'Military report on Tehran and adjacent Provinces of North-West Persia (including the Caspian Littoral)' [‎104v] (213/610)

Tnrki,
origin of.
Characteristics.
Their homes are one storeyed, flatroofed, ill-ventilated,
huts of mud and stone and their manner of life has remained
unchanged from generation to generation.
The Turk! population are the result of various bodies of
invaders from Central Asia into Persia, but more particularly
of the Ghuzz tribes who invaded it during the Seljuk period
in the 11th and 12th centuries. After the Seljuks ensued the
Mongol invasions and the rule of the Mongol il Khans of Persia
who had their capitals at Maragha, Tabriz and 1 Sultanieh
(near Zinjan).
According to a strong local tradition the ancestors of the
Khalaj and Ba’yat Turks in the Saveh district came to these
regions with the armies of Timur at the end of the 14th century.
Two theories however exist as to the origin of the present
Turki population
1. That they are descended from these Turks and Mongols.
2. That they are descendents of the original inhabitants
on whom the invaders imposed their language.
Apart from the difference in language the great difference
in mental and physical characteristics between Turki and
Farsi suggests that there must at least be a considerable ad
mixture of different blood in the former.
These regions were devastated and depopulated by the
invasions and probably the surviving remnants of the original
population intermarried and were absorbed with their con
querors.
Turki landowners and peasantry alike are of good physique
with broader faces and heavier build than the Farsi, and are
sullen, boorish, uncivilized and fanatical, and the filth of their
villages is worthy of their Mongol ancestors. They are bad
tempered, vain, avaricious and distrustful of strangers. In
short they possess the 2 bad without the redeeming qualities of
the Farsi, whom they regard with antipathy as a foreigner.
This feeling is reciprocated in the Persian slang expression 3
“You’re as big an ass as a Turk”. Farsi agents or servants
are out of place in these districts. In districts where there
is some admixture of Farsi with Turki, e.g., Kharagan and
Khalajistan and the country traversed by the Tehran-Saveh-
Hamadan road, the people are more amiable and these
remarks are less applicable.
1 The ruins nt Snltameh "re the mausoleum of Khudabanda, the II Khan
who founded this city in 1305 AD.
2 They are however comparatively free from the opium habit.
3 " Tu be qadri Turk khar ye”.