Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/122

82 successor to S. Peter on the throne of Antioch of the Syrians, and of Mar Yohanan Catholicos and Maphrian of Tekneet, Nineveh, and all the East, in the year 1557 of the Grecian era, and of the Hegira 643. The book itself was found in a coffin, together with the skeleton of a human body, which was dug up near the mosque about two centuries ago. The remains were claimed by the Syrians and re-buried in the church of Mar Tooma.

The Chaldeans have four churches in the town, and one called el-Tâhara close to the city walls. The latter is the best built Christian church in the place, and more attention to ecclesiastical architecture is displayed in the arrangement of the interior than in any similar structure which I have met with in the East. The second volume of this work contains a view of its eastern and western ends.

The Jacobites have four churches in Mosul, three of which are now divided between them and the Papal Syrians. There is nothing in these churches worthy of particular notice; they are for the most part massive but clumsy buildings, and in their internal arrangement similar to those already described at Diarbekir. Mutran Behnâm, however, has lately restored the Jacobite portion of Mar Tooma, which now forms a neat, and for the East a beautiful, church.

The population of Mosul according to the census of 1849 is as follows:

The only language in general use among the inhabitants of the town is Arabic, which is also spoken by all the villagers in the plains around. The Chaldean and Nestorian peasants know