The Ottoman Centuries [antikvár]

Westward along the high Eurasian steppe, from the borders of China across Turkestan and beyond it, there flowed through continuous centuries waves of nomad peoples. Pastoral, stock-breeding communities, living in tents, horsemen and camel drivers feeding and rearing the flocks and the herds which in turn were to feed and to clothe them, they moved in cycles between seasonal pastures, migrating onward periodically to seek better lands or to escape the pressure of kindred nomads behind them; sometimes trading their pastoral products for those of the townsmen and agriculturists; less frequently settling themselves by the way, in some watered oasis, to a life of cultivation. Obliged, for the maintenance of their pastoral economy, to wage a perennial war with the forces of nature, these nomads of the steppe, in loose federations of close tribal societies, developed their own especial energies, skills, institutions, and customs. Widespread among them were a vigorous people who became known as the Turks. To the Chinese and other neighbours they were the Tu-Kueh or Dürkö, a belligerent race deriving the name (so it is said) from a hill in their region which was shaped like a helmet. Identified at an earlier stage with the Huns, the Turks were akin to the Mongols and to the people who were later to be known as Finns and Hungarians. In the sixth century a.d. they conquered another people of their kind