volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

72
Mdr Eliyd MUds, Bishop of Malabar.
and the Nestorian bishop Mar Milosi was very helpful
to me in this respect. He was a man of great learning,
and possessed several ancient manuscripts and a large
number of copies of rare works which he had made with
his own hand. Like the Jacobites he refused absolutely
to sell his ancient manuscripts, but unlike them he was
quite willing to allow competent scribes chosen by him
to make copies of them for libraries or even private
scholars. Indeed, he was most anxious to have copies
of valuable manuscripts multiplied, first, because by
means of them the interest in Syriac Literature would
be increased, and secondly, because the making of such
copies would provide remunerative occupation for scribes
who needed practice in their craft to maintain their
skill and ability. He gave me introductions to members
of his community at Tall Kef, a large village lying a
few miles north of Mosul, with a good church served by
many priests, and I rode out there one afternoon to
deliver them. I was warmly received by the priests
and elders of the village, and over coffee and cigarettes
we discussed manuscripts and the possibility of obtaining
old manuscripts or copies of them. During my visit
they took me to the house of a good scribe, and I was
fortunate enough to find him actually engaged in copying
a work of Bar Hebraeus. I greatly admired the ease
and quickness with which he made his bold, wellformed
letters, and the unerring way in which he added
the vowel points and the other diacritical marks. In
answer to my questions he told me that he bought his
paper from the grocers in the bazar who used it for
wrapping up sugar. It was a good, stout, rag-made
paper manufactured in Russia, very rough on both
sides, and in size small folio. Before use each sheet
was laid upon a smooth board and well rubbed and
rolled with a large round bottle, like a whisky bottle,
and under this treatment the paper became so beautifully
smooth and shiny that the reed pen rarely spluttered.
^ The " Mar Elijah Millus," Bishop of Malabar, whose history is
given by H. Rassam in Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, p. i6i ff.