While of course it would be absurd to propose at this time of day any change in the terms by which the civilized world unanimously designates the Osmanlis and their dominion, it is well to insist on their incorrectness, because, like most erroneous names, they have bred erroneous beliefs. Thanks in the main to them, the Ottoman power is supposed to have originated in an overwhelming invasion of Asia Minor by immense numbers of Central Asiatic migrants, who, intent, like the early Arab armies, on offering to Asia first and Europe second the choice of apostasy or death, absorbed or annihilated almost all the previous populations, and swept forward into the Balkans as single-minded apostles of Islam. If the composition and the aims of the Osmanlis had been these, it would pass all understanding how they contrived, within a century of their appearance on the western scene, to establish in North-west Asia and South-east Europe the most civilized and best-ordered state of their time. Who, then, are the Osmanlis in reality? What have they to do with true Turks? and in virtue of what innate qualities did they found and consolidate their power? 1 _Origin of the Osmanlis_ We hear of Turks first from Chinese sources. They were then the inhabitants, strong and predatory, of the Altai plains and valleys: but later on, about the sixth century A.D., they are found firmly established in what is still called Turkestan, and pushing westwards towards the Caspian Sea. Somewhat more than another century passes, and, reached by a missionary faith of West Asia, they come out of the Far Eastern darkness into a dim light of western history. One Boja, lord of Kashgar and Khan of what the Chinese knew as the people of Thu-Kiu—probably the same name as ‘Turk’—embraced Islam and forced it on his Mazdeist subjects; but other Turkish tribes, notably the powerful Uighurs, remained intolerant of the new dispensation, and expelled the Thu-Kiu _en masse_ from their holding in Turkestan into Persia. Here they distributed themselves in detached hordes over the north and centre. At this day, in some parts of Persia, e.g. Azerbaijan, Turks make the bulk of the population besides supplying the reigning dynasty of the whole kingdom. For the Shahs of the Kajar house are not Iranian, but purely Turkish.