1

Moffett, Samuel Hugh . A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, 1500-

1900, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545. 742 pp, with index. 2005.
Reviewed by: George V. Yana (Bebla)

Editorial Note:
For the reader who intends to keep abreast the latest publications on
Christianity in Asia but finds Professor Moffett’s comprehensive historical
account in two volumes prohibitive to read, George Yana’s concise summary is a
welcome alternative. This article is selective in the sense that it focuses on
volume II that traces the history of specific Christian sects with an affinity to the
Assyrian Christians.

Brief biography
Professor Moffett was born in Korea of American parents, he taught for
four years in China, under both Nationalist and Communist governments. He
worked in Korea from 1951 until 1981. Dr. Moffett lives in Princeton, New
Jersey.

Introduction
As many of the readers may know, professor. Moffett’s volume one, which
covers the history of Christianity in Asia from beginnings to 1500, has become
an important resource and authoritative reference book for both Assyrians and
those students and scholars who follow the history of Christianity in Asia. This is
especially true with regard to the history of the Church of the East and the
“Syrian Period,” where “The Assyrian Christians of Arbela” and “Tatian the
Assyrian” are introduced.
Volume 2 covers four centuries of great missionary outreach with
ambiguous results. The author narrates, in an engaging manner, the history of
Christianity in countries such as India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, the
Philippines, Japan and many more.
All missionary denominations such as Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian
are given full consideration. The histories of the Church of the East, the
Jacobites, Maronites, and the Armenians are treated under separate chapters.
The story flows chronologically, covering country after country, while throwing
light on the social and religious environment where the missionaries were active.
As the activities of the missionaries involved dealing with Muslims and Hindus,
the author provides a brief history of the penetration of Islam and some
explanation about Hinduism.
It should be noted that the author of the book under review often uses the
name Nestorian when referring to the Church of the east. No doubt, the author
knows that the name Nestorian is a misnomer, and it would prove a better choice
1
Samuel Hugh Moffett is Henry Luce Professor Emeritus of Ecumenics and Mission at
Princeton Theological Seminary.
43
44 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

if, instead, he used the name “Church of the East.” Familiarity may be the reason
for using the name Nestorian, but, if the right name is used all the time, it will, in
time, create its own familiarity.
Regarding the subject of names, the author writes:
“On the use of the name “Nestorian,” and its alternatives (Syrian,
Chaldean, Assyrian) from the eighteenth century to the present, see John
Henry Joseph, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors: A Study of
Western Influence on Their Relations (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1961), 3ff. Many whom Westerners call Nestorians are quick to
point out that their “Church of the East,” as they proudly call themselves,
2
antedates Nestorius by several centuries.”
This review will focus mainly on the Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, St.
Thomas Christians of India, and a brief account of Armenians. The history of
Christianity in the major countries such as Japan, China, and Korea will not be
introduced.

Part I: They Came by Sea:

The Return of the West (1500-1800)
Chapter 1: India (1500-1700) St. Thomas or St. Peter
3
The St. Thomas (Mar Thoma) Christians and the Portuguese
When Da Gama sailed from the coast of Kenya in Africa to India, he took
with him a man who claimed to be an Indian Christian. From the commissions
the explorers had received from the pope in Rome and the king of Portugal, it is
clear that they expected to find fellow Christians in India. Evidently, the pope
and the king of Portugal were referring to the Mar Thoma Christians of India,
converted by the missionaries of the Church of the East; because, Christianity
was brought to India by the Church of the East, and the Mar Thoma Christians
were the only Christians in India.
4
Da Gama first landed in Calicut (1498 ), the southwest corner of India, and was
shocked by the number of Muslims in the predominantly Hindu town.
The second explorer to land in Calicut was Pedro Alvarez Cabral in 1501
with six ships and nineteen missionaries (including eight Franciscans). Next,
Cabral sailed south to Cranganore, a large and ancient center of Thomas
Christians near Cochin, where for the first time, the Portuguese made contact
with them. Cochin was at the center of Kerala’s rich pepper fields, and the Mar
Thoma Christians there had been isolated from the rest of the Christian world.
The Mar Thoma Christians rejoiced at the arrival of fellow Christians. When the
Mar Thoma Christians first met Da Gama in 1503, it was “with all the
enthusiasm of a religious minority anticipating the end of cast discrimination by
2
Page 206, note 2.
3
Pages 3-9.
4
Encyclopedia Britannica, CD 2005.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 45

5
Hindus and outright enmity by Muslims.”
G.M. Moraes, the Indian church historian, estimates that there were then
about one hundred thousand Mar Thoma Christians along the Malabar Coast,
now known as Kerala. There were about fifty Christian communities, and the
strongest were in two of the empire’s minor Hindu kingdoms, Cranganore
(Kodungalor) and Quilon (Kollam). A St. Thomas cross, made of stone, was
found in Alangad (Mangate). Ecclesiastically, the Mar Thoma Christians
recognized the authority of the Nestorian patriarch in Mesopotamian Persia, that
is the Church of the East, and were in the process of restoring their own
metropolitanate under that authority, just as the Portuguese arrived.
The Mar Thoma Christians of India, in 1490, had sent representatives to
Patriarch Simon (Shimon V, A.D. 1472-1502) to restore their episcopate. Mar
Shimon responded with the appointment of two Syrian bishops from Persia,
namely, Mar John (Mar Youkhanna) and Mar Thomas.
The successor of Mar Shimun, Elias V, continued his support of the Mar
Thoma Christians by sending a metropolitan named Yahbalaha (Yavalaha), and
two bishops, George (renamed Mar Jacob), and Mar Denha. These emissaries
reported to the patriarch a moving account of the Portuguese landings, which has
6
survived.
The Portuguese soon discovered that the Mar Thoma Christians were a
different kind of Christian, and reported their findings to Rome. The Portuguese
realized that the Mar Thoma Christians recognized the patriarch of the Church of
the East in Persia, not the pope, as the head of the church. The liturgical language
of the Mar Thoma Christians was Syriac, not Latin. Their priests married, while
the Roman priests were celibate.
The St. Thomas churches had no images, something that the Portuguese
considered to indicate a lack of proper reverence to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and
the saints. The Portuguese attributed this to ignorance rather than to faithfulness
to the traditions of the ancient Church of the East, in which they had been raised.
Portuguese began to press the Indian Christians, sometimes gently and sometime
7
rudely, to conform to Western Catholic customs, but they met with resistance.
8
Francis Xavier and the Jesuits
The Jesuits came forty years after the first Portuguese landing, and this
marked the second stage in the Latinizing of the Indian church. The first and
greatest representative of the Jesuits was Francis Xavier (1506-1552). Xavier
later left India to start a mission in Japan (1549-1552), and died off the coast of
China.

5
Page 5
6
Page 5-6
7
Page 6
8
Pages 9-12.
46 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

9
Friction between Thomas Christians and the Missions
After the departure of Xavier and the death of Mar Jacob, relations between
the Indian Christians and the Portuguese worsened. Mar Thoma Christians
describe the events as the suppression and disfigurement of the native identity of
the Malabar church, and the use of coercion, rather than evangelism, to convert.
In 1553 a schism in Persian Kurdistan between rival patriarch-elect Sulaqa
10
and Mar Denkha broke the unity of the Church of the East. Mar Sulaqa made
submission to Pope Julius III, and was ordained patriarch as a Uniate that is, a
Roman Catholic. He was permitted to follow a non-Latin liturgy, in this case
Syriac. Mar Denkha claimed the loyalty of traditional Nestorians, and thus began
a division in two lines of succession. This rivalry spread to India, causing the
weakening of its Thomas Christians.
John Sulaqa’s successor, Mar Abdisho the Uniate (Catholic) patriarch of the
new line, sent two bishops who arrived in Goa, India, in 1556. They were Joseph,
a brother of John Sulaqa, and Elias. The presence of these bishops from the
Church of the East caused problems. Although the Uniate bishops from
Mesopotamia were officially related as Uniates to Rome, Rome had already
placed all of India under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Goa. When Bishop
Joseph began showing partiality toward the Thomas Christians and their ancient
heritage, he was twice tried for heresy or insubordination, and was ordered back
to Portugal. After this incident, there is no mention of Bishop Elias, which means
that the Thomas Christians were left without a bishop. Naturally, they asked their
older mother church in Mesopotamia for a replacement. The patriarch of the old-
line Church of the East responded by consecrating a Thomas Christian as
Metropolitan Mar Abraham and sending him back to India. To avoid a repeat of
the treatment of Bishop Joseph, Mar Abraham eluded the authorities in Goa and
went straight to Thomas Christian territory in the south.
Mar Abraham served as metropolitan of the church for thirty stormy years
from 1569 to 1597, stubbornly refusing to bow to Goa’s claim of primacy. He
was the only Indian bishop to be consecrated three times, once by the old-line
patriarch, once by a new-line, or Chaldean patriarch, and once by the pope in
Rome.
In 1560 the Portuguese established the rule of the Inquisition in India,
which, as a step toward the westernization of the Thomas Christians, further
aggravated their sensibilities.
The enforcement of this “distasteful” form of religious control was placed
in the hands of the archbishop of Goa, who now carried a double title- bishop and
grand inquisitor.

9
Page 12.
10
In page 207, note 13 of the book, 1553 is the date Sulaqa submitted to the pope. But
1551 seems to be the date the successor of Bar Mama was installed. See also Aubrey
R. Vine in “The Nestorian Churches,” page 171, where the date is given as 1551
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 47

The inquisition represented a constant threat to the leaders of the Thomas

Christians, who might be targeted as heretics if they strayed into their old
traditional Syrian ways, from the Latin ways of the Portuguese. As an estimate,
11
the Catholics numbered their membership at 280,000.
12
The Synod of Diamper (1559)
Alexis de Menezes, a young new archbishop, arrived in Goa in 1595. Menezes
was appointed archbishop of Goa and primate of all India. He was determined to
settle once and for all the primacy of Rome in ruling the Indian church, and not
the Syrians of the Church of the East of any stripe. Menezes had orders to force
the Thomas Christians to renounce their errors and accept Roman jurisdiction
under a loyal, thoroughly Roman bishop to be selected as the successor of Mar
Abraham.
The current Indian archdeacon was Parambil George, known to the
Portuguese as George of the Cross. George was not only the administrative
leader of the Syrian church, but also the spiritual leader, as decreed by custom, in
time when no metropolitan appointed by Baghdad was in office in India. George
accepted the appointment of a bishop by Rome, but insisted that Thomas
Christians could worship only under a Syrian bishop.
Menezes wrote to Rome “They have taken an oath that if His Holiness
sends them a Syrian Bishop, they will obey him; but if he is a Latin, they will take
13
counsel.”
Disregarding Archdeacon George’s advice, Menezes moved in three
directions in order to bring Thomas Christians under the Latin, not Syrian rule.
First, by using his Portuguese pomp and power he influenced the Hindu rajah of
Cochin to abandon his support of the rights of his Indian Christian subjects.
Second, using the opportunity offered by the absence of a Syrian Indian bishop,
he ordained close to ninety new Indian priests, and asked them to disavow any
connection with the Church of the East in Mesopotamia. He thus created an
ecclesiastical power base loyal to him personally. When Archdeacon George
protested this unwarranted violation of his rights as vicar general of the St.
Thomas Christians, and threatened to excommunicate anyone that was ordained
in this fashion, Menezes proceeded to the third and final step of his campaign, the
calling of a general synod aimed at the legitimization of the absolute authority of
Rome over the Syrian community.
The synod ruled that there could not be two laws for the Christians of India,
one for St. Thomas and one for St. Peter. Therefore, the only law that applies is
the law of Christ. It said that Christ has only one vicar, who, is “head of the
whole Church on earth… and all who deny his obedience to the said

11
Page 13
12
Pages 13-16.
13
Page 14
48 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

Roman Bishop … are transgressors of the Divine Commands, and cannot attain
14
Eternal Life.”
The synod also renounced all “Nestorian heresies” in general and the
“heretical and schismatic” jurisdiction of the Syrian “patriarch of Babylon” in
particular. Even today’s Catholics agree that the patriarch was slandered. The
patriarch at the time was Mar Simon IX Denha. The synod also removed the
names of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodorus of Tarsus, Narsai, and other greatly
revered fathers of the Church of the East, from the calendar and prayers. The
books were to be examined, corrected or burned if found to have serious errors.
According to one author, there were fifteen doctrines in which the Indian
Christians differed with Rome, and which according to him, seemed proper
Anglican. “For example the Malabar church condemns the pope’s supremacy;
denies transubstantiation; condemns images; denies purgatory, auricular
15
confession, and extreme unction; and allows its priests to marry.”
The Synod of Diamper is considered the most important event in the life of
the Indian church during the period from 1498 to 1653 of the Portuguese rule.
Menezes appointed a Latin bishop, the irenic Jesuit Francis Roz as bishop of the
Syrian church. But it was not long before Francis discovered he had inherited a
crown of thorns.
The Synod of Diamper not only did not unite the Syrian and Roman
16
Christianity in India, it led to divisions that persist to this day.
17
The Drift from Nestorian to Jacobite Connections
The most serious rivalry in the St. Thomas Church was between those loyal
to Rome and the independent East Syrian protesters. Both were headed by Indian
bishops, Alexander Chandy (Parambil) on the Latin side, and Thomas Parambil
on the East Syrian side.
Bishop Thomas the metropolitan on the East Syrian side was an archdeacon
consecrated by his own priests. Therefore, he felt some doubts about the
authenticity of his consecration.
He, therefore, wrote letters to all non-Roman Eastern patriarchs: the Church
of the East in Baghdad, the Jacobite Church of Antioch, and the Coptic Church in
Alexandria, asking if any of them would send a bishop to confirm his title. In
1665 Mar Gregorios, a Jacobite Monophysite from Antioch responded to the call.
“This was the beginning of a drift from Persian (Chaldean) Nestorianism
to Antiochene (Jacobite) Orthodoxy, a shift of jurisdictional loyalty of
great historic and ecclesiastical significance, but one that in India evolved

14
Page 14
15
Page 15
16
Ibid
17
Pages 19-20
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 49

almost unnoticed at first by the St. Thomas Christians, who had for
18
centuries been isolated from thetheological controversies of the west.”
Syrian practices that were outlawed by the Synod of Diamper, were
gradually reintroduced. For example marriage of the clergy was reintroduced,
and the statues and crucifixes were removed from the sanctuaries. But, by the end
of the seventeenth century the independent St. Thomas Christians were non-
Roman and non- Nestorian. They had become Jacobite and were to remain so for
about one hundred years.
In 1708 bishop Gabriel was sent by Patriarch Elias X in Mesopotamia to
19
restore the Mar Thoma Christians of India to the old fold. Only a few followed
him, although the Dutch preferred him over the Jacobite Orthodox Bishop Mar
Thoma IV.
The Syrian Christians were gradually driven to the mountains by the
Portuguese, where they were called the people of the Serra.
An estimate suggests that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the
total number of Malabar Christians was 307000, of which 18700 had accepted
20
the Roman rule and 120000 followed the rule of the Jacobite bishop of Antioch.
21
Part I: Chapter 9: West Asia under the Turks and Persians (1500-1800)
“At Long last [in 1820 C.J. Rich] revealed to the English-speaking races
the astounding facts about the Assyrians, who still conversed in a language
similar to that spoken by Jesus and the Apostles, and whose peculiar form
22
of Christianity called for study and sympathy.”
This period covers the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation and
absolute monarchies in Europe. This is the period of discovery, prompted by the
western man, described as restless, inventive and daring. What economic and
social conditions made him restless, inventive and daring are beyond the scope of
this review. What the west wanted was access to the fabled riches of the Orient.
But, access by land to these riches was barred, not by geography, but by religion.
After throwing the Crusaders out of Asia in the thirteenth century, Islam
ruled west Asia for 150 years, guarding it against Western or Christian intrusion.
The formidable wall blocking Europe from accessing the riches of the Orient

18
Page 19-20
19
It should be noted that the Elias patriarchs represent the old line of Shimun VII Bar
Mama that originated in the breakup of 1551. The other line was originated by John
Sulaka, who was ordained in Rome in 1553, during the papacy of Pope Julius III, and
is known as the new line. See Aubrey R. Vine, “The Nestorian Churches,” pages
170-175.
20
Page 19-20.
21
Pages 193-205.
22
Quotation from A. S. Atiya, page 193 of the book under review.
50 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

were the two great Muslim empires of Ottoman Turkey (1300-1918), and Safavid
Persia (1500-1736). The cement that sealed this wall tight was the ancient enmity
between the Muslims and Christian religions.
After the fall of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1454 (1453 according to other
sources) at the hands of the Turks, Islam launched its own holy war against
Christian Europe. From Istanbul, the Turks moved north into the Balkans. The
Turks were not able to maintain their success in Europe because the two Muslim
empires, Turkey and Persia, had a crack, a fissure, in their religion. Shi’ite
Muslim Persia and Sunni Muslim Turkey were enemies. This crack in the fabric
of Muslim unity was one reason Christianity in West Asia survived after the
23
mass devastations of Tamerlane (Teimoure Lang, dead in 1405).
24
The Nestorians on the Turko-Persian Borders
The author begins by mentioning the habitat of the Nestorians, east of the
Euphrates River, in the mountains of Kurdistan. They lived in villages within an
inverted triangle, with its summit in Mosul, ancient Nineveh, and its base running
from Lake Van in Turkish Armenia, to Lake Urmia in Iran. He then explains that
these people trace their theology to Theodore of Mopsuestia, a fifth-century
bishop north of Antioch, in Syria. Nestorians also trace their roots to the first-
century pioneers of Christianity in Edessa (ancient Mesopotamia, now Urfa,
Turkey).
After the death of Tamerlane, “the Scourge of God,” the scattered remnants
of the once great Church of the East, was gradually being driven out of the cities
into the mountains on the borders between Turkey and Iran.
Despite its precarious situation, the Church of the East had managed to maintain
a line of patriarchs. The author reminds the reader that two hundred years earlier
a Mongol patriarch, converted to Christianity by the Church of the East, ruled
from his base in the capital of the Persian Empire. At that time the missionary
Church of the east stretched from the Euphrates River to China. By 1500 the
missionaries were gone, and the patriarch was hiding in the mountains.
In 1490, Simon V, or his predecessor Simon IV, received a surprise visit by
two Christian pilgrims who had come from the Malabar Coast in India, working
their way upstream on the Tigris River from Mosul, and had reached his village
Gazarta. They had traveled three thousand perilous miles to ask the patriarch for
their ordination by a bishop since no bishop was left in India. The patriarch
25
complied with their request and sent them back.
After the fall of the Mongols and the establishment of the Safavid dynasty
(1500-1732) in Iran, the Nestorians living east of the Euphrates River hoped
against hope for a better future. West of the Euphrates River, Sultan Salim of

23
Page 193
24
Pages 194-195.
25
Page 194.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 51

Ottoman Turkey was slaughtering Christians, Jews and Shi’ite Moslems by the
thousands. Shah Isma’il (1500-1524), the founder of the Safavid dynasty in
Persia had a softer policy toward religious minorities. His treatment of the
religious dzimmis (ghettos) followed the traditional recognition of the minorities
under the leadership of their patriarch. Shah Abbas I (1587-1628) went so far as
to propose an alliance between Shi’ite Persia and the Christian west against the
common enemy, Sunny Turkey. The alliance did not materialize and Shah Abbas
turned violently against Christians.
The intermittent persecutions between 1500 and 1800 by both the Ottoman
and Persian rule were serious enough to force the Nestorians to depart from their
own canon law. According to this law, the patriarch must be elected by the free
and public vote of bishops. Now, in order to preserve the Christian integrity of
patriarchal succession they decided to make the office hereditary. This led to
26
mediocrity and a schism.
27
The Nestorian Schism of the Sixteenth Century
Patriarch Simon VII bar Mama, after moving from Gazarta to a new mountain
retreat nearer to Mosul at Rabban Hormuzd in 1551 named his nephew to
succeed him. He was installed as Simon VII Denha (1551-1558).
There was a rebellion against this decision led by three bishops, a number
of clergy, and some of the most prominent leaders. They elected as patriarch
John Sulaqa, a monk from the Rabban Hormuzd monastery, who took the name
Simon (Shimon) VIII.
With the aid of the Franciscan missionaries in Mosul he was escorted to
Rome where he submitted loyalty to Pope Julius III and was named patriarch of
the Chaldeans.
From this point onward, and for the next three hundred years, the loyalty of
the Nestorians of Turkey and Iran was split between these two lines of patriarchs,
namely, the old line of Shimon VII bar Mama, and the new line of Sulaqa.
The old line claimed to represent the traditional ancient Church of the East
and the patriarchs of Selucia-Ctesiphon. The Sulaqa new line claimed to be more
authentically canonical, and interpreted its connection with the pope as the
recognition of a wider Christian unity.
But the turn of events reversed the positions of the two lines of
patriarchates. The new line of Sulaqa turned independent Nestorian and the old
line of Simon bar Mama joined Rome, becoming Uniate Chaldean. This outcome
occurred in the course of two centuries, in an irregular manner as follows.
First, the relations of the Sulaqa line with Rome cooled, and in 1600 they
reverted to the hereditary succession of patriarchs. Then around 1670 they
omitted the patriarchal vow of allegiance to Rome.

26
Page 194-195
27
Pages 195-197.
52 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

“About this time [1670] also, the old-line patriarchate [should be the new-
28
line] moved its seat a short distance across the border from Urmi in
Azerbaijan to Kurdestan in Turkey, where it now claimed inheritance of
the non-Catholic old Nestorian line from which it had separated in
1551…Thus somewhat vaguely Rome lost its formal relationship with the
29
new-line Nestorians.”
In the seventeenth century Rome tried to recognize both lines of patriarch,
giving the successors of the Sulaqa line the title “Patriarch of Oriental Assyria”,
and those of the old-line Simon bar Mama the title “Patriarch of Babylon.”
Finally in 1830 Rome admitted the traditional Nestorian old-line church [of
Shimun bar Mama] into full status as Uniate or Chaldean, Catholic. From what
preceded, this reviewer concludes that if the Chaldean Church is the Church of
the traditional old line, then the Church of the East, that does not call itself
30
Chaldean, must be the new line, the continuation of the Sulaqa line. Moffett
writes:
“The miracle is that Romanized “Chaldeans” (Uniates) and Assyrian
Nestorians alike, both still speaking a form of the Syriac language of
Dadyeshu and Mar Aba a millennium earlier, were still Christian in their
precarious homeland among the mountains and by the rivers that water the
31
Fertile Crescent.”
32
The Jacobites
The thirteenth century saw the decline of the Jacobite Monophysite
Orthodoxy. It began when the tolerant Mongol rulers of western Asia became
Muslim. Tamerlane, a century later, wiped them out. He destroyed monasteries,
burned their books, and killed their leaders. Those who survived escaped to
mountains and caves, until his death around 1404. Then it was the Turks who
took over the job of suffocating the recovery of Christians for another five
centuries. When all this was done, by the nineteenth century, there were probably
33
about two hundred thousand Jacobites left.

28
For two reasons this reviewer thinks that this should be the new-line, rather than the
old-line. First, further down it says “from which it had separated in 1551,” then it
adds “Rome lost its formal relationship with the new-line Nestorians.” It was the
Sulaqa line, the new, line that separated, and they were the ones who joined Rome,
that now Rome lost its relationship with.
29
Page 196.
30
See Aubrey R. Vine (The Nestorian Churches, London), pages 170-176. With regard
to Mar Shimun, Vine, in page 175 writes: he represents the line of patriarchs founded
by Sulaka, originally uniate.
31
Page 197
32
Page 197.
33
Ibid
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 53

34
Catholic Missions in West Asia
The Catholic mission in Persia, after having been expelled during the Crusades,
began in 1507 when the Portuguese occupied the Persian island of Hormuz,
situated at the entrance of the Persian Gulf.
The Portuguese hoped to make the island the base for Catholic penetration
of the Persian Empire. In 1570 a group of Augustinian chaplains was sent to
Hormuz for the Portuguese military and trade personnel. In 1582 King Philip of
Spain and Portugal sent Simon Morales, their prior, as ambassador to the court of
the Shah of Persia. At that time the Safavid dynasty was ruling Iran. Morales had
the advantage of having learned Persian. The capital of Persia at that time was
Isfahan, and Morales was given permission to establish a residential mission
there at around 1602.
In 1607 another Catholic group, the Carmelites, joined the Augustinians.
The trade supremacy of Portugal between Europe and India, as well as the
Catholic missions linked to its military power ended when a joint attack of
Safavid and British troops took over the Hormuz Island. This signaled the end of
Catholic mission’s advance in Asia, and the persecution of Augustinian converts
began. Five Persian Catholic converts chose martyrdom with hideous tortures
rather than to apostatize. The non-Persian Augustinians were expelled.
In 1628 the French established a mission in Persia, but they were faced with
difficulties explained below.
Shah Abbas I, known as the Great, who ruled from 1587 to 1629, issued an
edict that was aimed at encouraging Christians to convert to Islam. According to
the edict, any Christians who would convert to Islam had the right to confiscate
all the property of their Christian relatives for seven generations back. Under the
Safavid dynasty of Iran, from 1666 until 1736, the persecution of the Christians
intensified. In short, from 1650 to 1770, Christianity was almost wiped out in
Persia.
The Nestorians, who were driven out from the cities, were more and more
isolated, unschooled and poverty stricken. A Carmelite visiting the area around
the mid-1650s found some forty thousand Nestorian families in the hills around
Lake Urmia.
Among the Melchites of Antioch, the minority patriarch had since the
schism of 1724 joined the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, the
majority Jacobite patriarch of Antioch secured the recognition of the Ottoman
government.
The Maronites have been in communion with the Catholic Church since
1182, but their uninterrupted relationship with Rome dates from 1512-1517. The
35
Armenian Rite Uniate was established in 1742 and centered in Lebanon.
36
Christians in the Middle East at the Eighteenth Century
34
Pages 197-200.
35
Page 199-200
54 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

Of the Catholic missionaries, Augustinians left Persia in 1750 and the

Dominicans in 1764. Those Uniate Patriarchates that catholic missionaries had
established in parts of the Ottoman Empire such as Lebanon, Constantinople and
Jerusalem, survived.
Armenians on both sides of the Turko-Persian border were repressed, but
had expanded as far as India. Khojah Gregory, a humble Armenian cloth seller,
rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of the Bengal army, and then from 1760
to 1763 became the virtual ruler of Bengal, in Muslim Moghul India.
The Nestorians, split three ways, were surviving in their isolated villages in
the Kurdish mountains. In 1800 there were three Nestorian patriarchs:
1- Elias XIII Ishoyahb (1778-1804), from the old traditional Nestorian line. In
Mosul in the nineteenth century, where the patriarch then resided, this line
became Uniate (Roman Catholic), and is known as the Chaldean Church in
Iran.
2- Simon XVI Jean (1780-1820), represented the Sulaqa line, which in 1551
had turned Uniate, but a hundred years later turned back to Nestorianism. This
church is known as the Assyrian Church of the East, and regards itself as the
only valid inheritor of the old name “Nestorian.”
3- This line, a separate uniate patriarchate situated in Diarbekir on the upper
Tigris River, was absorbed into the Chaldean Catholic Church, when in 1781
37
its patriarch resigned.
When the first Protestant missionaries arrived in Asia in 1820, they found
the national Armenian Orthodox Church battered but organized and self-
governed. The Nestorians were lying low in the Kurdish mountains west of Lake
Urmia, and the Catholic Uniates, were all using their own liturgies, their own
38
Bibles and still speaking their own language.
39
The West and the Ancient Churches of the Middle East, 1800 to 1860
Here the author begins with a general picture of the forced relationships
between Turkey and Europe. The Turks twice threatened Vienna, the last one
being in 1683.
Western Protestants were slow to engage in worldwide mission work. They
regarded the Middle East as impermeable enemy territory. On the other hand,
Catholics, since 1551 have recognized the possibilities of a Christian recovery in
the land of its origin by reviving the Nestorian and the larger Armenian orthodox
churches. For more than two centuries, Rome remained in touch with the
Christian patriarchs who drifted in and out of the union. This reviewer would like
36
Pages 203-205.
37
Page 204 and note 49 in page 209.
38
Page 204.
39
Pages 376-393.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 55

to remind the readers that the Church of England also had this intention of
preparing the Nestorians to renew their missionary activities in Asia, as they had
40
so successfully done centuries ago.
When the Protestants discovered the Nestorians, it was a happy surprise.
It was in 1834 that Justin Perkins arrived in Iran as the resident Protestant
missionary to the Nestorians. The welcome was cordial, and Perkins and his
medical colleague, Dr. Asahel Grant, were delighted to have found Christians
who treasured the scriptures, accepted the authority of the Bible without
question, and reverenced no statues of saints. Perkins wrote home that he had
found “the Protestants of Asia,” survivors of the ancient Church of the East. This
is an excerpt of what he wrote:
“They were very artless and simple, welcoming us with open arms and
hearts to our labors. They were also far more simple and scriptural in their
religious beliefs and practices than any other Oriental sects of Christians,
acknowledging the Bible, in theory at least, as the only rule of faith, and
rejecting all image and picture-worship, confession to priests, the doctrine
of purgatory, etc., with hearty indignation. They were thus, in their deeply
fallen state, still entitled to the honorable epithet…the Protestants of
41
Asia.”
Of course, Justin Perkins was not the first American, and the Americans
were not the first Protestants to arrive in Persia. The first American missionaries
were Eli Smith and H. G. O. Dwight, two clergymen from the American Board of
Foreign Missions who in 1830 explored Nestorian territory on the northwestern
border of Persia. But, it was Perkins, serving under the same mission, who in
1834 established a continuing Protestant presence in Persia settling in Urmia,
Persian Azarbaijan. Professor Moffett referring to page 45 of John Joseph’s work
“The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors,” writes that the unexpected
welcome from non-Roman, non-Greek Orthodox Christians led Perkins to
believe he had found pre-Reformation Protestants.
The author concludes that Perkins was wrong, as he was later compelled to
modify his first impressions. What Perkins had found, writes Moffett, was one of
the last pockets in West Asia of the Nestorians, the ancient Church of the East,
which was once famous for its missionary passion throughout Asia.
Perkins writes that the ancient glory had gone and the old church had
become a “pitiful skeleton in a valley of dry bones,” fatally weakened by
centuries of persecution. Despite all these, Perkins considered the Nestorians as
having moral superiority to the Muslim culture around them. For thirty-six years,
Perkins translated the Bible, preached on Sundays, and almost looked like a
native. He had become so popular that when he approached a village the entire

40
See J.F. Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church of England (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992), 2.
41
Page 377.
56 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

people would march out and bring him in with the sound of drums and
42
trumpets.
Urmia at that time had about thirty thousand inhabitants, mostly Muslim but
with a considerable Nestorian community. There were also about three hundred
43
villages of which only one hundred were Nestorian. The patriarch, Abraham
Mar Shimon, lived in Kudshanis forty miles west, in the mountains of Turkish
Kurdistan about twelve thousand feet above sea level. He had recently moved
there and was represented by a bishop in Urmia. Near Mosul there was another
Nestorian patriarch by the name of Mar Elias. Nestorians seemed content to
accept either patriarch, depending perhaps on which one was nearest. The
Kurdish attacks and massacres of 1843 forced Mar Shimon out of Urmia to
Mosul.
Perkins estimate of the number of Nestorians in West Asia was about
150,000, but Eli Smith estimated 70,000 in Persia and Kurdistan. Moffett adds
his own “reasonable” estimate of 125,000.
Perkins was dismayed to find that most Nestorians were illiterate in their
own language and could not read their own sacred texts of old Syriac. Perkins
reported that no more than forty men and one woman were able to read the
Syriac sacred texts. The woman was Helena, the sister of Mar Shimun which,
44
under note 23, is represented as the wife of the Nestorian (Assyrian) patriarch.
Perkins noticed that the illiterate peasants spoke a language that is neither
Turkish, Persian, nor Arabic, but a language strikingly close to the old Syriac
texts. He then realized that this was a modern variation of Syriac that had not
been reduced to writing.
He then reported to his mission board that “spoken Nestorian Syriac was
not a dead language, extinct for a thousand years, but the spoken language of a
brave, long-forgotten, and long-persecuted but still surviving Christian
45
community.”
Perkins set out to reduce the spoken language of the Nestorians to writing,
and in this he was helped by Abraham, a Nestorian priest. The first printing press
arrived in Urmia in 1840, and that made it possible to print the Bible. Among the
books printed were “On the Necessity of a New Heart,” which was printed in
1841, and the Psalms, printed in classic Syriac the same year. The books next
printed were:
• The Four Gospels in Urmian Aramaic,
• The Acts and Epistles in classical Syriac,

42
Page 378
43
Dwight W. Marsh, The Tennesseean of Koordistan and Persia, Being Scenensand
Incidents from the Life of Samuel Audley Rhea (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of
Publication, 1869), 55.
44
Page 379 and note 23 in page 395.
45
Ibid.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 57

• The Faith of the Protestants in both classic Syriac and Urmian Aramaic, and
• Twenty-Two Plain Reasons for Not Being a Roman Catholic.
Perkins completed the translation of the complete New Testament into
spoken Aramaic in 1845, and it was published the next year, and opened a school
for Nestorian boys in Urmia, and a seminary for males to be trained as teachers
and preachers.
The Muslims of Urmia were jealous of these achievements, and they
demanded that the missionaries, Christians though they might be, to open a
school for Muslims. Asahel Grant, M.D., and his wife who had both joined the
Perkins, reluctantly accepted the education of Muslims.
More interesting and daring was the decision of Judith Grant, the wife of
Dr. Grant, to pick four Nestorian girls for the first “female seminary.” This was a
daring move because of the oppressive prejudice against freedom of education
for women prevalent at the time.
Judith Grant later died at the age of 25, but the seminary became famous as
the “Fidelia Fiske Seminary.” The name was chosen for a young recruit named
Miss Fidelia Fiske, from Mt. Holyok College, who joined the mission in 1843,
and revived the school. She has been called “one of the greatest missionaries of
46
modern times.”
47
The Nestorian-Protestant Schism (1846-1870)
Characteristic of all the early nineteenth-century Protestant missions in
West Asia was the commitment to evangelize the Muslim world through reform
of the ancient Christian churches of the East, and to avoid the creation of separate
Protestant churches via proselytizing.
“But before ten years had passed, it was becoming increasingly apparent
that the Puritan simplicities of Congregational worship and order were not
easily yoked with the long, unintelligible liturgies and high
authoritarianism of the Nestorian hierarchies. The two traditions began to
drift apart, at first almost unconsciously when the missionaries, after
enduring a Nestorian mass in language that most Nestorians did not
understand, sought to refresh their spirits at home with a simple
48
celebration of the Lord’s Supper in their own familiar language.”
On the other hand, the missionaries added spiritual experience and growth
to literacy and academic progress. The Bible was given a prominent place in the
teaching and higher moral standards were required of students than those to
which they had been exposed. Students had to pray everyday for forgiveness of
sin and for personal conversion. This resulted in a series of revivals first in the

46
Page 380
47
Pages 380-382.
48
Page 380-381.
58 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

schools. This revival, in fact, as presented above, boils down to conversion to

Protestantism. Afterwards two bishops and most of the seminary converted
during the years from 1846 to 1861. The revivals [conversions] spread from
schools to villages and churches. The Patriarch Abraham Mar Shimun V
regarded these conversions as a threat to the church’s authority. He compared the
separatism of the Congregational American mission to the American Episcopal
mission to the Eastern churches (1839-1850), and found the high regard for
tradition by the latter to be more congenial. Persian Nestorians were passionately
attached to their historic faith, which had preserved their identity through
centuries of torture.
In 1848 Abraham Mar Shimun V publicly opposed the Protestant reformers,
and denounced them to the Russian embassy, the nominal protectors of the
mission in the absence of diplomatic relations between Persia and the United
States. This was a drift toward separation, but Justin Perkins opposed separation
49
until his death in 1869.
50
Turkey
The author sets Turkey against a historical background with Europe to give
the reader a panoramic picture of the country where Christians lived. From 1280
to 1683 Turkey attacked Europe, who was on the defensive and on the edge of
disaster. Europe lost Constantinople, its last link with the Eastern Roman Empire
in 1453. Turks occupied the Balkans, took Crete, an island southeast of Greece,
advanced to the gates of Vienna, penetrated into Ukraine, and attacked Poland.
Their last attempt to take Vienna was in 1683, but they failed. Here the tide
turned, and within thirty-five years they were driven out of Hungary, Croatia,
much of Serbia, and Transylvania, a province in central Romania. By 1800 the
Turkish Empire was in full decline, facing the advance of new imperial powers
such as Britain, France and Russia. It was not only Turkey that was in decline,
but the Qajar dynasty of Persia was in decline too. The battle for the control of
the Middle East and Western Asia had begun. At first, the western powers
wanted land and commerce; the demand for oil came later.
It was in such a political environment that the missionaries of the American
Board came to Turkey in 1820, fifteen years before their counterparts in Urmia,
Persia. The difference between Turkey and Persia was that in Persia the
Christians were few and most of them Nestorian. In Turkey, about one-third of
the population was Christian, and the Nestorians were one of the smallest and
most isolated enclaves in the empire.
There were seven Christian communities in Turkey, each of which was a
nation within the nation. The members of these Christian communities were not
Turkish citizens, but wards or constituencies of the empire. To survive in the vast
sea of Islam, each church, Nestorian, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Jacobite and

49
Page 381-382
50
Pages 382-385.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 59

others, jealously preserved its own identity. This was a pattern older than Islam;
it was a remnant of the millet system of the Sassanids of the fifth-century Persia,
a system of semi-autonomous, socially disadvantaged, and politically powerless
religious ghettoes.
The largest of the Christian communities in Asian Turkey was Armenian,
called Gregorian, or Orthodox Monophysite. The second largest group was Greek
Orthodox, living mostly along the coast of Asia Minor [modern Turkey].
The Jacobite Church was placed, by the Ottoman Empire, under the
authority of the Armenian Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople. The church of
the Antiochene Orthodox Jacobites was centered in Syria, which had been ruled
by Turkey since the sixteenth century.
The churches that recognized the authority of the pope, but had their own
patriarch, were:
1- Maronites
2- Antiochene Rite Catholics
3- Chaldean Rite Catholics or Nestorian/Assyrian Catholics
4- Armenian Rite Catholics.
Shortly after the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, they gave legal
status to only the Greek and Armenian Orthodox patriarchs, as the political heads
of recognized religious minorities. The Greek patriarch had his seat in
Constantinople, and had the pride of location, but the Armenian patriarch was the
most powerful in Asia as the head of the largest ethnic religious group, and also
as the representative of all non-Muslim and non-Greek Orthodox
51
Christians.
As can be seen, the Nestorians had not received recognition from the
Turkish authorities, and as late as 1848 the Nestorian patriarchs were still seeking
recognition. An estimate in 1858 gives the following figures for the Christian
population of Turkey in Asia (Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Asia Minor and Palestine):
Armenian Gregorian (Orthodox)................................2 Million
Greek Orthodox..........................................................1 Million
Jacobites (Antiochene Orthodox)................................ 240,000
Maronite .......................................................................180,000
Independent Nestorians (Kurdistan).............................. 60,000
Uniate Nestorians (Chaldeans)...................................... 40,000
Uniate Jacobites (Antiochene).......................... 40,000-50,000
52
This distribution yields a total of 3,560,000 to 3,570,000 Christians
53
The Maronites
51
Page 383-384
52
Page 384
53
Pages 389-391.
60 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

After the Greek and Armenian Orthodox, the Maronites were the third
largest Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire. It was in the eighth century
that they settled in the mountains of Lebanon. Moffett does not trace the origins
of the Maronites; therefore the following is added for those interested in the
subject.
“The Maronites trace their origins to St. Maron, or Maro (Arabic Mārūn),
a Syrian hermit of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, and St. John Maron,
or Joannes Maro (Arabic, Yūhanna Mārūn), patriarch of Antioch in 685-
707, under whose leadership the invading Byzantine armies of Justinian II
54
were routed in 684, making the Maronites a fully independent people.”
In the above quotation, Yūhanna is written with a dot under “h,” which
makes it sound like “kh,” that is Yukhanna. Therefore, the word is not Arabic, as
stated in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it is Syriac.
As to their theological beliefs, they considered Christ as the union of two
natures, divine and human, but His will remained single and focused, and here
they diverged from Orthodoxy.
It was after a council in 1596 that the Maronite patriarch submitted to
Rome, accepting changes in liturgy and doctrine, but insisting on the retention of
the Syriac rite and language, which was granted
55
Protestants in Syria
William Goodell and Frank King, of the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions, opened their first residential work in 1823 in Beirut. The
two missionaries were assisted by an Armenian bishop and a highly literate
priest, and were thus able to establish schools with about seven hundred pupils.
They were also able to establish a school for girls, laying the foundations for
women’s rights in a fiercely Muslim environment. A significant event that caused
an angry reaction from the Eastern Churches, was the joining in communion and
fellowship of bishop Dionysius Garabed and the priest, Gregory Wortabet (or
Wartabed), with the mission church.
The Maronite patriarch excommunicated all those who had associated with
the Protestants. The gap between the Americans and the ancient churches
widened with the first martyrdom of a converted Maronite at the hands of his
fellow Christians.
As a result of these differences, the girls’ school was temporarily suspended
from 1833 until 1860, when the American mission was able to report a network
of elementary schools enrolling 743 boys and 277 girls. A seminary, or college,
was founded in 1846.
The efforts of the American Protestants culminated in the founding of the
famous American University of Beirut and the Beirut College for Women.

54
Encyclopedia Britannica 2005.
55
Pages 391-393.
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 61

The growth of the Protestant Church in Syria and Lebanon was

insignificant. An estimate of religions in Syria/Lebanon is illustrated below.
Out of a total population of 1.5 millions, the spread of the different groups was as
follows:
1- Sunni Muslims .............................. 750,000
2- Maronites....................................... 200,000
56
3- Nusairiyeh .................................. 200,000
4- Greek Orthodox............................. 150,000
5- Shi’ite Muslims ............................... 80,000
6- Greek Catholic ................................ 50,000
7- Druzes ............................................. 50,000
8- Jews ................................................. 30,000
57
Calamity in the Middle East (1860-1900)
In this part, Moffett condenses several centuries of Turkish history in a few, but
vivid sentences. For four hundred years, the Turks were pushing into Europe, and
in only a few decades of the nineteenth century, the empire collapsed. On the
other hand, the Western Christian military power was on the rise. Despite its
weakness, the Ottoman Empire neither lost land (with few exceptions) nor
people, and the Middle East remained Muslim. In its weakness, the Islamic
power turned against its own Christian minorities, and most brutally against the
Armenians. Here, the reviewer would like to mention that Assyrians were also
treated as brutally as the Armenians.
One of the symptoms of the decline of the Ottoman power was the mutiny
of the Janissary Corps in 1826. The Janissary Corps were formed from four to
eight year old Bulgar, Serb, and Bosnian boys, who were torn away from their
Christian families, forcibly converted to Islam and trained for celibacy, the
Muslim faith and war.
These Janissaries had become the heart of the Turkish military elite.
After suffering a series of humiliating military defeats, the sultan ordered a
remodeling of the Janissary in line with the Western military model. As
mentioned above, the Janissary revolted. The sultan’s reaction was a bloody
massacre that wiped out the entire Janissary Corps. The sultan’s reforms proved
ineffective and Turkish military power never recovered. It was Abdul Hamid II
(1876-1909) who massacred the Armenians, lost control of the Balkans, and was
replaced by Muhammad V (1909-1915). Muhammad V was the weakest sultan of
58
them all and came to be known as “the sick man of Europe.”
59
The Mountain Nestorians

56
a secrete sect, akin to the Druzes
57
Pages 403-412.
58
Page 403-404.
59
Pages 405-406.
62 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

Within the time span from 1860 and 1900, the ancient Church of the East
had become weaker, and no longer the dominant Christian force in Asia. Since
the Mongols turned Muslim in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Church
of the East never recovered. They were now to be found in western Persia and
eastern Turkey. The strain between the ancient church and the converted church
of the American missionaries finally led to a formal separation.
In 1862 a presbytery was organized, and in 1870 the American Board
(Congregationalist) turned over to the Presbyterians its work among the
Nestorians of Persia. The Presbyterians reluctantly surrendered their long
cooperation with the old church to form the independent Reformed Nestorian
Church. In 1870 the retiring American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions (ABCFM), while passing its responsibilities in Iran to the
Presbyterians, organized a seminary for the training of pastors and other
Christian workers. Ten years later the seminary changed its name to the Urmia
College. It was in the 1890s that persecutions were breaking upon Christians
across the border in Turkey.
60
The Massacre of Armenians
Moffett interprets the vulnerability of the Nestorians as a result of their
weakness and that of the Armenians, to their strength. He continues by describing
the situation of Armenians in Turkey, where their cultural status and financial
acumen was higher than that of the Turks, which made them enviable. In general,
Armenians were treated better in Persia than in Turkey; but were caught in the
wars between Turkey, Persia, and Russia. In the Turkish Empire in 1860, the
Armenians were the strongest of all the Christian minorities. The Christian
tradition of Armenians went back to the founding of their church in A.D. 302
under its first patriarch, Gregory the Illuminator (ca. A.D. 240-332).
The Armenians were divided geographically, politically, and
ecclesiastically. Geographically and politically they were divided by Turkey and
Persia. The ecclesiastical division of Armenians began since the fall of
Constantinople at the hands of the Turks in 1453. Here too the division was east
and west, the patriarchate of the east remaining in ancient Echmiadzin, near
Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. To control their Christian minority, the Turks
created the patriarchate of Constantinople. Both patriarchs, one in Constantinople
and one in Echmiadzin, possessed authority over the same number of Armenians,
about more than a million and a half in each area.
At the beginning of World War I, it was estimated that 3.4 million
Armenians lived in Turkey, Persia, and Russia. The Old Armenian Orthodox
Church was weakened by the secession of Armenian Catholics, Armenian
Jacobites (Antiochene), and Armenian Protestants (Evangelicals).
Russia had been intermittently advancing into Armenian territory in East
Turkey. In 1878 Russia occupied part of Turkish Armenia, and large numbers of

60
Pages 406-410
Book Review: A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume II, by Samuel Hugh Moffett, 63

Armenians migrated into Russia hoping for the restoration of an independent

Armenian nation.
But the turn of events was different, and Armenians suffered from both
Russia and Turkey. The far northeastern half of old Armenia, which since the
early 1800s was under Russian control, suffered suppression and
denationalization by a Christian power, i.e. Russia. In 1885 all Armenian schools
and newspapers were closed, and the name “Armenia” was condemned. In 1903
the Russian government confiscated all the property of the Armenian Church,
causing a rebellion that lasted until 1906. In that year the Russian government
restored the church property, but no independence was allowed for Armenians.
But, it was that part of Armenia conquered by Russia from Turkey that allowed
Armenians to establish their national government; the part that remained in
61
Turkey was lost.
In 1894, on the other side of the border in Turkey, sultan Abdul Hamid II
acting on the pretext of a supposed secret rebellion, let loose his Kurdish
irregulars to slaughter Armenians. It was massacre after massacre, spreading
eastward from Constantinople to Trebizond and Diarbekir. It was a tyranny
against all Christians. This was followed by the genocidal terror of World War I,
from 1915 to 1918, where about a million out of 2.2 millions were massacred.
62
Lebanon, the Maronites
After the great massacre of the Maronites by the Druzez in 1860, Turkey
yielded to the pressure by the French and created a greater Syria, which included
Lebanon. This greater Syria was made an autonomous province with a Christian
governor, something astounding in a Muslim empire. Since then the Maronites
have remained the dominant Christian presence well into the twentieth century.
Early in World War I, when Turkey found itself fighting against France, it
asserted its military control over Lebanon, and repealed all the privileges of the
Maronites and other Christians. When Turkey was defeated, the Treaty of Paris
in 1920, influenced by the strong Maronite Patriarch Elias Huwayyik, granted
independence to Lebanon and separation from Syria, under the French mandate.

Conclusion
This was a brief account of the vast subject covered by this book. The stories of
some Christian communities, such as the Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, and
Maronites were addressed. The book also deals with Christian missionary efforts
in Ceylon, Burma, Vietnam, Siam, Japan, China, and more.
What is common in all these missionary efforts is the violent reaction, at a certain
point, by the established religion of the country. When the national unity of
Armenians or Nestorians was threatened by the new Protestant Church, the
reaction became violent. We have been hearing or reading about the massacres of
Christians of the Middle East at the hands of the Kurds and Turks. In fact, the

61
Comment by this reviewer.
62
Pages 410-412
64 Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Vol. 20, no. 1, 2006

persecution and massacres of Christians have taken place in many countries,

where the uniformity and unity of society has been threatened. For example, the
book explains how Christians were persecuted in Japan, China, and other places.
A treaty between Japan and Korea stipulated that any Catholic seeking refuge or
escape in Korea was to be returned to Japan for execution. A Chinese shipwreck
on Korean soil in 1644 had five Catholic sailors. They were all dispatched to
Japan and executed.
The book broadens the outlook of the reader to wider horizons, enriching
his or her view of the world. The reader will notice that foreign missionary
activity did not result in splitting only the Church of the East; it split everyone it
touched. For example, the old Armenian Gregorian Church was split into a
Catholic and a Protestant Church, in addition to the Old Church. But the main
difference between Armenians and the old Syriac speaking churches is that,
Armenians, despite their religious differences, are united and brought together
through the glue of Armenian nationalism. This is not the case with Syriac
Christians, who are split along religious lines and united by the glue of religious
sectarianism. The nationalist glue that could unite all Syriac speaking Christians
is the glue of Assyrianism, which has its roots in the ancient history of Assyria
and Babylonia.
The author has produced a great work, for which he has to be congratulated.