'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎19v] (38/72)

22
more bureaucratic than ever: small charges, with the reins running straight up to
Secretariats on the Bosphorus. Until recently the Tigris valley was differently dealt
with. The Baghdad Wali had under his control the Mosul and Bussorah provinces ; and
with so wide a field must either have been a very able and honest governor, or a very
bad one. Not worth mentioning are mere administrative re-adjustments by the side of the
political changes which Mosul has seen. At one time independent, at another Persian,
then tributary, rather than subject, to the Porte, under its own hereditary Pashas whose
descendants still survive, it was only during the present century that, after a long
struggle, the famous Muhammad Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , surnamed " Inje Bairakdar,' , or the little standard-
bearer, hammered it into part of the Osmanli empire.
To say nothing of Mosul in its religious aspects would be to overlook several of
its most important features: to deal with this subject
Religious dissensions at Mosul. , ,, , , • j , it,'
fully would require more space and more knowledge than
are here available. Isl&m may be dismissed briefly. Muhammadans preponderate by at
least three families to one, and have several hundred places of worship. The Shia
schism, or sect of Ali, is unrepresented in the town, to which may be partly due the
comparative mildness of the local type of Islamism. It is among its Christian population
that those dissensions, sometimes resulting in bloodshed, exist which, when they force
themselves on the attention of European Governments, lead to such prolonged corre
spondences. Without saying a few words on the subject of eastern Christianity gene
rally, it would not be possible to refer intelligibly to the present aspect of affairs in Mosul
from this particular point of view. u Christianity," says Gibbon, " was successfully
preached among the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Perso-Arme-
nians, the Medes, and the Elamites ; the barbaric Churches from the Gulf of Persia to
the Caspian were almost infinite." Of these only the disjecta membra," so to call
them, now survive. No creed, human or divine, ever yet could be stereotyped, at all
events in this world ; and internal forces apart, centuries of oriental misrule, or anarchy,
on the one hand, and of European, especially Latin, interference on the other, have
passed like steam-rollers over these ancient structures. First among them may be
mentioned the Armenian, claiming an older than apostolic foundation, but dating its
distinctive existence from its break with the orthodox eastern, or so-called Greek, Church
in the fifth century. Next the Syrian, also called "Jacobite," the founder of which
has been referred to above in a footnote. And lastly the Nestorians, named after
Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople from A. D. 428 to 431, who, owing to his refusal
to apply to the Virgin Mary the term " Mother of God," was condemned by the Council
of Ephesus and driven into exile. Of the Armenian Church nothing need here be said
Like all the others, it has been more or less breached by Latin proselytism. But of this
there are no signs at Mosul, where the Armenian community, a mere handful, still holds
together on the traditional lines. Far more numerous and important in Upper Mesopo*
tamia, and indeed over the whole Tigris valley from Diarbakr nearly to the sea, what is
called with reference to its nationality the 11 Syrian," with reference to one at least of its
distinctive dogmas the "Jacobite " Church. To this belongs the bulk of the agricultural
classes, whole villages in the Mosul and Mardln districts being peopled by Syrian
Christians. Nothing could be worse than the condition in which these,clergy not less
than laity,for the most part now lie. The prevailing symptoms are heathen ignorance
apathy, and squalor, rather than actual poverty, and intercourse with them forcibly
suggested how apt they must be to impose on the credulity of European travellers or
missionaries, in the hope of realising some object at once selfish, sinister, and impossible
In the 17th century the Jesuits took them in hand: and beginning at Alepo, brouo-ht
them in thousands within the Roman fold. Some slight improvement in their conditton
here and there shows itself in consequence of the teaching and discipline thus introduced
But, as will presently appear, the counterbalancing evils have been considerable ; owin^
to the quarrels constantly arising between the old, or "Jacobite" Syrians on the one hand*
and the/' Catholic " Syrians, or " Syro-Catholics" on the other. Over Syria and Mesopd
tamia as a whole the latter are by far the more numerous; but in Mosul the numbers
seem to be about equal.
In regard to the Nestorians also a few words seem here required. The persecution
of their founder, alluded to above, was followed by similar results as the persecution of the
great Meccan dissenter and reformer a century later. Wherever he went disciples grew
up around him. "In their progress by sea and land," says Gibbon, "the Nestorians
entered China by the port of Canton/' And again: " Under the reign of the Caliphs