'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎20v] (40/72)

course is the local French Consulate.* The money comes statedly from a religious society
at Lyons; also on occasion direct from the Vatican. The strength of an organisation
like this, any one who knows the power of money in the world generally, and the
Ottoman empire in particular, will perceive. Considering the extremely backward con
dition of the Mesopotamian Christians, it would be a pity to take it as a foregone conclusion
that Rome will not in the long run make amends to them for all the social and politi
cal disturbance attendant so far on her efforts to improve them. One of the burning
questions which her operations have excited, and which still keep the Syrian Christians in a
ferment,is this: Shall their churches and ancestral burial places remain with the resi
duary, or pass to the Romanized,division ? In a strongly governed country such a case
would of course be dealt with by a court of justice. A judgment like the one delivered by
the late Sir Joseph Arnould, in the religious dispute among the Khojah, or Agha Khan
community of Bombay,f would show that there is no subject too intricate, or too technical
to be mastered and luminously expounded by a capable and unbiassed judge. But within
the Ottoman empire this unhappily is impossible. Farm&ns obtained by political intrigue in
the venal atmosphere of Constantinople here take the place of decrees by judicial tribunals.
The edicts thus from time to time issued for the settlement of the question now alluded to,
being based, like Solomon's famous judgment, on the principle of division, neither satisfied
nor silenced either party. They who were ordered to surrender a part obstinately refused
to do so ; they who claimed the whole were merely encouraged by what was given them to
press for more and more. The sacred grounds and buildings under dispute had not unfre-
quently to be occupied by picquets of Turkish soldiers. Scenes of violence at Mosul could
not of course be ignored at Constantinople ; but the negotiations and arbitrations which
ensued ended perhaps in the local heart-burnings being aggravated rather than mitigated.
Nor would the old Nestorian Church appear to have found rest, so far at least, in union
with Rome, any more than the Syrian. In the former case, as has been seen, the difficulty
met with has not been unconnected with the peculiarities of Ottoman rule ; in the latter ■
the manner in which the union has been effected seems more or less answerable for the
complications which have resulted. For the Nemesis of unsound work attends spurious
" conversions " as notably as it does everything else that is not based on sure foundations -
and when men and women pass like flocks of sheep from one spiritual fold to another, the
chances are the greater number of them neither understand what they are doing nor know
where they are going. What chiefly revealed the truth of this, in the instance of the
" Chaldean " Church of Mosul, was the " Papal Bull" of 1869, launching, among other im
provements, the dogma of Infallibility. This seems fairly to have struck it between wind
and water, for Catholic as it had become in name, it was still full of the old Nestorian
leaven. A state of convulsion and division was instantly produced in it. The clerical and
out and out Roman,party, accepting, as in duty bound, the " Bull," knit itself more closely
than ever with the Vatican. The residue, comprising very many of the laity, evinced a
disposition, rather than go so far as that, to break with Rome altogether. France of course
sided with the former party. The latter as naturally looked to England for support.
Correspondences between the governments of the two nations ensued, culminating in an
exhaustive inquiry at Mosul, by Colonel Miles, Acting Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. in Turkish Arabia A term used by the British officials to describe the territory roughly corresponding to, but not coextensive with, modern-day Iraq under the control of the Ottoman Empire. and
Her Majesty's Consul-General, Baghdad.J In dealing more especially with the Nestorian
versus Chaldean controversy, it proved impossible wholly to brush aside the points of
polemical theology imported into it by the disputants as the bases of their respective cases.
Statesmen and officials thus only the other day found themselves re-discussing, or, at all
events, re-examining at Mosul and Constantinople, Paris and London, the very same nice
ties, mostly connected with the doctrine of the Trinity, by which the Councils of Ephesus
* Vide in a work on Armenia, by the Jesuit Mon-Eugene Bor^, published in the " Univers," the following
passage" Si les catholiques n'avaient trouvfe un appui politique dans les ambassadeurs, et prin'cipalement dans
celui de France, le protecteur official de la religion des Latins, ils n'auraient pu resister ^ la persecution." As for
persecution, so far as the government goes, there is no longer much fear of that. Perhaps in all the Ottoman
empire one or two officials of the antique KurSnic type may still survive, who, if the opportunity were to offer
would exterminate with perfect impartiality every Christian community within their reach. But the average
Osmanli governor is, as a rule, too intent on other objects to take up, if he can help it, such unprofitable work as
the persecution of one branch of Christians at the bidding, or in the interests, of another branch. In Muslim'
circles at Mosul, as elsewhere, it was instructive in its way to notice how all that it was thought necessary to know
with reference to the Jewish or Christian communities of the country was comprised in the brief remark " Kulluhum
kdfir -r meaning " all of them deniers" (lit. cover^up, query cover et kufr, one word?) of Muhammad's mission
and message.
f Vide this judgment published, pamphlet form, and otherwise, Bombay, 1866.
^ Vide Report (printed) by this officer, dated 31st March 1880.