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Zagathai was one of the sons of the great conqueror Zingis Khan, and received that part of the empire for his share, which comprehended Turkistan, Mawaralnahar, and Kuaresm; which extensive country took from him the name of Zagathai. Forst. The furs mentioned in the text could not be brought from this country, which besides, is to the south-east of Kasan.
The enormous expansion in the volume of Bahá’u’lláh’s correspondence; the establishment of a Bahá’í agency in Alexandria for its despatch and distribution; the facilities provided by His staunch follower, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá, now established in Beirut to safeguard the interests of the pilgrims who passed through that city; the comparative ease with which a titular Prisoner communicated with the multiplying centers in Persia, ‘Iráq, Caucasus, Turkistán, and Egypt; the mission entrusted by Him to Sulaymán Khán-i-Tanakábúní, known as Jamál Effendi, to initiate a systematic campaign of teaching in India and Burma; the appointment of a few of His followers as “Hands of the Cause of God”; the restoration of the Holy House in Shíráz, whose custodianship was now formally entrusted by Him to the Báb’s wife and her sister; the conversion of a considerable number of the adherents of the Jewish, Zoroastrian and Buddhist Faiths, the first fruits of the zeal and the perseverance which itinerant teachers in Persia, India and Burma were so strikingly displaying—conversions that automatically resulted in a firm recognition by them of the Divine origin of both Christianity and Islám—all these attested the vitality of a leadership that neither kings nor ecclesiastics, however powerful or antagonistic, could either destroy or undermine.
They may still fall back upon the powerful cavalry, which carried them all the way from Turkistan; or they may proceed to employ a mercenary force; anyhow their primitive social type remains inviolate.
Little by little all Turkistan became Russian territory. Bokhara and Khiva alone keep their old forms of government, but they are practically Russian states and pay Russia annually a stipulated tribute. It is thought that once upon a time Siberia had a much larger population than it has now and the peoples who lived there dwelt farther north.
This is the country, forming the two basins of the Aral and the Caspian, which terminates the immense Asiatic plain, and may be vaguely designated by the name of Turkistan. Hitherto the necessity of their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but now they may diverge, and have diverged.
In the course of the following centuries, under the shadow of their more civilized brethren, other similar hordes were introduced, nomad and pagan still; they might indeed happen sometimes to pass down from the east of the Caspian as well as from the west, hastening to the south straight from Turkistan along the coast of the Aral; either road would lead them down to the position which the Chozars were the first to occupy in Georgia and Armenia, but still there would be but one step in their journey between their old native sheep-walk and horse-path and the fair region into which they came.
Such is the staple of Turkish history, whether amid the hordes of Turkistan, or the feudatory Turcomans of Anatolia, or the imperial Osmanlis. The remark I am making applies to them, not only as a nation, but as a body politic.
Enzelli is becoming the port of entry, for the North of Persia, of tea from India and China. Till within a very short time most of the tea for Persia, Trans-Caspia, and Russian Turkistan so far as Samarkand, passed up from Bombay by the Persian Gulf ports.
I am reminded, moreover, of the initial spread of the light of this revelation, in consequence of the banishment of Bahá’u’lláh, to the adjoining territories of ‘Iráq, and, as far as the western fringes of that continent, to Turkey and the neighboring territories of Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and, at a later stage, to the Indian subcontinent and China, situated on the southern and eastern extremities of that continent as well as to the Caucasus and Russian Turkistán.
The Túránians are the Scythians of the Greek Historians, who are said, about the year B.C. 639, to have invaded the kingdom of the Medes. Túrán, which is the ancient name of the country of Turkistán, appears from Des Guignes, to be the source and fountain of all the celebrated Scythian nations, which, under the name of Goths and Vandals, subsequently overran the Roman empire.
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