Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

It has long been known that the records of foreign missionaries in the Near and Middle East serve as valuable repositories of the social, religious, political, and even economic events of their adopted towns or districts. The reports sent to the Missionary Herald, a journal first issued in 1805 as the official organ of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (based in Boston) are one such source. Among their very interesting reports are those that dwell on the historic accommodation between faith and power that was one of the characteristics of Jerusalem throughout its long history.

In contrast to the received wisdom that stresses that Christians and Muslims were in perpetual conflict with one another in the Ottoman empire, due to the latent anti-Christian hostility exhibited by generations of Muslim Ottoman rulers, the situation in Jerusalem was far more complex. When the Reverends Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons were sent as Protestant missionaries to the city in the early 19th century, they did encounter great hostility but it did not stem from Muslims. Most of it arose from the Catholics in Jerusalem. On one occasion, in 1824, the missionaries at the American-led Palestine Mission believed that “the Catholics in Palestine violently oppose the efforts made to circulate the Scriptures” and that, due to their power in the Ottoman empire, not only forbade the Catholic Patriarch from meeting with the two Protestant missionaries but also influenced the issuance of ” a Firman (Sultanic decree) from the Grand Seignore at Constantinople (the Sultan himself), forbidding the sale of Bibles, and other religious materials, in his dominions.” Unlike the Protestant clergy, the Catholic hierarchy did not believe that Christians should read the Bible without the intercession of their parish priests. This was true until up to 50 years ago.

There is also a mistaken belief that the primary purpose of the foreign Missions was to proselytize among the Muslim population of Palestine. But, as the letter of intent of the American Board of Commissioners to the two American missionaries shows, most Christian missionary activity was directed at Jews (and Jewish converts to Christianity in the US were initially believed to be more successful than Protestant missionaries in furthering that assignment). In one part of the letter, the missionaries are told frankly that “[their] Mission … might be the means not only of conveying the Gospel to Jews and Mohamedans but of awakening [Christians] to the duties of the times”, thus making clear that the mission was many-tiered, aimed at all “native” religions in Jerusalem, including Eastern Christianity.

On the whole, however, the recognition on the part of the two missionaries that Ottoman Jerusalem catered to a plurality of faiths and confessions forced them to adapt their work to the local situation.For instance, they realized that for their missionary work to succeed, the Bible would have to be translated into different languages, both European and non-European (including Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and Turkish). Moreover, and much to their surprise, the propensity of the two missionaries to learn Farsi and Arabic was highly admired, and even gained them the friendship of some of the “Mussulmen”.

Finally, while “modernization” theory has had its day, there is some truth to the fact that external influences did play a part in the shaping of local Christian identity in Ottoman Palestine. One of the interesting facets of the missionaries’ work in Jerusalem consisted in the selection of highly motivated Christian youths for further education in the United States. In the 1820’s, the Turco-Greek war succeeded in granting independence to Greece. In the spirit of the age, it seemed almost natural that young Greek men from Jerusalem would be among the first selected for foreign educational missions, thus lending credence to the oft-repeated statement that missionaries were the first wave of modernizers in the Middle East.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

Reference:

Salibi, Kamal and Khoury, Yusuf K., Eds. The Missionary Herald: “Reports from Ottoman Syria, 1819-1870.” Vol.1, Amman: Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, 1995.