Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/172

118 to any earthly benefactor to whom they look for help, or from whom they had received any benefits. Their only answer has been: "Such is our way; as our forefathers did before us even so do we."

I think it not improbable, however, that the reverence which they pay to their so-called Sheikhs (I mean those over whose tombs the Shaks are erected), may be regarded as another form of indirect homage rendered to the Supreme Being. I have not been able to learn who these reputed saints were, and the modern Yezeedees are quite ignorant as to the time when they lived or died. The names by which they are designated, such as Sheikh Aboo-Bekr, Sheikh Mohammed, &c., must be regarded as fictitious, and invented to conciliate the Moslems, since they do not admit the mission of their prophet or the authority of the Korân, and their Sheikhs they affirm to have lived long before Mohammed. I have often inquired whether it was not possible for a new Sheikh to rise up among them now-a-days, and the answer has been a decided negative. Sometimes they affirm that the Shaks occupy the sites where the Sheikhs have sat, sometimes where they are buried, sometimes that they are only cenotaphs, and that the bodies were interred at Sheikh Adi, and then again you are told that the Sheikhs did not really die. From this I have been tempted to conclude, that these monuments may be myths, or symbols of the attributes ascribed to the Deity, or of supposed Divine emanations or incarnations. Twice a year these festivals are commemorated at the different villages with the same rites as those observed at Sheikh Adi; a lamp is nightly kindled and left to burn in the Shaks called after their names, and in those to which a room is attached (as in the case of that dedicated to Sheikh Mohammed at Ba-Sheaka), the Kawwdls assemble at sunset every Tuesday and Thursday, when they burn incense over the tomb, and after watching a short time, and smoking their pipes, return home. The season for commemorating the principal Sheikhs takes place in the month of April, and continues for eight or ten