The Porte was prevailed upon to punish this atrocious massacre, and to crush a rebellious subject who had long resisted its authority. An expedition was fitted out under Osman Pasha; and after two engagements, in which the Kurds were signally defeated by the Turkish troops headed by Omar Pasha, Beder Khan Bey took refuge in a mountain-castle. The position had been nearly carried, when the chief, finding defence hopeless, succeeded in obtaining from the Turkish commander, Osman Pasha, the same terms which had been offered to him before the commencement of hostilities. He was to be banished from Kurdistan; but his family and attendants were to accompany him, and he was guaranteed the enjoyment of his property. Although the Turkish ministers more than suspected that Osman Pasha had reasons of his own for granting these terms, they honourably fulfilled the conditions upon which the chief, although a rebel, had surrendered. He was brought to Constantinople, and subsequently sent to the Island of Candia, a punishment totally inadequate to his numerous crimes. After Beder Khan Bey had retired from Tkhoma, a few of the surviving inhabitants returned to their ruined villages; but Nur-Ullah Bey, suspecting that they knew of concealed property, fell suddenly upon them. Many died under the tortures to which they were exposed; and the rest, as soon as they were released, fled into Persia. This flourishing district was thus destroyed; and it will be long ere its cottages again rise from their ruins, and the fruits of patient toil again clothe the sides of its valleys. CHAP. VIII. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO ASSYRIA. ORIGIN OF THE CHALDEAN OR NESTORIAN CHURCH. EARLY MISSIONS OF THE CHALDEANS. THE MONUMENT OF SE-GAN-FOO.-THE CHALDEANS -- OF THE CHALDEAN -ORIGIN OF THE NAME OF THEIR PROFESSION OF FAITH. THEIR TENETS. PATRIARCH.-THEIR LANGUAGE. AMERICAN MISSIONS. THE account given in the preceding chapter, of the Chaldæan or Nestorian tribes, will probably have made the reader desirous of knowing something of their condition, and of the events which led to the isolation of a small Christian community in the midst of the mountains of Kurdistan. Indeed the origin of the race, as well as the important position which the Chaldæan church once held in Asia, renders the subject one of considerable historical interest. To Protestants, the doctrines and rites of a primitive sect of Christians, who have ever remained untainted by the superstitions of Rome, must be of high importance; and it is a matter of astonishment, that more curiosity has not been excited by them, and more sympathy felt for their sufferings. In the first centuries of the Christian æra, the plains of Assyria Proper were still the battle-ground of the nations of the East, and the West. From the fall of the Assyrian empire, whose capital was Nineveh, the rich districts watered by the Tigris and Euphrates had been continually exposed to foreign invasion. Their cities had been levelled with the ground, the canals which gave fertility to the soil had been destroyed, and a great part of the ancient population had either been exterminated or carried away captive to distant regions. Still there lingered, in the villages and around the sites of the ruined cities, the descendants of those who had formerly possessed the land. They had escaped the devastating sword of the Persians, of the Greeks, and of the Romans. They still spoke the language of their ancestors, and still retained the name of their race. The doctrines of Christianity had early penetrated into the Assyrian provinces; they may even have been carried there by those who had imbibed them at their source. When, in the first part of the fifth century, the church was agitated by the dissensions of St. Cyril and Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Chaldæans were already recognised as one of the most extensive of the Eastern sects. Nestorius himself was never in Assyria; but it will be remembered that, in the struggle at Ephesus between him and his rival St. Cyril, his chief supporters were the Eastern Bishops, who accompanied John of Antioch to the third œcumenical Council.* Although the peculiar doctrines held by Nestorius, had been previously promulgated on the borders of A. D. 431. Assyria by Diodorus of Tarsus, and Theodorus the Bishop of Mopsuestia, and had been recognised by the celebrated school of Edessa, the Ur of the Chaldees, and the last seat of their learning; yet until the persecution of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the schism had not attracted much attention. It was to the rank and sufferings of Nestorius, that the doctrines which he had maintained owed their notoriety, and those who professed them, their name. These doctrines were alternately taught and condemned in the school of Edessa, to the time of its close, by an order of the Emperor Zeno. Those who professed them were known as the Persian party. When the Emperor called upon all Christian sects to forget their dissensions, and to subscribe the Henoticon, or articles of Faith, Barsumas, the recusant Bishop of Nisibis, placed himself under the protection of the Persian King Firouz. Acacius, who on the murder of Babuæus was elected to the archbishopric of Seleucia or Ctesiphon*, secretly professed the Nestorian doctrines. Babæus, his successor, openly declared himself in favour of the new sect; and from his accession may be dated the first recognised establishment of the Nestorian church in the East, and the promulgation of its doctrines amongst the nations of central Asia. Until the fall of the Sassanian dynasty, and the establishment of the Arab supremacy in the provinces to * The names of Seleucia and Ctesiphon are very frequently confounded by the early Christian writers; but the cities stood on opposite sides of the river Tigris, and were built at different periods. the East of the Tigris, the Chaldæans were alternately protected and persecuted; their condition mainly depending upon the relative strength of the Persian and Byzantine Empires. Still their tenets were recognised as those of the Eastern Church, and their chief, at an early period, received the title of "Patriarch of the East." They laboured assiduously to disseminate their doctrines over the continent of Asia; and it is even asserted that one of the Persian Kings was amongst their converts. From Persia, where the Chaldæan Bishoprics were early established, they spread eastwards; and Cosmas Indicopleustes, who visited Asia in the early part of the sixth century, declares that they had bishops, martyrs, and priests in India, Arabia Felix, and Socotra, amongst the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites; and that their Metropolitans even penetrated into China as early as the fifth century.* The celebrated inscription of Se-gan-foo, which was seen by the Jesuit missionaries in the year 1625, gives many particulars regarding the state of the Chaldæan Church in China, from A. D. 620 to 781. The Chaldæans had enjoyed, during that period, with only two exceptions, the imperial favour; and their doctrines had been preached before the court, and throughout the empire. This inscription, the authenticity of which so long contested-seems at length to be generally admitted, contains an exposition of the creed of the sect, and of their peculiar tenets and * Cosmas Indicopleustes, in Topographiâ Christianâ, Assemani, vol. iv. p. 92. Gibbon, ch. 47. note 116. Mosheim, Hist. Tart. Eccles. pp. 8, 9. |