Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/105

Rh lodging we could procure was an open recess, where I lay for three days suffering from a severe attack of fever, which obliged me to call in the aid of a Christian female phlebotomist. She bled me freely from the arm, and otherwise attended me during my illness. Bedr Khan Beg was residing in a mountain fortress called Deir Guli, about four hours distant, and Jezeerah was governed by a Coordish Mutsellim, who ruled the Christians with a rod of iron. The bulk of the population consists of Coords, there being not more than twenty Jacobite and sixty Chaldean families in the place, who have each a church and a priest. Coordish is the language generally spoken by all classes of the people. Until within the last few years, a Nestorian Metropolitan resided at Jezeerah, but most of his flock here and in the plains around having joined the Church of Rome, he retired into the Buhtân mountains opposite, where he has still the oversight of a large diocese. Since then, Mutran Basileos, a Chaldean Bishop, has been appointed to this see; he seldom resides however at Jezeerah.

A heavy gloom seemed to pervade the inhabitants of this town: the poor Christians were afraid to open their mouths, and related to us in whispers many sad tales of Bedr Khan Beg's tyranny and oppression. The Coords, as they walked through the streets, or sat in the bazaar, looked upon us with sovereign contempt, and told us by their insolent and haughty bearing, that they hated us, as they did all who bore the name of. Their star was yet in the ascendant, and I have no doubt that many of them were even then looking forward with satisfaction and rapture to the projected slaughter of the mountain Nestorians.

Nov. 5th.—We left Jezeerah at 10, and in six hours reached the Chaldean village of Takiân. Our road to-day lay at the foot of the high mountains of Joodi, the Tooré Kardo of the Syrians, and supposed by them as well as by the Mohammedans to be the spot on which the ark rested after the deluge. This tradition is also handed down in the name of a village in the mountains, called the "Market of the Eight," with reference to the number of Noah's family who were preserved from the flood.