heavier, and more grotesque nature than the Irish, but they certainly are both of the same type. Thus an Irishman picks up a sovereign one day, which turns out to be a light one, only worth 178. 6d., and he refuses to pick up another the next day, because, forsooth, he lost 2s. 6d. by its sister the day before. Under the same confusion of ideas, Nasr-ed-din Hodja, because, through his donkey's straying, he lost his pelisse which he had thrown on the pack-saddle, takes off this pack-saddle from the animal's back to punish him, and, carrying it home on his own back, threatens never to replace it on the ass's back till the pelisse is found. In the same way, too, having quarrelled with the villagers, whose cowherd he had become, he threatens them with terrible vengeance. Upon which one of them asks him, "What will you do, O Hodja? Will you let our cows stray, and become the food of wolves?" "Worse than that," replies the Hodja. "Will you set fire to our village?" asks the villager again. "Much worse than that," he replies. "Well, what will you do? Tell us," says the villager. "I'll tell you," replies the Hodja; "I'll work for you for a whole year, and when the time comes for you to pay me my wages, I'll throw the money into your faces and go away" (pp. 203-4).

The Hodja may fairly be regarded as a representative of the Anatolian peasantry; to understand him is to understand them.

Nasr-ed-din is not a creation or growth of the pure Turks; he is the Turkish survival of the ancient Esop. Both Esop and the Hodja were Phrygians. Esop belonged to Kutaya, the ancient Kotiaion; Nasr-ed-din belonged to Ak-sheher, the ancient Philomelion; those cities lie on or near the great road which leads from Constantinople and Bithynia to the south-east. The wisdom and humour of Phrygia in its ancient and in its mediæval form are connected with these two names. Each represents a certain phase or stage in the development or degeneration of society in Anatolia. Esop marks the period when the collective self-protecting and self-directing instinct of the people, which previously had found expression through the goddess and her religious institutions, was seeking some more direct way of utterance, and was gradually learning a kind of rude half-literary expression, no longer in the guise of divine teaching through the prophets of the sanctuary, but as the native utterance of an individual mind. Nasr-ed-din

Hodja marks an epoch in degeneration. The society of the Christian Empire had long been accustomed to express itself in literary forms, not indeed reaching a high level in the later centuries, but still declaring through the mouth of individuals the thought of the community. The Turkish conquest had changed that; and such literature as was produced under the Seljuk Sultans was exotic and Persian in type rather than Anatolian. Thus the Moslemised peasantry of Phrygia were again placed on a stage similar to that on which Æsop had lived. The Hodja gave expression to the native thoughts, which now had ceased to be capable of real literary expression and again took the form of story and fable. He lived when Tamerlane overthrew the Seljuks and reigned at Konia, and his grave is shown at Ak-Sheher. Whether he or Esop was a real figure, or both were creations of the popular imagination (like many of the Moslem 'heroes' whose graves are shown in many parts of Anatolia), forms no part of our subject. They are types of the Anatolian peasant.

The native character of Nasr-ed-din suggests a fact which is too often forgotten, or rather which is unknown to or unregarded by the world in general, though every person who has travelled much in Asiatic Turkey is well aware of it. The Anatolian Turks are not merely Turks; they are in large degree and with certain exceptions the ancient population of the country. They are Phrygians or Isaurians or Cappadocians and so on, in a more real sense than they are Turks. This, of course, does not apply to the many nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes, such as Turkmen, Avshahr, Yuruk, etc., nor does it apply to the modern immigrant or refugee peoples-the Mohadjir element, as it is called-but it is eminently the case with the settled people of the towns and villages generally, who are pointedly distinguished in native appreciation from the nomads. Nasr-ed-din is a sort of impersonation of the rough, homely-witted, good-humoured peasant of the Phrygian hills and the great central plains, who has remained the same throughout the ages. The Anatolian is the fellah,' almost the beast of burden, whom we see carrying on his back a pack-saddle, supporting an enormous load of merchandise along the streets of Smyrna, in the service of a European merchant. The

Anatolians of the Phrygian hills and plain are the typical part of the whole population; and we remember that the word 'Phrygian' was practically equivalent to 'slave' in the estimation of the quicker-witted Greeks and Romans; the Phrygians were the 'fellahin,' the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the unskilled workmen, whom Nature intended (as Aristotle said) to be slaves of the higher race. Yet the Phryges were the 'Free Men,' the European conquerors of the land, and are still excellent soldiers under good officers.

Regarded as expressions of the character of the Anatolian peasant, the stories about the Hodja, which always arise out of some situation in social life, derive their point from their humorous and yet apparently ignorant or stupid way of describing the situation from an unexpected point of view; but there is a certain irony always under the surface, and to miss this irony is to miss everything. There is a translation by Muellendorff of some of the stories about Nasr-ed-din Hodja, published at the small price of threepence in the Universal Library of Reclam at Leipzig, but nothing can be more disappointing than the German version of the Turkish stories. Dr Muellendorff seems always to miss the point in his translation. I eagerly seized on the book when it was first shown to me, having been familiar in the past with many stories which passed from mouth to mouth regarding the adventures of the mediæval Phrygian, stories which always were apposite to the situation that suggested them, and full of quaint humour; but the pages of the learned German translator contain only disappointment. Something seems to have dropped out in practically every story, and the little thing that is omitted destroys the effect. Sir William Whittall has only a few stories of the Hodja, but they make the Turk and his ideal in Nasr-ed-din intelligible to the world.

The description of one of the best Turkish peasants with whom I have come in contact, may be quoted from my 'Impressions of Turkey' (published in 1897):

'Akhmet, a Koniali (from a village eleven hours west of Konia), who was one of our men in 1886, had served seven years as a soldier, had risen to the rank of sergeant, had gone through the earlier stages of the Russian war and the siege of Plevna; he had been taken prisoner when Plevna

was captured (one of 140 men who survived out of a regiment 700 strong), and had been released at the end of the war. During his seven years of service, he had received one dollar as pay. He was an excellent specimen of a village Turk; absolutely trustworthy, strong, slow, steady, modest, quiet, perfectly well-behaved, and perfectly useless in all the departments of work where any skill or readiness was required. When we came to a village, Akhmet, instead of putting on some show and making an impression of importance, would take the humblest inhabitant aside and enquire in a whisper where he could procure milk, a fowl, etc. He never knew what to do or to say beyond his ordinary round of duties; he could never learn to distinguish between a stone without letters and a "written stone"; he never could understand why we looked at such things, and, much as he tried, never could feel the faintest interest in them (even though he knew bakshish rewarded every discovery).'

Yet, if I ever should be in a really dangerous situation, it would be the rather stupid but absolutely honest Koniali, and not any one of the much abler servants whom I have often had, that I should wish beside me-if I could not have both. There lies the reason why I always have such affection for the Turkish villagers. A nation, to be self-sufficient, must contain more than people like the Koniali, but those who have known the need of such people will never undervalue them.

Such is the Anatolian peasant in his natural condition, with the good and the bad. Our object is to see what his fate has been under the reformed and centralised Oriental administration which, with the support and under the teaching of Europe, enabled the Osmanli Sultans to recover their power. They could learn a little from the methods of European organisation, and thereby they were gradually enabled to destroy or degrade the territorial aristocracy of Anatolia; but from Europe the Sultans learned little or nothing except the misuse of the methods of civilisation. There was always some European power which found it advantageous to its own individual interests to help the Turkish Government in Constantinople. Many people cherished a genuine though, as events have shown, mistaken belief that the Government could be regenerated and revivified, and that

it might apply the resources of civilisation to good instead of to evil; they thought after the fashion of a wise man and religious teacher in Smyrna, according to the story told by Sir William Whittall.

'During the Crimean War, the first telegraph was established in Turkey. This wonderful invention created the greatest astonishment amongst the Turks; and great and bitter were the discussions as to whether it was a good or a bad thing for humanity. To solve the question, it was at last decided to have a full debate by the Ulema of the Province of Smyrna, who were at the time presided over by a very wise old mollah. The meeting was held, and fierce was the contention. Half the Ulema opined that the telegraph was a good thing, because it quickened communications; the other half asserted that it could not be good, seeing that it was an invention of the devil. There seemed to be no way of arriving at a conclusion, when it was perceived that their chief, the old mollah, had not yet expressed an opinion. Both parties, therefore, eagerly pressed him for his view on the subject, and agreed to abide by his decision. The old mollah replied, "My children, the telegraph is a good thing." "What," said the conservatives, indignantly, "do you mean that it is not a work of the devil's?" "Oh yes," replied the old man, "assuredly it is a work of his; but why are you so dull of understanding, my children? Can't you see that if the devil is occupied going up and down the wires with each message sent, he will have less time to trouble us mortals on the earth below?" And all the Ulema acknowledged the wisdom of their chief.'

Deterioration, both moral and economic, has accompanied the reorganisation carried out by Mahmud and his successors. It is not that the theory of the relations which ought to exist between the various sections of the population was seriously wrong in the Turkish system; in some respects it was very good; the evil lay entirely in the administration. In practice it was a vast organisation of bribery. It was not merely the case that there were corrupt officials, and that some took bribes. It was that all took bribes as their main or only source of income, and that this was done almost openly on a wellrecognised tariff. Every one knew the system. Every official was in office to get money, and not to do work. Every official knew that all the world was aware that he Vol. 229.-No. 454.

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