Page 12 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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group of five missionaries to Egypt in 1818, 1 and the Ameri­

can Board of Foreign Missions had established a school in

Constantinople in 1831. Perhaps more significantly, the Ameri­

can Board had started educational work in Syria and Lebanon

in 1823, which led to the later establishment of the Syrian

Protestant College in Beirut. None of these Missionary act­

ivities, however, had resulted in any significant number of

religious conversions and most of them had been directed in

any case towards the already existing Christian minorities in

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the area and not the Muslim population. By the end of the

19th Century, therefore, the entire Middle East, particularly

the Arabian Peninsula, stood out as a last remaining frontier

on the world map of Christian missionary endeavor.

It is not altogether surprising then that in 1889 a

small group of American missionaries should have got together

‘se- in New Jersey, at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, to

found an Arabian Mission with the following charter:

"The object of the Mission, in accordance with its
original plan, is the evangelization of Arabia. Our ef­
fort should be exerted directly among and for Moslems,
including the slave population; our main methods are preach­
ing, Bible distribution, itinerating, medical work, and
school work. Our aim is to occupy the interior of Arabia
from the coast as a base." 3

The fledgling mission was not given a great deal of encourage­

ment by the existing missionary societies,^ but its founders

managed to raise enough funds by themselves to launch the mis-

sion in a modest way. Two years later, in 1891, Samuel Zwemer

and James Cantine, two of the founder members opened the mis­

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