volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Monastery of Mar Mattai. 251
clouds were piling themselves up in the north over the
Kurdish mountains. I hoped that it might be possible
to pay a visit to the Jacobite Monastery of Mar Mattai/
which is famous throughout the Christian world of the
East as the burial-place of Abu'l-Faraj, commonly called
" Gregory Bar-Hebraeus " (born 1226, died July 30th 1286)
About 2.30 p.m. we arrived at the bottom of the path
which led up to the Monastery, but I found that it would
take us at least an hour to reach the building itself,
for the path up is very rocky and steep. Nimrud was not
in favour of our attempting to go up to the Monastery,
of which we had a good view. I attributed this at first
to his dislike of every Jacobite person and thing which
manifested itself on every occasion, but I found that he
had good reason for not wishing to leave the plain.
He said that the appearance of the sky and the pecuUar
feeling in the air betokened snow or rain, and he feared
that if we stayed at the Monastery for the night we might
be kept there for many days by the weather. As he
knew the climate well and I did not, we turned our horses
and rode back direct to Mosul. I saw no more of Mar
Mattai's Monastery, for Nimrud's prognostics of the
weather turned out to be correct ; it began to snow that
night, and for four whole days it snowed heavily, ard
all the roads between Jabal Maklub and Mosul were
impassable. It was very fortunate that I had brought
back with me all the manuscripts which I acquired at
Al-Kosh, Batnaye and Tall Kef.
The following day, December 3rd, I began to make
preparations for leaving Mosul. The more I thought
over the difficulties which I was certain to encounter in
excavating at Der, the more I felt the need of an assistant
to help me in the work. I was sure that the Delegate
who would be sent with me by the Baghdad Government
would only be, at the best, an ornamental official,
' Excellent descriptions of it will be found in Badger, Nestorians,
i, p. 96 ff., and Rich, Narrative, ii, p. 66 ff. ; in each work a lithographed
drawing of the biiilding is given. For photographic views see Preusser,
op. cit., plates 23, 24.