Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan Volume Ii Part 15

[23] While I was sleeping in a buffalo stable in Turkey two buffaloes quarrelled and there was a terrible fight, in which the huge animals interlocked their horns and broke them short off, bellowing fearfully.

It took twenty men with ropes, or rather cables, two and a half inches in diameter, which are kept for the purpose, to separate them; and their thin skins, sensitive to insect bites and all irritations, were bleeding in every direction before they could be forced apart.

[24] Christian women and girls share the work of the fields with the men.

[25] It is a pleasant duty to record here the undeserved and exceeding kindness that I have met with from the American, Presbyterian, and Congregational missionaries in Persia and Asia Minor. It is not only that they made a stranger, although a member of the Anglican Church, welcome in their refined and cultured homes, often putting themselves to considerable inconvenience in order to receive me, but that they ungrudgingly imparted to me the interests of their work and lives, helping me at the cost of much valuable time and trouble with the complicated and often difficult arrangements for my farther journeys, showing in every possible way that they "know the heart of a stranger," being themselves "strangers in a strange land." Specially, I feel bound to acknowledge the kindness and hospitality shown to me by the Presbyterian missionaries in Urmi, who were aware that one object of my journey through North-West Persia was to visit the Archbishop of Canterbury's a.s.syrian Missions, which work on different and, I may say, opposite lines from their own.

NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN URMI[26]

A sketch of Urmi would present few features of general interest if it did not embrace an outline of the mission work which is carried on there on a large scale, first by the numerous agents, lay and clerical, male and female, of the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and next by the English Mission clergy and the Sisters of Bethany, who form what is known as "The Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the a.s.syrian Christians."

Besides these there is a Latin Mission of French Lazarists, aided by Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, which has been at work in Urmi and on the plain of Salmas for forty years.

Urmi, the reputed birthplace of Zoroaster, and in past ages the great centre of Fire Worship, was made the headquarters of the American Mission to the Nestorians in 1834, which, with the exception of the C.M.S. Mission in Julfa, was the only Protestant Mission in Persia up to the year 1885.

At present there are four ordained American missionaries, several ladies, and a medical missionary working in Urmi. Under their superintendence are thirty ordained and thirty-one licentiate pastors, ninety-three native helpers, and three Bible-women. The number of Nestorians or Syrians employed as teachers in the College and the Fiske Seminary for girls, as translators, as printers, and as medical a.s.sistants, is very considerable.

The whole plain of Urmi, with its innumerable villages, and the eastern portion of the Kurdish mountains, with its Syrian hamlets, are included within the sphere of Mission work.

This Mission has free access to Syrians, Armenians, and Jews, but for Moslems there can be no public preaching or teaching, nor can a Moslem openly profess Christianity, or even frequent the Syrian services, without being a marked man. Hence, while all opportunities are embraced of conversation with Mohammedans, and of circulating the Bible among them, the mission work is chiefly among nominal Christians.

The Americans own a very large amount of property at Urmi. The Fiske Seminary--a High School, in which a large number of girls receive board as well as education--is within the city walls, as well as some of the houses of both clerical and lady missionaries. About a mile outside they have acquired a beautiful and valuable estate of about fifteen acres, plentifully wooded and watered, and with some fine avenues of planes. On this are the large buildings of the Urmi College, the professors' houses, the Dispensary, and the Medical Mission Hospitals for the sick of both s.e.xes.

A very high-cla.s.s education is given in the Urmi College, and in addition to the general course there are opportunities for both theological and medical education. Last year there were 151 students, of which number eighteen graduated.

The education given is bringing about a result which was not antic.i.p.ated. The educated Syrian and Armenian young men, far from desiring generally to remain in their own country as pastors and teachers, and finding no opportunities of "getting on" otherwise, have of late been seized with a craze for leaving Persia for America, Russia, or any other country where they may turn their education to profitable account. It is hardly necessary to add that the admirable training and education given in the Fiske Seminary do not produce a like restlessness among its "girl graduates." The girls marry at an early age, make good housewives, and are in the main intelligent and kindly Christians.

Possibly the education given in the Urmi College is too high and too Western for the requirements of the country and the probable future of the students. At all events similar regrets were expressed in Urmi, as I afterwards heard, regarding some of the American Mission Colleges in Asia Minor. The missionaries say that the directly religious results are not so apparent as could be desired, that the young men are not ready to offer themselves in any numbers for evangelistic work, and that the present tendency is to seek secular employment and personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt.

Though this secular tendency comes forward strongly at this time, a number of evangelistic workers scattered through Persia, Turkey, and Russia[27] owe their education and religious inspiration to the teachings of the Urmi College. At present a few of the young men have banded themselves together to go forth as teachers and preachers with the object of carrying the Gospel to all, without distinction of nationality. The hopefulness of this movement is that it is of native origin, and that the young men are self-supporting. A capable Syrian physician and a companion are also preaching and healing at their own cost, only accepting help towards the expense of medicines.

The Medical Mission at Urmi, with its well-equipped Dispensary and its two admirable Hospitals, is of the utmost value, as such missions are all the world over.

Dr. Cochrane, from his courtesy and attention to the niceties of Persian etiquette, is extremely acceptable to the Persian authorities, and has been entrusted by them more than once with missions involving the exercise of great tact and ability. He is largely trusted by the Moslems of Urmi and the neighbourhood, and mixes with them socially on friendly and easy terms.

He and some of the younger missionaries were born in Persia, their fathers having been missionaries before them, and after completing their education in America they returned, not only with an intimate knowledge of etiquette and custom, as well as of Syriac and Persian, but with that thorough sympathy with the people whom they are there to help and instruct, which it is difficult to gain in a single generation, and through languages not acquired in childhood. Dr.

Cochrane has had many and curious dealings with the Kurds, the dreaded inhabitants of the mountains which overhang the beautiful plain of Urmi, and a Kurd, who appears to be in perpetual "war-paint," is the gatekeeper at the Dispensary. One of the most singular results of the influence gained over these fierce and predatory people by the "Missionary _Hak[=i]m_" occurred in 1881, when Obeidullah Khan, with 11,000 Kurds, laid siege to Urmi.

Six months previously, at this Khan's request, Dr. Cochrane went up a three days' journey into the mountains, where he remained for ten days, during which time he cured the Khan of severe pneumonia, and made the acquaintance of several of the Kurdish chiefs. Before the siege began Obeidullah Khan sent for Dr. Cochrane, saying that he wished to know his residence and who his people were, so as to see that none of them suffered at the hands of his men. Not only this, but he asked for the names of the Christian villages on the plain, and gave the _Hak[=i]m_ letters with orders that nothing should be touched which belonged to them. The mission families were a.s.sembled at the College, and 500 Christians, with their cattle and horses, took refuge in the College grounds, which were close to the Kurdish lines. The siege lasted seven weeks, with great loss of life and many of "the horrors of war," as time increased the fury of both Kurds and Persians. But Obeidullah kept his word, and for the sake of the _Hak[=i]m_ and his healing art, not only was not a hair on the head of any missionary touched, but the mixed mult.i.tude within the gates and the herds were likewise spared.

Mrs. Cochrane, the widow of the former medical missionary, superintends the food and the nursing in the hospitals, and I doubt whether the most fanatical Kurd or Persian Moslem could remain indifferent to the charm of her bright and loving presence. The profession of Dr. Cochrane opens to him homes and hearts everywhere.

All hold him as a friend and benefactor, and he has opportunities, denied to all others, of expounding the Christian faith among Moslems.

A letter from him is a safe-conduct through some parts of the Kurdish mountains, and the mere mention of his name is a pa.s.sport to the good-will of their fierce inhabitants.

The work of the mission is not confined to the city of Urmi. Among the villages of the plain there are eighty-four schools, taught chiefly in Syriac, seven of which are for girls only. The mission ladies itinerate largely, and are warmly welcomed by Moslem as well as Christian women, and even by those families of Kurds who, since their defeat in 1881, have settled down to peaceful pursuits, some of them even becoming Christians.

In fifty years the American missionaries have gained a very considerable and wide-spread influence, not only by labours which are recognised as disinterested, but by the purity and righteousness of their lives; and the increased friendliness and accessibility of the Moslems of Urmi give hope that the purer teachings of Christianity and the example of the life of our Lord are regarded by them with less of hostility or indifference than formerly.

The history of the mission is best given in the words of Dr. Shedd, one of its oldest members.[28]

The communicants of the "Evangelical Syriac Church," which might be termed, from its organisation and creed, the _Presbyterian Syriac Church_, numbered 216 in 1857 and 2003 in 1887.

Apart from the results of Christian teaching and example, there can be, I think, no doubt that the residence of righteous foreigners in Urmi for over half a century has had a most beneficial effect on the condition of the Nestorians. At the time when the first American missionaries settled in Urmi the yoke of Islam was hardly bearable.

The Christians were oppressed and plundered, their daughters were taken by violence, and they were scarcely allowed to practise the little religion left to them. The Persian Government, sensitive as it is to European opinion, has gradually remedied a state of matters upon which the reports of the missionaries were justly to be dreaded, and at the present time the Christians of Urmi and the adjacent plain have comparatively very little to complain of.

At the same time the Syriac Church was at its lowest ebb, absolutely sunk in ignorance and superst.i.tion. It had no exposition of the Bible, and all worship was in the ancient Syriac tongue, then as now "not understanded of the people." It had no books or any ability to establish schools. Bibles were scarce, and a single copy of the Psalms could not be bought for less than 32s. The learned nuns and deaconesses of the early days were without successors. Women were entirely neglected, and it was regarded as improper for the younger among them to be seen at church. In Urmi not a woman could read, and in the whole Nestorian region they were absolutely illiterate, with the exception of the Patriarch's sister and two or three nuns.

The translation of the Bible into modern Syriac, a n.o.ble work, now undergoing revision; the College; the Female Seminary; the translation and publication of many luminous books; the circulation of a periodical called _Rays of Light_, together with fifty years of intercourse with men and women whose chief aim is the religious and intellectual elevation of the people among whom they dwell, have wrought a remarkable change, though that the change is menaced with perils, and is not an absolutely unmixed good, cannot be gainsaid.

It is for the future to decide whether the Reform movement in Umri or elsewhere could survive in any strength the removal of the agency which inaugurated it, and whether a Church without a ritual and with a form of government alien to the genius of the East and the traditions of the fathers, can take root in the affections of an eminently conservative people.

The Mission, founded by the present Archbishop of Canterbury at the request of the _Catholicos_ of the East, Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Syrian Church, arrived in Urmi in the autumn of 1885. At the time of my visit it consisted of five mission priests, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and an ordained Syrian, four of whom were at the headquarters in Urmi, one in the Kurdish mountains, and one on the Urmi Plain. Four Sisters of Bethany arrived in the spring of 1890 for the purpose of opening a boarding-school for girls and instructing the women.

It is hardly necessary to say that the lines on which the Anglican and American missions proceed are diametrically different, and the modes of working are necessarily in opposition. The one is _practically_ a proselytising agency, and labours to build up a Presbyterian Church in Persia; the other purposes to "bring back an ancient church into the way of truth, and so prepare it for its union with its mother church, the Orthodox Church of the East." The objects of the latter and its ecclesiastical position are stated briefly in the note below.[29]

The actual work to be done by the Mission is thus summed up by its promoters: "The work of the Mission is in the first place to train up a body of literate clergy; secondly, to instruct the youth generally in both religious and secular knowledge; and thirdly, to print the very early liturgies and service-books, to which the a.s.syrians are much attached, which have never been published in the original, and of which the very primitive character is shown by their freedom from doubtful doctrine. The Mission in no way seeks to Anglicanise the a.s.syrians on the one hand, nor, on the other, to condone the heresy which separated them from the rest of Christendom or to minimise its importance."

The English clergy are celibates, receive no stipends, and live together, with a common purse, each receiving 25 per annum for personal expenses.

It is not a proselytising mission. It teaches, trains, and prints. It has one High School at Urmi for boys under seventeen, and two upon the Urmi Plain, but the work to which these may be regarded as subsidiary is the Urmi Upper School for priests, deacons, and candidates for holy orders. In these four establishments there are about 200 pupils, mostly boarders. There are also seventy-two village day-schools, and the total attendance last year was--boys 1248, girls 225. Seventy-six deacons and young men above seventeen are in the Upper School at Urmi.

The education given in the ordinary schools is on a level with that of our elementary schools. In the school of St. Mary and St. John, which contains priests, deacons, and laymen, some being mountaineers, the subjects taught are Holy Scripture, catechism, Scripture geography, universal history, liturgy, preaching, English, Persian, Osmanli Turkish, arithmetic, and Old Syriac.[30] Preaching is taught practically. A list of 100 subjects on a systematic theological plan has been drawn up, and each week two of the deacons choose topics from the list and write sermons upon them.

In 1887 the Mission clergy drew up a catechism containing between 200 and 300 questions, with "Scripture proofs," which the scholars in all their schools are obliged to learn by heart.

The boys of the Urmi High School and of the Upper School board in the mission house, and are under the constant supervision of the clergy.

Their food and habits of living are strictly Oriental. All imitations of Western manners and customs are forbidden, the policy of the Mission being to make the Syrians take a pride in their national customs, which as a rule are adapted to their circ.u.mstances and country, and to look down upon those who ape European dress and manners. Denationalisation is fought against in every possible way.

A year and a half ago work among women was begun by four ladies of the community of the Sisters of Bethany. The position of Syrian women, in spite of its partial elevation by means of the Fiske Seminary, is still very low, and within the Old Church there is an absolute necessity for raising it, and through it the tone of the home life and the training of children. These ladies have thirty boarders in their school between the ages of eight and sixteen, a previous knowledge of reading acquired in the village schools being a condition of admission. The daily lessons consist of Bible teaching, the catechism before referred to, ancient and modern Syriac, geography, arithmetic, and all branches of housework and needle-work. Due regard is paid to Syrian customs, and the picturesque Syrian costume is retained.

Since these ladies have acquired an elementary knowledge of Syriac they have been itinerating in the Urmi villages, holding Bible cla.s.ses, giving instruction, and distributing medicines among the sick. The ignorance and superst.i.tion of the Christian women are almost past belief. One great difficulty which the "sisters" have to encounter arises from the early marriages of the girls, child-brides of eleven and twelve years old being quite common. It may reasonably be expected that the presence and influence, the gentleness and self-sacrifice of these refined and cultured Christian ladies will tell most favourably upon their pupils, and strengthen with every month of their residence in Urmi. The Moslems understand and respect the position of voluntarily celibate women, and speak of them as "those who have left the world."

The Mission clergy of late have striven to instruct the adult Syrian population of the Urmi Plain by preaching among them systematically, explaining in a very elementary manner the principles of Christianity, and their application to the life of man. They have also set up a printing press, and have already printed in Syriac type a number of school books, the Catechism, the _Liturgy of the Apostles_, the most venerable of the Syrian Liturgical doc.u.ments, the _Second_ and _Third Liturgies_, the _Baptismal Office_, ancient and modern Syriac grammars, and a Lectionary.

It is the earnest hope of the promoters of this Mission that if this ancient Oriental church, once the first mission agency in the world, can be reformed and enlightened, she may yet be the means of evangelising the two great sects of Moslems by means of missionaries akin to them in customs, character, and habits of thought--"Orientals to Orientals."

The subject of Christian missions in Persia is a very interesting one, and many thoughtful minds are asking whether Christianity is likely to be a factor in the future of the Empire? As things are, no direct efforts to convert Moslems to Christianity can be made, for the death penalty for apostasy is not legally abolished, and even if it were, popular fanaticism would vent itself upon proselytes. It must be recognised that the Christian missionary is a disturbing element in Persia. He is tolerated, not welcomed, and tolerated only while his efforts to detach people from the national faith are futile. Missions have been in operation in Persia for more than fifty years, and probably at the present time there are over seventy-five missionaries at work in the country. If the value of their work were to be judged of by the number of Moslem converts they have made it must be p.r.o.nounced an _absolute failure_.

The result of the impossibility of making any direct attack upon Islam is that these excellent men and women are at present ostensibly engaged in the attempt to purify the faith and practice of the Syrian and Armenian churches, to enlighten their members religiously and intellectually, and to Christianise the Jews, waiting patiently for the time when an aggressive movement against Islam may be possible. In the meantime the Holy Scriptures are being widely disseminated; the preacher of Christianity itinerates among the villages, the Christian religion is greatly discussed, and missionary physicians, the true pioneers of the faith, are modifying by their personal influence the opposition to the progress of the missionaries with whom they are a.s.sociated.

On the whole, and in spite of slow progress and the apparently insurmountable difficulties presented by hostility or indifference, I believe that Christian missions in Persia, especially by their educational agencies and the circulation of the Bible, are producing an increasing under-current, tending towards secular as well as religious progress, and are gaining an ever-growing influence, so that, lamentably slow as the advance of Christianity is, its prospects cannot justly be overlooked in considering the probable future of Persia.[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[26] The name of the town and lake is spelt variously Urmi, Urumi, Urumiya, Ourmia, and Oroomiah. The Moslems call it Urumi, and the Christians Urmi, to which spelling I have adhered.