442 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES IN TURKEY, 
run down from the vicinity of Zara to Gulek Boghaz (Cilician Gates),—the great 
pass from the coast plain of Cilicia to the interior of Asia Minor. The character 
of Western Anatolia is quite different from that of the eastern district which 
Colonel Clayton has described. A large portion of the plateau is a dead, level 
plain with a salt lake in the centre. 
The country represented on the map is one of great historic interest, for 
through it, during the long struggle between the east and the west, invading 
armies have frequently marched. It has also been the scene of some of the 
decisive battles of the world. Near Melasgerd, to the north of Lake Van, was 
fought the great battle in which the Seljuk Turks, under Alp Arslan, defeated 
and made prisoner the Byzantine Emperor, Romanus Diogenes (a.d. 1171). As 
a result, the Seljuk Turks over-ran Asia Minor, and established the Seljuk 
Empire of Rum, with its capital, first at Nicaea ( Isnik ), and then at Iconium 
( Konia ). 
Then to the west, in the passes leading from Erzerum to Erzingan, Ala ed- 
Din, the Seljuk of Rum, defeated Jelal ed-Din, the Shah of Kharezm (a.d. 1229) 
and broke up the Kharezmian Empire which, at one time, threatened to extend 
its limits to the iEgean. A little further west, near Erzingan, the Mongols 
defeated Gliiyas ed-Din, the Sultan of Rum (a.d. 1248), who became tributary 
to Kuyuk Khan. Through the same district Timur marched westward to the 
conquest of Sultan Bayezid I. (a.d. 1402), and, in the following century, Sultan 
Selim I. marched eastward to defeat Shah Ismail near Klioi and enter Tabriz in 
triumph. The later Turco-Russian campaigns in the same district are no doubt 
well known to you. The country through which these armies have passed, 
following one of the great lines of communication between the east and the west, 
is not only historically interesting, but may be of great military importance in 
the future. 
Then the present inhabitants are in themselves extremely interesting, and the 
causes which have led to their existing distribution and to their peculiar relations 
to each other are no less so. The Armenians and the Kurds, for instance, are of 
kindred race, and I believe that the Kurds have been longer in the country, at 
any rate in the mountain districts, than the Armenians. If you read closely 
Xenophon’s narrative of the “ March of the Ten Thousand ” you will find that, 
after seven days’ constant fighting, with the Curduchi (Kurds) the Greeks crossed 
the Bohtan Su, which was then the boundary of the Persian Satrapy of Armenia. 
They then reached the Armenian villages on the plateau, and after a few days’ 
march entered the mountains to the north, apparently near Melasgerd. Here 
they saw the last of the Armenians and entered a district peopled by a number of 
different tribes. The origin of the present distribution of the population is 
remarkable and dates from the time of the Arab, Seljuk, Turk, and Mongol 
invasions, and especially from that of Timur. The Nestorians, who Colonel 
Clayton has described, and whose religious chief he visited, call themselves Syrians, 
and are really the descendants of the old Aramaean population of Mesopotamia. 
They were driven into the mountains by the encroachments of the nomads, and 
by the terrible massacres of Timur, who almost exterminated them. The 
nomads, with their countless flocks and herds, when they entered the rich plains 
of Mesopotamia destroyed everything as they passed. They cared nothing for 
civilization or for town life. Their one thought was to depopulate [the districts 
they traversed and convert them into pasture grounds. The result was that one 
of the richest and most fertile districts of the earth was laid waste and irretrievably 
ruined. One section of the inhabitants, represented by the Nestorian tribes 
Tiyari and Choma, became and remains nomad, whilst another conquered a 
position for itself in the Kurdish mountains where it still maintains itself in the 
midst of a hostile or unfriendly population, Exactly the same thing, although 
