Revival and awakening : American evangelical missionaries in Iran and the origins of Assyrian nationalism

Most Americans have little understanding of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the Middle East. They assume that the two are rooted fundamentally in regional history, not in the history of contact with the broader world. However, as Adam H. Becker shows in this book, Americans—through their missionaries—had a strong hand in the development of a national and modern religious identity among one of the Middle East's most intriguing (and little-known) groups: the modern Assyrians. Detailing the history of the Assyrian Christian minority and the powerful influence American missionaries had on them, he unveils the underlying connection between modern global contact and the retrieval of an ancient identity. American evangelicals arrived in Iran in the 1830s. Becker examines how these missionaries, working with the “Nestorian” Church of the East—an Aramaic-speaking Christian community in the borderlands between Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empire—catalyzed, over the span of sixty years, a new national identity. Instructed at missionary schools in both Protestant piety and Western science, this indigenous group eventually used its newfound scriptural and archaeological knowledge to link itself to the history of the ancient Assyrians, which in time led to demands for national autonomy. Exploring the unintended results of this American attempt to reform the Orient, Becker paints a larger picture of religion, nationalism, and ethnic identity in the modern era. Contents 8 Prelude: A Song of Assyria 10 Acknowledgments 16 Note on Transliteration and Names 18 Introduction: Religious Reform, Nationalism, and Christian Mission 20 1. The Church of the East before the Modern Missionary Encounter: Historicizing Religion before “Religion” 56 2. A Residence of Eight Years in Persia (1843): Mr. Perkins of West Springfield, Massachusetts, meets Mar Yokhannan of Gawilan, Persia 90 3. Printing the Living Word: Moral Reform and the Awakening of Nation and Self (1841–70) 121 4. Being Together in the Living Word: The Mission and Evangelical Sociality (1834–70) 156 5. Death, the Maiden, and Dreams of Revival 200 6. National Contestation and Evangelical Consciousness: The Journals of Native Assistants 242 7. Continuity and Change in the Late Nineteenth Century: New Institutions, Missionary Competition, and the First Generation of Nationalists 276 8. Retrieving the Ruins of Nineveh: Language Reform, Orientalizing Autoethnography, and the Demand for National Literature 318 Epilogue: Mirza David George Malik (1861–1931) and the Engaged Ambivalence of Poetry in Exile 358 Notes 378 Bibliography 418 Index 438 This volume examines how the presence of an American evangelical mission in the borderlands between Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century contributed to the development of a secular nationalism among the indigenous Neo-Aramaic speaking Christian population of the region. A particular evangelical configuration of modernity was cultivated at the mission in the antebellum period, one belonging to a visceral realm often unrecognised in characterisations of secularism and the Enlightenment Shows that Americans themselves through their missionaries had a strong hand in the development of one of the Middle East's most intriguing groups: the modern Assyrians. This book examines how these missionaries, working with the "Nestorian" Church of the East, an Aramaic-speaking Christian community in the borderlands between Qajar Iran and more.