496 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Damascus and Samaria. From Babylonia those early Amorites 



appear to have wandered up the Tigris to Kurdistan 

 Chaidaeans anc ^ *he Lake Urmia district, where they are now 



represented by a few groups of Christians commonly 

 but wrongly called " Nestorians," being simply eastern Christians 

 with a national rite 1 . They call themselves Kaldani (Chaidaeans) 

 and still speak, besides Arabic, a Syro-Chaldaean (Aramaic) 

 dialect written in a modified form of the Syriac (Estranghelo) 

 script 2 . Strange to say some of these Kaldani are still in the 

 tribal state 3 , unless we suppose that this is a case of reversion under 

 the influence of the surrounding Kurdish tribes. 



In Syria the whole population has become Arabised in speech, 



while the majority (Maronites of the Lebanon and 

 Syrians. others) have long been Christians of the Syrian rite. 



They possess a copious religious literature, adorned 

 by the names of St Ephrem and John of Damascus, and enriched 

 by a valuable version of Scripture (the Peshitto "correct") 4 and 

 some patristic writings still consulted by commentators. All 

 these writings are in the Aramaic, a distinct branch of the Semitic 

 family, which appears to hold a position somewhat intermediate 

 between the Assyrian of the cuneiform documents and Phoenician. 

 After the dispersion of the ten tribes and the Babylonian captivity 

 a slightly modified form of Syriac, often called " Syro-Chaldaic," 

 became the current speech of Palestine, where Hebrew, Phoenician, 

 and the other closely related Canaanitish dialects have been 

 extinct as vernaculars for quite 2000 years. 



1 Max von Thielmann, Journey in the Caucasus etc., 1875, vol. 2, 

 p. 72. 



2 M. Rubens, Les Dialectes Neo-Arameens de Satamasetc., Paris, 1884; and 

 Ignazio Guidi in Zeitschr. d. Morgen. Ges. xxxvi. p. 293 sq. 



3 Such are the Kojamis about the source of the Tigris (1000 families), the 

 Tiaris in the Salamas district (10,000) and the Tokdbis of the Upper Tigris 



(300). 



4 This version is not to be confused with the very old text of the Penta- 

 teuch in a Hebrew-Aramaic dialect, written in the original Hebrew character, 

 which is jealously preserved at Nablus (Sichem) by a small "Samaritan" com- 

 munity now dying out. They are an interesting link between present times 

 and Palestine before the Captivity, living under a Sheikh, Jakub Shalaibi, 

 whose subjects were reduced a few years ago to 133. 



