Khwârizm, at that period the seats of Oriental science and learning, were subdued by the Tûrki hordes. In the following century the Ghaznevide dynasty, whose dominion spread over great part of India and Persia, the dynasties of the Seljuks in Persia, the vassalage of the Khalifs of Baghdad to their Turkoman guards, and the final destruction of the Khalifat itself, the successive conquest of Armenia, Asia Minor, and in the end of the whole Empire styled the Turkish, from its founders, attest the valour and enterprize of the Tûrki tribes. The Moghuls were unknown beyond the wilds of Tartary, from the age of Attila till the thirteenth century, when their leader, the celebrated Chengîz Khan, after having subdued all the neighbouring Tartar tribes, particularly those of Tûrki extraction, who, under the dynasty that existed down to his time, had possessed the ascendency over the Moghuls, burst into the provinces of Turân, Mâweralnaher, Khwârizm, and Khorâsân, subdued part of India, reduced Azerbaejân, and a considerable portion of Persia, the Tûrki tribes of Kipchâk, and a great part of China, leaving those vast countries which were much more extensive than the Roman Empire at the period of its widest dominion, to be governed by his posterity. His successors pursuing the tract of conquest, traversed Russia, marched over Poland, and poured their troops into Hungary, Bohemia, and Silesia; accident alone, perhaps, prevented the cities of Germany from undergoing the fate of Samarkand and Bokhâra, cities at that time the seats of greater refinement and politeness than any in Europe; and it has been truly observed, that the disordered digestion of a barbarian on the borders of China, by withdrawing the Moghul armies from the west, may have saved us from the misfortune of witnessing at this day a Tartar dynasty in the richest countries of the west of Europe. The superiority acquired by Chengîz Khan, a Moghul, over the Tûrki tribes, has never been entirely lost. His empire, after his death, having been divided which strongly calls to our mind the kûrûgh or kûrûk of the Princes of Persia and Hindustân, which, though it has more the air of a Mahometan than of a Tartar usage, is confined to Tartar Princes.-(See Bernier's Journey to Kashmir, and Kompfer's Amoenitates Exoticæ.) The Roman ambassadors received a plentiful supply of provisions," and a certain liquor named camus, which, according to the report of Priscus, was distilled from barley."—(Gibbon ut supra, p. 71.) There can be little doubt that this was the intoxicating spirit prepared from mare's milk, which in all ages has been the favourite beverage of the Tartars, as it is at the present day; and which still retains its ancient name of Kamiz. Rubriquis, A. D. 1253, calls it Cosmos.-Hakluyt, vol. I. p. 83. Bleda's polite widow, who supplied the Roman strangers with a sufficient number of beauteous and obsequious damsels, probably only followed, as far as her circumstances permitted, the manners of some tribes of Moghuls, probably her countrymen, according to which the husband abandons his house and his wife to the temporary occupation of the traveller who honours him with a visit. One of Attila's sons is named Dengisick, perhaps from having been born near the Euxine, the Caspian, or some other sea, the word Dengis signifying a sea in the language of the Turks. As to the name of Attila, as that Prince did not succeed his father, but assumed the government on the death of his uncle, it seems not improbable that he was originally considered as regent for his predecessor's children, and thence acquired the name of Atalik,* a term so often occurring in the following Memoirs in the sense of regent or guardian. The dynasties of the Atabeks in Persia arose in the same manner from the usurpation of the regents; Atabek, meaning in Tûrki "Father of the Prince." Such etymological conjectures, however, are necessarily very uncertain. I have already observed that Attila's army seems to have been composed of tribes both of Moghuls and Tûrks, and even of other races: that both these languages, and perhaps some others, were probably spoken in his camp as in that of Chengîz Khan, but that, like that monarch, he was himself a Moghul.

Atalik literally signifies loco-parentis, or quasi-parens.

among his sons, who seem to have been accompanied to their governments by numerous families, and even by tribes, or parts of tribes of Moghuls, who followed their princes, the chief authority in all the conquered countries continued for a series of years to be in the hands of that race; and even the chiefs of Tûrki tribes, if not Moghuls themselves, appear to have been ambitious of connecting themselves by intermarriages with Moghul families; so that, at the present day, the greater part of them trace up their descent to Chengîz Khan. The descendants of these Moghuls and Moghul families, however, being placed among a people who spoke a different language, gradually adopted that of their subjects, as is usual in all conquered countries, where the conquerors are few and the conquered many; so that the Tûrks and their chieftains being now freed from any dependence on the Moghuls, are once more completely separated from them both by government and language, and regard them as strangers and foreigners. Whether the Moghul and Tûrki languages differ from each other essentially, or only as very different dialects of the same tongue, is a question which I have never seen clearly decided. Of the Moghul I possess no vocabulary, by which a comparison could be instituted with the Tûrki.* An examination of the lists in the Comparative Vocabulary made by order of the Empress of Russia, or of those in the Mithridates of the learned Adelung, would go far towards deciding the question, which is one of considerable curiosity. If the Tûrks, as is probable, inhabited the neighbourhood of the Caspian, as early as the days of Herodotus, by whom the Turkai are mentioned,† and if they always inhabited the country from Tibet to the Black Sea, their language may reasonably be supposed to have had some influence on that of their neighbours. But if, in addition to this, we consider the frequency of their irruptions into the south of Asia for the last fourteen hundred years, under their own name, and probably for a much longer period under that of Scythians; that one half of the population consists of Tûrki tribes, or of Tûrks settled in towns, but still speaking their native tongue; that the most numerous race next to the Slavonians, in the extensive empire of Russia, are the Tûrks; that several Turkoman tribes also traverse the wastes of Turkey, and that the Ottoman Empire itself, as well as the Turkish language, owes its origin to the northern Tûrks, we shall probably feel some surprise that a language so extensively spoken, and which seems to promise so rich a field to the industry of the philologist, should have been so much overlooked, and even its existence scarcely known, except in the Osmanli dialect of Turkey, the dialect, to the antiquary and philologist, of all others the least valuable, as most widely deviating from its primitive form. The Jaghatâi Tûrki furnishes a variety of finished works, both in prose and verse; but that dialect having been carried to its perfection in the provinces between the Amu and

Judging by the few Moghul words that I have been able to collect, I should suppose them to be totally different languages.

+ The Khozari, a Tûrki tribe, inhabited to the north of the Caspian in the middle of the fifth century, and, according to Moses of Chorene, had their Khakan (or great Khan) and their Khatuns or Princesses. Rex autem aquilonarius appellatur Chacanus, qui est Chazirorum dominus, et regina vocatur Chathunia quæ est Chacani conjux ex Barsiliorum gente orta. Moses Choren. Geog. ad calcem Hist. Armen. p. 356. Lond. 1736. 4to.-This, I imagine, is the earliest contemporary mention of these tribes. + See Tooke's View of the Russian Empire, vol. I. p. 449.

Sirr,* where the Persian was formerly spoken, is full of words borrowed with very little change from that language and from the Arabic. In the Tûrki of Baber, perhaps the purest specimen now extant of the language of his times, probably two-ninths of the whole extent may be traced to an Arabic or Persian root. Specimens of the language of the different wandering Tûrki tribes, compared with the language of Baber and with that of the Moghul tribes, would enable us to form tolerably decided notions of the affiliations of the Tûrki and Moghul races.

Another question, which has been a good deal agitated, and which to me appears to have been erroneously decided, is that which regards the application of the name of Tartar, or more properly Tatar, by which we denominate these nations. It is applied by Europeans as a general term comprehending a variety of different tribes in the northern division of Asia, and is quite unknown to the inhabitants themselves, as well as to the Indians; which last, very improperly, call'all of these tribes, as well as all Persians, and indeed any Mussulman with a whitish face, Moghuls. The term Tartar seems to have been first used by our historians and travellers about the thirteenth century. Joannes de Plano Carpini, who travelled A. D. 1246, informs us, that the country of the Moghuls, in his time, not long after the death of Chengîz Khan, was inhabited by four nations (or populi), the Yeka Mongals,† the Su-Mongals, or Water Mongals, who call themselves Tartars from a certain river called Tartar which runs through their territory, the Merkat and Metrit; and adds that all these nations speak the same language. Chengîz belonged to the Yeka Mongals, and subdued the other three divisions. All of these nations lived in the middle division of Tartary. Carpini, after describing his passage eastward through the country along the Sirr or Jaxartes, and the lands of the Tûrks whom he calls Black Kythai,§ adds, " On leaving the country of the Naymans" (which was the last of the Tûrks,) " we then entered the country of the Mongals, whom we call Tartars." || This name of Tartar, however, by which we are accustomed to designate Chengîz Khan and his successors as well as their empire, these princes themselves rejected with disdain. Rubriquis, who visited the court of Sartakh, Chengîz Khan's grandson, about the year 1254, was cautioned, therefore, to call him Moal (that is Moghul), and not Tartar; "for they wish to exalt their name of Moal above every name, and do not like to be called Tartars; for the Tartars were a different tribe;"¶ meaning, I presume, the Su-Mongals, conquered by Chengîz; and hence the victorious family did not choose to receive the name of their subject vassals. Rubriquis informs** us that Chengîz Khan, after the union of the kindred tribes of Moghuls and Tartars under his government, generally made the Tartars take the advance, and that, from this circumstance, they being the tribe who first entered the territory of their enemies, and whose name was first known, the appellation of Tartar was by foreigners applied to the whole race, to the exclusion of the superior name of Mo

*The Oxus and Jaxartes.

+ Chief or superior Moghuls.

Hakluyt, vol. I. p. 30. See also Petis de la Croix's Life of Gengis Can, p. 63, who calls the river Tata, whence Tatars. § That is Kara Khitâi.

|| Deinde terram Mongalorum intravimus, quos Tartaros appellamus. Hakl. vol. I. p. 55. Hakluyt, vol. I. p. 93.

**P. 93.

ghul. It was by the united strength of these two tribes of Moghuls that Chengîz Khan destroyed the powerful kingdom of Kara Khita, and subdued the Tûrki tribes.

As, in the time of the early successors of Chengîz Khan, the name of Tartar was erroneously transferred from one, and applied to the whole Moghul tribes; so, in latter times, and at the present day, it is, with still greater impropriety, applied by European writers to designate exclusively the tribes of Tûrki extraction, who are in reality a very different race. The French, as well as the German and Russian writers, regard the name of Tartar as properly applicable only to the western Tartars. D'Herbelot, Petis de la Croix, Pallas, Gmelin, as well as the Editor of Astley's Collection of Voyages, all agree in the propriety of this limitation. Tooke, who follows the best-informed Russian travellers, after dividing the country called Great Tartary, among the Monghuls, Tartars, and Mandshures, adds, that the appellative Tartars "is so much misapplied, that, with some inquirers into history, a doubt has even arisen, whether there ever was a peculiar people of that name. Under this denomination have been implied all tribes beyond Persia and India, as far as the Eastern Ocean, however differing from each other in regard to their origin, language, manners, religion, and customs. Now," he continues, "that we are better acquainted with these nations, we know that the Tartars in reality compose a distinct nation, which originally belonged to the great Turkish stock."* This opinion seems to be that at present universally received.+ The general name of Tartar, however, is not recognized by any of the tribes on whom it is thus bestowed. These tribes, who have the best right to fix their own appellation, know themselves only by the particular name of their tribe, or by the general name of Tûrk: their language they call the Tûrki, and if the name of Tartar is to be admitted as at all applicable peculiarly to any one of the three races,‡ it belongs to the Moghuls, one of whose tribes the ancient Tatars were, with much greater propriety, than to either of the others.

It is curious, that in like manner as in Modern Europe, the name of Tatar, taken from a Moghul tribe, was bestowed on all the inhabitants of these vast regions; so, among the Arab conquerors of Asia, and the Arab and Persian geographers, they were all of them, Moghuls as well as Tûrks, known as Tûrks, by a name taken from a different race; while the country as far as China received the name of Tûrkestân. This singularity arose from a very obvious cause, the relative position of the Arabs and Tûrks. The country of Tûrkestân enclosed the Arab conquests in Mâweralnaher on three sides. Being in immediate contact with Tûrki tribes, and unacquainted with the varieties of race or language among the more distant wanderers of the desert, whose manners, from similarity of situation, probably were, or at least to a stranger appeared to be, nearly the same, they applied the name of Tûrki to all the more distant nations

• Tooke's view of the Russian Empire, vol. I. p. 346. See Pinkerton's Geography, article Tartary. It may be remarked as singular, that though no large tribe, or union of tribes, bears at the present day the name of Tatar, it is sometimes to be found in the subdivisions of the tribes or Septs. Thus the Kachar are divided into six Aimaks, the Shulask, the Tatar, Kuban, Tubin, Mungal, and Jastyn. See Dec. Russ. vol. V. p. 183. Other similar instances occur.

§ See Abulfeda, Ulugh Beg's Tables, the Ancient Accounts of India and China by two Arabian travellers, particularly pp. 36-43, &c.

in these quarters, though differing from each other in many important respects: It has already been remarked, that the Indians use the term Moghul with still greater latitude.

66

But the difference between the Tûrks and Moghuls, if we may believe the best-informed travellers, is more marked than any that language can furnish. The Mongols, says Gmelin, have nothing in common with the Tartars (meaning the Tûrks), but their pastoral life, and a very remote resemblance in language. The Mongols differ, on the contrary, from all the races purely Tartar (Tûrki), and even from all the western nations, in their customs, in their political constitution, and above all, in their features, as much as in Africa the Negro differs from the Moor.* The description of their features, indeed, marks a race extremely different from the Tûrki. "Les traits caracteristiques de tous les visages Kalmucs et Mongoles, sont des yeux dont le grand angle, place obliquement en descendant vers le nez, est peu ouvert et charnu: des sourcils noirs peu garnis et formant un arc fort rabaissé; un conformation toute particuliere du nez, qui est generalement camus et ecrasé vers le front: les os de la joue saillans; la tête et le visage fort ronds. Ils ont ordinairement la prunelle fort brune, les levres grosses et charnues, le menton court, et les dents tres blanches, qu'ils conservent belles et saines jusques dans la vieillesse. Enfin leurs oreilles sont generalement toutes enormement grandes et detachées de la tête."+ Gmelin observes, that indeed " they have not the shadow of a tradition which could justify a suspicion that they ever composed one nation with the Tartars. The name of Tartar, or rather Tatar, is even a term of reproach among them; they derive it in their language from tatanoi, to draw together, to collect which, to them, means little better than a robber." It is singular that a name thus rejected among the nations to whom it is applied, should have had so much currency. The resemblance between Tartar and the infernal Tartarus, joined with the dread and horror in which the Tartar invaders were held, while they scattered dismay over Europe, probably, as has been well conjectured,§ preserved the name in the west. While all accounts of the Moghuls concur in giving them something hideous in their appearance, the Tûrks, on the other hand, appear to have been rather distinguished as a comely race of men. The Persians, themselves very handsome, considered them as such. Hafez and the other Persian poets, celebrate their beauty. They seem to have very much of the European features, but with more contracted eyes; a peculiarity which they probably owe to intermarriages with the Moghuls, or perhaps to something in their local situation in the deserts whence they issued. But whatever may have been the difference between these two nations, certain it is that a marked distinction did exist between them from very early times.

The manners of these roving and pastoral tribes, as described by the ancient Greek and Roman writers, agree precisely with those of their descendants at the present day; but they have been painted with so much liveliness and truth by Gibbon, in a work which is in every one's hands, that nothing need be added to what he has sketched.

See Decouvertes Russes, vol. III. p. 209, and Tooke's View of the Russian Empire, vol. III. p. 225 and 226. + Hist. des Decouvertes Russes, ut supra.

Ibid. p. 210.

§ Pinkerton.