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Updated: June 5, 2025
Mar Shimon, after the death of the king, prudently retired into Turkey, and his servants were put under bonds to keep the peace. The Koords, however, drove him back, later in the season, but stripped of his power to persecute.
It was presented by Dr. Grant to the library of the American Board, and is now there. His next sojourn was in the castle of Nûrûllah Bey, chief of the independent Hakary Koords, two days from the residence of the Patriarch. The Bey was very sick; and becoming impatient under the slow operation of the medicine given him by the doctor, he sent a messenger for him at midnight.
The man seems totally unable to comprehend why I should order him to leave me, and makes an elaborate display of his pantomimic abilities to impress upon me the information that the country ahead is full of very bad Koords, who will kill and rob me if I venture among them unprotected by a soldier.
Although my own unfavorable impressions of my entertainers are seconded by the visitors' reiterated assurances that these Koords are bad people, I decline to accompany them, knowing the folly of attempting to bicycle over these roads by moonlight in the company of horsemen who would be continually worrying me to ride, no matter what the condition of the road; after remaining in camp half an hour they take their departure.
He would empty his sacks as a peace-offering at my feet without venturing upon a remonstrance, were he ordered to do so; and when I relieve him of but one solitary cucumber, and pay him more than he would obtain for it among the Koords, he becomes stupefied with astonishment; when he continues on his way he hardly knows whether he is on his head or his feet.
After sundry adventures among precipitous mountains and savage Koords, Dr. Grant was once more the guest of Mar Shimon, who kindly received the New Testament, the Psalms, and other books from the mission press.
Providentially they had ridden out farther than usual that morning, in a vain search for a caravan, and before their return, the Koords had shut the gates, to prevent the entrance of government troops. That saved the lives of our brethren, who retired to the convent of the Syrian Patriarch, a few miles distant, which their enemies did not dare to attack.
This people inhabit, along with Koords and other races, the territory extending from the western shore of the Lake of Oroomiah to the eastern bank of the Tigris. It includes the Persian province of Oroomiah, and both the eastern and western slope of Central Koordistan. The most inaccessible recesses of the Koordish Mountains have been their refuge for centuries.
These midnight visitors turn out to be a party of Persian travellers from Miana, from which it would appear they have less fear of the Koords here than in Koordistan near the frontier; having, somehow, found out my whereabouts, they have come to try and persuade me to leave the camp and join their company to Zenjan.
Under these circumstances of abject fear on the one hand, and inbred propensity for violence and plunder on the other, it is really surprising to find the Koords in Persian territory behaving themselves as well as they do. Quilts are provided for me, and I occupy this same compartment of the tent, in common with several of the younger men.
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