeyed, 100,000 men at
length appeared cased in complete armour and on horseback; how they
drove the Turk from Nicæa over against Constantinople, where he had
fixed his imperial city, to the farther borders of Asia Minor; how,
after defeating him in a pitched battle at Dorylæum, they went on and
took Antioch, and then at length, after a long pilgrimage of three
years, made conquest of Jerusalem itself, I need not here relate. To
one point only is it to our present purpose to direct attention. It is
commonly said that the Crusades failed in their object; that they were
nothing else but a lavish expenditure of men and treasure; and that the
possession of the Holy Places by the Turks to this day is a proof of
it. Now I will not enter here into a very intricate controversy; this
only will I say, that, if the tribes of the desert, under the
leadership of the house of Seljuk, turned their faces to the West in
the middle of the eleventh century; if in forty years they had advanced
from Khorasan to Jerusalem and the neighbourhood of Constantinople; and
if in consequence they were threatening Europe and Christianity; and
if, for that reason, it was a great object to drive them back or break
them to pieces; if it were a worthy object of the Crusades to rescue
Europe from this peril and to reassure the anxious minds of Christian
multitudes;—then were the Crusades no failure in their issue, for this
object was fully accomplished. The Seljukian Turks were hurled back
upon the East, and then broken up, by the hosts of the Crusaders.[46]
The lieutenant of Malek Shah, who had been established as Sultan of
Roum (as Asia Minor was called by the Turks), was driven to an obscure
town, where his dynasty lasted, indeed, but gradually dwindled away. A
similar fate attended the house of Seljuk in other parts of the Empire,
and internal quarrels increased and perpetuated its weakness. Sudden as
was its rise, as sudden was its fall; till the terrible Zingis,
descending on the Turkish dynasties, like an avalanche, coöperated
effectually with the Crusaders and finished their work; and if
Jerusalem was not protected from other enemies, at least Constantinople
was saved, and Europe was placed in security, for three hundred
years.[47]
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Thornton.
[36] Gibbon.
[37] Vid. Dow's Hindostan.
[38] Caldecott's Baber. Vid. also Elphinstone, vol. ii. p. 366.
[39] “Our victorious army bears the gates of the temple of Somnauth
in triumph from Affghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmood
looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of 800 years is at last
avenged,” etc., etc.—Proclamation of the Governor-General to all
the princes, chiefs, and people of India.
[40] Gibbon. Universal Hist.
[41] Baronius, Pagi.
[42] Gibbon.
[43] Baronius, Gibbon.
[44] Vid. Cave's Hist. Litterar. in nom. Lambertus.
[45] Gibbon makes this the Fatimite governor of some town in
Galilee, laying the scene in Palestine. The name Capernaum is
doubtfully mentioned in the history, but the occurrence is said to have
taken place on the borders of Lycia. Anyhow, there were Turcomans in
Palestine. Part of the account in the text is taken from Marianus
Scotus.
[46] I should observe that the Turks were driven out of Jerusalem by
the Fatimites of Egypt, two years before the Crusaders appeared.
[47] I am pleased to see that Mr. Sharon Turner takes the same view
strongly.—England in Middle Ages, i. 9. Also Mr. Francis
Newman; “The See of Rome,” he says, “had not forgotten, if Europe had,
how deadly and dangerous a war Charles Martel and the Franks had had to
wage against the Moors from Spain. A new and redoubtable nation, the
Seljuk Turks, had now appeared on the confines of Europe, as a fresh
champion of the Mohammedan Creed; and it is not attributing too much
foresight or too sagacious policy to the Court of Rome, to believe,
that they wished to stop and put down the Turkish power before it
should come too near. Be this as it may, such was the result. The might
of the Seljukians was crippled on the plains of Palestine, and did not
ultimately reach Europe.... A large portion of Christendom, which
disowned the religious pretensions of Rome, was afterwards subdued by
another Turkish tribe, the Ottomans or Osmanlis; but Romish Christendom
remained untouched: Poland, Germany, and Hungary, saved her from the
later Turks, even during the schism of the Reformation, as the Franks
had saved her from the Moors. On the whole, it would seem that to the
Romish Church we have been largely indebted for that union between
European nations, without which Mohammedanism might perhaps not have
been repelled. I state this as probable, not at all as certain.”—
Lectures at Manchester, 1846.