646 The Bight Hon. Earl Percy [May 17, 



of the Patriarchal See, confirming bis spiritual authority over the 

 Nestorians of the Empire, was originally accorded by Mahomet to 

 Isby Yau, the then Patriarch of the East, residing at Bagdad ; and 

 Assemani, in his Bibliotheca Orientalis compiled for Clement XI., 

 gives the Latin text of Bar Hebraeus' account of this extraordinary 

 trausaction. The treaty, he says, was negotiated by the help of large 

 presents through the agency of Said the Christian Prince of Najran 

 (Nagranensiuni). By its terms Mahomet gave the Christians a 

 "diploma" commending them to the protection of the Arabs, safe- 

 guarding their religion and laws, and exempting them from military 

 service. If they entered a Moslem household they were to be shielded 

 from insults to their faith, they were to be allowed to erect churches 

 as they pleased, and the Arabs were even enjoined to assist them in 

 the work ; and finally the amount which might be raised in taxes from 

 the rich and poor was laid down with strict and minute precision. 

 The Caliphs of Bagdad seem to havo observed an attitude of general 

 tolerance to all faiths, and Assemani mentions a decision of Caliph 

 Mamun in the case of a dispute between the Jews of Tiberias and 

 Babylon, by which he laid the rule that any ten Christians, Jews or 

 Magians might meet and select whomever they pleased to preside over 

 their respective communities. This negative attitude, however, was 

 gradually abandoned, and the Arabs not only extorted money from 

 their proteges but ceased even to protect them from the Kurds. In 

 747 the Governor of Mosul levied a tribute of 375Z. from the monks 

 of Beth Abbe on the Upper Zab, and some 60 years later the 

 monastery itself was plundered by the Kurds of Kartaw. In 1370 

 another roving band sacked the monastery of Mar Mattai, and it is 

 at once a remarkable proof of the vitality of the church, and of the 

 yielding character of Mahommetanism in those days, that in spite of 

 all these hindrances the process of proselytism went on and pros- 

 pered, many of the Turks themselves becoming converts during the 

 eleventh century, through the efforts of Ebedjesus the Metropolitan 

 of Maru. 



It is not too much to say that if the Nestorians exist as a distinct 

 nationality to-day, it is because they exist as a separate church ; and 

 they certainly afford the most striking, if not the only, surviving 

 example of a purely ecclesiastical system of civil government. At 

 their head, supi'eme in all matters lay, as well as spiritual, and enforc- 

 ing his decisions by the decree of excommunication, which operates as 

 a kind of boycott, stands the Patriarch Mar Shimun (My Lord Simon) 

 Father of Fathers, and Great Shepherd, Catholicos of the East and 

 salaried representative of the Turkish Government. During the 

 first four centuries after the conversion of the people by St. Thomas 

 the Apostle, and Mar Addai, one of the Seventy, Mar Shinmn's 

 predecessors were not patriarchs at all, but simply metropolitans, 

 occupying the See of Seleucia Ctesiphon on the Tigris and subject 

 to the jurisdiction of the patriarchs of Antioch. Owing to the diffi- 

 culties of the journey, and perhaps also to the dangers of riot among 

 the non-Christians of Antioch, fomented for their own purposes by 





