Samarkand until 1499 with the usual struggles between different branches of the family. Their possessions included, at least from time to time, the northern parts of Afghanistan and Persia, as well as Transoxiana and Turkestan. They were one of the most enlightened and cultivated of Turkish dynasties. They beautified the cities of Central Asia and were patrons of literature. The literary languages were as a rule Arabic or Persian; Turkish was used more rarely and chiefly for poetry.
The Timurids were overthrown and succeeded by the Shaibani dynasty, a branch of the house of Juji, Jenghiz Khan's eldest son, to whom his father had assigned dominions in the region north of the kingdom of Jagatai. About 1465 a number of this clan migrated into the Jagatai khanate. They were given territory on the Ċhu River and were known as Uzbegs. About 1500 their chief, Mahommed Shaibani or Shahi Beg, made himself master of Transoxiana and founded the Uzbeg power. The chief opponent of the Uzbegs in their early days was Baber, who represented the house of Timur in the fifth generation, but he ultimately led his armies in another direction and invaded India (1526), where he founded the Mogul Empire, a far more important state than the principalities of the Oxus. The Shaibanis continued to rule in these latter till 1583, and were followed by the houses of Astrakhan and Mangit; but it is not necessary to continue here the complicated chronicles of these dynasties.
The Osmanlis, or house of Osman, the founders of the present Turkish Empire, appear to have been a clan similar to the early Seljuks or the present Turkomans of Transcaspia, who migrated into Asia Minor from Khorasan and made the neighbourhood of Brusa their headquarters. Their conspicuous position in history is mainly due to the fact that they attained pre-eminence very late and in districts very near Europe. Except for the invasion of Timur they did not suffer from the attacks of other Turks and they were able to concentrate their strength on the conquest of the decrepit Byzantine Empire.
Customs, Civilization, Religion, &c.—The Turks are imitative rather than original, and, in all their branches, have assimilated to some extent the nearest civilization whenever they have settled down. Up to the 7th century their only culture consisted of some scraps of Chinese and Indian civilization. Subsequently both the eastern and western states which they founded adopted Perso-Arabic civilization and Mahommedanism. The Osmanlis have also been affected by Byzantine and west European influences.
Chinese historians and the Turkish inscriptions of the Orkhon and Yenisei give us a good deal of information respecting the earlier condition of these tribes. We are told that the Hiung-nu lived on horseback and moved about from place to place in search of fresh pasture. They possessed horses, cattle and sheep and also camels. They had no towns or villages and no agriculture and they never stayed long in one camp, but during their halts a special piece of land was assigned to each tribe and each tent. They were ignorant of writing. The children were taught to ride and shoot, and the adults were expert archers. Their food was flesh and milk and their clothing the skins of animals. They were polygamous and a son married his deceased father's wives, except his own mother. It is expressly stated that old people were despised and neglected, but this barbarous trait disappeared from the manners of the later Turks.
Of the Turks in the 6th century the Chinese writers give a rather more flattering account. They had numerous grades of rank, and when their khan was invested with the supreme power he was carried in a carpet. When troops were levied or taxes collected, the required amount was carved on a piece of wood marked with a golden arrow as a sign of authority. Their punishments were severe. Marriage was by arrangement with the parents, not capture. The dead were kept for some time after death and the mourners gashed their faces. They sacrificed to heaven and to the spirits of their ancestors. Their amusements included singing antiphonally, playing dice and drinking koumiss till they were drunk. They had a written alphabet (derived from India or Syria) and a duodenary cycle in which the years were designated by the names of animals. Somewhat similar accounts are given of the Kerkur or Kirghiz and of the Kankli or Kankali. These were perhaps the ancestors of the Uighurs and moved about in carts with high wheels : they are described as a barbarous undisciplined people, but capable of concerted action.
In the Orkhon inscriptions of the early part of the 8th century a somewhat more civilized branch of the Turks gives an account of itself which tallies with the Chinese descriptions. No Turkish cities are mentioned, only tribes and localities. War is the national occupation. The sovereign or kagan fights himself, and it is interesting to see that the names of the various chargers which he mounted are carefully recorded. The spirit of tribal patriotism and desire for glory which animate these compositions are very noticeable and also the implied obligation of the rulers to see to the prosperity of the people. The existence of the tombs and of inscriptions in Chinese characters as well as in an alphabet of Aramaic origin, and the mention of gold, silver, silk and precious objects show that the builders had looted, so to speak, a certain amount of fragmentary civilization from their neighbours. The chief deity is Heaven or Tangri (still used in Osmanli Turkish as the equivalent of Allah), who gives the kingdom to the kagans and cares for the name and reputation of the Turkish people. There are also spirits of the earth and waters. All this is very like the earliest Chinese religion. Funeral ceremonies were evidently elaborate and the cycle of years named after animals was used for chronology.
The Chinese pilgrim Hüsan Tsang was entertained by She-hu (perhaps a title), kagan of the Western Turks, near Tokmak about A.D. 630. He left an account of the barbaric splendour of his reception and alludes to the number of horses, the gold embroidery of the kagan's tent, the silk robes of his retinue, and the use of wine and music. He says the Turks were fire-worshippers and would not sit on wooden seats.
It is probable that before they were converted to Islam the Turks practised in a desultory manner Buddhism, fire-worship and Nestorian Christianity, though they never wholly accepted any of them. An interesting trace of Buddhism remains in the names Shaman and Shamanism. It would appear that the Indian word Ṡramana or Samana was applied to the wizards and exorcizers of the older Turkish superstition. Recent investigations have discovered the existence of a considerable Buddhist civilization at Khotan, but at the time when it flourished it would appear that the mass of the population was of Iranian affinities and that the Turkish element was small.
The Kudatku Bilik (about 1065) gives a picture of life in Eastern Turkestan after the conversion to Islam, but still showing many traces of Chinese influence. But after this period nearly all the Turks (except a few obscure tribes like the Yakuts) adopted the Perso-Arabic civilization. Some however, such as the Kirghiz, Turkomans and Yürüks of Asia Minor, have not yet abandoned the nomadic life. The Turks seem to be everywhere characterized by their innate sense of discipline and their submissiveness to their own authorities; councils or assemblies have rarely assumed importance among them; sovereigns and even dynasties (except the house of Osman) have often been removed by violence, but the despotic form of government has never failed to secure obedience. But equally important, as explaining their military successes, is the fact, noticed alike by ancient Chinese historians and modern European officers, that the ordinary Turkish soldier has in military matters an unusual resourcefulness and power of initiative which, without impairing discipline, renders him independent of his officers.
Language.—The Turkish or Tatar-Turkish languages belong to the Ural-Altaic family. Both nominal and verbal forms are built up solely by the addition of suffixes, and the law of vowel harmony is strictly observed. Hard and soft vowels cannot occur in the same word, and there is a tendency to assimilate the vowels of the suffix to those of the root; thus pederiniz, your father, but dostunuz, your friend. From the Mongol-Manchu languages the Turkish group is distinguished by its much more developed system of inflexion, particularly in the verbs, by its free use of pronominal suffixes, and by its more thoroughly agglutinative character. The stem with its suffixes forms a single compound word, whereas in Mongol the suffixes often seem quasi-independent. In all these features Turkish resembles the Finno-Ugric languages, but it diverges from them in having a much simpler system of cases and different phonetics, in the absence of many peculiarities such as the incorporation of the pronominal object in the verb, and in the development of some special forms, such as the expression of negation by inserting a suffix after the verbal root (yazdim, I wrote, yazmadim, I did not write). The grammatical forms are more agglutinative and less inflexional than in Finnish; though they are single words, the root does not change and the elements can be easily separated, which is not always the case in Finnish. Compare the Turkish györdünüz, “you saw,” from the root györ, with the equivalent Finnish näitte from näke. The fusion between the root and suffixes is much more thorough in the latter. Turkish thus stands midway between Mongol and Finnish in its development of the agglutinative principle. Also, though compounds are not unknown in Turkish (e.g. demiryol, railway) they are much rarer than in Finnish or Hungarian.
Despite the apparent divergence between Turkish and Mongol, due perhaps partly to the influence of Chinese on the latter, the affinity between them seems real, though not superficial. The pronouns, case suffixes, and construction of sentences all show a
