Page 97 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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Slave Orphanage). 165

If the Mission failed in one respect, it nevertheless

had scored some spectacular successes as well, if not the

ones it had been aimimg for. By 1573, Reformed Church pastors

were, after all, serving "both Arab-speaking and English-

speaking congregations in Kuwait, Muscat and Bahrain that

totaled some eight hundred persons. In the educational field,

they had prepared some seven thousand five hundred students
for successful careers in business, politics and the profes­

sions and currently had some five hundred more students at­

tending their schools in Bahrain and Muscat. Their bookshops

in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Muscat were each the finest available
in their respective cities and were daily proving their popu­

larity by a combined monthly turnover of some $30,000.

It is tempting to speculate as well on what effect the
Mission’s operations had had on the role of women in the Mid­

dle East. Many of the missionary doctors and nurses were highly

educated women who commanded respect and prestige among the

Arabs. Many of the students at the Mission’s schools were
Arab girls who otherwise would certainly not have been encour­

aged to learn to read and write or to e:cpress themselves

publicly. Most of these girls probably went on to be nurses,

or teachers, or writers or doctors themselves. Unfortunately,

their memoirs are not yet available to us. But the considerable

impact that the Mission may have had on the lives of many
166
women in the Gulf can at least be imagined.

...A