vi. .MoDB[t.*f Tarsl'S. — The new Christian city of Tarsus had a checkered history. Byzontine Greeks, Latins, Annenians, Turcomans, Turks, Ejfj-ptians strutrnled for it, and alternately held it and lost it. For a century Greek rule in Cilicia was practically unchallenged by the decaying Saracen empire ; but even dviri'ng this time Tarsus must have undoubtedly retained many traces of the three centuries of Arab rule, and become far n'lore Oriental than it h.ad been under the Roman and early Byzantine rule. About 1067 the Seljuk Turks began to rava^'e Asia Minor, and their terrible annies were seen and felt m Cilicia ; and in 1071 the victory of Mauzikert laid the country prostrate and helpless at their feet. Their rule over Phrygia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, Annenia, Pontus, was recognized by the feeble emperors; but Cilicia still remained, on the whole, in Christian hands, so that the wall of Sit. Taurus once more formed a line of demarcation between the two religions (though now Islam was on the north and Christianity on the south). A new power now appearefl in Cilicia: in 108() Reuben, the first Armenian prince of Cilicia (called often during the next three centuries Lesser Annenia), seized some forts in the eastern Taurus mountains on the north frontier of Cilicia. The history of Lesser Armenia was stormy, and its bounds varied from year to ye.ar. sometimes confined' to the Taunis forts, sometimes including Tarsus and Cilicia as a whole. In 1097 Baldwin with his Crusading army captured Tarsus, and introduced another factor into the confiised history of Cilicia,
The vicissitudes of Tarsian history in this period are so rapid and so numerous that they cannot lie traced \n detail. Tarsus, the capital, passed from hand to hand. The Turks, who cap. tured It in 1078, did not hold it ; the Cnisaders were a more permanent power. The emperor John Conuienus look Tarsus in ll:i7, the Armenian Reuben IL in 1182. The Memluk Sultans of Kg\-pt became a factor in Cilician liistAjry in 1200. The terrible Egyptian invasion of 1322 devastated the country. The .-Vrmenians sufTered from quarrels in the governing family, from religious feuds, and from national inability to unite in a vigorous defensive policy. In 1375 the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (Lesser Armenia^ finally ^ave place to the Egyptian
f lower, and Tarsus may from this tune be said to have relapsed nto its original condition of a purely Oriental city. But it was still not subject to Turkey. It was the prey sometimes of Egypt, sometimes of Turcoman chiefs called Ramazarioglu, whose tribes seem to have entered the Taurus fastnesses ab<nit 1200, and to have gradually established their hold on the plain, and to have brought the country once more almost into nomadic barliarism. In 1400 the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks entered Cilicia, when the army of .Mohammed il. captured Tarsus ; but the city was often reraptured, until. Selim destroyed the Memluk power in 1618. Again in 1832 the Egyptian forces of Mehemet Ali entered Cilicia. and held Taraiu till 1840, when once more it passed under Ottoman power.
Tarsus remains a wretclied town of the Turki.sh style, little more than a large collection of hovels, with a trying climate, an oi>i)rcssive atino»i)liero, retaining not a trace of its former splemjour, and few scraps even of ancient marbles. There are few place.s where the contrast between ancient and iiodern life is more conspicuous. The unsightly and Khapeless nia-ss of concrete, wrongly called the Tomb of Sardanapalu.s, is the only ancient monu- ment that is displayed to the tourist. It is the substructure of the platform on which stood a temple of the Roman period, and woa originally hidden under the marble walls and floors and steps, afterwards utilized to make mediaeval build- ings, which in their turn have licen utterly destroyed.
VOL. IV.— 44
LiTERATiT.K. — Ritter, K[einast>n. ii. (Erdkiinde con AtAtn, voL xxi.) ]ip. lSI-23.'i: Beaufort, Karamania ; Leake, Tour and Ge'»jrai)hy of Asia Minor, p. 214 ; Barker, Lares and Penates; Hili, Oitaloijxu o/ Lritiith Museum Coins cif Iti/caonia, Isauria, and Cilicia, pp. IxxvifT., 162 ff.; Koldewey in Itobert, Aut der Anomia, p. 178 f.; Wernicke, ib. p. 77 f.; Sir C. Wilson io Hurrays Handbook. W. M. KamSAY.
TARTAR (prnn : Oa^fld/t ; Thnrthac).— An idol of the Avvites, introduced by them into S.tmaria, whither they had been transported by the Assyrian king Sargon (2 K 17^')- Tartak is mentioned with another deity called Nibhaz, and, according to the Bab. Talmud {Hityihedrin, 636), was worshipped under the form of an ass.* Various speculations have been made as to the identity of this deity, the religious systems of the Egyptians, I'ersians, and Carnianians having been laid under contribu- tion to supjily points of comparison ; but the Typhon of the hrst, and the sacrihciug of an ass by the last to their god (identified with Mars), do not seem to atlbrd satisfactory explanations. In Assyro-liabylonian mythology no god in the form of an ass is at present provable, and the comparison of the name Tartal> with the 15abylonian god Ital^ (on account of the second syllable) can no longer be made, the correct reading of the latter being Isum. In all probability no trustworthy identi- fication of the deity, nor satisfactory explanation of his name, \vill be maile until the position of the place (AvvA or IvvAllt) whence his worshippers came, has been determined. T. G. Pinches.