volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

240 Al-Kdsh, the Village of Nahun.
warmly welcomed, for Nimrud had many friends there.
The priests, who by some means had heard of our
coming, had prepared a meal for us, and we only escaped
from spending the whole day there by promising to
pass the night with them on our way back. The clergy
told me they had many Syriac manuscripts to show
me, and that they would be glad to sell some of them.
We got away with difficulty, and did not arrive at
Batnaye, or Tytnaye, as the natives call it, until noon.
As this village was inhabited by Chaldeans of the same
sect as Nimrud he was received by them with singing
and much noise, and with many entreaties to stay with
them for several days. We only stayed to take a
hurried look at the Syriac inscriptions on the sepulchral
monuments of the priests of the village, which were set
up on the walls of the Church of Mar Cyriacus and
Maryam al-'Adhri, or Mary the Virgin, and then went
on to Tall Uskuf,^ or Tall Skipa, which we reached in
about an hour. We rested here until two o'clock and
then rode on, leaving Hatarah, a Yazidi village, on the
left, and skirted the little stream called " Shar§.fiyah,"
and then crossed the plain to the village of Al-K6sh,
arriving there at four o'clock. Nimrud took me to the
house of Kuss Thomi, who welcomed us warmly and
insisted on providing supper for ourselves and our
horses. In the course of the evening many priests and
scribes came in and talked about manuscripts, and the
time passed very pleasantly. I enquired of them if
any of the books of the famous old deacon Homo^ of
Al-K6sh were still in existence, and though they told
me there were not, I felt sure that there were. And
before I left Al-K6sh I was convinced that somewhere
1 See Yakut, i, p. 863. In Rich's time a society of nuns lived there.
{Narrative, ii, p. loi.)
' He and his brother Yalda were the sons of the priest Daniel of
Al-K6sh, and he was alive in 1709. He wrote the famous manuscript
Add. 25,875, from which I edited the Syriac version of the Life of
Alexander the Great, by Pseudo-CaUisthenes (Cambridge, 1889). See
also Hoffmann, Opuscula Nestoriana, pp. i and xxiii.