ABSTRACT
There is an old man, well-known to the few Englishmen who have visited Mosul, once an East-Syrian monk of the Monastery of Rabban Hormuzd, now a deacon of the Presbyterian community. He has a history which would be worth writing, especially if he wrote it himself; for he has been a traveller with the manners of an Englishman and the heart of a Syrian; and he has seen many troubles among his own people, and changes in the country from Erzingan to Mosul. But before all things he is a gossip; if there is news from Stamboul, Shammas is the first to retail it; for is not his wife's third cousin third-division clerk in the telegraph office? Has the Mufti run off with a Mulla's wife? Shammas was at the bottom of it, and probably suppled from his own stud (for he is a bit of a dealer in horse-flesh) the requisite barb. He deals, too, in manuscripts and ancient books, Persian, Arabic, Syriac; and once on a time over-reached himself in this pursuit. Among some books, which I was examining, he showed me one more especially commendable. Its actual personality so shamelessly belied its decent age and virtue as described by Shammas, that he drew forth a request that even if he loved gold, he should spare my folly. But with a candour, quite disarming rebuke, he drew out a letter, which he regarded as a high testimonial to his integrity as a dealer in palimpsests, but, in fact, containing so sound a rating of a rascal, that it seemed to bear more on the subject than perhaps the old man would have cared to acknowledge. Yet he reads and understands English well; truly these people have a strangely twisted sense of straightness, or more dullness than they get credit for. 1
This classic description of Jeremiah Shamir by Oswald Parry was written twelve years after the deacon had been wafted from a state of obscure poverty to become a purveyor to the (Prussian) Royal Library in Berlin.
