[183] The caves are carefully excavated and I should say that they are ancient. Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 54) speaks of them as tombs and some may have been intended as burial-places, but I do not doubt that many were from all time used by the living. The troglodyte habits of the dwellers in these mountains are still strongly marked. Above Bâ’adrî I saw an underground village; at Ḥiṣn Keif, higher up the Tigris, the people live in rock-hewn chambers.
[184] Anabasis, Bk. IV. ch. i.
[185] Ammianus Marcellinus, when he speaks of Izala, evidently intends the name to cover the whole Ṭûr ’Abdîn: Bk. XVIII. ch. vi. 11, and Bk. XIX. ch. ix. 4.
[186] The Jacobites and the Syrians (i.e. Jacobites who have submitted to Rome) have now ousted the Nestorians, who must have been the first to occupy the Ṭûr ’Abdîn. When this change took place I do not know, but the Nestorians were in possession of the monastery of Mâr Augen as late as 1505: Pognon, op. cit., p. 109.
[187] Pognon’s account of the churches, and his publication of the inscriptions, is the best work on the subject (Inscriptions de la Mésopotamie); Parry (Six Months in a Syrian Monastery) gives a short description of the churches and some sketch plans.
[188] Tigris ferry 9.25; Handak (Christian) 9.45; Thelailah (Moslem) 10.40; Kôdakh—marked in Kiepert—we saw at 12.15, a little to the south of our route.
[189] Our itinerary was as follows: 5.30 Azakh; 6.30 a ruined site (marked in Kiepert); 7.5 Salakûn (Kiepert: Salekon Kharabe), a small Moslem village; 8 Middo (marked in Kiepert), a Christian village on the further side of a deep gorge (here we got into the oak woods); 9 Irmez, about a mile to the south of our road; 9.25 Arba’, a Christian village also about a mile south; 9.45-10.45 Deir Mâr Shim’ûn, a ruined monastery; 11.30 Deir Bar Sauma, the first monastery of Bâ Sebrîna.
[190] Monasteria clericorum. See The Thousand and One Churches, p. 461.
[191] Pognon: op. cit., p. 108. The stela has not, as Pognon feared, been destroyed. The script is in an unknown alphabet, which Pognon believes to be the prototype of Pehlevî. He gives excellent photographs of the two inscriptions; my photograph shows the relief on the third side. The fourth side is much weather-worn.
[192] I sent the photograph to Professor van Berchem. The inscription is merely a date: 630 (= A.D. 1232-3), or possibly 639.