[156] Nouschirwan, whose reign falls in the first half of the sixth century of our era, married Scharouz, the daughter of the Khakan of the Turks. She was the most beautiful woman of her time. (Haneberg, _Zeitschr. f. d. K. des Morgenl._, vol. i. p. 187.) This is by no means an isolated instance; Schahnameh furnishes a number of similar ones. [157] The Scythes, though having adopted a language of the Arian classes, were, nevertheless, a Mongolian nation; there would, therefore, be nothing very surprising if the Orghuses had been an Arian nation, though speaking a Finnic dialect. This hypothesis is singularly corroborated by a passage in the relations of the traveller Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis as ambassador to the sovereign of the Mongols. "I was struck," says the worthy monk, "with the prince's resemblance to the deceased _M. John de Beaumont_, whose complexion was equally fresh and colored." Alexander Von Humboldt, justly interested by this remark, adds: "This physiognomical observation acquires importance, when we recollect that the monarch here spoken of belonged to the family of Tchinguiz, who were really of Turkish, not of Mogul origin." And pursuing this trace, the great _savant_ finds another corroborating fact: "The absence of Mongolian features," says he, "strikes us also in the portraits which we possess of the Baburides, the conquerors of India." (_Asie Centrale_, vol. i. p. 248, and note.) [158] It will be seen that Mr. Gobineau differs, in the date he gives of the institution of the Janissaries, from all other European writers, who unanimously ascribe the establishment of this corps to Mourad I., the third prince of the line of Othman. This error, into which Gibbon himself has fallen, originated with Cantemir: but the concurrent testimony of every Turkish historian fixes the epoch of their formation and consecration by the Dervish Hadji-Becktash, to the reign of Orkhan, the father of Mourad, who, in 1328, enrolled a body of Christian youths as soldiers under this name (which signifies, "new regulars"), by the advice of his cousin Tchenderli, to whose councils the wise and simple regulations of the infant empire are chiefly attributed. Their number was at first only a thousand; but it was greatly augmented when Mourad, in 1361, appropriated to this service, by an edict, the _imperial fifth_ of the European captives taken in the war--a measure which has been generally confounded with the first enrolment of the corps. At the accession of Soliman the Magnificent, their effective strength had reached 40,000; and under Mohammed IV., in the middle of the seventeenth century, that number was more than doubled. But though the original composition of the Janissaries is related by every writer who has treated of them, it has not been so generally noticed that for more than two centuries and a half not a single native Turk was admitted into their ranks, which were recruited, like those of the Mamelukes, solely