emirs who had occupied the cities or the mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khan 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,* one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the Moguis gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE.†

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

* Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the rival of Cyrus and Alexander (l. 12, c. 1). In the conclusion of his history (1. 13, c. 36, he hopes much from the arrival of thirty thousand Tochars or Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D. 1308. + The origin

His

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. [Finlay (Byzant. Empire, ii. 527-601) and Koeppen (p. 206) are worthy of being consulted on the origin of the Ottomans, as they state some particulars omitted by Gibbon. On the approach of Dschingis-khan in 1224, Soliman-Schah, with his tribe of 50,000 Oghusian Tartars, fled from Western Khorasan to Khelat, near Lake Wan. When the Mongol storm had passed over in 1231, most of them returned to their former home, under Soliman's eldest sons. youngest, Orthogrul (the Straight), with four hundred families, took service under Alaeddin the Seljukian sultan in Roum, and was rewarded by the fertile plains between the Sangarius and Mcunt Olympus. His son (or grandson, according to Kruse, Tab. xx.) Othman or Osman (the Bone-breaker), conquered Dorylæum and Melangia (1288) and Prusa (1326), and gave his name to the empire which Orchan consolidated. Koeppen follows Von Hammer (Geschichte der Osmanen, Pesth, 1825), who wrote from an early Turkish History which he found in the Vatican. Finlay relies on his Byzantine authorities, with occasional glances at D'Ohsson and Von Ham. - ED.]

mer.

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 Karismian 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 fiftytwo 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 describe that pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. 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 27th of July, in the year 1299 of the Christian era, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; and the singular accuracy of the date seems to * See Pachymer, 1. 10, c. 25, 26; 1. 13, c. 33, 34. 36, and concerning

*

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.

the guard of the mountains, 1. 1, c. 8-6. Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. 7, c. 1, and the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles, the Athenian.

I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older than Mahomet II. nor can I reach beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad annum 1550), translated by John Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius (ad calcem Laonic. Chalcond. 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 anuals, 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. [The Mongolian, or Tartar, hosts, whom we find for many an age following each other on the track of conquest and devastation, were in no single instance a powerful homogeneous race, moving gradually onward, with a steady development of instinctively conceived design. They began as fortunate robber-bands, stimulated by first success to more daring enterprise, enrolling every day fresh adventurers, and thus awelling into those enormous masses that swept everything before them and overwhelmed more than half the then known world. Soon, 500, they were dispersed, after a transitory abuse of apparent empire;

*

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true era 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 Orchan, assumed the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a mosch, 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 and even when detached dynasties established a more enduring sway, they rapidly declined and fell. The single arm of England has wrested India from their grasp, and the lately-dreaded Ottoman Porte would have sunk before this in utter decay, had it not been supported by the politic diplomacies of jealous European courts. Mr. Layard has truly observed (Nineveh and its Remains, ii. 241), that the "Mongolian nations have scarcely a monument to record their existence; they have had no literature, no laws, no arts--they have depopulated, not peopled." The institutions of Dschingis, if not magnified, and those of Orchan (Finlay's Byzant. Empire, ii. 577-593) seem to be an exception to this censure. But they produced no per manent effect, formed no better school, and are now as if they had never been. The career of such hordes is a very uninviting study. They little illustrate the history of human progress. To bestow on them the same research and observation as on the influential impellers of improvement, would be unprofitable labour.-ED.]

*

[Finlay (p. 595) dates the establishment of the Ottoman Empire from the year 1329. But this was three years after the death of the real founder, who had some time before become powerful both by land and sea.-)

-ED.]

freebooters. By these arts he formed an army of twentyfive 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. Orchan granted a safe conduct to all who were desirous of departing with their families and effects; but the widows of 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;* 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 the Turks of Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the modest title of emir; and in the list of his compeers, the princes of Roum or Anatolia,† his military forces were surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom could bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their dominions were situate in the heart of the Seljukian kingdom; but the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who formed new principalities on the Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the light of history. The maritime country, from the Propontis to the Mæander, and the isle of Rhodes, so long threatened and so often pillaged, was finally lost about the thirtieth year of Andronicus the elder. Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and Aidin, left their names to their conquests, and their conquests to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the seven churches of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first

* Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic flight of the younger Andronicus (1. 2, c. 6-8), dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia, which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras (1. 8. 15. 9. 9. 13. 11. 6). It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in 1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat different from the Turkish dates. The partition

of the Turkish emirs is extracted from two contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus Gregoras (1. 7. 1) and the Arabian Marakeschi (De Guignes, tom. i. p. 2, p. 76, 77). See likewise the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles, Pachymer, 1. 13, c. 13.