Note 56 — Chapter IV · VAN

It is not so easy to trace the remnants of this ancient people in the southern zone of mountains. Their presence there is attested by the march of Xenophon with the relics of the Ten Thousand. A body of Chaldæan or, more properly, of Chaldian mercenaries oppose his passage of the Bohtan branch of the Tigris.56 They are described as of independent spirit and warlike nature, and, like the Karduchi, the modern Kurds, as still maintaining their political freedom. One is tempted to enquire whether the present so-called Chaldæan or Assyrian Christians, who are spread about the districts in the neighbourhood of Julamerik watered by the Great Zab, may not supply the necessary and missing link. But here we approach a thorny and difficult question, upon which the limitations of the present enquiry forbid us to touch.57 It will be better capable of discussion when some unanimity shall have been attained upon the origin and ethnic affinities of the subjects of the old Vannic kings. The Chaldæan Christians are reputed to have fled into the mountains from Mesopotamia as late as the era of Timur. Baghdad and then Mosul would seem to have been the earlier seats of their patriarchate. The name Chaldæan is not one which they apply to themselves, although they believe in their “Assyrian” origin. There is held by some scholars to be the widest etymological and original difference between the name of the people who were called after the god Khaldis and that of the Babylonian Chaldees or Chaldæans. But the question of a possible racial or cultural link between them cannot at present be regarded as already negatived.58