The Turks,[481] or “settlers,” were a branch of that strong Mongol race which first created civilisation in Mesopotamia, and which, through the courage and masterfulness that have always characterised this sturdy people, ruled Western Asia at least a thousand years before Abraham, as Akkadians and Hittites, who, though dominated by the Aryan and Semitic races after 1500 B. C., still clung, under their “tarkhans,” to North Syria as late as the time of Nebuchadnezzar. The Turks proper had penetrated, or had been driven, into Central Asia at some early period, and the home of the tribes--Huns, Uigurs, Khitai, and others--was beyond the Oxus. They were long held at bay by the Byzantines and the Persians, but broke out east into China, and west into Hungary as Huns in the fifth century. Justinian was allied with the Turks, called Khozars, on the Volga. In Turkestan they protected the silk caravans, and about 580 A. D. Dizavul (“the orderer”) sent his ambassadors to Justin II. of Byzantium. The civilisation of the Turks was primitive until they came under the influence of Buddhists from India, of Jews (who established a great trade in Central Asia), and of Chaldean Christians who had churches at Samarkand about 900 A. D. The old Uigur alphabet is evidence of the wide range of the race, which drove a wedge of Yakuts into Siberia. Their letters were those of the Aramean alphabet of Persia, and Uigur texts are found on the banks of the Yenissei; while farther east this alphabet reached Manchuria and China. Farther west the Khozars were converted to Judaism about 750 A. D., and are even said to have been ruled by Jewish kings. More than one empress of Byzantium was a Turkish princess, and the blood of the race thus ran in the veins of the Isaurian dynasty, Constantine VI. being the son of a Khozar mother.