The history of this land is that of its invaders. Successive streams of humanity poured into it from four superabundant reservoirs. Its central mountain zone was the motherland of a virile race whose sons went forth at intervals to breathe vitality into gentler populations scattered between the Ægean coast and the valleys of the Nile and Mesopotamia. Armenians and a number of Mohammedan sects represent today this Alpine race. Mediterranean men proceeded constantly from the south and west to new homes in the pleasant valleys that connected eastern Ægean shores with the interior table-land. Mobile Semitic hosts abandoned the plateau of inner Arabia before the time of our earliest records and drifted naturally northwards towards the fertile Tigris-Euphrates basin or the commercial routes of Syria. Finally a Turki element, lured out of its mountain cradle in the Altai by scattered grass lands extending westwards, swarmed in successive hordes into Asia Minor and even beyond, well into the heart of Europe. In addition to the foregoing fundamental wanderings, the inflow of an Iranian element, composed of men of Aryan speech, may be observed. This contingent marched out of the plateau of Iran and reached the Turkish highland without having to scale its slopes. As a result of this migration Persian words permeate Armenian[214] extensively. The Turks also have appropriated a certain amount of Persian words and culture from the same source. Racially, however, the eastern element was absorbed by the Armenoid population. The present inhabitants of the diversified domains of the Sultans have been welded by the run of history into a shadowy political unity which has failed to harmonize their incompatibilities of origin and ideals. Turkey is a thoroughly theocratic state. Its sovereign-caliph and his subjects have always considered it their most important mission to bring Islam to the infidel. So great is the hold of ideals over the human mind, however, that the non-Mohammedan populations have clung passionately to their religious beliefs. We are forced to seek in creed the main distinguishing traits which, outwardly at least, divide the inhabitants of Turkey into groups of different names. We shall see, however, that in the minds of many of them, language or historical traditions have little significance. At the same time it is believed that distinctions of a more fundamental character will be brought out in the course of this chapter. THE GREEKS