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Rh decoration of bookbinding in Turkestan. The East Syrian church was represented at the beginning of the first World War by 190,000 members domiciled in and around the edges of Kurdistan. Those who survived drifted into Iraq and Syria and were given the appellation Assyrian chiefly by Anglican missionaries.

The East and the West Syrian churches with their ramifications did not comprise all Syrian Christians. There remained a small body which succumbed under the impact of Greek theology from Antioch and Constantinople and accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (451). Thereby this community secured orthodoxy and not only escaped excommunication but obtained protection, even patronage, from the state church and the imperial city. By way of reproach their opponents centuries later nicknamed them Melkites, royalists. Melkite ranks must have been recruited mainly from city-dwellers and descendants of Greek colonists. Gradually Greek replaced Syriac as the language of ritual and the Syriac liturgy gave place to the Byzantine. In the Crusading period the Melkite com- munity suffered heavily. Their Syrian descendants main- tain one patriarchate in Damascus and another in Jerusalem and are now known as Greek Orthodox. In recent years, strangely enough, 'Melkite' has been exclusively employed to designate Christians drawn from the Orthodox church and attached to Rome. Their patriarch maintains a resid- ence in Egypt and another in Lebanon. At present they number about one-half of the Orthodox community, estimated at 230,000. The majority of the Greek Catholics and of the Greek Orthodox live in Syria rather than in Lebanon.

The spirit of holy war which animated the Mamluks in their counter-crusades seems, after its initial triumph, to have been canalized against Egyptian and Syrian Christians. Towards the end of his reign Qalawun issued edicts excluding his Christian subjects from governmental offices. In 1301 Rh