Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/281

Rh Sometimes the Nestorian churches consist of three aisles, as does that of Mar Gheorghees at Leezan, which I visited in 1850, and of which the following is a sketch:—

All the churches in the Tyari are constructed of very rough materials, and the building, though substantial, is extremely rude and plain. The people, however, are very much attached to them, and numbers, I am persuaded, for greater safety would have settled in the plains after the massacre of 1843, had it not been for their associations connected therewith. "We would gladly go to Mosul," said many of them to me, "but how can we abandon the churches where our forefathers worshipped, and where their bones have rested through many generations?" The Syriac word for church is Eta, or Oomra; but the Nestorians frequently use the word Deira, which literally means a convent, though there are at present no monastic establishments in the mountains.

While on this subject, I may take the opportunity of noticing another of Dr. Grant's fallacies in his argument in favour of the Hebrew origin of the Nestorians, founded upon the internal arrangement of their churches, which he makes to agree with that of the Jewish temple, divided as it was into an inner and outer court, and a holy of holies. Now, if this identity of order proves any thing, it proves too much, since the same disposition is preserved not only in all the oriental, but also