The Liturgy of this Church is one of the oldest used in any part of Christendom; for it is practically certain that it existed in something like its present form by the year 450, and tradition ascribes it to an even earlier date. However, in a land where all services were until very lately manuscript and not printed, a certain amount of “fluidity” is natural; and indeed at certain services anyone who will bring an anthem of his own composition is entitled to have it chanted!
Evening celebrations of the Eucharist (Qurbana is the Syriac name for the Rite) are customary on the vigils of the greater festivals; and these are performed in a way that suggests a possible and most beneficial concordat on that disputed point between the “high” and “low” divisions of the Church of England, for all who attend the evening celebration in the Nestorian Church do so fasting!
That so ancient a Church as this isolated body should have certain rites peculiar to itself, in addition to those that are variants of services common to all Christendom, is of course to be expected; and every Nestorian attaches great importance to what is known among them as the “Succession of the Leaven.” Like all Orientals they celebrate the Eucharist with leavened bread,[133] and a certain amount of this is reserved after each “Qurbana” for one purpose, and one only. That purpose is neither communion of the sick, nor adoration; but the leavening of the dough that is to be baked for the next celebration. That baking of the bread, as is general with Orientals, is performed by the priest himself, and in the sacristy of the church, at a special preliminary office; and the admixture of the reserved crumbs at once leavens it, and puts it “into connexion” with that used on the previous occasion. And so they hold it is put “into connexion” with that used at all previous celebrations also, back to the institution in the[{276}] upper room at Jerusalem. As a matter of history, the fact can be of course neither proved nor disproved. As a piece of instructive and interesting ceremonial, we imagine that at the least nobody could object to it; while many would envy such a possession.
It is at the patriarchal diwan that the real life of Qudshanis finds its centre. At this solemn gathering, which is held daily in the course of the afternoon, anyone may be present; and anyone may bring forward any conceivable business that he wishes to have discussed in public. Coffee and tobacco go round, and for picturesqueness the gathering is hard to beat. It is composed mostly of mountaineers who look as if they had stepped down from the Assyrian sculptures, clad in loose home-spun coats and trousers, gay cummerbunds that are wrapped round and round their waists, and high felt caps that have been their headgear since time immemorial. Below these hang the long, plaited pigtails that form the traditional arrangement of their long hair. A bishop, or so, in long dark robes, serves as a foil to the many coloured dresses of the men of Tyari and Tkhuma; and the wonderfully handsome face of the young Patriarch (for good looks are part of the inheritance of the men of his family) forms a centre to the whole. He has himself unfortunately departed from the tradition of his fathers, and wears semi-European dress, which is seldom becoming to the Asiatic. Any visitor at Qudshanis is expected to attend the reception; and indeed to be in the place and not to be sometimes at the diwan of the Patriarch is a marked act of discourtesy and almost a proclamation of disloyalty. As far as the writer can make out, something the same line of thought governs the Oriental attendance at the services of his church. In attending the Qurbana, he is attending the diwan of that Great Power to whom he certainly does not intend to be openly disloyal.
Absolutely any business may be discussed, or any subject brought forward at these gatherings. Who is to be malik of such and such a district; what villages stand in need of clergy; what terms of agreement can be suggested for the settlement of some grazing dispute. And though these[{277}] questions may be settled in camera, the meanest man has his chance of making his opinion heard. If there is no special business to talk over, other subjects crop up; and a good fund of general information is a desirable possession for any Englishman who may be present, for strange questions are put before his wisdom. Thus, he may be asked why it is the case that some wild animals take so much more killing than do others; or invited to pass an opinion as to whether it is really the fact that shooting stars are the javelins cast by the Seraphim at the Jann, when they see them come up from earth to the lower courts of heaven for the purposes of eavesdropping. Once, a worthy old priest started the problem whether the angels kept the Fasts of the Church; and this was discussed with much learning and in true scholastic style. The theory propounded that they could hardly fast because they did not eat was scouted on the authority of the text, “Man did eat angels’ food;” this proving that they certainly ate something! “Then they eat but do not fast” said some; but that seemed unlikely, for of all sorts of men known to these present, whether Christian, Mussulman, Jew or Devil-worshipper, the only folk who did not fast in some way were the American Missionaries, and there was a general feeling that this was not quite a conclusive precedent![134] Finally the meeting somehow hammered out the very sensible conclusion that laws[{278}] made for fallen creatures like man did not necessarily bind unfallen beings; and the matter was left at that.
Occasionally some queer anecdote is related by one of the visitors; and one of these sticks in our memory as exemplifying the exceeding toughness and callousness of the Kurd. A gentleman of that race was riding his mule along one of the mountain paths when he was caught by an avalanche, which carried him down some distance, and then (in the sportive way that avalanches sometimes have) flung him on one side with his leg broken, but with his mule unhurt. He was ill enough off even so; for the spot was very lonely, and it was near nightfall. There was frost in the air already, and the temperature would be somewhere about zero before dawn. But by great good luck another traveller passed, and that traveller the victim’s own brother. This model of fraternal affection rode off with the mule “lest it should get stolen,” and left his brother in the snow till morning! But the latter was little the worse for his experience after all!
This episode was told us, as it happened, on the day after the query why some animals were very hard to kill; when we had explained that roughly, the lower the animal in the scale of creation, the more cutting and hacking he would stand. Hearing of the Kurd’s adventures, the Patriarch looked across at us and observed drily, “I always thought that Kurds were precious low animals, Rabbi, and now I know it.”
On the same occasion, a visitor detailed his own experience, when he had gone to pay a visit of sympathy to a Kurdish neighbour, who had recently lost some near relative. He entered the house, and found all the family as he had expected, seated wailing round the fireplace, as proper Kurdish custom dictates. They will sit thus, literally in the ashes, for some days; keeping up a low keening continuously, though at times some one of the party, without the least warning, will spring to his feet and shriek. Any visitor who wishes to express sympathy, takes up a shovelful of ashes from the hearth and pours it on the heads of the whole circle. The Christian, of course, did not neglect this[{279}] act of courtesy, but performed it liberally. However, quite unintentionally, he took up some live coals in the shovel, and these, by ill-luck, went down the neck of one of the mourners, who at once sprang to his feet with a howl, exclaiming “I burn, I burn,” and began tearing his clothes off. This, however, was quite ordinary behaviour, for wailing and rending of garments are habitual on these occasions; so all the family simply sat still and wailed in sympathy. The unlucky lad was really painfully, though not dangerously, burnt before his friends could be brought to understand that his sufferings were physical rather than mental!
As the recognized head of the Christian “ashirets” of Tyari and Tkhuma, and as the present holder of what all Mussulmans of the district recognize as a most ancient and venerable throne, Mar Shimun has a high position among the Kurds personally; though that fact does not, of course, keep them from plundering his people. In the past, indeed, it has not always availed to protect the House of the Patriarch itself from outrage; for when Bedr Khan Beg, the formidable Mira of Bohtan, attacked these Christian tribes in 1845—and perpetrated a massacre so appalling that the years are dated from it to this day—a special attempt was made to “extirpate the head of this brood of serpents.”
Qudshanis itself was ravaged; the church plundered; and many priceless records utterly destroyed. Even a firman said to be signed by the Prophet himself, and specially granting toleration to members of this body, was destroyed; no doubt as a forgery, because it condemned the very thing that its captors were in the act of doing. Whether as a matter of fact the document in question was actually Mohammed’s own dictation and sealing, cannot of course be proved now; but tradition has it that he was taught what he knew of Christianity by a monk of this body, so the story may be true. It is perhaps more probable that the grant in question was made by Omar, who was Khalif at the time that the Mussulmans over-ran Persia; and who is known to have made some such grant of toleration to the Nestorian Patriarch of his day.[{280}]