Islam dates from 622 A.D., but the first Christian missionary to Mohammedans was Raymund Lull, who was stoned to death outside the town of Bugia, North Africa, on June 30, 1315. He was also the first and only Christian of his day who felt the extent and urgency of the call to evangelize the Mohammedan world. His constant argument with Moslem teachers was: Islam is false and must die. His devotion and his pure character coupled with such intense moral earnestness won some converts, but his great central purpose was to overthrow the power of Islam as a system by logical demonstration of its error; in this he failed. His two spiritual treatises are interesting, but his Ars Major would not convince a Moslem to-day any more than it did in the fourteenth century. His life is of romantic interest and his indefatigable zeal will always be a model and an inspiration to missionaries among Moslems.[132] But he lived before his time and his age was unworthy of him.

Nothing was done to give the gospel to Arabia or the Mohammedans from the time of Raymund Lull to that of Henry Martyn, the first modern missionary to the Mohammedans. The histories of these two men contain all that there is to be written about missionary work for the Mohammedan world from 622 until 1812, so little did the Church of God feel its responsibility toward the millions walking in darkness after the false prophet.

To the Protestant Church of the eighteenth century Arabia and the Levant presented no attractions or appeal. The Turks, as representing the Mohammedan world, were remembered as early as 1549, it is true, by the English Book of Common Prayer, in the collect for Good Friday,[133] (which dates from the Sarum Missal). No effort was made, however, to carry the gospel to them or to any part of their empire, until long after other far more distant regions had been reached. Even Carey did not have the Moslem world on his large program. It was Claudius Buchanan who first aroused an interest in the needs of the Moslem world. On his return from India he told, on February 25, 1809, in his sermon at Bristol, the story of two Moslem converts, one of whom had died a martyr to Christ. In his Christian Researches he propounds a comprehensive scheme for the evangelization of the Levant. The Church Missionary Society sent out missionaries, and in 1819 the American Board began work for Moslems by sending Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons to Syria.

This modern beginning of the gospel in Asia Minor had an indirect bearing on the future evangelization of Arabia and was a part of the Divine preparation. The journeys of Eli Smith and H. G. O. Dwight brought the American churches face to face with the whole problem of missions in that region. The Syrian Mission through its press at Malta (1822) began the assault on the citadel of Islam’s learning. In 1833 the press was removed to Beirut; and from that day until now it has been scattering leaves of healing throughout all the Arabic-speaking world. When in 1865 Dr. Van Dyck wrote the last sheet of “copy” of the Arabic Bible translation and handed it to the compositor, he marked an era of importance not only to Syria and Asia Minor, but to the whole of Arabia, greater than any accession or deposition of sultans. That Bible made modern missions to Arabia possible; it was the result of seventeen years of labor; “and herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth ... other men labored and ye are entered into their labors.” Whatever special difficulties and obstacles missionaries to Arabia have met or will meet, the great work of preparing the Word of God in the language of the people and a complete Christian literature for every department of work, has already been accomplished by others; and accomplished in such a way that the Arabic Bible of Beirut will always be the Bible for Oman and Nejd and the most inland villages of Yemen and Hadramaut.

The history of direct effort to reach the great Arabian peninsula begins with Henry Martyn. It is deeply interesting to follow the gradual unfoldings of the Divine Providence in the reintroduction of the gospel into Arabia thirteen centuries after Christianity had been blotted out in that land by the sword of Mohammed and his successors. In more than one sense Henry Martyn was the pioneer missionary to Arabia. He first came into contact with the Arabs through his study of their language and his employment of that remarkable character, Sabat, as his munshee and co-worker. Sabat and his friend Abdullah were two Arabs of notable pedigree, who, after visiting Mecca, resolved to see the world. They first went to Cabul, where Abdullah entered the service of the famous Ameer Zeman Shah. Through the efforts of an Armenian Christian he abjured Islam and had to flee for his life to Bokhara. “Sabat had preceded him there and at once recognized him on the street. ‘I had no pity,’ said Sabat afterward, ‘I delivered him up to Morad Shah, the king.’ He was offered his life if he would abjure Christ. He refused. Then one of his hands was cut off and again he was pressed to recant. ‘He made no answer, but looked up steadfastly toward heaven, like Stephen, the first martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He looked at me, but it was with the countenance of forgiveness. His other hand was then cut off. But he never changed, and when he bowed his head to receive the blow of death all Bokhara seemed to say, What new thing is this?’ Remorse drove Sabat to long wanderings, in which he came to Madras, where the government gave him the office of mufti or expounder of the law of Islam in the civil courts. At Vizagapatam he fell in with a copy of the Arabic New Testament as revised by Solomon Negri and sent out to India in the middle of last century by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He compared it with the Koran and the truth fell on him like a flood of light. He sought baptism in Madras at the hands of the Rev. Dr. Kerr and was named Nathaniel. He was then twenty-seven years of age. When the news reached his family in Arabia, his brother set out to destroy him, and, disguised as an Asiatic, wounded him with a dagger as he sat in his house at Vizagapatam. He sent him home with letters and gifts to his mother, and then gave himself up to propagate the truth he had once in his friend Abdullah’s person, persecuted to the death.”[134] These two were doubtless the first fruits of modern Arabia to Christ.

It was doubtless in a great degree Sabat who directed Martyn’s thoughts and plans toward Arabia and the Arabs. On the last day of the year 1810 he wrote in his diary: “I now pass from India to Arabia, not knowing what things shall befall me there.” His purpose in leaving India was partly his broken health but more his intense longing to give the Mohammedans of Arabia and Persia the word of God in their own tongues. On his voyage from Calcutta to Bombay he composed tracts in Arabic, spoke with the Arab sailors and studied the Koran and Niebuhr’s travels in Arabia. From Bombay he sailed for Arabia and Persia in one of the ships of the old Indian navy going on a cruise in the Persian Gulf. He reached Muscat on April 20, 1811, and writes his first impressions in a letter to Lydia Grenfell: “I am now in Arabia Felix; to judge from the aspect of the country it has little pretensions to the name, unless burning, barren rocks convey an idea of felicity; but as there is a promise in reserve for the sons of Joktan, their land may one day be blessed indeed.” He attempted to go inland for a short distance, but was forbidden by the soldiers of the Sultan of Muscat.

Every word of Henry Martyn’s journal regarding Arabia is precious, but we can quote only one more passage: “April 24. Went with one English party and two Armenians and an Arab who served as guard and guide to see a remarkable pass about a mile from the town and a garden planted by a Hindu in a little village beyond. There was nothing to see, only the little bit of green in this wilderness seemed to the Arab a great curiosity. I conversed a good deal with him, but particularly with his African slave, who was very intelligent about religion. The latter knew as much about his religion as most mountaineers, and withal was so interested that he would not cease from his argument till I left the shore.”

Martyn did not tarry long at Muscat but his visit was “a little bit of green in this wilderness” and the prayers he there offered found answer in God’s Providence long afterward. On all his voyage to Bushire he was continually busy with his Arabic translation; the people of Arabia were still first in his heart for he expresses himself as desirous finally “to go to Arabia circuitously by way of Persia.” His longing to give the Arabs the Scripture began in India and intensified his devotion to the study of Hebrew. Had Martyn’s chief assistant in the Arabic translating, Sabat, been a better scholar their New Testament version would have proved abidingly useful. As Sabat’s knowledge of the language proved very faulty their Arabic Testament did not remain in use. It was first printed at Calcutta in 1816, and although it accomplished a good work in common with other old translations, all have been superseded by the wonderfully perfect version of Eli Smith and Van Dyck. It was not due to Martyn, however, that the Arabic language had no worthy version of the Bible until 1860. In his diaries for September 8 and 9, 1810, we read these remarkable entries: “If my life is spared, there is no reason why the Arabic should not be done in Arabia, and the Persian in Persia as well as the Indian in India.” ... “Arabia shall hide me till I come forth with an approved New Testament in Arabic.” ... “Will government let me go away for three years before the time of my furlough arrives? If not I must quit the service, and I cannot devote my life to a more important work than that of preparing the Arabic Bible.”

These facts about Martyn’s life show at how many points it touched Arabia; his purposes, his prayers, his studies, his translations, his fellow-worker, and his visit to Muscat. But more than all these was the result for Arabia of Martyn’s influence and the power of his spirit to inspire others.

In 1829 Anthony N. Groves, a dentist of Exeter, taking the commands of Christ literally, sold all he had and, in the spirit of Martyn, began his remarkable attempt at mission work in Bagdad. His work was stopped twice, by the plague and by persecution, and the story of his life reveals how great were the obstacles which he vainly tried to surmount.[135] From that day until long years after Northern and Eastern Arabia were waiting once more for the light. The only effort made in the Gulf was by Dr. John Wilson of Bombay who, before 1843, sent Bible colporteurs once and again by Aden and up the Persian Gulf; “he summoned the Church of Scotland to despatch a mission to the Jews of Arabia, Busrah and Bombay. A missionary was ready in the person of William Burns who afterward went to China, the support of a missionary at Aden was guaranteed by a friend and Wilson had found a volunteer ‘for the purpose of exploring Arabia’ when the disruption of the Church of Scotland arrested the movement.”[136] It was Henry Martyn’s life that inspired John Wilson in 1824. It was the Free Church of Scotland that afterward took up the work of Ion Keith Falconer the pioneer of Yemen. So God’s plans find fulfillment.[137] Even Muscat was not left without a witness in those years of waiting. It appears that the captain of an American ship which called at Muscat every year for a cargo of dates was a godly man and used to distribute Arabic Bibles and Testaments, even before the Bible Society extended its work to this place.

As early as 1878 the British and Foreign Bible Society sent Anton Gibrail from Bombay to Bagdad on a colporteur-journey. And about the same time the South Russia agent of the Society, Mr. James Watt, visited Persia and Bagdad and pressed the needs of this field on the committee of the Bible Society. He was seconded in his efforts by Rev. Robert (now Canon) Bruce, a Church Missionary Society Missionary in India. Arrangements were made between the two societies by which Bible work was opened in Bagdad under the supervision of Mr. Bruce. In December, 1880, a Bible depot was opened. Since then the work has gone on continuously and extended, through the Arabian Mission, to the entire east coast of Arabia.

The first reference to the needs and opportunities for work in Western Arabia appears in the Annual Report of the British Bible Society for 1886, where the opening of a Bible depot at Aden is announced with the hope that it would lead to “the circulation of the Holy Bible on a larger scale and in a variety of languages.” Ibrahim Abd el Masih was the first in charge of this depot, and his name was attached to the call for prayer from South Arabia issued after the death of Keith Falconer. Colporteurs from Egypt and from Aden of the British and Foreign Bible Society have once and again visited the Arabian Red Sea ports and penetrated to Sana, the capital of Yemen.

Between the years 1880 and 1890 more than one appeal went forth for Arabia’s need. Old Doctor Lansing of the American U. P. Mission in Egypt who for over thirty years had labored there waiting for the dawn of a brighter day, when he heard of one of these appeals, was all on fire, to start for Yemen. “For some years,” wrote an American minister in the far West, “I and my people have been praying for Arabia.”

The Wahabi reformation in its time attracted the interest of those who studied the political horizon. The bombardment of Jiddah in 1858 compelled attention to Mecca and the pilgrimage, while from 1838, when England became mistress of Aden, until 1880 commerce and exploration was specially active on all the Arabian coast. It was during this period that the Anglo-Indian naval officers MorÊsby, Haines, Elwon, Saunders, Carless, Wellsted and Cruttenden carefully surveyed the entire Arabian coast. What they did for commerce, Major-General F. T. Haig did for missions in Arabia. He it was who first made the extensive journey all around the coast of Arabia and into the interior of Yemen. His articles pleading for the occupation of the Peninsula reached Keith Falconer and finally decided his choice of a particular field, in the wide Mohammedan world, to which his thoughts were already turned. It was also the experience and counsel of this man of God that helped to determine the final location as well as the preliminary explorations of the American missionaries of the Arabian mission in 1890-92. The reports of General Haig are even to-day the best condensed statement of the needs and opportunities in the long neglected Peninsula while his account of the problems to be met and the right sort of men to meet them will always remain invaluable until the evangelization of Arabia is an accomplished fact.

In 1886 General Haig was asked by the committee of the Church Missionary Society to undertake an exploration of the Red Sea coast of Arabia and Somaliland with a view to ascertaining the openings for missionary effort. He set out from London on October 12th, 1886, reaching Alexandria on the 19th, and proceeded by way of the Red Sea coast in an Egyptian steamer to Aden, calling at Tor, Yanbo, Jiddah, Suakin, Massawa and Hodeidah. Dr. and Mrs. Harpur of the Church Missionary Society were already at Aden seeking an opening for mission work; the former accompanied General Haig back to Hodeidah and occupied that place for a time as the first medical missionary in Arabia. General Haig then took the journey inland by the direct route to Sana with Ibrahim, the British and Foreign Bible Society colporteur and from Sana they went straight across Yemen to Aden. Shortly afterward General Haig proceeded to Muscat and up the Persian Gulf calling at all the ports. From Busrah he journeyed along the river to Bagdad and thence across the Syrian desert by the overland post route to Damascus. It was this long and difficult journey which formed the basis of two papers[138] entitled: “On both sides of the Red Sea,” and “Arabia as a Mission Field.”[139]

A few brief extracts from these papers will interest the reader and show the character of this first appeal to evangelize the land of the Arabs. Writing of Yemen he says; “We have in this southwestern part of Arabia a great mountainous country with a temperate climate, and a hardy laborious race. This hill-country and its races extend northward into Asir, eastward into Hadramaut for an indefinite distance, while to the northeast they extend inland as far as the borders of the great desert. The finest and most warlike races are those to be found to the north and northeast of Sana. These have never yet submitted to the Turkish yoke; in fact the limits of the Turkish territory to the east of Sana are only a few miles distant from that place. Is it not of extreme importance in connection with the evangelization of all Southern Arabia that the gospel should be preached and the Word of God brought to these hardy mountaineers? They are mostly Zeidiyeh, a sect akin to the Shiahs in doctrine, but I saw no trace of fanaticism among them, rather they seemed everywhere willing to listen to the truth. For the most part I suspect they are but poor observers of the prescribed religious practices of Islam. During the whole of my travels in Yemen I never once saw a man at prayer, and in only a few of the larger villages is there a mosque. The women are particularly accessible; in the villages they wear no covering to the face, and those that we met at the khans, or inns, were always ready to come forward and talk. The little girls used frequently to run into our room, and, if invited, would come and sit down by our side. Ignorance is, I should say, the predominant characteristic of the whole population—ignorance of their own religion, ignorance of the simplest elements of truth. I believe that an evangelist, thoroughly master of the language, Arabic, might go from village to village all over Yemen preaching, or quietly speaking the gospel.”

This testimony is true. But the challenge has never yet been accepted and all the highlands are still waiting for the first news of the gospel. Speaking of the capital of Yemen the report goes on: “Sana is a most important point. It is impossible to exaggerate its importance from a missionary point of view. It is in the centre of the finest races of Southern Arabia, and if a mission could be established there, its influence would extend on all sides to a multitude of tribes otherwise shut out from the gospel.”

After reviewing in detail the open doors in every part of Arabia, and speaking of the special obstacles at each point together with the best methods of inaugurating work, he writes toward the end of his report: “In one degree or another then, all Arabia is, I consider, open to the gospel. It is as much open to it as the world generally was in apostolic times, that is to say, it is accessible to the evangelist at many different points, at all of which he would find men and women needing salvation, some of whom would receive his message, while others would reject it and persecute him. In some parts of the country he would not be molested or interfered with by the ruling powers; in others, as in Turkish Arabia, he might be arrested and even deported. Dangerous fanatics are, I believe, seldom met with but occasionally the missionary might come across such, and then the consequences might be more serious. But what if his lot were even worse than this, if he were hunted from village to village, and persecuted from city to city? Our Lord contemplated no other reception for His disciples when He sent them forth. This was in fact His ideal of the missionary life.... ‘When they persecute you in this city, (abandon the country? No.) flee ye into another.’ The evangelist in Arabia need expect nothing worse than this and even this would probably be of rare occurrence.... There is no difficulty then about preaching the gospel in Arabia if men can be found to face the consequences. The real difficulty would be the protection of the converts. Most probably they would be exposed to violence and death. The infant church might be a martyr church at first like that of Uganda, but that would not prevent the spread of the truth or its ultimate triumph.” The most remarkable thing about this report, which occupies only forty pages, is its prophetic character, its permanent value and the fact that it touches every phase of the problem still before us.

The immediate result of General Haig’s report was the determination of the Church Missionary Society to leave Aden and Sheikh Othman to Keith Falconer and the Free Church of Scotland, while Dr. and Mrs. Harpur went to Hodeidah to try the possibilities of work in that city. There the skill of a Christian physician would have more of strategic power than in Aden itself which had two hospitals under government service. Everything was hopeful at the outset and the people flocked in large numbers to the dispensary. Evangelistic work was carried on, and Dr. Harpur wrote: “I try to read of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ including Isaiah liii., and the simplest parables.” One or two of the Arabs became specially interested and read the Bible very eagerly. But the Turkish governor found objection and required a Turkish diploma from the missionary, or to have his diploma acknowledged at Constantinople. Work was at a standstill. Dr. Harpur was compelled to return to England on account of severe illness and Hodeidah was not again entered. In his letter to the Church Missionary Intelligencer, dated April 12th, 1887, we read:

About the same time, a remarkable call to prayer was sent out by the little band of workers in South Arabia, who were left to mourn the sudden death of their spiritual leader, Ion Keith Falconer. It was the first call to prayer issued for Arabia and it did not remain unheeded:

Prayer for the Spread of the Gospel in South Arabia.

“We earnestly invite united intercession to Almighty God for the people of this land, that He will open doors for the preaching of the gospel, and prepare the hearts of all to receive it.

We trust that many will respond to this request, and unite with us in setting apart a special time every Tuesday for prayer for the above object. We are, yours faithfully,

While the Church Missionary Society did not continue work at Hodeidah, they were already occupying the extreme northeast corner of Arabia and had begun work in Bagdad, the old city of the caliphs, with its commanding situation on the Tigris, and its large, Arab population. In 1882 Bagdad was occupied as an outpost of their Persia Mission on recommendation of Dr. Bruce. Rev. T. R. Hodgson was the first missionary there, but he afterward went into the service of the British and Foreign Bible Society and greatly extended its work in the Persian Gulf. He was succeeded by Dr. Henry Martyn Sutton and others. The mission has had hard struggles with the Turkish officials and its converts were compelled to flee. The medical work has had a vast and extensive influence in all the region round about, and at present the mission-staff is larger than ever before and the school recently opened is flourishing. Mosul has been taken over from the American Presbyterian Board by the Church Missionary Society, and in the words of one of their missionaries, “we are watching for an opportunity of carrying the gospel into the very heart of Central Arabia, where the independent Prince of Nejd holds rule, across whose territory runs one of the principal routes for pilgrims to Mecca.”

As early as 1856 Rev. A. Stern made missionary journeys to Sana, Bagdad and other parts of Arabia to visit the Jews with the gospel. That remarkable missionary to the Jews, Joseph Wolff, the son of a Bavarian Rabbi and who was baptized by a Benedictine monk in 1812, also visited the Jews of Yemen and Bagdad in his wanderings.[140]

In 1884, Mr. William Lethaby, a Methodist lay-preacher from England, with his faithful wife, began a mission among the wild Arabs at Kerak in the mountains of Moab; so populous and important is this mountain fortress in the eyes of the nomads that they call it El Medina, “the city.” This pioneer effort, after some years of struggle, was taken up by the Church Missionary Society in connection with their Palestine mission. Mr. Lethaby, after journeying in East Arabia, and attempting in vain to cross the Peninsula from Bahrein westward (1892), is now in charge of the Bible Society’s depot at Aden.

As early as 1886 the North Africa Mission attempted to reach the Bedouin tribes of Northern Arabia in the vicinity of Homs. Mr. Samuel Van Tassel, a young Hollander, of New York, trained at Grattan Guinness’ Institute, went out under their direction and accompanied a Bedouin chief on his annual migration into the desert in 1890. He found good opportunities among the nomads for gospel-work, so that the door to him seemed “wide-open,” but Turkish official jealousy of all foreigners who have dealings with the Bedouin tribes, put an end to his work and compelled its abandonment. His experiences, however, as the first one who lived and worked for Christ among the nomads in the black tents of Kedar is valuable for the future. The door of access was not closed by the Bedouins themselves, but by the Turks. Mr. Van Tassel found the Arabs very friendly, and willing to hear the Bible read, especially the Old Testament. He found none of the fanaticism of the towns, and even persuaded the sheikhs to rest their caravans on the Sabbath day. It is interesting to note that the North Africa Mission was led to enter North Arabia through the representations of General Haig, then one of their council. At present they have no workers in Arabia, although that name still finds a place in their reports every month with the pathetic rehearsal:[141] “Northern Arabia is peopled by the Bedouin descendants of Ishmael; they are not bigoted Moslems, like the Syrians, but willing to be enlightened. This portion of the field is sadly in need of laborers.”

In 1898 the Christian and Missionary Alliance of New York again called attention to the needs of Northern Arabia through Mr. Forder, formerly of the Kerak mission. He attempted to enter into the interior, by way of Damascus, but met with an accident, which prevented the undertaking.

Before sketching the lives of the two great pioneer missionaries to Arabia, we must chronicle the appeal for the dark peninsula that came from the heart of the Dark Continent. Not only because this appeal belongs to the early dawn of Arabian missions, but because of its remarkable character and its author. Henry Martyn in 1811 wrote at Muscat, “there is a promise in reserve for the sons of Joktan”; Alexander Mackay, from Uganda in 1888, took up the strain, and, in closing his long plea for a mission to the Arabs of Muscat, wrote: “May it soon be said, ‘This day is salvation come to this house forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham.’”

This plea, written only two years before Mackay’s death, and dated, August, 1888, Usambiro, Central Africa, is a great missionary document for two reasons; it breathes the spirit of Christianity in showing love to one’s enemies and it points out the real remedy against the slave-trade. And yet Mackay accompanied his carefully written article with this modest letter: “I enclose a few lines on a subject which has been weighing on my mind for some time. I shall not be disappointed if you consign them to the waste-paper basket, and shall only be too glad if, on a better representation on the part of others, the subject be taken up and something definite be done for these poor Arabs, whom I respect, but who have given me much trouble in years past. The best way by which we can turn the edge of their opposition and convert their blasphemy into blessing is to do our utmost for their salvation.”[142]

In this article Mackay pleads for Arabia for Africa’s sake and asks that “Muscat, which is in more senses than one the key to Central Africa,” be occupied by a strong mission. “I do not deny,” he writes, “that the task is difficult; and the men selected for work in Muscat must be endowed with no small measure of the Spirit of Jesus, besides possessing such linguistic ability as to be able to reach not only the ears, but the very hearts of men.” He pleads for half a dozen men, the pick of the English universities, to make the venture in faith. His continual reason for the crying need of such a mission is the strong influence it would exert in Africa because of the Arab traders. “It is almost needless to say that the outlook in Africa will be considerably brightened by the establishment of a mission to the Arabs in Muscat.” “The Arabs have helped us often and have hindered us likewise. We owe them therefore a double debt, which, I can see no more affective way of paying than by at once establishing a strong mission at their very headquarters—Muscat itself.”

Mackay was not unaware of the great difficulties of work among Mohammedans and in Arabia; he calls it “a gigantic project” and terms Arabia “the cradle of Islam.” But his faith is so strong, that at the very beginning of his article he quotes the remarkable resolution of the Church Missionary Society passed on May 1st, 1888, regarding work for Mohammedans.[143]

The effect of Mackay’s pleading was that the veteran Bishop French took up the challenge and laid down his life at Muscat. That life has “such linguistic capacity as to be able,” evermore “to reach not only the ears but the very hearts of men” in a way even far above the thought of Alexander Mackay of Uganda.