The Mission of the American Board in Syria

Front matter

Uta Zeuge-Buberl The Mission of the American Board in Syria

Implications of a transcultural dialogue

History

Introduction

DBRN

“The rest of the world need[s] civilizing”: Between cultural

. Notes on the transliteration of proper names and geographic desionationss.2:5. 25442 tes ota) eee oor erode ed ohn

Chapter I: The mission of the ABCFM in the Ottoman province of Syl S19-1870)* iseanan esata a a n cata nine Mite

2.. The mission schools coercicion a aie 3. “Satisfactory evidence of piety”:

4. Advanced schooling “in the native style”:

Theseminary in “A DE1h 2.3.2: s.esseessessessecsea ecieeetecssnse e Ra 5. “We are making history out here very fast”:

6. “This field it seems to me to be unwise in us to forsake”:

Hopes, disappointments, and differences of opinion

in the Syria MISSION sissies en raai uha

The emergence of an educated middle class in Beirut 0.0... eee Literary and scientific SOCLCtICS 00... ee cetseseeeeseeeceeceeeeceeceeeseeseeaeenees

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6 Contents 1. Biographical overview ....ccccecesseescesccsseetecesceseeeceseeeseeeseeeceseeteesneeneens 97 3. American Arabic: Ty pet. aeae e R Meee A E 102 5. The first Arabic journal in Syria: Majmu ` Fawa id w...cccccccsceesesettees 110 6. Biblical Researches in Palestine ....ccccccccssccessecesccesecenseeescenseeesseesseenses 114 8. Smith’s involvement with the Oriental societies 0.0.0... cc eceeeeeeeeees 119 10; Final -ObS6rvatiOns soneron citiesoidoea E EER 125 II.2. “[He] had Arabic at his tongue’s and fingers’ ends”: Cornelius Van Dyck (1818-1895) ...ceecccccececesceseeeseeeeeneeeseeeecesenteeeseeneees 127 1. Biographical Overview sieren E E ia a 127 2. “Our policy has been a contracting not an extending policy”: 3. Completion of the Arabic Bible ....0....ccccecccscesseeseseeeeseeseeeseeseeneesaeenes 138 Ay Abak anene tain a ateeteacba A anand 142 5. From Akhbar ‘an Intishar al-Injil fi Amakin Mukhtalifa to al-Nashra al-Usbu iyya w.ceecccecccssseessceeeecescecesceseceaeeceneenseeeaeeesseeneeeasens 152 Te Final observatis sareren iriri E E ETA 158 NI.1. “A man ahead of his time”?

Mu‘allim Butrus al-Bustani (1819—1883) w...c ce eecesesesceccseeceeeeeeeeseeeeeeees 169 1. Biographical overview 2. “May [he] live as burning and shining light ... in this 3. Al-Madrasa al-Wataniyya: A model of secularism and national pride: areis iine iiei cee EEA RR Aa 179 4. Hubb al-watan (Love for the nation): Bustani’s career 5. In support of women’s education and cultural progress: Bustani and the literary circles occ ecccccccesceseeeeeseeeeeeeceseeteeeseeneens 192 6- Final Observations... cccccsssessesscescessceccsocectsotvecseevervecnsensevsescebeectdieeieteress 195 II.2. “He was truly the child of the mission”: 1. Biographical overview oo... cccecesseecesscssessecseceeeeseeeeesseeseeeeceseeteesaeeneens 199 2; .A child: Of thie Mission’? enoa a ates cee heaves 200 3. Distancing from the ABCFM ou... eccccccceesesseesseeteesecesecsesseeseensesseeaes 209 4. Wortabet’s return to Beirut as a doctor oo... eee eeeceeeesceeeneeeeeeeeteeseeseens 215

Contents 7

5. John Wortabet as author and translator 0.0... cccceceeseecceseeseeteeneeeeeeee 222

6. Final Observations 4 o.:2. 28 sce esses eis a watts 226 Bibliography ©si:sc:evavesovreceesset atsean a aR need nas 235 TATIE S onoarei e Aree eee a 235 3. ABCFM and PBCFM publications 00.0... cceccccccsseeseeeseeseeseeeseeseeseeeeeneeeneees 236 4. Additional literature oo... cccccceseeseeccsseeeceeecscecessecsecesesseceseeseeeaeceecseensees 237 Se Website Sienan n a RG Ae Send a hb cteechecaed eae to danecres eee 248

Appendix I: Literary contributions by Smith, Van Dyck, Bustani,

1s, Butrus als Bustant': ot ct nea a aa o aa AEAEE a6 249 25 SEIS Mithiin es besten tee Se BEA St Peale Sa ah hoa ce Sol ad 254 3: “Comeliis van. Dyck spea a in tiso eat 255 4: John Oraa e 2223 sete Be RR ee es 264 Appendix II: Native helpers and Protestant converts (1823-1900) «00... eee 268 ADStract: sist, PATATE EAE Sige tes Ba Dees She A ES EIE bE ek ek IO 289

ILLUSTRATIONS

Map with key sites for the Syria Mission in the Ottoman province of Syria

(Source: Marius König, Graphic Design, Freiburg im Breisgau) Mission seminary in “Abeih

Rev. Eli Smith, D. D.

(Source: American University of Beirut, Special Collections, “Portrait of Eli Smith, 1800s”)

Title page of the journal Majmu ‘ Fawa ‘id (1851)

(Source: Harvard Lamont Library)

Rev. Cornelius Van Dyck, M.D., D.D., LH.D.

(Source: Yale Divinity School Library, Henry Harris Jessup Papers, RG 117, Box 10/44)

Title page from al-Nashra al-Usbu ‘iyya (May 9, 1871)

(Source: NEST Special Collections)

(Source: Yale Divinity School Library, Henry Harris Jessup Papers, RG 117, Box 10/44)

al-Madrasa al-Wataniyya (Dormitories for the young students, entrance hall, auditorium and examination room, office and residence of the president and his family)

(Source: al-Jinan, 1873, p. 628b; Harvard Widener Library) al-Madrasa al-Wataniyya (Elementary school and private schools, recreation rooms for summer and winter)

(Source: al-Jinan, 1873, p. 628d; Harvard Widener Library)

Rev. John Wortabet, M.D.

(Source: J. Y. Khuri, al-Rawad al-Mu‘assasun li l-Jami ‘a al-Amirikiyya bi-Beyrut [The Founding Fathers of the American University of Beirut: Biographies], 173)

The first professors of the Syrian Protestant College, 1870-1874 (First row, left to right: Cornelius Van Dyck, Daniel Bliss, John Wortabet; second row, left to right: David Stuart Dodge, George Post, Edwin Lewis, Harvey Porter)

(Source: American University of Beirut, Special Collections, “Original Faculty Members, 1870-1874”)

AA

AAC minutes ABCFM ABC

AUB

DMG

HHL

JAOS

MH

NECB minutes

NEST.

NEST/SC NLS, MS PBCFM ROS

SPC

TA

UPC UPC-GMBM ZDMG

ABBREVIATIONS

Archive of the American University of Beirut

Anglo-American Congregation, Records (1868-1905)

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Archive of the ABCFM, accessible at Harvard University American University of Beirut

Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society)

Harvard Houghton Library

Journal of the American Oriental Society

Missionary Herald

National Evangelical Church of Beirut, Sijil al-Waqa ‘i Umdat Kanisa al-Injiliyya al-Wataniyya, min 19 Ayar 1848 ila 9 Ayar 1922 (Catalog of Committee Minutes from the National Evangelical Church, from May 19, 1848 to May 9, 1922)

Near East School of Theology

Near East School of Theology Library/Special Collections National Library of Scotland, Manuscript

Presbyterian Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria 1819-1870, eds. K. Salibi and Y.K. Khoury, 5 vols. (Beirut, 1995)

Syrian Protestant College

Translation from Arabic by Tarek Abboud!

United Presbyterian Church of Scotland

United Presbyterian Church General Minute Book, Missions Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft [Journal of the German Oriental Society]

1 Assistant for the DFG project “Transatlantische Vernetzung von Institutionen des Wissens am Beispiel der Syrienmission des American Board” (Humboldt University, Berlin)

Preface

Without question, my study abroad year at the Near East School of Theology (NEST) in Beirut between 2005 and 2006 was a formative experience, strongly influencing the subsequent years of my theology studies and interest in fields like the Arabic language. Before I traveled to Lebanon, I knew little about the Christian minority there, and even less about its smallest group, the Protestants. I learned that they had a great influence on the region’s educational sector, although their history in the Middle East began only in the nineteenth century. Already in 2006, I became interested in exploring this history more closely.

The following study is part of the project “Transatlantische Vernetzungen von Institutionen des Wissens am Beispiel der Syria Mission des American Board” (The Syrian Mission of the American Board as an Example of Transatlantic Networking Among Institutions of Learning), directed by Dr. Andreas Feldtkeller, Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin, between March 2011 and January 2015. Within the framework of this project, I could make three of the four trips abroad that were necessary to complete my archival research: to Lebanon (March 2013 and March 2014) and Great Britain (June 2014). A grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) supported my research at Harvard University in January and February 2011. Without these sources of financial assistance, my dissertation could not have been completed.

I would especially like to thank my colleagues Dr. Christine Lindner (New York), Dr. Deanna Ferree Womack (Atlanta), Dr. Julia Hauser (Kassel), Dr. Sarah Markiewicz (Berlin), and Dominika Hadrysiewicz (Berlin) for their conversations and valuable advice. I am equally grateful to my Arabic-speaking friends Nouhad Moawad, Midu Hafz, and Ayman Sadek, as well as to my colleague Tarek Abboud. They helped me with translations from Arabic on many occasions.

I thank the archivists at Harvard University, the Near East School of Theology, the American University of Beirut, and the National Library of Scotland for their shared research and many helpful suggestions.

Vienna, April 2015

12 Preface

Mediterranean Sea

Figure 1: Map with key sites for the Syria Mission in the Ottoman province of Syria

INTRODUCTION

“The importance of the Mediterranean, as a medium of access to a considerable portion of the great scene of action ... will be felt by all,” wrote the Missionary Herald in 1819.' The magazine was published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), founded in Boston in 1810. The ABCFM was the largest interdenominational (Presbyterian, Congregational, and Dutch Reformed) missionary society in North America at that time. Its Palestine Mission was established in 1819, renamed the “Mission to Syria and the Holy Land” nine years later. More than eighty missionaries, sometimes accompanied by wives and female assistants,” were sent to the Levant through 1870, when administration of the mission was transferred to the Presbyterian Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The mission field initially extended across the entire Ottoman province of Syria, encompassing the present-day territories of Lebanon, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan. Its renaming as the “Syria Mission” in 1842 underscored its geographic concentration within the present-day territories of Lebanon and parts of the Syrian Arab Republic. The subject of this study is the American Board’s Syria Mission from the establishment of the Beirut mission station in 1823 until the end of the nineteenth century. The mission was well documented, particularly in the English- and Arabic-speaking world, and it has since been analyzed in numerous studies, from a historical as well as sociocultural perspective. The following monograph draws upon English-language sources that are not accessible within Europe, and also upon relevant Arabic texts that are comprehensible to only a small circle of theologians.

1. “THE REST OF THE WORLD NEED[S] CIVILIZING”?: BETWEEN CULTURAL ARROGANCE AND LOVE FOR THE FOREIGN

One hundred and fifty years after the first American missionaries were active in Syria, their legacy is ambivalent. This is apparent when one speaks with Protestant or other Christians in Lebanon today, particularly those who are familiar with the history of Protestant missions in the Near East. The missionaries’ educational accomplishments continue to influence present-day Lebanese culture, with far-reaching consequences even outside the Protestant community. At the same time, however,

1 Missionary Herald 15 (1819), in: Reports from Ottoman Syria 1:1. In all subsequent references, the Missionary Herald is abbreviated as “MH.” The five-volume Reports from Ottoman Syria (eds. Kamal Salibi and Y. Q. Khoury), a reprinted edition of Syria Mission reports that were first published in the MH, is abbreviated as “ROS.”

2 Women began to be identified as “missionaries” only at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, women were employed as “female assistants” or “female teachers.”

3 Bonk, The Theory and Practice of Missionary Identification, 239.

it is frequently said that missionaries treated local religious communities with intolerance, regarding themselves as privileged in their relationship with Arab culture. The Lebanese sociologist Samir KHALAF remarks:

While gladly accepting their long exile from home ... evangelists almost always considered themselves as aliens and strangers wherever they went. They resisted, in fact, any effort or temptation to get closer to, or acquire, even the superficial, exotic or outward artifacts of the native culture.4

Beginning in 1819, the ABCFM sent consistently well-educated, engaged young men and women to the region. They had to get to know native culture in order to respond to natives’ needs, but — as KHALAF demonstrates — they conveyed an image of western superiority and arrogance in their encounters with everything outside of their highly civilized world.> Even after decades of foreign mission work in Syria, many missionaries could not overcome classic prejudices against “the Arabs.”® Their view of Islam — a religion grounded upon the false revelations of a deceptive prophet — did not change even after many years of contact with Muslims.’ It was not uncommon for these views to reach Western readers through missionary reports and also travel literature, since the Orient® had become an increasingly popular destination for well-educated, middle-class travelers by the mid-nineteenth century.” With few exceptions, many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foreign missions!° were defined not only by Pietist Christian thought but also an intolerance of other peoples. These attitudes were not grounded upon notions of racial supremacy,

4 Khalaf, “New England Puritanism,” 61.

Ibid.

6 As Deanna Ferree Womack demonstrates in her dissertation, this did not change within the American Syria Mission until the end of the nineteenth century. See “Conversion, Controversy, and Cultural Production,” 161—221.

7 Khalaf, Cultural Resistance, 34.

8 At the time, “Orient” was understood to include not only the Levant, but also the entire “East” (from a European perspective), extending to China and India. The term is used in this study with these geographic considerations in mind.

9 David D. Grafton demonstrates, however, that enthusiasm for the Orient is much older: “the ‘Orient’ has always carried a sense of fascination of the mysterious unknown: its people, their customs, and their religions.” (See Grafton, Piety, Politics, and Power, 2) Christian travelers and missionaries in the Levant frequently sought traces of Biblical times. The idea that the region had hardly changed in eighteen hundred years was widespread: “The manners, customs, and dresses of the people at Beyroot served to remind the Christian of the times of Christ, and led back the imagination through the lapse of eighteen hundred years to the thrilling events which transpired throughout the Holy Land. So few are the improvements made in art and agriculture, that one can easily fancy himself in the middle of the first century ...” Here, Daniel C. Eddy describes the impressions of Sarah Smith, the first wife of missionary Eli Smith. See Eddy, Heroines of the Missionary Enterprise, 134.

10 In his essay on the beginnings of the Gossner Mission in the nineteenth century, Klaus Roeber describes the missionaries’ respectful engagement with India’s religions, which fostered intercultural and interreligious dialogue from the start. See Roeber, “Missionare der Gossner Mission,” 339-57. Likewise, the German missionary Detwig von Oertzen, who was stationed in Mahabad with the German Orient Mission from 1905, strove “to break down or even to overcome” the stereotype of “Kurdish thieves” through the study of Kurdish culture and language. See Tamcke, “Gleichzeitig-Ungleichzeitiges Wissen,” 399.

Ur which was a much later phenomenon, but rather upon the basis of “civilization.”!! Missionaries, scholars, colonialists, historians, and philosophers of the day agreed: “The rest of the world need[s] civilizing.”!? For the missionaries, Christianity naturally played a leading role; it was “the elixir of the Western civilization ... Like a tonic, the purer it was the better it worked; and the more one took, the healthier one became.”!? Thus, native peoples abroad were not merely foreign. In the eyes of missionaries, they were also in dire need of Christianity’s saving message. !4

Numerous parallels existed between American missionary attitudes towards the indigenous Syrian population and the colonial interests of the Western powers.!° Their prejudices and assurance of superiority could be identified as cultural imperialist.!° But the missionaries in the Middle East did not pursue political interests, and in fact renounced these vehemently. Nevertheless, certain cultural imperial premises underlay the entire Syria Mission. Thus, as formulated by Samir KHALAF, it is more appropriate to speak of the missionaries’ “cultural arrogance.” A politically motivated acquisition of territories certainly did not apply in this case. Rather than dominating a foreign culture, according to KHALAF, missions sought to morally reorient the population.'!’ Their methods could be described as “callously ethnocentric and mindlessly romantic, at times poignantly altruistic and confusedly well-meaning.”!8

Missionaries and Syrians! encountered one another in a social space that Mary Louise Pratt calls the “contact zone”: “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.”?° Dialogue that takes place in a contact zone may be fruitful, but it is rarely harmonious. Missionaries did not enter this space with the intent of approaching foreigners

11 Reeves-Ellington, Domestic Frontiers, 126. In his article on the intensifying views of nineteenth-century Western Protestants towards evangelizing the world, Andrew Witmer refers to Rebecca Goetz’s thesis that Western attitudes towards non-Christian peoples were later channeled into conceptions of race. See Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Baltimore, 2012), cited in Witmer, “Agency, Race, and Christianity,” 896.

12 Bonk, The Theory and Practice of Missionary Identification, 239.

14 Nielssen, Protestant Missions and Local Encounters, 10.

15 Homi Bhabha speaks of “fixity” in the discourse of colonialism, referring to the rigid definition of otherness and the “daemonic repetition” of stereotypes. See Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 66. For more on the close relationship between European colonialism and missionary work in Africa and Asia, see Bonk, The Theory and Practice of Missionary Identification, 91—155.

16 See Tibawi, American Interests in Syria; Hutchinson, Errand to the World; and Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven.

17 Khalaf, Cultural Resistance, 116-17. Similarly, Wanis Semaan describes this as “cultural aggression of a very subtle kind.” See Semaan, Aliens at Home, 33.

18 T.O. Beidelmann, Colonial Evangelism (Bloomington, 1982), cited in Khalaf, Cultural Resistance, 117.

19 On the use of “Syrian,” see section 7 in this introduction.

20 Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” 34; and Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 8. Although “contact zone” has the same meaning as “colonial frontier,” the latter term is comprehensible only from a European perspective. “Contact zone” encompasses different perspectives, including those of non-European participants.

without prejudice, nor did they intend to affirm the equal rights of other peoples or acknowledge that others might be in the position to develop the same abilities and skills as themselves. Concepts like “integration” and “religious coexistence” were far removed from this time. To borrow the words of WANIS SEMAAN: given the coming millennium and the urgency for conversions, there was no time to analyze or reflect on “what was culturally conditioned in their message and what was universally valid and true.”?! America’s short history was characterized by mostly intolerant relations with its native inhabitants, whose culture was not deemed worthy of preservation.?* Young Americans’ conviction that they had been specially chosen to establish their young state encouraged their belief that savagery and ignorance prevailed beyond its borders. This could be seen in the American movement of religious awakenings. Missionaries from nineteenth-century New England, in particular, felt called to spread their message.??

Like merchants, explorers, and diplomats, missionaries acted as cultural brokers, “who actively or deliberately transfer[red] cultural messages or contents to a different environment.”** The term “cultural brokers,” which is increasingly favored by historians of intercultural encounters,”> fits the missionaries perfectly. Their intent was to transmit important components of their own culture — new interpretations of religion and different kinds of knowledge — to the people of another culture. Their field investigations and memoirs, in turn, informed readers in their home country. Thus, cultural transmission occurred in both directions.

To what degree missionaries in Syria acted in a cultural imperialist or colonialist manner is a frequent question in recent scholarship. In my view, this is a very one-sided approach.”° This is not to say, however, that cultural imperialism can be disregarded. Building up, and then dominating, the education sector was a typical practice of European countries at this time. In this way, economic influence over another country was gradually established, instead of being compelled within a shorter timeframe through military occupation.”’ Fully aware of the cultural imperialist connotations of missionary activity, the ABCFM rejected insinuations that it represented the United States’ colonial interests from the very beginning. As time passed, greater efforts were made to act less imperially and to focus solely on preaching.”® The reports,

22 Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 33. To identify as American in the eighteenth or nineteenth century meant being white and Protestant. Lindner notes that “in 1830, the United States Supreme Court ruled that American citizenship was limited to those of European descent,” thereby legitimizing the exclusion of native inhabitants. Ibid., 38.

24 Höh, Jaspert, and Oesterle, “Courts, Brokers and Brokerage,” 9.

25 Koschorke, “Weltmission, Globale Kommunikationsstrukturen,” 197.

26 See Semaan, Aliens at Home, 2: “Had the missionaries been historically and culturally conscious, they would have understood better and would have attempted to understand the histories and the cultures of the societies to which they went ... . But alas, they were conditioned only of their own culture and not of its conditional nature.”

27 Scholz, Foreign Education and Indigenous Reaction, 16-17.

28 Harris, Nothing but Christ, 96. American missionaries even accused their French rivals of encouraging imperial interests in the Levant. See Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 134.

letters, and diaries that missionaries composed in the field, as seen through the eyes of contemporary readers, contain many derogatory descriptions of the native population. The missionaries were unable to interpret their environment through standards other than their own. They saw their own experiences as universal, suitable for guiding their actions in the mission field.” With respect to the missionaries’ handwritten correspondence, however, the ideological influence of the American Board cannot be underestimated. The length and wording of missionary reports that appeared in the Missionary Herald and other publications were altered strategically, as this study will show. Such changes were often motivated by a desire to convince American readers of the ongoing necessity of foreign missions, or to retain generous donors.

It was missionaries who communicated the linguistic, geographic, historical, and cultural definitions of the Near East to Americans. Missionaries had a formative influence on Oriental studies in the United States; for many decades, they were the first and only source of information on foreign cultures.*° In a sense, they were their country’s first diplomats. As “ambassadors for Christ,”>! as they often called themselves, they not uncommonly discovered a love for the land and people they sought to convert. In some cases, the engagement of American missionaries extended well beyond the scope of their official duties and was not always condoned by the ABCFM. This point is an important condition for the following analysis of cultural dialogue.

Eli Smith (1801-1857), Cornelius Van Dyck (1818-1895), Butrus al-Bustani (1819-1883) und John Wortabet (1827-1908) were chosen as subjects of this study because of their impressive biographies, as well as the comparative accessibility of primary and secondary source material about them. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck were distinguished by their extraordinary mastery of the Arabic language, as well as by their engagement for education and their participation in Syrian intellectual circles. Butrus al-Bustani, the renowned Syrian scholar, and John Wortabet — a Syrian of Armenian descent, a foster child of the mission and later a successful theologian and medical doctor — were participants in the circle of Smith, Van Dyck, and their colleagues. Their life stories would have been unthinkable without the influence of the American missionaries. Rather than acting as subordinates, however, Bustani and Wortabet used their expanded cultural horizons to achieve successful careers.

2. CONDITIONS FOR TRANSCULTURAL DIALOGUE

The phenomenon of “transculturation” has assumed an increasingly prominent role in recent historical scholarship. The term describes “processes of translation, adaptation, regeneration, and appropriation” that occur — sometimes in harmony,

30 New knowledge about the Arab world led to the introduction of Oriental studies in numerous universities in Europe and North America. See S. Mangold, “Eine ‘weltbiirgerliche Wissenschaft’— Die deutsche Orientalistik im 19. Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte 11 (Stuttgart: Pallas Athene, 2004) 29-63.

sometimes in conflict — when different cultures meet.” The complexity of transculturation is readily apparent in the American missionaries’ encounter with Syrians in the Ottoman Empire. This intercultural encounter, which led to different situations of dialogue, had diverse motivations. The cultural context of the young Americans, who felt called to their mission in the Middle East, could not be more different from that of nineteenth-century Europeans who came from big cities. The young American missionaries usually came from small towns, and they had been educated at Christian schools. They were pious and highly ambitious. Many of them had earned university degrees, a distinction enjoyed by only two percent of Americans at that time.*? Christianity assumed special prominence. In the northern United States, the Bible was the basis for instruction in schools, which were still subject to church authority at the beginning of the nineteenth century.**

“From our childhood our idea of the Christian religion has been identified with education, social order, and a certain correctness of morals and manners, in other words, with civilization,”*> stated Rufus Anderson, corresponding secretary of the ABCFM.36 Learning to read and write was essential for a religious education and the pursuit of one’s chosen path.*’ For the Americans, a proper education brought together religious and secular knowledge.*® Both types of knowledge were incomplete without the other. This philosophy of education accompanied the missionaries on their journey to the Levant, informing the establishment of the first mission school in 1824. In Ottoman Syria, the Americans found a wide hearing. They enjoyed particular success in the field of education because political and social changes smoothed the way. The province of Syria represented, as CHRISTINE LIND- NER Calls it, a “dynamic environment.”??

Building ports and opening markets to transcontinental trade promoted globalization, setting the stage for political and cultural disruptions — not only in the Ottoman Empire, but also in other Asian and African countries.*° “It is not the Napoleonic invasion nor the Egyptian occupation in itself that brought about the

32 Hock, Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie, 51.

33 Khalaf, “New England Puritanism and Liberal Education,” 54-55; and Khalaf, Cultural Resistance, 181.

34 Government authorities in New England assumed responsibility for education only in 1852. See Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England, 59.

35 Rufus Anderson in 1870, as cited by Khalaf, “New England Puritanism and Liberal Education,” 58.

36 At the beginning of the Syria Mission, Anderson was still assistant corresponding secretary. Through his administrative and organizational talents, he later became the American Board’s head corresponding secretary. See Badr, “Mission to ‘Nominal Christians,” 106-7.

37 Lindsay, Nineteenth Century American Schools, 33. In 1642, the state of Massachusetts passed a law that required families to see that their children and apprentices receive instruction in reading and writing, Christian principles, and the most important laws of the land. See also Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England, 66. The first public schools in Massachusetts, however, were not introduced until 1820. See Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 50.

38 Lindner, “Negotiating the Field,” 138.

40 Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History,” 999-1027.

racial transformation, but the opening of the way for cultural inflow that counted.’”4!

Cultural dialogue occurred because the Americans learned over time that success depended upon respectful behavior. At first, their interest in dialogue derived solely from their Christian convictions. Syrian Christians and Muslims of different confessions,”” on the other hand, proved very receptive to the new religion’s possibilities. Their motives for engaging in dialogue were often not only religious. Hope for a better future, family disagreements, and opportunities for professional success also played a role. Nonetheless, joining the new Protestant community entailed sacrifices. Syrian society was not yet a well-defined cultural entity. Tradition and a sense of belonging derived from the religion of one’s parents. Protestant converts had to be prepared to overstep previously accepted cultural boundaries for their newfound convictions.

3. PAST AND CURRENT RESEARCH

In the 1980s, there was a tendency to criticize and stereotype the history of missions from a postcolonial and gender studies perspective. The past decade has seen a shift towards considering ethnographic texts individually, as well as towards incorporating indigenous sources (DoumATo, 2002). The intent is to give voice to native collaborators, since their influence on the missions’ achievements was substantial. Evaluating missionary sources is no longer only the domain of mission studies, but has also attracted interest in other fields such as sociology, cultural studies, and geography. Taking the historical and social context of each mission country into consideration is essential for better understanding how missions developed in the past. Mission studies are increasingly undertaken within the framework of intercultural theology.*? Each discipline has its own set of questions for investigating the actions and consequences of Western missionaries abroad. Missionaries in the field often accomplished pioneering work, not only as theologians, but also as humanists and natural scientists. Mission history today is understood as a part of “secular” cultural history that must incorporate different points of view.4

In 2010, an international conference on “Mission History as Global History: Transcultural Appropriation and Transfer of Knowledge by Christian Missionaries in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Africa and Asia” was held in cooperation with the Department for Religious and Mission Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Berlin Society for Mission History.*> The conference showed “that questions discussed by other historical disciplines, concerning globalization

41 Hitti, Lebanon in History, 453.

42 The beginning of chapter I examines which confessional groups were most drawn to the missionaries’ message.

43 Hock, Einführung in die Interkulturelle Theologie, especially 21-23.

44 Rzepkowski, “Missionsgeschichte im Wandel der Motivationen,” 270-75.

45 Also in 2010, the University of Zurich organized an international symposium on “Europe in China — China in Europe: Science and Technology as a Vehicle to Intercultural Dialogue.” See Widmer, ed., Europe in China — China in Europe.

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, have also been addressed in the historiography of missions in an interesting way.’”*°

Missionary institutions of education, according to conference organizers UL- RICH VAN DER HEYDEN and ANDREAS FELDTKELLER, were sites (or “contact zones”) where Western educational traditions merged with those of a foreign culture, resulting in the emergence of “something new for both sides.’’** At these sites, knowledge was both produced and transformed, which is why missionary institutions of education can be viewed as hubs in the emerging globalization of knowledge.*”

The goal of this study is not to provide an overview of the wide-ranging literature on the ABCFM or the numerous chronologies of the Syria Mission. A key source is Reports from Ottoman Syria, which was compiled by Kamat SALBI und YUSUF Kuoury in 1995. It is a collection of reports that first appeared in the Missionary Herald between 1819 and 1870. Another essential source is RUFUS ANDERSON’S two-volume History of the Missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Oriental Churches, which presents the Syria Mission within the comparative context of other missions in the Middle East. Another American missionary affiliated with the ABCFM, Tuomas Laure, detailed missionaries’ contributions to the natural sciences, the translation of the Bible, geography, history, medicine, and much more in his comprehensive and distinguished Ely Volume (1881).