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The Turcomans having completed their plunder, placed each of us behind a horseman, and we passed through wild tracts of mountainous country to a large plain, covered with the black tents and the flocks and herds of our enemies.
But in 1065 Jerusalem was taken by the Turcomans, who massacred three thousand citizens, and placed the command of the city in savage hands.
His face bore the marks of deep suffering, and gave silent witness to the story of his terrible captivity in the hands of the Turcomans. His incarceration at Barnaool was referred to as an "unfortunate oversight." Escaping from barbarian slavery he fell into a civilized prison, and must have considered Christian kindness more fanciful than real.
Conversation was utterly forbidden, and at night, if the slaves were heard talking, they were visited with stripes. The cells in which they now slept were single ones. Once only in many days Hubert was able to ask a fellow sufferer: "What happens in the end?" "We are impaled on a stake, I believe, after the fashion of the Turcomans; or perhaps burnt alive; or the two may be combined. God help us.
Nor should it be overlooked that this rich country has been subjected to the same calamities which have been the desolation of Asia Minor; for, as the Turcomans have devastated the latter, so, as I have already had occasion to mention, Zingis swept round the sea of Aral, and destroyed the fruits of a long civilization.
And this is why the path southwards to the east of the Aral was, in matter of fact, the path of civilization, and that by the Caucasus the path of barbarism; this is why the Turks who took the former course could found an empire, and those who took the latter have remained Tartars or Turcomans, as they were originally; because the way of the Caucasus was a sheer descent from Turkistan into the country which they occupy, but the way of the Aral was a circuitous course, leading them through many countries through Sogdiana, Khorasan, Zabulistan, and Persia, with many fortunes, under many masters, for many hundred years, before they came round to the region to which their Turcoman brethren attained so easily, but with so little eventual advantage.
As the modern Iran now suffers from the perpetual incursions of Uzbegs and Turcomans, so the north-eastern provinces of the ancient Persia were exposed to the raids of the Asiatic Scythians and the Massagetse, who were confined by no such barrier as the Caucasus, having merely to cross a river, probably often fordable during the summer, in order to be in Persia.
And next it must be borne in mind that, few as may be the Osmanlis, yet the raw material of the Turkish nation, represented principally by the Turcomans, extends over half Asia; and, if it is what it ever has been, might under circumstances be combined or concentrated into a formidable Power.
The former of these go among us by the general name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans or Turkmans. Now, first, I shall briefly mention the Turcomans, and dismiss them, because, when they have once illustrated the original state of their race, they have no place in this sketch.
With the Curds we are not here concerned. He proceeds: "The Turcomans, who are spread over the whole of Asia Minor, are a most warlike people.
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