July 1 8, 1878] 



NATURE 



305 



The Anatolian Turks are a lusty, stalwart race, of rude 

 manners and harsh utterance, still speaking nearly in its 

 purity the primitive agglutinating Turkish tongue, which 

 in Stambul has become a sort of Arabo-Perso-Tatar 

 medley. They are not, perhaps, over-industrious, culti- 

 vating little more than is needed to supply their modest 

 wants, and showing a preference for the fig, the vine, and 

 the olive, plants yielding bounteous returns for the little 

 care bestowed on them. Though by constitution ex- 

 tremely frugal, with few and simple belongings, and 

 living in the humblest of dwellings, they are still gene- 

 rally oppressed with debts, and at the mercy of the usurer 

 and the tax-gatherer, the former relentlessly exacting his 

 pound of flesh, the latter often farming the public re- 

 venues, forestalling the tithes before harvest-tide and 

 basing his estimates on calculations not always realised 

 even in more favoured climes. Hence many yearly give 

 up their holdings, sinking to the position of proletariates, 

 the day-labourer's life being in many respects preferable 

 to that of the small tenant farmer left unprotected by the 

 authorities and an easy prey to the unscrupulous in a 

 country where the administration of justice leaves much 

 to be desired. 



Fortunately for their rulers, past and to come, the Ana- 

 tolian Turks are a patient, much-enduring race, kindly, 

 hospitable, and tolerant in religious matters. Of an 

 earnest, taciturn temperament, with much sound under- 

 standing and shrewd observation, they are yet devoid of 

 foresight and business habits. Hence they make, as a 

 rule, indifferent merchants, so that most of the wholesale 

 trade has fallen into the hands of the rival races. In the 

 country districts they are simply tillers of the land and 

 stock-breeders, in the towns dealers in small wares mostly 

 of home production, or else craftsmen employed in such 

 industries as are needed to supply the few wants of 

 Turkish life. Their seafaring qualities, however, have been 

 unjustly decried, for in the hands of efficient officers they 

 make excellent sailors, while as organisers and conductors 

 of caravans they are unsurpassed. Their greatest short- 

 comings are perhaps a certain apathy due mainly to the 

 universal belief in Kismet, or " the Inevitable," combined 

 with the absence of progressive ideas and indifference to 

 the future. Heedless of the morrow they will often pay 

 exorbitant interest to escape from present pressure. 

 Hence where mingled with other peoples they have fallen 

 somewhat behind in the race, though never sinking to 

 abject want, so modest are their needs, so rich their 

 lands in varied resources. Military service, also, as is 

 well known, weighs heavily on them, and on them alone, 

 helping with polygamy, and all its accompanying evils, 

 to account for the steady decrease of the Turkish element 

 for some years past, especially on the coast. 



Here the somewhat indolent Osmanli has had to con- 

 front the more versatile Greek, still clinging to his old 

 Ionian homes along the eastern shores of the island- 

 studded ^gean, and it is not, perhaps, surprising that 

 under such circumstances his quick-witted rival has 

 largely succeeded to his inheritance. For the second time 

 in the history of the Hellenic race, GrcBcia capta feros 

 •victores cepit. An industrious trader, a shrewd calcu- 

 lating merchant, an excellent seaman, an intelligent 

 agriculturist, the Greek outstrips the Osmanli in his own 

 special province, while monopolising the learned profes- 

 sions. Smyrna has thus again become a Greek city, and 

 the Greek race has in modern times everywhere displayed 

 a praiseworthy zeal for the spread of education, while 

 fostering among the people a healthy national sentiment. 

 A well-directed and widely-ramifying association, radiating 

 from Athens, encourages a movement which has tended 

 more than anything else to maintain the influence of the 



Hellenic race in western Anatolia, despite their numerical 

 inferiority. 



Next to them in importance are the Armenians, 

 sparsely diffused throughout the east from Constanti- 



nople to Calcutta, and still existing as a distinct nationality 

 in the north-eastern highlands of Anatolia. Intellectually 

 almost on a level with the Greeks, out-rivalling them in 

 commercial enterprise, the Armenians present certain 

 distinctive physical, social, and moral characteristics by 

 which they are readily recognised wherever met. Con- 

 spicuous amongst these traits, besides their speech, be- 

 longing to the Eranian branch of the Aryan family, are 

 their national dress, their bushy close-set eyebrows, and 

 a decidedly unlovable disposition, which has earned for 

 them the dislike and contempt of their neighbours. 

 Their trickery and avarice have become proverbial 

 throughout the East, and after making all due allowance 

 for exaggeration, they cannot be altogether acquitted of a 

 certain moral obliquity. Deprived for generations of all 

 political rights, they have taken eagerly to trade like the 

 Jews in Europe, like them in many places monopolising 

 it, ruling the money market, and notwithstanding mutual 

 family jealousies ever ready to band together and make 

 any sacrifices for the common good. As traders they 

 certainly display an amount of keenness and cunning, 

 though of a somewhat low order, dealing by preference 

 in " the cheap and nasty," and retailing their " shoddy" 

 and "Brummagem" wares at exorbitant prices to an 

 ignorant clientele. 



Constitutionally timid and reserved they may on the 

 whole be regarded as a feeble race, rarely appealing to 

 arms in self-defence, in all cases ever ready to yield sub- 

 mission to the strongest. Of all Christian peoples the 

 Armenians harmonise best with their Turkish rulers ; they 

 habitually speak Turkish like a second mother-tongue, 

 and come nearest to the Osmanli in their quiet, earnest 

 disposition. 



Of far different temperament are their southern neigh- 

 bours, the fierce, freedom-loving Kurdish highlanders. 

 Long recognised as belonging also to the Eranian branch 

 of the Aryan stock, in which they seem linguistically to 

 approach nearer to the Persian than to the Armenian 

 sub-division, the Kurds have been variously depicted, 

 according to the sympathies of the writer, as brave, 

 chivalrous mountaineers or else treacherous, lawless, and 

 blood-thirsty marauders. All, however, agree in describ- 

 ing them as of a restless and unruly disposition, some 

 attributing this quality to the effects of Turkish misrule, 

 others to inherent national temperament, the latter 

 appealing with some plausibility to the sentiment of anti- 

 quity, according to which the fierce Carduchi of Xenophon 

 evidently bear a strong family likeness to their modem 

 descendants. 



What may be called the disturbing element in Asiatic 

 Turkey is continued from Kurdistan southwards to Arabia 

 by the Bedouins of the Syrian desert. Half savage 

 Kurdish tribes in the uplands about the head streams of 

 the Tigris and the Euphrates, almost equally restless 

 nomad Arab tribes in the plains watered by those rivers 

 will for a long time tax all the watchfulness of a strong 

 and wise administration. Nominally subjects of the 

 Porte, the Shamara, Beni-Lam, and other powerful Arab 

 tribes have long maintained an ill-disguised standing 

 feud with the authorities, often making their presence 

 unpleasantly felt, especially along the right bank of the 

 Euphrates from about the parallel of Aleppo all the way 

 to the Persian Gulf. If united they might easily bring 

 from 10,000 to 20,000 formidable mounted warriors into 

 the field. But here as elsewhere tribal dissensions neu- 

 tralise their power, enabling the Turks still to keep the 

 upper hand in the Mesopotamian plains, and show a fair 

 front towards the Persian frontier. 



A glance at the population column in the above scheme 

 will show at once that the peoples hitherto touched upon 

 — Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs — can alone 

 possess any real importance for the future administrators 

 of these regions. The Kysyl-Bashes, Juruks, Druses, 

 and Maronites, doubtless present many curious problems 



