34 Ichabod! the proud day of that statement is passed away, and so is the greater part of the Chaldean Church—“the superstitions of Rome” have captured the Chaldeans, though not, I fear, in fair contest.

35 “The good and merciful King Yezdijird, the blessed amongst the kings, may he be remembered with blessing, and may his future be yet more fair than his earlier life! Every day he doeth good to the poor and distressed.”—Browne, Lit. Hist., vol. i., p. 135.

36 Browne, Lit. Hist., vol. i., p. 168, quotes the gratitude Christians bore Nushirvan, for they “gave a touching proof of their gratitude for his favours a century later, when they would not suffer the remains of his unfortunate descendant Yazdigird III. ... to lie unburied.”

37 None can tell, naturally, what would have been the condition of the Middle East had Muhammad never appeared, but while it would quite possibly have been Christian, it would have been a very debased faith; for even in those days before Islam, wherever the Christian Church had wandered far from Chaldea, it had become terribly corrupt, and doctrines crept in that almost took from it the right to be called Christian.

38 An enormous amount of feeling has been recently roused upon this subject in Turkish dominions, by the resolve of the new Turkish Majlis to abolish the jaziya and make Christians and Jews serve in the army.

39 Testimentum Mahometi (Paris: Sionita, 1630).

40 The Bishoprics were: 1. Elam (Arabistan of south-west Persia); 2. Nisibis (north-east Mesopotamia); 3. Basra (Persian Gulf); 4. Assyria (tract between the Zab rivers); 5. Beth Qurma, in Assyria; 6. Hulvan, in western Persia (now called Zuhab, a Kurdish province); 7. Persia; 8. Merv; 9. Herat; 10. Arabia; 11. China; 12. India; 13. Armenia; 14. Syria; 15. Azarbaijan (north-west Persia); 16. Ray and Tabaristan (northern Persia); 17. Dailam (south coast of the Caspian Sea); 18. Samarqand (Transoxiana); 19. Kashgar and Turkestan (Tartary); 20. Balkh and Tucharestan; 21. Sistan (eastern Persia); 22. Khan Baligh (Pekin); 24. Tanguth (Tartary); 25. Chasemgara and Nuachita (Tartary).—(From Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i., p. 257.) From the twelfth bishopric were descended the Christians of St John of Malabar. That of Persia included the Bishopric of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, said to have been founded by one Theophilus, about A.D. 350.

41 Muir’s Caliphate, pp. 521–2.

42 A very interesting letter regarding the state and pomp of this khan is quoted in Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i., pp. 250–4.

43 Vide Layard, Nineveh, vol. i., p. 245, for a full description of the monument and a part translation. More recent discoveries in the 20th century have confirmed this inscription, which was first seen in A.D. 1625.

44 From the accounts that are to be read of the invasion of Hulagu Khan, we learn thousands of details of the revolting and bestial nature of the inhuman Mongols, and of the ghoulish ingenuity of cruelty they displayed. These are fully described in the books of Planocarpini, Guillaume de Ruysbroeck, d’Ohsson, and others.

45 Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i., p. 259.

46 This village, whose inhabitants would seem to have a special aptitude for river work, supplies deck-hands to the steamers of Messrs Lynch Bros., on the Tigris and Karun rivers, to the Turkish boats, and to the “Nusrat,” a Persian steamer on the Karun. By this means the Chaldeans find themselves once more back in their ancient country, and there is now a priest at Ahwaz, not far from where his forbears taught in the great college of Jund-i-Shapur.

47 Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i., pp. 262–3.