[143] Thiersch has indicated the true relation of Ibn Ṭûlûn’s minaret both to the zigurrat of Mesopotamia and to the pharos of Alexandria. His objections to Herzfeld’s theory that the Cairo minaret is purely Hellenistic in origin are conclusive. Thiersch: Pharos, p. 112.
[144] I believe it is generally admitted by the learned in these matters that Nestorius was not guilty of the heresies for which he was condemned in 431, at the second œcumenical council held at Ephesus. I remember to have heard a distinguished English Catholic, who was also an acute historian, express his definite opinion that Nestorius was in the right, for all his expulsion beyond the pale of western Christianity. An excellent account of the rise of the Eastern Churches is contained in Wigram’s recently published book, The Assyrian Church.
[145] I am relying upon local tradition, upon comparison with churches in the country districts, and upon the character of the ornament compared with Moslem ornament in Môṣul which can be dated with tolerable accuracy.
[146] The barn church is more fully defined in The Thousand and One Churches, published by Sir W. Ramsay and myself, p. 309.
[147] There is a description of Mâr Tûmâ in Rich: Residence in Koordistan, Vol. II. p. 118.
[148] All the doors in the atrium of Mâr Tûmâ look as if they had been patched together out of older materials, but I suspect that these materials came from the church itself and that the patching is due to repair.
[149] Badr ed Dîn Lûlû, 1233-1259, according to Lane Poole: Mohammadan Dynasties, p. 163; Ritter, following Desguignes, makes him regent from 1213-1222, and an independent sovereign from 1222-1259.
[150] Le Strange: Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 89.
[151] Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeere zum persischen Golf, Vol. II. p. 176, gives a short description of it.
[152] De Beylié has given a good photograph of the general view: Prome et Samarra, p. 49.