Western missionaries are credited with introducing many changes to Middle Eastern societies in the 19th century. Their influence on the Ottoman state is less well known. Competing with Protestant and Catholic missionaries for the minds, souls, and bodies of its Arab subjects, the Ottomans adopted Christian missionary methods to beat them at their own game

Rogan, E.

Leiden University Scholary Publications

Regional IssuesI S I M  N E W S L E T T E R  4 / 9 9 19Eugene Rogan is director of the Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College and lectures in the modernhistory of the Middle East in the University of Oxford. He is the author of Frontiers of the State in the LateOttoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.E-mail: eugene.rogan@oriental-institute.oxford.ac.ukMi ddl e Ea stE U G E N E  R O G A NWestern missionaries are credited with introducingmany changes to Middle Eastern societies in the 19t hcentury. Their influence on the Ottoman state is lesswell known. Competing with Protestant and Catholicmissionaries for the minds, souls, and bodies of itsArab subjects, the Ottomans adopted Christian mis-sionary methods to beat them at their own game. Ottoman MuslimMissionaries and theTransjordan FrontierThe south-eastern corner of Ottoman Syrialay beyond the reach of the government’sauthority until the second half of the 19t hcentury. A thinly-populated contact zonebetween the desert and the sown, the peas-ants and Bedouin of Transjordan had morein common with each other than they didwith the urban cultures of neighbouring Jer-usalem, Nablus and Damascus. This was par-ticularly true in terms of spiritual affairs. Farfrom the centres of orthodoxy, the residentsof Transjordan had grown highly unortho-dox in their religious practices. The largeChristian minority abstained from alcoholand pork and some Christian men wereknown to take a second wife when the firstfailed to conceive. The Muslims, for theirpart, imposed none of the restrictions onChristians common in urban Syria or Pales-tine. Christians were free to ride the samesize mount as Muslims, to wear any colourof the rainbow, and to trade insults andblows with Muslims as among equals whenthey had a falling out. Indeed, it was evenreported that Muslims would take their in-fants to be baptised by a Greek Orthodoxpriest to protect them from harm.An Open DoorFollowing the establishment of direct Ot-toman rule in northern Transjordan in 1867,Christian missionary societies were quick toenter the field. British and German Protes-tants of the Church Missionary Society(CMS) and French and Italian Roman Cathol-ics dispatched by the Latin Patriarch of Jeru-salem were attracted by the high degree oftolerance which they encountered in Trans-jordan. Not only could they hope to winover large numbers of Greek OrthodoxChristians, but they believed Transjordan tobe the one place in which they might winMuslim converts – particularly among theBedouin tribes. The missionary societies provided a widerange of social services hitherto neglectedby both the Ottoman religious authoritiesand the state, such as education and medi-cine. They embarked on ambitious buildingprojects to provide churches, schools andclinics. Initially, they met with support andeven gratitude from the local Ottoman offi-cials. By the 1880s, however, the Ottomansmoved to impose stricter limits on Christianmissionary activities in Greater Syria, and inTransjordan in particular. The missionariesresponded by turning their attention to thesouthern reaches of Transjordan, to the Kar-ak district, which still lay beyond direct gov-ernment rule.In February 1888, CMS missionaries HenrySykes and Frederick Connor set out on atour of Madaba and Karak to assess theprospects for mission work there. Connorwas most enthusiastic: ‘If the CMS avails it-self of the present opportunity, it will gainan undisputed footing in Kerak before theTurkish authorities enter it.’ Here was a tol-erant society reminiscent of the Transjordanof the 1860s. ‘The people are only nominalMoslems, and have not the same fanaticismas Moslems of Palestine and Syria. The doorfor evangelization in East and West Pales-tine is practically closed; in the Kerak districtit is open.’As it turned out, the CMS only opened itsmission in Karak after the Ottomans enteredthe town in 1893. The Latins too re-estab-lished their mission in Karak in 1894. The Ot-toman state they confronted was deter-mined not to allow agents of foreign powersto disrupt their delicate work in Transjor-dan’s newest frontier. The Ottoman govern-ment had to provide the services which theyforbade missionaries to deliver. They recog-nized the dubious religiosity of the tribes-men at the Transjordan frontier. The prob-lem was more aggravated the further onemoved south. Ottoman assessments of theinhabitants of the Karak district did not dif-fer from those of the missionaries. As thegovernor in Damascus wrote in 1894:’Although there are in excess of 50,000Muslim tribesmen estimated to be livingwithin the region of Macan [i.e. southernTransjordan, including Karak], they havelong been born into savagery and igno-rance of Islamic religious duties and reg-ulation of prayer. …One does not en-counter one man in a thousand whoperforms his prayers… Given the ab-sence of mosques and prayer rooms it isonly natural that they should abandonprayer, for even if they so desired thereare no places of worship to be found.’The Ottoman responseTo forestall missionary work among Mus-lims, the Ottoman government sought tobuild on the Muslim identity preservedamong those who observed none of theoutward practices of Islam. On entering Kar-ak, the Ottoman government sought to en-dow its new regional capital with a Fridaymosque. The governor of Syria petitionedthe Imperial Palace with the drawings andcostings for a new structure built on the siteof the ancient mosque ‘founded by Faruk[i.e. the Caliph cUmar] at the time of the [7t hcentury] conquest of Syria, destroyed five orsix centuries ago.’ The cost of constructingthe mosque, with a school attached, was es-timated by army engineers in the region of300,000 piasters. Over the next two dec-ades, old mosques were restored and newones built along the length of the Transjor-dan frontier, by local initiative and with gov-ernment support.The Ottomans were equally concerned tocounteract the proselytizing of Christianmissionaries among Muslims. The state con-sistently sought to provide spiritual gui-dance to Muslim communities within reachof European missionaries. For example, tocounteract the work of Christian missionar-ies in the Hawran in 1886, the provincial au-thorities in Damascus dispatched Quranicteachers to work with the tribes, ‘providedwith a tent and a camel to carry it when thetribe removes from place to place.’ Similarly,Sultan Abdülhamid II called for the postingof ‘village preachers’ (köy imamlari) to everyvillage in those districts of rural Syria where‘Muslim children are sent to schools openedby foreigners.’ He also called for the provin-cial printing presses to publish books andtreatises for distribution as a means ofreaching the literate.These calls for Quranic teachers to workamong the tribes and for village preachersbecame particularly acute after the Otto-man entry into Karak, given the determina-tion of the Latin and Protestant missionariesto make inroads among the Muslims there.In 1896, the CMS was represented by Fred-erick Johnson, an accredited medical doc-tor. The audacity of the British medical mis-sionary was confirmed in April 1897 whenDr Johnson travelled the short distancefrom Karak to Qatrana to visit ‘the Hajj Pil-grims on their outward journey with theidea of discovering the existence or not ofopportunities for the Medical Missionary.’He met with the ‘Pasha of the Hajj’ and oth-er officials and, not surprisingly, was dealt awarning six months later from the BritishConsul in Damascus ‘enclosing a copy of aNote Verbale received from the SublimePorte in which further complaint is made ofyour action in the matter of proselytismamong Moslems.’Muslim missionariesOttoman officials continued to follow thework of European missionaries in the Karakdistrict very closely. The governor in Damas-cus sent a telegram to the imperial palace inDecember 1898 with the familiar refrain of‘Latin and Protestant foreign missionariesopening unlicensed schools and educatingwild and uncivilised Arab Muslim childrendevoid of Islamic beliefs.’ However, his solu-tion was to imitate the societies they soughtto suppress, and to dispatch Hanafi Muslim‘missionaries’ (m i s y ö n e r l e r) to the Karak dis-trict to work in pairs among the tribes onstate salaries of 150 piasters each. Similarly,the office of the Sheyhülislam dispatchedsalaried preachers to remedy the ignoranceof Islamic practice in Macan in July 1899.The news of the Muslim missionaries wasreceived with alarm by the CMS, and dis-missed with derision by the Latins. CMS mis-sionary Henry Harding wrote to a Britishsupporter in 1899 asking him ‘to sympathizewith my feelings on learning that the Turksare sending fourteen fully trained Moslemmissionaries to Kerak, and these are on theirway now.’ The Dominican priest AntoninJaussen claimed that the Muslim missionar-ies made little impression on the natives ofthe Karak region. Some results were ob-tained in getting the Bedouin to observethe fast of Ramadan, though respect for thefast was localized: more fasting in the town,less among the plateau lands of Karak, andno observation at all among such independ-ent tribes as the Bani Hamida, Bani Sakhrand Huwaytat. The injunction to pray five times daily, heclaimed, was even less respected. Accordingto Jaussen, the Bedouin found the prostra-tions of prayer dishonourable and dis-missed the practice as ‘the prayers of thee f e n d i s (officials)’. Once having learned topray, Jaussen claimed the knowledge wasonly used out of political motives as part of‘official life’ when visiting government offi-ces in town. He cited as an example mem-bers of the Huwaytat tribe who ‘had them-selves initiated in the a r t of prayer and sub-mitted to those practices only when theywent to the Saray (government offices).’It is regrettable that our records provideno local reactions to the Ottoman mission-aries to balance the opinions expressed bysuch interested parties as the Catholic andProtestant observers. All that can be said ofthe European accounts is that they confirmthe dispatch of Ottoman missionaries. In allprobability, the Hanafi missionaries metwith no more success than the Protestantsor Catholics in trying to impose new valueson the people of Transjordan. For when, in1910, the people of Karak revolted againstthe state’s centralizing initiatives, theysacked the Friday mosque along with all theother structures built by the Ottoman au-thorities as another symbol of repressivestate rule. ♦

Ottoman Muslim Missionaries and the Transjordan Frontier

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Ottoman Muslim Missionaries and the Transjordan Frontier

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