[ { "id": 204393, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "16\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nIn A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch.\n\n4\n\nIt is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians.\n\nAfter the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam.\n\nWith the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate.\n\n7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204394, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n17\n\nHe himself was the son of a Christian mother and he had a Christian wife, both from the Kerait tribe in north-eastern Mongolia, whose king had been converted by Nestorian missionaries in A.D. 1007. The era of communication between the Mongol Khans and the Popes and Princes of Europe commenced. At the end of the 14th century Bagdad was sacked by Tamerlane, as also were Aleppo and Damascus. He savagely attacked the Syrian Christians many of whom fled to the inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan, where they have lingered to the present day.\n\nIt was the break-up of the ancient Syrian Church. About which Harnack writes:\n\nThe Syro-Persian Church deserves our unqualified sympathy. It was the only large Church which never enjoyed the official protection of the state. It maintained the traditions of Antiochene exegesis, it translated the works of Christian antiquity into Syriac with great assiduity... It also assimilated Greek philosophy and science which it transmitted to the Arabians. At the present day it is crushed, impoverished, and down-trodden, but it can face its downfall with the consciousness that it has not lived in vain, but upon the contrary that it has filled a real place in the history of civilization.\n\nClaudius Rich visited the remnants of this Church in the mountains north-east of Mosul in 1820, including the 4th century Convent of Rabban Hormuz in its rocky gorge, and left a graphic description of the austere life and primitive worship of the dusky monks pursuing their manual labour in the remote solitude.10\n\nHenry Layard made a more extended visit to the same region a few years after the great massacre of the Assyrian Christians in 1842 by a fanatical Turkish Bey, when the threat of a second attack was already impending. He saw the ruined homes and churches, and the bleached bones still lying at one of the worst scenes of massacre; and he attended the simple worship and sacrament of the people a few days before a second indiscriminate massacre took place. He described with approbation the 'unadorned and imageless walls', the 'simple and primitive rites', 'the hospitality and simple manners of the priests'\n\n* Adency, op. cit., p. 495.\n\nHarnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. 2, p. 150.\n\n10 C. R. Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, London, 1836.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206619, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "ARCHAEOLOGY IN HONG KONG AND SOUTH CHINA (1938)\n\nW. SCHOFIELD*\n\nOf all the ancient and famous seats of early civilisation, China is the one where the smallest amount of scientific investigation has hitherto been done. Years of excavation and research have revealed to us many of the details of the life and history of Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Palestine, Minoan Crete, the Hittite confederacy, and prehistoric India; but of China all that was known came partly from the chance finds of curio-hunters, about which their finders carefully suppressed all information of scientific value such as provenance, depth of burial, and context of other finds; and partly from the literature of the Chou and Han dynasties, which, valuable as it is, is a distorting medium for historians.\n\nIn the last ten years, however, scientific investigation has been started. The Chinese National Research Institute has excavated several important dwelling sites in North China, including that of the capital of the Shang dynasty. Several distinguished foreign scholars, mostly Swedes, have conducted explorations and excavations in the service of the National Government, and various provincial societies of scholars and archaeologists have worked in their own areas. A few years ago the Research Institute discovered and excavated untouched graves of the great Shang civilisation; the report on their work is eagerly awaited.\n\nAll this activity, however, relates to the area of North China traditionally known as the centre of ancient Chinese civilisation. From China south of the Yangtse and especially from its coast provinces, hardly any object had been known to come that was\n\n* Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) was a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service 1911-1938. Previous contributions will be found in the 1968 and 1969 Journals, (Vols 8 and 9).\n\nThe first of these, Ch'eng-tsu-yai (*‡A), a Report of Excavations of the Proto-historic Site at Cheng-tzu-yai, Li-ch'eng Hsien, Shantung was published as Archaeologia Sinica Number One by Academica Sinica Nanking 1934. A translation into English by K. Starr has been published by the Yale University Press, Yale Publications in Anthropology, No. $2, under the title Ch'eng-tzu-yai: The Black Pottery Culture Site at Lung-shan-chen.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 } ]