dates confirmed a lasting separation in the PERSIAN dynasty, the ELDEST and principal branch of the house of Seljuk. The THREE YOUNGER DYNASTIES were those of KERMAN, of SYRIA, and of ROUM; the first of these commanded an extensive, though obscure, dominion on the shores of the Indian ocean; the second expelled the Arabian princes of Aleppo and Damascus and the third, our peculiar care, invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. The generous policy of Malek contributed to their elevation: he allowed the princes of his blood, even those whom he had vanquished in the field, to seek new kingdoms worthy of their ambition; nor was he displeased that they should draw away the more ardent spirits, who might have disturbed the tranquillity of his reign. As the supreme head of his family and nation, the great Sultan of Persia commanded the obedience and tribute of his royal brethren; the thrones of Kerman and Nice, of Aleppo and Damascus; the Atabeks, and emirs of Syria and Mesopotamia, erected their standards under the shadow of his sceptre; and the hordes of Turkmans overspread the plains of western Asia. After the death of Malek, the bands of union and subordination were relaxed and finally dissolved; the indulgence of the house of Seljuk invested their slaves with the inheritance of kingdoms; and, in the Oriental style, a crowd of princes arose from the dust of their feet."* Thus was the Turkish empire divided into the four sultanies of Persia, Kerman, Syria, and Roum. The Euphrates subdivided their immense dominions, in nearly equal portions; and drew all its waters from their territories, which encompassed and enclosed it, with all its tributaries, on every side. But vast as was the kingdom of the Turks, its subdivision threatened it with immediate dissolution. His "A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, the son of Izrail, the son of Seljuk, had fallen in a battle against Alp Arsan, and the human victor had dropt a tear over his grave. five sons, strong in arms, ambitious of power, and eager for revenge, unsheathed their scimitars against the son of Alp Arsan. The two armies expected the signal, when the Caliph, forgetful of the majesty which secluded him from vulgar eyes, interposed his venerable mediation. Instead of * Gibbon's Hist. vol. x. pp. 368-370. shedding the blood of your brethren, your brethren both in descent and faith, unite your forces in an holy war against the Greeks, the enemies of God and his apostle.' They listened to his voice; the sultan embraced his rebellious kinsmen; and the eldest, the valiant Soliman, accepted the royal standard, which gave him the free conquest, and hereditary command of the provinces of the Roman empire, and from Arzeroum to Constantinople, and the unknown regions of the West. Accompanied by his four brothers, he passed the Euphrates: the Turkish camp was soon seated in the neighbourhood of Hutaieh, in Phrygia : and his flying cavalry laid waste the country as far as the Hellespont and the Black Sea." * The Hellespont alone staid the progress of the Turks. And many ships were in readiness to transport them to the shores of Europe. Antioch, the capital of Syria, yielded to their arms. Damascus was reduced by famine and the sword. Jerusalem became their prey; and three thousand of its citizens were massacred. And the whole power of Europe was speedily exerted to bind, in their own region, the four sultanies of the Euphrates. The fate of Asia Minor was, for a time, again decided in a day. At Dorylæum, in Phrygia, "besides a nameless and unaccountable multitude, three thousand pagan knights were slain in the battle and pursuit." In the siege of Antioch, "one hundred thousand Moslems are said to have fallen by the sword." And Antioch was taken by the crusaders. "The victors themselves were speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the Caliph and the Sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. In this extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the town, and in a single memorable day annihilated or dispersed the host of Turks Gibbon's Hist. vol. x. pp. 370, 371. † Ibid. vol. xi. p. 62, c. 58. 6 + Ibid. p. 65. and Arabians which they might safely report to have consisted of six hundred thousand men." "The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till the decline of the Turkish empire. Under the manly government of the three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and justice; and the innumerable armies which they led in person, were equal in courage, and superior to the barbarians of the west. But at the time of the crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was disputed by his sons; their private ambition was insensible of the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the royal vassals were ignorant or regardless of the true object of their allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard of Kerboga, were his rivals or enemies; their hasty levies were drawn from the towns or tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord, to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan, Aphdal, besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Orlok, and restored in Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. They heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed from Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy."† No sooner had the Turks entered the Holy Land, and taken possession of Jerusalem, than Europe was in motion and in arms; and nations marched to the field of the world's debate. Crusade followed after crusade. Europeans became the assailants; and instead of extending their territories, the Turks could not retain the conquests they had won. On the subdivision of their empire into four sultanies, their victorious career was not long unchallenged, but speedily retarded and restrained. The Lesser Asia and Syria again became fields of battle, but with foreign foes. From these countries, formerly overflowed by them, the Turks were repelled. The Crusaders from the west, and the Fatimites on the south, won back the +Ibid. pp. 77, 78. * Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. p. 68. countries which the Turks had conquered, and the original region of their conquests, on the banks and borders of the Euphrates, became the disputed seat of their dominion, and was partly reft from them by the Franks. And even when the Crusades had spent their fury, and Europe had exhausted its strength, a new conqueror of Asia, Zinghis Khan, the emperor of the Moguls, repressed anew the power of the Turks, and, as if taking upon himself the task for which they were already prepared, threatened the Roman empire with destruction. "The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes in modern history; but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruptions of the Moguls and Tartars; whose rapid progress may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe.*-The Moguls subdued almost all Asia, and a large portion of Europe.+―They spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by her feeble offspring; but the Mamelukes had breathed in their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air; equal in valour, superior in discipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought field: and brought back the stream of hostility to the eastward of the Euphrates. But it overflowed, with resistless violence, the kingdoms of Armenia and Anatolia, of which the former was possessed by the Christians, the latter by the Turks. The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks at Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the Khans of Persia-Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll.§-The life and reign of the great dukes of Russia, the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the emirs of Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the Great Khan. In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the * Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. p. 401, c. 64. Ibid. p. 419. § Ib. Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less potent than Alexander, they were pressed like the Macedonian, both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and, had the Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad.' The Turks, for a long period, were thus restrained and bound. Though they came like a whirlwind, so soon as their time of preparation began, yet their triumphs were checked, their power was broken; the first of their dynasties was dissolved, they seemed to be fitted for slaughter rather than prepared to slay : but yet apostate Christendom was not without its woe. The frenzy of a combined superstition and fanaticism wrought its own punishment, although that punishment failed to cure the mental and moral malady. Europeans, indeed, passed through the countries of Lesser Asia and Syria, which the Turks had previously overflowed: but desperate was the strife, and dreadful the slaughter; and their pathway was sprinkled, if we may use the profane phraseology of the world, with the best blood of Christendom. Eu rope, for the space of two hundred years, from the close of the eleventh to that of the thirteenth century, sent forth its swarms of armed crusaders; and innumerable calamities followed in their train, no less disastrous eventually to the Catholics than to the Turks. The Crusaders, from the farthest west, with incredible loss of treasure and of blood, forced back the Turks to the regions where their conquests began: and the Moguls, from the farthest east, took up the task of repressing them. But though the extremes of the then known world met to eradicate the Turkish power; though the lion-hearted Richard of England, and also the great Mogul, traversed at different periods the same plains for the execution of the same purpose; nay, though Mahometans disarmed the representatives * Gibbon's Hist. vol. xi. pp. 425-428. |