'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎546] (609/714)

PERSIA
different and even irreconcilable, the Anglican missionaries having
come out to renovate and build up that which it is the avowed
desire of a proselytising body to weaken and destroy. The
American Missions, including, as they do, Mohammedans within
the scope of their activity, are also rendered more likely thereby
to conflict with the Persian Government, which resolutely prohibits
any such propaganda, and has in consequence sometimes come
into collision with the work of the Church of England Missionary
Society, of which I shall speak later, at Isfahan.
The latest calculation of the Nestorian population of Azerbaijan
is as follows :—
Families
100
Salmas district .
Somai and Chara
Urumiah district
Sulduz
Families
700
100
3,600
400
Baradost or Beranduz
Tergavar .
Mergavar .
Total
It has been common to estimate these families at four or five
persons apiece, and hence the total usually given of 20,000 to 25,000
Numbers Persian Nestorians. The missionaries, however, are of
pearance 0 P™ 0n ^ ie population has so much increased in the
of Persian peaceful reign of the present Shah that eight persons to
Nestorians i /• m f
eacn lamiiy is a fairer computation. Adopting this
average, we shall get a total of 44,000. It is to the interest of the
Persians for political reasons to underrate the number of their
Christian subjects. The Nestorians of the plains are robust, broad-
shouldered men, with open countenances, fair complexions, and
frequently with red beards. The mountain Nestorians are wild
and uncouth, and often undistinguishable from the Kurds, with
whom, however, they are at constant and deadly enmity. Each
attack the camps and rob the flocks of the other, but the Kurds,
being the stronger, better armed, and more evilly-disposed, are
usually the aggressors.
Owing to the active interest of the missionaries, the protesta
tions of foreign consuls, and the milder disposition of modern
Disabilities ^ >ers ^ an Governments, the Persian Nestorians cannot now
and hard- complain of serious oppression. It is true that there still
remain in the Mohammeidan code two laws which, if
enforced as they were once, with asperity, might become instruments
of cruel injustice. These are the law by which, in a court of
justice, the evidence of a Christian is not accepted against that of a
ill** k
...ijuBiieitj of t!
^ either to ca
-fij to assign t
social pre
population
^jdofwliicl
gietobeopi
ritepay tki
ftki is their le|
iri many year
211« safeguard t
isii between tl
stiHliis {
iiwtflextrac
loMestori
".k certiintv ol