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fields, they spend every para in raki, and sit eating and drinking, like hogs, night and day." I was forced to agree with Ibrahim Agha in his conclusions, and would have remonstrated with my hosts; but there was no one in a fit state to hear advice; and I was not sorry to see them at midnight scattered over the roof, buried in profound sleep. I ordered the horses to be loaded, and reached Mosul as the gates opened at daybreak.

The reader may desire to learn the fate of Tkhoma. A few days after my return to Mosul, notwithstanding the attempts of Tahyar Pasha to avert the calamity, Beder Khan Bey marched through the Tiyari mountains, levying contributions on the tribes and plundering the villages, on his way to the unfortunate district. The inhabitants of Tkhoma, headed by their Meleks, made some resistance, but were soon overpowered by numbers. numbers. An indiscriminate massacre took place. The women were brought before the chief, and murdered in cold blood. Those who attempted to escape were cut off. Three hundred women and children, who were flying into Baz, were killed in the pass I have described. The principal villages with their gardens were destroyed, and the churches pulled down. Nearly half the population fell victims to the fanatical fury of the Kurdish chief; amongst these were one of the Meleks, and Kasha Bodaca. With this good priest, and Kasha Auraham, perished the most learned of the Nestorian clergy; and Kasha Kana is the last who has inherited any part of the knowledge, and zeal, which once so eminently distinguished the Chaldæan priesthood.

The Porte was prevailed upon to punish this atrocious massacre, and to crush a rebellious subject who had long resisted its authority. An expedition was fitted out under Osman Pasha; and after two engagements, in which the Kurds were signally defeated by the Turkish troops headed by Omar Pasha, Beder Khan Bey took refuge in a mountain-castle. The position had been nearly carried, when the chief, finding defence hopeless, succeeded in obtaining from the Turkish commander, Osman Pasha, the same terms which had been offered to him before the commencement of hostilities. He was to be banished from Kurdistan; but his family and attendants were to accompany him, and he was guaranteed the enjoyment of his property. Although the Turkish ministers more than suspected that Osman Pasha had reasons of his own for granting these terms, they honourably fulfilled the conditions upon which the chief, although a rebel, had surrendered. He was brought to Constantinople, and subsequently sent to the Island of Candia, a punishment totally inadequate to his numerous crimes.

After Beder Khan Bey had retired from Tkhoma, a few of the surviving inhabitants returned to their ruined villages; but Nur-Ullah Bey, suspecting that they knew of concealed property, fell suddenly upon them. Many died under the tortures to which they were exposed; and the rest, as soon as they were released, fled into Persia. This flourishing district was thus destroyed; and it will be long ere its cottages again rise from their ruins, and the fruits of patient toil again clothe the sides of its valleys.

CHAP. VIII.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO ASSYRIA. ORIGIN OF THE CHALDEAN OR NESTORIAN CHURCH. EARLY MISSIONS OF THE CHALDEANS. THE MONUMENT OF SE-GAN-FOO.-THE CHALDEANS UNDER THE ARABS. THE LEARNING OF THE CHALDEANS. THEIR TRANSLATIONS OF GREEK WORKS.

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THE CHALDEANS PRESTER JOHN. HIS LETTER EXTENT OF THE CHALDEAN

CHURCH.-DECLINE OF ITS POWER.
NESTORIANS."-

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ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF -DOCTRINES OF THE CHALDÆANS OR NESTORIANS.

THEIR PROFESSION OF FAITH. THEIR TENETS. PATRIARCH. THEIR LANGUAGE.

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AMERICAN MISSIONS.

THEIR

THE account given in the preceding chapter, of the Chaldæan or Nestorian tribes, will probably have made the reader desirous of knowing something of their condition, and of the events which led to the isolation of a small Christian community in the midst of the mountains of Kurdistan. Indeed the origin of the race, as well as the important position which the Chaldæan church once held in Asia, renders the subject one of considerable historical interest. Protestants, the doctrines and rites of a primitive sect of Christians, who have ever remained untainted by the superstitions of Rome, must be of high importance; and it is a matter of astonishment, that more curiosity has not been excited by them, and more sympathy felt for their sufferings.

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In the first centuries of the Christian æra, the plains of Assyria Proper were still the battle-ground of the

nations of the East, and the West. From the fall of the Assyrian empire, whose capital was Nineveh, the rich districts watered by the Tigris and Euphrates had been continually exposed to foreign invasion. Their cities had been levelled with the ground, the canals which gave fertility to the soil had been destroyed, and a great part of the ancient population had either been exterminated or carried away captive to distant regions. Still there lingered, in the villages and around the sites of the ruined cities, the descendants of those who had formerly possessed the land. They had escaped the devastating sword of the Persians, of the Greeks, and of the Romans. They still spoke the language of their ancestors, and still retained the name of their race.

The doctrines of Christianity had early penetrated into the Assyrian provinces; they may even have been carried there by those who had imbibed them at their source. When, in the first part of the fifth century, the church was agitated by the dissensions of St. Cyril and Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Chaldæans were already recognised as one of the most extensive of the Eastern sects.

Nestorius himself was never in Assyria; but it will be remembered that, in the struggle at Ephesus between him and his rival St. Cyril, his chief supporters were the Eastern Bishops, who accompanied John of Antioch to the third œcumenical Council.* Although the peculiar doctrines held by Nestorius, had been previously promulgated on the borders of

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Assyria by Diodorus of Tarsus, and Theodorus the Bishop of Mopsuestia, and had been recognised by the celebrated school of Edessa, the Ur of the Chaldees, and the last seat of their learning; yet until the persecution of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the schism had not attracted much attention. It was to the rank and sufferings of Nestorius, that the doctrines which he had maintained owed their notoriety, and those who professed them, their name.

These doctrines were alternately taught and condemned in the school of Edessa, to the time of its close, by an order of the Emperor Zeno. Those who professed them were known as the Persian party. When the Emperor called upon all Christian sects to forget their dissensions, and to subscribe the Henoticon, or articles of Faith, Barsumas, the recusant Bishop of Nisibis, placed himself under the protection of the Persian King Firouz. Acacius, who on the murder of Babuæus was elected to the archbishopric of Seleucia or Ctesiphon*, secretly professed the Nestorian doctrines. Babæus, his successor, openly declared himself in favour of the new sect; and from his accession may be dated the first recognised establishment of the Nestorian church in the East, and the promulgation of its doctrines amongst the nations of central Asia.

Until the fall of the Sassanian dynasty, and the establishment of the Arab supremacy in the provinces to

* The names of Seleucia and Ctesiphon are very frequently confounded by the early Christian writers; but the cities stood on opposite sides of the river Tigris, and were built at different periods.

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