and denounced by successive Vicars of Christ. 6. The year 1048 of our era is fixed by chronologists as the date of the rise of the Turkish power, as far as Christendom is interested in its history.[41] Sixty-three years before this date, a Turk of high rank, of the name of Seljuk, had quarrelled with his native prince in Turkistan, crossed the Jaxartes with his followers, and planted himself in the territory of Sogdiana. His father had been a chief officer in the prince's court, and was the first of his family to embrace Islamism; but Seljuk, in spite of his creed, did not obtain permission to advance into Sogdiana from the Saracenic government, which at that time was in possession of the country. After several successful encounters, however, he gained admission into the city of Bokhara, and there he settled. As time went on, he fully recompensed the tardy hospitality which the Saracens had shown him; for his feud with his own countrymen, whom he had left, took the shape of a religious enmity, and he fought against them as pagans and infidels, with a zeal, which was both an earnest of the devotion of his people to the faith of Mahomet, and a training for the exercise of it. He died, it is said, in battle against the pagans, and at the wonderful age of 107. Of his five sons, whom he left behind him, one, Michael, was cut off prematurely in battle against the infidels also, and has obtained the name of Shadid or the Martyr; for in a religion where the soldier is the missionary, the soldier is the martyr also. The other sons became rich and powerful; they had numerous flocks and fertile pastures in Sogdiana, till at length they attracted the notice of the Sultan Mahmood, who, having dispossessed the Saracens of the country where Seljuk had placed himself, looked about for mercenary troops to keep his possession of it. It was one of Seljuk's family, who at a later date alarmed Mahmood by telling him he could bring 200,000 horsemen from the Scythian wilderness, if he sent round his bow to summon them; it was Seljuk's horde and retainers that ultimately forced back Mahmood's son into the south and the east, and got possession of Sogdiana and Khorasan. Having secured this acquisition, they next advanced into Persia, and this was the event, which is considered to fix the date of their entrance into ecclesiastical history. It was the date of their first steadily looking westward; it determined their destiny; they began to be enemies of the Cross in the year 1048, under the leading of Michael the Martyr's son, Togrul Beg.