News of the death of the King arrived at Oroomiah on the 14th of September. He was succeeded by his eldest son, a young man of twenty years, who for the last year had been Prince Governor of Azerbijan. In Persia, the death of the King interrupts for a time the regular transaction of public business.
An immediate effect of the news was to displace the Governor of Oroomiah, Yahyah Khan, with whom Mar Shimon had been forming an alliance, to strengthen him in his persecutions.
Through the friendly, but unsolicited agency of the English Consul, five of the most prominent of Mar Shimon's coadjutors were put under heavy bonds in no way to aid or abet him again in similar proceedings. Should they violate their written engagements to the authorities, they would expose themselves to severe corporal punishment and heavy fines.
Another requisition from the government was, that the two servants who had entered the mission premises, and beaten and insulted several of the ecclesiastics, should be taken to that same inclosure, and be bastinadoed to the satisfaction of the mission. Only one of the two could be found. He was brought thither, and laid upon the pavement with his feet tied to a pole, and a large bunch of rods by his side; and the missionaries were requested to come and see that due punishment was inflicted. But they, greatly to the satisfaction of the crowd of Nestorians who had assembled to witness the punishment, complied with the earnest entreaties of the culprit to excuse the crime he had committed, and he was at once released.
The repeated mention of Suleiman Bey's friendly attentions to Dr. Grant, must have interested the reader in his behalf. But we are now obliged to place him among the persecutors of the Lord's people. Tamo was teacher in the male seminary for about ten years, and became hopefully pious in the revival of 1846. He accompanied Dr. Wright and Mr. Breath in their visit to Bader Khan. His family resided in the mountain district of Gawar, within the limits of Turkey. Being fleet, athletic, and capable of great endurance, he was well fitted for a mountain evangelist. After an extended preaching tour in the summer of 1848, he spent some time at his mountain home. The Bishop of Gawar had received a charge from Mar Shimon to ruin him, and made complaint against him to Suleiman Bey. He was seized by that chief, heavily fined, and his life threatened. But Suleiman Bey was taken, meanwhile, a prisoner by the Turks. Afterwards, Tamo, while on his return to Oroomiah with two of his brothers and a nephew, all members of the seminary, was attacked in the night by a party of ruffian Koords, also incited by the Patriarch, who beat all the company with clubs, and called to each other to "kill them." Friendly Koords came to their rescue, but not until they had been stripped of nearly all their clothing and suffered cruelly from the hands of the barbarians.
In the year 1848, Bader Khan Bey, failing in one of his favorite night attacks on the Turkish army, was taken prisoner in his own castle of Dergooleh, and placed, as such, on one of the islands of the Grecian Archipelago.
Nûrûllah Bey, also, some time in 1849, was driven from his stronghold at Julamerk, and fled from castle to castle, till he also was taken captive by the Turks, whom he had aided to destroy the Nestorians, and went into captivity, far from the scenes of his former power. Suleiman Bey, as already stated, was taken captive while cruelly persecuting deacon Tamo, and died at Erzroom, while on his way to Constantinople.1
1 Missionary Herald, 1850, p. 96.