'Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh; with Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad and an Account of a Visit to Shirauz and Persepolis.' [‎101] (132/450)

CH. XVI.]
NUNS AT TELISKOF.
101
o'clock reached Teliskof, that is to say, the Bishop's
Mount *.
The crowds assembled to see us were prodigious;
and the village seemed to pour forth twice as many
people as I thought it could have contained. They
are all Chaldean Catholics. I have never been so
much stared at in a Mahometan town. The Chris
tians seemed to take a pride in me, and to look at the
Turks with me, and before whom they had so often
been used to cower, as if they might now defy tliein.
This made me have some patience with them, though
their crowding and staring was rather incommodious.
We were met at a mile from the village by the
Kiahya; and an old woman wanted to burn incense
before me, but my horse would admit of no such
familiarity. We were lodged of course in the best
house, close by the old mount which gives name to
the village. It would be a tolerable place but for
the extreme dirtiness, which, with the smell of
liquor, is, I am sorry to say, the characteristic of a
Christian village in these countries.
There are nuns at Teliskof, but no monastery.
They live in their parents or relations' houses; and
this is likewise the case at Alkosh. I believe there
are no monasteries of females any where in the East,
except in Mount Libanus.
* This mount is not remarkable. It is indeed rather smaller
tlian many of those which are the ordinary accompaniments of
villages in these parts.