[9] The older view, that Iran represented peoples of Indo-European stock, and Turan peoples of Ural-Altaic stock, though once so generally adopted as to sanction the bestowal of the names Iranian and Turanian upon these groups of peoples, has been abandoned as regards the original legends, in which Turan seems to have represented ruder tribes of Indo-European lineage (Meyer, _Geschichte_, i. pt. ii. 814-815). But the Greeks from their first acquaintance with the name identified Turan with the Scythians, and at about the same time the Persians began to apply it to the Northern peoples of alien stock. The conditions of frontier contact between Turks and Persians during many centuries were undoubtedly as described in the legends. [10] Rawlinson, _Parthia_, 33-35; Keane, 319. Meyer (in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed., xxi. 214 c) regards the Parni or Aparni, who became the conquering tribe in Parthia, as Iranian nomads; but Peisker (in _Cambridge Medieval History_, i. 332) asserts that the nomads of the Asiatic background all belong to the Altaian branch of the Ural-Altaian race. The fact that the Parthian army was a slave army (see Meyer, as above, 217 a) is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that the original Parthians were Turks. [11] Keane, 327. Asia Minor is here used in the larger sense, as denoting in general the Asian territory which lies west of a line drawn from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta. [12] Quoted in Keane, 328, from Gibbon (ed. Bury), vi. 250. [13] Vambéry, _Die Primitive Cultur_, 47; Keane, 328; Cahun, _Introduction_, 169 ff.; Ramsay, _Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces_, 295. [14] Ramsay, _Studies in Eastern Roman Provinces_, 297. This statement has been confirmed by conversation with other persons well acquainted with conditions in Asia Minor. See also E. Huntington, in _National Geographic Magazine_, September, 1910, p. 767. [15] Vambéry (_Die Primitive Cultur_, 47) expresses the opinion that the Ottomans never received, all told, more than 25,000 men of Turkish blood. [16] _Ottoman_ is an attempt to pronounce _Othman_ by those who pronounce _th_ like _t_; _Osman_ a similar attempt by those who pronounce _th_ (as in “thin”) like _s_. [17] Hammer, _Geschichte_, i. 42-43. [18] Keane, 268, 316. Peschel, 380, says, “The Turks of the west have so much Aryan and Semitic blood in them that the last vestiges of their original physical characters have been lost, and their language alone indicates their previous descent.” On the other hand, E. Huntington (in _National Geographic Magazine_, September, 1910, p. 767) expresses the opinion that the inhabitants of the central part of the plateau of Asia Minor are “almost purely Turkish in race.” He does not say, however, that this opinion is based on observation of physical appearances. [19] Hammer, _Geschichte_, i. 59.