"قاموس، فارسي، عربي، إنجليزي، مع أطروحة عن لغات أمم المشرق وآدابها وعاداتها" [ظ‎‎٢‎٨] (١٨٢٦/٦١)

xl
DISSERTATION.
Tartary; though our greatest writers, following
Jornandez, the Gothic abridger of Cassiodorus,
have looked only to Scandinavia, and the northern
parts of Germany, for those bodies of fierce war
riors, who, in the early ages of Christianity, over
turned the government, and changed the manners
of Europe. The Tartars, Scythians, or Turanians
(under which general names the historians of
different nations have comprehended the inhabi
tants of that immense tract, stretching from 53° to
130° east long, and from about 39° to 80° north
lat.), have from the oldest times been remarked
fora roving, irregular, martial life. People, whose
riches centered in cattle, who wandered for pasture
from district to district, could in consequence
have no attachment to a spot. That amor patria?,
so conspicuous in the Hottentot, in the Laplander,
and in the wild inhabitant of every barren rock,
has never been discovered in men of this descrip
tion. Attached to his tribe, and glorying in an
extensive line of ancestors, the natale solum is to
the Tartar an object of the most perfect indif
ference ; and to abandon it, in the company of his
friends, a circumstance rather of choice than regret.
These great outlines have accordingly marked the
operations of this extraordinary people from the
most ancient times. Without those restraints on
matrimony, which are found in more civilized com
munities, their numbers had naturally a prodigious
increase ; and as they despised the idea of cultivat
ing the ground, the same extent of country which
could have maintained thousands of husbandmen,
was found often insufficient for hundreds of roam
ing pastors. Emigrations alone could remedy this
inconvenience. A celebrated warrior had only
to proclaim, therefore, his intention of invading
some neighbouring state or more distant country.
He was immediately joined by the chiefs of many
hordes. Chance, oftener than design, might shape
their course; to the south, to the north, to the east,
to the west: for every quarter of the globe has at
different times been the theatre of Tartar establish
ment or plunder. The ancient annals of the Per
sians are entirely employed in commemorating
their numerous wars with the Turanians beyond
the Jihun. China and Hindustan have often felt
their fury. Whilst Changlz Khan and Tamerlane,
at the head of their bold and hardy subjects, ap
proached nearer to universal monarchy than any
conquerors of ancient or modern times/"
That the West must have been the object of
Tartar invasion, as well as the East and South,
there can be little ground to question. These
people possess, as we may observe, the whole in
terior almost of the Asiatic and European Conti
nent. In a constant state of action and re-action,
history informs us, that they have burst repeatedly
upon every adjacent country. Like subterraneous
vapours, when rarefied beyond a certain degree,
they have at times acquired a great expansive
force ; and the violence of the explosion in one
part, would be generally in the ratio of the resist
ance in others. In the vigour of the Roman and
Persian powers, they were often repulsed from their
frontiers; but they would not always return. ith-
out success, without plunder, that would have
been an indelible disgrace. They might then have
struck to the West or to the North, where, finding
countries more thinly peopled ; and the few inha
bitants, not only strangers to the art of war, hut -
unprotected by fortified towns, the opposition they
might encounter would in general be insufficient
to check their progress. Yet meeting with no rich
spoils in those countries, which could give a
splendour to their expedition amongst their coun
trymen, they would ofte 1 ' be induced rather to
settle in their conquests than to go back : and as
there would be sufficient territory for the invaders
and the invaded, enmity would soon give way to
intermarriages and social intercourse. The old
inhabitants would adopt by degrees some of the
manners and beliefs of the Eastern strangers : and
these, in return, falling in with habits and ideas
peculiar to the aboriginal people, a few generations
would naturally incorporate them, and form in
time those various nations, known by the names of
Goths, Vandals, Loynbards, Franks; whose roaming,
rapacious, Tartar genius, became afterwards con-