TURKISH
97
TURKISH
ccupation of the valley of the Syr Daria, forming the
rovinces of Serairechensk and Sjt Daria; in 1878
tie Zarafshan district was added and became sub-
■quently the Samarkand Province. Later on, in
S73, part of the Klianate of Khiva, on the right bank
f the Amu Daria, was occupied and was incorporated
ith the S\T Daria Province. In 1875 and 187t) the
Ihanate of Khokand being anne.\ed became the
rovince of Ferghana. The population is but
,243,422 inhabitants including, on the one hand,
Russians, Poles, Germans, etc.; on the other, the
atives: Aryans, Sarts, Tajiks, Tzigans, Hindus, with
longob: KLrghizs, Uzbeks, Torbors, etc., and emi-
rated Jews and Arabs representative of the Semitic
lace. The chief products are corn, b;u)ey, rice,
igara, cotton. Cattle-breeding is the main source of
jmmerce. The trade of Turkestan amounts to
bout 320 millions and a half of rubles, of which 140
lillions and a half are exportation and ISO million.s
re importation. The chief trading province is
erghana with 120 millions. Tashkent, the chief
ity of the S>T Daria Province, is also the centre of
le administration of Russian Turkestan with a
opulation of 191, .500 inhabitants, of which 150,622
re natives, for the most part (140,000) Sarts. The
no main rivers of Russian Turkestan which flow into
je Aral Sea are the Syr Daria, Sihun, or Jaxartes, and
18 Amu Daria, Tihun, or Oxus.
Henri Cordier.
Turkish Empire, created in the fourteenth and fleenth centuries on the ruins of the Byzantine Imjiire, from the caliphate of Bagdad and independ- nt Turkish principalities. It occupies a territory f 1,114, .502 sq. miles, with a population estimated at 5,000,000 inhabit ants, and extends over parts of .\sia, frica, and Europe between the Eastern Mediter- mean, the Black Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the led Sea. The Turkish Empire thus possesses some f the most important highways by land and sea, etween the.se three continents.
I. Geocir.\i'hy. — .\. The Balkan Peninsula (Euro- ean Turkey), divided into eight provinces or vilayets, smprises the plateaux and terraces which extend to le south-east of the uplands of the Alps between the driatic, the .\rchipelago, and the Black Sea. Tur- ey still possesses .-Vlbania and Epirus, a vast plateau ivered with towering mountain ranges (Tchar- )agh, 10,000 ft.) and with uplands stretching from le north-west to the south-east which reach as far s the Pindus; the coastal plains of the Adriatic nd the small inland levels (Scutari Lake, Lake ichrida, plains of Monastir d'Uskuf and of Yanina) re separated by very high ridges; Macedonia, a lain richly cultivated with vines, cereals, and jbacco, includes within the mountains of Macedonia 3 the west, Rhodope (9842 feet) to the north, Olym- us to the south-west, the sharp and rocky peninsula f Chalcidice to the south-east; its only outlet, the ort of Salonica (144,000 inhabitants), situated at 3e opening of an historical trade highway which scends to the valley of the Vardar as far as Uskub, nd over a hill of 1640 feet leads to the valley of the lulgarian Morawa and as far as the Danube (railway 5ute from Belgraile to Salonica); the plain of Thrace, ordering on the .\rchipelago and the Sea of Marmora, )rming the lower level of the valley of the Maritza, f which Eastern Rimiclia represents the up[)er. lultivation is broken by the great stretch of .sterile lateaux; the only important city in the interior is drianople (125,0(X) inhabitants), but at the extremity F the pcnin.sula situated between the Black Sea, le Archipelago, and the Sea of Marmora, stands lonstantinople, which occupies, on the Bosporus, one f the fine.st strategetical positions of the old conti- ent. This metropolis of 1 ,.500.(WO inhabitants is at lie cros.s-roads formed by the great waterway which XV.— 7
connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, and
by the overland route (followed by a railway) which
reaches the valley of the Danube by way of Adri-
anople, Philippopoli, Sofia, and Belgrade. It is com-
posed of the Turkish city of Stamboul, of the Euro-
pean districts of Galata and Pera separated by the
natural roadstead of the Golden Horn, and of the
suburbs of Scutari, Haidar-Pacha, and Kadi Keui.
These settlements are on both sides of the Bosporus,
in Europe and Asia. On account of its military and
commercial importance and its population composed
of all the races of the earth, Constantinople is a
typical cosmopolitan city.
B. The Peninsula of Asia Minor, or Plateau of Anatolia, important for the richness of its coastal plains and its geographical situation ; the construction of the railway from Constantinople to Bagdad (in 1912, 781 miles of track open for traffic from Con- stantinople to Boulgourlou by Eski-Chehir and Konieh) will result in a rebirth of this ancient coun- try; a (^ierman company is at present fertilizing the plain of Konieh, diverting for this purpose the waters of a lake.
C. Syria, a narrow strip of land, 500 miles long by 93 wide, lies between Asia Minor, Egypt, the ^iedi- terrancan, and the Desert. It is traversed by the two parallel ridges of Libanus (ranging from tlu'ee or four thousand to nine thousand feet) and Anti- Libanus, separated by a deep depression, the 6'dr, bounded on the north by the valley of the Orontes, on the south by that of the Jordan, which abuts on the gorge of the Dead Sea, 1200 feet below the sea level. The most important centres are the ports of Beirut (185,000 inhabitants), St. Jean d'Acre, and Jaffa (55,000 inhabitants), whence starts the railway to Jerusalem (115,000 inhabitants). The largest city is Damascus (350,000 inhabitants) in the middle of an oasis of luxuriant vegetation, one of the chief industrial centres of the Orient.
D. Mesopotamia and Turkish Armenia, or Kur- distan, separated from SjTia by the Great Desert, extends on the north to Anatolia and Armenia by the vast mountain ranges of Kurdistan, 13,000 feet, intercepted from the plains in the interior by Lake Van, whence flow the Tigris and the Euphrates, whose alluvial valleys are marvellously fertile; corn, wheat, barley, grain, one might say, originated here. Cotton may be also found in abundance, rice and plantations of date palms, and fruit-trees of every kind. The leafling centres of Armenia are Erzerum, Van, and Ourfa. In Mesopotamia Mo-ssoul (69,000 inhabi- tants), Bagdad (12.5,000 inhabit.ants), and Bassorah give but a feeble idea of the once great cities of Ninive, Babylon, and Seleucia-Cte.siphon.
E. The Peninsula of Arabia is a spacious desert plateau, bounded by immense mountain ranges, which rise over 9000 feet above the Red Sea. Scarcely a seventh of this vast territory (over 1,000,000 sq. miles) is dependent on the sultan, and that more nominally than in reality. The volcanic jilateau of the centre (Nedjed or Arabia Petriea) is almost a desert. The population has flocked to the coast districts (Hedjaz and Yemen, or Arabia Felix). The only important centres are the sacretl cities of the Mussulmans: Mecca (60,000 inhabitants) with its port Djcddah, where the Caaba, which preserves the "black stone" of Abraham, draws each year numer- ous pilgrims from aU points of the Moslem world, and Medina (50,000 inhabitants),where Mohammed resided and died. The possession of these cities lends great political importance to the Turkish Government. A railway, intended to unite Damascus to Mecca, was laid to Medina in 1908.
F. Tripolilana, occupied largely at present (1912) by the Italians, is in reality the Saharan coast of the Mediterranean. It is compo.sed of plains of sand and rocky plateaux, to the east the plateau of Barka
