belong to a branch of the Turkish race inhabiting the Altaī Mountains and the upper regions of the Yenesei and Irtish in Mid-Siberia. Long before the Christian era the pressure of population led them to migrate southwards and eastwards, and, following in all probability the old course of the Oxus, their hordes spread over the great steppes extending from the Caspian to the Hindu Kush. The appellation by which the race has for centuries been known is considered by Vambéry to be derived from “Turk,” a proper name which the nomads always employ when speaking of themselves, and “men,” a suffix equivalent to the English “ship” or “dom.” That the Turkomans were identical with the Parthians, who were so long a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire, admits of little doubt, and the supposition derived from identity of racial character finds corroboration in the fact that the Dahæ,[568] a famous Parthian tribe, dwelt in ancient days in the region between the Balkans and the river Atrak, which is still called Dehistān. But the strangers from the icy north were not long contented to roam over steppes which were well-nigh as hospitable as those of Siberia. They smelt booty in the richly watered slopes of the Kopet Dāgh and the populous cities of Northern Persia. The era of the Sāmānides (A.D. 218–639) was one of constant struggles between these unwelcome immigrants and the settled Iranians of Northern Persia, and history repeated itself in the ruin and desolation which befell the latter. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the northern portion of the old empire of Darius was given up to Turkoman tribes bent on war and pillage. At this date we find them divided into many tribes. The most famous were the Salors, who possessed some at least of the traits of the noble savage of fiction. They dwelt at the edge of the hills on the oasis formed by the Murghāb and Tajand. In the twelfth century the Sultan Sanjar, the greatest of the Seljūkides, was defeated by the Kara and Alieli Turkomans at Andakhūy and Maymena, where both are still to be found. The Balkan Mountains in the sixteenth century looked down on Ersari encampments, and at an earlier date the peninsula of Mangishlāk was roamed over by various tribes. For centuries unnumbered the Turkomans were free from foreign influence, and maintained the primitive ferocity and power for aggression unleavened by intercourse with civilisation. They found their master in rare exceptions to the long succession of debauchees who filled the throne of Persia. In the seventeenth century Shāh `Abbās the Great (1585–1626) drove them from the rich valleys of the Kopet Dāgh and planted colonies of 15,000 Kurds along the crest, in the not altogether vain hope that these scourges of Asia Minor would hold their neighbours in check. Nādir Shāh, infamous for the bloodshed attending his capture of Delhi, was himself a Turkoman, and proved more than a match for his kinsmen. In 1796 Āghā Mohammad, the first sovereign of