It sounds a staggering statement to make, but it is nevertheless the truth, that all these stories told by the Italian poet as legends current in his day, are literally the fact in all essentials (or were so until very lately), with the Patriarch of the Nestorians in Kurdistan. He is the “Bishop-Prince” of a mountain kingdom of Christians; subject to the Sultan of course, but still a recognized ruler, and ruler by virtue of his Episcopal rank. Even the mountains over which the hippogrif bore Astolpho were hardly more inaccessible than those which girdle the village of Qudshanis; while a very good imitation of the harpies that tormented Prester John are found in the Kurds that ravage the land. English visitors are there too, as members of what is known as the “Archbishop’s Assyrian Mission;”[126] though they, alas, have no magic horn with which to drive away the harpies of to-day.[{263}]
If, however, the old magical power has gone, some prestige attaches to the name of the English still; for villages where they reside are not raided when all others suffer, for fear that some evil may thereafter befall the thief. The writer once spent a night in a little village of Nestorians in this immediate district, called Shwawutha; a village whose little rock-built church is shown in one of our illustrations. Hospitality was given him there, as a matter of course; but in the middle of the night he was roused by a Dutch concert of the most pronounced description. Men shouted, women screamed, cattle bellowed, and sheep bleated; while a shot or so told that something warlike was afoot. And soon folk came rushing in to tell him that the Kurds had descended on the village, and were engaged at that moment in turning it inside out.
Sure enough, when he emerged in somewhat sketchy toilet, he found himself in the midst of some five and twenty well armed ruffians. Most of them were gathered on the threshing-floors, and threatening the villagers with their rifles; while the rest were coolly rounding up the sheep for the purpose of driving them away. Deponent had some talk with their leader, carefully introducing himself as an Englishman, and laying stress on the fact that he was going down from that village to the seat of government, to interview the Vali and the British Consul. And presently the robber excused himself for a moment and gave an order in Kurdish, which was not understood by his interlocutor, but which resulted in his men allowing the sheep to remain in their folds. He then turned round and explained with all politeness that he and his young men were on a peaceful journey, and desired to be the guests of the village for the rest of that night. Would the Effendi use his influence with the headman to get him to extend hospitality to them? He tactfully ignored the fact that you do not usually occupy a village with an armed force at two in the morning as a preliminary to asking to be received as a guest!
The Effendi told the headman that he had better let it go at that, lest worse should befall him; for naturally he[{264}] had no means whatever of controlling these fellows if they should break loose. A meal was hurriedly prepared for all the gang, and he sat with their chief till unholy hours that night, or morning, exchanging yarns. Eventually he had the satisfaction of seeing the marauders depart at daybreak. No harm had been done to the place; though had it not been for the “accident” of the presence of an Englishman, there would have been a different tale to tell.
The village of Qudshanis, which is the residence of the Nestorian or Assyrian Patriarch, “Mar Shimun,” and the headquarters of his Church, has a marvellous situation. It lies on a sloping “alp” of rugged pasture, between two mountain torrents which spring from the towering snow-fields to the west of it; and which descend in gradually deepening gorges, enclosing the tongue-shaped plateau on which the village stands. They meet beneath the point of the tongue at the base of a lofty wedge of rock; and thence the united stream flows on, joined by others on its way, till it falls into the Zab some two hours below the village. Nestorian tradition regards the Zab as the Pison, one of the four rivers of Paradise; and the Patriarch will occasionally date his official letters “from my cell on the River of the Garden of Eden.”
The official title of the Church, whose principal bishop resides in this romantic, but singularly inaccessible, spot is “the Church of the East.” This title was given to it originally by those whom we call “the Eastern Christians,” viz. those of Constantinople and Antioch; and by it they meant the Church to the east of them, beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire, in what was then the kingdom of the Sassanid Persians. In the days of its greatness, this communion extended itself marvellously, in just those countries where Christianity finds it hardest to establish a footing now. In the year 1300 its bishops were distributed from Damascus to Pekin, and from Tartary to Malabar. The “Syrian Christians” of the latter land, though they now own a different jurisdiction, still remain as a memorial of its missionary zeal in the fifth century; and the Singan monument in the very heart of China tells of the presence[{265}] of this “pacific, philosophical, and excellent religion” there also, and commemorates the names of sundry of its bishops and clergy. Nay, the historic Prester John (for he was an historical figure strange to say) was of this Church. A dynasty of Tartar princes of the eleventh century were Christians; and the name of their founder, Ung Khan, readily became Yukhanan, which is John, in Syriac-speaking mouths. Whether he ever was, as a matter of fact, an ordained presbyter is more questionable.
Massacre (particularly the tremendous massacres of Tamerlane about the year 1400), oppression, and the proselytism of better protected and educated bodies, have reduced this Church now to a few wild tribes of mountaineers living in a most inaccessible country; and to a fringe of rayat villages, many of whom are little better than serfs to the Kurds near whom they live. Yet the Church still exists, guarding its independence and its ancient rites, and boasting with legitimate pride that it, alone of all peoples, still uses in daily life the language that our Lord spoke on earth. Whether the dialects of vernacular Syriac that are here in use would have been intelligible in Palestine in the first century of this era, may be doubted; but the statement is so far true, that the language is unquestionably a variant of the Aramaic referred to.
As this Church is a survival of so much that is ancient and that has passed away from other lands, it is appropriate that here alone in all the world, the “temporal power of the Church” should still survive. It is little more than a shadow now, but not a dead thing yet. Mar Shimun holds the village of Qudshanis, and the lands that belong to it, by grant from the Sultan; and until lately every inhabitant of the place was in the happy condition of paying neither rent, rates, nor taxes to anyone. Unfortunately the grant was a merely verbal one, made in the days when you did not ask your king to sign papers from fear that he would “play the Jew” and go back from his given word, and when the evidence of the “grey-beards” of a place was enough to prove a fact. Now there is a new rule in the land, the rule of forms and pens and ink and paper;[{266}] and this new régime has not recognized the old right. A harmless and picturesque survival has gone; taken away in the interests of civilization and uniformity, by the same people who were so desirous of substituting a Parisian boulevard for the Roman walls of Constantinople, and for the same reason.
One other feature of the old rights remains—besides the fact that the peacock, the bird of royalty, still walks the patriarchal terrace.[127] The wild Christian tribes of Hakkiari, whither no Government of any sort has ever extended, still pay tribute to their Patriarch for transmission to the Sultan; and not taxes through the tax-collector, like the rest. This, again, is based on custom only, and if it were challenged (as it will be ere long), the tribes could show no document acknowledging their right; for it simply arose from the fact that the Ottoman Government was not disposed, or able, to enforce their government practically in this wild district. It was easier to give the Patriarch, whom the tribesmen did reverence, a few decorations and a small salary, and to set him to collect such tribute as he could get the tribesmen to pay. It was an acknowledgment of jurisdiction that could be made more effective if ever the opportunity should offer.
Westerns, accustomed to correct Western notions of managing Church and State, hear with a shock that the patriarchate of this ancient church is hereditary in one family; as indeed is the case also with almost all its bishoprics. Bishops do not marry (though other clergy are free to do so at their will), so the office cannot go from father to son. It does go, however, from uncle to nephew, and so keeps in the “Episcopal house”.