'Reconnaissances in Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, North-West Persia, and Luristan from April to October 1888. By Lt F R Maunsell, Intelligence Branch. In Two Volumes. Volume I: narrative report, description of larger towns and routes leading from them. Simla: Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General's Dept, 1890' [‎129r] (262/312)

URMIA.
TTrmia is a town of 7,000 houses with 35,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, situ
ated iu the centre of an extremely fertile, thickly populated country, 12 miles
distant from the western shore of the lake of the same name.
The city is surrounded by a wall with 7 gates, and is built partly of mud
and partly of sundried bricks, the gates being of burnt brick, closed every
evening by heavy wooden doors.
The wall is flanked at intervals by circular bastions, and is 20 to 25 feet
high, 6 to 10 feet thick at the base, and 2 feet at the top with banquette and
loopholes. It is irregularly built, and several portions are crumbling and
unfinished. On the east side, facing the lake, it is most complete, and is
there quite 30 feet high. On the south it is breached in several places, and
has no banquette.
It would be useful to keep out Kurdish troops armed with rifles only,
but could easily be breached by field artillery.
There is a ditch 15 to 20 yards wide and from 10 to 12 feet deep, fdled in
some places by stagnant pools. The small water channels which supply the
town are led over on hollow tree trunks.
There are several country seats of Persian officials, &c., dotted among the
orchards outside the town, and a few well built houses in the town with open
courtyards and fountains, ornamented with coloured tiles in the usual Persian
style. ■. o i tt
Water-supply of the town is drawn by canals from the oahar or Urmia
river, which Hows about H miles to the south of the town. It is led in
small channels through the streets and houses of. the town, and must in its
course get very contaminated. Some houses get their water from wel s.
The streets are wide for a Persian town, but the majority of the houses aie
wretched mud huts, and there are no public building of any size._
The principal building is the arsenal, an enclosed building in the centre
of the town, with high brick walls having a round tower at each corner. 1 m
courtyard is about 250 yards square, and contains 13 bronze 6-pr. smoth-bore
guns, and one small brass howitzer, with limbers and stores. At present
there are three regiments of regular troops quartered here armed wit i ern .
There are several unenclosed graveyards inside the walls which disfigure
the town very much. A very ancient Nestorian church and the graves ot
the three Magi are shown. Urmia is also reputed to he the birthplace ot
Zoroaster. About | mile outside the east gate is the Christian village ot Diga a,
near which is a large mound of ashes, the remnant of a hrewoislnpper s emp e.
There are 100 houses of Nestorians in a separate quarter near the soutii gate,
and 50 or 60 families of Jews, . . , v i -fu
There are five American Presbyterian missionaries who live here witn
their families, and two missionaries of the Archbishop o an er ury
Mission to the Nestorian Christians, who were established here m ibbo.
Another of the latter lives with Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Nestonans,
at Kochannis. There is also a Dominican mission of priests and sisters who
work among the large Christian population of the U rm ^ an . a mas p ains.
The American mission has a house in the town for the winter, and another
about a mile to the south, outside the gates, called the College, w eie aie
schools, &c.