History of the Arabian Mission

The History of Arabian Missions is one of the most unusual books among the collection passed on to me for digitisation by Redcliffe College. It summarises first the evangelisation the Arabian Peninsular from the the First Century until 1889. From then on it covers in great detail the foundation and developing work the Arabian Mission by James Cantine [1861-1940] and Samuel Marinus Zwemer [1867-1952]. My thanks to Doug Leonard, the Director of RCA Global Mission, for his kind permission to place this book on-line.

Alfred DeWitt Mason & Frederick J. Barny, History of the Arabian Mission. New York: The Board of Foreign Missions Reformed Church in America, 1926. Hbk. pp.256. [Click to download the complete book in PDF]

Contents

1. The Land and its People
2. History and Civilisation
3. Religion and Education
4. Early Contact with Christianity
5. The Pioneers
6. Possessing the Land
7. Strengthening the Stakes
8. Lengthening the Cords
9. Years of the Right Hand of the Most High
10. Women’s Work for Women
11. Sister Missions
12. Conclusion

• Appendices

This section caught my wife’s eye as she was scanning through the book.

Extract from pp.87-88.

On his return to Arabia in the fall of 1896, he found one new missionary whose accession was the most significant of any that had yet occurred, Mrs. Amy Wilkes Zwemer, who had married Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer at Baghdad, May 18, 1896. Miss Wilkes had been a member of the Church Missionary Society with headquarters in the city of Baghdad. On her marriage to Mr. Zwemer she was released from her contract with the English Society, but the cost of her outfitting and travel to the field had been advanced by the Church Missionary Society and very properly had to be in part at least refunded to them. It, therefore, became a pleasantry among the missionaries to say that “Mr. Zwemer had obtained a wife in true Oriental fashion by buying her from her former people. “And a fellow missionary used to facetiously remark, “Yes, I had to go about at home and raise money to pay for Mr. Zwemer’s wife.” [Continue reading]