Page 32 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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from the rest of the missionary community. For the founders,

Samuel Zwemer, James Cantine and their mentor, Reverend Dr.

John G. Lansing, Professor of the Old Testament language and

Exegesis in the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, it was a
proud moment.

With Board sponsorship, it was now possible to put more

missionaries in the field and to expand field operations.
<3*

From three missionaries in 1891 (all in Basrah), the Mission

staff had expanded to ten by the turn of the century, eighteen

by 1915, and thirty-five by 1933. These men and women were

distributed seventeen to Basrah, (including-Araarah), eight

to Bahrain, and five each to Muscat and Kuwait.^ The Mission

now had sufficient manpower to strike out on itinerant mis­

sionary activity to supplement its permanent stations. It

could thus vastly expand its base of operations and reach

much larger numbers of Gulf Arabs. Not surprisingly, there-

for, the period from 1915 to 1933 saw a rapid increase in

explorative travel. Missionaries were set to Nasariyah (1918)
46
and Baghdad (1921). More importantly, medical missionaries

toured the Arabian peninsula for the first time with an ex­

pedition to Doha from Bahrain in 1918, to the Trucial States

in 1919, a tour of the Omani coast by Dr. Louis P. Dame in

1925, a tour of South West Arabia and Yemen by Dr. Dame in

1932, and a daring foray across the Ja'alan desert by Dr. W.

Harold Storm in the same year. Perhaps even more important

than these dashes into the Arabian hinterland, regular expedi­

tions to the court of Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa’ud at Riyadh were