[153] This decoration is curiously akin to some of the Buddhist Græco-Bactrian work.
[154] In the middle ages it was more numerous. Benjamin of Tudela found a colony of 7,000 Jews at Môṣul: Ritter, Vol. X. p. 254.
[155] An account of Mâr Behnâm has been published by Pognon: Inscriptions de la Mésopotamie, p. 132. He believes that the existing church is due to a reconstruction that took place in the twelfth century, but its original form seems to him to be the same as that of Mâr Gabriel of Kartmîn in the Ṭûr ’Abdîn, a church which I should date not later than the sixth century. The history of Mâr Behnâm would therefore offer an exact analogy to that of the churches of Môṣul, according to my theory; it is a mediæval building following the lines of a very early structure. Pognon gives a good illustration of the altar niche in the tomb (Pl. VIII), which is dated the year of the Seleucid era corresponding to 1306 A.D. The superstructure he takes to have been a baptistery.
[156] They must be dated before 1550, according to Pognon’s reasoning. He speaks of them with great contempt, and they are not very remarkable works of art, though they seemed to me to be of considerable interest. The Moslems call the monastery Deir el Khiḍr, Khiḍr being the Mohammadan counterpart of St. George. The village close at hand is known as El Khiḍr.
[157] The following notes on the decorations of the church are perhaps worth recording. S.W. door in porch: on lintel, a pair of birds on either side of a cross; over lintel, two snakes, tail to tail, with open jaws turned to what looks like a piled-up cup; in the corners, lions with tails ending in the head of a snake; band of entrelac and round it a band of Syriac inscriptions surrounding the door. N.W. door in porch: on lintel, an angel on either side of a cross; over lintel, small crosses with a boss between, two circles with a star in each; at either corner the figure of a saint; entrelac and inscriptions. Door from nave into apse; on lintel, a lion’s head forming a central boss, on either side St. George and the Dragon. Door into S.E. chapel: on lintel a cross; round door, small niches formed by an interlacing rope (cf. the sanctuary door of Mâr Tûmâ at Môṣul), the niches alternately filled with a saint and a decorated cross; above the door two of the niches are filled with representations of: (1) the baptism in Jordan; (2) the entry into Jerusalem, with an ass and palms in the background. The spandrils between the upper niches are filled in with dragons’ heads with open jaws.
[158] Pognon found inscriptions of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries at Ḳaraḳôsh (op. cit., p. 129), but the inscriptions inside the churches have not, so far as I know, been recorded.
[159] The bishop had not perhaps retained a clear memory of his facts—if facts they can be called; but Rich seems to have found the history of Mâr Mattai and Mâr Behnâm scarcely less involved than I did: Residence in Koordistan, Vol. II. p. 75. See, too, Pognon, op. cit., p. 132, note 1.
[160] I fancy that ’Abdullah’s explanation was not far from the truth. Layard, who is the best of all authorities on this country, makes the following remarks about the Shabbak: “Though strange and mysterious rites are as usual attributed to them” (i.e. as is usual with regard to a secret creed), “I suspect they are simply the descendants of Kurds who emigrated at some distant period from the Persian slopes of the mountains, and who still profess Sheeite doctrines. They may, however, be tainted with Ali-Illahism, which consists mainly in the belief that there have been successive incarnations of the Deity, the principal having been in the person of Ali, the celebrated son-in-law of the prophet Mohammad. The name usually given, Ali-Illahi, means ‘believers that Ali is God.’ Various abominable rites have been attributed to them, as to the Yezidis, Ansyris, and all sects whose doctrines are not known to the surrounding Mussulman and Christian population.” Nineveh and Babylon, p. 216.
[161] A full description of the reliefs is contained in Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon, p. 207. Mr. King is so kind as to inform me that the smaller panels at Baviân were carved in the reign of Sennacherib, between the dates 689 B.C. and 681 B.C. The larger sculptures are to be assigned to Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.).
[162] It has been described and drawn by Layard: Nineveh and Babylon, p. 48.