Moguls

MOGULS. Here it is proposed to sketch the earlier wanderings and agglomerations (for they can hardly be called kingdoms) of Turkish tribes in eastern and central Asia. Much new information on this subject has been made accessible in the last twenty years by the discovery near the river Orkhon, to the south of Lake Baikal, of Turkish inscriptions dating from the 8th century A.D., and by the publication of materials furnished by Chinese writers. But authorities are still not entirely agreed as to the chronology of the events recorded or the identity of the names which appear in Turkish, Greek and Chinese forms, so that the following summary is for many periods tentative. From 1400 B.C. onwards, but especially about 200 B.C., Chinese history contains notices of warlike nomads called Hiung-nu or Hsiung-nu, who were a danger to the empire. Their political power broke up in the early centuries of this era before the advance of the Sien-pi and Tobas, who appear to have been Tunguses, and from whom arose the Wei dynasty of northern China. In A.D. 433 a Hiung-nu clan called Asena or A-shih-na, disliking the rule of the Wei, moved eastwards and sought the protection of a people called Jeu-Jen or Jwen-Jwen, who were also a kind of Hiung-nu.

They are the Geougen of Gibbon and othersxand their identity with the Avars has been affirmed and disputed with equal confidence. The Asena served the Jwen-Jwen as workers in iron and lived not far from the modern city of ShanTan in Kan-suh. In this neighbourhood was a hill called from its shape Turku, Durku or T'u-chueh, meaning helmet, and this is said be to the origin of the national name which has become so celebrated. The name Tu-Kiue (Tou-Kiue) or Turk is first used by the Chinese in recording the events of A.D. 545, and the following years, when the Turks, or descendants of the Asena, revolted against the Jwen-Jwen. These latter were crushed and disappear from history, at least under that name. The victorious Turks advanced across their territory, came into collision with the Hephthalites or Ephthalites, whom they defeated, and are heard of on the Oxus about A.D. 560. The period 546-582 marks the first brilliant epoch of early Turkish history. The tribes were not divided and made the most astonishing advance under Tumen (who took the title of Ili-Khan), his brother Itsami or She-ti-mi (perhaps the Stembis of Greek writers), his son Mokan and Istami's son Tardu or Ta-t'eu.

Though fifty years before only a servile clan in China, they sent an embassy in 567 to the East Roman emperor Justin II., as related by Menander Protector (C. Miiller: Fragm. hist, grace., vol. iv.). The object of this mission was to open up commercial relations, especially in the silk trade, with the West, and to co-operate with the Greeks against the Persians, because the latter wished to make the Persian Gulf the only outlet for the silk trade, and with that object to hamper the communications of the Turks with Western powers. The ruler who sent this embassy is called in Greek