Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/382

328 quarrel was ended. The use of the cemetery is now understood to be common to both parties, but the Jacobites have the exclusive right of consecrating the holy Eucharist on the grave of S. Ephrem.

Pursuing our walk through the vineyards we reached a beautiful garden on the north-west of the town, in which is a circular fountain called by the Mohammedans Sooleiman Pyâr, but believed by the Christians to be the spring where S. Thaddeus baptized his first converts.

There are 12,000 Mussulman families at Urfah, who are accounted very bigoted, and are extremely overbearing in their conduct towards the native Christians. Many of them are Hadjis, i.e. have visited Mecca, and the entrances to the houses of these devotees are gaudily painted with the symbols of their pilgrimage, the begging bowl, flag, truncheon, axe, coffee-pot, pipe, censer, &c. What the serpent is intended to represent I know not. The annexed is a specimen of these designs taken from a house opposite to that inhabited by Mokdisi Yeshua.