650 The Bight Eon. Earl Percy [May 17, 



when she was scarcely out of her teens, are educated by a priest who 

 devotes most of his life to copying old manuscripts with a reed pen 

 and gall ink. 



The only other edifice worthy of notice is the church of Mar 

 Shalita, perched on a high rock on the verge of the opposite precipice, 

 and surrounded by a clump of poplars. The first monastery churclies 

 appear to have been built of clay and brick, but those of the present 

 day are of solid limestone, and the general plan of all of them is the 

 same — a plain oblong nave divided off from the sanctuary by a 

 curtain, and containing no furniture of any kind, except a couple of 

 lecterns, a string of sheep bells stretched across the west end, and 

 rung at intervals during the service, and, at Kochanes, a low, truncated 

 pillar which serves as a stand for the censer. There are no longer 

 any screens dividing the men from the women as in the earliest 

 buildings, and the congregation either stand or squat in Oriental 

 fashion on their heels, after leaving their shoes, as the Mussulmen do, 

 at the entrance. Icons are forbidden, and the only form of decoration 

 are the curtains and hangings on the walls. A tiny light is always 

 kept burning before the altar, and another in the nave is lit at the 

 commencement of the service. Otherwise the church is almost 

 entirely dark, for little daylight penetrates through the small slit 

 windows, and when the priest reads the gospels he has to do so by 

 the aid of spiral tapers of beeswax. No one but the clergy may 

 enter the sanctuary, and even they may not do so without having 

 fasted beforehand. The vestry or baptistry usually forms an adjunct 

 to it with a separate entrance, which at Zerani in Jelu is closed by 

 quaintly carved wooden doors. The chief peculiarities of Mar 

 Shalita are the small chamber in the north wall, where the Com- 

 munion bread is prepared, and the minute entrance doorway, scarcely 

 more than four feet high, which can only be reached from the outside 

 by means of a ladder. This gives the building the appearance of a 

 fort rather than of a church, and is due to the apprehension enter- 

 tained by the Kochanes people that the Kurds after a successful raid 

 might be tempted to stable their cattle or horses in the interior. 



From Kochanes, after crossing a range of about 8000 feet, you 

 reach the main valley of the Great Zab, the traditional Pison of 

 Genesis, at Julamerk. Between this point and Lizan, a distance of 

 about forty miles, lies the district of Tiyari, divided roughly into two 

 equal portions (Upper and Lower Tiyari) by the Levin river, which 

 flows in from the north-west at a place called Shinna, or the Precipice. 

 For the greater part of its course through this tract the Zab flows 

 between sheer walls of cliff, which in places come so close down to 

 the water's edge that there is scarcely room for a mule to pass, and 

 most of the villages are built high up on any grassy slope which 

 affords sufficient space for cultivation. Artificial steps called " stangi " 

 (the work, according to M. Binder, of Kurdish prisoners, but accord- 

 ing to local tradition, of rival suitors for the hand of the chief's 

 daughter) are laboriously cut in the rock to facilitate the passage of 

 caravans ; and isolated fields of millet, hemp and rice are banked up 



