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and while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians, they renounced all intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the idolaters of China

nople and

empire from

A.D.

1240-1304.

In this shipwreck of nations some surprise may be excited by the escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of Escape of the Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and ConstantLatins. Less potent than Alexander, they were pressed, the Greek like the Macedonian, both in Europe and Asia, by the the Moguls, shepherds of Scythia; and had the Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; 34 and in a second expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants, and regulated the tributes, of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend, and the Greeks might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus,3 at a distance from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a Thracian castle by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance of Azzadin the Turkish sultan, and were content with his person and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak, obtained in marriage Maria the natural daughter of Palæologus, and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and fugitives; and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first terror of their arms secured rather than disturbed the peace of the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy

"Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew Paris, p. 545, 546) might propagate and colour the report of the union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310), after forty years beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.

25 See Pachymer, 1. iii. c. 25, and 1. ix. c. 26, 27; and the false alarm at Nice, 1. iii. 8.27 [c. 28, tom. i. p. 244. . Bonn]; Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. iv. c. 6

encouraged the Turks to defend their barrier against the common 36 That barrier indeed was soon overthrown, and the servienemy. tude and ruin of the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which ne had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful litany, "From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us,” had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind credulity of fear the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe. But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately diverted by the conquest of Bagdad and a long vicissitude of Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to unite with the Greeks and Franks; 37 and their generosity or contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of Persia ; and he often interposed his authority, and sometimes his arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan,38 one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the OTTO

Decliue of the Mogul

kbans of
Persia,

A.D. 1304,
May 31.

MAN EMPIRE.39

After the retreat of Zingis the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had returned from India to the possession and defence of his Persian

G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37; Nic. Greg. 1. ii. c. 6, l. iv. c. 5.

37 Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a competent witness. Hayton likewise, the Armeniac prince, celebrates their friendship for.himself and his nation.

38

Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the rival of Cyrus and Alexander (1. xii. c. 1). In the conclusion of his history (1. xiii. c. 36 [tom. ii. p. 651, ed. Bonn]), he hopes much from the arrival of 30,000 Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D. 1308.

The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by the critical learning of MM. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 329-337) and D'Anville (Empire Turc, p. 14-22), two inhabitants of Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the history and geography of their own country."

"They may be still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, by M. von Hammer Purgstall of Vienna. -M. The English reader will find an ex

cellent abstract of this work in Professor Creasy's History of the Ottoman Turks 1854,-Ş.

Origin of the

A.D. 1240, &c.

kingdoms. In the space of eleven years that hero fought in person fourteen battles; and such was his activity that he led his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march Ottomans, of a thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the Moslem princes and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and after his last defeat Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved a veteran and adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians or Corasmins many Turkman hordes that had attached themselves to the sultan's fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more humble engaged in the service of Aladin sultan of Iconium, and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat remarkable that the same spot should have produced the first authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At the head, or in the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became the soldier and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he governed fifty-two years both in peace and war. He was the father of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the appellation of the caliph Othman ; and if we de- Reign of scribe that pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those characters all idea of ignominy and base- 1299-1326. ness. Othman possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious to his independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no more, and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his gazi, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of Palæologus these passes had been vigilantly guarded by the militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of July, in the year twelve

⚫ Osman is the real Turkish name, which has been corrupted into Othman. The descendants of his subjects style

Othman,

A.D.

themselves Osmanlis, which has in like manner been corrupted into Ottoman.-S

hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian æra, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; 10 and the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the most useful and defensible posts, fortified the towns and castles which he had first pillaged, and renounced the pastoral life for the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities that he received the welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The glory of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the Turks have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last counsels of justice and moderation.11

40 See Pachymer, 1. x. c. 25, 26, 1. xiii. c. 33, 34, 36, and concerning the guard of the mountains, 1. i. c. 3-6; Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. vii. c. 1; and the first book of Laonicus Chalcocondyles, the Athenian.

41 I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older than Mahomet II.,b nor can I reach beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550), translated by John Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius (ad calcem Laonic. Chalcocond. p. 311-350), with copious pandects, or commentaries. The History of the Growth and Decay (A.D. 1300-1683) of the Othman Empire was translated into English from the Latin MS. of Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia (London, 1734, in folio). The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history; but he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions of the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696 to sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original historians. In one of the Ramblers Dr. Johnson praises Knolles (A General History of the Turks to the present Year: London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism.

He had become chief of his race on lived during the reign of Bajazet II., but, the death of Orthogrul in 1288.-S.

b We could have wished that M. von Hammer had given a more clear and distinct reply to this question of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p. 630, M. von Hammer shows that they had not only sheiks (religious writers) and learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to historians. The oldest of their historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the 'Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade,' i. e. the History of the Great Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervise and celebrated ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author of the work,

he says, derived much information from the book of Scheik Jachshi, the son of Elias, who was imaum to sultan Orchan (the second Ottoman king), and who related, from the lips of his father, the circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having searched for it in vain for five-and-twenty years) our author found at length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories on his list, as indeed this, were written during the reign of Mahomet II. It does not appear whether any of the rest cite earlier authorities of equal value with that claimed by the

Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade.'-M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p. 292).

Reign of
Orchan,

A.D.

From the conquest of Prusa we may date the true æra of the Ottoman empire. The lives and possessions of the Christian subjects were redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand crowns of gold; and the city, by the labours of 1326-1360. Orchan, assumed the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a mosque, a college, and an hospital, of royal foundation; the Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of the new dynasty; and the most skilful professors of human and divine knowledge attracted the Persian and Arabian students from the ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizir was instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; and a different habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems from the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of loose squadrons of Turkman cavalry, who served without pay and fought without discipline; but a regular body of infantry was first established and trained by the prudence of his son. A great number of volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with the permission of living at home, unless they were summoned to the field: their rude manners and seditious temper disposed Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those of the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount on horseback and follow his standard, with the appellation and the hopes of freebooters. By these arts he formed an army of twenty-five thousand Moslems: a train of battering engines was framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful experiment was made on the cities of Nice and Nicomedia. His conquest Orchan granted a safe-conduct to all who were desirous of of Bithynia, departing with their families and effects; but the widows of 1326-1339. the slain were given in marriage to the conquerors; and the sacrilegious plunder, the books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at Constantinople. The emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished and wounded by the son of Othman : 42 he subdued the whole province or kingdom of Bithynia as far as the shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the justice and clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary attachment of

A.D.

42 Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic flight of the younger Andronicus (1. ii. c. 6, 7, 8), dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia, which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras (1. viii. 15; ix. 9, 13; xi. 6). It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in 1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat different from the Turkish dates.

* Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. ten pashaliks or kingdoms of the Selju. p. 82.-M. kians in Asia Minor, see V.Hammer, vol. L p. 112.-M

b Ibid. p. 91.-M.

For the conquests of Orahan over the

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