The Death of Religion and Ottoman Missionaries in Europe

Chris Gratien, Georgetown University

The high aspirations of Western missionaries in the Ottoman Empire and their negligible successes in attempts to convert the Muslim population of the empire are well documented. After being met with the initial difficultly of such a task, Western missionaries focused their efforts on Ottoman Christians and providing social services to those communities. While the numbers they converted were small, missionaries are known to have played a prominent role in the politics of the period as figures situated between the local communities of the Ottoman Empire and the imperial powers of the Christian world.

Considerably less has been written on Ottoman efforts to proselytize abroad, and while these activities were likewise focused on Muslim communities in Asia and Africa, Europe was also on the radar. This document is a peculiar artifact of that phenomenon.

This letter to the Ottoman Interior Ministry concerns converting Europeans to Islam. The author (whom I was unable to identify) indicates that with the rise of socialism and communism and the general wane of religious beliefs in Europe, many in the West were in a search of a new faith, presenting a "great opportunity" (büyük fırsat) for the spread of Islam. In the margins of the letter, the author notes that Western newspapers were already reporting conversions and the construction of mosques in England and widespread pro-Islamic sentiments in France.

The only issue was that there seemed to be no qualified teachers to carry out such a mission, as the number of religious scholars in the empire with sufficient general education and knowledge of European languages was very few. The documents refer to one exemplary candidate, an imam from South Africa, who had been involved in Islamic education. He had since passed away and had been succeeded by his son. If a teacher like him could be found for spreading the word in Europe, it might enable the Ottomans to capitalize on the apparent dearth of faith in Europe.

The reverse side of the document is perhaps even more interesting. In contains a list of men and their qualifications for the job. Individuals from the Arab provinces figured prominently on this list, probably because they had more experience with foreigners and missionaries in particular.

For example, Yusuf Efendi, a former member of the Ottoman parliament and one of the eşraf of Jerusalem, was a qualified man capable of conversing in English, German, and Greek (in addition to Arabic presumably). Magrebi Tahir Efendi (this might be Tahir el-Jazairi, referred to in his day as the Muhammad Abduh of Syria) of Damascus was a scholar who had served in some official posts previously. He was capable of getting along with missionaries and knew a little French.

The most conspicuous name among the learned Islamic scholars of the list was undoubtedly the real Muhammad Abduh, an Egyptian scholar who traveled extensively in Europe and is known as one of the founding figures of Islamic modernism. According to the letter, he had been in Beirut but recently returned to Egypt. This piece of information helps us get a clearer sense of when this document may have been written. While the Ottoman archive catalog lists the date of this document as 1909, no date is written on the document itself. Since Muhammad Abduh died in 1905, this date is suspicious. He returned to Egypt in 1888, so this document might then be from 1889 or so. Since it is part of the Yıldız Palace archives associated with the reign of Abdülhamid II, this is a distinct possibility.

Not all of the men on the list were Islamic scholars. The list also included a few men involved in the fields of trade and medicine who were simply devout and possessed good foreign language skills. Meanwhile, Mehmed Efendi, a Bosnian employed at the military rüşdiye school in Beşiktaş as a Farsi teacher, seems to have been selected in part for the fact that he knew Russian, likely as a consequence of growing up in the Balkans.

While many of the facts surrounding this document are difficult to ascertain, this eclectic list points to a clear fact. While there were undoubtedly many knowledgeable and charismatic scholars in the Ottoman Empire and no shortage of men possessing a number of European languages, the two attributes seem to have converged only rarely, and thus, a devout physician with good English could suddenly become a candidate for missionary work. Such a description was in fact fairly applicable to many of the American or European missionaries operating in the Ottoman Empire, who were as much associated with Western science and culture as any particular religious learning or function.

Source: BOA, Y-EE 38/92

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