The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870
The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870

Author: Thomas O'Flynn

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-08-28

Total Pages: 1141

ISBN-13: 9004313540

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Winner of The 2018 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award In The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c.1760–c.1870, Thomas O'Flynn vividly paints the life and times of missionary enterprises in early nineteenth-century Russia and Persia at a moment of immense change when Tsarist Russia embarked on an expansionist campaign reaching to the Caucasus. Simultaneously he charts the relationship between the new Persian dynasty of the Qājārs and missionary activity on the part of European and American missionaries. This book reconstructs that world from a predominantly religious perspective. It recounts the sustaining ideals as well as the everyday struggles of the western missionaries, Protestant (Scottish, Basel and American Congregationalist) and Catholic (Jesuit and Vincentian). It looks at the reactions of diverse tribal peoples, the Tatars of the North Caucasus, the Kabardians and Circassians. Persia was the ultimate goal of these missionaries, which they eventually reached in the 1820s. Altogether this study throws light on the troubled course of history in West Asia and provides the background to politico-religious conflicts in Chechnya and Persia that persist to the present day.

The Iranian Christian Diaspora
The Iranian Christian Diaspora

Author: Benedikt Römer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0755651707

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Over the past few decades, whilst evading severe governmental restrictions in Iran, the Iranian Evangelical diaspora has grown across Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, the US and the UK. Far from the censorship of the Islamic Republic, Iranian Evangelical pastors and ministers publish Persian-language Christian magazines and online videos with the aim to reach the transnational Iranian Christian community, as well as potential converts in Iran. This book explores notions of nationhood and diasporic dwelling in the religious narratives and practices of Iranian Christian exilic communities, showing how claims to the authenticity of a distinct Iranian-Christian identity are constructed. Examining abundant source material available in the Iranian Christian exilic milieu, the book draws extensively upon five unstudied series of Persian-language Christian exile magazines published between the early 1990s and the 2020s, Persian-language video material and a number of interviews with Iranian Christian pastors with leadership positions in the Iranian Christian diaspora. These sources demonstrate the significance of exile and religious affiliation as key factors shaping diasporic images of the homeland and visions of a future return. Benedikt Römer weaves the history and contemporary story of the Iranian Christian community together, placing it in the context of a wider ongoing religious transformation in Iranian society.

American-Iranian Dialogues
American-Iranian Dialogues

Author: Matthew K. Shannon

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-07

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1350118737

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Bringing together historians of US foreign relations and scholars of Iranian studies, American-Iranian Dialogues examines the cultural connections between Americans and Iranians from the constitutional period of the 1890s through to the start of the White Revolution in the 1960s. Taking an innovative cultural approach, chapters are centred around major themes in American-Iranian encounters and cultural exchange throughout this period, including stories of origin, cultural representations, nationalism and discourses on development. Expert contributors draw together different strands of US-Iranian relations to discuss a range of path-breaking topics such as the history of education, heritage exchange, oil development and the often-overlooked interactions between American and Iranian non-state actors. Through exploring the understudied cultural dimensions of US-Iranian relations, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in American history, international history, Iranian studies and Middle Eastern studies.

An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville
An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville

Author: Reza Aslan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1324004487

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In this erudite and piercing biography, best-selling author Reza Aslan proves that one person’s actions can have revolutionary consequences that reverberate the world over. Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a twenty-two-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution—the first of its kind in the Middle East—led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament. The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers. “The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth," Baskerville declared, “and that is not a big difference.” In 1909, Baskerville was killed in battle alongside his students, but his martyrdom spurred on the revolutionaries who succeeded in removing the shah from power, signing a new constitution, and rebuilding parliament in Tehran. To this day, Baskerville’s tomb in the city of Tabriz remains a place of pilgrimage. Every year, thousands of Iranians visit his grave to honor the American who gave his life for Iran. In this rip-roaring tale of his life and death, Aslan gives us a powerful parable about the universal ideals of democracy—and to what degree Americans are willing to support those ideals in a foreign land. Woven throughout is an essential history of the nation we now know as Iran—frequently demonized and misunderstood in the West. Indeed, Baskerville’s life and death represent a “road not taken” in Iran. Baskerville’s story, like his life, is at the center of a whirlwind in which Americans must ask themselves: How seriously do we take our ideals of constitutional democracy and whose freedom do we support?

Mission Manifest
Mission Manifest

Author: Matthew K. Shannon

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2024-06-15

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1501775960

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In Mission Manifest, Matthew Shannon argues that American evangelicals were central to American-Iranian relations during the decades leading up to the 1979 revolution. These Presbyterian missionaries and other Americans with ideals worked with US government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and their Iranian counterparts as cultural and political brokers—the living sinews of a binational relationship during the Second World War and early Cold War. As US global hegemony peaked between the 1940s and the 1960s, the religious authority of the Presbyterian Mission merged with the material power of the American state to infuse US foreign relations with the messianic ideals of Christian evangelicalism. In Tehran, the missions of American evangelicals became manifest in the realms of religion, development programs, international education, and cultural associations. Americans who lived in Iran also returned to the United States to inform the growth of the national security state, higher education, and evangelical culture. The literal and figurative missions of American evangelicals in late Pahlavi Iran had consequences for the binational relationship, the global evangelical movement, and individual Americans and Iranians. Mission Manifest offers a history of living, breathing people who shared personal, professional, and political aims in Iran at the height of American global power.

The Travels of Robert Lyall, 1789–1831
The Travels of Robert Lyall, 1789–1831

Author: Gwyn Campbell

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-01-25

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 3030516482

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This book explores the life of Robert Lyall, surgeon, botanist, voyager, British Agent to the court of Madagascar. Born the year of the French Revolution, Lyall grew up in politically radical Paisley, Scotland, before studying medicine, in Edinburgh, Manchester, and subsequently St. Petersburg, Russia. His criticism of the Tsar and Russian aristocracy led to an abrupt departure for London where Lyall became the voice of liberalism and calls for political reform, before appointed British Resident Agent in Madagascar in 1827, representing the interests of the Tory establishment that he had hitherto so roundly castigated. However, Lyall discovered that the Malagasy crown had turned against the British alliance of 1820, his scientific pursuits alienated the local elite, and his efforts to re-establish British influence antagonized the queen, Ranavalona I, who accused Lyall of sorcery and forced him and his burgeoning family to leave for Mauritius where he died an untimely death, of malaria, in 1831.

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History Volume 20. Iran, Afghanistan and the Caucasus (1800-1914)
Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History Volume 20. Iran, Afghanistan and the Caucasus (1800-1914)

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-02-27

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 9004526900

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Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 20 (CMR 20) is about relations between Muslims and Christians in Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the period from 1800 to 1914. It gives descriptions, assessments and bibliographical details of all known works between the faiths from this period.

Colonialism and Communalism
Colonialism and Communalism

Author: M. Christhu Doss

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-04-09

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1040019994

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Christhu Doss examines how the colonial construct of communalism through the fault lines of the supposed religious neutrality, the hunger for the bread of life, the establishment of exclusive village settlements for the proselytes, the rhetoric of Victorian morality, the booby-traps of modernity, and the subversion of Indian cultural heritage resulted in a radical reorientation of religious allegiance that eventually created a perpetual detachment between proselytes and the “others.” Exploring the trajectories of communalism, Doss demonstrates how the multicultural Indian society, known widely for its composite culture, and secular convictions were categorized, compartmentalized, and communalized by the racialized religious pretensions. A vital read for historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and all those who are interested in religions, cultures, identity politics, and decolonization in modern India.

Asylum and Conversion to Christianity in Europe
Asylum and Conversion to Christianity in Europe

Author: Lena Rose

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1350407895

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Drawing together previously disjointed scholarship on the topic of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity, this book shows how boundaries of belonging are negotiated between Middle Eastern ex-Muslim asylum seekers, church representatives, lawyers, legal decision-makers and policymakers. With case studies from European countries such as Germany, Austria, Finland and Sweden, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach including ethnographic and other qualitative research, discourse analysis and case law analysis, to explore the complexities of the phenomenon of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity. This book is an authoritative resource for academic scholars in fields as diverse as migration and refugee studies, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, law and socio-legal studies, as well as legal and religious practitioners.

Promised Lands
Promised Lands

Author: Jonathan Parry

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-12-10

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0691231443

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A major history of the British Empire’s early involvement in the Middle East Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 showed how vulnerable India was to attack by France and Russia. It forced the British Empire to try to secure the two routes that a European might use to reach the subcontinent—through Egypt and the Red Sea, and through Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Promised Lands is a panoramic history of this vibrant and explosive age. Charting the development of Britain’s political interest in the Middle East from the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimean War in the 1850s, Jonathan Parry examines the various strategies employed by British and Indian officials, describing how they sought influence with local Arabs, Mamluks, Kurds, Christians, and Jews. He tells a story of commercial and naval power—boosted by the arrival of steamships in the 1830s—and discusses how classical and biblical history fed into British visions of what these lands might become. The region was subject to the Ottoman Empire, yet the sultan’s grip on it appeared weak. Should Ottoman claims to sovereignty be recognised and exploited, or ignored and opposed? Could the Sultan’s government be made to support British objectives, or would it always favour France or Russia? Promised Lands shows how what started as a geopolitical contest became a drama about diplomatic competition, religion, race, and the unforeseen consequences of history.