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And now I have said enough, and more than enough, of the original state of the Turkish race, as exhibited in the Chozars and Turcomans: it is time to pursue the history of that more important portion of it with which we are properly engaged, which received some sort of education, and has proved itself capable of social and political union.
The bands of Patzinacites, Chozars, and Turks, repaired to the standard of victory; and the ambassador of Nicephorus betrayed his trust, assumed the purple, and promised to share with his new allies the treasures of the Eastern world.
For himself, that emperor had chosen a Barbarian wife, the daughter of the khan of the Chozars; but in the marriage of his heir, he preferred an Athenian virgin, an orphan, seventeen years old, whose sole fortune must have consisted in her personal accomplishments.
Yet we have heard, that in the sea of Rum, or the Mediterranean, there was found the wreck of an Arabian ship, which had been shattered by a tempest, in which all her men had perished. Her remains were driven by the wind and weather into the sea of the Chozars, and thence by the canal of the Mediterranean sea, and were at last thrown upon the coast of Syria.
With a band of followers, attached to his person by common hope or common despair, Justinian fled from the inhospitable shore to the horde of the Chozars, who pitched their tents between the Tanais and Borysthenes.
The religious aspect, however, of this first era of their history, seems to have passed away without improvement; what they gained was a temporal advantage, a settlement in Georgia and its neighbourhood, which they have held from that day to this. This horde of Turks, the Chozars, was nomad and pagan; it consisted of mounted shepherds, surrounded with their flocks, living in tents and waggons.
Hence it is evident, that the sea surrounds all the country of China and Sila or Cila, the uttermost parts of Turkestan, and the country of the Chozars, and that it communicates by the strait with that which washes the coast of Syria.
This alliance suggested to Heraclius the counterstroke of allying himself with the Turkish freebooters, who in like manner, as stationed above the Caspian, were impending over Persia. Accordingly the horde of Chozars, as this Turkish tribe was called, at the Emperor's invitation, transported their tents from the plains of the Volga through the defiles of the Caucasus into Georgia.
In the short interval, the Chersonites had returned to their city, and were prepared to die in arms; the khan of the Chozars had renounced the cause of his odious brother; the exiles of every province were assembled in Tauris; and Bardanes, under the name of Philippicus, was invested with the purple.
There, however, in matter of fact, they remain to this day, the successors of the Chozars, in Armenia, in Syria, in Asia Minor, even as far west as the coast of the Archipelago and its maritime cities and ports, being pretty much what they were a thousand years ago, except that they have taken up the loose profession of Mahometanism, and have given up some of the extreme peculiarities of their Tartar state, such as their attachment to horse-flesh and mares' milk.
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