Caesar Augustus.

Byzantium has become a very potent element in the Osmanlis' character,
more potent than the habits of the march or the instinct of the steppes.
It has dictated their system of administration, dominated their outlook
on life, penetrated their blood. But the heritage of "Rûm" is not the
final factor in the Ottoman Empire as it exists to-day; for after the
successors of Osman had founded their military monarchy with blood and
iron on the ruins of one-third of Europe, they turned eastwards, with a
genuinely Oriental gesture, and overran kingdoms and lands with the
apparently mechanical impetus of all Asiatic conquerors, from Sargon of
Akkad and Cyrus the Persian to Jenghis Khan and Timur. The stoutest
opponent of the Osmanlis in Asia was the Anatolian Sultanate of
Karaman--Moslem, Turkish, and the legitimate heir of those Seljuk
Turkish Sultans who had given Osman's father his first footing in the
land. Osmanli and Karamanli fought on equal terms, but when Karaman was
overthrown there was no power left in Asia that could stop the Osmanlis'
advance. The Egyptians and Persians had no more chance against Ottoman
discipline and artillery than the last Darius had against the
Macedonians. A campaign or two brought Sultan Selim the First from the
Taurus to Cairo; a few more campaigns at intervals during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, when Ottoman armies could be spared from
Europe, drove the Persians successively out of Armenia and Mosul and
Bagdad. And thus, by accident, as it were, in the pursuit of more
coveted things, the Osmanlis acquired "Turkey-in-Asia," which is all
that remains to them now and all that concerns us here.

"Turkey-in-Asia" is a transitory phenomenon, a sort of chrysalis which
enshrouded the countries of Western Asia because they were exhausted and
needed torpor as a preliminary to recuperation. Many calamities had