Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/80

 68 TURKISTAN fruits and vegetables ripen. The field crops are cotton, rice, wheat, hemp, flax, barley, and maize, while the gardens produce tobacco and melons, and the orchards of the more favored districts yield an abundance of apples, pears, peaches, apricots, and other fruits. The herds of cattle are very large, and afford the princi- pal article of export. The wild animals are generally the same as those of West Turkistan, with the addition of the tiger, the panther, and a peculiar species of stag found in the Lob- nor region of forest, jungle, and reed growth. The minerals are gold, found in the mountain streams and in the Thian-shan mountains, sil- ver, iron, copper, nitre, sal ammoniac, sulphur, asbestus, agate, and the precious jasper, which was formerly a monopoly of the Chinese em- pire. The inhabitants are not so distinctly classified as the tribes of West Turkistan, all of which, however, are represented in those parts of the country to which modern explora- tion extends. The Turanian element is most prominent, although Shaw regards the Yarkan- dees as Tartarized Aryans. The inhabitants of the Lob region are a wild race of huntsmen, concerning whom little is known. The ruling class consists mainly of Uzbecks and Kiptchaks. Sunni Mohammedanism is the prevailing reli- gion. The villages are made up of aggregated enclosures, each wall surrounding a house and a garden or fields. The western part of Tur- kistan was known as Turania to the ancient writers on Persia. It was the theatre of re- peated terrible conflicts between the Iranian or Persian and the Turanian races, in the early ages of Persian history, and the Persian hero Jemshid figures as largely in some of these as Achilles in those of the early Greeks. The Iranians finally remained masters of the south- ern part of the country, and at the begin- ning of the historic period it was comprised in the Persian satrapies of Bactria and Sogdiana, which were afterward conquered successively by Alexander the Great, the Parthians, the later Persians, the Arabs, and the Tartars or Mongols of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, un- der whom the Tartar elements almost entire- ly replaced the Indo-European. The Mongols ruled over the southern portion till about the beginning of the 16th century, when their sul- tan Baber, the future founder of the Mogul empire in Hindostan, was driven out by the Turkish tribe of the Uzbecks. The Uzbecks established a powerful monarchy, which con- tinued about 160 years, and then separated into numerous independent khanates, of which Bokhara, Khiva, and the late khanate of Kho- kan are the modern representatives. For the history of the advance and establishment of the Russian power in this region, see BOKHA- RA, KHIVA, and RUSSIA. The Russian prov- ince of Turkistan, already described, was es- tablished in 1865, and the influence of Russia is paramount throughout all this part of Asia. The various forts and towns are garrisoned by a military force, numbering in 1874 about TURKS 30,000 enlisted men. In East Turkistan the chief state is now Kashgar, and the history of the country is given under that title. See Vambery's " Travels in Central Asia " (Lon- don, 1865), "Sketches from Central Asia" (1867), and "Bokhara, its History and Con- quest" (1873); Die Rusen in Centralatien, by Friedrich von Ilellwald (1874); "Khiva and Turkestan," translated from the Russian by Capt. H. Spalding (1874); "England and Russia in the East," by Sir Henry Ravvlinson (1875); and, as to East Turkistan, Robert Shaw's "High Tartary, Yarkand, and Kash- gar" (1871), and "Kashmir and Kashghar," by Dr. H. W. Bellew, C. S. I. (1875), being a narrative of Sir Douglas Forsyth's embassy from India to Kashgar in 1873-'4. TURKOMANS. See TURKISTAN, and TURKS. TURKS, one of the most important branches of the Turanian family. (See TURANIAN RAGE AND LANGUAGES, and TURKISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.) In former ethnological classifi- cations they were sometimes set down as a Caucasian race, and in physical characteristics some of their tribes are nearly or quite Cau- casian; but more recent science shows that they have no connection with the Aryan or Indo-European family. They made their first appearance in northern and central Asia among the Hunnic and Tartaric hordes who for sev- eral centuries before and after our era were the terror of the Chinese. (See CHINA, vol. iv., p. 459, HUNS, and TARTARS.) Turk is used in central Asia as synonymous with Tartar, or to designate the Mongolians generally. Be- fore the commencement of the Christian era a tribe of Turks had wandered westward as far as the Don ; they are mentioned by Pliny under the name of Turcte, and by Pomponius Mela under that of lure ; while other tribes had not long after penetrated into the moun- tainous regions of Asia Minor. In the 4th and 5th centuries of the Christian era a por- tion of the Turks who had remained in N. W. China conquered two provinces of that coun- try, which they organized as independent king- doms, to which the Chinese give the names of Chao and Northern Liang ; but the greater part of those who were driven out in the 3d century rallied around Lake Balkash, and after the 5th century made no further separate ap- pearance in history. In the early part of the 6th century a new Turkish empire, appa- rently having its nucleus in what is now East Turkistan, threatened the peace of Asia. These Turks renewed their conflicts with China at the east, and with Persia at the southwest, and in 569 formed an alliance with Justin II., then emperor of Constantinople, for the over- throw of the Sassanides. But this Turkish empire (which the Chinese called Tu-kiu), like all the attempts of the Turks at imperial dom- ination, was an agglomeration of dissimilar peoples in one huge nation, with no common bond of union or citizenship, and its very vastness contributed to its weakness. In 744