Ramsay, William Mitchell: Impressions of Turkey during twelve years' wanderings (London, 1897)

OF ASIA MINOR 103

defeats in detail, the Turkish power grew steadily
stronger. The nomad Turkmens spread over the
face of the land ; the soil passed out of cultivation;
the population decreased ; the Christian cities were
isolated from each other by a sea of nomad wan-
dering tribes ; intercourse, and consequently trades
and manufactures, were to a great extent destroyed ;
and gradually the Christians in most places ac-
quiesced, as we have seen, in the Oriental spirit
and the Oriental religion of the dominant race.
It is a remarkable instance of degeneration from
civilised to barbarian society, and one which it
would be instructive to study in detail ; but the
general fact is summed up in the phrase, the
nomadisation of Asia Minor.1

Turkmens are almost always exceedingly hospit-
able. In 1883, at lunch in a Turkmen tent a dozen
miles south of Dorylaion, there was one man who
struck me as being very Irish in appearance, and
who was unusually pressing in his hospitality, in-
viting us most urgently to stay a night. I said to
the friend who was with me that I had never met
such cordial kindliness in all my experience, and
remarked on the man's Irish look. As it was only
midday, and there was no opening for work in the
neighbourhood, we had to decline the invitation.

1 Citit-s and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., pp. 16 f., 27 fT., 299 ff.,
etc.