DÊRA NESTÛRÎ YA KOÇANIS - Qudshanis | COLEMÊRG - 4K

In a relatively isolated area, Qodshanis was for many years cut off from the outside world up until 1829, when a German traveller discovered it. Visitors from the West began arriving as emissaries. One of these emissaries, an Englishman known as William Ainger Wigram, described it in his book The Cradle of Mankind: Life in Eastern Kurdistan (1922): The village of Qudshanis, which is the residence of the Nestorian or Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Shimun, and the headquarters of his Church, has a marvellous situation. It lies on a sloping alp of rugged pasture, between two mountain torrents which spring from the towering snow-fields to the west of it; and which descend in gradually deepening gorges, enclosing the tongue-shaped plateau on which the village stands. They meet beneath the point of the tongue at the base of a lofty wedge of rock; and thence the united stream flows on, joined by others on its way, till it falls into the Zab some two hours below the village. Nestorian tradition regards the Zab as the Pison [or Pishon/Uizhun], one of the four rivers of Paradise; and the Patriarch will occasionally date his official letters from my cell on the River of the Garden of Eden.