Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/358

336 As usual they began with the idea, not of making converts, but of educating and spiritualizing, then quarrelled with the hierarchy, and now have small sects of ex- Jacobite Protestants.

3. Organization and Hierarchy

The name Jacobite, known to us in England in a more honourable connection, is since about the 8th century the usual one for the Monophysite Church of Syria. It has been explained in other ways, for instance, as derived from St. James the Less (whose rite they use); but there is no doubt that it comes really from James Baradai (p. 324).

The total number of Jacobites is now estimated at about eighty thousand. Most of them live in the district of Ṭur 'Abdīn by the upper Tigris, between Diyārbakr and Mardīn. Here are about one hundred and fifty Jacobite villages. They have smaller colonies at Diyārbakr, Edessa, Mosul, very few families at Bagdad, Damascus, Aleppo, hardly any in Palestine, except a small colony at Jerusalem. They are now a poor and backward people, neglected by the more advanced parts of Christendom, suffering still from centuries of oppression and isolation, generally despised by their neighbours. All who know them admit that the Monophysite Jacobites stand far behind their brothers who have returned to union with Rome. All talk Arabic, except thirty or forty villages in Ṭur 'Abdīn, who still speak Syriac.