The Syrian church is situated in the same quarter--that of Kizil Mejid, or the red Mejid. Mejid is said to be a proper name. A plain little whitewashed chapel nestles under the cliff, and here the service is read in the Syriac language, and a Syriac Bible lies upon the desk. Not that any of the congregation understand that tongue; they speak Armenian and are familiar with Turkish. The Bible is expounded to them in Armenian, which may be said to be their native tongue. When we reflect that the services of the early Armenian Church were celebrated in the Syriac or the Greek languages, this transformation in the old order of things is not without interest. The attendant priest, a charming man who had come from Diarbekr, seemed half aware of the irony of the situation. He went so far as to say that the Armenians had usurped the Syrian religion and then set up a separate Church. But the differences between the Churches amounts to little more than a divergence in the preparation of the consecrated bread. The Syrians use leavened bread. There was sadness in his voice when he related the fortunes of the Jacobite community. In old days he maintained that they had been much more numerous; and he believed that the principal mosque in Bitlis had originally been a Syrian church. Some had emigrated; the greater number had become Armenians. A Jacobite marries an Armenian wife whom he leaves a widow; the woman brings up the children in the Armenian faith. I enquired why the faithful remnant spoke Armenian to the exclusion of any Syrian dialect. He replied, "Because this earth is Hayasdan (Armenia)." He added that there were some 1500 Syrians in the sanjak of Sert, mostly in the districts of Sert and Shirvan. Their spiritual ruler is the patriarch of Mardin.