Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/428

368 mission of Mar Shimoon to open schools in the mountains, which he refused. The Americans abandoned Mosul shortly after.

With regard to the Commissioners appointed to examine into the sufferings of the Nestorians, Mar Shimoon complained bitterly of their inattention to the interests of his people. Nothing further had been effected in their behalf up to the month of July, 1844, when Kemal Effendi proceeded to Baghdad, where he was joined shortly after by Mr. R. Stevens, who remained there for six months, acting as British Consul during the temporary absence of Major Rawlinson. His letter on this subject contains some startling disclosures, which I shall suppress for the present, and merely give the following quotation: "There are still forty captives in the possession of Bedr Khan Beg, which the Commissioners have knowingly left there. … Neither has Bedr Khan Beg, up to the present time removed his Mutsellim from Asheetha, and the people of Tyari are scattered about here and there, for the Coords will not allow them to live in their homes in peace. A young child also was brought hither among the captives from Diarbekir, the only child of his mother, and she is a widow; this child has been taken by Kemal Effendi, who has made him a Mussulman, instead of returning him to his afflicted parents, who vainly wept for many nights and days by the shade of … and Kemal Effendi, that she might regain her son. This child is not more than three years old, and can know neither the Saviour nor Mohammed." In March, 1845, the Commission was recalled, not one whit of the plundered property had been restored, the Coords still kept possession of the Tyari, the Nestorians continued to be wanderers, and the Patriarch, though anxious to leave, and most unjustly blamed for his desire to join his people in Persia, was detained in virtual imprisonment at Mosul. For my own part, I am fully convinced that the Turks, sensible of their own weakness, had all along abstained from seriously remonstrating against the proceedings of Bedr Khan Beg, and that being anxious to extend their rule throughout central Coordistan, they regarded with secret complacency, the late dissensions among the Coords and Nestorians,—dissensions which their own policy had fomented,—foreseeing that these would lead eventually to the weakening of the mountain tribes, and pave the way to the es-