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.[36] Sixty-three years before this date, a Turk of high 30 rank, of the name of Seljuk, had quarreled 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 5 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, 10 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 15 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.... 20 [36] Baronius, Pagi. For four centuries the Turks are little or hardly heard of; then suddenly in the course of as many tens of years, and under three Sultans, they make the whole world resound with their deeds; and, while they have pushed to the East through 25 Hindostan, in the West they have hurried down to the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, have taken Jerusalem, and threatened Constantinople. In their long period of silence they had been sowing the seeds of future 30 conquests; in their short period of action they were gathering the fruit of past labors and sufferings. The Saracenic empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a Turk showed himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he found himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred 5 which had been so long in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the Romans in a former age had shown the passes of the Caucasus; and he could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his 10 native desert, and following in his track. Such was the state of Western Asia in the middle of the eleventh century.