volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Tomb of Jonah the Prophet. 35
In spite of all the attempts I made to get into the
Mosque of Nabi Yunis, I found it impossible to do so.
The guardians and keepers of the various parts of it
watched me with more than ordinary care, for they knew
that I was collecting antiquities and Syriac and Arabic
manuscripts, and they seemed to be afraid that I would
carry off the building itself to London. The Will told
me that no Christian had ever entered the mosque, and
he hoped that I would not try to do so, because the
mullahs would make complaints against him in Stambul
if I succeeded. From what I could see of the outside of
the mosque, very few portions of it seemed to be older
than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but portions
inside must be many centuries older. According to
Layard the tomb of Jonah is in a dark inner room. The
sarcophagus, which is made of wood or plaster, stands
in the centre of the room, upon a common European
carpet, and is covered with a green cloth embroidered
with extracts from the Kur'an. Ostrich eggs and coloured
tassels, such as are found in all Arab sanctuaries, hang
from the ceiling. A staircase leads into the holy chamber.
^ Miss Badger, who through the Pasha's influence
succeeded in gaining admission to the tomb some ten
years before Layard, gives a somewhat different description.
Passing through a spacious courtyard and along
a fine open terrace, she descended into the mosque,
which is a square building, lighted by several windows
of stained glass. The eastern end is separated from the
nave by a row of noble arches, which probably formed a
part of the old church dedicated to Jonah. The pulpit
(mimbar) stands at the south end, and the floor is
covered with rich carpets. A passage, with locked doors,
about thirty feet long, leads down into a square room
with a vaulted roof, and in the middle of this, raised
about five feet from the ground, stands the coffin, which
measures ten feet by five feet. On the south end of this
is an enormous turban made of costly silks, and shawls,
' Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. xxii ; Nineveh and
Babylon, p. 596.
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