It was a weird and striking effect that we witnessed from it next morning. The clouds lay low and horizontal above the plain beneath us; and many of them seemed to have sunk on to the ground, and looked exactly like lakes under the level rays of the rising sun. As his orb rose higher they lifted, and dispersed into wreaths of vapour. How well might such an effect have inspired the words of the Prophet, “Nineveh is of old as a pool of water: yet they shall flee away!”
Some three miles east of Alkosh lies a great recess in the mountains—hardly so much a valley as a deep pocket among the cliffs. And at the end of this pocket is ensconced one of the most interesting Christian relics in these regions—the ancient monastery of Rabban Hormizd, the Scetis of the uttermost east. Rabban Hormizd is no western monastery; it is a typical Oriental Laura: a rookery of independent hermits rather than a community of monks. And to speak of it as a “rookery” is hardly so descriptive as to call it a warren of sand-martins; for the anchorites’ cells are all caves, some natural and some artificial, burrowed into the escarpments of a great natural cirque.
Rabban Hormizd, the original and eponymous hermit, established himself here in the eighth century; and the fame of his singular sanctity soon drew hundreds of other eremites to the neighbourhood of his lonely retreat. Here he lived praying, fasting, and macerating himself after the manner of the Great St. Anthony; and wrestling mightily with the devils who notoriously frequent such desert spots. He was evidently a believer in “close action,” for the adjoining pocket is known as the Vale of Devils; and, appropriately enough, a little village of “Devil-Worshippers” is situated at the mouth of it to this day.
But perhaps in the eyes of Rabban Hormizd even the very devils themselves were not so foul an abomination as[{118}] the great rival monastery on Jebel Maklub,[70] which rises conspicuous in the midst of Mosul plain in full sight of his cell. For Rabban Hormizd was a “Nestorian,” while the monks of Sheikh Mattai were “Jacobites;” their monastery being still the abode of their Maphrian, the second dignitary in their church. Both sects are equally obnoxious to the intermediate orthodox; but they are even more obnoxious to each other, for they draw towards opposite poles.
His zeal against the monks of Sheikh Mattai roused Rabban Hormizd to the great deed of his lifetime. He actually quitted his cell (for the only occasion on record) and started on a lone-hand raid against his adversaries’ stronghold. The monks of Sheikh Mattai received him hospitably, and gave him lodging in their monastery. But at dead of night he arose and groped his way to their library, where the works of “the accursed Cyril” stood stored like cordite shells. By virtue of his prayers he summoned up a miraculous spring in the centre of the floor, and carefully washed every line of writing off every page of their books! Then leaving them a collection of nice clean leaves free from every taint of heresy, he departed joyfully to his hermitage and thereafter stirred from it no more.
This scandalous transaction was of course accounted to him for righteousness; and indeed Oriental religious controversies continue to be conducted on very similar lines to this day!
The monastery of Rabban Hormizd has always been kept going ever since the date of its foundation; but now it is only the Succursale of the big modern monastery established on the plains below it, and there are but some four or five monks still left in the old mother house. They are Uniat Nestorians who have submitted themselves to the Papacy, and are consequently not at all in charity with the independent Nestorian church from which they have seceded. Hearing that we were going to Tyari, the home of the independent Nestorians, they inquired artlessly “Pray, do[{119}] you know anything of a deacon there? one Werda, a very wicked person—a tall man with a red beard?” (Our deacon is short and rotund, and his beard is black).
“I am Shamasha Werda,” replied that worthy with a twinkle.
“Oh! but we don’t think you can be the man we mean!” protested our hosts in some consternation.
“Oh, yes! I am,” persisted the delighted deacon.[71]