'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎542] (605/714)

642
PERSIA
physician to the Vali-Ahd, or Heir Apparent, at Tabriz. Another,
Dr. Torrence, is well known in Teheran. The income of the Mission!
according to the latest published returns, is over 7,000/. a year.
In addition to the American ministers and their wives or female
helpers, the organisation can boast of seventy ordained or licentiate
native priests, of 120 native lay missionaries, of thirty churches
and over 2,000 communicants, of 120 schools and 2,800 scholars.
It is pushed by all the means that an indefatigable propaganda
and large pecuniary resources can promote.
A number of Roman Catholic Chaldaeans had been for some time
settled upon the Salmas plain, to the north of Urumiah. 1 Alarmed
2. French
at the prospect of losing these adherents, owing to the
Catholics vigorous neighbouring crusade of the Americans, the
Papal ( ollege at Rome, urged by a very remarkable young
Frenchman, named Bore, who, having been sent out to Persia
on a scientific mission by a French society, became interested in
the Persian Christians, and developed a passionate missionary fer
vour determined upon an energetic counter-effort, and sent out
a band of Prench Lazansts to take their part in the competi
tion for converts. The French Government has always patronised
this establishment, though it was not till the year 1858 that
the Primate of the Roman Chaldgeans, with the aid of the
French Embassy at Constantinople, obtained a firman A Persian word meaning a royal order or decree issued by a sovereign, used notably in the Ottoman Empire (sometimes written ‘phirmaund’). from the
Porte acknowledging his patriarchal supremacy. At the present
time the trench missionaries have two stations in Azerbaijan-
one at Urumiah, in which place a Monseigneur or French bishop
resides ; the other at Khosrova, on the plain of Salmas, where the
Catholics have for long been in the ascendant. Their establishment
consists of seven priests and a nunnery of the Sisters of Saint
A incent de Paul. In Turkey, but not in Persia, there is a
Dominican mission to the Papal Chaldseans as well.
3 - Swiss About the same time a mission to the Nestorians
vvag i naU g Ura ^0^ the Protestant Church of Basle.
At Dilman, in the Salmas district, to the north-east of Lake Urumiah, there
is a colossal Sassaniau bas-relief sculped on a rock, which has been conjectured
to represent Ardeshir and Shapur I. receiving the submission of the Armenians,
(lexiers UArmcnie, tyc., vol. i. pi. 40, and Flandin and Coste, Perse Ancienne,
vol. iv. pis. 204-5. Colonel Stewart also tells me of a rock-tomb 30 feet above the
ground, at a distance of 1hour fronvSuj Eulak on the road to Miandoab, where
a pillar carved in the cliff-face separates two doorways conducting into the
sepulchral chamber.