This Bedr Khan Beg is no relation whatever to his famous (or infamous) namesake of Bohtan, of whom we make mention elsewhere. He is a chief of the Begzadi Kurds whose prowess and activity have won him much local reputation, but who can boast no such formidable following as the Sheikhs of Neri or Barzan. For ourselves, we feel bound to speak well of him; for did he not once offer, out of pure goodwill, to make proclamation in the district that if we or any of our servants had to complain of any molestation, "I, Bedr Khan Beg, will hang at least two Kurds every time!" It is true that we scrupled to lay ourselves under such an obligation to him; but Bedr Khan Beg (like General Robert Craufurd) had a reputation of being uncommonly likely to carry out his threats. He adopted a similar expedient with conspicuous success a little later. Some citizen of Urmi owed him money, and refused to discharge his just debt. Accordingly he published his intention of killing one _Seyyid_ a month until such time as he received payment. Urmi _Seyyids_ are mostly _Shiahs_, whereas Bedr Khan Beg is a _Sunni_; though it may be doubted whether this was a point to which he attached much weight. The unfortunate _Seyyids_, of course, had no concern in the debt whatever; but they are the most influential caste in Urmi. And now, to save their own skins, they began to apply pressure to the debtor: which was exactly what Bedr Khan Beg had calculated upon all along![108] Of the two bishops who control the church in this land, one (now dead) was a feeble old man, noted only for possessing in his house the fiercest fleas in all Mergawar. The other, however, is of a different stamp. Not that one counts him as precisely an ideal Prelate, seeing that he occasionally has to stop to spell a word in the service, and would be put to it to write his own name. However, in Kurdistan you are not in the twentieth century, but in the fourteenth--or perhaps the dark ages outright--and in those times Mar Dinkha of Tergawar might readily be paralleled in England. There was a Bishop Beaumont of Durham who made five or six shots at the word _episcopalis_ in the reading of a formal document; and finally swore a round oath--said _soit pour dit_--and went on. Now we have often heard Mar Dinkha stumble, but we have never heard him swear!