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CHAPTER II.
WRITINGS OF THE NESTORIANS.
Although science of every kind, among the Nestorians of the present day, is at its lowest ebb, yet the monuments still extant of the learning of their fathers from the earliest ages of Christianity down to the thirteenth century, display a wonderful ability of writing combined with a vast amount of intellectual energy. The famous schools of Edessa and Nisibis, whilst they lasted, sent forth giants in literature, who, so far back as five hundred years after Christ, had scattered the seeds of their own acquirements from the vast plains of Mesopotamia to the uttermost limits of ancient Persia. These seeds, sown in a grateful soil, and nurtured by the native warmth and acumen of the Oriental mind, like indigenous plants sprang up at once with an almost rank and inexpressible fertility, and displayed, in their varied productions, whatever was peculiar and excellent in their nature, on a scale the most magnificent. And long after the splendour of Edessa had grown dim, and the nursery of Nisibis had followed the downfall of her elder sister, Nestorian writers continued to flourish, and to bring forth fresh fruits of intellectual exertion, until the dark curse of Mohammedan despotism and tyranny hid from them the sun which enlightened and warmed them, and doomed them to wither and fade almost entirely away.
In order to convey a just idea of the number and extent of Nestorian compositions, I have in Appendix A. given the translation of a literary catalogue, drawn up by the learned Mar Abd Yeshua, as far back as a.d. 1298. From this list, containing
