Balian writes: "Saint Taurus is one of the very old monasteries built on a hill near a village called Mandjelek, at the same time as the Saint Nshan monasteries of Sepastia (Sivas) and Tokat" But Balian does not provide any evidence to prove what he says; this is probably based on oral history. One of the two outer doors of the monastery's surrounding wall, which is facing north, is at present rotten. The internal situation is unenviable, but in 1900 there was an orphanage there, thanks to the expenditures of Moscow charities and the supervision of the national patriarchate. The monastery owns 20 plots of land, two gardens, a mill, and 20 acres of prairies.
2. SAINT JACOB MONASTERY:
The monastery named Saint Jacob is an old one, located one and a half hours from the small market town of Darende, belonging to Gurin, near the Armenian populated village of Ashot. It is one of the isolated places without any activity, but it was appreciated and visited for a long time as a place of pilgrimage. It was probably mixed up with another namesake monastery which was allegedly near the Mandjelek village, if it is not Saint Taurus itself -- one of its chapels or altars being named Saint Jacob.
It is sad that further information about the monasteries of the town of Gurin in the province of Sepastia (Sivas) is missing. It looks like they did not have anything attractive and that the monks were not very well known.
Fr. Hamazasp Voskian
"The monasteries of Sepastia, Kharberd and Trabizon provinces," page 34-36, Vienna, 1962