estate, and receive his son Pethiun under his care. Neither Government nor clan openly resented, at the moment, this conversion of a family that was obviously of some local importance.
Still, this exemption of an active Church from Government interference and from doctrinal quarrels could not last; and about the year 448 we find Yezdegerd II declaring war against Christianity in his dominions. At about the same time he started a vehement persecution of both Armenians and Assyrians; in the former case avowedly because Christians could not possibly be loyal subjects of Persia, and, in all probability, for the same reason in the latter case also.
The persecution seems to have been intended to be general all over Persia,[1] but we have only details of it as far as it affected the province of B. Garmai. It is probable that it was far more severe there than elsewhere, and perhaps was unknown in some districts altogether.
According to the rather late account that remains to us, a massacre of appalling magnitude took place; ten bishops and 153,000 (!) clergy and laity being martyred in several consecutive days of slaughter on a mound outside the city of Karka d'Bait Sluk. Local tradition still asserts that the red gravel of the hillock was stained that colour by the martyrs' blood, and the martyrium built over the bodies remains to this day.[2]
- ↑ Bedj., ii. 519, and, passim, 518–531. Certain officials are ordered "to deal with" the Christians of Karka. The order reads like one of a series issued to governors at large, but M.-Z., though he knows of the persecution (p. 147), does not refer to it as extending into Adiabene.
- ↑ The writer believes the existing building, a church of unusual design, to be at least built on the lines of the original. Memory of other sites referred to in the History of Karka (Bedj., ii. 510–531) has perished; the Christian community of Kirkuk (as Karka is now called) having been almost exterminated by plague about 100 years ago.
