The Ottoman Empire could only have gained effectual political influence in these remote regions of the East when it was roused from its slumbering Oriental existence before the time of Peter the Great. In its character of Turkish dynasty, the house of Osman might, out of the different kindred elements with which it is connected by the bond of common language, religion, and history, have founded an empire extending from the shore of the Adriatic far into China, an empire mightier than that which the great Romanoff was obliged to employ not only force but cunning to put together, out of the most discordant and heterogeneous materials. {436} Anatolians, Azerbaydjanes, Turkomans, Özbegs, Kirghis, and Tartars are the respective members out of which a mighty Turkish Colossus might have arisen, certainly better capable of measuring itself with its greater northern competitor than Turkey such as we see it in the present days. With _Persia_, its nearest neighbour, Khiva and Bokhara interchange ambassadors but rarely. The fact that Persia avows the principles of the Shiite sect, forms in itself just such a wall of separation between these two fanatical nations as Protestantism created between the two great classes of Christians in Europe three centuries ago. To this feeling of religious animosity let us add, also, the traditional enmity between the Iranian and Turanian races that has become matter of history, and we may then easily form an idea of the gulf that separates the sympathies of nations that nature has made inhabitants of adjoining countries. Persia, which, according to the natural course of events, should form the channel to convey to Turkestan the benefits of modern civilisation, is far from producing there even the slightest effect. Powerless to defend even her own frontiers from the Turkomans, the disgraceful defeat she sustained, as before mentioned, at Merv, in an expedition directed, in fact, against Bokhara, has utterly destroyed her prestige. Her power is the object of very little apprehension in the three Khanats, for the Tartars affirm that God gave the Persians head (understanding) and eyes, but no heart (courage). {437} With respect to _China_, its political relations with Central Asia are so rare and insignificant, that they scarcely merit any mention. Once, perhaps, in a century a correspondence takes place. The Emirs are in the habit of sending occasionally envoys to Kashgar, but the Chinese, on their side, never venture so far into Turkestan as Bokhara. With Khokand negotiations take place more frequently, but it sends only functionaries of inferior rank to the Musselman barbarians.