volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Visit to the WdU Pdshd of MSsul. 53
went off with the Turkish officers to see the town. The
stream of visitors seemed endless, but when it became
known that White had left the house it diminished, and
in the early afternoon I thankfully saw our last visitor
leave the house.
The following morning I sent a messenger to the
Sarayah to ask if the Pasha was disengaged, and received
a very polite invitation to come, at 6nce.. so Nimrud and
I set out for the Sarayah. I had arranged with Nimrud
to make him the overseer of the workmen and to pay
him a salary, and I was very fortunate in obtaining the
services of such a capable and trustworthy man. He
spoke Arabic, Turkish, and Fallehi equally well, and could
read and write all these languages with great facility
and he knew some French. He was a very fine Syriac
scholar, and was thoroughly well acquainted with the
Nestorian branch of Syriac Literature, but he regarded
with contempt the Jacobites, their books and all their
works. He was himself a most careful copyist, and
wrote a beautiful Nestorian Syriac hand with unusual
accuracy. When we arrived at the Sarayah we found
the courtyard filled with an excited crowd of men from
the town, and peasant farmers and stockholders, and
Nimrud soon heard that they were there demanding
payment from the Government for the robberies of
horses, asses, and goods from their caravans by the
Shammar. They hailed me as a fellow-sufferer, and in
their eagerness to enlist my sympathy and help hustled
and crowded Nimrud and myself very unpleasantly. I
had to stand and listen, but as half a dozen shouted at
me at a time and dozens of men interrupted with loud
remarks and curses on the Government, it was not easy
to get at the facts. At last I found out the cause of
the violent demonstration which they were making. It
seemed that the Shammar had fallen upon a large
caravan of 300 baggage camels loaded with valuable
merchandise for Mosul and Persia, and a smaller caravan
which consisted entirely of young camels that were being
taken eastward for sale in various towns. TheKarawanb^shi,
or leader of the caravan, tried to come to terms