Some early Turkish barbaric ancetry to see how far they have progressed.
Accounts by Aristakes the Armenian, describing events from around 1000AD when the Turks first came to Anatolia.
http://rbedrosian.com/a1.htm
But they left behind them a scene more pitiful and lamentable than it had been before. The death-agonies were of many types: for some who had fallen [75] [fatally wounded] were still alive. From thirst their tongues had dried up, and with weak and soft voices they sought to quench their thirst, but there was no one to give them drink. Others who were terribly wounded, and could not make sounds, were breathing violently. Others whose throats had been slit but were still alive were emitting gurgling sounds in pain. Yet others, who had been badly wounded, were scraping the ground with their feet and clawing at it with their fingernails. There were others whose appearance was so frightful that the very rocks and other inanimate objects were moved to lamentation and sighing. For when the infidels were removing captives from the mountain, they took the children from their parents' embrace, and threw them to the ground, and [the Saljuqs'] place of encampment was swarming with them. Some [of the children] had died when they fell against rocks. The sides of some of them had torn open and their intestines poured out onto the ground. As for those remaining alive, what ear could bear their crying? Those [children] capable of walking were moving about here and there looking for their mothers, and the mountains reverberated with the loudness of their crying. Those who [76] were [to young to be] steady on their feet, were crying as they crawled along on their knees. Those who were even younger than they, thumped the ground with their feet, and, weakened through crawling they could scarcely breath. With their piteous sounds and unceasing cries they resembled lambs newly separated from their mothers, who, being impatient by nature, angrily struck out this way and that, offending the very air with their bleating and weighing heavily upon the listeners' ears.
how suddenly they fell to the ground and tumbled over, struck by the enemies' swords, as if struck by hail. Add to this the number of children who were taken from their mothers' embraces and hurled to the ground, who sought their mothers with their baby sighs. But the parents, cudgled, were quickly separated from them. What heart of stone would not be straitened by tears, hearing these numerous and varied [recitations] of evil? Virgins fell dishonored, newly-married women were separated from their men and led into slavery. In one single moment the country, which had been crowded with [97] people, like a densely populated city, became an uninhabited wasteland. [As for the people], they were either killed by the sword, or taken captive. Oh Christ, for your forgiveness at that time; Oh the wickedness that befell us! How bitter was the death we died!
One could see there the grief and calamity of every age of humankind. For children were ravished from the embraces of their mothers and mercilessly hurled against rocks, while the mothers drenched them with tears and blood. Father and son were slain by the same sword. The elderly, the young, priests and deacons also died by the same sword. The city became filled from one end to the other with bodies of the slain, and [the bodies of the slain] became a road. From the countless multitude of the slain, and from the corpses, that great stream which passed by the city became dyed with blood.
Some [the Saljuqs] seized, brought forward and beheaded with the sword. They died a double death. More bitter than death was the scintillating of swords above them, then the death verdict. Swords in hand they came upon some, fell upon them like beasts, pierced their hearts and killed them instantly. As for the stout and corpulent, they were made to go down on their knees, and their hands were secured down by stakes. Then the skin together with the nails was pulled up on both sides over the forearm and shoulder as far as the tips of the second hand, forcibly removed, and [the Saljuqs] fashioned bowstrings out of them. Oh how bitter this narration is!
As for the presbyters and clerics, what ear could bear the unique tortures to which they were subjected? Their skin was flayed from the breast upward, over the face, and [g109] then twisted around the head. And only after so torturing them did [the Saljuqs] kill them. Who has heard of more bitter, unbelievable tortures? We have not encountered any in the martyrdoms of the saints.
