followed Ertughrul in the male line without a break, and, after six centuries, his descendant still stands lord over wide provinces and peoples of various races and languages. At Sugut in 1258 was born Osmân (or Othmân), from whom his followers took the name Osmanlîs, which Europeans have corrupted into Ottoman. At the beginning of the 14th century the Seljuk kingdom split up into ten states, one of which, the Ottoman province of Sultanöni, gradually absorbed the rest. Osmân, who reigned from 1301 to 1326, waged a guerilla war upon his Greek neighbours, and captured many fortresses, pushed his conquests to the verge of the Hellespont, and took Brúsa the capital of Bithynia. His son, Orkhân (1326-59), reduced Nicæa (1330) and absorbed one of the ten Seljûkian states, the ancient Mysia (1336). Thus in two generations the little clan of nomads had possessed themselves of the whole north-west corner of Asia Minor, and obtained the command of the eastern shores of the Bosporus and Propontis. Then for twenty years peace reigned between the Greeks and Ottomans, and Orkhan and his brother, 'Alâ-ed-dîn, devoted themselves to the task of organising the state, forming a standing army (the first in modern times) out of the material supplied by the mixed population of their dominions, and inaugurating the famous corps of Janizaries (Yeni cheri, new soldiery') which for centuries constituted the flower of the Ottoman army. This celebrated force was recruited entirely from Christian children, who were educated as Moslems, and carefully trained and disciplined. Deprived of all ties of kinship, but encouraged by every inducement to zeal and devotedness, this military brotherhood became the most devoted as well as the most fanatical instrument of imperial ambition which has ever been devised, until they abused their power so wantonly that they had to be summarily exterminated in 1826 by Mahmûd II. (see JANIZARIES). Besides this military organisation, the civil administration was skilfully ordered, and the government of the Turks contrasted favourably with the corrupt and nerveless rule of their Byzantine neighbours, who, for their part, humbled themselves by abject concessions, delivered up their imperial princesses to the harems of the Osmanlîs, and allowed them to levy blackmail in their raids for Christian slaves.

The Turks could not look across the Bosporus upon the domes of Constantinople without longing for its possession. In 1358 they occupied Gallipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles, and a few years later Adrianople and Philippopolis fell before the onslaught of the new sultan, Murâd I.—the first Amurath of European writers (1359-89)-who in 1364 decisively routed the united Servians, Hungarians, and Vlachs, on the banks of the Maritza. In 1375 he took Nissa, the birthplace of Constantine, and received the homage of the despot of Servia and the kral of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula was now a Turkish possession, with the exception of the territory immediately surrounding Constantinople. Twice again the Christians endeavoured to turn back the wave of Moslem conquest. Lazarus the Servian in 1389 led a great army against the Turks, but was severely defeated in the battle of Kosovo, which was, however, followed by the assassination of Murad I. by the Servian Milosh Kobilovich. His successor, Bayezid I. (Bajazet, 1389-1402), surnamed Yilderim, or "Thunderbolt,' by reason of his impetuous valour, annexed the remainder of the Seljukian states of Asia Minor, and meeting a vast army of the Christians of all Europe, who had vowed a crusade against the Turks in 1394, cut them to pieces at Nicopolis. Ten thousand prisoners were butchered in heaps before the eyes of the pitiless sultan from

daybreak till four in the afternoon. The invasion of Timur (Tamerlane) interrupted the victorious course of the Ottoman arms, then, apparently, on the eve of the capture of Constantinople. The Tartar hordes overran Asia Minor, and totally defeated near Angora, in 1402, the army which Bayezid had vaingloriously brought into the field. The sultan was taken prisoner, and died in captivity eight months later. Timûr reinstated the Seljuk princes; the Christians of Europe were free; and the history of the Ottoman empire seemed to have suddenly come to an end. Its extraordinary revival was due partly to the physical and moral superiority of the Osmanlis over their neighbours in Europe and Asia, partly to the enduring strength of their civil and military organisation, which contrasted strikingly with the demoralised condition of the Greek empire, and largely to the wisdom and prudence of Mohammed I., 'the Restorer,' also called Chelebi, or the Gentleman' (1402-13). By sound statesmanship, firm yet conciliatory, this able sovereign recovered all that had been lost in the Tartar convulsion. His foresight was displayed in an ominous step: he transferred the capital of his dominions from Asia to Europe, from Brúsa to Adrianople. The interval of prudent consolidation of the empire was followed by another period of aggression. His son and successor, Murâd II. (1421-51), was as wise as his father, but his lines were fallen in fighting times. A terrible foe had arisen in the person of Hunyady, the 'White Knight' of Wallachia (an illegitimate son of Sigismund, king of Hungary), who for twenty years was a cruel scourge of the Balkan provinces, and who inflicted grievous losses upon the Ottomans at Hermannstadt (1442), Vasag, and Nissa (1443). A ten years' peace was concluded by the treaty of Szegedin, by which Servia regained her independence and Wallachia was annexed to Hungary. Murad was now weary of war and kingship, and abdicated in favour of his son Mohammed; whereupon the Christians, in violation of their oath and treaty, invaded the Ottoman dominions, led by Hunyady, and sanctioned by the presence of Frankish crusaders under the command of Cardinal Julian. This flagrant breach of faith drew Murâd from his voluntary retirement. He collected 40,000 veterans, induced the Genoese to ferry them across the Bosporus, and, displaying the violated treaty on a lance as his standard, fell upon the Christians at Varna (10th November 1444), and won a decisive victory. The king of Poland and the cardinal were among the slain. Henceforth, for more than two centuries, the Turks had nothing to fear from European invasions until the rise of the Russian power created a new danger.

Murad's long reign of thirty years was soiled by no breath of dishonour; his character was as noble as it was commanding. His successor, Mohammed II., 'the Conqueror' (1451-81), reigned also thirty years, but his rule was marked by violence and treachery, and the new sultan was as cruel and unscrupulous as he was conspicuously able. The great event of his reign was the siege and capture of Constantinople (29th May 1453), whereby the miserable remnant of the Byzantine empire was extinguished for ever, and the Turks obtained that commanding position on the Bosporus which has contributed more than anything else, directly and indirectly, to the maintenance of their empire. In the north the progress of Ottoman conquest was arrested by the heroic defence of Belgrade in 1456 by Hunyady and John Capistran, and by the subsequent resistance of Hunyady's successor, Matthias Corvinus. In the west Scanderbeg for a while kept the Turks back in Albania. But towards the end of the reign they were making substantial progress. They had conquered the Crimea (1475), their arms

were menacing Venice (1477), they had annexed Greece and most of the Ægean islands, made their first attempt upon the stronghold of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, and even planted their foot on Italian soil by the capture of Otranto in 1480. In the following year, whilst fitting out a vast expedition, Mohammed the Conqueror died, amid the thanksgivings of Europe. The long reign of his son, Bayezid II. (1481-1512), was marked by no great conquests, and the chief interest centres in the adventures and fate of his unlucky brother, Prince Jem. With Bayezîd's son, Selîm I., 'the Grim' (1512-20), however, a new epoch of transcendent glory began to dawn. In his brief eight years of sovereignty he drove back Isma'il, the powerful shah of Persia, after a furious battle at Chaldiran, and incorporated Kurdistân and Diârbekr in the Turkish empire, annexed Syria, and wrenched Egypt from the hands of the valiant Mamluks (1517), who had possessed it almost since the days of Saladin. With Egypt came the Hijaz | and its Holy Cities, while from the last 'Abbasy Caliph of Cairo Selîm received relics of the Prophet Mohammed and the inheritance of the title of Caliph, by which his successors to the present day | signify their claim to the homage of all orthodox Mohammedans. Selim, however, did but usher in the great epoch (1520-66) of his son, Suleymân the Magnificent, though without the father's warlike genius it may well be doubted whether the son would have been able to attain to the glory with which his name is associated. His epoch is famous for many triumphs both by land and sea. quered Belgrade, and, after a heroic siege, reduced (1522) the rocky stronghold of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, who were allowed to evacuate the island upon honourable terms. In 1526 the sultan marched north, at the head of an army of 100,000 men and 300 guns, and utterly crushed the Hungarians on the field of Mohács, and slew their king, Louis II., and 20,000 of his followers. Buda and Pesth fell, and Hungary became an Ottoman province for a century and a half. Quarrels over the now nominal kingship of Hungary drew Suleymân northward again in 1529 to support his nominee, Zápolya, and after enforcing his authority, and laying the country waste, the sultan proceeded to push forward to Vienna. Austria was incapable of meeting him in the field, but Vienna heroically withstood a furious siege for eighteen days. The Turks abandoned their design for the moment, and the sultan retreated in disgust to Constantinople, and eventually made a truce with Charles V. in 1533. Eight years later, however, Suleymân led his ninth campaign in the north, and compelled the emperor to sue for peace, the Archduke Ferdinand agreeing to pay a heavy tribute to his lord the sultan, who retained the whole of Hungary and Transylvania. War and sieges, however, continued to the death of Suleymân in 1566. The

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sultan's claim to be called 'the Great' rests not merely upon his undoubted wisdom and ability, and the splendid series of his successes, but upon the fact that he maintained and improved his grand position in an age of surpassing greatness the age of Charles V., Francis I., Elizabeth, and Leo X.; of Columbus, Cortes, and Raleigh. In the great days of Charles he dared to annex Hungary and lay siege to Vienna; and in the epoch of great navies and admirals, of Doria and Drake, he swept the seas to the coasts of Spain, and his admirals Barbarossa, Pialé, and Dragut created panic fear along all the shores of the Mediterranean, drove the Spaniard out of the Barbary States, and defeated pope, emperor, and doge together at the great sea-fight off Prevesa in 1538. But just as Vienna had resisted him in 1529, so the Knights of Malta withstood a powerful Ottoman armament

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in 1565, and 25,000 Turks fell in the fruitless siege.

Selîm II. (1566-74), a degraded sot, owed whatever renown belongs to his reign to the ability of his father's old statesmen and generals. Sinân Pasha subdued Arabia in 1570, and Cyprus was conquered in 1571; but these successes were outweighed by the utter defeat of the Turkish fleet by Don John of Austria, 7th October 1571, off Lepanto, which first broke the spell of Turkish prestige at sea. During this reign occurred the first collision of the Turks with the Russians. The connection of the Don and Volga by a canal was a project which, by allowing the passage of ships from the Black Sea into the Caspian, would obviously serve both military and commercial purposes; and accordingly 5000 workmen were despatched to cut the canal, and an army of 80,000 men to aid and protect them. The possession of Astrakhan formed part of the programme; but the attack upon this town brought upon the Turks the vengeance of the Russians, a people till then unknown in southern Europe; three-fourths of the Turkish army was lost in the expedition, and the project was abandoned. On the other hand, Tunis was taken from the Spaniards in 1574. The reign of Selîm's son, Murâd III. (1574-95), is chiefly notable for the reception of the first English embassy to Turkey in 1589, which was sent with the object of concluding an alliance against Philip II. of Spain. War with Persia ended in the extension of the Turkish frontier, so as to include Georgia, and a fresh contest with Austria was marked at first by success, but afterwards by severe reverses, until in the reign of the next sultan, Mohammed III. (1595-1603), the tide of failure was turned by a signal victory over the Austrians and Transylvanians on the plain of the Keresztes (1596). The victory, however, was not followed up; and the prestige of the Ottoman arms continued to wane. The Turks were no longer the terror of Europe. Of the next four sultans, Ahmed I. (1603-17), Mustafa I. (1617-18, 1622-23), Osmân II. (161822), and Murâd IV. (1623-40), the last alone resembled his great forefathers, and by his campaign against Persia and conquest of Baghdad (1638) vindicated his title to be the last of the fighting sultans of Turkey. The death of Murâd IV. was the signal for fresh troubles. Mustafa, the grand vezîr (vizier), a man of great ability and integrity, indeed, continued to direct the helm of government under Ibrahîm (1640-48), took from the Poles their conquests, and in a war with the Venetians (1645) obtained Candia and almost all the Venetian strongholds in the Egean Sea, though with the loss of some towns in Dalmatia. But the empire was distracted by military factions and seraglio intrigues, and the new sultan, Mohammed IV. (1648-87), began his reign under the most unfavourable auspices. He was only seven years of age, and the whole power was vested in the Janizaries and their partisans, who used it to accomplish their own ends. Fortunately for Turkey, in 1656 Mohammed Köprili, an old Albanian of seventy, but possessed of an iron will, was appointed vezîr with practically absolute powers; and the extraordinary talents of this man proved to be the salvation of Turkey at this critical juncture. He had 36,000 persons executed in his five years of office, and then died with a good conscience. He was succeeded (1661) in office by his son, Köprili-zâda Ahmed, a man of even greater ability, and under his guidance the central administration recovered its control over even the most distant provinces; a formidable war with Austria, though unsuccessful and marked by a severe defeat at St Gothard on the Raab (1664), was concluded by a peace advantageous to the Turks; Crete

was finally subdued, and Podolia defended from the Poles; though these advantages were somewhat overshadowed by the crushing defeats administered at Choczim and Lemberg in 1673 and 1675 by John Sobieski (q.v.). The next vezîr, Kara Mustafa, who was not a Köprili, relied too much upon the success of his predecessors. He invaded Austria at the head of 400,000 men in 1682, and, undeterred by the great Suleymân's discomfiture, had the audacity to lay siege to Vienna. But the second siege ended even more disastrously than the first. The grand vezîr's army was totally routed by Duke Charles of Lorraine and John Sobieski, king of Poland. The Austrians followed up this victory by repossessing themselves of Hungary (1686), inflicting upon the Turks a bloody defeat at Mohácz, whilst Louis of Baden entered Bosnia, and the Venetians seized the opportunity to conquer the Peloponnesus and bombard the Acropolis of Athens. The fortunate appointment of a third Köprili, Mustafa, as grand vezîr by Suleymân II. (1687-91), was the means of restoring to some extent the faded honour of the Turkish arms; but with his death (1691) fortune deserted the Turks. Meanwhile Sultans Ahmed II. (1691–95) and Mustafa II. (1695-1703) enjoyed their state in their palace on the Golden Horn. The latter indeed tried to emulate his warlike ancestors; but the Austrians under Prince Eugene effectually cooled his zeal at the disastrous battle of Zenta (1697). The treaties of Carlovitz (1699) and that of Passarovitz (1718) mark the end of Turkish rule in Hungary, Transylvania, and Podolia, and brought the frontier to very nearly the same line as it occupied before the treaty of Berlin in 1878.

Ahmed III. (1703-30) was noble enough to refuse to deliver up the refugee king Charles XII. of Sweden to the Russians after the battle of Pultowa, and the result was an invasion of Moldavia in 1711 by the Czar Peter, who, however, soon found himself in great straits, from which he was rescued by the genius and bribes of his queen, afterwards Catharine I. But for her, Peter and his army would have become Turkish prisoners. The recovery of the Morea by the vezîr Damad 'Aly (1715) from the Venetians, and the loss of Belgrade and parts of Servia and Wallachia, recovered during the reign of Mahmûd I. (1730-54), and the commencement of a long war with Persia (see NADIR SHAH) were other events of Ahmed's reign. In 1736 the career of Russian aggression recommenced with the seizing of Azov and Oczakov; but a scheme for the partition of Turkey between Austria and Russia was foiled by the continued series of disgraceful defeats inflicted upon the Austrian armies by the Turks. The Russians, on the other hand, were uniformly successful; but the czarina, desirous of peace, resigned her conquests in Moldavia, and concluded a treaty at Belgrade (1739). 'Osman III. (1754-57) soon gave place to Mustafa III. (1757-73), under whom the empire enjoyed profound tranquillity; but after his death the Russians, in violation of the treaty of Belgrade, invaded Moldavia. The war with Russia continued during the succeeding reign of Abdul-Hamîd I. (1773-89); the fortresses on the Danube fell; and the main army of the Turks was totally defeated at Shumla. The campaign was ended July 1774, by the celebrated treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji. In defiance of its provisions the czarina in 1783 took possession of the Crimea and the whole country eastward to the Caspian. The sultan was compelled, by his indignant subjects, to take up arms in 1787. In 1788 Austria made another foolish attempt to arrange with Russia a partition of Turkey; but, as before, the Austrian forces were completely routed. The Russians, however, with their usual success, had overrun the northern pro

vinces, taken all the principal fortresses, and captured or destroyed the Turkish fleet. The accession of Selîm III. (1789-1807) was inaugurated by renewed vigour in the prosecution of the war; but the Austrians had again joined the Russians. Belgrade surrendered to the Austrians, while the Russians took Bucharest, Bender, Akerman, and Ismail (see SUVOROFF); but the critical aspect of affairs in western Europe made it advisable for Russia to terminate the war, and a treaty of peace was accordingly signed at Yassy, 9th January 1792. By this treaty the provisions of that of Kainarji were confirmed; the Dniester was made the boundary line, the cession of the Crimea and the Kuban was confirmed, and Belgrade was restored to the sultan. Numberless reforms were now projected for the better administration of the empire. The people were, however, hardly prepared for so many changes, and the sultan's projects cost him his throne and life. The occupation of Egypt by the French brought on a war between them and the Turks, in which the latter, by the aid of the British, were successful in regaining their lost territories. After the ephemeral reign of Mustafa IV. (1807-8), the able and energetic Mahmûd II. (1808-39) ascended the throne; and though his dominions were curtailed by the loss of Greece, which established its independence in 1828, and of the country between the Dniester and the Pruth, which by the treaty of Bucharest in 1812 was surrendered to Russia, and in spite too of a disastrous war with Russia in 1827-28, the reformation he effected in all departments of the administration checked the decline of the empire. Egypt, during his reign, attempted unsuccessfully to throw off the authority of the sultan (see EGYPT, Vol. IV. p. 242). His son, Abdul-Mejîd (1839–61), continued the reforms commenced in the previous reign (see STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE); but the czar, thinking that the dissolution of the Ottoman empire was at hand, constantly tried to wring from the sultan some acknowledgment of a right of interference in the internal affairs of the country. It was an attempt of this sort to obtain the exclusive protectorate of the members of the Greek Church in Turkey, that brought on the Crimean War (q.v.) of 1853-55, in which the Turks were effectively supported by England, France, and Sardinia. The treaty of Paris (1856) restored to Turkey the command of both sides of the lower Danube, excluded the czar from his assumed protectorate over the Danubian principalities, and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. The Porte, apparently adopted into the family of European nations, made proclamation in the Hatti-Humâyûn of 1856 of equal civil rights to all the races and creeds of the Turkish dominions. But a massacre of Christians in Lebanon and at Damascus provoked western intervention in 1860. Abdul-Mejid, whose last years were disgraced by irrational profuseness of expenditure, was ceeded by his brother Abdul-Azîz (1861-75). Meanwhile the nominally subject peoples of Moldavia and Wallachia ventured to unite themselves into the one state of Roumania; and in 1866 the empire, becoming more and more enfeebled through its corrupt administration, had to look on while the Roumanians expelled their ruler, and, in the hope of securing western support, chose Prince Charles of Hohenzollern to be hereditary prince of the united principalities. The rebellion of Crete in 1866 threatened a severe blow to the integrity of the empire, but was ultimately suppressed in 1868, in spite of active help from Greece. Servia, already autonomous within her own frontiers, demanded the removal of the Turkish garrisons still maintained in certain Servian fortresses; and in 1867 Turkey saw herself compelled to make this

suc

concession. In the same year the sultan distinguished the pasha of Egypt by granting to him the unique title of Khedive (q.v.). The vassal king drew down the wrath of his suzerain in 1870 by negotiating directly with foreign courts, and was compelled to give formal tokens of vassalage. But later concessions have made the Khedive virtually independent of Turkey. The Russian government took the opportunity of war between Germany and France to declare, in 1871, that it felt itself no longer bound by that provision of the Paris treaty which forbade Russia to have a fleet in the Black Sea; and a London conference sanctioned this stroke of Russian diplomacy. Between 1854 and 1871 the Turkish debt had increased by more than £116,000,000; and in 1875 the Porte was driven to partial repudiation of its debts. An insurrection in Herzegovina in the later part of 1874 marked the beginning of a very eventful and critical period in the history of Turkey. The insurrection smouldered on through 1875 and part of 1876, and excited all the neighbouring Slavonic peoples. A threatened revolt in Bulgaria in May 1875 was repressed with much bloodshed; and the merciless cruelty displayed by the Bashi-bazouks or Turkish irregulars alienated foreign sympathy from the government. In May Abdul-Azîz was deposed; and his nephew, Murâd V., son of AbdulMejid, who succeeded him, was destined in turn to make way for his brother, Abdul-Hamid II., in August of the same year. In June Servia declared war, and Montenegro followed her example. Before the end of the year the Servians were utterly defeated, in spite of the help of many Russian volunteers; but the state of affairs in the Turkish provinces seemed to call for a conference of the great powers at Constantinople. The proposals then made for the better government of the Christian subjects of Turkey were rejected by the Turkish authorities, who had, during the conference, taken the extraordinary step of bestowing a purely nominal parliamentary constitution on the Ottoman empire. Russia took upon herself to enforce on Turkey the suggestions of the conference, and on 24th April 1877 declared war. Both in Armenia and Bulgaria the opening of the campaign was favourable to Russian arms, but later the Turks rallied and seriously checked the triumphant progress of the invaders. Even after the Russian forces had been greatly augmented the Turks resisted energetically. Kars, besieged for several months, resisted till the middle of November; Erzerûm did not surrender until after the armistice had been concluded. Osman Pasha, who established himself in Plevna early in July, repelled with brilliant success repeated and determined assaults from a besieging army of Russians and Roumanians; and he had so strengthened the fortifications as to be able to hold out until the 10th December, when he surrendered. Desperate fighting in the Shipka Pass had failed to expel the Russians from their position in the Balkans; but within a month of the fall of Plevna the Russians captured the whole Turkish army that was guarding the Shipka Pass, and then easily overran Roumelia. The victorious Muscovites occupied Adrianople in January 1878; on the last day of that month an armistice was concluded; and in March the 'preliminary treaty' of San Stefano was signed. After grave diplomatic difficulties, owing chiefly to the apparent incompatibility of English and Russian interests, a Congress of the Powers met at Berlin, and sanctioned the cessions and other territorial changes which, with modifications, were carried out between 1878 and 1881, as has been already noticed.

Von Hammer-Purgstall's Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (1834-35) is the standard history of Turkey, which has been largely used in Sir E. Creasy's accurate

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History of the Ottoman Turks (1854), and in the present writer's Turkey ('Story of the Nations' series, 1888). Among other writers treating of special periods may be mentioned Finlay, Chesney, H. von Moltke, Kinglake, Freeman, and the diplomatic papers of Gentz, Metternich, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.

Literature.-By Turkish literature we understand that of the Osmânlîs, 'the Turks' par excellence. It is true there is an eastern Turkish_language, represented (among others) by the Jagatai or Chaghtai dialect, in which the Emperor Bâber wrote his 'Memoirs' (c. 1535), but the eastern Turkish idioms, interesting as they are to the philologist, hold a small place in literature compared with the Ottoman development. Of Turkish literature in this restricted sense there is a great quantity, but it has never achieved a high reputation. The reason is found in its lack of originality, in the absence of any characteristic national flavour. Turkish poetry is closely modelled upon the Persian style with which the Ottomans naturally became familiar during their early association with the Seljuks (q.v.), who had become deeply imbued with Iranian ideas in their long residence among the Persians. Like the Seljuks, the Osmanlis assimilated the literature of the people they subdued. Firdausi and Nizâmî had already written their masterpieces before the name of Ottoman was heard, and at the time of their settlement in Asia Minor Sa'di and Jelâl-ed-din Rûmî were attracting the admiration of the eastern world. The latter was a resident at Iconium (Kôniya), the Seljuk capital, and his mystical verses or mesnevis impressed their character upon the whole literature of the new power then rising in Anatolia. Ottoman poetry is full of the subtle esoteric ideas which are characteristic of its Persian exemplars. Its long metrical romances, while apparently treating of the loves of Leyli and Mejnûn, of Khusrev and Shirin, or of Joseph and Zuleykha, are really occupied with the deeper thoughts of the longing of the soul for God, the yearning of the heart for heavenly wisdom, the struggle between human passion and the endeavour towards divine serenity. The short odes or ghazels, the most characteristic of Ottoman poetic forms, though outwardly mere voluptuous songs, are in reality the outpourings of hearts drunken with the love of God.' Nor is the mystic spirit the sole gift of Persia to the Turkish poet. He has also borrowed the history and mythology of his predecessors, and, instead of the deeds of the old Turkish chiefs and the cult of the gods of the Caspian nomads, he celebrates the prowess of Persian heroes, of Rustem and Jemshîd, KayKhusrev and Ferîdûn, and the loves and tragedies of Leyli and Shîrîn and other Persian heroines. And the Ottoman poet followed the forms as well as the ideas of his Iranian masters, such as the kasida or Arabian lyric, adopted by the Persians, in which the second hemistychs rhyme throughout the whole length of the composition; the Persian mesnevi, or rhymed couplet; and the ghazel or sonnet of the East. In all these the Persian love of playing upon words, far-fetched conceits, and extreme elaboration of metaphor is not merely emulated but exaggerated to intolerable excess : the grace of expression and finish of the form alone redeem the artificiality of the style and thought. Turkish poetry, it must be admitted, is lamentably unreal: it lacks warmth, and earnestness, and sincerity. It is throughout essentially a court poetry, mannered and insincere. There is nothing robust or healthy about it. There is nothing strong or masculine in its love or its patriotism. Throughout we trace the effects of an artificial town life, where genius is cramped in convention, and poetic art is no longer an inspiration, but a cast from the face of the dead.

Ottoman poetry begins soon after the establishment of the Ottoman empire. Already in the beginning of the 15th century Ahmed Dâ'î's 'gay and flowing songs of love and wine' delighted the court of Prince Suleymân at Adrianople, and poems had been indited by Ghâzî Fâzil, who had crossed the Hellespont on a raft with that prince on the night when the Osmanlis gained their first foothold in Europe. To write poetry soon became part of the accomplishments of kings and courtiers. Of the thirty-four sultans of Turkey twenty-one were poets of a sort, and Amurath the Great (Murâd II.), Mohammed the Conqueror, and Selîm I. (the Grim) were accounted bards of repute. The unhappy Prince Jem was especially noted for his poetic talent; and from Murad II. to Murâd IV. (1421–1623) twelve successive sultans left poems which have come down to us. Generals and ministers followed the imperial example. The grand vezîr Mahmûd Pasha (d. 1474), the conqueror of Negroponte, delighted in the composition of ghazels, and Kemâl Pasha Zâda (d. 1534), as he rode to the conquest of Egypt with the Sultan Selim the Grim, beguiled the way with recitations of the leading events of Egyptian history in choice Turkish verse. He was the author of the Nigaristán, a poem modelled on the Gulistan or RoseGarden of Sa'dî.

The greater poets of Turkey, however, were not high dignitaries, but sons of inechanics, cutlers, saddlers, shoemakers; few were of rank or wealth. Their numbers and their merits rise and fall as the tide of Turkish conquest flows and ebbs. It is ever in a period of strong national feeling that the poetry of a people is called forth; and it was in the golden prime of Sultan Suleyman, when the confines of the kingdom were at their broadest, when the name and fame of the Ottoman empire stood higher than ever before or since, that the opportunity of Turkish poetry arrived, and with it came the masters of the art. To the age of Suleymân and his predecessor Selim belong Mesîhî (d. 1512), Lâmi'î (d. 1531), Ghazâlî (d. 1534), Fuzûlî (d. 1562), Fazlî (d. 1563), and Bâkî (d. 1600). The best Turkish poetry is chiefly included in this epoch, which partly corresponds in time with our Elizabethan era. Lâmi'i's works, to which Von Hammer devoted 174 pages of his great History, include poems on old Persian romances, besides a multitude of ghazels and other short pieces. Fuzûlî, on the whole the greatest of Turkish poets, in spite of his provincial idiom, is best known by his Leyli and Mejnún and his charming odes. Bâkî, the most famous of Turkish lyricists, was the friend of four successive sultans, filled some high offices of state, and received the unhesitating homage of all the poets of his day and the admiration of all succeeding generations. His famous elegy on Suleymân the Great is unsurpassed in Ottoman literature. The appreciation of nature which is shown in such poems as Mesîhî's Ode to Spring' and Bâkî's and Lâmi'i's odes to Autumn,' and which is characteristic of their period, forms one of the best features of Turkish poetry. Their love-songs, on the other hand, are disappointingly stilted and artificial; and it is singular that, in spite of their military renown, the Turks have no martial poetry of the old time: there is hardly a respectable warsong in the whole range of mediæval Ottoman literature.

The classical period of Ottoman poetry, which began with the 16th century, did not end with the glorious reign of Suleyman the Great (d. 1566). Nef'i of Erzerûm (d. 1635), the most renowned of Turkish satirists, wrote in the time of Murâd IV.; Nabi (d. 1712) wrote thousands of couplets of a didactic tendency; and Nedîm (d. c. 1727), perhaps the most finished and certainly the most blithe of

Turkish singers, belongs to the time of Ahmed III. He was the last of the old classical school of Ottoman poets, though Sheykh Ghâlib (d. 1795), the author of 'Beauty and Love' (Husn-u-Ashk), was little inferior to any of the older writers. During the past half century a notable change has come over Turkish poetry. It is as voluminous as ever, but it turns for inspiration to Paris instead of Shîrâz. Ghazels and kasidas have given way to western forms; the very vocabulary has been modified; and a modern Ottoman poem would hardly be comprehensible to the older writers of the classical epoch. Wâsif, who tried to write in colloquial Stambûlî Turkish, 'Izzet Molla, 'Akif Pasha, and the poetesses Fitnet and Leyla were among the lights of the transition period; Shinâsî, Ekrem, and Hamid Bey the dramatist have been the leaders of the European style, of which it is too early yet to express a general criticism. One of the modern school has to some extent wiped out the stigma, already mentioned, of the want of martial poetry among the Turks: Rifat Bey has at last written an Ottoman war-song.

Turkish prose writers have been and are very numerous, though here again originality is lacking, and their activity has been chiefly displayed in translations from the Persian and Arabic. One of their earliest works is the well-known History of the Forty Vezirs, a collection of old folk-stories, written in the first half of the 15th century, and now translated by E. J. W. Gibb. Sinân Pasha, however, the vezîr of Mohammed the Conqueror, was the first prose stylist of merit. Sa'd-ed-dîn, the historian, in spite of his elaborate style and alliteration, was a writer of conspicuous ability, and Na'îma, his successor, is as vigorous and direct as Sa'd-ed-din is circumlocutory and ornate. The Taj-et-Tevárikh of the former goes down to 1520, and Na'îma's history covers the ground from 1591 to 1659. Evliya the traveller, and Hâjjî Khalifa, an encyclopædic writer on history and bibliography, are among the best-known Turkish authors. Jevdet Pasha is the leading Turkish historian of the 19th century, and Kemal Bey one of the most notable modern men of letters. Printing was begun in Turkey in 1728, and the products of the Turkish press in the present day are numerous and often valuable. Turkish prose as well as poetry has been revolutionised by the introduction of western ideas since the reforms of Mahmûd II.

The standard but not very satisfactory work on Turkish poetry is Von Hammer-Purgstall's Geschichte der Osmanischen Dichtkunst (Pesth, 1836). The best English works are Sir James W. Redhouse's History, System, and Varieties of Turkish Poetry (1878) and E. J. W. Gibb's Ottoman Poetry (1882). See also the latter's chapter on Ottoman literature in the present writer's Turkey ('Story of the Nations' series), and the article on Ottoman Poetry by the present writer in Macmillan's Magazine, Redhouse and Wells have compiled the January 1883. best Turkish dictionaries and grammars.

Turkey (Meleagris), a genus of gallinaceous birds, according to some ornithologists of a distinct family, Meleagridæ, but included by others in Phasianidæ. The head is bare, the neck wattled, and the bill of the male surmounted with a conical fleshy caruncle, sometimes erected, sometimes elongated and pendulous. A curious tuft of long hair springs from the base of the neck of the male, and hangs down on the breast. The bill is rather short, strong and curved; the tail is broad and rounded, capable of being erected and spread out, as the male delights to do when he struts about in pride, with wings rubbing on the ground, uttering his loud peculiar gobble. The Common Turkey, the largest of gallinaceous birds, well known as an inmate of our poultry-yards, is a native of North America, where it exists in two forms. The typical